Today’s News 31st January 2022

• Is It Time For The US To Engage With The Taliban?
  Is It Time For The US To Engage With The Taliban?

  Authored by James Dorso,

  Afghanistan’s Taliban recently proposed it take a role in aid distribution via the creation of a joint mechanism with international aid organizations to coordinate the distribution of food aid to the country. According to the Taliban, “The goal of this committee is coordination on a higher level for facilitating humanitarian aid of the international community and to distribute aid for needy people.”

  

  Taliban representatives recently met with Western government officials and Afghan women’s rights and human rights activists in Norway. The U.S. delegation addressed “the formation of a representative political system; responses to the urgent humanitarian and economic crises; security and counterterrorism concerns; and human rights, especially education for girls and women.”

  Afghanistan’s neighbors Central Asia and India aren’t dallying. They recently met and agreed to create working groups to address Afghanistan’s food emergency, recognition of the Taliban, and the development of the Iranian port of Chabahar. The U.S. and Europe can help by holding their fire as the neighbors of heavily-sanctioned Iran and Afghanistan attempt to stabilize the region and create economic opportunity that will allow them to distance themselves from China’s thrust into the region.

  The West needs to get a move on as the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)  have declared that 19 million people in Afghanistan are experiencing “high levels of acute food insecurity” and that that number will climb to 22.8 million this winter unless action is taken.

  Washington’s priorities of a satisfactory (to the U.S.)  representative government, and its desires for Afghan women girls should take a back seat to averting a humanitarian catastrophe this winter. Afghans are being forced to sell their children for food, so more public engagement along will U.S. food aid will rebound to Washington’s benefit.

  U.S. policymakers no doubt feel anger and humiliation at the public failure of their two-decade project to reform Pashtun culture.

  But refusing practical steps to engage now with the new government in Kabul as disaster looms will show the U.S. and its confederates to be both incompetent and spiteful, a massive in-kind donation to the Taliban’s PR campaign internally and aimed at the wider Muslim world.

  Recent visitors to Kabul report the Taliban want Americans to return to the country (“Even Erik Prince can come here!”), one reason being to counter Chinese expansion in the region.

  A good start would be visits by U.S. officials to Kabul, as limiting their contacts to the Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar may also be interpreted as a lack of physical courage, which won’t inspire confidence in Kabul’s new chiefs. It will also give U.S. officials an opportunity to meet the Taliban out of earshot of Qatari officials who, while they have been helpful to the U.S., have their own agenda.

  According to the visitors, the roads are open, free of roadblocks, and repair crews are at work. As the country was historically a trading crossroads, now is the time to again make it the connector between Central and South Asia, and a trade partner with Iran’s 80 million people.

  Fortunately, leaders from Central Asia and South Asia — Uzbekistan and Pakistan — previously acted to connect the regions to increase trade and opportunity. In July, Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan met in Tashkent where they signed agreements to upgrade their countries’ economic relations. The leaders may have been racing the clock, but their project requires an Afghan crossroads where their businesses can trade with without fear of the U.S.

  The U.S. attempt to export identity politics to Afghanistan (via demands for a “representative government”) may be obliged by the Taliban if they introduce the world to the Afghan Margot Honecker, which will cause wails of “We didn’t mean a woman like that!” The Taliban aren’t neglecting girls’ education as private schools – for boys and girls – are open, and the government  promised public schools will all be open after the Afghan New Year in late March.

  After the Taliban’s August victory, there were few revenge killings and no one has been sent to a reeducation camp. If the Taliban deliver on their promise to open girls’ schools in March, the way should be open to consider releasing some Afghan funds seized by the U.S. or waiving sanctions against Taliban leaders so foreign businessmen can start to explore just how ready the Taliban are to engage with them and meet their demands for security and transparency.

  The U.S. will have concerns about what the Taliban is doing to repress the Pakistan Taliban (the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)), Al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K). If the Taliban follow through on the girls’ schools, the U.S. should grant concessions that will facilitate regional trade, then ask Kabul to take action against the three extremist groups. The Taliban may then be likely to move against Al-Qaeda and IS-K, but not against the TTP, and the U.S. will know this if it is clear-eyed, though it should call for action against the TTP, at least to keep Pakistan on-side when Islamabad goes into a funk over the latest American “abandonment.”.

  Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, described the Afghan Taliban and the TTP as “two sides of the same coin.” The Afghan Taliban see the TTP as their Pashtun allies in a conflict with Pakistan over the nominal border, the contested Durand Line. It is a scrap the U.S. will be wise to otherwise avoid, and instead focus on strengthening local economies as a counter to Beijing’s designs for Central and South Asia.

  The Taliban aren’t the baddest actors America ever dealt with.

  After World War II, the U.S. quickly hired German scientists and former Nazi officials. The U.S. also gave a pass to leaders of Unit 731, Japan’s germ warfare unit that experimented on Allied POWs.

  The difference between then and now is that then the U.S. was the victor, so it was easy to be generous, especially as the West was rapidly retooling to confront Communism.

  The question for America now is, as it faces a Communist regime in Beijing instead of Moscow, can it be magnanimous in defeat?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 01/31/2022 – 02:00

• "Think Twice Before You Vaccinate Your Kids", Dr. Robert Malone Warns Parents On COVID-19 Shots
  “Think Twice Before You Vaccinate Your Kids”, Dr. Robert Malone Warns Parents On COVID-19 Shots

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

  Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and immunologist who has contributed significantly to the technology of mRNA vaccines, issued a strong caution for those who seek to have their children vaccinated against COVID-19.

  “Think twice before you vaccinate your kids. Because if something bad happens, you can’t go back and say, ‘whoops, I want a do-over,’” Malone told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program in an interview, Part 1 of which premiered on Sunday.

  He also said, “It is clear that parents should think twice about vaccinating their child,” adding that serious adverse events can occur and can be “so severe that it puts your child in the hospital.”

  

  Malone noted that with regard to myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, “there’s a good chance that if your child takes the vaccine, they won’t be damaged, they won’t show clinical symptoms—[but] they may have subclinical damage.”

  “But the question is, do you want to take that chance with your child? Because if you draw the short straw and your child was damaged, most of these things, if not all of them, are irreversible. There is no way to fix it,” he said.

  “And I get these emails all the time: ‘Doctor, doctor, what can we do? This has happened.’ And that once it’s happened, there’s … you can’t go back you can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

  He pointed to information compiled on his website, which includes a list of peer-reviewed studies related to COVID-19 vaccine adverse events in children, the main one being myocarditis. The website also includes a collection of adverse events reports as well as death reports in the pediatric community, submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

  “They’re there as links to the VAERS database, and if you click on them, you can see the actual VAERS report that was filed by a physician saying this is what happened,” Malone said.

  “And you can make your own decision about whether or not you think that that’s vaccine-related. So all of those data are there.”

  

  A 5-year-old girl looks at her arm after getting a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in New York City on Nov. 8, 2021. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

  One page on Malone’s website points to a paper published in the Toxicology Reports journal in which authors noted, using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that normalized data on COVID-19 deaths per capita are “negligible in children,” while deaths after COVID-19 vaccination are “small, but not negligible, in children.”

  “For children the chances of death from COVID-19 are negligible, but the chances of serious damage over their lifetime from the toxic inoculations are not negligible,” the authors wrote in the paper, titled “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?”

  Malone’s latest warning comes after he issued a prepared statement in mid-December 2021 aimed at parents, in which he said that with regard to mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, “a viral gene will be injected into your children’s cells” that “forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins.”

  “These proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including their brain and nervous system, their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots, their reproductive system, and this vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system.”

  Malone is strongly opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates for children. He is the chief science officer and regulatory officer for The Unity Project, a movement seeking to resist COVID-19 vaccine mandates for K–12 children.

  “The Unity Project’s position is one based on the logic of informed consent versus forced vaccination—that mandates should not happen,” Malone told EpochTV. “The state should not be forcing itself into the family. The decisions belong at the level of parents not at the level of the state or the school board. School boards and schools and teachers have no right to understand and seek out medical information about their students‚ that’s illegal. And yet, it’s being done all the time. And students are being bullied if they haven’t taken vaccine.”

  Malone is also the president of the International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists—a group of 16,000 professionals who have signed a declaration that says healthy children “shall not be subject to forced vaccination.”

  “Mandates are illegal based on the Nuremberg Code, Helsinki Accord, the Belmont Report,” Malone said.

  “These continued to be unlicensed products, they’re only available through emergency use authorization … These are not licensed products, and they’re being forced on your children, and they have risks. And the media—through its censorship—and Big Tech, is blocking your ability to even learn what those risks are so you can make an informed decision for your children yourself. That is a huge crime in my mind.”

  

  Municipal workers hold placards and shout slogans as they march across Brooklyn Bridge during a protest against the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, in New York on Oct. 25, 2021. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

  Two mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are currently available in the United States under emergency use authorization (EUA)—one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Moderna.

  The only COVID-19 vaccine that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for people 16 and older is Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, which is marketed as Comirnaty. Doses are to be produced in the future, according to FDA documents.

  A separate, existing supply of COVID-19 vaccines under Pfizer-BioNTech continue to be available under an updated EUA for those over 16. The FDA has also granted an EUA for Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 12–15 in May 2021, and for children aged 5–11 in October 2021.

  California in October 2021 became the first state to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for children, followed by Louisiana in December 2021. Both states said they will only enforce the mandate if the FDA fully authorizes the vaccines for children.

  The Pfizer vaccine remains the only jab against COVID-19 available for people aged under 18 in the United States. The FDA in October 2021 delayed a decision on whether to grant Moderna an EUA for its COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 12 to 17, saying it needs more time to further review the vaccine’s risk for myocarditis in this population.

  The Epoch Times has reached out to Pfizer-BioNTech and the FDA for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 23:30

• With The Next CPI Print Critical For Stocks, Here's What Is Pushing Inflation Higher
  With The Next CPI Print Critical For Stocks, Here’s What Is Pushing Inflation Higher

  The earlier comments from Atlanta Fed president Bostic, who was clear in his readiness for a 50bps hike but also said that he was encouraged by the latest employment cost index (ECI) report which showed a sequential decline, and which prompted Bostic to expect a moderation in wage growth going forward, suggests that the coming CPI print on Feb 10 will be market-moving especially if it comes well below expectations, as it could also force the Fed to rethink its hawkish reversal.

  And while we wait, let’s take a look at what the latest inflation data shows, and what are the key drivers of inflation at this moment.

  As a reminder, the core PCE price index rose 0.50% month-over-month in December to a new four-decade high of 4.85% year-on-year, and core CPI inflation rose to 5.49%. Core inflation was again boosted by rapid shelter inflation — which has run at the highest level since 1990 over the last four months, just as we warned would happen in mid-2021 — and another jump in the prices of durable goods impacted by temporary shortages.

  

  The role of outliers over the last year is illustrated by the gap between core PCE inflation at 4.85% year-on-year and the Goldman trimmed core PCE at just 2.78% year-on-year. However, the breadth of inflation has continued to increase and the bank’s trimmed core PCE has run at an annualized pace of 4.02% over the last three months (vs. 5.84% for corePCE).

