Today’s News 31st December 2022

• 2022's Danger Signs: From Totalitarian Paranoia To Authoritarian Madness
  2022’s Danger Signs: From Totalitarian Paranoia To Authoritarian Madness

  Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  The danger signs were everywhere in 2022.

  

  With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except for that which the Deep State grants on an as-needed basis.

  Totalitarian paranoia spiked. What we have been saddled with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it has conspired to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority. In a Machiavellian attempt to expand its powers, the government unleashed all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace in order to justify its demands for additional powers to protect “we the people” from emerging threats, whether legitimate, manufactured or overblown.

  The state of our nation suffered. The nation remained politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. The combined blowback from a contentious presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in Americans being subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, martial law, lockdowns, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, and the criminalization of lawful activities.

  Thought crimes became a target for punishment. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly. In 2022, those who criticized the government—whether that criticism manifested itself in word, deed or thought—were flagged as dangerous alongside consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information.”

  Speech was muzzled. Those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech continued to push for social media monitoring, censorship of flagged content that could be construed as dangerous or hateful, and limitations on free speech activities, particularly online. Of course, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

  Kill switches aimed to turn off more than just your car. Vehicle “kill switches” were sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, but they were a perfect metaphor for the government’s efforts to not only take control of our cars but also our freedoms and our lives. For too long, we have been captive passengers in a driverless car controlled by the government, losing more and more of our privacy and autonomy the further down the road we go.

  Currency went digital. No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough, so the government came up with a new plan to make it even easier for its agents to seize Americans’ bank account. In an Executive Order issued in March 2022, President Biden called for the federal government to consider establishing a form of digital money. Digital currency will provide the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

  The government spoke in a language of violence. Police violence killed three people a day. Warrior cops—trained in the worst-case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—did not make us or themselves any safer. Despite this, President Biden’s pledged to expand law enforcement and so-called crime prevention through a $30 billion “Fund the Police” program.

  Cancel culture became more intolerant. Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs. Everything has now become fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

  Homes were invaded. Government agents routinely violated the Fourth Amendment at will under the pretext of public health and safety. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways the government and its corporate partners-in-crime used surveillance technology to invade homes: with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, and other monitoring devices.

  Political theater kept the public distracted. Having devolved into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population, the political scene provided ample diversions with its televised Jan. 6 committee hearings, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings, and more.

  Bodily integrity was undermined. Caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, concerns about COVID-19 mandates and bodily integrity remained part of a much larger debate over the ongoing power struggle between the citizenry and the government over our property “interest” in our bodies. This debate over bodily integrity covered broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccinations to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Although the Supreme Court overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, it did nothing to resolve the larger problem that plagues us today: namely, that all along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the aged—the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry.

  The government’s fiscal insanity reached new heights. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) hit $30 trillion. That translates to roughly $242,000 per taxpayer. It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). That debt is also growing exponentially: it is expected to be twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2051.

  Surveillance got creepier. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business was monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted. With every new AI surveillance technology that was adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry were marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

  Precrime became more fact than fiction. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies were used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating was done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. Where this becomes particularly dangerous is when the government takes preemptive steps to combat crime or abuse, or whatever the government has chosen to outlaw at any given time.

  The government waged psychological warfare on the nation. The government made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded. Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government weaponized violence; surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns; digital currencies, social media scores and censorship; desensitization campaigns; fear; genetics; and entertainment.

  Gun confiscation laws put a target on the back of every American. Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) gained traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

  The burden of proof was reversed. Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head. Each and every one of us is now seen as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker in the eyes of the government. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

  The Supreme Court turned America into a Constitution-free zone. Although the Court’s rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating. The bottom line: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

  The FBI went rogue. The FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people ran the gamut from surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, and intimidation tactics to harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.

  The government waged war on political freedom. In more and more cases, the government declared war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

  The military industrial complex waged more wars. America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine conveniently followed on the heels of a long line of other crises which have occurred like clockwork in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms.

  The Deep State went global. We’ve been inching closer to a new world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which saw governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, shifted this transformation into high gear. This new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations owes its existence in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations. This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

  Authoritarian madness escalated. You didn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to recognize the slippery slope that starts with well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate. When any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and an utter disregard for the rights of the individual, there should be reason for concern.

  The takeaway: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests—as it always has—at the local level, with “we the people.”

  Unless we work together to push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse, 2023 will be yet another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 23:30

• Suicide Among The Most Common Causes Of Death In The US
  Suicide Among The Most Common Causes Of Death In The US

  Homicide as well as suicide are common causes of death for young age groups in the United States, second only to accidents for those between the ages of 15 and 34.

  After that age, cancer, heart disease and more recently Covid-19 become bigger killers.

  Even for children aged 5-9, homicide is a big danger and was the fourth most common cause of death for the age group in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

  For those 10 to 14 years old, both homicide and suicide are among the top 4 killers.

  According to a study published this week in scientific journal Jama Pediatrics, homicide rates in children have been rising in recent years, increasing by as much as 50 percent for Black children and those between the ages of 16 and 17 just between 2018 and 2020.

  They also shot up for adults in 2020 and 2021. Suicide rates also increased for those under the age of 45 in the past decade, including very young children from the age of 5.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Of approximately 46,000 suicides recorded by the CDC in the U.S. in 2020, between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths occurred per ten-year age cohort above the age of 15.

  Despite being a relatively large killer of children who are 10 to 14 years old, only around 600 suicides occurred in this age group in 2020. The situation is similar for homicides, where around 200-300 death in the age groups 5-9 and 10-14 constitute rank 4 of the most common causes of death. Between 6,000 and 7,000 homicide deaths occurred for those 15 to 24 years old and those 25 to 34 years old in 2020.

  For older age groups, the number decreases gradually.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 23:00

• Biden Admin Expands Crackdown On Ghost Guns
  Biden Admin Expands Crackdown On Ghost Guns

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Biden administration has dialed up its crackdown on so-called “ghost guns” by issuing guidance that basically expands the definition of what “readily converted” means in a new federal rule and making more do-it-yourself pistol parts subject to restrictions.

  

  In an open letter to firearms dealers (pdf) dated Dec. 27, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) told firearm vendors that nearly-complete handgun frames or receivers—basically the pistol grip and firing mechanism—will be treated the same as fully completed firearms.

  Ghost Gun Rule

  Firearm vendors who sell near-complete pistol frames and receivers—often as kits that can be relatively easily turned into untraceable homemade guns—were hit with the new rule in August, which required that frames and receivers that could be “readily converted” into fully operational guns are subject to the same regulations as traditional firearms.

  

  The August regulation, dubbed the Ghost Gun Rule, meant that kits containing partially complete frames or receivers plus assembly tools and instructions were subject to licensing, background check, and serialization requirements.

  But ambiguity around the definition of the word “readily” in the regulation meant that some vendors continued to sell nearly-complete unserialized frames and receivers as standalone products while additional components needed to finalize their at-home manufacture were offered separately, or by third parties.

  Such was the argument made in an October letter (pdf) by a dozen or so Democrat lawmakers to the ATF and Justice Department, which claimed that a number of ghost gun companies were continuing to sell unserialized frames and receivers by interpreting “readily” in a way that amounted to a loophole.

  

  “The final rule, however, is clear and unambiguous: a nearly-complete frame or receiver is a firearm,” the lawmakers wrote.

  “The rule does not cover only frames and receivers sold as part of a kit, but also frames and receivers that can be readily completed,” they continued, urging the ATF to issue enforcement guidance that basically expands the definition of what it means for pistol components to be considered as “readily converted” into a functional firearm.

  They asked the ATF and the Justice Department to consider a nearly-completed frame or receiver as “readily convertible” not only when it’s sold as part of a kit containing things like jigs, molds, templates, and tools for assembly but also when such auxiliary equipment is available to the general public.

  “In particular, we urge the Department and ATF to confirm that how ATF reviews the ‘readily convertible’ nature of a nearly-complete frame or receiver will not be limited to what tools, equipment, and instructions are included in the same sale or distribution of the part sold, but rather premised on the tools, equipment, and instructions that are readily available to the general public, including those easily obtainable online through third parties,” the lawmakers wrote.

  ATF agreed and by issuing the new guidance, the agency is making clear that it will now be requiring relevant firearm frames to have serial numbers and to be sold by licensed dealers who carry out background checks just like with fully completed guns.

  

  “Today’s open letter is another important step in implementing the crucial public safety rule regarding privately made firearms, or Ghost Guns,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said in a press release. “Ghost Guns can kill like other firearms if they are in the wrong hands, so they are treated as firearms under the law.” 

  According to explanatory remarks to the Ghost Gun Rule published in the Federal Register, from the beginning of 2016 to the end of 2021, there were around 45,000 homemade ghost guns recovered by law enforcement from potential crime scenes, including 692 homicides or attempted homicides.

  Before Regulating ‘Ghost Guns,’ Enforce Existing Laws

  Several current and former law enforcement members told The Epoch Times that the proliferation of ghost guns at crime scenes is a problem, but that being insufficiently tough on repeat offenders under current laws is a much bigger problem.

  “If we are going to invest energy to fight crime, we should invest energy to get repeat offenders off the street,” Al Maresca, a deputy U.S. marshal in the District of Maryland, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.

  “Felon in possession of a gun is already illegal, a straw purchase is already illegal—there are all these other laws on the books that we can be focusing our efforts on,” he added.

  Roberto Alaniz, a recently retired sergeant from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), told The Epoch Times that focusing on ghost guns is unlikely to make a dent in violent crime.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 22:30

• Seattle Tech Worker Inspired By 'Office Space' Nets $300,000 In Alleged Software Scheme
  Seattle Tech Worker Inspired By ‘Office Space’ Nets $300,000 In Alleged Software Scheme

  A Seattle tech worker was charged this week in a criminal theft scheme which netted around $300,000 from his employer.

  

  28-year-old Ermenildo Castro of Tacoma allegedly told detectives he was inspired by the 90’s movie “Office Space” when he allegedly wrote software code to manipulate shipping fees paid to his employer, Zulily.com, to go into his own bank accounts.

  According to KOMO news, citing court documents, Castro netted around $260,000 in shipping fees.

  What’s more, he used his position as a software engineer to alter the price of around $41,000 in merchandise for ‘pennies on the dollar.’

  According to police, the company’s cybersecurity staff found a document on Castro’s laptop titled ‘OfficeSpace project’, which outlined Castro’s scheme to ‘cleanup evidence’ by manipulating audit logs and disabling alarm logging. The theft began in February and by March the company had identified discrepancies in the shipping fees being charged to customers, an SPD report states.

  Castro was part of the team assigned to investigate the discrepancies in shipping fees, according to the report. –KOMO

  Investigators for the company eventually caught on to Castro’s scheme and visited his house, where they found several boxes of merchandise piled up in the driveway and around the front door. 

  He claimed the orders, which included more than 1,000 items, were sent to his house in error.

  “When asked why he never returned the items to Zulily, he said that once they fired him his opinion was, ‘f— ‘em’,” reads the police report.

