Today’s News 2nd February 2023

• Escobar: A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia "An Offer It Can't Refuse"
  Escobar: A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia “An Offer It Can’t Refuse”

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?

  

  Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.

  Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.

  So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.

  As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.

  The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.

  In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).

  The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.

  Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.

  ‘Please don’t go on the offensive’

  The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”

  The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.

  Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”

  What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.

  The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.

  The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”

  Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.

  There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.

  This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.

  Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.

  What the Deep State really wants

  Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.

  The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.

  And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.

  It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”

  From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”

  Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”

  The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.

  The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.

  Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/02/2023 – 00:05

• Chinese Companies Dominate Among Global AI Patents
  Chinese Companies Dominate Among Global AI Patents

  Chinese enterprises increased patent filings for artificial intelligence products rapidly in the past couple of years.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the companies holding the most active AI and machine learning patent families are now tech giant Tencent and search engine provider Baidu, ahead of U.S. firm IBM, South Korea’s Samsung, Chinese insurance provider Ping An and former AI patent leader Microsoft.

  The latter company has been seeing one of its major AI investments come to fruition recently, as conversational AI bot ChatGPT by Microsoft partner OpenAI has been making waves. Microsoft swiftly announced another round of funding for OpenAI, rumored to be to the tune of $10 billion.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As this chart based on the LexisNexis PatentSight directory shows, Tencent and Baidu became the largest patent owners in machine learning and AI in 2021, each holding more than 9,000 active patent families. A family is a set of patents covering the same technical content. IBM owed more than 7,000 families that same year, while Microsoft held just under 6,000 – rank six. Between 2012 and 2019, it was Microsoft which owned the most AI patents, according to LexisNexis.

  Even bigger than the rise in filings by Tencent and Baidu was the AI patent frenzy unleashed by Chinese insurance and banking giant Ping An. The number of patent families it owns grew from fewer than 50 to more than 6,000 just in the past five years. years. Among the AI tools recently developed by the company is software for analyzing facial micro-expressions (i.e. eye blinks, involuntary twitches), which Ping An uses to assess insurance claims its policyholders send in by video.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 23:45

• UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don't Follow COVID-19 Narrative
  UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don’t Follow COVID-19 Narrative

  Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Nicole Sirotek is a registered nurse in Nevada with over a decade of experience working in some of the harshest conditions. When a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico, Sirotek and the organization she founded, American Frontline Nurses (AFLN), were there and gave out over 500 pounds of medical equipment and supplies.

  

  She hasn’t hesitated to be the first in when an emergency hits and medical professionals are needed. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s woken up on a cot in the middle of nowhere, boots still strapped to her feet, and ready to go.

  But in tears during an interview with The Epoch Times, she detailed her ordeal with harassment and doxing over the past year and how she’s contemplated suicide due to crippling anxiety and depression.

  “It took such a toll on my mental health. I wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t eating,” Sirotek said.

  To regain her mental health, she decided to step back from the group she started. But even that decision brought pain.

  “I said after I left New York, I’d do everything that I can to make sure it didn’t happen again,” Sirotek said, recalling the death she witnessed when she volunteered in New York as a nurse at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, for me to step back and take a break just makes me feel like I failed!”

  

  Sirotek is the victim of ongoing harassment. She’s received pictures of her children posed in slaughterhouses and hanging from a noose, drive-by photos of her house, and letters with white powder that exploded upon opening.

  The Nevada State Board of Nursing was inundated with calls for Sirotek’s professional demise and flooded with anonymous complaints.

  These complaints trace back to Team Halo, a social media influencer campaign formed as part of the United Nations Verified initiative and the Vaccine Confidence Project.

  In response, Sirotek filed a police report. Her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter. The Epoch Times reviewed the documents.

  The reply from the cease-and-desist letter? The client was acting within his First Amendment rights.

  The Harassment Begins

  In February 2022, Sirotek, as the face of AFLN, a patient advocacy network that boasts 22,000 nurses, appeared before Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and testified about the harm patients were experiencing when they sought treatment for COVID-19.

  She said she didn’t witness patients dying from the novel virus when she volunteered to work the front lines in New York at the start of the pandemic.

  Instead, in her opinion, as a medical professional with multiple master’s degrees, patients were dying from “negligence” and “medical malfeasance.”

  Sirotek detailed the withholding by higher-ups of steroids and Ibuprofen and the prescribing of remdesivir. Additionally, there was zero willingness to consider possible early intervention treatments like ivermectin.

  As the pandemic continued, such practices only escalated, Sirotek said.

  Sirotek’s testimony resulted in cheers, widespread attention, and a target on her back.

  

  “[The harassment] all started the day we got back from DC,” Sirotek said.

  At first, the attacks started with the typical “you’re transphobic, you’re anti-LGBTQ. I mean, they even called me racist,” Sirotek, who is Hispanic, recalled.

  And as more patients sought AFLN’s help, the attacks increased in frequency and force.

  At first, Sirotek said the attacks appeared to come from random people. But as the attacks continued, the terms “Project Halo,” “Team Halo,” and “#TeamHalo” continually cropped up. Especially on TikTok and from two accounts, “@jesss2019” and “@thatsassynp.”

  “[@thatsassynp] just kept on saying how I was spreading misinformation, [that] ivermectin doesn’t work,” Sirotek said. “He kept targeting the Nevada State Board of Nursing because I was on the Practice Act Committee, and he did not feel like that was acceptable.”

  Craig Perry, a lawyer representing nurses, including Sirotek, before the Nevada State Board of Nursing, confirmed Sirotek’s account. The executive director of the Nevada State Board of Nursing, Cathy Dinauer, declined to provide details on complaints or investigations, stating to The Epoch Times via email that they are “confidential.”

  Sirotek said the complaints overwhelmed her ability to defend her nursing license.

  “Untimely, they were filing so many complaints against me that [the Nevada State Board of Nursing] had to start filtering them as to what was applicable and not applicable. And [the complaints] just buried my nursing license to the point that we couldn’t even defend it,” Sirotek said.

  Attacks Transition to Threats

  Whenever Sirotek, or AFLN, tried to set up a community outreach webinar, hateful comments flooded their videos.

  Julia McCabe, a registered nurse and the director of advocacy services for AFLN, told The Epoch Times that initially, they tried kicking the trolls out of the outreach videos. But they couldn’t keep up with the overwhelming numbers and had to shut the videos down, usually after only 10 minutes, she said.

  To address the swarms, as McCabe labeled them, AFLN started charging an entrance fee for their webinars. But, McCabe said, they’d send out an email with a free access code to all of their subscribers before the webinar started. It helped, but not enough. The swarms kept coming. And the attacks escalated.

  On June 5, 2022, @thatsassynp posted a video on TikTok calling for a “serious public uprising,” because the Nevada State Board of Nursing and other regulatory agencies weren’t disciplining nurses for spreading “disinformation.”

  It became one of many such videos in the ensuing days. In the comments of one, he stated, “Also, stay tuned as [@jesss2019] will be addressing this as well. We are teaming up (as per usual) to raise awareness and demand action on this issue.” @jesss2019 responded, “Yes!!!! We will get this taken care of.”

  Jess and Tyler Kuhk of @thatsassynp have “teamed up” on several occasions, targeting healthcare workers who question the COVID-19 narrative. Team Halo doesn’t officially list Kuhk on its site, but Kuhk posts with the #teamhalo.

  In another video, he states, “If you’re new to this series, PLEASE watch the videos in my playlist ‘Nevada board of nursing.’ This started in Feb of this year.” His video has almost 35,000 “loves.”

  On June 7, 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video on TikTok accusing Sirotek of spreading misinformation. It included a link to @thatsassynp, and his complaints about Sirotek to the Nevada State Board of Nursing and calls to remove her from the Practice Act Committee. She implored TikTok to boost the message. It, too, became one of many videos attacking Sirotek.

  Specifically, @jesss2019 and @thatsassynp took issue with videos and posts from Sirotek, and AFLN, advocating for ivermectin and highlighting possible issues with remdesivir and the COVID-19 vaccines.

  @jess2019 removed all of the above videos after The Epoch Times sought comment. The Epoch Times retains copies.

  Sirotek says she received the first death threat against herself and her children around the same time, in June 2022.

  “They cut off the pictures of my children’s faces from our family photos, where we take them every year on our front porch—we’ve got 11 years of those photos—and they cut them out and put them on the bodies of those little boys that have been sexually abused. And that’s what would get sent to my house. And I gave the police that,” Sirotek said.

  In response to a request for comment from The Epoch Times, Sen. Johnson defended Sirotek.

  “The COVID Cartel continues to frighten and silence those who tell the truth and challenge their failed response to COVID,” Johnson said. “It is simply wrong for Ms. Sirotek to be smeared and attacked like so many others who have had the courage and compassion to successfully treat COVID patients.”

  As the threats continued and escalated, Sirotek also asked Perry to send a cease-and-desist letter to Tyler Kuhk on Aug. 1, 2022.

  Kuhk, a nurse practitioner, is the person posting on TikTok under the pseudonym @thatsassynp.

  

  The letter sent to Kuhk alleges that on at least 10 different occasions, @thatsassynp encouraged a “public uprising” against Sirotek. It also details that his videos attacking Sirotek garnered over 400,000 views.

  In response, McLetchie Law, a “boutique law firm serving prominent and emerging … media entities” responded to Perry by stating in a letter dated Aug. 16, 2022, “Both Nevada law and the First Amendment provide robust protections for our client’s (and others’) rights to criticize Ms. Sirotek’s dangerous views and practices—and to advocate for her removal from the Nursing Practice Advisory Committee of the Nevada State Board of Nursing.”

  It also warned that any attempt to deter Kuhk from his chosen path would “backfire” and could result in a “negative financial impact.” Neither Kuhk nor McLetchie Law responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

  Unable to confirm the real name behind the TikTok account @jesss2019, and thus, unable to send her a legal letter, Sirotek posted some of the threats she’d received on Facebook, pleading for @jesss2019 to cease targeting her, and recognize the possible real-world harm.

  In desperation, Sirotek asked Perry to file a legal name change, which he did on Sep. 15, 2022, hoping that would thwart people’s ability to look up Sirotek’s information. Perry told The Epoch Times, “Usually, when you do a name change, it’s a public record. But under extenuating circumstances, you can have that sealed.”

  In Sirotek’s case, the court recognized the threat to her and her family’s safety, waived the publication requirement, granted the change, and sealed her record on Oct. 4, 2022.

  Sirotek, at the behest of Perry, filed a police report detailing the harassment on Oct. 17, 2022.

  In December 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video to TikTok doxing Sirotek by revealing her name change. The Epoch Times sought comment from @jesss2019 but has not received a response. After the request for comment, the user removed the video.

  Team Halo and Social Media

  On Dec. 17, 2020, Theo Bertram, a director at TikTok; Iain Bundred, the head of public policy at YouTube; and Rebecca Stimson, the UK head of public policy for Facebook, appeared before the UK’s House of Commons to explain what their social media sites were doing to combat “anti-vaccination disinformation.”