  

  Here is a look at component-level trends:

  • Used cars, hotels, new cars, nonprofit services, furniture, and transportation services are much stronger than usual on a year-on-year basis, boosted by supply constraints and base effects.

  

  • Used car auction prices increased 0.6% to 56% above the pre-pandemic level in the first half of January, after adjusting for depreciation, which could push consumer prices even higher.

  

  • Goldman’s shelter inflation tracker increased to +6.3%, pointing to a pickup in the official shelter series from its current +3.7% year-over-year rate.

  

  • On the other hand, a High-frequency tracker of hotel prices and airfares has dropped to 18% below the two-year ago level amidst elevated virus spread.

  

  Here are the key key inflation drivers:

  The Goldman composition-corrected wage tracker increased to +4.3% year-on-year and the GS wage survey leading indicator stands at+3.8% — each series’ highest level since the early 2000s.

  

  The GS low-wage wage tracker increased to +7.5% year-on-year, its highest level in at least three decades.

  

  Industrial metals prices increased to 161% of the pre-pandemic level and energy prices rebounded sharply to 141% of the pre-pandemic level. Goldman expects the boost from commodity prices to year-on-year core PCE inflation to decline from a peak of 80bp in 2021Q4 to 40bp by 2022Q4.

  

  

  Supply chain disruptions:

  Supply chain disruptions measured by supplier delivery times and indicators of port congestion remained near record-high levels in January.

  

  Supply-constrained categories boosted core PCE inflation by 140bp in December, and that contribution is expected to grow to 145bp in January before shrinking to -25bp by year-end.

  

  Inflation expectations:

  The Goldman monthly version of the Fed’s Index of Common Inflation Expectations remained unchanged at 2.10% in January, roughly in line with the pre-2014 level.

  

  Household inflation expectations increased on net and remain near multi-year highs. The University of Michigan’s 5-10y measure increased to3.1% in January and the NY Fed’s 3y measure remained at 4.0% in December. One-year expectations in both surveys remained a couple percentage points above their longer-run equivalents.

  

  Financial market-implied CPI inflation expectations increased by 30bp on average in each 2022 and 2023.

  

  The composite of seven business inflation expectations series edged up to the highest level in its two-decade history.

  

  Goldman’s index of company price announcements is at the highest level since the series began in 2010, and mentions of the word “inflation” have been the most frequent since at least 2010 so far in this quarter’s Russell 3000 earnings calls.

  

  GS inflation forecast:

  After completely fumbling its inflation forecasts in 2021, Goldman expects that ongoing supply chain disruptions will raise the prices of some goods further above the pre-pandemic trend and boost sequential inflation through mid-year. However, declines in durable goods prices are likely to drive inflation lower by year-end, more than offsetting a sharp acceleration in year-on-year shelter inflation.

  

  The bank now forecasts core PCE inflation of 2.9% at end-2022 (vs. 2.5% previously), 2.2% at end-2023 (vs. 2.15% previously), and 2.25% at end-2024 based onour bottom-up inflation model.

  

  The bank’s top-down model projects that inflation will rise modestly above 2% in 2023-2024.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 23:00

• Wokeism Is A Cruel And Dangerous Cult
  Wokeism Is A Cruel And Dangerous Cult

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

  Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and – if need be – of those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda…

  

  Wokeism has been described by its critics as the omnipresent use of race—and to a lesser extent, gender—to replace meritocracy and thus ensure equality of result. What follows from implementing that ideology are reparatory actions to reward those of the present by atoning for the injustices done to others in the past. 

  Some see it as an update of 1960s cultural Marxism fads. Others scoff that it is just a return to 1980s-style political correctness. 

  Still more see it as the logical successor to 1990s-type race, class, and gender obsessions—albeit with a shriller and more dangerous Jacobin, Soviet, and Maoist twist. Wokeism’s hysteria also invites comparisons to the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. 

  But few have described wokeism as the cruel creed that it is. 

  Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and—if need be—those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda. It is nihilist and destroys everything it touches. It tears apart foes and friends alike, whether by fueling media-driven hatred of Donald Trump or faux-deification of the disaster that is now Joe Biden. 

  Woke’s Victims 

  Defunding law enforcement and defaming police resulted in record numbers of murders in 12 U.S. cities. A wave of violent crime is even hitting America’s suburbs. 

  Without much fear of arrest, indictment, conviction, and incarceration, emboldened violent career criminals for the past year have robbed, assaulted, and killed the innocent with impunity. 

  The victims at the bus stop, the subway, or in the furniture store do not seem to warrant media or progressive attention, much less sympathy. 

  They are the ignored—the unnamed, and the forgotten collateral damage from the grand experiment of redefining crime as a social construct. The guilty are the elite academics, activists, and billionaires like George Soros who are untouched by what they birthed.

  We have all seen videos of the vast expanse of flotsam and jetsam strewn by train thieves along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Yet the Wild West mess is still more than just the concrete manifestations of Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón’s unhinged efforts to excuse criminals from legal consequences. 

  The packages thrown along the ground by thugs and gangsters represent, among other things, lost COVID-19 test results of the ill. Presumably, they unknowingly are waiting still by the window for the delivery of results that never arrive. The package in the dirt was, perhaps, a key tractor part eagerly awaited, in vain, by the broke farmer in the Central Valley. The mess included the life-saving medicines shipped to the sick that disappeared. 

  And our elected leaders did what in response? Governor Gavin Newsom apologized for using the insensitive word “gangs” to describe those who plunder, loot, and trash railcars.

  Always In Search of Targets 

  It is a cruel thing to indoctrinate children with the lie that they are innately guilty of oppression due to their skin color. One accurate definition of racism is collective ill-treatment of an individual due to his innate appearance—on the pretext that such bias is deserved, given the target is deemed mentally, spiritually, or morally inferior because of said traits. But that, in a nutshell, is the essence of critical race theory: the destruction of all human traits and unique characteristics, as demonized individuals are reduced to stereotyped, faceless members of a collective.  

  For over a half-century, female athletes have sought to achieve parity in society’s attitudes to sports. Title IX forced universities to ensure rough equality for both female and male sports. 

  But the woke effort to redefine transitioning biological males as identical to biological women will assuredly destroy the life work of thousands of pioneer athletes. 

  Ironically, the sexist woke movement has allowed men to take hormones and undergo surgery to become females—even as their immutable skeleton frames, muscularity, or organ characteristics ensure an unfair and asymmetrical contest. 

  The lives of thousands of young female athletes will likely be diminished. Each sprinter, every swimmer, and all female pole-vaulters will now inevitably at some future date have a rendezvous with career implosion—defined by losing to a transgendered female/biological male. 

  Records are being rewritten, the very nature of individual women’s sports changed, and soon there will no longer remain an idea of “women’s sports” at all. 

  The Forgotten Broken Eggs of the Woke Omelet 

  The green wokeists postulate that they are saving lives by radical efforts to restrict gas and oil production, to raise fuel prices. They want to force Americans to buy high-priced alternative sources of wind- and solar-generated power and battery-powered cars. But away from the faculty lounge, millions of Americans are colder and less mobile this winter, paying far more to heat their homes and to drive to work. 

  Most of the woke climate change activists rarely see the poor trying to empty their purses to scrounge combinations of cash and credit cards to leverage over $100 to fill their cars’ gas tanks. Tesla drivers might be the architects of last year’s war on carbon fuels. But real-life victims pay for their piety—those who have no such options to buy high-priced electric cars. 

  For the cosmopolitan woke, the border is many things: a mere xenophobic construct, a racist barrier, a nationalist tic. 

  But the thousands who live near the Mexican border see their homes and farms overrun with drug traffickers—and during a pandemic thousands of unvaccinated and possibly sick illegal aliens. They suffer firsthand from daily violence as all security disappears. 

  For the American poor, who rely on government health clinics and state entitlements, the influx of thousands of illegal aliens into their communities becomes a zero-sum game. The more noncitizens put demands on such already oversubscribed services, the fewer citizens there are who will have access to quality care. 

  The woke lecture that colleges and universities must now go beyond their former de facto racial quotas for admissions and hiring, already mostly based on proportional representation and disparate impact. But now a sort of reparations system emerges. It is what the Left itself used to call in derision “overrepresentation.”

  Equity in our Orwellian world is not equality, but payback. Again, it is the idea of making the current generation pay for the supposed sins of the long dead of centuries past. 

  Aside from the destruction of merit by the substitution of racial criteria, millions from a discarded generation will have doors slammed on their careers—simply because of the color of their skin. And they will never forget that. 

  The woke do not even make the effort to admit that class matters as much as, or more than, race. By doing so, they doom millions of poor white and Asian students, who managed in poverty to achieve excellent grades and test scores, from being admitted to top-tier schools. Their actual achievement, despite their absence of wealthy, college-educated, or well-connected parents, means little. 

  Once a morally bankrupt society—for naïve, utopian, or ignoble reasons—begins to calibrate graduation ceremonies, dorm space, roommate selection, achievement, and grading standards based on race, then it not only will lose its standard of living, but it will deserve to. And it may have a future date with the violence of Rwanda, Iraq, or the Balkans. 

  Power, Not “Equity,” Is the Creed 

  In sum, wokeness is not about kindness, equality, fairness, or morality. 

  It is the power agenda of the elite of all races. For differing reasons, they rig the game in their own interests, without a care about who suffers. 

  Rich white people assume that they possess the money, the influence, the networking skills, and the connections to navigate around the very exclusionary rules they make for others. For them, there are seldom costs. But they win apparent psychological gain at feeling spiritually superior while driving a Range Rover.

  They get high on the sense of power they wield to engineer the lives of millions deemed less important than they. And to the degree they feel guilty about their own monopoly of wealth and leisure, such transient superficial remorse is alleviated by abstract caring for the “other.” 

  If they can ensure that 50 percent of TV commercials highlight African Americans, then they worry little about the nation’s existential crisis of 800 blacks murdered in Chicago last year. And no such television execs have a clue—or likely a concern—about how to stop it. 

  The woke take out a medieval contract that all their material indulgences can be balanced by virtue-signaling caring for the less fortunate—although always at someone else’s expense. 

  Woke = Wealthy Careerists 

  And for the millions of the affluent, elite nonwhite? The resurgence of racial obsessions conveniently destroys the old idea of class, even though now it is the far more precise calibration of inequality. 

  For all the woke talk about “constructs” of gender, race is somehow alone exempted and declared innate, definable, and immutable. One’s appearance becomes the permanent victimized refuge—even of NBA multibillionaires and billionaire rappers alike.

  A Ward Churchill or Elizabeth Warren can desperately seek to leverage a career in becoming Native American, apparently as if they were almost trapped in their own white bodies. Yet they can still not manage to construct such assumed identities in the manner of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. 