  Seattle police wrote a narrative on how Castro’s alleged scheme was like “Office Space.”

  “In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job. His best friends are two software engineers Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar, that also hate Initech. When he discovers that Michael and Samir will be downsized, they decide to plant a virus in the banking system to embezzle fraction of cents on each financial operation into Peter’s account. However[,] Michael commits a mistake in the software on the decimal place and they siphon off over $300,000. The desperate trio tries to fix the problem, return the money and avoid going to prison.”

  Apparently Castro thought he could avoid ‘pound me in the ass prison.’

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 22:00

• Are You A "Thought Criminal"?
  Are You A “Thought Criminal”?

  Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

  If we are not free to think what we want, we do not have a free society.  It really is that simple.  Unfortunately, there is now an overwhelming consensus among elitists in the western world that radical measures must be instituted to control what people think.  If you insist on being a rebel, there is a very good chance that you will be punished for holding unorthodox views.  You won’t necessarily be put in prison, but our system has countless other ways that it can punish you.  For example, those that insist on embracing unacceptable thoughts will find that their career choices are quite limited, and there are certain positions that they will be prohibited from ever holding under any circumstances.  Not only that, but if your thoughts are offensive enough you may have a financial account suddenly shut down or credit denied for seemingly no reason.  This sort of thing was unheard of a decade ago, but now it is happening all the time.  Of course you can forget about having any sort of a substantial social media presence if your thoughts do not conform to current “societal norms”.  Even the “free speech platforms” are banning and shadowbanning countless accounts every single day.

  

  If any of the things that I have just described have happened to you, that is probably because you are a “thought criminal”.

  You are not supposed to contradict the conditioning that you have received from our education system, from the news media, from our politicians and from the corporate entertainment that you are being fed for hours each day.

  When you deviate from socially acceptable viewpoints, you are guilty of “thoughtcrime”.  This is how “thoughtcrime” is defined by Wikipedia…

  Thoughtcrime is a word coined by George Orwell in his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It describes a person’s politically unorthodox thoughts, such as beliefs and doubts that contradict the tenets of Ingsoc (English Socialism), the dominant ideology of Oceania. In the official language of Newspeak, the word crimethink describes the intellectual actions of a person who entertains and holds politically unacceptable thoughts; thus the government of the Party controls the speech, the actions, and the thoughts of the citizens of Oceania.

  Sadly, we truly have become an “Orwellian society” at this point.

  In fact, a woman in the UK was just arrested for thoughts that she was thinking within her own mind…

  The U.K. March for Life director was recently arrested after police found her praying silently outside of an abortion clinic, according to a press release by Alliance Defending Freedom U.K.

  Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a charity volunteer and Christian, was approached by police officers outside of BPAS Robert Clinic in Birmingham, England, and asked if she was praying, according to ADF’s press release. Vaughan-Spruce told the officers she “might be praying silently” and was later arrested.

  “It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind,” Vaughan-Spruce stated in the release. “Nobody should be criminalized for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK.”

  Once she was taken in to the station, you would think that those in charge would realize that a huge mistake has just been made.

  But instead of releasing her, she was ruthlessly interrogated.

  Apparently they were absolutely determined to discover whatever evil thoughts that this vicious thought criminal had been thinking.

  And apparently they found something, because now she has been charged on four counts…

  Remember the British woman who was arrested for praying silently? She’s been charged.

  pic.twitter.com/VrHx93kQEd

  — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 28, 2022

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

  She insists that she is not a criminal.

  But she doesn’t understand that the world has changed.

  Anyone that thinks unauthorized thoughts in now a criminal in this system.

  And at this moment there are countless intelligence agents all over the western world that are scouring social media sites for more thought criminals.

  Thanks to the release of the Twitter Files, we now know that the FBI has spent an enormous amount of time, effort and energy looking for unauthorized thoughts on our largest social media platforms.

  When the FBI found unauthorized thoughts on Twitter, requests were made to ban specific accounts.  This represented a gross violation of our First Amendment rights, and apparently it kept happening over and over again.

  The FBI was confronted about this, and this is how they responded…

  “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our tradition, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.

  As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.

  The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.

  It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

  And it has also come out that the FBI has been paying Twitter and other social media companies millions of dollars for some reason…

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation is declining to specify what other social media companies the federal agency gave money to after Fox News confirmed that it paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million.

  FBI officials told Fox News that the nearly $3.5 million payment to Twitter was a “reimbursement” for the “reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process… For complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.”

  The FBI officials also said that Twitter isn’t the only social media company that is being paid by the federal agency, telling Fox News “We don’t just reimburse Twitter.”

  What exactly was that money for?

  We deserve to know.

  New Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently stated that “almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true.”

  Reading that should chill you to the core.

  Of course many other big tech companies have also been colluding with the government to suppress free speech, and one recent survey found that the vast majority of Americans want answers…

  A recent poll shows that 63 percent of Americans want Congress to investigate “whether the FBI was involved in censoring information on social media sites.”

  The Twitter Files disclosures show that not only did Twitter collude with the FBI, it also worked with other government agencies like the CIA and the Pentagon to suppress information.

  Musk said in a post on Dec. 27 that “*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government.”

  As time rolls along, those that choose not to conform to “societal norms” will be increasingly pushed to the utter fringes of society.

  If you continue to choose to be an “independent thinker”, getting a “good job” will be exceedingly difficult.

  Just think about it.  Right now, how many of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are “independent thinkers” that have unacceptable belief systems?

  If you want to rise in the pyramidal structure of our society, you have got to believe what the system tells you to believe.

  Of course if all independent thought is eliminated, our society will become the sort of dystopian nightmare that authors such as George Orwell and myself have been warning about for a very long time.

  Even though I do not like much of what my fellow Americans have to say, I vigorously defend the right to say those things.

  Freedom of thought and freedom of speech are non-negotiable, and our system of government simply will not work without them.

  *  *  *

  It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 21:30

• Russia To Supply Iran With 24 Advanced Sukhoi Fighter Jets
  Russia To Supply Iran With 24 Advanced Sukhoi Fighter Jets

  Starting a week ago reports began emerging in Middle East regional media, including in both Iranian and Israeli news sources, that Russia will soon provide Islamic Republic with dozens of Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets. Israeli reports are even citing “Western intelligence officials” in making the claim.

  Iranian state Tasnim wrote days ago that “Iran will soon receive 24 of the fourth-generation twin-engine, super-maneuverable fighter jets that are primarily used for air superiority missions,” in what seems to be some level of confirmation.

  

  The state-run outlet noted that Iran hasn’t been able to acquire any new aircraft from outside countries in years, and the last time jets were transferred from Russia was in the 1990’s.

  The Times of Israel also recently reported the following, citing the country’s Channel 12 network: 

  The report by Channel 12 said the deal could include as many as 24 jets that were originally intended for Egypt, in a deal that the United States thwarted.

  This left Moscow looking for a new potential buyer, which it has reportedly found in Tehran. The report comes after Iranian media said in September that Tehran was weighing such a purchase.

  Intelligence indicated that Iranian pilots were already using the jets for training, the report said, without elaborating.

  In all of these reports, the sourcing is anonymous and thus somewhat dubious, given also even Iranian state media is citing “reports say…”. However, the fact that state media is running headlines about acquiring the Sukhoi Su-35s is hugely significant nonetheless. 

  It could mean that Tehran and Moscow are at least in the early phases of negotiating such a transfer. This would indicate that their deepened military ties which has been on display throughout the Ukraine war, based largely on Iran controversially supplying its ‘Kamikaze’ drones which have been in use by the Russian army in Ukraine, is going the other way too as far as the defense supply chain.

  🇮🇷✈️🇷🇺Iran to receive dozens of Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets from Russia pic.twitter.com/bGKRQUKnzt

  — AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) December 30, 2022

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

  On Thursday, Forbes asked the qestion: who will operate these sophisticated and advanced jets if they are acquired? Likely there would be a significant Russian-overseen training program…

  The IRGC-AF has never operated more advanced aircraft than those vintage Soviet-era Su-22 Fitter or Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes — ex-Iraqi warplanes that fled from Operation Desert Storm to Iran in 1991, which Tehran promptly confiscated. The IRGC-AF returned the Su-25s to Iraq in mid-2014 to help Baghdad fend off the threat posed by the rampaging Islamic State (ISIS) group.

  Forbes further reviews of Iran’s ageing air force planes: “Aside from procuring Chengdu F-7 fighters from China during the 1980s, post-1979 Iran only made one significant fighter procurement, in 1990 when it bought MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets and Su-24 Fencer bombers for the IRIAF from the Soviet Union.”

  Thus any advanced fighter transfer could see the rare instance of Russian advisers training IRGC pilots. Meanwhile, the US and UK have continued to ratchet up sanctions on Iran’s defense manufacturing sector, especially in light of the drone supplies which appear to be ongoing in relation to the war in Ukraine.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 21:00

• Millions Of Earners, Businesses To See State Tax Cuts Beginning On Jan. 1
  Millions Of Earners, Businesses To See State Tax Cuts Beginning On Jan. 1

  Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  With state legislatures entering their third sessions since the 2020 pandemic pumped trillions in federal recovery and stimulus assistance into state and local government coffers, tax reform across a range of levies is among front-burner priorities for lawmakers in 2023.

  

  During 2022 sessions, Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation reports at least 38 states adopted “noteworthy tax changes” with most going into effect on Jan. 1, including trims in personal income tax rates in 11 states and flat income tax structures being implemented in three states, Arizona, Idaho, and Mississippi on New Year’s Day.

  Here is a round-up of “noteworthy tax changes” that go into effect Jan. 1 provided by analysts at the Tax Foundation, Council On State Taxation, and Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:

  * ARIZONA: A flat personal income tax rate of 2.5 percent will replace Arizona’s tiered, or progressive, income tax structure that had a top rate of 4.5 percent.

  * IDAHO: Under 2022’s House Bill 1, Idaho will move to a flat personal income tax rate of 5.8 percent, replacing a progressive tax structure with a top assessment rate of 6 percent, on Jan. 3.

  * INDIANA: Under 2022’s HB 1002, Indiana’s flat personal  income tax rate will drop from 3.23 to 3.15 percent through 2024. Afterwards, the personal income tax rate will incrementally decline to 2.9 percent by 2029, depending on state revenues.

  * IOWA: On Jan. 1, Iowa’s nine personal income tax rates will be consolidated into four, with the top declining from 8.53 to 6 percent. The state is set to implement a flat income tax rate of 3.9 percent in 2026.

  Also beginning in 2023, Iowa will exempt retirement income, certain farm rental income, diapers, and menstrual products from taxation. The state will phase out its inheritance tax by 2025, with this levy also being incrementally slashed beginning in 2023.

  On the other side of the ledger, Iowans will no longer be able to claim a state deduction on federal income and property taxes.

  * KENTUCKY: Under 2022’s HB 8, Kentucky’s income taxes will go down, and some sales taxes will go up on Jan. 1.