  All three stated their companies employed a “two-pronged approach.” Specifically, “tackle disinformation and promote trusted content.”

  Bundred stated that from the beginning of the year to November 2020, YouTube had removed 750,000 videos that promoted “Covid disinformation.”

  

  Stimson stated that between March and October 2020, “12 million pieces of content were removed from [Facebook],” and it had labeled 167 million pieces with a warning.

  Bertram stated that for the first six months of 2020, TikTok removed 1,500 accounts for “Covid violation” and had recently increased that activity. “In the last two months, we took action against 1,380 accounts, so you can see the level of action is increasing,” Bertram said.

  “In October, we began work with Team Halo,” Bertram added. “I do not know if you are familiar with Team Halo. It is run by the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is about getting reliable, trusted scientists and doctors on to social media to spread trusted information.”

  Team Halo’s Origins

  On Sep. 20, 2022, Melissa Fleming, the under-secretary-general for global communications at the United Nations, appeared at the World Economic Forum to discuss how the United Nations was “Tackling Disinformation” regarding “health guidance” as well as the “safety and efficacy of the vaccine” for COVID-19.

  “A key strategy that we had was to deploy influencers,” Fleming stated. “Influencers who were really keen, who had huge followings, but really keen to help carry messages that were going to serve their communities.”

  Fleming also explained that the United Nations knew its messaging wouldn’t resonate as well as influencers, so they developed Team Halo.

  “We had another trusted messenger project, which was called Team Halo, where we trained scientists around the world, and some doctors, on TikTok. We had TikTok working with us,” Fleming said. “It was a layered deployment of ideas and tactics.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 23:25

• Will ATF Perform "Compliance Checks" With An Expanded Registry?
  Will ATF Perform “Compliance Checks” With An Expanded Registry?

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  The Biden Administration’s so-called “Ghost Gun” rule released last year provided everything ATF now needs to confiscate millions of pistols equipped with stabilizing braces.

  With the gun registry expansion rule enacted, the Biden Administration has created a complete national gun registry of every commercial firearm transaction in the last twenty years. This illegal gun registry can easily be used by ATF to enforce compliance with their pistol brace ban.

  President Biden has initiated a pistol brace ban via executive action—formally an ATF rule entitled “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces'”—because ATF is in its strongest position yet to begin systematically confiscating firearms from gun owners.

  The ATF’s draconian Pistol Brace Rule just hit the federal register. Your 120 day clock starts now.

  GOA is prepared to fight this by:
  ✅Working with Congress to pass a Joint Resolution of Disapproval
  ✅Filing a lawsuit
  ✅Passing the SHORT ACT
  ✅Defunding the ATF

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) January 31, 2023

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

  This rule regulates pistols equipped with stabilizing braces, which ATF approved previously and were designed and intended to allow disabled shooters to hold certain firearms with one hand.

  Even though these guns were acquired lawfully and with prior ATF approval, these pistol owners will now face a choice: reconfigure their pistols at personal cost, register them with the federal government as short-barreled rifles (SBRs), turn them in, or destroy them.

  The ATF has referred to this program as Biden’s “Amnesty Registration of Pistol Brace Weapons” plan. All of these so-called “options” infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

  The Biden Administration is using the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) as established by the antiquated National Firearms Act of 1934 to formally register these pistols with the federal government. But an illegal gun registry of Firearm Transaction Records will help ATF enforce this new ban with disturbing precision and legal consequences for gun owners.

  As mentioned earlier, the Biden Administration’s “Ghost Gun” rule also empowers the ATF to use Forms 4473 or Firearm Transaction Records, kept by FFLs after gun sales, to create a complete gun registry.

  Now, the ATF has guaranteed that there is a complete record of every firearm transferred since at least August 24th, 2002, including firearms equipped with stabilizing braces which first hit the markets in the last decade.

  This means all ATF-approved and commercially-sold pistol braced firearms have a paper registration trail for the ATF to trace at local gun stores or are already present in ATF’s digital and searchable out-of-business records gun registry, which had nearly a billion records even prior to its expansion by Biden’s ATF.

  While ATF will not be able to use its gun registry to find those who purchased a stabilizing brace and attached it to their firearms at home, the same cannot be said for the millions of gun owners who commercially purchased or transferred many of these brace-equipped pistols.

  ATF’s gun registry includes an extraordinary amount of information about each firearm an individual has purchased. ATF’s out-of-business registry is, in fact, searchable by make, model, serial number, and weapon type. Therefore, the ATF can efficiently create a list of all gun owners’ AR-15 pistols to create a door-to-door confiscation list, complete with home addresses and firearm serial numbers.

  GOA already caught the Biden Administration using commercial sales records to go door-to-door to enforce the “Ghost Gun” rule’s solvent trap provision last year.

  Gun owners also found ATF going door-to-door, asking gun owners to verify the serial numbers on their recent gun purchases without a warrant. ATF surely plans to do the same for President Biden’s pistol brace ban.

  

  In fact, there is little more the Biden Administration could do to make the ATF’s illegal gun registry more useful than it already is for confiscating pistol AR-15s and other such firearms.

  The implementation of the ATF’s gun registry and “ghost gun” crackdown was strategically implemented to make sure that Biden’s Pistol Ban would be as successful as possible. Gun owners should beware that this unconstitutional database of all their commercial firearm transactions is ready to be used against them to confiscate their lawfully acquired pistols.

  Watch: Will ATF Perform Brace “Compliance Checks” With It’s Expanded Registry?

  *   *   *  

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 23:05

• Florida's Gov. DeSantis Declares Financial War On 'Woke' Universities In State
  Florida’s Gov. DeSantis Declares Financial War On ‘Woke’ Universities In State

  Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threw down the gauntlet on fixing higher education on Jan. 31, vowing to eliminate all funding for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) throughout the state.

  

  Public universities should not be in the business of using taxpayer money to offer degrees in “zombie” studies but should embrace academic excellence and truth, and allow students to think for themselves, DeSantis said.

  “Our institutions will be graduating students with degrees that will actually be useful,” he said. “We will be eliminating all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in Florida. It will wither on the vine.”

  DeSantis offered a series of legislative proposals to flush political ideologies out of universities, including allowing university presidents and the university board of trustees to hold a post-tenure review on professors as needed.

  He also wants to shift hiring authority to the university president that had been ceded to faculty.

  

  DeSantis says he wants to ban the campus hiring committees’ use of DEI oaths that certify candidates will adhere to ideologies. One of them is Critical Race Theory—a Marxist ideology that divides people into oppressors and victims based on race or gender.

  Currently, candidates who reject social justice ideology and embrace the belief of equality and a color-blind society get points deducted during the hiring process designed to weed out those who disagree, he said.

  DeSantis said DEI bureaucracies had become a component of the administration within universities that are imposing a political agenda and ideologies such as implicit bias, which embraces the idea that America is systemically racist.

  “These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom, and really they constitute a drain on resources,” he said.

  DeSantis said he rejects the dominant view in academia around the country that higher education should impose ideological conformity to provoke political activism.

  He proposed that higher education curriculums should require a course on the history and philosophy of Western Civilization.

  The governor said that DEI bureaucracies have “metastasized,” adding they mandate training on political ideology. He pointed out that the state’s Stop Woke Act passed last year gives employees, particularly of private businesses, the right to opt out of CRT or DEI training.

  He praised the Florida College System (FCS) presidents who on  Jan. 18 publicly supported his vision of higher education as one free from indoctrination and open to truth and intellectual freedom. FCS is made up of community colleges and state colleges.

  

  The Stop Woke Act is currently being challenged in the court system, but DeSantis said he is confident the law will survive.

  The act addresses “wokeness” to historic injustices surrounding race or gender that may have created a false sense of guilt among those who were not responsible for them, such as the idea of systemic racism.

  It outlaws “indoctrination” practices in education or the workplace that label people as inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, based on their skin color, sex, or national origin, consciously or unconsciously.

  The law allows the state university system’s Board of Governors to require tenured professors to undergo a “comprehensive post-tenure” review every five years.

  DeSantis’ announcement is his latest assault on the “woke” ideology that he says is running rampant on college campuses in Florida and elsewhere.

  ​​The governor also mandated that public universities report their expenditures for CRT and DEI programs.

  The Dec. 28 order from DeSantis came four days after The Epoch Times documented the experiences of six conservative students attending a major Florida university.

  They described difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American culture.

  At the DeSantis press conference, a conservative University of Florida student described experiences of being attacked for her beliefs that mirrored what students have told The Epoch Times.

  “My university has fallen corrupt to the woke ideal that is being taught by leftist professors in the classroom,” said Emily Sturge, a sophomore at UF.

  She said professors tell her that America is the most racist nation and that women have no rights. She said that professors lecture on the importance of the Covid vaccine instead of teaching content.

  Sturge said she received a failing grade for writing a paper on how empowering it was for women to get their concealed carry licenses. But when she tactically wrote about the virtues of Marxism, she got an A.

  Sturge said she had a “target on her back” for being a pro-American Christian and had been called “every name in the book” by fellow students.

  In January, DeSantis again struck a blow to “woke” culture in the university system by appointing six conservatives to the board of trustees for the failing New College.

  These included Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow who has exposed CRT in schools nationwide.

  Rufo, who also spoke at the press conference, talked about how the Left was manipulating public perception by using terms such as DEI, which sounds great on the surface but is a dark concept.

  “It is an Orwellian misuse of language that manipulates you into feeling that this is a good thing while under the surface. It’s something quite different,” he said.

  Rufo said DEI is the same thing as CRT, which divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Professors train students, faculty, and staff members that certain people are oppressors and others are oppressed.

  He said the entire board of New College was scheduled to meet after the press conference. He and trustee Eddie Speir, who toured New College last week, was met with resistance from students and faculty.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 22:45

• "Worst Payouts Since The Financial Crisis": Asia's Investment Bankers See Pay Cuts Up To 70%
  “Worst Payouts Since The Financial Crisis”: Asia’s Investment Bankers See Pay Cuts Up To 70%

  It’s a story we have been covering since before last year’s holidays. After a tough 2022 for dealmaking, banker pay continues to get cut. The rollbacks continued this week with some top investment bankers in Asia ex-Japan are “having their worst payouts since the financial crisis”, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

  The report says that managing directors at banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. will see their total compensation fall by 40% to 50%. Payouts for senior managing directors will total between $800,000 to $1.5 million. First year MDs will see bonuses of $600,000 to $1 million, the report says. 

  High performers may only see cuts of 20% or less, with some of them still taking home about $2 million, the report says. But those who underperformed are seeing cuts of up to 60% to 70%. Some are also being “left out altogether” from bonus pools. 

  Banking in China was hit particularly hard in 2022 thanks to Beijing’s prior stance on Covid, which kept a majority of the country locked down. Deals slumped 88% after the government limited the ability by domestic companies to sell shares overseas, the report says. Investment banking revenue was down about 50% at the largest banks last year. 

  

  Recall just days ago we reported that Bank of America had cut bonuses for its dealmakers by about 30% this year. Bonuses were also cut in equity capital markets and leveraged finance, with some bonuses down by as much as 50%, the report says.