  If race is now the sole immutable barometer of who is a victim, who a victimizer, then LeBron James, Jay-Z, Kayne West, Chris Rock, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey are always to be among the eternally oppressed. The enormous influence, power, status, and wealth they wield never negates their victimhood, despite a nation three generations into affirmative action. 

  In the immoral calculus of woke, the poor white or Southeast Asian offspring of poorly paid high-school dropouts constitute “the privileged.” And a multimillionaire racist like the TV anchorwoman Joy Reid claims to be the perpetual victim, not the inner-city African American retiree who in 2021 has lost local police protection. 

  No wonder the woke elite and the affluent leftists fixate on race, given they are now the ruling class. Otherwise, their own privilege would be the obvious target of the once-beloved “Revolution.”  

  So, they fear that by their own prior left-wing standards, they too could end up on the wrong side of their moral Maginot Line. Wokeism’s obsessions with ferreting out “white privilege” are a way for rich people to head off (so to speak) the fate of Marie Antoinette. 

  Totalitarian Wokeism 

  A final note. We know wokeism is both contrary to human nature and antithetical to democracy and constitutional government. 

  Without public support, it has instead embraced an entire array of cruel, Soviet, and Maoist means to achieve its own self-interested ends. Woke talk about “racists” eerily emulates Soviet boilerplate about “counterrevolutionaries.” Today’s wokeist spouts things that could come right out of the mouth of the novelist Boris Pasternak’s character Army Commissar Strelnikov, or Mao’s Little Red Book concerning “suppression of counterrevolutionaries.”

  No wonder the woke, so-called “humanists” are the first to resort to Trotskyization and iconoclasm. They are masters of censoring, blacklisting, scapegoating, deplatforming, ritual humiliation, doxxing, cancel-culture, ostracism, and disbarring. 

  Wokeism’s logic is the eternal one of the bully Jacobin with his guillotine lists of the revolutionary unpure, the 19th-century lynch mob storming the frontier jail, the Red Guards hounding the counterrevolutionary, and the forced mental hospitalizations of the Soviet Union. 

  But above all, wokeism is a cruel cult—created by and for the careerist benefit of the privileged.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 22:30

• Meteorologists Warn Of "High Impact Snow And Ice Event" Around Groundhog Day
  Meteorologists Warn Of “High Impact Snow And Ice Event” Around Groundhog Day

  While millions of people along the North East recover from the “bomb cyclone” that dumped feet of snow in several coastal cities, there’s a new storm that readers should be monitoring that could unleash disruptive weather ranging from snow, ice, and severe thunderstorms next week. 

  Meteorologists at private weather forecaster BAMWX are warning about a potential “high impact snow and ice event” that may occur around Groundhog Day on Wednesday across the central Rockies to the Eastern Seaboard. 

  Kirk Hinz, the meteorologist with BAMWX, outlined the highest threat areas for winter weather, including parts of Northeast Oklahoma; St. Louis, Missouri; Indianapolis, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan, and Northern Maine. 

  

  

  Hinz said the impending storm would have “cold air in place,” and there will be heavy bands of snow for specific areas that could receive north of one foot of snow. He said the timing and exact snow amounts on a metro by metro basis are still unknown. 

  The potential storm is projected to occur around the anniversary of the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011, a powerful and historic winter storm that affected large swaths of the US and Canada. The Chicago metro area was buried in 21 inches of snow and had blizzard conditions for days. 

  Here are some of the latest snowfall totals from this weekend’s bomb cyclone. 

  Final snowfall reports from the January 28-29, 2022 blizzard. Highest totals by state:
  MA-Stoughton 30.9″
  NY-Islip 24.7″
  RI-Warren 24.6″
  CT-Norwick 22″
  ME-Veazie 22″
  NJ-Bayville 21″
  DE- Lewes 14.2″
  MD-Ocean Pines 14″
  NH-Rye 13.5″
  VA-Wallops Island 9.5″
  PA-Lower Makefield 9″ pic.twitter.com/qIzPHUM4pD

  — NWS Eastern Region (@NWSEastern) January 30, 2022

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

  Forecasts are not locked in and will most likely change in the next 24 hours. There could be widespread flight cancellations and delays if the winter storm materializes — continuing the chaos from this weekend.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 22:00

• If Unrest Soars In America Will Looters Be Shot?
  If Unrest Soars In America Will Looters Be Shot?

  Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

  An interesting question to ponder centers on social unrest and whether those with the job to protect property would follow orders if told to shoot looters. Of course, the type of violence I’m alluding to extends far beyond anything we have seen in America or most western countries. Why people loot and how governments react is the issue. You can call it martial law if you like, but whatever name you place on it, those holding the power and the guns make the final decision.

  

  Progressive leaders in some areas are no longer treating theft of $950 or less as felonies but as misdemeanors. This has led to a wave of smash-and-grab robberies. How do you stop this sort of growing social disorder from getting out of hand? Of course, the flaw in thinking you can create a goon squad to control the masses is that your enforcers may begin to sympathize with those they are employed to suppress. 

  Considering how the military is moving towards more automated weapons that kill, it is difficult to think these weapons will not eventually find their way into law enforcement. To those in power, the great thing about robots and mechanical autonomous guards is they will carry out their missions as programed. Rest assured when push comes to shove those displaced from the job market and only able to scrape by will find they are only given enough to ensure they remain docile and behave. If and when this becomes an issue conflict and violence will rise.

  Before his death, famed physicist Stephen Hawking warned that Earth is headed for a “catastrophic ending” as a result of rising inequality fueled by robots that grow increasingly smarter by the day. Hawking’s dire prediction came as robots and artificial intelligence started to take over human jobs. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts some 800 million people around the world will be displaced out of their jobs by 2030 as a result of automation. 

  Without jobs, we stand the risk of losing our relevance in society. This creates a scenario of misery and conflict with many people displaced and those with little to lose fighting to merely survive. The topic of our future and culture always circles back to and is directly linked to the issue of jobs vanishing as automation and an army of robots march into our workplace. This can result in a future that takes on a very grim dystopian appearance. The fear of being replaced by a robot or seeing your job being outsourced or eliminated is on the rise.

  

  Africa Has Witnessed Looting And Unrest   

  Many issues get swept under the rug or are often under-reported by mainstream media this includes the number of protests over lockdowns and mask mandates. Many Americans have paid little attention to the rampant looting and violence in South Africa in July of 2021.  In short, most people are ill-informed about what is happening across the world. This shocking video of the looting in South Africa signals the country is on the path to social and economic collapse.

  Sadly, South Africa is just one of many countries where social unrest has been escalating. This makes it a more exaggerated version of what is playing out in many areas. In the case of South Africa, the government under the control of the African National Congress (ANC) already had a strong communist tilt before Covid-19 hit. Amendments being proposed to its constitution demanded that “reparations” be taken from white farmers which would then be redistributed to black citizens.

  A similar movement is being pursued here in America as socialists/Marxists in the Democratic Party push some cities and states in the direction of  reparations. The tiny movement demanding reparations for blacks be written into law because of slavery nearly 200 years ago is real. At a time when we are witnessing growing economic inequality, this idea has a small but vocal base. Such social justice initiatives are often backed by those politicians and corporations interested in dividing us so they can gain more control.

  

  This Is Also Happening Here In America

  Circling back to the focus of this article, the question of “would they shoot?” The answer is after people cross a tipping point, they probably would. This creates a new question, where is that tipping point? The answer to this is a bit muddy but falls into the area of when authorities can get away with it. History shows genocide is far more common than people think but is rapidly hidden after it occurs.

  Several signs have recently surfaced that scream problems ahead. What has become known as flash looting or smash and grab incidents are on the rise, this is especially true in areas where low-level crimes are not enforced. In these areas, it seems organized retail crime gangs are no longer content to just target large department or boutique stores where they can snatch high-value merchandise from shelves.

  In places such as Mexico where criminal cartels run wild, it is not uncommon to see delivery trucks  hijacked in broad daylight. If you think America could never slip into such a dysfunctional state, already we are seeing shipments raided in transit. CBS Los Angeles recently reported that a section of train tracks in downtown Los Angeles has been littered with thousands of shredded boxes, packages stolen from cargo containers that stop in the area.

  

  Destroyed Packages Left On Tracks By Looters

  The raiding of containers double stacked on train cars has been documented by Photojournalist John Schreiber. He has tweeted shocking videos of packages torn apart and left on the tracks by looters after they raided trains stopped to be integrated into a shipping facility. Many of the boxes on the ground were from Amazon and UPS. The point is, the looters are people seeking easy-to-hit targets that can be easily converted to cash. 

  The ugly truth is that once the genie of disorder gets out of the bottle it is difficult to get him back in. Sadly, the media and current culture has turned this into an issue where people focus on the color or race of the person committing these crimes rather than their actions and the consequences flowing from them. With all this the above in mind, it is important to remember that high-tech solutions are not the gift of freedom many people think. 

  

  Those In Power May Secretly Develop New Weapons

  We are being boxed in and many of our options are vanishing. Many people claim they have nothing to hide and use that as the reason they don’t object to the expanding web of surveillance being weaved over them. These people ignore the fact we are surrendering our right to freedom when society moves down this path. With around seven and a half billion people living on Planet Earth today and 10 billion predicted by 2050 even feeding our population may not be easy, especially if climate change adds to our problems. This brings us back to the prediction of famed physicist Stephen Hawking, that Earth is headed for a “catastrophic ending” in the near future.

  Not only do those in power watch bad people, they decide who is bad and they watch everyone. So the point is, when does the shooting start? Throughout history, we have seen new weapons are often only revealed when those in power wish to make a statement. It is reasonable that in a scenario where it rapidly becomes clear the plant has too many people vying for dwindling resources that the huddled masses will be considered “the odd man out” and it is time to cull the herd to reduce the world’s population for “the greater good!”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 21:30

• Chinese EVs Aren't Retaining Their Value Like ICE Vehicles
  Chinese EVs Aren’t Retaining Their Value Like ICE Vehicles

  On one hand, we’ve done nothing but talk about how the price of used cars has skyrocketed as a result of depleted inventory, combined with supply chain and semiconductor woes. 

  But in China, they’re having the opposite discussion when it comes to EVs: the vehicles just can’t seem to hold their value, according to a new writeup by Caixin. 

  The writeup profiled companies like XPeng, who have been forced to buy back older versions of their models from customers who worry about the speed with which EV makers are coming out with new models. “Several” other automakers had to take similar measures over the past few years, the article notes. 

  In fact, a new survey from Geek NEV shows that new cars “sold for 100,000 yuan or less in China hold on to 67.8% on their value on average after their first year, while cars running on the old internal combustion engine retain 74.3% of their value after three years on the road”. 

  EVs have trouble holding onto their value because of how unpredictably their batteries degrade and how China’s subsidies for EV have led to higher prices for the vehicles than there ever should have been in the first place. 

  Caixin notes that “there is no easily accessible data or commonly accepted standard for valuing the quality of used batteries”. On top of this, batteries have been evolving faster than automakers can keep up. The report says that the “average range an EV can travel on a single charge increased from 212 kilometers (131.7 miles) in 2017 to 391 kilometers in 2020”. 