  The state’s flat personal income tax rate will dip from 5 to 4.5 percent in 2023 and to 4 percent in 2024. Depending on state revenues, state lawmakers plan to implement further incremental cuts until the personal income tax is eliminated.

  The income tax cuts will be countered by new or increased sales taxes on a range of services, such as a 6 percent levy on limousine, car rental, ride-sharing, car-sharing, and taxicab services. A 1 percent transient room tax will now apply to campgrounds and RV parks.

  Kentucky will also impose a new excise tax of 3 cents per kilowatt hour for electric vehicle power distributed in the state by an electric vehicle power dealer or by electric charging stations located on state property. 

  * MISSISSIPPI: Under 2022’s HB 531, Mississippi will adopt a flat personal income tax beginning Jan. 1. The state’s 4 percent levy on income between $5,000 and $10,000 will be eliminated and a 5 percent tax on income above $10,000 imposed. 

  Under the bill, the 5 percent flat rate will decrease to 4.7 percent in 2024, 4.4 percent in 2025, and 4  percent in 2026.

  But hold everything: Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) will spearhead divergent efforts to eliminate the state’s personal income tax altogether in 2023.

  * MISSOURI: Under 2022’s Senate Bill 3, Missouri’s top personal income tax rate will be reduced from 5.3 to 4.95 percent, and the amount of income exempt from income taxation will increase from $100 to $1,000. The measure calls for incremental reductions in the top income rate levy to 4.5 percent.

  Also on Jan. 1, Missouri will become the last state to assess state and local sales taxes on remote or online transactions under a 2021 bill.

  * NEBRASKA: Under 2021 and 2022 bills, Nebraska will reduce its top personal income tax rate from 6.84 to 6.64 percent, and in its top corporate tax rate from 7.5 to 7.25 percent. The state will lower its top corporate income tax rate to 5.84 percent by 2027. 

  Also beginning in 2023, beneficiaries can deduct 60 percent of Social Security benefits, up from 40 percent in 2022, and exemptions from taxation for retirement and military pension incomes will be increased. 

  Property owners will also get some breaks in 2023 under 2022’s Nebraska Property Tax Incentive Act, which sets aside $660.7 million for income tax credits that will offset portions of school district and community college property taxes.

  * NEW HAMPSHIRE: Under 2022’s HB 2, New Hampshire will start phasing out its income tax on interest and dividends income, lowering the levy from 5 to 4 percent on Jan. 1. The rate will decline by 1 percent until the tax is no more by 2027.

  Under 2022’s HB. 1221, the state’s corporate income tax, or ‘Business Profits Tax,’ will drip from 7.6 to 7.5 percent beginning Jan. 1.

  * NEW YORK: Under 2022’s SB 8009, New York will accelerate reductions in the state’s personal income tax rated for “middle-income earners” first adopted in 2016. 

  Beginning Jan. 1, the tax rate applied to income between $13,900 and $80,650 for single filers, and between $27,900 and $161,550 for joint filers, will be 5.5 percent, down from 5.85 percent. The tax rate on income between $80,650 and $215,400 for single filers, and between $161,500 and $323,200 for joint filers will decline from 6.25 percent to 6 percent. 

  Also beginning Jan. 1, New York will resume assessing its gas tax. The state’s 16 cents per gallon motor fuel tax had been suspended since June 1, 2022.

  * NORTH CAROLINA: Under 2021’s SB 105, North Carolina’s flat personal income tax rate will decline from 4.99 to 4.75 percent on Jan. 1. 

  The rate is set to continue declining 3.99 percent by 2027, with North Carolina’s current 6.9 percent corporate income tax to disappear entirely by 2030.

  Also beginning in 2023, the state’s franchise tax will be a simplified net worth levy instead of the three different franchise tax liability rates previously assessed.

  * ALABAMA: Under 2022’s HB 162, Alabama will exempt the first $6,000 of retirement and military pension income for those 65 or older from income taxes beginning Jan. 1.

  State lawmakers in 2022 also revised Alabama’s “business privilege tax,” reducing the minimum payment of $100 to $50 a year. 

  * DELAWARE: Under 2022’s SB 188, Delaware will increase its exemption from taxation on retirement and military pension income from $2,000 to $12,500 for those 60 and older beginning Jan. 1.

  * RHODE ISLAND: Under 2022’s HB 7123, Rhode Island will boost its exemption on taxation on retirement and military pension income from $15,000 to $20,000 beginning Jan. 1. 

  * ILLINOIS: Under SB 157, Illinois’ Child Tax Credit will increase from 18 to 20 percent of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) beginning Jan. 1.

  On the other side of the ledger, the state’s gas tax inflation adjustment will be implemented on Jan. 1 following a six-month freeze. The state’s 42.3 cent tax on a gallon of gas will increase by 3.1 cents. Another inflation adjustment will be implemented in July.

  * ARKANSAS: Under 2022’s HB 1002, reductions in personal and corporate income tax rates will be accelerated. Beginning Jan. 1, the top tax rate on personal income will dip from 5.5 to 4.9 percent, and the state’s corporate income tax rate will go down from 5.9 to 5.3 percent.

  * PENNSYLVANIA: Under 2022’s HB 1342, Pennsylvania’s corporate income tax rate will be reduced from 9.99 percent to 8.99 percent on Jan. 1. The corporate tax rate will decline by a half-percent until it reaches 4.99 percent by 2031. 

  * OKLAHOMA: Under 2022’s HB 3418 in May 2022, Oklahoma will become the first state to make permanent a 100 percent bonus depreciation allowance for investments in machinery and equipment beginning Jan. 1. 

  The state will also require that local sales taxes be levied on retail sales of tangible personal property in 2023.

  * VIRGINIA: Under several 2022 bills, Virginia will exempt groceries and essential hygiene products, including menstrual products, from the state’s 1.5 percent sales tax beginning Jan. 1.

  Also, retired military pensioners 55 and older will be eligible to subtract up to $20,000 in military benefits from taxable income in 2023, up from $10,000. That exemption will increase to $30,000 in 2024 and $40,000 in 2025.

  * KANSAS: Under 2022’s HB 2106, Kansas will begin phasing out its 6.5 percent sales tax on groceries to 4 percent on Jan. 1. The sales tax on groceries will decline to 2 percent in 2024 before disappearing in 2025. 

  * COLORADO: Under 2022’s HB 22-1055, Colorado will exempt diapers and menstrual products from sales taxes.

  Read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 20:35

• Brazil's First Corn Shipment To China Indicates Shifting Trade Flows Could Endanger US Dominance
  Brazil’s First Corn Shipment To China Indicates Shifting Trade Flows Could Endanger US Dominance

  Brazil, the world’s second-largest corn exporter, sent its first vessel carrying corn to China this month. Global trade flows are shifting away from the US, the largest exporter of corn, as China reduces its reliance on the Midwestern US farm belt. 

  Commodity traders have tracked the Star Iris, the bulk carrier hauling 68,000 metric tons of grain for Chinese trader Cofco Corp., which left Brazil late last month and just arrived in Singapore. 

  

  Bloomberg said Beijing decided to purchase Brazilian grains in May to “reduce dependence on the US and replace supplies from Ukraine cut off by the Russian invasion.” 

  Reuters recently quoted Brazil’s National Association of Grain Exporters as saying Brazilian corn exports could surge next year because of China. 

  There’s still a while until Brazil threatens the US dominance of the China ag market. More than 20 bulk carriers with US corn are currently en route to China. Still, Brazil’s first corn shipment to China might indicate global trade flows are shifting. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 20:10

• How Did EVs Handle America's Arctic Blast?
  How Did EVs Handle America’s Arctic Blast?

  Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience.com,

  There are now an estimated 1.7 million electric vehicles (EVs) on U.S. roads, compared to roughly 400,000 in spring 2018. That means that a lot more Americans are experiencing the joys and pitfalls of EV ownership, from silent, swift acceleration and emission-free driving on the positive side to slower fueling times and shorter driving ranges on the negative side.

  More Americans are also learning that frigid temperatures affect EVs differently than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, chiefly by cutting into their driving range to a greater extent. While a typical ICE vehicle might have its range reduced by 15% to 25% in below-freezing temperatures, an EV’s range will be slashed 20% to 50% depending upon driving speed, temperature, and interior climate preferences. Combustion reactions occur more inefficiently at colder temperatures, accounting for the range decline in ICE vehicles. But cold slows the physical and chemical reactions in EV batteries to a larger degree, limiting the energy and power the battery can deliver to the motors. Moreover, while ICE vehicles utilize otherwise wasted heat from the engine to warm car interiors in winter, EVs use electric heaters to perform much of the climate control, further draining the already hamstrung battery.

  The Arctic blast that chilled much of the “Lower 48” last week showcased the EV range hit to more Americans than ever, and also yielded a few more lessons.

  

  EV owners sounded off about their experiences on social media and subreddits. Here are a few of the takeaways:

  1. EVs are not ready for frigid road trips. 

  I warned about this in August: Driving an EV on the highway in extreme cold will produce a range loss of 40% or more. EV owners of various brands traveling for the holidays shared numerous stories verifying this annoying (and potentially dangerous) reality. Drivers traveling in temperatures at or around zero with a headwind could go only 100 to 150 miles before needing to stop and recharge, depending upon the car, significantly increasing travel time. When they did charge, they had to deal with another disconcerting problem with EVs and winter…

  2. EV fast-chargers operate much more slowly in extreme cold, if they work at all.

   The colder the EV battery, the slower the rate of charge that it will accept, making “fast-charging” in subzero temperatures a potentially miserable and plodding experience. Think a 45 to 60 minute charge instead of a 25 to 35 minute one. To top it off, users reported that fast-charging equipment, particularly from Electrify America, often just didn’t work in temperatures below -10 °F. Tesla’s proprietary Superchargers didn’t seem to have the same reliability issues. The generally sorry state of charging infrastructure shed light on another takeaway…

  3. EVs driven in regions with a cold winter need to be charged at home. 

  Preferably with a garage. Owners simply can’t rely on public infrastructure in its present state with current battery technology. However, this situation could easily change in five to ten years with novel batteries that suffer less range loss and more widely available chargers, preferably housed indoor.

  4. Aside from range issues, EVs handled the Arctic air well. 

  Owners reported that their cars started without issue, drove well (albeit with slightly reduced power), and heated quickly thanks to their fast-acting electric heaters. For drivers who didn’t need to worry about traveling long distances, their EVs were functional, comfortable, and relatively untroubled by the cold.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 19:45

• Sullivan To Visit Israel, Meet With Netanyahu, On Concerns Of Democratic Backsliding
  Sullivan To Visit Israel, Meet With Netanyahu, On Concerns Of Democratic Backsliding

  On Thursday we took note of President Joe Biden’s strained and slightly awkward congratulation message sent to newly sworn-in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his most hard-right wing and religious government in the nation’s history.

  In issuing the formal congratulations, Biden stressed that his administration will “oppose policies that endanger” the two-state solution or “contradict our mutual interests and values” – given Netanyahu’s newly formed far-right government has vowed precisely to expand West Bank settlements, directly threatening the possibility of the kind of future two-state solution Washington says it’s long sought.