  We also noted last week that Deutsche was the latest to cut its investment banking bonuses by 40%. 

  Credit Suisse Group AG Chairman Axel Lehmann also made a statement last week warning about lower bonuses after what he called a “horrifying year”. Recall we wrote days ago that the bank had come out and was considering a large cut to its bonus pool. It was considering a 50% cut to its bonus pool, Bloomberg reported last week. 

  Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan join a number of Wall Street banks who laid off employees, cut bonuses or both after a torrid 2022. Goldman Sachs, for example, is set to lay off up to 4,000 employees, we noted last month. The bank was also “considering shrinking the bonus pool for its more than 3,000 investment bankers by at least 40 per cent this year”.

  Also in mid-December, we wrote that Ernst and Young would be cutting its bonuses entirely. The company held an “all hands” meeting two weeks ago where it delivered the news to its employees. The company is in the midst of splitting its audit business from a tax and advisory business heading into 2023. Morgan Stanley’s Asia banker bonuses were also at risk by as much as 50%, we wrote days before that. In December, we also noted that Jefferies was considering slashing bonuses. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 22:25

• Two Insurance Companies Stop Providing Coverage For Hyundai And Kia Car Models
  Two Insurance Companies Stop Providing Coverage For Hyundai And Kia Car Models

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Top insurers State Farm and Progressive are refusing to provide insurance coverage for certain models made by South Korean car firms Kia and Hyundai, with reports claiming that the vehicles are easier to steal due to a lack of proper anti-theft technology like electronic immobilizers.

  “State Farm has temporarily stopped writing new business in some states for certain model years and trim levels of Hyundai and Kia vehicles because theft losses for these vehicles have increased dramatically,” the insurer said in a statement to CNN. “This is a serious problem impacting our customers and the entire auto insurance industry.”

  

  Meanwhile, Progressive claimed that certain car models of the brands have seen theft rates more than triple in the past year. “In some markets, these vehicles are almost 20 times more likely to be stolen than other vehicles,” the insurance company said in a statement to the outlet.

  Due to the “explosive increase” in theft of these cars, Progressive finds it “extremely challenging” to offer insurance to such vehicles. As such, the company has raised insurance rates and restricted the sale of insurance policies in some regions for certain Hyundai and Kia models.

  To individuals of these cars who have already taken a policy at the company, Progressive is continuing to provide insurance. Neither firm has revealed which states or cities have been affected by their policy decisions.

  The Epoch Times has reached out to State Farm and Progressive for comment.

  Hyundai, Kia Theft

  According to an analysis of 2021 insurance claims by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), a few models of Hyundai and Kia were found to be the top targets. Among 2015–19 model-year vehicles, the chances of theft claims were twice as common when compared to other manufacturers, HLDI found.

  “Car theft spiked during the pandemic,” said HLDI senior vice president Matt Moore, according to a Sept. 22nd post by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). “These numbers tell us that some vehicles may be targeted because they’re fast or worth a lot of money and others because they’re easy to steal.”

  “Our earlier studies show that vehicle theft losses plunged after immobilizers were introduced … Unfortunately, Hyundai and Kia have lagged behind other automakers in making them standard equipment.”

  Electronic immobilizers prevent criminals from easily breaking in and bypassing a car’s ignition. In 2015, immobilizers were found to be a standard feature among 96 percent of car manufacturers, except for Hyundai and Kia. Among the two brands, only 26 percent of the models were found to have immobilizers.

  Wisconsin was one of the worst affected states when it came to the theft of Hyundai and Kia vehicles. In 2021, the amount paid on theft claims per insured vehicle year jumped to over 30 times compared to 2019, according to IIHS.

  Insured vehicle year refers to one vehicle insured for a period of one year, two vehicles insured for a period of six months, and so on.

  Lawsuits, Company Responses

  Both Hyundai and Kia are battling multiple lawsuits for the security failure of their models. Last week, Seattle city attorney Ann Davison filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers at a federal court for failing to install “anti-theft technology” in some of their vehicles, according to a news release on Jan. 25.

  “Kia and Hyundai chose to cut corners and cut costs at the expense of their customers and the public. As a result, our police force has had to tackle a huge rise in vehicle theft and related problems with already stretched resources,” said Davison, according to the release.

  “Now Seattle taxpayers must shoulder the burden of the increase in theft … Kia and Hyundai need to take responsibility for the public safety hazard that they created.”

  In September, MLG Attorneys at Law filed a national class-action lawsuit against Hyundai and Kia, alleging that cars manufactured between 2011 and 2021 by the firms came without an “engine immobilizer,” according to a press release on Sept. 21, 2022.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 22:05

• Visualizing The Scale Of Global Fossil Fuel Production
  Visualizing The Scale Of Global Fossil Fuel Production

  Fossil fuels have been our predominant source of energy for over a century, and the world still extracts and consumes a colossal amount of coal, oil, and gas every year.

  This infographic below by Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada visualizes the volume of global fossil fuel production in 2021 using data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

  

  The Facts on Fossil Fuels

  In 2021, the world produced around 8 billion tonnes of coal, 4 billion tonnes of oil, and over 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

  Most of the coal is used to generate electricity for our homes and offices and has a key role in steel production. Similarly, natural gas is a large source of electricity and heat for industries and buildings. Oil is primarily used by the transportation sector, in addition to petrochemical manufacturing, heating, and other end uses.

  Here’s a full breakdown of coal, oil, and gas production by country in 2021.

  Coal Production

  If all the coal produced in 2021 were arranged in a cube, it would measure 2,141 meters (2.1km) on each side—more than 2.5 times the height of the world’s tallest building.

  China produced 50% or more than four billion tonnes of the world’s coal in 2021. It’s also the largest consumer of coal, accounting for 54% of coal consumption in 2021.

  

  India is both the second largest producer and consumer of coal. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the world’s largest coal exporter, followed by Australia.

  In the West, U.S. coal production was down 47% as compared to 2011 levels, and the descent is likely to continue with the clean energy transition.

  Oil Production

  In 2021, the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia were the three largest crude oil producers, respectively.

  

  OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia, made up the largest share of production at 35% or 1.5 billion tonnes of oil.

  U.S. oil production has seen significant growth since 2010. In 2021, the U.S. extracted 711 million tonnes of oil, more than double the 333 million tonnes produced in 2010.

  Natural Gas Production

  The world produced 4,036 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2021. The above graphic converts that into an equivalent of seven billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to visualize it on the same scale as oil and gas.

  Here are the top 10 producers of natural gas in 2021:

  

  The U.S. was the largest producer, with Texas and Pennsylvania accounting for 47% of its gas production. The U.S. electric power and industrial sectors account for around one-third of domestic natural gas consumption.

  Russia, the next-largest producer, was the biggest exporter of gas in 2021. It exported an estimated 210 billion cubic meters of natural gas via pipelines to Europe and China. Around 80% of Russian natural gas comes from operations in the Arctic region.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 21:45

• Why Is There A COVID Vaccine Mandate For Students?
  Why Is There A COVID Vaccine Mandate For Students?

  Authored by Margaret Anna Alice via ‘Through The Looking Glass’ Substack,

  Letter to the Stanford Daily: Why Is There a COVID Vaccine Mandate for Students?

  “Not to know is bad. Not to wish to know is worse.”

  —African proverb

  I can’t figure out why Stanford is mandating the COVID vaccine for students.

  1. Is it to protect students from the virus, hospitalization, or death?

  2. Is it to protect them from other students?

  3. Is it to protect the Stanford community members from the students? 

  

  If it’s to protect the students from catching COVID, that doesn’t make sense because the CDC says it “no longer differentiate[s] based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.”

  The CDC also acknowledges natural immunity, noting that “persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.”

  It appears Stanford didn’t get the memo because Maxwell Meyer—a double-jabbed, COVID-recovered alum who was nearly prohibited from graduating for choosing not to get boosted—was informed by an administrator that the booster mandate is “not predicated on history of infection or physical location.”

  Despite living 2,000 miles away from campus and not being enrolled in coursework for his final term, Maxwell was told Stanford was “uniformly enforc[ing]” the mandate “regardless of student location.” Does that sound like a rational policy?

  Fortunately, a different administrator intervened and granted Maxwell an exemption, but few Stanford students are so lucky. Almost everyone else simply follows the rules without realizing they’ve volunteered for vaccine roulette.

  A Cleveland Clinic study of the bivalent vaccines involving 51,011 participants found the risk of getting COVID-19 increased “with the number of vaccine doses previously received”—much to the authors’ surprise.

  

  They were stumped as to why “those who chose not to follow the CDC’s recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination” had a lower risk of catching COVID than “those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses.”

  So if the vaccines don’t keep you from getting COVID, maybe they at least protect you from hospitalization?

  That doesn’t wash, either, because according to data from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET), hospitalization rates for 18–64-year-olds have increased 11 percent since the vaccine rollout. Worse, kids under 18 have suffered a shocking 74 percent spike in hospitalizations.

  An observational study conducted at Germany’s University Hospital Wuerzburg found:

  “The rate of adverse reactions for the second booster dose was significantly higher among participants receiving the bivalent 84.6% (95% CI 70.3%–92.8%; 33/39) compared to the monovalent 51.4% (95% CI 35.9–66.6%; 19/37) vaccine (p=0.0028). Also, there was a trend towards an increased rate of inability to work and intake of PRN medication following bivalent vaccination.”

  A new paper published in Science titled Class Switch Towards Non-Inflammatory, Spike-Specific IgG4 Antibodies after Repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination even has Eric Topol concerned:

  Late after mRNA Covid vaccines, or with booster or breakthrough infections, there is a shift to IgG4 antibodies, not seen with adenovirus vector vaccines. The clinical significance is not knownhttps://t.co/5thLxRwemm @SciImmunology @UniFAU pic.twitter.com/YozSLVjVLd

  — Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 22, 2022

  If you don’t know what that means, Dr. Syed Haider spells it out in this tweet. He explains that the shots “train your immune system to ignore the allergen by repeated exposure,” the end result being that “Your immune system is shifted to see the virus as a harmless allergen” and the “virus runs amok.”

  Latest IgG4 COVID vax study

  Think allergy shots. They train your immune system to ignore the allergen by repeated exposure.

  That’s what repeated shots with the vax are doing.

  Your immune system is shifted to see the virus as a harmless allergen.

  Which means: virus runs amok.

  — Dr. Syed Haider (@DrSyedHaider) December 28, 2022

  Viral immunologist and computational virologist Dr. Jessica Rose breaks down the serious implications—including cancer, fatal fibrosis, and organ destruction—of these findings.

  Well, then does the vaccine at least prevent people from dying of COVID?

  Nope. According to the Washington Post, “Vaccinated people now make up a majority of COVID deaths.”

  

  At Senator Ron Johnson’s December 7, 2022, roundtable discussion on COVID-19 Vaccines, former number-one–ranked Wall Street insurance analyst Josh Stirling reported that, according to UK government data:

  “The people in the UK who took the vaccine have a 26% higher mortality rate. The people who are under the age of 50 who took the vaccine now have a 49% higher mortality rate.”

  Obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to KBV (the association representing physicians who receive insurance in Germany), “the most important dataset of the pandemic” shows fatalities starting to spike in 2021.

  Data analyst Tom Lausen assessed the ICD-10 disease codes in this dataset, and the findings are startling. His presentation includes the following chart documenting fatalities per quarter from 2016 to 2022:

  

  This parallels the skyrocketing fatality rates seen in VAERS:

  

  The vaccinated are more likely to contract, become hospitalized from, and die of COVID. If the vaccine fails on all of those counts, does it at least prevent its transmission to other students and community members?

  The obvious answer is no since we already know it doesn’t prevent you from getting COVID, but this CDC study drives the point home, showing that during a COVID outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, “three quarters (346; 74%) of cases occurred in fully vaccinated persons.”

  Maybe Stanford can tell us why they feel the mandate is necessary. Their booster requirement reads:

  “Why does Stanford have a student booster shot requirement? Our booster requirement is intended to support sustained immunity against COVID-19 and is consistent with the advice of county and federal public health leaders. Booster shots enhance immunity, providing additional protection to individuals and reducing the possibility of being hospitalized for COVID. In addition, booster shots prevent infection in many individuals, thereby slowing the spread of the virus. A heavily boosted campus community reduces the possibility of widespread disruptions that could impact the student experience, especially in terms of in-person classes and activities and congregate housing.”

  The claim that “booster shots enhance immunity” links to a January 2022 New York Times article. It seems Stanford has failed to keep up with the science because the very source they cite as authoritative is now reporting, “The newer variants, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading quickly, and boosters seem to do little to prevent infections with these viruses.”

  Speaking of not keeping up, that same article says the new bivalent boosters target “the original version of the coronavirus and the Omicron variants circulating earlier this year, BA.4 and BA.5.”

  It then goes on to quote Head of Beth Israel Deaconess’s Center for Virology & Vaccine Research Dan Barouch, who says, “It’s not likely that any of the vaccines or boosters, no matter how many you get, will provide substantial and sustained protection against acquisition of infection.”

  In other words, Stanford’s rationale for requiring the boosters is obsolete according to the authority they cite in their justification.

  If Stanford is genuinely concerned about “reduc[ing] the possibility of widespread disruptions that could impact the student experience,” then it should not only stop mandating the vaccine but advise against it.

  Some nations have suspended or recommended against COVID shots for younger populations due to the considerable risks of adverse events such as pulmonary embolism and myocarditis—from Denmark (under 50) to Norway (under 45) to Australia (under 50) to the United Kingdom (seasonal boosters for under 50).

  The Danish Health Authority explains why people under 50 are “not to be re-vaccinated”:

  “People aged under 50 are generally not at particularly higher risk of becoming severely ill from covid-19. In addition, younger people aged under 50 are well protected against becoming severely ill from covid-19, as a very large number of them have already been vaccinated and have previously been infected with covid-19, and there is consequently good immunity among this part of the population.”

  Here’s what a Norwegian physician and health official had to say:

  “Especially the youngest should consider potential side effects against the benefits of taking this dose.”
  —Ingrid Bjerring, Chief Doctor at Lier Municipality

  “We did not find sufficient evidence to recommend that this part of the population [younger age bracket] should take a new dose now.… Each vaccine comes with the risk for side effects. Is it then responsible to offer this, when we know that the individual health benefit of a booster likely is low?”
  —Are Stuwitz Berg, Department Director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health

  A new Nordic cohort study of 8.9 million participants supports these concerns, finding a nearly nine-fold increase in myocarditis among males aged 12–39 within 28 days of receiving the Moderna COVID-19 booster over those who stopped after two doses.

  This mirrors my own findings that myocarditis rates are up 10 times among the vaccinated according to a public healthcare worker survey.

  Coauthored by MIT professor and risk management expert Retsef Levi, the Nature article Increased Emergency Cardiovascular Events Among Under-40 Population in Israel During Vaccine Rollout and Third COVID-19 Wave reveals a 25 percent increase in cardiac emergency calls for 16–39-year-olds from January to May 2021 as compared with the previous two years.

  The paper cites a study by Israel’s Ministry of Health that “assesses the risk of myocarditis after receiving the 2nd vaccine dose to be between 1 in 3000 to 1 in 6000 in men of age 16–24 and 1 in 120,000 in men under 30.”

  A Thai study published in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease found cardiovascular manifestations in 29.24 percent of the adolescent cohort—including myopericarditis and tachycardia.

  Even Dr. Leana Wen, formerly an aggressive promoter of the COVID vaccine, admitted in a recent Washington Post op-ed:

  “[W]e need to be upfront that nearly every intervention has some risk, and the coronavirus vaccine is no different. The most significant risk is myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, which is most common in young men. The CDC cites a rate of 39 myocarditis cases per 1 million second doses given in males 18 to 24. Some studies found a much higher rate; a large Canadian database reported that among men ages 18 to 29 who received the second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the rate of myocarditis was 22 for every 100,000 doses.”

  All over the world, prominent physicians, scientists, politicians, and professors are asking pointed questions about illogical mandates; the safety and efficacy of the vaccines; and the dangers posed by the mRNA technology, spike protein, and lipid nanoparticles—including in the UK, Japan, Australia, Europe, and the US.

  Formerly pro-vaxx cardiologists such as Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Dr. Dean Patterson, and Dr. Ross Walker are all saying the COVID vaccines should be immediately stopped due to the significant increase in cardiac diseases, adverse events, and excess mortality observed since their rollout, noting that, “until proven otherwise, these vaccines are not safe.”

  Dear Prime Minister @RishiSunak,

  YOU have the power to stop the ongoing unnecessary harm that is devastating individuals and families. @Keir_Starmer the Labour Party also lost one of its most decorated doctors @KailashChandOBE to this mRNA product. Please stop this roll out NOW https://t.co/SECbfK9joz

  — Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) December 18, 2022

  @DrAseemMalhotra @DrJBhattacharya @JohnBoweActor @PierreKory pic.twitter.com/lw7jdtzNl4

  — Dr Dean Patterson 🇾🇪 (@mottomeneki) December 10, 2022

  President of the International Society for Vascular Surgery Serif Sultan and Consultant Surgeon Ahmad Malik are also demanding that we #StopTheShotsNow.

  BREAKING:

  President of the international vascular society raises concerns about covid vaccines in relation to cardiovascular problems.

  ‘It would be great if someone can show us the light of where to go from here’

  We must pause the mRNA jab now to stop more unnecessary harm pic.twitter.com/gIZr19SVl8

  — Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) December 16, 2022

  And now, perhaps most notably, Dr. John Campbell has performed a 180-degree turn on his previous position and is saying it is time to pause the mass vaccination program “due to the risks associated with the vaccines”:

  A Rasmussen poll published on December 7, 2022, found 7 percent of vaccinated respondents have suffered major side effects—a percentage that echoes the 7.7 percent of V-Safe users who sought medical care as well as my own polling data.

  Add the 34 percent who reported experiencing minor side effects, and you have nearly 72 million adults who’ve been hit with side effects from the vaccine.

  Rasmussen Head Pollster Mark Mitchell explains:

  “With 7% having a major side effect, that means over 12 million adults in the US have experienced a self-described major side effect that they attribute to the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s over 11 times the reported COVID death numbers. And also note that anyone who may have died from the vaccine obviously can’t tell us that in the poll.”

  According to British Medical Journal Senior Editor Dr. Peter Doshi, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s own trial data found 1 in 800 vaccinated people experienced serious adverse events:

  “The Pfizer and Moderna trials are both showing a clear signal of increased risk of serious adverse events among the vaccinated.…

  “The trial data are indicating that we’re seeing about an elevated risk of these serious adverse events of around 1 in 800 people vaccinated.… That is much, much more common than what you see for other vaccines, where the reported rates are in the range of 1 or 2 per million vaccinees. In these trials, we’re seeing 1 in every 800. And this is a rate that in past years has had vaccines taken off the market.…

  “We’re talking about randomized trials … which are widely considered the highest-quality evidence, and we’re talking about the trials that were submitted by Pfizer and Moderna that supported the regulators’ authorization.”

  Dr Peter Doshi senior editor of the BMJ wants to know why we haven’t already #StoptheShots when 1 in 800 are seriously harmed, yet previous vaccines were suspended for harming ‘only’ 1 in 100’000.
  Beats me too! pic.twitter.com/llT4JwL5WQ

  — Porridge2022 (@porridge2022) December 16, 2022

  And this is the same Pfizer data the FDA tried to keep hidden from the public for 75 years.

  Nothing to see here … except 1,223 deaths, 158,000 adverse events, and 1,291 side effects reported in the first 90 days according to the 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports—and those numbers are likely underreported by a factor of at least 10 (my conservative calculations show an underreporting factor (URF) of 41 for VAERS).

  Stanford is asking students to risk a 1 in 800 chance of serious adverse events—meaning the kind of events that can land you in the hospital, disable you, and kill you. And for what?

  Anyone who knows how to perform a cost-benefit analysis can see this is all cost and zero benefit.

  Stanford’s own Dr. John Ioannidis—professor of medicine, epidemiology & population health, statistics, and biomedical data science—demonstrated that college students are at a near-zero risk of dying from COVID-19 in his “Age-Stratified Infection Fatality Rate of COVID-19 in the Non-Elderly Population.”

  One of the six most-cited scientists in the world, Ioannidis found the median IFR was 0.0003 percent for those under 20 and 0.002 percent for twenty-somethings, concluding the fatalities “are lower than pre-pandemic years when only the younger age strata are considered” and that “the IFR in non-elderly individuals was much lower than previously thought.”

  And yet Ioannidis’s employer is mandating an experimental product with extensively documented risks of severe harm.

  What if a Stanford student dies and the coroner determines it was caused by the vaccine? That happened with George Watts Jr., a 24-year-old college student whose cause of death Chief Deputy Coroner Timothy Cahill Jr. attributed to “COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.” Cahill says, “The vaccine caused the heart to go into failure.”

  Notorious for mandating a booster not yet tested on humans (just like Stanford), Ontario’s Western University dropped its mandate on November 29, 2022, stating:

  “We are revoking our vaccination policy and will no longer require students, employees, and visitors to be vaccinated to come to campus.”

  That was the same day this article reported that 21-year-old Western University student and TikTok influencer Megha Thakur “suddenly and unexpectedly passed away” on November 24.

  

  The timing is interesting, don’t you think? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence—even though this Clinical Research in Cardiology paper determined vaccine-induced myocardial inflammation was the cause of death in “five persons who have died unexpectedly within seven days following anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination.” In that analysis, the authors “establish the histological phenotype of lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.”

  Coincidences notwithstanding, Stanford may want to revoke the mandate before anything like that happens to one of its students … if it hasn’t already.