  

  And what would a Chinese industry be without the government interfering with the economics of it?

  Subsidies that started in 2010 and will be phased out in coming year used to offer as much as 70,000 yuan to automakers. Those numbers moved to “100,000 yuan for a car that could travel 150 kilometers to 250 kilometers on a single charge, and 120,000 yuan for a car with the range of more than 250 kilometers.”

  Automakers were incentivized to price vehicles higher because subsidies from the government weren’t allowed to exceed 60% of the vehicle’s sticker price. 

  When the government cut subsidies by 50% in June, many vehicles ended up on used car lots where they were sold at prices “far below retail,” the report says. 

  As the industry evolves, there are some optimistic signs that EVs are holding onto their value for slightly longer. Caixin wrote:

  The Wuling Mini EV and Tesla Model 3, the two best-selling EVs on Chinese market since 2020, have managed to maintain their second-hand price after one year on the road at the same level as conventional vehicles, according to data released by the CADA in November.

  Automakers are also starting to phase out their buyback programs, the report says. At the same time, there have been calls to re-sell EVs separately from their batteries in an effort to help them maintain their value. EVs can have lifespan of at least 15 years, when the battery isn’t taken into account, the report concludes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 21:00

• The Cult Of Safety
  The Cult Of Safety

  Authored by Thomas Buckley via the Point

  It was the 1970s.  Dry cleaning bags lurked quietly behind couches waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the hapless child who dropped a Lego nearby.  Unguarded five-gallon buckets stood brazenly in the middle of basement floors hoping to entice their next drowning victim.  Discarded refrigerators prowled the land looking for unsuspecting eight-year-olds to gobble up.  GI Joes and Barbies, with the help of their little owners, were making out everywhere.

  It is the 2020s.  Entire schools ban peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because maybe one kid might have an allergy.  Parents get visits from county protective services for letting their children play unsupervised in the park across the street.  Jungle gyms are an endangered species.  And third-graders are taught to not impose cisnormative constructs, let alone behaviors, on anyone or anything.

  

  The odd thing is that the events described in the first paragraph (except the GI Joe one) were not actually happening on any grand scale.  The sad thing is that the events in the second paragraph are.
  There has to be a middle ground.

  Admittedly there were children – one assumes – who did manage to trap themselves inside random refrigerators, hence the televised public service announcements (seriously, and such a seventies solution) asking the public to at least take the handle off of the appliance before heaving it over an embankment or leaving it in a burned-lot in the Bronx.  And admittedly – again, one assumes – a child somewhere somehow managed to get themselves tangled up in a dry cleaning bag.  As to the bucket problem, that one is rather hard to fathom but it must have happened at least once to spawn the lawsuit that forced manufacturers to put drowning warnings – complete with a graphic depiction of the inept toddler – on their buckets.

  Whether it was caused by the misadventures of Darwin’s children, the ever-burgeoning personal injury litigation field, a cherry-picking sensationalist media, humanity’s inability to comprehend statistics or some combination thereof, society has clearly shifted drastically from a relatively laissez faire approach to common hazards to – not just a risk aversion or risk reduction model – the codified elimination of risk.

  There was once a feeling that hard cases make bad law; it now appears that the concept that any case must make immediate law holds sway.

  The process started with some actually pretty necessary common sense notions – drunk driving is not actually cool, dumping toxic waste in salmon brooks might not be a good thing, smoking really can kill you so quit, don’t eat lead paint, etc.  But these were the easy bits and the organizations and forces behind their implementation soon came to realize that if people started to be more sensible in general, society’s need for their input, expertise, and services – their guiding hand – would by definition decrease.

  Take, for example, the March of Dimes.  Originally started as an effort to both find a vaccine against polio and to help those already stricken, the organization in the early 1960s was facing a dilemma.  With the vaccines pretty much eradicating the disease, the group was faced with a choice: declare victory and essentially close up shop or continue forward and not waste the fundraising and organizational skills and capital they had built up over the previous 20-odd years.  They chose the latter and continue to this day as a very well-respected and important group, leading various initiatives to fight numerous childhood maladies – just not polio.

  In the March of Dimes case, they unquestionably made the right call and they continue to serve a vital function.  But, respectfully, to state that there were no, shall we say, personal motivations involved in that decision strains credulity.

  This pattern – whether with good and righteous intent or not – was and is being repeated over and over again as lesser people and groups actively search out something – anything – that could theoretically possibly be misused or can even remotely be deemed questionable (everything is questionable – all someone has to do is ask the question) to latch onto and save us from.  Whether out of true concern or some other nefarious motive – power, profit, societal purchase – the inexorable march towards the bubble-wrap of today that was launched by the professional caring class continues all the way from the classroom to the living room to the newsroom to the board room.

  Obviously, we can see this process in real time in the pandemic effort.  From “two weeks to stop the spread” to fully vaccinated people being shame/told to wear two masks a year later, this continuing impact is a perfect example of a “gain of function” experimental research principle being implemented not in a lab but in society at large.

  This form of – or bastardization of – progress is in fact antithetical to the tenets of a free society.  By worshiping at the altar of the safe we denigrate, delay, and deny the myriad possibilities for human advancement that are inherent in the concept of risk.

  It may seem to be a bit of leap to claim that the proposition that children should be warned to stop eating lead paint led inevitably to having children ask people what their preferred pronouns are so as to avoid even the semblance of giving offense, but this form of incrementalism – whether intentional or not – cannot be easily controlled once started.

  And this is one slippery slope on which a Cuidado Piso Mojado sign is nowhere in sight.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 20:30

• Something Stinks In The Illinois Governor's Office
  Something Stinks In The Illinois Governor’s Office

  Authored by Don Tracy via RealClearPolitics.com,

  The more we learn about the Jenny Thornley affair, the more it appears that senior members of the Pritzker administration, including potentially the governor and his wife, may have facilitated a fraud on the state by a now-indicted former campaign aide to enrich her and then obstructed efforts to bring her to justice.

  

  This is a tangled web, so stay with me as I set forth a timeline of events and characters, according to the Chicago Tribune.

  The former executive director of  the Illinois State Police Merit Board, Jack Garcia, discovered evidence that one of the employees under his direction, Jenny Thornley, was stealing money from the people of the state 

  Garcia is a well-known, skilled investigator who previously supervised the divisions of internal investigations and forensic services, before becoming the first deputy director of the Illinois State Police. Thornley was a campaign aide for Gov. J.B. Pritzker (her husband, Jared, was also a senior political appointee at the Illinois comptroller’s office) and close enough to Pritzker and his wife, M.K., that she had their personal telephone numbers.

  After assembling the evidence and building the case, Garcia scheduled meetings to fire Thornley and refer her for prosecution on the morning of Feb. 3, 2020. However, on the eve of that day, Thornley contacted (at least) the governor’s wife (pictured, at left) and asked her to intervene, alleging that Garcia had assaulted her sexually a week or so earlier.

  The governor’s chief counsel promptly called the merit board (which is an independent agency created “to remove political influence” from State Police hiring, promotion and discipline) to “advise” it to: (a) cancel her firing and the referral for prosecution, (b) suspend Garcia (the experienced investigator who uncovered the Thornley fraud) and (c) retain an outside counsel proposed by the governor’s office. The merit board went along, but also suspended Thornley, and Garcia voluntarily took and passed a lie detector test.

  Then Thornley sued to stop the investigation of her own claim of sexual harassment.

  The outside counsel, Christina Egan, nonetheless completed an investigation by July 2020 (at the cost of $500,000 paid by the people of Illinois), confirming the evidence Garcia assembled that Thornley had stolen money and committed forgery, and finding no evidence of Thornley’s sexual assault allegation. The State Police Merit Board then reinstated Garcia, fired Thornley, referred her for prosecution. She has now been indicted for theft and forgery.

  However, after Thornley was fired, someone with clout in the Pritzker administration somehow granted her disability payments reserved for people that are actually state employees. These payments (amounting to some $71,000) went on for more than a year, ending days before she was indicted for theft and fraud.  These extensive payments were for “injuries” sustained from an “assault” that Egan determined had not occurred.

  From the Tribune: “The merit board unsuccessfully called on the executive inspector general to investigate Thornley’s workers’ comp claim and then turned to anti-fraud investigators at the Illinois Department of Insurance. Brad Lucchini, assistant deputy director of the agency’s fraud unit, called the Thornley matter a ‘clear case of fraud,’ according to a July 27 memo to Garcia written by Emily Fox, the merit board’s program director.” But, apparently the investigators did nothing.

  Indeed, no one did anything about Thornley’s disability payments until days before another agency (outside the Pritzker Administration’s control) indicted her in September 2021.

  In the meantime, someone in the Pritzker administration worked with Democrat members in the legislature to insert — in the middle of the night, moments before it was passed – a provision into legislation to fire Jack Garcia. He was actually fired by the Democrat-controlled Illinois legislature!

  Then, just a few weeks ago after Thornley was indicted, the administration removed two members of the five-member merit board, including the chairman who oversaw much of this investigation and who had been appointed by Pritzker himself in 2019.

  This fact pattern raises numerous questions with respect to theft and fraud perpetrated on the people of Illinois and an apparent pattern of obstruction of justice.

  1) Who effectuated Thornley’s enrollment in the disability program over the objections of the merit board — and on whose orders did that person or persons act?

  2) Why did the inspector general refuse to look into this blatant abuse?  What role has the attorney general played — what were his or his staff’s communications with the governor and his staff?

  3) What did the governor, Mrs. Pritzker and their staff do, and when did they do it, to help Jenny Thornley? Did they continue to protect her even after Egan’s independent investigation affirmed the evidence of her theft and forgery?

  4) What did the administration know about the evidence assembled by Garcia that has led to Thornley’s indictment before it intervened on her behalf over Super Bowl weekend in 2020?  Was any of this information considered, along with the timing of the claim, before intervening to stop her from being fired and being immediately referred for prosecution?

  The Tribune story also puts a further gloss on the curious late-night insertion of language in a legislative bill to cause the dismissal of the distinguished Jack Garcia from his position at the merit board, as well as the dismissal in October of the merit board chairman who oversaw the investigation into these matters.  Is this a campaign of retribution against fraud fighters?

  This smells like another episode in Illinois’ unfortunately long history of political corruption and shenanigans.

  Did high government officials actively facilitate and participate in obstruction of justice and fraud by and with Thornley, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars?  Did Democrat legislators participate, wittingly or unwittingly, in a Pritzker campaign to “get” fraud fighters because they uncovered and pursued fraud by someone close to the first family?

  The people have a right to know.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 19:30

• Spotify Says Rogan Interview Did Not Violate Policies; Will Add "Content Advisory" Warnings
  Spotify Says Rogan Interview Did Not Violate Policies; Will Add “Content Advisory” Warnings

  Spotify has responded to growing cries from the left to censor medical information which challenges or refutes official government bodies regarding Covid-19. Last week, artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from the platform to protest Joe Rogan over an interview with mRNA inventor and early treatment advocate Dr. Robert Malone, while others have been threatening to follow suit.