  On Friday it’s been revealed the White House is planning to dispatch national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Israel after the start of the new year, in mid-January.

  

  Israeli and US officials confirmed to Axios that Sullivan will hold talks with PM Netanyahu over his government’s controversial policies, especially the most concerning ones which threaten to harm US-Israeli ties.

  Listed among Sullivan and the White House’s list of concerns is the potential for Israel’s backsliding on democracy and human rights, given the new government plans to legalize Jewish outposts in the occupied West Bank.

  According to Axios: 

  • U.S. concerns extend to policies that could harm Israeli democracy.
  • Those include measures that would decrease the independence of Israel’s judicial system, and challenge the rights of its Arab minority and the LGBTQ+ communities.

  What’s more is that a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken could soon follow the Sullivan trip. While high-ranking US officials have frequently visited Israel across US administrations, and Israel continues receiving $3.3 billion annually in foreign military aid from America, the hardline make-up of the new government has apparently sent the White House scrambling.

  Netanyahu has sworn in Israel’s most far right government ever… he’ll lead a coalition including figures once considered fringe extremists

  Key line in its mission statement: promise to expand settlements in the Occupied West Bank where violence has already been flaring pic.twitter.com/Gpva0fc5ds

  — Secunder Kermani (@SecKermani) December 29, 2022

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

  Other issues expected to be focus US-Israel intense dialogue in the coming months will likely be Iran and its nuclear program, as well as normalization efforts with Saudi Arabia.

  Netanyahu is expected to get more hawkish on Iran, and could mull the possibility of preemptive strikes on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities. As for the Saudis, the new prime minister has been vocal of late in wanting to normalize relations, with the Trump era Abraham Accords serving as the foundation.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 19:20

• Bovard: Liberals Learned Nothing In 2022
  Bovard: Liberals Learned Nothing In 2022

  Authored by Jim Bovard,

  Though 2022 was a feast for cynics, The Washington Post is confident that next year will be much happier — at least for Democrats. The DC newspaper this week published a piece called “15 Reasons You Should be Hopeful for 2023.”It should have been called ­“liberals have learned nothing in the Biden era.”

  

  The vast power of the Justice Department is at the top of the article’s list for reasons for “hope.” Post columnist Jennifer Rubin gushes over the likelihood that Donald Trump will be indicted on criminal charges and hectors readers: “Accountability is a critical component for democracies, and . . . we are seeing the guardrails of democracy and the rule of law reestablished.”

  But the Post’s glorified guardrails include a “Do Not Enter” sign for Hunter Biden’s laptop and plenty of other federal rascality.

  Post columnist E.J. Dionne whoops up “the next generation” and valorizes “democratization powered by the energy of the young.” But the most visible example of Millennials’ and Gen Z’s activism is their endless clamoring to have their federal student debt expunged. When did forcing other people to pay your debts become the height of idealism?

  Post columnist Jonathan Capehart trumpets the “Democrats’ Senate Majority” as the Great Hope of 2023. Capehart says that Senate majority was achieved “by some kind of gravity-defying political sorcery (and incredible candidates).” He didn’t mention the shift to mail-in ballots, or President Biden’s shameless demagoguery (denouncing Republicans as fascists) on the campaign trail.Regardless, Democratic senators will help safeguard “the constitutional rights that make us a beacon for the world.” As long as the Post continues ignoring how federal agencies trample those constitutional rights, Americans will live happily ever after.

  Post cartoonist Michael de ­Adder finds hope in “A less polarized world.” But that is no thanks to de Adder. When Canadian truckers protested the Trudeau government’s compulsory-vaccine mandate, de Adder ridiculed their convoy as the incarnation of “fascism” and portrayed truckers as mindless sheep.

  Post columnist Helaine Olen ­laments that “the past few years have not been kind to in-person gatherings,” leaving people “isolated.” Happily, people are “again going to gatherings large and small.” This is “no fault” punditry at its worst. It would be bad form to castigate the politicians and officials whose lockdowns destroyed freedom, subverted education and spurred soaring rates of suicide, drug abuse and alcoholism that dismally failed to stop the spread of COVID. Instead, people are supposed to forget everything that happened before they were let out of their cages.

  On the same day that the Post published its “15 reasons for hope” piece, it gave a booster shot to the hatred and intolerance permeating liberals and much of the ­media. The Post proudly revealed that its investigation of more than 400 statues, paintings and other artworks in the US Capitol had discovered representations of “141 enslavers and 13 Confederates.” Does the Post favor Stalin-style photo editing? If the Post expanded its list of villains to include presidents and congressmen who violated the Constitution, the US Capitol would have more empty space than a looted Dollar General store.

  The Post omitted one of the biggest reasons why liberals are hopeful for 2023.

  “Big Brother is protecting you,” Mayor Adams declared last week. The fierce backlash against Elon Musk for exposing FBI censorship of social media vivifies how liberals trust federal blindfolds to keep people in their place, paying and obeying. Perhaps liberals are confident that G-men will yank the same strings to boost Biden’s ­reelection campaign that they illegally pulled to aid his 2020 ­victory.

  Regardless of the Post’s wacky list, there are plenty of reasons for hope next year. Republican-controlled congressional committees could expose so many federal crimes that even The Washington Post will have to notice. Backlashes in financial markets may compel politicians to cease spending trillions of dollars that they don’t have. And more Americans are finally recognizing that, regardless of Biden’s preening or the media’s cover-ups, the federal government is the most dangerous threat to their rights and ­liberties.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 18:55

• Researcher Reveals Google Home Speakers Could've Been Hijacked And Turned Into Wiretaps
  Researcher Reveals Google Home Speakers Could’ve Been Hijacked And Turned Into Wiretaps

  Security researcher Matt Kunze revealed a serious vulnerability in Google smart home speakers that could’ve enabled threat actors to gain remote access over the devices.

  Kunze was experimenting with his own Google Home speaker in early 2021 when he found a hacker could install a ‘backdoor’ account on the device over the web. He detailed the security flaw at length on his blog, indicating someone could send commands to the speaker remotely, access its microphone, scrape Wi-Fi passwords, and access other devices on the network. 

  

  He said the hacker would have to trick the target or victim into installing a malicious Android app, which allowed the attacker’s account to connect with the smart speaker. Once the hacker was in, the microphone in the Google Home speaker would be easily accessible to snoop on conversations. 

  The victim would be clueless about the hack. Kunze said, “the only thing they might notice is that the device’s LEDs turn solid blue, but they’d probably just assume it’s updating the firmware or something.” 

  He reported the security flaw to Google in early 2021, and a patch was provided to all devices in April of the same year. The tech giant rewarded him with more than $100,000 for his efforts. 

  “I was recently rewarded a total of $107,500 by Google for responsibly disclosing security issues in the Google Home smart speaker that allowed an attacker within wireless proximity to install a “backdoor” account on the device, enabling them to send commands to it remotely over the internet, access its microphone feed, and make arbitrary HTTP requests within the victim’s LAN (which could potentially expose the Wi-Fi password or provide the attacker direct access to the victim’s other devices). These issues have since been fixed,” he wrote on his blog. 

  “It’s worth noting that Google Home was released in 2016, scheduled routines were added in 2018, and the Local Home SDK was introduced in 2020, so an attacker finding the issue before April 2021 would have had plenty of time to take advantage,” Tech blog Bleeping Computer pointed out. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 18:30

• The Twitter Files Have Confirmed (Again) That Conspiracy Theorists Are Not Crazy
  The Twitter Files Have Confirmed (Again) That Conspiracy Theorists Are Not Crazy

  Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

  So…it turns out we crazy conspiracy theorists aren’t so crazy after all. In fact, we can knock “crazy” right off that moniker. Again. Elon Musk has allowed the curtain to be pulled back on Twitter to reveal corruption, collusion, and straight-up propaganda that have changed the course of American history. Musk is catching all sorts of flack for the Twitter Files from the mainstream media, who are somehow trying to defend the indefensible actions that have taken place behind the scenes and paint Musk as the bad guy for exposing it.

  

  Many things that non-liberals have been saying for years have been shown to be true. There was indeed collusion between the Biden campaign and Twitter, conservatives were absolutely shadowbanned, the FBI is involved in social media, and points-of-view that were not in line with the narrative were suppressed by the social media giant.

  What are the Twitter Files?

  Elon Musk has provided journalists like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss,  Lee Fang, and Michael Schellenberger access to years of internal documents and chat logs showing the trend of biased moderation behind the scenes. (You can sift through Musk’s own Twitter account to read these reveals yourself.

  It’s a story of censorship cloaked as moderation and political bias cloaked as safety. Favors were done, and stories were either suppressed or allowed to trend based on the whims of a handful of people behind the scenes. Regardless of how many times the MSM says “alleged” in conjunction with these revelations, it’s very clear that there’s a real problem.

  And keep in mind this is only the tip of the iceberg. I’d be willing to bet everything I have that similar conversations have gone on behind the scenes at Google and Facebook too. That means that Big Tech has been responsible for illicitly influencing the course of history, something we here at The Organic Prepper have been saying for a decade. While you personally may not have been influenced by things on social media, the people around you have been and the consensuses that were formed in America were based on biased information.

  That’s a real problem. Propaganda works and the position our country is in shows the heinous aftermath of it.

  Here’s what we learned from the Twitter Files so far.

  The best synopsis I’ve seen of the Twitter Files comes from the account of journalist Benjamin Carlson. Carlson wrote, “No agency should be unaccountable. No institution is indispensable.”

  Here’s his breakdown.

  What is the real story of the Twitter Files? It’s a much bigger deal than many realize.

  I’ve spent hours reading the great reporting (now thousands of words in 7+ parts) by
  @mtaibbi, @bariweiss, and @ShellenbergerMD

  Here are 7 crucial takeaways everyone needs to know:

  1. History changed because of this:

  • Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption censored

  • Covid 19 lockdown debate stifled

  • Trump silenced

  You may agree with each decision. But there is no denying that halting information flow and free debate had real consequences.

  2. Many things called conspiracy theories were true:

  • FBI was working w Twitter and paid TW $ millions

  • Blacklists & shadow bans were real

  • US intel lobbied to censor accounts

  • Covid-19 convo heavily manipulated

  • Twitter rules changed & enforced by whim

  3. Censorship is being cloaked in the language of safety:

  • ‘Safety, harm, violence’ redefined to apply to ideas

  • Opinions & info deemed ‘unsafe’ subject to silencing

  • Jokes, memes, questions about origin of covid off limits

  4. The government is policing opinion:

  • FBI has 80 staff monitoring speech

  • Small accounts on left and right flagged

  • FBI held frequent meetings w TW

  • Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram = similar?

  • Private censors & police control what you say to whom.

  5. Social media executives lie freely:

  • Twitter execs repeatedly and publicly denied shadow bans

  • In reality, bans were in place as “visibility filtering”

  • Ultimately, no accountability to public

  6. Free speech is controlled by a small group:

  • Biggest decisions in Twitter Files made by 3-4 individuals

  • Despite misgivings and doubts, once made, decisions stuck

  • Now it’s Musk.