  And if that’s not incentive enough, Stanford should consider the legal ramifications of mandating an experimental product. As this JAMA article warns:

  “Mandating COVID-19 vaccines under an EUA is legally and ethically problematic. The act authorizing the FDA to issue EUAs requires the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to specify whether individuals may refuse the vaccine and the consequences for refusal. Vaccine mandates are unjustified because an EUA requires less safety and efficacy data than full Biologics License Application (BLA) approval.”

  Dr. Naomi Wolf delivered an impassioned speech to her alma mater, Yale, in which she called their booster mandate “a serious crime. It is deeply illegal. Certainly, it violates Title IX.” She explains:

  “Title IX commits the university to not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender in getting an equal education.… I oversee a project in which 3,500 experts review the Pfizer documents released under court order by a lawsuit. In that document, there is catastrophic harm to women! And especially to young women! And especially to their reproductive health.… 72% of those with adverse events in the Pfizer documents are women!”

  Other universities are currently facing lawsuits for mandating the COVID vaccine in violation of state laws, including one against Ohio University, University of Cincinnati, Bowling Green State University, and Miami University of Ohio.

  Let’s recap.

  Abundant evidence proves the vaccines FAIL to:

  • stop transmission

  • prevent contraction of COVID

  • lower hospitalization rates

  • reduce mortality

  By the same token, this evidence shows the vaccines are ASSOCIATED with:

  • heightened transmission levels

  • greater chances of catching COVID

  • increased hospitalization rates

  • higher excess mortality

  • disproportionate injuries to women

  Why is Stanford mandating these unsafe and ineffective products, again?

  If logic, peer-reviewed studies, and legal concerns such as the violation of Title IX don’t convince Stanford to rescind the mandate, then what about its stated ethical commitment to upholding its Code of Conduct?

  BMJ’s Journal of Medical Ethics recently published COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk Benefit Assessment and Ethical Analysis of Mandate Policies at Universities. In this paper, eminent researchers from Harvard, Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and UC San Francisco (among other institutions) present five reasons university mandates are unethical.

  They argue that the vaccines:

  “(1) are not based on an updated (Omicron era) stratified risk-benefit assessment for this age group; (2) may result in a net harm to healthy young adults; (3) are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; (4) violate the reciprocity principle because serious vaccine-related harms are not reliably compensated due to gaps in vaccine injury schemes; and (5) may result in wider social harms.” (emphases mine here and below)

  They calculate that:

  “To prevent one COVID-19 hospitalisation over a 6-month period, we estimate that 31,207–42,836 young adults aged 18–29 years must receive a third mRNA vaccine.”

  The authors conclude that:

  “university COVID-19 vaccine mandates are likely to cause net expected harms to young healthy adults—for each hospitalisation averted we estimate approximately 18.5 SAEs and 1,430–4,626 disruptions of daily activities.… these severe infringements of individual liberty and human rights are ethically unjustifiable.”

  This builds on a previously published BMJ Global Health article by some of the same authors titled, “The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Restrictions May Cause More Harm Than Good.”

  In this paper, the authors contend that COVID-19 vaccine mandates “have unintended harmful consequences and may not be ethical, scientifically justified, and effective” and “may prove to be both counterproductive and damaging to public health.”

  Over the course of history, countless products once thought to be safe—from DDT to cigarettes to thalidomide for pregnant women to Vioxx—were eventually discovered to be dangerous and even lethal. Responsible governments, agencies, and companies pull those products from the market when the scientific data proves harm—and institutions that care about their community members certainly don’t mandate those products when evidence of risk becomes obvious, as is the case now for the experimental COVID vaccines.

  Mahatma Gandhi once stated:

  “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.”

  The truth is clear to anyone who’s willing to look.

  Will Stanford stop following the propaganda and start following the science—the real science and not the politicized science?

  Will it stand up for the lives and health of its students—or will it wait until tragedy strikes another George Watts Jr. or Megha Thakur?

  This is a historic opportunity for Stanford to prove its allegiance to people, scientific data, and critical thought over pharmaceutical donors, political pressures, and conformist thinking.

  The stakes could not be higher.

  *  *  *

  For 16.4 cents/day (annual) or 19.7 cents/day (monthly), you can help Margaret fight tyranny while enjoying access to premium content like Memes by Themes, “rolling” interviews, podcasts, Behind the Scenes, and other bonus content:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 21:25

• Hamburger Prices Might Continue To Rise As US Cattle Herd Shrinks
  Hamburger Prices Might Continue To Rise As US Cattle Herd Shrinks

  Consumers grappling with elevated food inflation might be in for another surprise: A shrinking US cattle herd indicates tight livestock supplies for years. 

  A decline in cattle herds and high production expenses will translate into higher beef prices at the grocery store. We documented this trend last fall (read: “Dwindling US Cattle Herd Implies Supermarket Beef Prices May Rise Even More“). 

  Bloomberg explained the reason for the drop: 

  Years-long drought in the US Plains has withered pastures and squeezed supplies of feeds including hay and corn. The result: ranchers have liquidated some animals to cut costs, depressing breeding.

  The latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture cattle-inventory report on Tuesday showed 89.3 million cattle as of Jan. 1, down 3% from a year ago. The decline wasn’t unexpected and was in line with a Bloomberg survey. 

  However, a much more significant decline in beef production could be nearing. If not this year, perhaps between 2024-26. 

  “With fewer cattle supplies becoming available, beef production is expected to undergo a sizable decline over the next few years,” said Courtney Shum, a livestock-market reporter at Urner Barry, an industry publication.

  What’s alarming is the shrinking herd of beef replacement cows has fallen to 1962 levels. 

  

  Don Roose, founder of US Commodities, a grain and livestock investment and management firm, warned:

  “We’re still in the contraction phase.

  “It takes a long time to build a herd back up again.”

  Meaning beef prices at the supermarket might go higher until demand destruction hits. 

  

  Soon, beef and eggs will be a delicacy for only the rich while everyone else ingests protein-rich insects

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 21:05

• The Four Worst Ways To Attack Bitcoin
  The Four Worst Ways To Attack Bitcoin

  Authored by Joakim Book via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  In his latest book, Nouriel Roubini demonstrates the worst ways to try and attack Bitcoin…

  

  Finding fault with Bitcoin and Bitcoiners is easy. Every schmuck, stick, know-it-all pundit, wise-ass and establishment elite has a handful of complaints readily available.

  Bitcoin uses too much electricity; its fixed money supply schedule makes interventions from a benevolent central bank impossible; it doesn’t have enough inflation for a growing economy; it is used by pesky criminals; and its mean, technobabbling users hurt my brittle feelings.

  The objections get tiresome about as quickly as they get recycled.

  One fantastic example is the doomspeaker economist Nouriel Roubini, known for his bombastic and bearish declarations — frequently nicknamed “Dr. Doom” by the financial press. In his own mind, he is merely “realistic,” which every madman would say about himself when queried. In his latest book, “Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, And How To Survive Them,” he insists that most people overlook something about this infamous nickname:

  “Those who label me Dr. Doom fail to see that I examine the upside with as much rigor as the downside. Optimists and pessimists both call me contrarian. If I could choose my nickname, Dr. Realist sounds right.” 

  The Bitcoin obituaries site 99bitcoins.com lists our beloved economist hater 12 times, but Googling finds plenty more Bitcoin denouncements from this outspoken character — in every outlet that’ll have him, it seems, from Twitter to the Financial Times.

  To Roubini, bitcoin was a bubble in 2013, a “Ponzi game” and “not a currency” in 2014, a “gigantic speculative bubble” in 2017, almost all transactions were fake in 2019 and, most tastefully, in 2020 a little bit of everything:

  Bitcoin is NOT a currency: it is not a unit of account, it is not a single numeraire, it is not a scalable means of payments, it is not backed by any asset, it is not legal tender, its price is highly manipulated & thus its partial store of value function is based on nothing.

  — Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 9, 2020

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

  What his new book does so well is outline the world’s many macroeconomic troubles. For five mesmerizing chapters, he describes the debt problems, the demographic impossibility that is the bankrupt Ponzi (sorry, “pension”) schemes of Western nations, the easy money disaster and the boom-bust cycle that it gives rise to. Stagflation in the 2020s did not come as a surprise to him, and he locates the blame precisely where it should be: “We poured massive amounts of money and fiscal stimulus into a financial and economic system already awash in cash and credit.” With a short-term view and politically-captured central banks, we get disastrously easy money because “that is what voters want and leveraged markets need to avoid crashing.”

  He even comes down on the correct side of the 2022 blunder to use the dollar payment rails to sanction a G8 economy: “This sort of weaponizing of currency for the pursuit of national security goals is the latest frontier of the mission creep of central banks, starting with the Fed” (ignoring that the Federal Reserve doesn’t make sanction decisions).

  As a rule, whatever Bitcoin’s flaws are — as a money, as a protocol, as a usable tool, as a community — it gets better, relatively speaking, when the incumbent monetary system gets worse. Whatever your position on Bitcoin was three, five or 10 years ago, you must look at it more favorably today: the monetary system in place has gotten so much worse, with inflation, anti-money-laundering bureaucracy, clown-world behavior and frozen accounts being just the worst offenders. All is not well in the world of money; that makes Bitcoin a more tempting prospect, all things equal.

  So, is Roubini a Bitcoiner now? Has the ultimate Bitcoin bear, diligently at it for a decade, finally come around? Seeing clearly the monetary madness of the world, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing for Dr. Doom to at last tone down his criticism of Bitcoin.

  Instead, we got Groundhog Day.

  The single chapter dedicated to financial instability spends a dozen or so pages on Bitcoin, unbelievably dedicating most of them to “crypto,” “DeFi,” “stablecoins” and central bank digital currencies. Sigh.

  Still, even here we had potential: The rise of crypto, explains Roubini, “exposes our collective wilting faith in the ability of governments to back the money they issue.” Hear, hear.

  QUEEN TAYLOR CALLED

  “Ugh, so he calls me up and he’s like ‘I still love youuu’, and I’m like ‘I just… I mean, this is exhausting, you know? Like, we are never getting back together. Like, ever.’”

  –Bitcoin philosopher Taylor Swift

  If you are to critique Bitcoin — something you certainly, certainly can do — here are some things you should do:

  First, get your monetary attributes in order.

  There are three — store of value, unit of account, medium of exchange — not five. You can’t invent new ones and duplicating previous ones isn’t useful. Roubini introduces “single numeraire,” which is exactly the same thing as a unit of account, and splits store of value into stable value against “market value” and against “an index of the price of goods and services.” Try carving out a difference. This is silly word play.

  Second, make sure your criticism is levied against Bitcoin, not “crypto.”

  Most people think of bitcoin as merely the first “cryptocurrency,” the most famous among tens of thousands of scammy shitcoins. It’s not. What holds and happens in the la-la land of vaporware tokens rarely has anything to do with Bitcoin: Sam Bankman-Fried’s shenanigans, Terra’s implosion or the Cryptoqueen scam do in no way detract from Bitcoin’s core, its principles or operations. When Roubini cites “BaconCoin,” quotes LoanSnap’s founder or reports negative comments by DogeCoin’s creator, he does not undermine Bitcoin’s promise.

  Bitcoin is a one-off monetary invention, separated from every other money or “crypto” by a Great Wall of categories and concepts: it doesn’t have a company or founder running it, like every other shitcoin does; it doesn’t have counterparty risk nor is it subject to censorship like every other fiat currency. Bitcoin has no CEO and no marketing department; it has the strongest Lindy and the highest hash rate.

  Third — and this is a hard one — make sure your points haven’t already been debunked, answered and relegated to the dustbin of unimpressive, erroneous jabs at Bitcoin.

  Repeating an outdated accusation makes you look stupid, not Bitcoin. Roubini goes for the vast wealth inequality in Bitcoinland, believing it to be “worse than that of North Korea.” It’s not, and as flawed as these investigations are, UTXO ownership seems to become less and less unequal over time — as you’d expect for an emerging money that gets distributed in use.

  Unsurprisingly, it uses too much energy, as much as a small country and therefore “will blunt urgent climate initiatives to slow down global warming.” It doesn’t and it won’t: if anything, Bitcoin unlocks stranded energy, contributes to balancing the grid and miners are more renewable than most major economies.

  Fourth, make sure that the property of Bitcoin that you’re attacking isn’t worse in the legacy system.

  Warren Buffet often makes this error, thinking that hacks, fees or the fact that bitcoin doesn’t generate “yield” dooms it to failure. Nevermind that paper money doesn’t either (unless you count seigniorage to the central bank); nevermind that his ridiculing of bitcoin as a Ponzi applies equally well to apartments or Uncle Sam’s pension schemes.

  The most absurd accusation arrives with Roubini’s silly soda shitcoins: If you need Coke coins to buy Coke and Pepsi coins to buy Pepsi, how could you ever establish (relative) value?! How could you ever know what either of them are worth?

  Makes you wonder how Americans could ever buy things when they’re abroad, how pound-based customers (i.e., British residents) can ever acquire anything sold in euros or spend their melting currency on Fifth Avenue. There’s a publicly-displayed market price for you to “convert” value into the monetary system that you’re familiar with; and there’s a publicly-traded market that the banks on either side of your and your vendor’s transaction can trade and settle such that international trade works.

  Fascinating.

  His currency risk examples are illustrative — and disingenuous. Apparently vendors can’t “price” goods in bitcoin since “an overnight fall in value might wipe out the [seller’s] profit margins.” That’s true as far as it goes, but holds equally so for any cross-currency transaction in the legacy world: imports or export or any supply chain more complicated than your local currency area. Besides, if you worry about the currency exposure in your sales, there is a liquid market that provides hedges for you. Many stores that accept bitcoin through various third-party solutions instantly exchange them for dollars, thus mitigating the risk.

  In the very next sentence, Roubini considers the downside of the opposite risk:

  “Were someone to write a mortgage with principal and interest in bitcoin, a spike in the value of bitcoin would cause the real value of the mortgage to skyrocket. If default then likely occurs, the lender loses money, and the borrower loses her house.” 

  I suppose no American therefore owns property in New Zealand or Mexico, no European has debt contracts in USD-dollars. These are not novel risks, but ordinary financial risks that firms and households deal with already.

  What’s so fascinating is Roubini’s lack of symmetry: If margins can get obliterated by an overnight drop, then margins can also be doubled by an equal overnight rise. Symmetric risk. If bitcoin’s exchange rate for dollars falls — which Roubini is so certain it will — a bitcoin-denominated mortgage will wipe out itself by becoming easily repayable with appreciating dollars. This isn’t to say that he’s wrong to point out these risks, but that they’re reduced to what economists call “risk aversion.” Unhedged bitcoin transactions or debt contracts are bad if households worry about the downside more than the upside — which, in the real world, seems to be true only to some extent.

  The honest conclusion isn’t Roubini’s “bitcoin is incapable of being money,” since many established currencies with volatile values between one another can serve that function, but that an emerging bitcoin economy would have this added, minor layer of business risk.

  It’s like Roubini went out of his way to be up to date on all his other macro worries, only to lay forth criticism of Bitcoin that was outdated by the time he first voiced it in the mid-2010s.

  Most devastatingly of all: Can anyone really be taken seriously when they slap a plural “s” on the uncountable noun “bitcoin”?

  The better you understand the faults of the current way of doing monetary things, the better Bitcoin looks.

  When you look at the many macro ills that Bitcoiners are so well attuned to, the pit of your stomach should churn in anxiety. When you look at the debts (public and private) that rampage the system, you should be feeling nauseous. All of this Roubini captures expertly, and much of his writing could even have been featured on these pages. Our beloved economist hater gets the problem, better and more vocally than most. Still, no dice.

  It’s unfathomable that someone so attuned to the world’s catastrophic macro problems as Roubini cannot see the master-key solution that is Bitcoin.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 20:45

• Generative AI Explained… By AI
  Generative AI Explained… By AI

  After years of research, it appears that artificial intelligence (AI) is reaching a sort of tipping point, capturing the imaginations of everyone from students saving time on their essay writing to leaders at the world’s largest tech companies. Excitement is building around the possibilities that AI tools unlock, but what exactly these tools are capable of and how they work is still not widely understood.

  We could write about this in detail, but given how advanced tools like ChatGPT have become, it only seems right to see what generative AI has to say about itself.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley explains, everything in the infographic above – from illustrations and icons to the text descriptions⁠—was created using generative AI tools such as Midjourney.

  Everything that follows in this article was generated using ChatGPT based on specific prompts.

  Without further ado, generative AI as explained by generative AI.

  

  Generative AI: An Introduction

  Generative AI refers to a category of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that generate new outputs based on the data they have been trained on. Unlike traditional AI systems that are designed to recognize patterns and make predictions, generative AI creates new content in the form of images, text, audio, and more.

  Generative AI uses a type of deep learning called generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create new content. A GAN consists of two neural networks: a generator that creates new data and a discriminator that evaluates the data. The generator and discriminator work together, with the generator improving its outputs based on the feedback it receives from the discriminator until it generates content that is indistinguishable from real data.

  Generative AI has a wide range of applications, including:

  • Images: Generative AI can create new images based on existing ones, such as creating a new portrait based on a person’s face or a new landscape based on existing scenery

  • Text: Generative AI can be used to write news articles, poetry, and even scripts. It can also be used to translate text from one language to another

  • Audio: Generative AI can generate new music tracks, sound effects, and even voice acting

  Disrupting Industries

  People have concerns that generative AI and automation will lead to job displacement and unemployment, as machines become capable of performing tasks that were previously done by humans. They worry that the increasing use of AI will lead to a shrinking job market, particularly in industries such as manufacturing, customer service, and data entry.

  Generative AI has the potential to disrupt several industries, including:

  • Advertising: Generative AI can create new advertisements based on existing ones, making it easier for companies to reach new audiences

  • Art and Design: Generative AI can help artists and designers create new works by generating new ideas and concepts

  • Entertainment: Generative AI can create new video games, movies, and TV shows, making it easier for content creators to reach new audiences

  Overall, while there are valid concerns about the impact of AI on the job market, there are also many potential benefits that could positively impact workers and the economy.

  In the short term, generative AI tools can have positive impacts on the job market as well. For example, AI can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, and help humans make faster and more informed decisions by processing and analyzing large amounts of data. AI tools can free up time for humans to focus on more creative and value-adding work.

  How This Article Was Created

  This article was created using a language model AI trained by OpenAI. The AI was trained on a large dataset of text and was able to generate a new article based on the prompt given. In simple terms, the AI was fed information about what to write about and then generated the article based on that information.

  In conclusion, generative AI is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize several industries. With its ability to create new content based on existing data, generative AI has the potential to change the way we create and consume content in the future.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 20:25

• India Set To Crank Up Coal Power To Meet Soaring Demand
  India Set To Crank Up Coal Power To Meet Soaring Demand

  Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

  India will see its power generation from coal increase in the coming year as authorities plan to have coal-fired units maximize electricity production from imported coal to meet rising demand, government sources told Reuters on Monday.

  

  The government of India, where coal still generates around 70% of electricity, plans to use an emergency law to have more coal-fired power generation this summer, expecting record demand, according to Reuters’ sources.

  Indian coal power plants that have relied on imported coal have not run at full capacity recently because they cannot compete with those using cheaper domestic coal supply. Last year, coal prices globally surged to a record as the EU banned Russian coal imports in August, and the coal trade flows changed, while energy security has been a priority over climate pledges for many developing nations.

  India’s government expects coal-fired power plants to use 8% more coal in the next financial year between March 2023 and March 2024, as demand is set to continue rising thanks to growing economic activity and unpredictable weather, according to Reuters.

  The emergency law is being invoked after Maharashtra and Gujarat, the western Indian states that host the majority of the industry, asked for emergency measures to ensure power supply, Reuters’ sources say.

  Last June, the largest power-generating company in India, state giant NTPC Ltd, said it could increase its coal-generation capacity as it prioritizes energy security after power outages in the spring.

  The coal phase-out in India is “going to take 2-3 decades, if not more,” NTPC’s chairman Gurdeep Singh said at the time.

  India’s coal minister said at the end of 2022 that the country has no intention of ditching coal from its energy mix any time soon. Addressing a parliamentary committee, Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi said that coal would continue to play an important role in India until at least 2040, referring to the fuel as an affordable source of energy for which demand has yet to peak in India.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 20:05

• Best And Worst States For Summer Internships For Gen-Zers
  Best And Worst States For Summer Internships For Gen-Zers

  US tech giants are slashing headcount almost every week. Some of these companies, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, Salesforce, and many more, overhired during the last several years are cutting staff to drive profitability amid the Federal Reserve-induced economic storm. 

  For Gen-Z youth (aged 18 to 24), fresh out of school or in the latter years of college, searching for an internship in today’s challenging job environment could be tricky. Cutting through all the nonsense is a study from CashNetUSA revealing the best and worst states and industries for the upcoming summer internship season. 

  CashNetUSA analyzed over 50,000 vacancies on Chegg Internships and found the best-paid internships are in the state of Washington, California, and Connecticut — paying an average of $20 an hour or more. 

  

  On the flip side, the states with the lowest-paid internships were Wyoming, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Alabama. Wyoming had an average pay of around $11.92 per hour. 

  Meanwhile, in President Biden’s home state, Delaware, a third of the interns are unpaid.

  

  Despite the tech layoffs, interns can expect the technology industry to pay the highest average hourly rate of $19.77. Finance is second at $18.10.

  

  Also, finance has the highest amount of unpaid interns at nearly 31%. 

  

  So for Gen-Z youth preparing for internships, use this study wisely to pick region and industry carefully. Perhaps avoid firms with unpaid internships so you can cover your bar tab this summer. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 19:45

• The End Of Monetary Hedonism
  The End Of Monetary Hedonism

  Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

  Does cheap money and credit make us richer? Does more money and credit create more stuff, or better stuff? Do they make us happier and more productive? Or do these twin forces actually distort the economy, misallocate resources, and degrade us as people?

  

  These are fundamental questions in an age of monetary hedonism. It is time we began to ask and answer them. Millions of people across the West increasingly recognize the limits of monetary policy, understanding that more money and credit in society do not magically create more goods and services. Production precedes consumption. Capital accumulation is made possible only through profit, which is generated by higher productivity, thanks to earlier capital investment. At the heart of all of it is hard work and human ingenuity. We don’t get rich by legislative edict.

  How we lost sight of these simple truths is complex. But we can begin to understand it by listening to someone smarter! The great financial writer James Grant probably knows more about interest rates than anyone on the planet. So we should pay attention when he suggests America’s four-decade experiment in rates that only go down, down, and down appears to be over.

  The striking thing about the bond market and interest rates is that they tend to rise and fall in generation-length intervals. No other financial security that I know of exhibits that same characteristic. But interest rates have done that going back to the Civil War period, when they fell persistently from 1865 to 1900. They then rose from 1900 to 1920, fell from 1920 or so to 1946, and then rose from 1946 to 1981—and did they ever rise in the last five or 10 years of that 35-year period. Then they fell again from 1981 to 2019–20.

  So each of these cycles was very long-lived. This current one has been, let’s say, 40 years. That’s one-and-a-half successful Wall Street careers. You could be working in this business for a long time and never have seen a bear market in bonds. And I think that that muscle memory has deadened the perception of financial forces that would conspire to lead to higher rates.

  —James Grant, speaking to the Octavian Report

  Do the brilliant young Ivy League quants working at central banks and investment houses really understand this history? Why should they? The baseline cost of capital has been less than 3 percent throughout their careers. Cheap credit and rising stock markets are all they know. Lots of projects make sense when funded with debt rather than equity; or as we might say, with other people’s money. And when those projects go public, the numbers go up!

  Until they don’t.

  One fears our under-forty financiers really have little understanding of the basic function of interest rates, a function Mises explained so clearly more than one hundred years ago. Interest rates should act as “prices,” as Mr. Grant states, or more precisely, as exchange ratios. They bring together borrowers and savers, thus performing a critical function of capital markets and allocating resources to their best and highest uses.

  Yet, in 2022, interest rates are widely viewed as policy tools. They are economic controls, determined and tinkered with by technocratic central bankers when the economy overheats or chills. We expect central banks to “set” interest rates, an impossibility in the long run but also a perverse goal in a supposedly free economy.

  What other prices do we want centrally planned? Food, energy, housing? Should the Fed direct how many cars GM produces in 2022, the price of a bushel of wheat, or the hourly wage for an Amazon warehouse employee? Is this the Soviet Union?

  Of course not. But those who view money as a political creation are once again prone to fundamental errors. They don’t understand money qua money. They certainly cannot imagine a world without “monetary policy,” which is plainly a form of central planning.

  Austrian economists like Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises illustrated how money can arise on the market as simply the most tradeable commodity, with the most desired features of “moneyness.” We don’t need state treasuries or public banks to issue it. And we should care about the quality of money, much as we care about the quality of the goods and services we exchanged for it.

  But in fiat land, that quality goes down, down, and down. Everything politics touches gets worse; why would we expect money to be an exception?

  This four-decade experiment in price fixing of interest rates, described as cyclical by Mr. Grant, not surprisingly corresponds with a dramatic rise in the US M1 money supply. In January 1982, the Fed’s “narrow money” was less than $450 billion. In January 2022, it was more than $20 trillion—roughly forty-four times bigger!

  We can call this monetary hedonism: a combination of low rates and ever-growing money supply designed to create an illusion of real wealth. Monetary hedonism is an arrangement which encourages our whole society to live beyond its means, using monetary policy rather than direct tax-and-spend policy. It directly benefits both the Beltway and the banking classes, who enjoy an exorbitant political privilege due to their proximity to newly created cheap money. After all, Congress can service $30 trillion+ of debt with interest payments of less than $400 billion—thanks to a weighted average interest rate of only about 1.6 percent on that debt. And it’s awfully nice for spendy politicians to know the Fed stands ready to create an instant market for Treasurys owned by commercial banks.

  To be sure, cheap money and low rates benefit all of us in a shortsighted sense. They make the cost of doing business lower and enable corporations to carry more (tax-deductible) debt. They make house payments and mortgages more affordable. They make college and cars and dinners and vacations purchased on credit cheaper. They make it easy and fun to spend.

  Yet there is always a price to be paid for unearned profligacy. The hangover follows the party. We all sense it. A reckoning is coming for the inflationary US dollar. That reckoning will come for entitlements, for congressional spending, for deranged US foreign policy, and for Treasury holders.

  But this economic reckoning is not the full story. We must also consider the incalculable but rarely considered social and cultural costs.

  What happens to society when spending is encouraged and saving is for chumps?

  Our grandparents understood the power of compound interest rates. They could save 10 percent of their income at, say, 10 percent interest rates, and their nest egg doubled roughly every seven years. They could get ahead simply, if not easily, through sheer thrift. They could follow the most human of compulsions, the deep-rooted desire to put money away for a rainy day. They could leave something for future generations. Even when consumer inflation approached 10 percent in the 1970s and ’80s, they could get 14 percent on a simple CD or money market account!

  Compare their experience to that of a hapless young person today, attempting to save up a 20 percent down payment on a modest $300,000 house. In 2022, with inflation at least 6 points above simple savings rates, this seems like a pipe dream.

  This is the perversity of our times: with inflation rates higher than savings rates, the overwhelming incentive is to spend and borrow rather than produce and save.

  Bitcoiners already understand the problem. The simple economic concept of time preference explains so much: some people are more than willing to forego consumption today to reap a larger reward later—even if that “later” is beyond their lifetimes. Time preference is the only way to make sense of interest rates and their critical function in society; interest rates reflect the relative preferences of borrowers and savers. Manipulation of interest rates by central banks severs this critical mechanism, allowing bubbles to occur in the form of new credit without new saving.

  Without interest rates determined by time preference, society’s signals become mixed up. We all understand, axiomatically, why humans prefer something today (certain) over something in the future (uncertain). We may die unexpectedly, our financial positions could change radically due to unforeseen events, or external conditions could influence our desires. We all understand borrowing money to buy a dream home at age forty instead of paying cash at age ninety. We all understand why lenders, given the uncertainty and forbearance that goes with lending, want to be paid interest for their risk.

  It is a matter of time.

  Everything we do in this corporeal world has a temporal element. When governments or central banks interfere with money and interest rates, they distort the vital information provided by real people’s relative time preferences.

  Hans Hoppe, in his infamous Democracy: The God That Failed, goes further—describing time preference as the essential civilizing or decivilizing element in society.

  The saver-investor initiates a “process of civilization.” In generating a tendency toward a fall in the rate of time preference, he—and everyone directly or indirectly connected to him through a network of exchanges—matures from childhood to adulthood and from barbarism to civilization.

  When lots of people save and invest, across society, we call it capital accumulation. And as Hoppe posits, this is not just economic—it is cultural and civilizational. Thrifty people like our grandparents, generation after generation, bequeathed to us an almost unimaginable world of affordable food, water, habitation, transportation, communication, medicine, and material goods of every kind. They did this out of love and sacrifice, but they also did it because the monetary system rewarded saving.

  Today, the opposite is true. Monetary policy across the West is an agent of decivilization. It upends the natural, innate human impulse to save for a rainy day and leave our children better off. It encourages consumption over production, profligacy over thrift, and political promises today that will be paid for by savers and taxpayers tomorrow. Monetary policy degrades and deforms the economy, but ultimately its corrosive effects impact the broader culture.

  In short, it makes us worse people.

  Does bitcoin fix this? Maybe. In the eyes of many maxis (or “bitcoin realists,” per Cory Klippsten), certainly. But time is running short. We face a toxic mix of high–time preference junkie politicians and central bankers who are only too willing to provide the fix. We are depleting capital and borrowing against the future. We consistently display high time preference, both as individuals and as a society. This cannot end well for our children and grandchildren.

  It is past time for all of us to demand better money, not better monetary “policy.” It is time for money to comport with human nature and reward the saving impulse. It is time for us to reconsider our bequest to future generations and make their lives better and more prosperous than ours.

  Monetary hedonism, in the form of low interest rates, is coming to an end. The hangover will not be pretty. Readers would be well served to prepare themselves and act accordingly. Politicians and bankers are unlikely to do this for us.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 19:25

• Poll Shows More Americans Believe 'Too Much' Aid Going To Ukraine
  Poll Shows More Americans Believe ‘Too Much’ Aid Going To Ukraine

  Earlier we quoted former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth who posed in a recent television interview: “Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine?  It’s highly unlikely…”

  Opinion polls are continuing to show waning public support for the West’s deepening involvement in the Ukrainians’ fight against Russia, given the obvious fears of sliding toward nuclear confrontation. While the opening months of the invasion last year resulted in 24/7 headlines, and a frenzy of social media posts displaying the Ukrainian flag and pledges of support, this trend has waned, and what many have dubbed “Ukraine fatigue” has long set in.

  

  As billions in US weaponry is being shipped to eastern Europe at unprecedented pace, an increasing number of Americans see the support at taxpayer expense as now ‘too much’.

  “About a quarter of Americans, 26 percent, think the U.S. support of Ukraine is too strong, according to a new Pew Research Center poll,” The Hill reports this week. “It is a percentage of people that has steadily grown since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year and has jumped 6 points since September.”

  And in particular more and more Republicans are souring on the record-setting support levels to Ukraine…

  “the poll of 5,152 people, with a margin of error of 1.7 percent, found that Republican voters are following along. A total of 40 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think the U.S. is providing too much support, according to the poll. That is up from 32 percent in September and from nine percent directly after the invasion.”

  Further, as The Hill reports of the Pew survey, “In March 2022, Republicans were more likely to see the invasion as a direct threat to the U.S., but now Democrats are more likely to hold that opinion, with 43 percent holding that belief.”

  Ukraine news fatigue began setting in by the end of the first two months of war…

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Pew also details that it remains mainly Democrats who support Biden’s handling of the invasion: “In the Center’s new survey, about four-in-ten U.S. adults (43%) say they approve of the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while about a third (34%) disapprove. About two-in-ten (22%) say they are not sure. Views of the Biden administration’s response have changed little since May 2022, the last time this question was asked.”

  Pew finds that “Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans (61% vs. 27%) to approve of the Biden administration’s response to the Russia invasion.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 19:05

• Tennessee Population Grows As Residents Leave More Liberal States
  Tennessee Population Grows As Residents Leave More Liberal States

  Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Peace and quiet is still a major draw for people moving to smaller-yet-growing states such as Tennessee from more crowded ones such as New York, but lower taxes, great personal freedom, and conservative politics have been bringing even more people in recent years.

  

  Tennessee surpassed 7 million residents in 2022 for the first time, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, making it the seventh-fastest-growing state in the United States by population last year.

  States such as Tennessee have become attractive to individuals beyond the natural environment, mountains, and rivers. Those interviewed by The Epoch Times who moved from Illinois and New York said lower property taxes, low or no state income tax, and more conservative populations have become attractive reasons to move to the southeast.

  According to the bureau, the Southeastern United States is the most populated region of the country, with nearly 129 million residents, and it was the largest-gaining region in 2022, growing by 1.1 percent, or 1.3 million people. Most of the increase in population came from other U.S. states (867,935) while a smaller percentage came from international migration (414,740).

  The West was the only region to also increase in population, with an annual increase of 0.2 percent. The Northeast and Midwest both lost residents overall to other regions.

  Corporate World to Homesteading

  “We wanted to be out in the middle of nowhere,” said Matt Moreno, who moved to Spring City, Tennessee, with his wife, Marla, from the Chicago area in 2020. “We were tipped off about the property and came here fresh out of the corporate world in Chicago. We thought at first it might just be a temporary move, not permanent, and we could maybe make an Air BnB out of it and move back up north once COVID was over.”

  The Morenos, both in their 30s, grew up in an area of northern Illinois about an hour north of Chicago and less than a half-hour south of Kenosha, Wisconsin—where riots and looting dominated the public psyche just around the time the Morenos were packing up to head south.

  Matt Moreno works in real estate, while Marla Moreno sells herbal medicine products. While the natural environment and ability to become more homesteaders than city-dwellers were attractive, so were statistics such as lower crime, lower taxes, and conservative politics.

  “You see a lot of people here with guns on their side, but we feel safer here,” Matt Moreno said.

  The move wasn’t the easiest decision to make, he said, noting that he wasn’t good with his hands or “mechanically inclined” coming from the corporate world.

  

  “The thing about the area that surprised me the most was the sense of community,” he said. “In Illinois, people will run you over and flick you off in the street. When we came here, neighbors came together to help us get established.”

  Moreno got into the real estate world in Tennessee quickly after moving and said now he has been able to help other couples and families wanting to move to the area from similar situations he was in.

  Aside from the natural beauty and culture, he said the political climate was another major reason for their move.

  “Tennessee is a very conservative state with conservative values, and to be honest, that attracted me,” he said. “Illinois had an extremely liberal workforce, and I like being here among like-minded thinkers.”

  Other positives for Moreno include the lack of state income tax in Tennessee, which is why a number of people have told him they’re moving to the state, too.

  Moreno said they had some learning experiences, such as learning that the mountain they lived on was quite windy and the tents they put up to store his wife’s products for her herbal medicine line wouldn’t hold up.

  They also got into homesteading, starting with a goat they found for sale on Craigslist. They quickly discovered goats are social animals, so they bought a second and then a third. Then came chickens and ducks.

  “We felt people were rude and only cared about money where we were,” he said. “It’s peaceful here. We have trails to access and hike. It’s just a very different world.”

  In his work as a real estate agent, one of the main questions people have is about any restrictions on building on land for sale. They’re usually surprised to learn that there are none and are really excited about that fact, he said.

  Living in a rural area comes with some inconveniences, such as driving longer distances for shopping or eating, but Moreno said he wouldn’t trade the location.

  From Upstate New York to Southeast Tennessee

  The Morenos’ sentiment was shared by Lynne Jornov, a nurse who moved south with her husband, Gary, in 2018. At first, they moved to Soddy-Daisy, but relocated to the small town of Dunlap after about two years.

  Lynne Jornov’s job as a nurse allows her to work anywhere, while her husband’s work as a trucker gives him flexibility as well. The two said the main reasons for their move were taxes and conservative values.

  “The cost of running a small business in New York was … pretty much unmanageable,” she said. “That, together with property taxes, [made us realize that] we could retire and own our own home outright and still have to pay $10,000 a year in property taxes just to stay there. That was a little eye-opening, along with the political insanity up there. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.”

  She said that although their families are still in New York, she and her husband “had to do something” and move. They also wanted to get into agriculture, with a few cows, to become more self-sufficient.

  “It was a tough decision,” she said. “[New York] was very beautiful, we had all four seasons. Of course, my parents are getting older and I would love to be there all the time, but we wouldn’t be able to live anywhere near as comfortably as we do here.”

  She said the couple has grown children, so that wasn’t a factor in their decision, but they would have had a tough time raising their kids in New York’s current political climate.

  Gary Jornov added that toll roads called “choice lanes,” which are currently being proposed by Tennessee legislators, aren’t something he would want to see.

  “This state needs to be conservative, that’s why we came here,” he said in an interview. “We want to keep conservative clause and not be taxed to death. Hopefully that doesn’t change here and stays the way it is.”

  Lynne Jornov said she understands the concerns of Tennessee natives who may not want people from states with different cultural backgrounds to bring their values with them, but that’s not what they want anyway.

  “We could’ve stayed in New York for that,” she said. “Tennessee is more of what we were looking for. Thank God we don’t have small kids because I wouldn’t want to raise a child in any of those places. Things they are doing and allowing are absolutely insane.”

  Southward Move Followed by Millions

  Jae Gillispie, who moved from a suburban area in Illinois, has documented her move with her husband to Pikeville, Tennessee, on social media for tens of thousands of viewers.

  She said she left her job of 21 years, and her husband left his job of 25 years.

  “We downsized,” she said. “No traffic. We love our little home. It’s just beautiful out here. I am so glad we did this. It was a huge risk, because we are not retired. We made decent money, good money, and now we make less than half of what we did, but it’s worth every penny.”

  The couple moved to a rural area around 2 1/2 miles from Fall Creek Falls State Park, the largest and most visited state park in Tennessee, and around 14 miles from the small town of Pikeville.

  “If you’re thinking about moving out here, which a lot of people are, this state is going crazy. Everything has doubled and tripled in price because this is such a hot state right now,” she said, adding that they moved in 2020, just as the pandemic began. “It’s not cheap anymore, it’s definitely going up in price, but it’s the best move we ever made.”

  She said that after 48 years in Illinois, they decided to leave for a variety of reasons, including taxes.

  “The freedoms down here, you can’t beat that,” she said. “So just to set some of the people straight that care about transplants coming down—we’re not here to change anything, we’re pretty darn conservative.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 18:45

• Orange Juice Futures Hit New Record High Amid Supply Squeeze
  Orange Juice Futures Hit New Record High Amid Supply Squeeze

  OJ futures have hit a new high, surging 10 cents or 4.56% to $2.292/lb, surpassing the 2016 record of $2.2585, due to limited supply.

  

  The USDA predicts Florida’s citrus production will reach 44.5 million boxes this year, which could result in the state’s smallest orange harvest since 1945. This is due to “greening disease” and hurricane damage in Florida’s citrus groves.

  Recall we have closely followed the squeeze in supplies:

  • Orange Juice Prices Could “Increase Substantially” As Hurricane Pummels Florida’s Top Citrus Grow Region
  • Orange Juice Futures Limit Up On Global Supply Squeeze

  The domestic shortage has led domestic companies to seek out new supplies in Mexico and Brazil. WSJ reported a gallon of orange juice has risen above $6 in some US supermarkets.

  Besides orange juice, egg prices are also soaring. People aren’t thrilled about rapid food inflation. 

  I almost put the Orange Juice back at Walmart today. These prices are out of hand. #DoBestByEveryBody #Inflation

  — Darryl R Ware II (@DarrylRWareII) January 31, 2023

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

  It’s 5.00 for orange juice, 3.50 for eggs. Let’s focus on the important issues, not the fantasy that America will be “all electric” anywhere in our lifetimes. But good job on other stuff you’re doing. Keep up the support for Ukraine and reducing gas prices.

  — Corey (@elbrynncanticle) January 30, 2023

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

  Maybe is a Republican strategy to put you down let’s say there is around 10 people dead at day because weapons rights
  prices of food eggs $10:00
  Bread $6:00
  Coffee cream $9:00
  Milk $$7:00
  Frozen orange juice $ $8:00
  Please we don’t want to mention the prince of chicken,fish,Beef

  — ALICIA M Blay Casal Franco Rivero (@ALICIAMBlayCas1) January 29, 2023

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 18:25

• Missing Radioactive Capsule In Western Australia Found
  Missing Radioactive Capsule In Western Australia Found

  Authored by Nina Nguyen via The Epoch Times,

  Australian authorities have found and secured a radioactive capsule missing in the outback of Western Australia (WA) after a frantic one-week hunt.

  

  The capsule, which is filled with Caesium-147 which emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour, was located two meters off the Great Northern Highway near Newman on Wednesday morning local time.

  “I do want to emphasize this is an extraordinary result,” WA Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson said at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

  “The search crews have quite literally found the needle in the haystack.”

  A crew from Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services found the silver-colored capsule using radiation survey meters to detect the gamma rays and radiation levels to locate the capsule.

  It has been placed in a lead container and is being transported to Newman for secure storage overnight before being taken to a WA Health Facility in Perth on Thursday.

  

  A supplied image obtained on Jan. 27, 2023, of a small round and silver capsule containing radioactive Caesium-137 that went missing in transportation between a mine site north of Newman and the north-eastern parts of Perth between Jan. 10-16. (AAP Image/Supplied by Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA)

  The device has been put in a 20-meter “hot zone” to make sure the public is not in contact with the radiation from the substance.

  “This fantastic result in just seven days in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is a testament to the close collaboration of all the agencies who came together to ensure the safety of WA,” said the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) WA, the lead agency in charge of the search.

  “Thank you to the community for heeding the safety advice, sending suggestions and reporting any info they thought may aid the search efforts.”

  The potentially dangerous radioactive capsule, just 6mm wide and 8mm long, is believed to have fallen from a truck that travelled from the Rio Tinto mine in WA north to a storage facility in Perth, an 870-mile journey.

  “It is extremely rare for a source to be lost,” Western Australia Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson said in a statement. 

  Potentially Harmful Tiny Capsule

  Authorities had warned the public to stay at least five meters away from the silver capsule as exposure could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness, though experts have said driving past the capsule would be relatively low risk, akin to taking an X-ray.

  “It emits both beta and gamma rays, so if you have contact or close to you, you could either end up with skin damage, including skin burns … and if you have it long near you it could cause acute radiation sickness,” Robertson said.

  

  Western Australian Chief Health Officer Andrew Robertson at a press conference at Dumas House in Perth, Australia, on Feb. 4, 2021. (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)

  “Our concern is someone will pick it up, not knowing what it is, think this is something interesting [and] keep it … not knowing what they are actually dealing with.”

  The capsule cannot be weaponized or broken to spread the radioactive material, however, it can cause cancer, Robertson warned.

  Rio Tinto’s Statement

  The capsule left the Rio Tinto’s mine site on Jan. 12 and was reported to be missing on Jan. 25. The gauge was found broken apart and missing a screw and a bolt, which are believed to have come loose due to vibrations from the truck. Inspectors believed the capsule then fell through a hole and then out of the truck.

  The public received an alert about the missing capsule about two days later. The package was in accordance with radiation safety regulations.

  Rio Tinto said it recognized the disappearance is “clearly very concerning” and apologized for the alarm it has caused in the Western Australian community.

  “Rio Tinto engaged a third-party contractor, with appropriate expertise and certification, to safely package the device in preparation for transport off-site ahead of receipt at their facility in Perth,” Simon Trott, Rio Tinto’s iron ore division chief, said in a statement on Monday.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/01/2023 – 18:05

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