  

  In a Sunday public letter, Founder and CEO Daniel Ek tried to strike a compromise between free speech advocates and those who want to eliminate wrongthink from public discourse under the guise of protecting the public from ‘dangerous concepts.’

  “We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users,” wrote Ek – who made no specific mention of Rogan. “In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.“

  There’s been a lot of conversation about information regarding COVID-19 on Spotify. We’ve heard the criticism and we’re implementing changes to help combat misinformation. https://t.co/ic8jfR1RNR

  — Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) January 30, 2022

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

  Ek also said that Spotify would add a “content advisory” to any podcast episode which includes any mention of Covid-19, and will direct listeners to a “Covid-19 hub” where they can consume mainstream information regarding the virus.

  

  Where does this leave Rogan?

  A company spokesperson told Bloomberg that none of Rogan’s episodes currently on the platform (which includes the Malone interview) violate Spotify’s policies – a decision which risks fueling further outrage on the left, who may accuse the company of circling wagons around one of the most powerful voices in media to protect their bottom line.

  Rogan has presented a public relations conundrum for Spotify ever since the company paid more than $100 million for the exclusive rights to his show. He offers a hospitable environment for guests with controversial points of view about the pandemic, politics and just about every other topic. 

  The criticism and controversy has thus far been worth it to the company’s leadership: Spotify’s stock price jumped the day they announced the deal, and Rogan hosts the single most popular podcast on its service. Spotify moved into podcasting hoping it would turn its popular but unprofitable music service into a more lucrative business. Investors cheered the efforts, though they have cooled on the company in recent months. Its stock has fallen 48% in the past 12 months, closing at $172.98 on Jan. 28 with a stock-market value of $33 billion. -Bloomberg

  A cadre of aging leftist musicians vs…

  Joe Rogan has completely disrupted the legacy media. pic.twitter.com/rBLCYweag0

  — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) January 3, 2022

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

  Spotify has also made public its rules governing acceptable content on the platform, but only made them available to employees.

  Their ‘medical misinformation’ section pertains to “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health.’ Examples include:

  • asserting that AIDS, COVID-19, cancer or other serious life threatening diseases are a hoax or not real
  • encouraging the consumption of bleach products to cure various illnesses and diseases
  • promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death
  • encouraging people to purposely get infected with COVID-19 in order to build immunity to it (e.g. promoting or hosting “coronavirus parties”)

  Read the entire policy below:

  Dangerous Content

  Spotify is home to communities where people can create, express themselves, listen, share, learn, and be inspired. Don’t promote violence, incite hatred, harass or engage in any other behavior that may place people at risk of serious physical harm or death. What to avoid:

  Content that advocates or glorifies serious physical harm towards an individual or group includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • encouraging, promoting, or glorifying suicide and self-harm (if you or someone you know is struggling or thinking about self-harm, please see here for ways to get help)
    • inciting or threatening serious physical harm or acts of violence against a specific target or specific group
    • content that promotes or supports violent extremist organizations

  Content that targets an individual or identifiable group for harassment or related abuse includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • repeatedly targeting specific individuals with sexual advances
    • sharing, threatening to share, or encouraging others to share someone’s private information, including credit card or banking information, National Identity numbers, etc.

  Content that incites violence or hatred towards a person or group of people based on race, religion, gender identity or expression, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, age, disability or other characteristics associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • praising, supporting, or calling for violence against a person or group of people based on the characteristics listed above
    • dehumanizing statements about a person or group based on the protected characteristics listed above
    • promoting or glorifying hate groups and their associated images, and/or symbols

  Content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • asserting that AIDS, COVID-19, cancer or other serious life threatening diseases are a hoax or not real
    • encouraging the consumption of bleach products to cure various illnesses and diseases
    • promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death 
    • encouraging people to purposely get infected with COVID-19 in order to build immunity to it (e.g. promoting or hosting “coronavirus parties”)

  Content that illicitly promotes the sale of regulated or illegal goods includes, but may not be limited to: 

  • • selling illegal firearms or firearm parts
    • selling illegal drugs
    • selling endangered species or products derived from endangered species

  Content that promotes, solicits, or facilitates child sexual abuse or exploitation includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • visual depictions of a minor engaged in a sexual act or lascivious depictions of a nude minor
    • promoting acts of sexual abuse against a child in exchange for money
    • encouraging or promoting sexual attraction by adults towards minors
    • promoting, normalizing, or glorifying child grooming behaviors

  Deceptive Content

  Creating great experiences on Spotify requires trust that people are who they say they are, that they won’t be scammed, and that no one is trying to manipulate our platform. Don’t use malicious practices to deceive others. What to avoid:

  Content that impersonates others in order to deceive includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • replicating the same name, image, and/or description as another existing creator
    • posing as another person, brand, or organization in a misleading manner

  Content that promotes manipulated and synthetic media as authentic in ways that pose the risk of harm includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • audio or video recording that comes from a real and valid source that has been altered in a way that changes the meaning or context of the original media and is purported to be true, thus posing a risk of harm to the speaker or other individuals
    • audio or visual media artificially created through the use of technology that’s purported to be true, such as digitally manufactured sexual audio and video content or content falsely suggesting that someone committed a crime

  Content that attempts to manipulate or interfere with election-related processes includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • misrepresentation of procedures in a civic process that could discourage or prevent participation
    • misleading content promoted to intimidate or suppress voters from participating in an election

  Content that attempts to take advantage of the Spotify community includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • posting, sharing, or providing instructions on implementing malware or related malicious practices that seek to harm or gain unauthorized access to computers, networks, systems, or other technologies
    • phishing or related attempts to deceptively solicit or collect sensitive information
    • promoting investment and financial scams like “get rich quick” and pyramid schemes, or otherwise encouraging others to part with money under false pretenses

  Sensitive Content

  We have tons of amazing content on Spotify, but there are certain things that we don’t allow on our platform. Don’t post excessively violent or graphic content, and don’t post sexually explicit content. What to avoid:

  Content that promotes graphic or gratuitous depictions of violence, gore, or other shocking imagery includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • severely mutilated or dismembered bodies 
    • promoting animal cruelty or torture 

  Content that contains sexually explicit material includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • pornography or visual depictions of genitalia or nudity presented for the purpose of sexual gratification
    • advocating or glorifying sexual themes related to rape, incest, or beastiality

  Illegal Content

  The law is the law. No matter who you are, it is your responsibility to comply with applicable laws and regulations. What to avoid:

  Content that violates applicable laws and regulations includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • content that does not comply with applicable sanctions and export regulations
    • content that is intended to promote or commit an illegal act of any kind

  Content that infringes the intellectual property rights of others includes, but may not be limited to:

  • • content provided to Spotify without obtaining necessary permissions
    • content that infringes third-party copyrights or trademarks

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 19:11

• Los Angeles Tackles Zombies Ahead Of Super Bowl
  Los Angeles Tackles Zombies Ahead Of Super Bowl

  Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

  “What the hell is going on?” California Governor, Gavin Newsom

  Gender X?

  The sun always shines bright over the Golden State.  Even in January.  But, beneath the sunshine, darkness rages in the land of fruits and nuts.

  For example, State Senator Scott Wiener – a monster – recently introduced a bill that would permit children 12 and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19 without their parent’s knowledge or consent.  According to Wiener, this bill is consistent with current state law that allows teens to have abortions and obtain birth control without telling their parents.

  Yet Wiener’s bill may be finished.  Because his cohort, State Senator Dick Pan, has introduced a bill that would require all children to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend K-12 schools regardless of personal beliefs.  Not vaccination?  Then no school.

  Perhaps, this is for the best.  Getting kicked out of school at this late stage in the decline and fall of western civilization is a major blessing.  What kid deserves an institutional education from freaks and rejects?

  Before we pulled our son out of the local Long Beach public high school, he was learning history from someone that went by Mx.  Apparently, the teacher – a dude with a green beard – was uncertain if he was male or female.  So he used Mx. instead of Mr. or Ms.

  This all may seem a little ridiculous, we know.  However, in California, many people are confused about what gender they are.  It’s a real problem.

  Several years ago the state Department of Motor Vehicles attempted to simplify things by adding a nonbinary gender designation (X, as opposed to M or F) to driver licenses and identification cards.  But, alas, this further complicated things…

  Because if you’re gender X, what locker room do you use when changing into your swimsuit?

  All logic was lost to absurdity.

  To solve the matter, at least in our local hamlet, the Long Beach Unified School District is using school repair and safety bond measure funds to build high school aquatic centers with all-gender locker rooms.  That way, if you’re confused about your biology, you can don your swimsuit without having to decide what sex you are.

  And even if you’re in full agreement with how God made you, you’ll still have to use an all-gender locker room…because that’s the only option.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Zombie Apocalypse

  California, no doubt, has been in a worsening state of decay for decades.  Public displays of gender confusion are but one of many signs of degeneration.

  The recent rash of flash mob smash and grab robberies and freight train plunderings has garnered what local public officials consider to be unwanted national attention.  Quite frankly, for many Americans across the nation, this offers a preview of what tomorrow will bring.

  Zombies may be coming to a city or town near you, eventually.  But in California’s urban centers, the zombie apocalypse is already here.  In fact, it’s been here for many years.

  

  As of 2020, according to something called the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, there’s a homeless population in Los Angeles County of precisely 66,463.  For perspective, SoFi Stadium, the posh new home of the Los Angeles Rams, which was constructed in Inglewood several years ago at a price tag of $5 billion, has a capacity of 70,000.

  So if you tune in to watch the Rams play the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, or to watch the Super Bowl in a few weeks, the number of zombies roaming around LA County represents 95 percent capacity of SoFi Stadium.  What’s more, the homeless count was not conducted in 2021 because of COVID-19.  By now, the number of zombies is easily over 70,000.

  They’re everywhere.  Haphazard urban campsites litter the bank tops of the colossal, concrete Los Angeles River Channel between Downtown Los Angeles and Downtown Long Beach.  Bidenvilles extend along sidewalks and beneath highway bridge abutments.  When you spare a zombie a dollar, they gripe, “that’s all?!”…confirming that price inflation is totally out of control.

  The massive army of zombies roaming about the LA LA land paradise – screaming at the air and defecating on residential driveways – has become a significant embarrassment for local leaders.  The massive collection of tents and makeshift shelters has become too much for public officials to ignore.

  

  What to do…

  Los Angeles Tackles Zombies Ahead of Super Bowl

  Dirty jobs require trained professionals.  Planet Green, from what we gather, is a company that specializes in emergency disaster and biohazard waste cleanup.  Early Monday morning, Planet Green workers donned hazmat suits and cleared away several homeless encampments near SoFi Stadium.

  

  Is this because the Super Bowl is just a few weeks away or merely a coincidence?

  The Mayor of Inglewood, James Butts, said the clearing of Bidenvilles had to do with safety and is part of regular cleanups around the city.  Jass Singh, a local business owner, offered another perspective:

  “Finally it’s cleared, they should have done it five, ten years ago.”