  One difference: his embrace of public polls to set policy.

  7. The slippery slope is real:

  • Staff rebellion led to Trump ban

  • Staff called for more covid-19 censorship

  • 2021-22 saw increase of bans and ‘one-offs’

  This is how you get Billy Baldwin in the crosshairs.

  Once you silence a president, who has a right to speak?

  8. Musk has made enemies:

  • Leaking to indy media

  • Expressing opinions on Fauci

  • Suspending journalist accounts

  I expect his businesses will see counterattacks. Now is a good time to refocus—and let the users decide how to uphold free speech.

  TLDR

  1. History changed

  2. Conspiracy theories true

  3. ‘Safety’ = censorship

  4. Government policed ideas

  5. Executives lied

  6. Speech controlled by small group

  7. Slippery slope is real

  8. Musk must watch out

  The MSM is outraged.

  Unsurprisingly, those who have been shown to be biased and corrupt are displeased and the MSM is leaping to their defense and attacking Musk for using his platform to expose it.

  Tech Crunch said breathlessly:

  Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, is feverishly promoting his “Twitter Files”: selected internal communications from the company, laboriously tweeted out by sympathetic amanuenses. But Musk’s obvious conviction that he has released some partisan kraken is mistaken — far from conspiracy or systemic abuse, the files are a valuable peek behind the curtain of moderation at scale, hinting at the Sisyphean labors undertaken by every social media platform.

  Vanity Fair dismisses the claims in the Twitter Files and focuses its wrath on Musk.

  Right-wingers are reveling in the latest batch of Elon Musk’s Twitter Files, which Republicans continue to dubiously frame as bombshell revelations into the platform’s squelching of far-right accounts. But amid all the brouhaha, a simple question remains: What new information has actually emerged from these splashy document dumps?

  …All that can be gleaned from the latest Twitter Files release is this: Musk, likely under pressure from spooked advertisers to justify his conservative rebrand of the company, wants everyone to know that at least a few right-wing users were sent to varying degrees of Twitter time-out.

  The Intelligencer is equally dismissive and but far more sarcastic as they strive to discredit Musk.

  ..the Twitter Files are best understood as an egregious example of the very phenomenon it purports to condemn — that of social-media managers leveraging their platforms for partisan ends…

  …The Constitution does not give you an inalienable right to retweet Hunter Biden’s genitals…

  …The Twitter Files provide limited evidence that the social-media platform’s former management sometimes enforced its terms of service in inconsistent and politically biased ways. The project offers overwhelming evidence that Twitter’s current management is using the platform to promote tendentious, partisan narratives and conservative misinformation. In that sense, Taibbi and Weiss have performed revelatory journalism.

  NPR suggests that Musk is a big, mean bully.

  Musk’s conspiracy-baiting has quickly turned ugly, as he uses a project that purports to be about transparency to discredit Twitter’s former leadership and harass people he disagrees with. That’s giving his 120 million Twitter followers easy targets…

   …many tech journalists, social media experts and former Twitter employees say Musk’s claims are over-hyped, given that the documents shared so far largely corroborate what is already known about the messy business of policing a large social network.

  “What is really coming through in the Twitter Files for me is: people who are confronting high-stakes, unanticipated events and trying to figure out what policies apply and how,” said Renée DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who studies how narratives spread on social networks…

  …But with his drumbeat of Twitter Files releases and gleeful tweets dunking on the company’s former employees, Musk has successfully hijacked the conversation.

  “It is being processed as punitive and sort of owning the last regime, as opposed to saying, ‘Here are things that we can see in these files and here is how it’s going to be done differently under our watch,’” DiResta said.

  I suppose the bottom line here is that when faced with one set of facts, people with different philosophies will always draw diverse and strongly held conclusions.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 18:05

• Biden Family Disowns Hunter's 4-Year-Old Daughter, Remains "Estranged From The Child"
  Biden Family Disowns Hunter’s 4-Year-Old Daughter, Remains “Estranged From The Child”

  The Biden family has remained “estranged” from Hunter Biden’s 4-year-old daughter, and ‘seemingly wants nothing to do with the child,’ according to the Daily Beast, citing the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

  

  The woman who mothered Hunter’s secret lovechild, Lunden Alexis Roberts, filed paperwork on Tuesday requesting that an Arkansas court allow the child, Navy Joan Roberts, be given the Biden name, claiming that the toddler would “benefit from carrying the Biden family name” because it’s “now synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute, and politically powerful.”

  The Bidens, meanwhile, have completely ignored the President’s grandchild – striking her attendance from the 46th presidential inauguration and allegedly refusing to offer security aid to the mother-daughter pair, despite domestic violence threats from Roberts’ ex.

  The filing cites President Biden, Jill Biden and Hunter’s late brother Beau as examples of successful individuals bearing the last name, and says that the Biden family remains “estranged from the child. To the extent this is misconduct or neglect, it can be rectified by changing her last name to Biden so that she may undeniably be known to the world as the child of the defendant and member of the prestigious Biden family.”

  Roberts, originally from Batesville and an Arkansas State University graduate, met Hunter Biden while she was living in Washington, D.C., and worked for him, Lancaster previously said.

  The child, initially referred to in the case as “Baby Doe,” was born in August 2018; the paternity suit followed in May 2019, days after Hunter Biden’s marriage to a South African filmmaker, the former Melissa Cohen.

  A DNA test showed, “with near scientific certainty,” that Biden is Baby Doe’s father, Judge Holly Meyer declared in a January 2020 order. That month the parties agreed on temporary child support until the issue was resolved. -Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette

  Hunter Biden wrote in his 2021 book “Beautiful Things” that he fought Roberts’ paternity suit because, being a crackhead, he had no recollection of the incident that led to the pregnancy.

  

  “The other women I’d been with during rampages since my divorce were hardly the dating type. We would satisfy our immediate needs and little else,” wrote Hunter, adding “I’m not proud of it.”

  According to Roberts, Hunter has a “long, and lengthy, history of attempting to avoid discovery by filing endless and recurrent motions for protective orders. Additionally, this case was finally resolved the first time when this court denied the defendant’s motion for a protective order relating to discovery.”

  Roberts has requested a list of Hunter’s residences for the past 10 years, along with vehicles he’s owned or driven for the past five years in order to obtain evidence of his “well-established history of a lavish lifestyle.”

  “[Biden] objects and refuses to provide all the requested information. Instead, [Biden] seeks a protective order,” reads a filing. She’s also requested information related to a federal investigation into Hunter’s “tax affairs.”

  “This information is relevant to determine if, as Federal authorities insinuated, the defendant failed to disclose all his income as this goes to earning capability and Mr. Biden’s credibility.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 17:40

• 2022: The Year ESG Fell To Earth
  2022: The Year ESG Fell To Earth

  Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClearEnergy.org,

  The year 2022 brings an end to an era of illusions: a year that saw the end of the post–Cold War era and the return of geopolitics; the first energy crisis of the enforced energy transition to net zero; and the year that brought environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing down to earth with a thump—for the year to date, BlackRock’s ESG Screened S&P 500 ETF lost 22.2% of its value, and the S&P 500 Energy Sector Index rose 54.0%. The three are linked. By restricting investment in production of oil and gas by Western producers, ESG increases the market power of non-Western producers, thereby enabling Putin’s weaponization of energy supplies. Net zero—the holy grail of ESG—has turned out to be Russia’s most potent ally.

  

  It wasn’t only a bad year for ESG on the stock market. Earlier this month, Vanguard announced that it was quitting Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (NZAM), set up by former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney a little over a year ago. “We have decided to withdraw from NZAM so that we can provide the clarity our investors desire about the role of index funds and about how we think about material risks, including climate-related risks,” the world’s second-largest asset manager said. 

  Two months ago, Alex Edmans, coauthor of the latest edition of the standard textbook on the principles of corporate finance and professor of finance at the London Business School, published a paper titled “The End of ESG”—without a question mark. Edmans criticizes what has become the primary justification for ESG: the claim that business can generate higher returns for investors by tackling climate change. Since governments are democratically elected by a country’s citizens, they are best placed to address externalities, whereas investors disproportionately represent the elites. “If ESG is pursued for its externalities, companies and investors should be very clear that it may be at the expense of value,” Edmans says.

  October also saw the publication of Terrence Keeley’s Sustainable, where the former BlackRock senior executive penned what amounts to a requiem for ESG. Rather than “doing well by doing good,” the logic of Keeley’s case, as I reviewed for RealClear Books, is that investors in conventional ESG investment products are likely to end up not doing very well and leave investors feeling good, not doing good.

  It has not all been going one way. In May, HSBC terminated Stuart Kirk, its global head of research at HSBC’s asset-management arm, for voicing some hard truths about ESG. Earlier this month, HSBC announced that it will stop financing new oil and gas fields, putting the West’s third-largest bank on Putin’s side in Russia’s energy war on the West. 

  What is now a negative factor disadvantaging the West in a world increasingly characterized by East–West geopolitical tensions originated after a period when the United Nations had been fostering a horizontal global division between a rich North and an exploited South. As University of Pennsylvania’s professor Elizabeth Pollman records in her June 2022 paper “The Origins and Consequences of the ESG Moniker,” through the 1970s and early 1980s, the UN promoted the New International Economic Order that called for the regulation of transnational corporations on the alleged grounds that they were widening the gap between developed and developing countries. 

  After Kofi Annan became secretary-general in 1997, the UN shifted from a strategy of confrontation to co-optation. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 1999, Annan launched a Global Compact between business and the UN. In 2004, the Global Compact’s financial-sector initiative published a report titled “Who Cares Wins”—a rip-off of the British special-forces SAS motto “Who Dares Wins”—arguing for “better consideration of environmental, social and governance factors” in investment appraisals, claiming that this would both improve outcomes for investors and help the UN achieve its sustainable development goals. 

  ESG means different things, depending on whom you’re talking to. Is it about risk disclosure? Or about factors driving long-term shareholder value? Or is it about society holding business to account? One thing is clear: ESG’s unsustainable dual mandate of boosting shareholder returns and at the same time making the world a better place— “doing well by doing good”—was present at the creation of ESG. It was a masterstroke by ESG’s designers to incorporate “G” for governance. No investor can be against improved governance, and it helped mainstream ESG, whereas previous iterations, such as Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), remained niche. 

  The 2008 financial crisis subsequently turbocharged the uptake of ESG. Having caused the financial crisis, Wall Street was going to redeem itself by saving the world from a planetary catastrophe. Without climate change, ESG would have vastly less salience. Although marketed as a climate risk analysis tool, ESG is no such thing. In reality, it’s about investors and debt providers driving the decarbonization of Western companies and sunsetting its oil and gas companies. 

  According to ESG doctrine, there are two types of climate financial risk—physical risk and transition risk—and it’s straightforward to demonstrate that both are spurious. Take the Bank of England. For its climate stress tests, the Bank of England uses a scenario derived from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) extreme and physically implausible RCP8.5 climate scenario. Roger Pielke, Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado–Boulder, and Justin Ritchie have documented how use of the RCP8.5 scenario represents “a stubborn commitment to error,” with its absurd projection of a sixfold growth in per-capita coal consumption to 2100, based on erroneous reports in the late 1980s of virtually unlimited coal deposits in Siberia and China. The Bank of England compounds implausibility with impossibility by taking the RCP8.5 pathway of 4 degrees by the turn of the century and telescoping it into a 3.3-degree Celsius rise by 2050. Central banks resorting to these types of games constitutes strong evidence that climate physical risk is a nonissue for financial stability. 

  When he was governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney gave an agenda-setting speech alleging a tragedy of the horizon as the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors. Climate catastrophes are presumed to be triggered by tipping points, one of the earliest being the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. In its sixth assessment report, the IPCC declared that with sustained warming, there was limited evidence that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets would disappear “over multiple millennia.” That is some time horizon. Despite the best efforts of central bankers, geologic timescales of millennia and human timescales of decades are completely out of whack.

  Similarly, climate transition risk and the stranded assets trope defy economic and financial logic. If you restrict the flow of capital into a sector producing stuff that people want and are willing to pay for, the price of the output of a capital-embargoed sector will rise, as will the value of its invested capital. This, in essence, is what has been happening in energy and capital markets over the past year and explains why ESG as an investment strategy does not work. In the absence of draconian government policies to suppress demand for oil and natural gas, ESG policies strangling the supply of capital to Western oil and gas producers have two effects: they push up the price of hydrocarbons; and they displace supply from Western producers to neutral or hostile ones, with major detriment to the economies and security interests of the West.

  Although the disintegration of ESG as an investment strategy became unmistakable in 2022, its existence as a political doctrine will continue until it is challenged and defeated politically. This is already happening in Red states such as Florida, Texas, West Virginia, and Utah. It also requires concerted leadership at a national level to get central bankers and financial regulators to quit playing covert climate policy and to shame banks such as HSBC into switching their support from Russia in the energy wars by dropping their anti–oil and gas financing policies. Defeating ESG not a case of “who cares wins” but “who fights wins.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 17:15

• 'I Also Orchestrated It': Uncharged J6 Witness Ray Epps Transcript Released
  ‘I Also Orchestrated It’: Uncharged J6 Witness Ray Epps Transcript Released

  Ray Epps, the uncharged man identified as a key instigator behind the January 6, 2020 Capitol Breach for telling people to storm the Capitol, said in a text message to his nephew that he “orchestrated” things, according to newly released witness transcripts from the January 6th Committee.

  

  On January 6, 2021 Ray Epps texted his nephew to say, “I WAS IN THE FRONT WITH A FEW OTHERS. I ALSO ORCHESTRATED IT.” See the relevant section and also link to full transcript below https://t.co/JV1cITkprd pic.twitter.com/EJb6UKoDfU

  — Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) December 30, 2022

  “At that point, I didn’t know that they were breaking into the Capitol,” Epps told Congressional investigators, adding “I didn’t know anybody was in the Capitol. … I was on my way back to the hotel room.”

  But the night before, Epps was seen going around to various groups of Trump supporters, telling them they need to storm the capitol. 

  Ray Epps was near the front line from the very beginning of the riot when he was whispering in Ryan Samsel’s ear to when he helped push a large metal sign into the police line (for which others have been charged with felonies)

  No “I didn’t know what was going on” for him https://t.co/SJUpIXzH8h

  — Stephen Horn (@stephenehorn) December 30, 2022

  In two interviews with the FBI in 2021, Epps explained his actions on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He admitted he was guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds and confessed to urging protesters to go to—and into—the Capitol on Jan. 6.

  Epps also told members of the Committee that he found himself playing peacekeeper between Trump supporter “Baked Alaska” and the police – who called Epps a Fed.

  “I was trying to find some common ground,” said Epps. “This guy was trying to turn people against me…he was calling me ‘boomer,’ and it’s his generation’s fault that we’re in the position we’re in.”

  Despite the admissions, the FBI never arrested Epps and he was not charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with any Jan. 6 crimes. The non-action has fueled a crop of theories that he might have been working for the FBI or another agency.

  Epps, 61, has repeatedly denied those suggestions through his attorney.

  

  Speculation that Epps was a ‘fed’ intensified after a Revolver News reported with the headline: “Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol“

  Revolver also determined, and will prove below, that the the FBI stealthily removed Ray Epps from its Capitol Violence Most Wanted List on July 1, just one day after Revolver exposed the inexplicable and puzzlesome FBI protection of known Epps associate and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes. July 1 was also just one day after separate New York Times report amplified a glaring, falsifiable lie about Epps’s role in the events of January 6.

  Lastly, Ray Epps appears to have worked alongside several individuals — many of them suspiciously unindicted — to carry out a breach of the police barricades that induced a subsequent flood of unsuspecting MAGA protesters to unwittingly trespass on Capitol restricted grounds and place themselves in legal jeopardy. -Revolver News

  As speculation over Epps grew, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) claimed that Epps had “cooperated with the Jan 6 committee,” and was removed from the FBI’s most wanted list “because apparently he broke no laws.”

  pic.twitter.com/ZNF8QMNkpl

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 18, 2022

  We’re sure Epps, who claims he wasn’t working for the feds, ‘cooperated’ indeed.

  And who’s this guy?

  Who unlocked the magnetic doors on the east side of the Capitol on January 6? When George Tenney first tried to open them, both were locked. Then after he pointed at the doors and said something, the left door opened. #SmokeyInsider #GreenSidesPack #ScruffyBouncer #January6 pic.twitter.com/4VlH2pIlhJ

  — 🇺🇸 (@FreeStateWill) January 29, 2022

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 16:50

• Jim Quinn: It's Not A Lie If You Believe It
  Jim Quinn: It’s Not A Lie If You Believe It

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” – George Orwell, 1984

  

  “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

  I wish I could go through a day without having to reference Orwell and Huxley when observing how the ruling class is able to manipulate, subjugate, and propagandize the willfully ignorant masses through lies, deceptions, disinformation, and fear. But here we are, living through a dystopian nightmare blending the worst aspects of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.

  It’s as if O’Brien and Mustapha Mond are running the show, using behavioral conditioning, restricting freedom of speech, adhering to a strict caste system, surveilling everything we say or do, using our fears to control us, utilizing propaganda to produce false narratives, and ultimately threatening to stomp a boot on our faces forever if we do not obey and conform. Virtually everything we are told by politicians, government bureaucrats, military brass, “esteemed” journalists, medical “experts”, bankers, and corporate executives is lies. They do not believe their lies, but they know it benefits themselves financially to lie, and as long as they work together, they know the ignorant masses will believe them.

  George tells Jerry “It’s not a lie if you believe it” as he is going to take a lie detector test. I wonder how Fauci, Biden, Hillary, Obama, Comey, Wray, Pelosi, and the slew of other Deep State coup conspirators would fare on a lie detector test about Russiagate, Covidgate, J6 Insurrectiongate, and Vaccinegate. Based on the titanic volume of lies they have spewed over the last several years, I’m sure the machine would overheat and explode if hooked up to any of this traitorous vile scum.

  The humorous phrase uttered by George Costanza on a sitcom twenty-seven years ago captures a significant kernel of truth about the mindset of the vast majority of non-critical thinking drones roaming the aisles of Wal-Marts and waiting in the drive-thru at McDonalds across our dystopian states of America. The lies run so deep you need hip-boots to wade through them on a daily basis. The reason our leaders lie is because we let them lie. The majority prefer comforting lies to unpleasant truths, because accepting unpleasant truths would require them to act and they prefer being distracted by trivialities like sports, reality TV, social media likes and otherwise being addicted to their technological gadgets.

  

  “The process of mass-media deception has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.” – George Orwell

  Orwell’s explanation of mass-media deception is a brilliant assessment of how the ruling class changes the narrative to suit their needs, and without blinking an eye are able to deny what they have said and done. Orwell saw this manipulation of the truth before TV, the internet, social media, or professionally created government propaganda existed. In his day only newspapers, radio, and speeches existed to push deception upon the public.

  The proliferation of technologically enhanced mass-media deception has accomplished everything the ruling class/oligarchs/Big Brother surveillance state could hope for. Lies and deception are nothing more than a means to their ends of control, wealth, and power. Right and wrong; good and evil; justice and injustice; truth and falsity; humanity and inhumanity; are meaningless concepts to the corrupt, greedy, power hungry, immoral, deviant, evil overlords who wield their wealth to maintain and expand their control over the ignorant masses, unwilling and unable to resist because their indoctrination runs deep, and the unceasing propaganda keeps them confused and angry at phantom enemies.

  

  The perfect example of Orwell’s mass media deception in practice has been this entire Covid hoax, which has been built on a foundation of lies from the very beginning. At the outset Fauci scoffed at the concept of masks providing any protection from a microscopic virus while being interviewed on 60 Minutes. He wasn’t lying. Numerous scientific studies documented by the CDC proved beyond a doubt, masks are absolutely useless in preventing the spread of viruses. But a few weeks later the covid controllers realized the usefulness of masks as the perfect fear inducing symbol of a fake pandemic and the first step in demanding compliance and obedience by the masses.

  Suddenly Fauci and his Big Pharma bought medical “expert” lackeys discarded the inconvenient facts that masks do not work, and piously preached that everyone must mask or mass death would occur. Any dissenting voice speaking the truth about masks was the enemy and needed to be silenced, scorned, ridiculed, and destroyed. The deception was aided and abetted by Twitter, Facebook, Google and the feckless MSM doing the bidding of the ruling elite, while being paid off by Big Pharma.

  

  This was only the beginning of a worldwide conspiracy of lies. The videos from China of bodies in the streets were fake. Evidently to provoke fear among the global community. The purported origin of the virus being bats in a wet market in Wuhan was a lie concocted by Fauci, Daszik, and their Chinese co-conspirators to cover-up their illegal weaponization of viruses in the Wuhan Bio-weapon lab. This cover-up was maintained by the dying legacy media, Twitter, Facebook, and Google through the censorship and banning of anyone (ZeroHedge) who dared question the government approved narrative.

  The demand for national lockdowns was built on the lies of Neil Ferguson, a 3rd rate academic, and his fear mongering Imperial College model of deaths if the world didn’t shut down. His ludicrous outcomes, based on false assumptions, were the basis for the disastrous decisions made by corrupt politicians across the world. The results in Sweden, which did not lockdown, have proven his model to be worthless, and responsible for the destruction of the lives of millions across the globe.

  

  They lied about social distancing, based on a 3rd grade girl’s school paper. They used a PCR test improperly to falsely produce “positive” cases in order to terrify the masses into a mass formation psychosis. A case was not a sickness. They drastically overestimated the fatality rate and attributed the deaths of extremely old sick people to covid when they died from their existing malady. Only 6% of covid deaths can be attributed to strictly covid. The overall survival rate if you contracted covid is 99.7%, with anyone under 70 years old 99.9%. Virtually no one under 21 years old died from covid. It was less lethal than the annual flu to young people.