  Clearing out LA zombie camps before primetime affairs has been a classic playbook for local leaders since at least the 1980s.  One local advocacy group, “Services Not Sweeps”, provided a statement, saying in part:

  “This is the same strategy politicians use any time a major event comes to LA, whether it’s the Super Bowl or the Oscars or the Olympics.  They use cops and criminalization to sweep away evidence of their failure to address Los Angeles’ affordable housing crisis.”

  Services Not Sweeps has compassionate sentiments.  And while politics certainly caused this manmade disaster, there’s no way politics can fix it.  The fact is, LA’s zombie apocalypse is too great to reverse.  Once a city’s slipped into decay and disrepair, it keeps on sliding.

  We don’t like it.  We can’t change it.  Still, there’s an immediate challenge at hand.  Here’s the situation:

  Super Bowl Sunday is February 13.  Century Boulevard, between LAX and SoFi Stadium, is roughly 4 miles.  Will Planet Green clear all the zombie camps from this corridor in time?

  Consider it a Hail Mary.

  *  *  *

  Silver is an industrial metal with many different applications.  Most important of all, however, is that silver can be stacked.  By this, silver stacking is an important way to subvert government policies of extreme dollar debasement.  If you enjoy stacking silver, and if you’re interested in discovering other means to protect your wealth and profit during the zombie apocalypse, then consider giving the Wealth Prism Letter a try.  Take a look, and join our burgeoning club of silver stacking subscribers today!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 18:30

• Atlanta Fed President Pours Gasoline On Fire With 50Bps Hike Comment, But There Are Reasons To Fade It
  Atlanta Fed President Pours Gasoline On Fire With 50Bps Hike Comment, But There Are Reasons To Fade It

  Here we go again.

  After we saw a veritable rollercoaster in market last week, after Powell’s shockingly hawkish FOMC presser which spooked Wall Street into predicting that 5 (as JPM and Goldman now expect), six or even seven rate hikes (as per the latest Bank of America forecast) are on deck in 2022 alone, tensions have also remained elevated after Powell refused to refute speculation of a 50bps rate hike this year.

  Of course, tensions eased on Friday after the latest set of dismal economic data, which led the Atlanta Fed to come out with a 0.1% Q1 GDP estimate which will turn negative in the coming days after just a few more incrementally negative datapoints…

  

  … suggested that inflation will fade far sooner and the US economy will slide into contraction long before the Fed can hike even a handful of times, let along go the way to 2.50% or 3.00% or whatever strategists believe the neutral rate is these days. This, together with tens of billions in month end mutual fund rebalancing, sent futures soaring on Friday in the latest violent intraday reversal.

  But with futures set to open in just a few hours, we may get another sharp drop at 6pm ET when traders punt risk after yet another Fed official – we would say hawk but that’s meaningless now that even the uber-doves have turned hawkish to appease Biden and his imploding approval rating…

  Monetary policy 4 parts pic.twitter.com/eibcu5nNKo

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 28, 2022

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

  … hinted at a 50bps rate hike in March.

  In an interview with the Financial Times, Raphael Bostic, president of the Fed’s Atlanta branch, said the Fed could “supersize a rate increase to half a percentage point if inflation remains stubbornly high.“

  Curiously, while not jumping on the latest Wall Street bandwagon calling for 5 or more hikes in 2022, Bostic instead stuck to his call for only three quarter-point interest rate increases in 2022, with the first coming in March, but he said a more aggressive approach was possible if warranted by the economic data.

  That, the FT notes, could mean rate rises at each of the seven remaining policy meetings in 2022, or even the possibility of the Fed increasing the federal funds rate by half a percentage point, double its typical amount and a tool it has not used in roughly two decades.

  “Every option is on the table for every meeting,” Bostic said on Friday. “If the data say that things have evolved in a way that a 50 basis point move is required or [would] be appropriate, then I’m going to lean into that . . . If moving in successive meetings makes sense, I’ll be comfortable with that.”

  “I do think that a view has emerged that we have some meetings that we really just dial it in and that there’s no ability of action at, and that’s just never been my mindset.

  Bostic added that he would be watching closely for a deceleration in monthly consumer price gains and further evidence that rising wages are not feeding meaningfully into higher inflation when thinking about his forecast for interest rates. Which means that the next CPI print will be especially important.

  And, as we noted on Friday, the Atlanta Fed president said he was encouraged by the latest employment cost index (ECI) report, which was published on Friday and which showed a sequential decline, which prompted Bostic to expect a moderation in wage growth going forward.

  That said, Bostic expressed little concern about the recent market gyrations, and said it was a natural response to a Fed that was beginning to withdraw its support.

  “The reduction of accommodation should translate into tighter financial markets,” Bostic said. “The developments that we’ve seen on that front are comforting in the sense that markets are still functioning the way they’re supposed to, and they are responding to conditions in ways that are rational and appropriate.”

  He said, however, that he was closely monitoring overnight borrowing markets, in particular, for signs of stress akin to the episode in 2018 when financial markets seized up as the Fed tightened monetary policy further despite fears of a growth slowdown.

  Bostic, who also supports the Fed reducing its $9tn balance sheet “as quickly as” possible without impairing market functioning, said he was “optimistic” about how the economy was going to perform in the coming months, despite elevated inflation.

  Throwing a bone to the market bulls, Bostic rejected claims that the Fed would raise interest rates far too aggressively and in a manner that would prove damaging.

  “Our policy path is not a constriction path. It’s a less accommodative path,” he said. “If we do the three [interest rate increases] that I have in mind, that’ll still leave our policy in a very accommodative space. I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of constraint on growth as we remove these emergency actions.”

  Of course, while the kneejerk response to Bostic is that this is another telegraphing of a 50bps hike, the reality is that all the Fed president is saying is what Powell said earlier, namely that the Fed will now have to be much more reactive to continued price pressures. And yes, while that could include faster rate hikes, it could also lead to a slowdown or even reversal if we hit a recession in the second half, something which BofA’s CIO Michael Hartnett has been pounding the table on in recent weeks…

  Hartnett: “Fed won’t end up tightening many times as just few rates hikes & QT are enough to unwind excesses and threaten H2 recession”

  He is usually 3-6 months ahead of the herd

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 28, 2022

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

  … although the bigger danger, as Hartnett also revealed, is that the Fed will hike until the market breaks. Of course, if his own Atlanta Fed shows GDP has turned negative, we expect Bostic to be among the first to push back on aggressive tightening as the last thing the Fed will do is hike into a clear and present recession.

  

  Meanwhile, even the sellside is starting to turn, with BofA writing on Friday that based on recent data trends, the “risk of a negative growth quarter” is “significant”, and the bank slashed its Q1 GDP forecast from 4.0% to just 1.0%.

  Economic conditions aside, there are at least two more fundamental reasons to ignore what Bostic has to say: first, he has always been among the Fed’s more outspoken hawks.

  

  Secondly, even if Bostic is dead set on hiking into a recession (which he isn’t) he won’t have the opportunity to do so for years: as a reminder, he is a non-voter until 2024, by which point not only will the Republican part control Congress…

  

  … but the US will likely already long be in a recession.

  Finally, even if the Fed is using Bostic’s FT interview as a way to telegraph what is coming, there are almost two months until the March FOMC, and a lot can change by then, not least the next CPI print which if it comes (well) below expectations, will be viewed as a key dovish reversal by the market, especially if the current downbeat economic trends fail to reverse, pushing the economy straight into a contraction.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 18:00

• Hedge Fund CIO: An Asset With Finite Supply, But No Intrinsic Value, Can Become Priceless
  Hedge Fund CIO: An Asset With Finite Supply, But No Intrinsic Value, Can Become Priceless

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “The Fed bought $130bln of bonds so far this year. And global central banks bought $300bln already,” said Biggie Too, global chief strategist for one of Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail affairs.

  “We have a rate shock, yet they’re still doing QE,” bellowed Biggie. “There really are just two camps now: sheepish equity longs and stubborn equity longs,” he barked.

  “So you gonna buy 30yr treasuries with 7% inflation? Or buy gold when the dollar is going up? Who wants to buy emerging markets when the Fed is about to tighten?” asked Biggie, working himself up, bouncing.

  “Maybe that’s why equities have gone from being this thoroughbred, racing beautifully around the track, to a bucking bronco – and yet no one can get off.”

  * * *

  Infrared tests of the ancient artwork reveal that Botticelli initially started painting Christ as a young child, hugged by his mother. But for reasons long since lost, during the year 1500 AD, the 55yr old artist entered his studio, turned the canvas upside down, started over, and produced The Man of Sorrows.

  

  From a few ounces of unremarkable paint, emerged a masterpiece, a haunting work. His earlier paintings were mainly mythological, The Birth of Venus, his most famous. Later, his work turned more Gothic, perhaps a reflection of the darkness that briefly descended on Florence. Dictatorship. Botticelli lived in a time resembling ours, rhyming, the Renaissance — a period of breathtaking creativity, expressed with the tools of time, brushes, chisels, pens.

  But even in periods that favor the uninhibited expression of human creativity, we wrestle with our eternal demons. Political conflict, rivalry, false pride, greed, stupidity. We see it manifest today in Russia/Europe, US/China, Republicans/Democrats, climate-change, crushing inequality. The Man of Sorrows changed hands over five centuries, watching our triumphs, defeats, in silence.

  An anonymous buyer purchased the painting in 1963. It re-emerged this week, selling for 45,400,000 dollars; a currency invented 282yrs after Botticelli died.

  The Sotheby’s auction price is +1,621-times the 28,000 dollars paid in 1963. Such a return is almost inconceivable.

  The S&P 500 in those 59yrs is +68-times. Gold +51-times. The US consumer price index is +9-times. But high art is unlike other assets, connecting us to genius, the sublime. And it reveals this truth: an asset with finite supply, but no intrinsic value, can become priceless, if only we imagine it so.

  Which leads back to our present Renaissance. We live in a period of utterly stunning human advance, expressed with the technological tools of our time. Today’s greatest creations will barely resemble those of the past. Yet all this is obscured from most by the distractions streaming across the newsfeeds. And our highest calling, of course, is to navigate the rising volatility, while quietly creating and investing in the treasures of tomorrow. 

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

• Meet The 29 Year Old Woman Teaming Up With Cathie Wood To Launch A Bitcoin ETF In The US
  Meet The 29 Year Old Woman Teaming Up With Cathie Wood To Launch A Bitcoin ETF In The US

  A 29 year old crypto “expert” that already manages $2.5 billion is coming to an ARK near you.

  Ophelia Snyder, whose firm 21Shares manages $2.5 billion from her office in Switzerland’s “Crypto Valley”, is teaming up with ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood to try and launch a bitcoin ETF in the United States, according to Bloomberg. 

  She has already opened an office in New York, where crypto-friendly Mayor Eric Adams has publicly proclaimed his support for the asset class. She’s now going to be tasked with the difficult proposition of getting regulators to look favorably upon the idea of a bitcoin ETF. It’s an idea the SEC hasn’t seemed to warm up to just yet. 

  

  But that hasn’t stopped her. She told Bloomberg: “We really want to make people feel confident when they enter the space. That’s the whole game for us — lowering the barriers to entry and making people feel excited about what we feel is revolutionary technology.”

  Wood and Snyder first met at a conference, the report says, where they “bonded over their mutual interest in crypto”. Now, Wood sits on the board of Amun, another of Snyder’s crypto-related companies. 

  Todd Rosenbluth, head of ETF and mutual fund research at CFRA Research, told Bloomberg that risks of these ETFs “are elevated relative to traditional equity or fixed income products, so it’s easy to see how investors could lose money faster.”

  Snyder’s current company tries to minimize risk of crypto “by purchasing the actual coins that underlie its funds and storing them in an offline wallet, known as cold storage”, the report says. While this adds to fees, it adds a layer of security. However, it doesn’t do much to protect investors from the volatile swings in crypto pricing. 

  

  She has also been a critic of bitcoin futures ETFs: “The futures products are much more financially complex outside of the Bitcoin exposure. My worst nightmare is people start buying these products not understanding these nuances.”

  21Shares charges between 1.49% and 2.5%. 

  Snyder has “an enormous amount” of her own money in crypto, Bloomberg writes. 

  She concluded about the asset class: “This is my life. This is the thing I think is going to change the entire world.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 17:05

• "Some Unpleasant Math" – The Fed Has Two Options: A Recession,Or Years Of Very High Inflation
  “Some Unpleasant Math” – The Fed Has Two Options: A Recession,Or Years Of Very High Inflation

  By Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley global chief economist

  The Fed, Inflation, and Some Unpleasant Math

  At last week’s FOMC press conference, Chair Powell was unequivocal about his discomfort with persistently high inflation. Had the January FOMC been a forecast meeting, he told us, he would have revised up his inflation forecast for 2022 by “a few tenths.” The Fed is set on tightening policy this year. Bringing down inflation through monetary policy means slower growth, but how much inflation and growth will decline is the question.

  A dirty little secret about the economics profession is how imprecisely we understand the inflation-generating process. The Fed and most mainstream economists have in mind a version of an “expectations-augmented Phillips curve” to describe cyclical inflation. Inflation is driven by inflation expectations and whether the economy has slack and inflation falls or is overextended and inflation rises. That cyclical component ignores other short-term factors, like swings in oil prices or the current supply chain frictions, that can temporarily push inflation up or down. Framing inflation this way has some thorny implications for the next few years, particularly if most of current inflation is cyclical, not temporary.

  Core PCE inflation just hit roughly 5%, or about 3 percentage points above the Fed’s target. If the extra inflation is cyclical, policy will have to slow the economy to create enough slack to bring it down. If it is mostly Covid driven and temporary, inflation will come down on its own. Our house view is that the majority of the extra inflation is Covid driven, not cyclical, but what if we are wrong?

  Suppose two-thirds of the extra inflation (2 percentage points) is cyclical and only one-third is temporary. The Fed’s baseline estimate of the Phillips curve has a slope of about 0.1, that is, a 1-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate lowers core PCE inflation by only one-tenth of a percentage point. Simple arithmetic says that a 20-percentage-point increase in unemployment is needed to bring inflation down by 2 percentage points. But even if the relationship is 5 times larger, as may have been the case decades ago, the Fed would need to orchestrate a 4-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate to wring out those 2 percentage points of inflation. Any time unemployment has risen by 50bp, we have had a recession.

  Of course, the Fed does not want to intentionally cause a recession, so something would have to give. The other refuge, of course, is inflation expectations. If the Fed can convince everyone that inflation will get back to 2%, the trade-off is much less painful. But some measures of inflation expectations are highly sensitive to realized inflation, whereas others barely budge. (Others have criticized the prominence of inflation expectations in macro analysis, see Rudd, 2021) .The real question is whether under the current circumstances, the inflation expectations that matter will move simply because the Fed acts, or if inflation has to come down first. If the latter is true, we are still stuck.

  So if the bulk of current inflation is cyclical … a recession or years of high inflation. Chair Volcker opted for recession, but inflation in the 1970s was much, much higher. I suspect Chair Powell will not deliberately engineer a recession. The challenge, of course, is knowing how much policy tightening is too much. To be clear, our baseline view is that most of the inflation will prove temporary, but it always pays to ask “what if we are wrong?”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 16:43

• Here's Why US Truckers Staging Convoy To DC Will Face Soaring Diesel Prices
  Here’s Why US Truckers Staging Convoy To DC Will Face Soaring Diesel Prices

  U.S. truckers celebrate the recent Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) canceled vaccine mandate and their Candian counterparts who have rolled into Canada’s capital, Ottawa, this weekend, demanding an end to cross-border vaccine rules. Truckers are on the frontlines fighting against medical tyranny as the next convoy could be soon headed to Washington, D.C. 

  A Facebook group called “Convoy To DC 2022” has more than 63k members and is preparing a convoy of truckers to ride from California to Washington, D.C., to tell the Biden administration and progressives they’re are done with overreaching health mandates. 

  

  Dates and planned routes for Convoy To DC 2022 are expected to be released in the near term on a website and various social media platforms, and a GoFundMe page will be set up. The funds raised will help fund fuel costs and lodging for truckers participating in the movement. 

  For truckers considering to partake in the convoy, we wanted to explain what’s happening with diesel markets. 

  Bloomberg reports ultra-low sulfur diesel futures have entered backwardation, a market condition where prices today are higher than future contracts trading months out. This is a bullish structure and the first time materializing since 2015. 

  

  The backwardation comes as a powerful winter storm and cold weather have plagued the Eastern U.S., boosting heating demand. Diesel stockpiles in the central Atlantic region decreased to 19.7 million barrels last week, a seven-year seasonal low. Total US stockpiles are well under a 5-year average. 

  

  Dwindling stockpiles and high demand have pressured spot diesel prices, jumping to an 8-year high this month, trading around $2.68 per gallon. 

  

  Putting this all together for the organizers of the Convoy To DC 2022, the most significant expense for truckers will be soaring fuel costs. With backwardation in full swing, diesel prices are likely to move higher. A GoFundMe campaign could greatly alleviate expenses for those planning to make the cross-country drive. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 16:15

• Speech Therapist: 364% Surge In Baby And Toddler Referrals Thanks To Mask Wearing
  Speech Therapist: 364% Surge In Baby And Toddler Referrals Thanks To Mask Wearing

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A speech therapist says that mask wearing during the pandemic has caused a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers.

  

  Jaclyn Theek told WPBF News that before the pandemic, only 5 per cent of patients were babies and toddlers, but this has soared to 20 per cent.

  Parents are describing their children’s speech problems as “COVID delayed,” with face coverings the primary cause of their speaking skills being seriously impaired.

  As young as 8 months old, babies start learning how to speak by reading lips, a thankless task if parents and carers smother themselves with masks to comply with mandates.

  A speech therapist says her clinic has seen a “364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers”.

  “It’s very important kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth.”

  What the hell have we done?!

  End this cruel insanity. pic.twitter.com/DN6J4yQfju

  — Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes_) January 26, 2022

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

  “It’s very important kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth,” said Theek.

  The news report featured one such mother, Briana Gay, who is raising five children but having speech problems with her youngest.

  “It definitely makes a difference when the world you’re growing up in you can’t interact with people and their face, that’s super important to babies,” said Gay.

  According to Theek, since the pandemic, autism symptoms are also skyrocketing.

  “They’re not making any word attempts and not communicating at all with their family,” she said.

  As we previously highlighted, Forbes deleted an article written by an education expert who asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks was causing psychological trauma.

  A study by researchers at Brown University found that mean IQ scores of young children born during the pandemic have tumbled by as much as 22 points while verbal, motor and cognitive performance have all suffered as a result of lockdown.

  Michael Curzon noted that two of the primary causes for this are face masks and children being atomized as a result of being kept away from other children.

  “Children born over the past year of lockdowns – at a time when the Government has prevented babies from seeing elderly relatives and other extended family members, from socialising at parks or with the children of their parent’s friends, and from studying the expressions on the faces behind the masks of locals in indoor public spaces – have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born before, according to a new U.S. study. Tests on early learning, verbal development and non-verbal development all produced results that were far behind those from the years preceding the lockdowns,” he wrote.

  Perhaps all the virtue signalers who think of themselves as such morally upstanding people for wearing masks will change their behavior given they are literally contributing to causing major cognitive problems in children.

  Or maybe they simply won’t care, given that the mask is now a political status symbol above anything else.

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 15:50

• China PMIs Show Economy On Verge Of Contraction Amid Continued Growth Slowdown
  China PMIs Show Economy On Verge Of Contraction Amid Continued Growth Slowdown

  While China’s credit impulse recently bottomed and is already starting its next major upcycle, the remnant of the current slowdown are still hitting the economy and overnight the latest PMI data showed that China’s manufacturing sector expanded at a slower pace in January amid a seasonal slowdown, Covid-19 outbreaks and a housing market drop which dragged activity at small firms to the weakest since the depth of the pandemic.

  In keeping with China’s penchant for always beating expectations, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index declined to 50.1 from 50.3 in December, just above the median estimate of 50.0 which separates expansion from contraction. Likewise, the non-manufacturing PMI, which measures activity in the construction and services sectors, fell to 51.1, also just fractionally above the consensus forecast. Meanwhile, the non-government Caixin manufacturing PMI fell to 49.1 in January from 50.9 in December, likely due to local outbreaks.

  

  Some details from the NBS report:

  • Among major manufacturing sub-indexes, the output index fell to 50.9 from 51.4, and the new orders sub-index decreased to 49.3 from 49.7.
  • The new export order sub-index increased to 48.4 in January vs. 48.1 in December, and the import sub-index fell to 47.2 in January vs. 48.2.
  • The manufacturing employment sub-index decreased to 48.9 in January from 49.1. The raw material inventories sub-index edged down to 49.1 from 49.2, and the finished goods inventories sub-index fell to 48.0 from 48.5 in December.
  • The suppliers’ delivery times sub-index fell to 47.6 from 48.3, suggesting slower suppliers’ delivery likely due to local outbreaks and related restrictions.
  • By enterprise size, the PMI of large enterprises rose to 51.6 (vs. 51.3 in December), the highest in six months while the PMIs of small enterprises fell to 46.0 (vs. 46.5 in October),  the lowest since February 2020 and taking a contracting streak to a ninth month.

  Price indicators in the NBS manufacturing survey suggest inflationary pressures picked up in January with the input cost sub-index rebounding significantly to 56.4 (vs. 48.1 in December), and the output prices sub-index rose to 50.9 (vs. 45.5 in December), both are higher than November levels. NBS mentioned both input cost and output price sub-indexes of petroleum, coking and other fuels, and smelting and pressing of nonferrous metals were above 60.