  The overlords and their bevy of apparatchik whores in the government, media, and academia needed to ramp up the fear through rising cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in order to get rich off this plandemic, while planting the seeds of their Great Reset scheme to turn the world into a compliant surveillance state. The coup de grace of lies was to be the miraculous “Operation Warpspeed vaccine” which would rid the world of this perilous pestilence. Supposedly brilliant virologists developed amnesia over the concept of herd immunity, which has been known for centuries.

  

  This War on Covid has gone as well as the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, meaning it has been a complete and utter failure in defeating its supposed foe, but has been hugely successful in enriching politicians, corporations, and the multitude of toadies in the media, academia, and the bureaucracy who perpetuate the lies and disinformation they are paid handsomely to disgorge. The lies engulfing the supposed vaccine run deep and wide.

  The entire vaccine scheme is built on an altar of lies, mistruths, misinformation, deception, and censorship. mRNA gene therapies have existed for decades and had consistently failed in application as every animal tested using these concoctions died. Pfizer faked their trial data, lied about adverse reactions, lied about long-term safety, lied about effects on pregnant women, and tried to keep these results hidden for seventy-five years. The tripe about these “vaccines” being safe effective has been and continues to be the Big Lie.

  The emergency use authorization for these experimental jabs could only be given if there were no existing medications which were an effective treatment for the illness. There were dozens of scientific studies and world-renowned physicians acknowledging the effectiveness of both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in treating covid and alleviating its symptoms safely and effectively – and cheaply. That was the real problem. The hundreds of billions in profits to be made by Big Pharma, and then divvied up to politicians, legacy media companies, the FBI, and social media censorship arms of the ruling class, would be impossible if the truth about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin was allowed to be acknowledged.

  

  Therefore, Fauci and his sycophants claimed they were dangerous, horse de-wormer medicine, and ineffective. Twitter, Facebook, and Google censored and banned doctors who posted anything positive about either treatment. Meanwhile, Fauci sentenced tens of thousands to death by pushing Remdesivir, a treatment he financially benefitted from, and recommending ventilators for those with covid. Fauci sentenced tens of thousands to death by not allowing these treatments to be used. He deserves the same fate for his treacherous actions but is treated like a saint by the left-wing media and the Biden minions.

  “In a meta-analysis of 63 studies of ivermectin versus COVID-19 in humans, 100% of these have shown positive results… 29 of those studies were found to be statistically significant regarding use of ivermectin alone.https://t.co/KRWm8dSTAc

  — Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) December 27, 2022

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

  The biggest Orwellian mass-media deception of them all was what the “experts” unequivocally declared about their glorious vaccines. Just as every vaccine in history was supposed to keep you from contracting the illness you were vaccinated against, Fauci, Biden, Walensky, Gates, the Pfizer CEO, and a myriad of other paid “experts” told the global population they would not contract or spread covid once they were vaxxed. They are on video and in print declaring this to be true.

  But when it was proven to be not true, they just denied they had ever said so. As long as the masses could be convinced the lie had become the truth, then the lie was the truth, according to the Party and its journalistic narrative guardians. Controlling the narrative through suppressing and censoring the truth is how they continue to maintain control. The release of the Twitter files by Musk confirms every “conspiracy theory” put into the public domain by the naysayers, critical thinkers, and a few honest journalists. They have lied about everything.

  

  “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – Orwell

  When confronted by the reality these experimental, toxic, gene altering, spike protein generating brews do not prevent anyone from contracting the virus, being hospitalized by the virus, or dying from the virus, the powers that be just changed the definition of a vaccine and attempted to alter the narrative and pretend they had never said what they said. How Orwellian of our Big Brother overlords. The past is alterable in a totalitarian regime.

  “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” ― George Orwell, 1984

  

  Even the current definition of vaccination is a lie. Not only does it not protect you from the virus, but the Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE), warned about by highly regarded doctors like Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and Pierre Kory over a year ago, is now happening to the vaxxed and boosted victims. Biden’s lie about this being a pandemic of the unvaccinated has transformed to the truth we are experiencing a pandemic of the vaccinated. The vaccinated are now 4x as likely to contract covid as an unvaxxed person who has recovered from covid. Natural immunity, which has protected humanity for centuries, is real and far superior to these Big Pharma jabs.

  The cognitive dissonance of the vaxxed runs deep. They are too embarrassed and ashamed to admit they were duped and lied to. How many more young people need to “die suddenly” before they turn on Fauci, Biden, Big Pharma CEOs, media talking heads, politicians, and the sickcare industrial complex, and hold them accountable? Is the mass formation psychosis too ingrained in their psyche to ever revolt?

  The lies about the covid vaccines being safe and effective, promulgated through a multi-billion-dollar advertising campaign running non-stop for the last two years, paying famous athletes, Hollywood stars, social media influencers, and unethical doctors, are proving to be the most diabolical and fatal falsehoods ever perpetrated on global humanity. The “effective” nonsense was put to bed last year when covid spread faster after more than half the country was berated and threatened into getting the jab, then a 2nd jab, then a 3rd jab, and then a booster, because the previous three failed.

  And still half the country refuses to accept the truth because they don’t want to question the narrative or abandon their fellow vaccine cultists. The “safe” garbage narrative is collapsing on a daily basis as factual data about sudden deaths, real scientific studies proving the extreme dangers of these vaxxes, fertility data, excess mortality data, a constant stream of reports about young people contracting myocarditis, having heart attacks, and developing blood clots, has swamped Fauci and his ship of lying fools – with the ultimate result of breaking the mass formation psychosis of the masses.

  

  Essentially, these vaccines are creating a slow-motion mass casualty event, and everyone involved in their premature use in human beings should stand trial for murder, but they won’t. That is because the totalitarian Deep State has grown too powerful, too arrogant, and too filled with contempt for those they rule over. They feel invincible, as they blatantly steal elections, keep peaceful protestors in dungeons, assassinate those who might implicate them in child trafficking conspiracies, use the mechanisms of the surveillance state to crush all opposition, and collude with mass media networks and the Silicon Valley mafia media to suppress the truth and censor those who dare question the Deep State sanctioned narrative. The Twitter files confirm the deceit and treason at the highest levels of government, media, and military. Hannah Arendt describes how totalitarian regimes depend on fabrications to maintain their power.

  “Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

  At this point in history virtually everything uttered by the president, any politician, government bureaucrat, media personality, corporate executive, medical “expert”, and faux journalist is a fabrication, exaggeration, disinformation or outright lie. The list of lies is never ending, and has been going on since Adam and Eve, but the quantity and audaciousness of the lies in recent times has accelerated to a point where the totalitarians no longer fear revelations about their lies. They are comfortable knowing the masses will believe absurdities as long as they confirm their ideologies, biases, and beliefs.

  The masses do not mind being lied to because they are entranced by narratives created to keep them under control and focused on whichever enemy they are propagandized to hate, whether it be Trump, lockdown and mask dissenters, anti-vaxxers, phantom white supremacists, J6 “insurrectionists”, the Russians, or “election deniers”. Provenly bold faced liars like Biden and Fauci are admired and celebrated for their dedication to the narrative, despite its falseness. It happened in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Mao’s Communist China, and today as we plunge towards a new world order totalitarianism of unknown outcomes and atrocities.

  

  “Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

  I think a list of big lies is sufficient to prove we are ruled by totalitarian ideologues who don’t care their lies are destroying our country, culture, and societal norms. During my lifetime: they lied about JFK’s assassination; they lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to get us into the Vietnam War; they lied about 9/11; they lied about WMD in Iraq; they lied about the 2008 financial collapse; they lied about the 2014 CIA coup in the Ukraine creating the havoc we have today; they lied about global warming and had to switch to climate change when the original lie was revealed; they lied about Russiagate and their coup against Trump, they lied about the “peaceful” BLM protests; they lied about the cause of George Floyd’s death (fentanyl overdose); they lie about child trafficking and grooming; they lie about butchering children in the name of gender identity; they lied about Hunter Biden’s computer and the Biden family crime syndicate; they lied about rigging the 2020 election; they lied about Epstein’s “suicide”; they lied about the FBI and Pelosi staging the January 6 “insurrection”; they lied about colluding with Twitter, Facebook, and Google to influence elections and create a fake pandemic; they are lying about our border being safe and secure; they are lying that Biden isn’t a dementia ridden puppet controlled by Obama, Soros, and Gates; they are lying that Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX money laundering operation wasn’t an arm of the Democrat party, using ill-gotten funds and funneling it to Democrat candidates; and they are lying about their intentions to destroy our society through suicidal economic, social, and legal policies in order to usher in a totalitarian Great Reset New World Order run by wealthy elites and their detestable acolytes. Our dystopian nightmare is on-par with Orwell’s.

  

  “The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.” – George Orwell

  Totalitarian regimes have tremendous success using fake data and fake charts to give the appearance of truth to a populace too willfully ignorant to investigate whether the data and charts are a truthful and accurate reflection of reality. It is so much easier to believe supposed experts than it is to think critically and question the narrative, especially when they are telling you what you want to hear. Even though the average person knows their financial situation has steadily deteriorated over the last two decades, along with the financial situation of the country, they still believe the fake data vomited on a daily basis by the government and Wall Street banking cabal.

  They are lying about the inflation rate being 7%. It is more than double the government reported figure, based upon the calculation from 1980 when Volker needed to raise the Fed Funds Rate to 18%.

  

  They are lying about the 3.7% unemployment rate. The total working age population is 265 million, up from 212 million in 2000. There are 158 million employed today, versus 137 million in 2000. The unemployment rate in 2000 of 4% is virtually the same as the rate reported today. How could that be if the working age population went up by 53 million, but employment only went up by 21 million? Quite a conundrum. It’s easy if you lie. According to the government 100 million working age Americans choose not to work, therefore they aren’t unemployed. That number was 70 million in 2000. Fully 40% of our working age citizens are not working today, but the government tells you our unemployment rate is 3.7%. This might be the biggest lie ever told.

  

  The government has reported positive real GDP growth for most of the past two decades, with short-term dips in 2008/2009 and due to covid in 2020. Those figures are lies. Using a truthful inflation figure shows GDP has barely stayed flat for the last 20 years. The great American economy hasn’t grown in 20 years. We are a dying lying empire of debt. Our national debt grew from $5.7 trillion in 2000 to $31.5 trillion today. The debt to GDP ratio has gone from 55% in 2000 to 122% today. Throughout history, when this ratio exceeds 90%, economic disaster follows.

  

  The biggest lie has been perpetrated by the Wall Street controlled Federal Reserve, whose mandates are a stable currency and low unemployment. With a straight face these jokers declare they have succeeded, while the USD has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the deceitful inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, and the real unemployment rate is north of 20%. Losing the last 3% of purchasing power guarantees to be the most painful.

  

  After documenting the outrageous multitude of lies being told by those controlling the levers of society, I’m torn regarding whether I trust enough people can be awakened from their self-induced stupor of belief in authority to mount a counter-offensive of truth. I guess I wouldn’t be writing articles about these subjects unless I thought there was a kernel of hope I could plant with my reasoning. But I find myself drawn more towards the conclusion reached by Alexandre Koyré over fifty years ago about mobs and the ease with which totalitarian authority figures can manipulate them:

  “The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over. Provided too that its passions, hatreds, fears are catered to. Nor need one try to stay within the limits of plausibility: on the contrary, the grosser, the bigger, the cruder the lie, the more readily is it believed and followed. Nor is there any need to avoid contradictions: the mob never notices; needless to pretend to correlate what is said to some with what is said to others: each person or group believes only what he is told, not what anyone else is told; needless to strive for coherence: the mob has no memory; needless to pretend to any truth: the mob is radically incapable of perceiving it: the mob can never comprehend that its own interests are what is at stake.” ― Alexandre Koyré, Réflexions sur le mensonge

  When the mob has been essentially hypnotized by totalitarian authority figures, unbound from the law through illegally invoking “emergency” powers to ensure the safety of the masses, it takes massive bloodshed and enormous upheaval before the mob will come to their senses and realize their dreadful misplacement of trust in tyrants. Personally, I hope I am wrong about what lies ahead, but I don’t see a pathway towards a peaceful, reasoned resolution of what plagues our country and the world.

  Fools, knaves, and low IQ ideologues control the narrative, the political power, the media messaging, the banks, and the minds of the mob. We can attempt to distance ourselves from the onslaught, but there really is no way to escape the impact of a Fourth Turning, whether it be global conflict, civil chaos, financial Armageddon, or the wrath of the mob for being right about the vaccines, politicians, or the financial markets. I am not surprised or upset about the lies told to me by those running the show. Neitzsche and Carlin, two brilliant thinkers, pretty much sum up my feelings.

  “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

  

  “My first rule:  I don’t believe anything the government tells me.  Nothing.  Zero.” – George Carlin

  Very few people who need to awaken from their propaganda induced stupor of believing absurdities will read this article. Those who are already awake and can see what is happening clearly have few or no options to impact the course we are traveling. Too few see the iceberg dead ahead as the U.S. Titanic accelerates towards its rendezvous with destiny. We can shout and wave our hands, but there is nothing we can do to alter the course of an empire run by idiot ideologues, hellbent on the destruction of our ship of state. As Bradbury presciently noted in his masterpiece of societal self-immolation, I can’t make people listen to a message they don’t want to hear.

  “But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

  At this point I’m torn between the darkness of Orwell’s vision and the stoic attitude put forth by Tolkien. We are living in a time of universal deceit and telling the truth feels like a revolutionary act when the mob is under the spell of mass formation psychosis. It is an interesting dichotomy that this article will only be read by a small audience of people who already agree with most of my arguments. If it ever reached a wider audience, I would be attacked by the mob, censored, threatened, and doxed in an attempt to destroy my life. So be it.

  I will do what I can do with my limited resources, protect my loved ones, strengthen relationships with like-minded hobbits, disconnect from this warped and deviant society as much as possible, distance myself from the government, prepare for an uncertain future, and try my best to navigate the perils ahead. We only have a limited time on this earth to make a difference. We each must decide what we do with the time given us. God help us.

  “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

  

  “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

  *  *  *
  It is Jim’s sincere desire to provide readers of his site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions.

  To donate via Stripe, click here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 16:25

• 'Worst Year Ever' For Stocks & Bonds – Global Inflation Fight Bursts 'Everything Bubble'
  ‘Worst Year Ever’ For Stocks & Bonds – Global Inflation Fight Bursts ‘Everything Bubble’

  Before we get to the big picture on the month, quarter, and year, this week has ended with no ‘Santa Claus’ rally this year for US stocks…

  

  Until the last few minutes, the S&P 500 pinning around 3835 just as we said as JPM’s Collar trumped 0-DTE chaos, then everything melted up into the close…

  

  As SpotGamma remarked earlier, as January is a put-heavy OPEX, any downside start to January could energize those puts, and serve to press markets lower.

  This could lead to higher IV, and a reflexive selling loop to the downside. We’d then look for a rally after OPEX, as those puts expire.

  Conversely, should January start off with strength, those puts could help to fuel a rally as their values collapse leading to an early, material stock rally.

  OPEX could then trigger a reversal of that market strength. We currently assign edge to this scenario.

  Trade the first week of January should help shed light on the timing of the rally (i.e. pre-OPEX or post-OPEX) as the machines show the way…

  The dollar slipped lower, gold higher, and bitcoin lower on the week as Treasury yields surged into year-end…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  December saw stocks behave rather oddly with the S&P 500 cumulatively unchanged overnight and the massive bulk of selling occurring during the US day session…

  

  On the year, global stocks suffered a 20% decline in 2022, the 2nd worst year since 1974, as central banks fought inflation in the face of supply chain shortages and an energy crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Worse still, as The FT reports, a traditional portfolio consisting of 60% US stocks and 40% US bonds will have seen its worst performance since 1932, when the U.S. was in the midst of the Great Depression.

  

  As US bond returns are suffering their worst stretch in over a century…

  

  US equity and bond markets lost a combined $17.4 trillion in 2022 at their October lows…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  And while The Dow ‘only’ fell 9% in 2022, Nasdaq plunged over 33% (worst year for US stocks since 2008 in percentage terms)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Over $7 trillion in stock market cap has been erased from the Nasdaq 100. While the Nasdaq 100”s drop was bigger in 2008 (down 41.9%), it was only down about $1 trillion in 2008 though, because the denominators have gotten so much bigger…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  European stocks were also slammed lower (worst year since 2018) with UK worst and Spain the prettiest horse in the glue factory…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  With the ‘longest duration’ stocks having been hammered the hardest…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Energy stocks turned in a dramatic performance and were the only US equity sector with gains in 2022 (as Consumer Discretionary and Tech underperforming)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  “This has been a year to be in the bunker,” says John Bilton, head of global multi-asset strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management.

  Gold ended the year unchanged as the dollar surged; and while bonds and stocks were monkeyhammered lower, crypto was really clubbed like a baby seal…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The volume of negative-yielding debt has collapsed in 2022 (from a peak over $18 trillion in Dec 2020, there remains a modest $113 billion left, mainly in short-dated JGBs)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  As The Fed unleashed its most aggressive tightening cycle in decades…

  

  Source: LPL

  Some investors welcome this new discipline.

  “This has been a train crash waiting to come,” says Alexandra Morris, chief investment officer at Norway’s Skagen Funds.

  “Now, money has a cost. You can’t just throw money at unprofitable businesses, very risky businesses. We need to have a much more sensible allocation of capital.”

  As the year ends, 113 counterparties parked a record $2.554 trillion at the Fed’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility, in which counterparties like money-market funds can place cash with the central bank. That was $245 billion more than the day before, the biggest one-day increase ever.

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Demand for the facility has tended to surge at the end of each quarter as dealers curtail their activity in the market for repurchase agreements in order to shore up their balance sheets for regulatory purposes.

  US Treasury yields exploded higher this year, led by the short-end, as the market realized The Fed wasn’t kidding about its anti-inflation stance. 2Y Yields rose a stunning 370bps in 2022 while 30Y yields rose over 200bps…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Which meant a massive flattening in the yield curve…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  …driving the entire curve deep into inversion…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  For some context, 2Y Yields started the year at 0.72% and ended at 4.43% (with Fed Funds now trading above it)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The last six months have seen dramatic swings in the market’s expectations for The Fed’s monetary policy trajectory with the terminal rate surging up to around 5.00% as the expectations for a H2 2023 rate-cutting cycle (which implies a recession) surging dovishly in Q4…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The dollar has gained more than 8 percent over the year, but it lost more than 8 percent this quarter on expectations the Fed may not raise rates as high as previously feared…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Cryptos took annus horribilis to ’11’ this year with the big ones – BTC and ETH – down 64% and 67% respectively as chaos reigned across the ecosystem…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  On the commodity side of the board, it was a very volatile year with copper down notably (growth/demand scares) and energy up (supply scares), though the latter is dramatically below its mid-year panic highs…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  WTI had a volatile year as Putin invasion reactions battled China COVID restrictions

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Despite the dollar’s gains, gold ended unchanged on the year, rallying back above $1800 after triple-testing $1600 support…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Silver outperformed gold on the year, with Q4 seeing the gold/silver ratio top out (at 2019/2020 resistance) and fall back into the red for the year…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Finally, if you’re hoping for a rebound in 2023, there’s really only one factor you can pray for…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  When (or if) The Fed ends its QT program? Or this?

  

  See you in 2023!

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 16:01

• US Mulls Testing Airline Wastewater As China Covid Surge Expands
  US Mulls Testing Airline Wastewater As China Covid Surge Expands

  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering a plan to sample wastewater taken from international aircraft to track emerging Covid-19 variants, Reuters reports.

  

  According to an infectious disease expert, such a policy would provide the best chance of tracking the virus and slowing its entry into the United States, vs. blanket travel restrictions announced this week by the US and other countries, which once again are requiring mandatory negative Covid tests for travelers from China.

  “They seem to be essential from a political standpoint. I think each government feels like they will be accused of not doing enough to protect their citizens if they don’t do these,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, referring to the travel restrictions.

  Nearly half of a plane-load of 212 passengers who arrived in Italy’s Milan Airport from China on Monday tested positive for Covid, according to a Wednesday statement by a regional health chief.

  This week the United States added its voluntary genomic sequencing program to the Seattle and Los Angeles airports, bringing to the total number of airports that can analyze positive tests to seven.

  That may not be enough, according to experts.

  A better solution would be testing wastewater from airlines, which would offer a clearer picture of how the virus is mutating, given China’s lack of data transparency, said Dr Eric Topol, a genomics expert and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

  Getting wastewater off planes from China “would be a very good tactic,” Topol said, adding that it’s important that the United States upgrade its surveillance tactics “because of China being so unwilling to share its genomic data.” –CNBC

  China has hit back at critics, calling criticism of its Covid statistics ‘groundless’ – and saying that the risk of new variants is low, as they would likely be more infectious but less severe.

  According to CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund, sampling airline wastewater is one of several options the agency is considering.

  “Previous Covid-19 wastewater surveillance has shown to be a valuable tool and airplane wastewater surveillance could potentially be an option,” she wrote.

  In July, French researchers reported that airplane wastewater tests revealed that negative Covid tests don’t protect against new variants – finding the Omicron strain in wastewater from two commercial airplanes which flew from Ethopia to France in Dec. 2021 despite all passengers having tested negative. 

  California researchers reported in July that sampling of community wastewater in San Diego detected the presence of the alpha, delta, epsilon and omicron variants up to 14 days before they started showing up on nasal swabs.

  Osterholm and others said mandatory testing before travel to the United States is unlikely to keep new variants out of the country. -CNBC

  “Border closures or border testing really makes very little difference. Maybe it slows it down by a few days,” said Osterholm, adding that the virus is likely to spread worldwide anyway, so closing borders would simply delay the inevitable.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 12/30/2022 – 15:40

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