  The official non-manufacturing PMI – comprised of the services and construction sectors – also fell in January to 51.1 vs. 52.7 in December, driven by a decline in services sectors – the services PMI fell to 50.3 (vs. 52.0 in December), and the lowest since August. According to the survey, the PMIs of monetary and financial services were above 60 in January, while the PMIs of high-contact consumer services, including accommodation and transportation, were below 50 due to local outbreaks in January.

  The Caixin manufacturing PMI was released later in the morning. The headline index fell to 49.1 in January from 50.9 in December: this was the lowest print since the Covid crash in March 2020.

  

  Sub-indexes in the Caixin manufacturing PMI showed themes were mostly consistent with NBS PMIs except new export orders (stronger in NBS, weaker in Caixin): 

  • deceleration in output and new orders in January (48.4 and 48.5 vs. 52.7 and 50.9 in December),
  • weaker employment (47.9 vs. 48.7 in December),
  • falling inventories in both raw inputs and finished goods (49.8 and 48.7 vs. 50.3 and 50.1 in December),
  • renewed inflationary pressures in input and output prices (both rose to 52.6 in January vs. 50.8 and 49.2 in December),
  • slower suppliers’ delivery (47.5 vs. 48.7 in December), while new export orders sub-index in Caixin fell to 46.5 in January (vs. 49.9). Caixin survey mentioned the recent uptick of COVID cases home and abroad impacted sales and supply chains in January.

  

  Despite the traditional fudging of PMI numbers especially on the NBS side, the numbers signaled a clear slowdown in the economy – with weaker output and new orders, weaker employment, falling inventories, slower supplier’s delivery, heightened inflationary pressures – although to be expected not just due to local outbreaks and related restrictions but because Chinese factories often see a production lull in January and February as workers head home for the Lunar New Year holidays. The divergence between NBS and Caixin in new export orders could be related to potentially geographic coverage differences and sector bias – NBS closely linked to raw materials, Caixin tilted towards machinery – between the two surveys. Activity has also been affected this year by the government’s orders for steel plants to trim output to reduce air pollution ahead of the Winter Olympics in Beijing which begin Friday.

  “Industrial activities slowed due to weak domestic demand,” Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd., wrote in a note. “The slowdown is particularly severe for the small firms.”

  The disruptions have added to the woes facing the Chinese economy, with home sales falling and consumption sluggish due to tightened restrictions to contain the spread of the highly-contagious omicron virus variant. Residents in places where there have been recent Covid-19 outbreaks, including Beijing, Shanghai and the northern port city of Tianjin, have been urged to not leave the cities unless necessary.

  Manufacturers were also squeezed by higher costs, with input prices rising at the fastest rate in three months, according to the official data.

  “That could drive the producer price index up and narrow the room for monetary policy,” said Bruce Pang of China Renaissance Securities Hong Kong, although in light of the recent commitment to easing policy, we doubt that even a solid bounce in the PPI will derail Beijing’s new-found monetary generosity.

  To spur growth, the central bank has cut key interest rates, lowered reserve requirements for lenders and vowed to open its toolbox wider, in response to top leaders’ call for prioritizing stability. Still, a set of earliest available indicators tracked by Bloomberg sent mixed signals about the state of the economy in January, with the housing market and consumer spending staying weak and business confidence and stocks tumbling.

  Elsewhere, construction activity continued to cool this month, with the NBS sub-index falling to 55.4, suggesting sentiment remained subdued given the property downturn and the limited effect that government spending on infrastructure is having so far. The approaching holiday and cold winter may have also had some impact on building.

  “The weak PMI indicates the policy easing measures from the government have not yet been passed to the real economy,” according to Pinpoint’s Zhang. “We expect the government will step up policy supports in coming months, particularly through more fiscal spending.”

  Translation: China’s all important credit impulse will soar, perhaps hitting its cycle high around the US midterm elections.

  

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 15:25

• Stockman Says "This Goes Way Beyond Wag-The-Dog 2.0" As Ukraine Pushes Back Against American Hawks
  Stockman Says “This Goes Way Beyond Wag-The-Dog 2.0” As Ukraine Pushes Back Against American Hawks

  Authored by David Stockman via AntiWar.com,

  It looks like we have plunged so deeply into the theater of the absurd that we now have a case of “Albania don’t want the ball!”.

  Our reference, of course, is to the apocryphal football story about a coach repeatedly signaling a play from the sidelines, only to have the quarterback keep breaking huddle while frantically waving his arms and shouting,

  “But Leroy don’t want the ball!”

  That is to say, Ukrainian president Zelensky, a former television comic, apparently knew all about the 60- year old American story, at least according to the geniuses at CNN who reported it below. That the White House quickly disavowed the “Ukraine” story is undoubtedly your authentication:

  A call between US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday “did not go well,” a senior Ukrainian official told CNN…… Biden warned Zelensky an imminent invasion is a “distinct possibility”

  On the “long and frank call, Biden warned his Ukrainian counterpart……that an invasion was now virtually certain, once the ground had frozen later in February…..

  Zelensky, however, restated his position that the threat from Russia remains “dangerous but ambiguous,” and it is not certain that an attack will take place, the official said.

  Zelensky urged his American counterpart to “calm down the messaging,” warning of the economic impact of panic, according to to the official.

  You might think so. For instance, it is apparently not just president Zelensky who is not seeing the white of those Russian eyes. The country’s defense minister also recently weighed in to that effect. So let’s pierce the fog of hysteria by asking Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov what’s going on:

  “I can absolutely say that to date, the Russian armed forces have not created a strike group that could make a forceful invasion of Ukraine.”

  It must be comical for Russia to sit back and watch the Keystone Kops at the helm of US foreign policy blunder and bluster, with Biden’s press secretary insisting that a Russian invasion is “imminent” even as the Ukrainians – who are in a position to know and also in a position to benefit if it was true – pour cold water on the Biden war-fear-porn.

  Then again, if this purportedly “beleaguered ally” doesn’t see the danger, so what?

  The Washington and NATO neocons do – they are literally foaming at the mouth with war fever. Kiev is obviously not aware that the White House, with access to arguably “privileged intel”, is convinced that Russia will invade “any-minute-now”.

  So, yes, we can cut to the transcript of the must re-watch Wag the Dog. After all, when it comes to America’s security and prosperity, what’s really the difference between Albania and Ukraine, anyway.

  So, as Hollywood was still bold enough back in 1998 to say,

  Wait. We can’t afford a war.

  We’re not having a war. We’re having the appearance of a war.

  We cannot afford it. -What’ll it cost? –

  But they would find out.

  Who’s gonna find out? The American people? Who’s gonna tell them? What did they find out about the Gulf War? One video of one bombfalls down a chimney.

  The building could have been made out of Legos.

  You want us to go to war?

  That’s the general idea.

  With who?

  I’m working on it. Albania?

  Why?

  Why not?

  What do you know about them?

  Nothing.

  Precisely. They seem shifty, standoffish. Who knows from Albania? Who trusts Albanians?

  What did Albania ever do to us?

  What did they do for us? This is why we have to mobilize the B-3 bomber.

  You really want to go to war with Albania?

  We don’t have a choice. This is what you do to make it real. Get your press office right now to deny it. It didn’t happen.

  “There is no report of Albanian activity.”

  They have to deny it. It didn’t happen.

  Deny. …news from the president on his visit to China.

  Another sort of news, however… has emerged from the presidential quarter. We turn to Melissa Gardner at KZAB in Santa Fe… with this breaking news.

  Thanks, Richard. Today a local Firefly Girl… accused the president of *** misconduct. This photo of the girl claims that the *** misconduct… occurred inside the Oval Office. Her attorney says there are no plans yet… to hold a press conference.

  There you have it. There is no imminent war, threat of war, even tiny specter of war, in the Ukraine. It’s all White House theater, and its about nothing more than–like director Barry Levinson’s “suitcase nukes” from Albania – distracting from Biden’s plunging poll figures.

  So it needs be said: Compared to Donald Trump’s statists excesses and pretensions, the Biden team’s disgusting War Movie would have made Dustin Hoffman so proud at the end that they would not have had the gall to kill him with a heart attack!

  Unfortunately, however, this goes way beyond Wag The Dog 2.0. It’s not simply that there are no meaningful, historically validated Ukrainian borders to defend – if that made a difference for national security, which it doesn’t. More importantly, however, is that the underlying policy architecture – preserving the rule of law which Washington claims to have scrupulously advanced since, say 1917–is a complete and unmitigated crock.

  

  As we indicated in the previous article, Ukraine is, and always has been, a patchwork of morsels that belonged until recently to different empires – Austro-Hungarian and Russian – as well as several nations, such as Russia, Poland and Romania. It regroups Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and has millions of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers with deep historical, cultural and economic links with Russia.

  So Ukraine was a de facto new Yugoslavia.

  The fatal mistake committed by Washington in 2014, therefore, was to force Kiev as well as the Ukrainian population as a whole to make an impossible choice between Europe and Russia. Or as Aaron Mate astutely observed,

  The inevitable result would have to be Maidan, completely manipulated by American intel, even as Russians clearly saw how the EU switched from the position of honest broker to the lowly role of American chihuahuas.

  Russo-phobic U.S. hawks will never renounce the spectacle of their historical adversary bogged down in a slow-burning fratricidal war in the post-Soviet space. As much as they will never renounce Divide and Rule imposed over a discombobulated Europe. And as much as they will never concede “spheres of influence” to any geopolitical player.

  Without their toxic imprint, 2014 could have played in quite a different manner.

  To dissuade Putin to restore Crimea to its rightful place – Russia – it would have taken two things: for Ukraine to be decently managed after 1992, and not to force it to choose the Western camp, but to make it a bridge, Finland or Austria-style.

  After Maidan, the Minsk agreements were as close as possible to a viable solution: let’s end the conflict in Donbass; let’s disarm the protagonists; and let’s re-establish control of the borders of Ukraine while providing real autonomy to Eastern Ukraine.

  For all that to happen, Ukraine would have needed a neutral status, and a double security guarantee, by Russia and NATO. And to render the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU compatible with the close links between Eastern Ukraine and the Russian economy.

  All that would have perhaps configured a European vision of decent future relations with Russia.

  Yet the Russo-phobic Deep State would never allow it. And the same applied to the White House. Barack Obama, that cynical opportunist, was too engulfed by the dodgy Polish context in Chicago and not free from the exceptionalist obsession with deep antagonism to be able to build a constructive relationship with Russia.

  Then there’s the clincher, revealed by a high-level US Intel source.

  In 2013, the late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski was presented with a classified report on Russian advanced missiles. He freaked out. And responded by conceptualizing Maidan 2014 – to draw Russia into a guerrilla war then as he had done with Afghanistan in the 1980s.

  And here we are now: it’s all a matter of unfinished business.

  In the meanwhile, here is the spoiler alert for the next article: The idea that what is happening on the Washington orchestrated TV stage has anything to do with standing up to dictators and Munich 2.0 is so blithering stupid that it deserves to be torn asunder limb-for-limb.

  Which is exactly what we intend to do.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/30/2022 – 15:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest