Today’s News 4th November 2022

• Russia Threatens Norway With "Final Destruction" Of Relations
  Russia Threatens Norway With “Final Destruction” Of Relations

  Russia has issued new warnings and threats against Norway, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for its role in expanding NATO operations in the Arctic region.

  “Oslo is now among the most active supporters of NATO’s involvement in the Arctic,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday. “We consider such developments near Russian borders as Oslo’s deliberate pursuit of a destructive course toward escalation of tensions in the Euro-Arctic region and the final destruction of Russian-Norwegian relations.”

  Zakharova warned additionally that any future “unfriendly actions will be followed by a timely and adequate response.” The warning comes as Norwegian media and politicians are caught up in denouncing alleged Russian spy plots.

  

  On Monday the Norwegian government grabbed international headlines by issuing a rare ‘high state of alert’ order for its military, specifically citing Russia’s expanding military operations in Ukraine.

  As The Guardian wrote, “Norway is putting its military on a raised level of alert, moving more personnel on to operational duties and enhancing the role of a rapid mobilization force in response to the war in Ukraine – although the prime minister said there was no reason to believe Russia intended to invade.”

  “This is the most severe security situation in several decades,” Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre told a news briefing. But he added the key caveat, “There are no indications that Russia is expanding its warfare to other countries, but the increased tensions make us more exposed to threats, intelligence operations and influence campaigns.”

  Interestingly, the raised alert level appears related to ongoing concern over Russian spies potentially compromising sensitive facilities in the country: 

  Several Russian citizens have been detained in Norway in recent weeks, chiefly for being in possession of drones or allegedly photographing subjects covered by a photography ban. Most have since been released.

  European nations have heightened security measures around key energy, internet and power infrastructure after underwater explosions ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

  …The Russian embassy in Oslo has alleged that authorities there have used drone and ship sightings, as well as incidents involving Russians with cameras, to fuel a “spy mania”.

  Tensions with Russia across the Scandinavian region are higher than ever also because of Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO. So far it remains that Turkey and Hungary are the final two holdout nations, refusing the fast-track membership, especially as Turkey as accused both Nordic countries of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”. 

  A prosecutor with Norway’s domestic security agency on Friday gave a Russian name for the man who entered the country as a Brazilian but is suspected of spying on state secrets for Russia. https://t.co/idO9yiYE7O

  — CBS News (@CBSNews) October 31, 2022

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

  As for Norway, the government late last week slapped new sanctions on top Russian officials and companies. This included at least 30 individuals and seven Russian entities. 

  “Once again we are acting in concert with the EU to impose sanctions on Russia to maintain pressure on the Russian Government and its supporters,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Anniken Huitfeldt told a last Friday press conference.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 02:45

• Hudson: Germany's Position In America's New World Order
  Hudson: Germany’s Position In America’s New World Order

  Authored by Michael Hudson,

  Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia.

  

  Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

  President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

  By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

  The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

  These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

  Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

  Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

  Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

  Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

  This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

  These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

  The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

  Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

  More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

  The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

  A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

  The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

  The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

  What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

  Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

  My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

  As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

  The 12th and 13th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

  Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

  Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

  Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

  What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

  The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

  The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

  The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

  There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

  How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

  The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

  The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors. The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, excluding China, Russia and their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

  Another byproduct of America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

  Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

  The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

  There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

  How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

  The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

  *  *  *

  This paper was presented on November 1, 2022. on the German e-site BraveNewEurope.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 02:00

• Twitter's "Red Wedding" Moment Arrives As Musk Layoffs Begin
  Twitter’s “Red Wedding” Moment Arrives As Musk Layoffs Begin

  Twitter – long considered a safe space for election-influencing jackboots drunk on their own arrogance – is having its ‘Red Wedding’ moment, as one Employee characterized the widely anticipated mass layoffs following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant.

  

  Indeed, with the abruptness of a guillotine, the company’s 7,500 employees were suddenly notified in a Thursday email that the layoffs had begun.

  According to the NY Times, workers were instructed to go home and not come back on Friday as the cuts proceeded.

  “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” read the email. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

  According to previous internal messages and an investor, around half of Twitter’s employees were just laid off – however the final number is unknown. On Wednesday employees circulated a message on Slack that suggested 3,738 people could be fired, but that changes could still be made to the list.

  On Thursday evening, employees posted heart emojis and salutes in their Slack channel.

  The mass layoffs come a little more than a week after Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter – after which he immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers, while other execs have since resigned or were fired.

  Managers were asked to make lists of employees based on performance.

  Meanwhile, Musk brought over 50 engineers and employees from his other businesses – including Tesla – to assist with the firings.

  The Times then cites some ‘industry’ insider who said there was “nothing visionary or innovative about summarily firing workers by email,” because Musk is firing people with “specialized expertise and de institutional knowledge” before he “even seems to have a basic grasp of the business.”

  Or, he’s completely wrong and Musk’s team of 50 were able to figure out how to fire 3,500 people based on contributions.

  

  For employees, it’s a question of whether they ‘can’ or ‘can’t even.’

  On Wednesday evening, some employees circulated a “Layoff Guide” with tips on corporate surveillance and employment rights. One worker created software to help colleagues download important emails and documents. He was later fired, he said.

  On Thursday, workers got other signals that their workplace was changing. Twitter’s “Days of Rest,” which are monthly days off so employees can rest and recharge, were removed from their calendars, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Some workers also noticed that the employee directory had been taken offline, according to internal chats seen by The Times.

  “Has the red wedding started?” one employee wrote on Slack, a reference to a massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Nine minutes later, the company sent the email informing workers of the layoffs. Employees who will keep their jobs would receive a message saying so on their corporate accounts, the message said, while employees being laid off would be notified on their personal accounts.

  As the Times further points out, keeping employees out of the office on Friday means that laid off workers can’t take any items from the company (or sabotage it).

  “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email continues.

  Congratulations Twitter, you played yourself.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:51

• Orlov: The New Cuban Missile Crisis That Isn't
  Orlov: The New Cuban Missile Crisis That Isn’t

  Authored by Dmitri Orlov,

  The Cuban Missile Crisis is a malicious misnomer. Cuba never had any nuclear missiles; it temporarily played host to some Soviet ones. The crisis started when Americans put their intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Turkey that posed a new threat the Soviet Union, which responded by placing similar missiles in Cuba, evening the score. The Americans flew into a rage but eventually calmed down and withdrew their missiles from Turkey. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the crisis was over. And so it should be called the American Missile Crisis.

  What’s happening now couldn’t be more different. Unless you spent the last few weeks hiding under a rock, you have probably heard that some sort of new nuclear crisis is underway because of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” or some such. Some people have suffered nervous exhaustion as a result, neglecting their duties and generally letting themselves go. Take former British PM Liz Truss, for instance. The poor silly thing latched on to Putin’s words that “the wind rose can point in any direction” (a factual point about the utter uselessness of tactical nuclear weapons). She then allowed the British economy to go into free-fall while she obsessively tracked the wind direction over the Ukraine. It all ended badly for poor Liz. Don’t be like Liz.

  I am here to tell you that there is nothing going on beyond the usual – the usual Western propaganda fakery, that is.

  

  In particular, this has nothing to do with anything Putin or with anything nuclear. Instead, this is all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for narrative failure, and a failed attempt at that. The problem for the collective West is simply this: 80% of the world’s population has refused to join it in condemning, sanctioning or otherwise punishing Russia, with some very large countries (China, India) either supportive or neutral on the subject.

  Most of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is carefully watching Russia systematically destroy what was by far the largest and most capable NATO-equipped, NATO-commanded army in the world (the Ukrainian army, that is), understanding full well that what is unfolding is Washington’s Waterloo. Some countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance) are so sure of the result that they are already refusing to obey Washington’s dictates. This is a problem, because all the Washingtonians know how to do is impose their will on the world. Treating others as equals or looking for opportunities to negotiate a win-win is simply not part of their core competence—or any of their competence, for that matter. Once defanged, all they know how to do is bark and drool.

  To fix this problem, the narrative-mongers in Washington and Brussels have decided to play the nuclear card and accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail. Meanwhile, all that Russia has done is decimate the Ukrainian army several times over, then accept four former Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation based on highly conclusive local referenda closely watched by a goodly number of international observers, and then announce that it will defend these regions against foreign attack by all means necessary. These, obviously, include nuclear means, since Russia does have them, and would use them in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, which precludes their first use.

  Meanwhile, the US has no such stipulation in its nuclear doctrine, has actually used nuclear weapons against civilians (in Japan), and has for decades dreamed of developing a nuclear first strike capability that could not be countered. If any country should be judged to be a nuclear threat, it is the US, not Russia… except, as I will explain, the US is no longer much of a nuclear threat either. Putin barely hinted at this, but a mere hint was enough to utterly infuriate the US national defense establishment, whose worst enemy is reality itself. Putin pointed out that at this point Russia has some weapons in its nuclear deterrent arsenal that are superior to that of the West.

  These new weapons, of which more later, guarantee that any nuclear attack on Russia would be a suicidal move. That is, the West has no way of reliably destroying Russia (it is too big and its economic core is too independent and too well defended with air and space defense systems) while Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first. Unlike back in the old Soviet days, Russia has no missionary zeal; it is happy to sit back and watch the West starve itself (due to a lack of Russian chemical fertilizer) in the dark (due to a lack of Russian oil and gas). All it wants to do is gather the pieces of the shattered Russian world and all the people and lands that the collapse of the USSR abandoned behind some Bolshevik-decreed border. In this situation, the risk of a nuclear war is pretty much zero. Please sit back, take a series of deep breaths and let the good news soak in. Feel the joy.

  But the joy probably won’t last if you listen to craven idiots whose job is to lie to you about “Putin’s nuclear threat.” When, for instance, Jack Philips writes that Moscow has threatened to use… tactical nuclear weapons… in Ukraine to salvage its war there,” he is basically just lying to us, and not once but thrice in the same sentence: Russia did not threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons but instead pointed out their uselessness; and Russia’s special operation is a success. The fact that there is no threat is the main message of this article, but let us briefly digress and describe of Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat look like.

  The Ukraine is victorious in that according to the IMF its GDP is down 35% in 2022; according to its national bank inflation has topped 30% and isn’t slowing down; according to the World Bank next year 55% of Ukrainians will be below the poverty line, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day; according to the Ukraine’s economics minister, unemployment has reached 30%; according to its prime minister, it will be unable to pay pensions and salaries without immediate foreign aid; according to the UN, 20% of the population has left the country and another 33% are internally displaced; according to its energy ministry, it has already lost 40% of its electricity generating capacity. The Ukrainian army is drafting any male up to the age of 60, having run out of reservists, and the casualties it is suffering at the front are nothing short of horrific.

  Meanwhile, Russia is vanquished because according to Reuters the Russian ruble is the strongest currency in the world; according to the Guardian Putin is more powerful and popular than ever; according to its agriculture ministry this year’s grain harvest is over 150 million tonnes, 50 million of which are for export, making Russia the world’s largest grain exporter; according to The Economist, Russia is emerging from recession just as the West is entering recession; and according to Goldman Sachs the index of economic activity in Russia is now higher than in the West. Russia just got done calling up 300 thousand, or 1%, of its trained and experienced reservists, who are now being drilled in the latest NATO-fighting techniques before being sent to the Ukrainian front.

  But let’s not let facts stand in the way of the dominant narrative: the Ukraine has to be winning and Russia has to be losing because otherwise what could possibly cause Russia to become so utterly desperate as to threaten the world with its nuclear weapons? That part is simple; what is less obvious is why Western propagandists are sufficiently desperate to concoct and promulgate the false narrative of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail”?

  The reason for all of this hectic propagandizing is that the collective West cannot hope to survive politically or economically unless Russia is brought to its knees and agrees to exchange its energy and mineral resources freshly minted digits that reside inside computers at Western central banks which can be confiscated at any time and for any reason. The situation is dire: the US is running through its Strategic Petroleum Reserve at breakneck pace, yet facing a shortage of diesel fuel and stubbornly high gasoline prices. It has a massive debt to roll over and expand but can only do so through direct money-printing, driving inflation, already at over 10%, ever higher. Europe is bracing for a harsh winter of ridiculously high energy bills, industry shutdowns and massive unemployment, while the US is not far behind. The fracking bonanza in the US was never quite profitable and now has perhaps a year or two before it is tapped out. Then the dream of US liquefied natural gas replacing Russian pipeline gas in Europe, never a realistic plan, will be dead for good while industry shutdowns spread to the US.

  To avoid this scenario, desperate measures have been applied, and all of them have failed. First there was the plan of sanctions from hell, forcing numerous Western companies to stop shipping product to Russia and doing business there. This has done great harm to Western companies while providing Russia with an opening to steal their market share. What couldn’t be replaced with domestic production has been replaced with “parallel imports” via third countries.

  Next, the West (Europe in particular) curtailed its Russian energy imports through a number of means, from sanctions against Russian tankers, to bans on the use of existing pipeline capacity through the Ukraine and through Poland, to outright terrorist strikes on Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic. An outright ban on Russian oil imports to the European Union is scheduled for December, and it will make the situation predictably worse. The result is that Russia has started shipping oil and gas to its partners in Asia instead, China in particular, and the West is now welcome to compete for this energy on the spot market, while spare supplies last. They won’t. Because of higher prices, Russia is exporting less energy but earning more foreign revenue.

  And so an ingenuous plan was hatched for a nuclear provocation in the Ukraine. The Ukrainians, with some US and British help, were to take an old Soviet-era ballistic missile (a Tochka-U), load it up with nuclear waste from one of the Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, blow it up somewhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (which is already contaminated with long-lived radionuclides) and then Western media and diplomatic sources would all wax hysterical and blame it all on Russia in unison, hoping that at least some of the countries around the world that have been refusing to join Western sanctions against Russia would be cajoled into joining them.

  How well did it go? Not at all well, apparently! First, Russian intelligence got the details on the whole operation from an inside source or two or three. This is not surprising, since no self-respecting nuclear engineer would be too excited to take responsibility for such a travesty. Second, Russia’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu, under direct orders from Putin, made phone calls to his counterparts throughout the world, sharing this evidence with them. Third, Russia specifically requested that the IAEA go and investigate the two Ukrainian sites at which the travesty was being concocted. The end result is that the Ukrainians are now hurriedly destroying the evidence and covering their tracks. Considering that every gram of such highly controlled substances must to be inventoried and its every movement logged, this coverup may come to involve some incidents, accidents and force majeur circumstances. A nasty little accident involving a teacup of nuclear waste and a firecracker is not to be ruled out, to be blamed on Russia, of course.

  Meanwhile, in the real world of nuclear superpower standoffs, two interesting events took place. On Thursday, October 20, 2022, the American nuclear sub West Virginia, an Ohio-class sub that carries 24 Trident II ballistic missiles, each of which carries 10 nuclear charges, surfaced in the Arabian Sea and was visited by Michael Kurilla, commander of United States Central Command. I imagine that he lined up the crew on deck, stood before them in navy dress whites, then dropped his pants down and did a little “milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner fudge is made” routine… because he might as well have. The purpose of a nuclear sub is to be stealthy because Russian air defense systems can intercept Trident II missiles especially well if they know where they are coming from. Thus, the act of surfacing and holding parades on deck basically announces to the world that the sub is off-duty for the time being.

  Why would the Americans do this? Is this a clumsy peace gesture, a cryptic act of surrender or a veiled cry for help? Or are they all going senile because whatever Biden has got is infectious? It is hard for us to tell. Whatever it is, the Russians seem unaffected. The Russian nuclear sub Belgorod recently sailed off into the blue, causing a bit of a panic within NATO. It carries a number of the new Poseidon nuclear-powered drone torpedos, which are all about the number 100. Each of them carries a charge of 100 megatons. Poseidons have almost infinite range, move at around 100 km/h at a depth of 1000m (three times deeper than any nuclear sub) and when detonated near an underwater coastal ridge can raise a 100-meter tsunami. Just five of them are sufficient to demolish both coasts of the US and all of Northern Europe. These would be underwater nuclear tests conducted in international waters—antisocial, yes, but not exactly direct nuclear strikes on anyone’s territory, so hardly a casus belli. And the ensuing tsunami? Uh-oh! Oopsie-daisy, sorry about that! Nobody is going to write “in case of tsunami destroy Russia” into the US nuclear doctrine. Best of all, Poseidons can lie in wait for years, surfacing periodically to receive new orders. But if Russia is destroyed they will rise up and destroy the rest of the world world, because “What use is the world if there is no Russia in it?” (V. Putin)

  We can be sure that the Russians won’t launch a nuclear war because it’s risky and they don’t have to take that risk in order to win. We can be sure that the Americans won’t launch one because it would be suicide. And so we can all sit back and relax while the “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” narrative-mongers bark their stupid heads off. As for all those assorted media whores who are scaring people with their nuclear nonsense in order to catch some hype—shame on them!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:40

• Transgender Groups Claim Their Voting Rights Will Be Restricted By State ID Laws
  Transgender Groups Claim Their Voting Rights Will Be Restricted By State ID Laws

  Are voter ID laws an obstacle to transgender people exercising their rights at the ballot box?  Some trans groups and the ACLU argue that this is the case as the midterm elections near.  

  The push against identification at the polls has been aggressive, with Democrats making up the bulk of people in opposition.  A long list of excuses has been presented as to why very simple and straightforward laws requiring ID to vote are a violation of the civil liberties of various minorities.  Notably, Democrats and the ACLU have suggested that such laws are “racist” because minorities often don’t have or are “not capable” of getting a state ID.

  The ACLU argues, for example, that over 25% of blacks and 16% of Hispanics of voting age in the US do not have ID.  This data comes from the GOA and the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and was collected from 2012-2014, around a decade ago.

  The problem with this argument is that there are no legal obstacles for minorities to get a state ID.  If they don’t have one then it is their fault they are not able to vote.  The only people who would have trouble obtaining an ID are illegal immigrants who are not allowed to vote anyway.  The minority access to ID argument just doesn’t hold water.

  However, not to be defeated, anti-ID groups are turning to a tiny portion of the population that might face legitimate confusion at polling stations because of their appearance – Transgenders.

  Representatives from the ACLU in Tennessee where stricter enforcement of voter ID laws is underway suggest that the act of a trans person having to explain their trans status is humiliating:

  “It’s not just embarrassing, but it’s terrifying to have to do that — to try to read the room and see, like, are they going to kick me out? It can be really dehumanizing to have your whole identity nitpicked just so that you can cast your ballot and have your voice be heard…” Says Henry Seaton, an ACLU advocate.  Seaton is a woman who transitioned in appearance to a man who claims she once had her ID scrutinized in 2016.

  Beyond the apparent embarrassment, trans rights groups also say that ID confusion could potentially lead to people being turned away from the polls, or it could put trans people “at risk” of harassment.  Almost all stats involving trans harassment accounts are collected by trans rights groups with a clear political agenda, so it is difficult to say how serious this threat actually is and how much of it is fantasy.

  “People who might be inclined to harass marginalized voters at the polls are more aware of trans people’s existence,” said Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “So I expect that we’re going to hear more stories of trans people being harassed, whether by voters, poll workers, poll monitors or other folks who are present during the election.”

     

  Legitimate harassment is illegal regardless of the individual, as are any acts of assault or violence.  Trans people are protected under the same laws as everyone else, but groups like the ACLU claim that this is not enough and separate laws need to be established giving trans people special protections.  This would include making them exempt from voter ID laws.  

  Frankly, this is yet another example of social justice proponents trying to make their problems into the country’s problems.  If a person’s identification does not match their appearance then it is going to be scrutinized whether they are trans, a minority or they are white and straight.  By attempting to change their appearance to look more like the opposite sex, trans people set themselves up for questions when going to vote.  There are dozens of other scenarios where this would also be an issue.  It is not for state governments to cater to every individual case; their job is only to ensure that ballots are secure and that non-citizens don’t vote illegally.

  Since the ACLU and trans rights organizations cannot come up with many examples of trans people being denied the right to vote and only present anecdotal stories of individuals being inconvenienced for five minutes, it’s hard to find justification for an overhaul of state laws preventing voter fraud.

  The more likely explanation for the growing interest in transgender voting is that social justice activists have hit a brick wall when it comes to stopping the spread of ID laws and they are looking for a legal toe hold or weakness in the armor.  Their exploitation of minorities failed, but if voter ID can be challenged using trans people as a foil, then these groups might be able to bring down all ID laws for everyone, including illegal immigrants; the real golden goose for progressive politicians.      

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:20

• Pfizer, Audi, Mondelez Join Growing List Of Companies Pausing Ads On Twitter
  Pfizer, Audi, Mondelez Join Growing List Of Companies Pausing Ads On Twitter

  Several years ago, when the “liberal, tolerant” left first decided to cancel Zerohedge , they did so using their two favorite eradication strategies: deplatforming (we were removed from Facebook and Twitter, a death sentence for most websites that depend on media powerhouses for their traffic, luckily we are not one of them) and demonetization (we lost ads hosted by Google, Amazon, and various other platforms, and we also were booted by PayPal, which in retrospect was a lucky outcome). Despite this full-bore effort by the left to silence us, we somehow survived – in large part thanks to our readers who have signed up as subscribers for our premium offering.

  Fast forward to today when it is now the turn of the world’s richest man to go through this same drama.

  In a carbon copy of what happened to us, America’s woke, politically correct corporations are taking aim at Twitter in hopes of starving it of cash, nevermind that its traffic is orders of magnitude greater than such socialist-endorsed, mindnumbingly boring propaganda websites and TV channels as MSNBC, CNN, Vox, The Atlantic and everything else that desperately relies on implicit advertiser subsidies to survive. According to the WSJ, food giant General Mills, Oreo maker Mondelez, pandemic profiteers Pfizer and Volkswagen’s Audi are among a growing list of brands that have “temporarily” paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk. General Motors paused its spending on the social-media platform last week.

  

  Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.

  So, @Pfizer – making billions off of government mandates, liability protection, & often demonstrably false propaganda – pulls ads from Twitter – over, uh, “concerns about disinformation?” #HealthcareFreedom #BeatBigHealthcare

  — Chip Roy (@chiproytx) November 4, 2022

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

  Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform, which should answer Elon Musk’s question what advertisers prefer: free speech or political correctness.

  Advertisers should support:

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

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

  Other advertisers temporarily halting their ads because of the uncertainty at the company as top executives exit and Mr. Musk considers a raft of changes, some of the people said.

  And just in case it’s still unclear, as long as a handful of shrill, ultra-left harpies such as this lunatic manage to outshout everyone else, it will always be free speech that loses, even if that means that advertisers are stuck peddling their wares at places like MSNBC and CNN where most of the audience has zero disposable income as it is entirely reliant on the government for its handouts.

  Several ad buyers say they expect the number of brands pausing Twitter ads to rise. The platform isn’t considered a must-buy for many advertisers, with far larger budgets going to tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, they say, and pausing makes sense during the bumpy transition under Musk.

  Additionally, many executives on Madison Avenue are uneasy with the rash of sudden executive departures from Twitter’s advertising sales and marketing units. Among those who have exited are Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, and Jean-Philippe Maheu, Twitter’s vice president of global client solutions. Those executives “helped reassure advertisers that their ad dollars were being spent wisely and appropriately on Twitter” according to the Journal. We assume that means that the woke ad agencies were assured that only liberals would be allowed to view their ads.

  Musk has been working to reassure advertisers, both publicly and privately, that the platform will remain a safe place for brands. Since tweeting last week that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape,” the billionaire has participated in several meetings and video calls with some of the world’s largest ad companies and blue-chip advertisers, ad executives said.

  On Wednesday, Musk participated in a video call with WPP PLC, the world’s largest ad company, and some of its clients such as Coca-Cola, Unilever PLC and Google, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the meeting, Musk stressed that Twitter would be a safe place for brands, promising to rid the platform of bots and add community-management tools, according to the people.

  He also discussed how he was seeking to segment the content on Twitter so users could customize what shows up in their feeds. That would allow people to have the equivalent of a PG-rated version of the platform, Musk said, and give advertisers the ability to choose which content to be near.

  Somehow we doubt that approach will succeed. Instead, what Musk – and other thought leaders – should do, is show the variance in disposable incomes between those who frequent conservative media outlets, and those which are a magnet for liberals. Something tells us advertisers will be very surprise at who has more purchasing power. Because when you cut out the virtue signaling and the PC bullshit, at the end of the day, an ad is supposed to reach the richest, most willing to buy segment of society. The fact that this has become lost may explains the dismal state of consumer-facing companies in the US today.

  As for Twitter, ironically less ads will only make the user experience that much more enjoyable. For Musk, it will also mean that the website will generate far less cash flow, which means that either he will have to dig deep to keep it funded, or he will have to start charging everyone, not just the bluechecks, for access. Whether that is a viable proposition, remains to be seen.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:08

• Elon Musk Reportedly Expands Private Jet Fleet With This $78 Million Gulfstream
  Elon Musk Reportedly Expands Private Jet Fleet With This $78 Million Gulfstream

  Billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly trading up his 2015 Gulfstream G650 private jet for a top-of-the-line Gulfstream G700, Bussiness Insider reported.

  The G700 costs a whopping $78 million and is powered by all-new, high-thrust Rolls-Royce engines that can propel the aircraft to a maximum Mach .925 while cruising at more than 50,000 feet. 

  

  Insider said Musk is expected to take delivery of one of the finest private jets in the world in early 2023. It can fly up to 7,500 nautical miles without refueling, allowing the billionaire to travel non-stop from Austin, Texas (where Tesla Motors is headquartered) to Hong Kong. 

  

  The addition of the new jet shows Musk’s growing desire for Gulfstreams, which would expand his overall fleet of private jets to four. Three would be Gulfstreams, while the Dassault 900B stands out. 

  Billionaires and elites have run into trouble with private jet ownership this year — mainly because of climate change warriors tracking their every movement and posting jet locations on social media. We noted last month that French businessman Bernard Arnault, the owner of the luxury-goods company LVMH, sold his private jet after being fed up with social media tracking his every movement. He said renting private jets solves that issue. 

  We are certain Jack Sweeney, who created the Twitter account “Elon Musk’s Jet” to track the billionaire, will be adding the G700 sometime next year. 

  But with a fleet of four jets, it’s getting more difficult to track the billionaire unless independently verified on the ground that he was in the plane. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 22:40

• Biden Admin Renews Public Health Emergency Over Monkeypox
  Biden Admin Renews Public Health Emergency Over Monkeypox

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden administration on Wednesday renewed the public health emergency determination for monkeypox.

  

  Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement that his decision to renew the public health emergency was “a result of the continued consequences of an outbreak of monkeypox cases across multiple states.” He had consulted with public health officials before renewing the determination.

  The Biden administration first declared monkeypox a public health emergency this year on Aug. 4. It would have expired Wednesday, Nov. 2, if it was not renewed.

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky previously said the declaration would provide more “access to resources” and will “enable personnel to be deployed to the outbreak” in some areas. The emergency will also “further raise awareness” and encourage testing for monkeypox.

  The latest U.S. renewal of the public health emergency comes after the World Health Organization announced that its emergency committee had likewise determined monkeypox as a global health emergency. The determination was made following a meeting of the committee on Oct. 20.

  As of Wednesday, the CDC has recorded 77,573 monkeypox cases globally and 38 deaths. It has recorded 28,492 cases of monkeypox in the United States, with the death toll at 8.

  Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality congressional caucus, praised the renewal of the public health emergency determination, saying it will ensure continued support to address the outbreak.

  “Thanks to vaccination efforts across the country, the contraction and spread of MPV has decreased significantly. However, MPV continues to spread and is disproportionately impacting people of color. We must bolster support and resources—including by appropriating sufficient funds—to help these communities and end this outbreak,” Cicilline added.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 22:00

• GOP's Billionaire Donors Dwarf Democrats In Huge Reversal From 2018
  GOP’s Billionaire Donors Dwarf Democrats In Huge Reversal From 2018

  The number of billionaire donors to the GOP has been rapidly increasing vs. previous midterm election cycles – dwarfing the amount Democrats have received from their own Democrat donors (and which is largely due to George Soros).

  

  In particular, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison have been ramping up contributions.

  The three men, worth a collective $150 billion, are among the 12 top political donors ahead of the elections, according to the most recent data from OpenSecrets. Of that dozen, 10 are backing Republicans in a big way: They’ve spent a cumulative $338 million, up 250% from the 2018 cycle. –Bloomberg

  And as Bloomberg further notes, this is a trend which extends to the top 100 political donors – among which some $574 million has gone towards Republican candidates and groups – around 45% more than what Democrats have received.

  

  George Soros is of course the largest supporter of Democratic causes with $129 million in donations – nearly double the largest GOP donor Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein. Other GOP whales include Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Yass and Timothy Mellon.

  Several new names appear near the top of this year’s top 100, who combined account for almost 35% of total campaign contributions. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, is the second-largest contributor to Democrats, while another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, is backing Republicans. -Bloomberg

  

  “If you look at the people who are giving on the Republican side — Griffin and Schwarzman and the others — they’re all historically Republican donors,” said Chartwell Strategy Group founding partner, David Tamasi. “It’s not like this is their first rodeo with giving. It’s just got more weight behind it.”

  Last week we noted that Democrat donors had all but abandoned Florida.

  • “The Democratic Governors Association spent just $685,000 this election cycle. It gave $14 million to Florida in the past two governor races.
  • Big outside donor money has almost completely dried up. New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg contributed only $1.5 million to Democrats this cycle. He vowed $100 million to Florida in 2020.
  • Democrats have collectively raised $29 million in the four non-federal statewide races. Republicans raised nearly $200 million.” — Politico

  The boost from GOP billionaire donors will give Republicans an advantage in what Bloomberg suggests is a ‘dead-heat race’ to regain control of the Senate, on top of an expected majority win in the House.

  That said, Democrats still top Republicans in terms of overall campaign donations this cycle, outraising Republicans by nearly $191 million in all House and Senate races.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 22:00

• Alleged Pelosi Attacker Confirmed As Illegal Immigrant, Embraced Left- And Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories
  Alleged Pelosi Attacker Confirmed As Illegal Immigrant, Embraced Left- And Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories

  The man who allegedly attacked Paul Pelosi is an illegal immigrant, U.S. officials have confirmed.

  

  “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on Canadian national David DePape with San Francisco County Jail, Nov. 1, following his Oct. 28 arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told The Epoch Times in an email.

  DHS is the parent agency of ICE, which is tasked with removing people who are in the United States illegally.

  Immigration detainers are placed on suspects who are illegal immigrants. They are meant to prevent state or local officials from releasing the suspects.

  If a suspect is due to be released, the detainer means officials hand over the person to federal officials, unless local officials defy the request.

  Adam Lipson, DePape’s public defender, indicated after DePape’s arraignment this week that he was representing an illegal immigrant.

  “He currently has a federal hold so he can’t be released anyway,” Lipson told reporters when asked about the motion for no bail entered by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

  Lipson could not be reached for comment.

  “Nobody in America should be victimized by an illegal alien. The illegal alien crime rate here should be exactly 0.0%,” the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol’s union, said in a statement.

  Immigration records show DePape entered the United States in March 2008 as a temporary visitor. Canadians are generally admitted without a visa if they are visiting for business or pleasure and can typically stay in the United States for up to six months.

  Additionally, according to a lawyer who has been in touch with DePape’s former girlfriend, DePape has embraced left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theories.

  

  As Janice Hisle reports at The Epoch Times, the former girlfriend, Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, is herself in a women’s prison for 20 crimes involving a teen boy.

  Taub’s attorney, Christopher Dobbins, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 2 that based on his conversations with Taub the theories about DePape being a right-wing extremist seem to be off base.

  Dobbins thinks DePape tends to believe conspiracy theories in general, whether they’re left-wing or right-wing.

  “He’s all over the place,” Dobbins said.

  Dobbins said he has heard from Taub by phone frequently since news broke that DePape, 42, was arrested in the Oct. 28 breach of the Pelosi mansion in San Francisco. She has expressed a lot of concern for DePape, Dobbins said.

  Taub has been trying to raise funds for DePape’s defense, Dobbins said.

  Statements from Dobbins and a neighbor shed new light on DePape’s unorthodox lifestyle, his apparent homelessness, and his thought processes.

  “Even though he’s probably Public Enemy No. 1 right now,” and DePape and Taub have apparently been estranged for a while, Taub still cares for her ex, Dobbins said.

  She thinks he’s deeply troubled and has serious mental issues, Dobbins said. The two have known each other for many years and both were pictured in San Francisco newspapers in 2013 when they were protesting city ordinances banning public nudity.

  Taub asked Dobbins to defend DePape; Dobbins said he declined the offer, choosing to steer away from a potential conflict of interest involving his representation of Taub.

  Lawyer Contests ‘Fixated’ Claim

  DePape is the father of two of Taub’s three children. A daughter, fathered by another man, is grown; two boys, in their late teens or early adulthood, have been living alone at their mother’s property during her legal troubles, Dobbins said.

  Now 53, Taub is imprisoned near Los Angeles for offenses involving a teen boy, prosecutors said in a news release when a jury convicted her in August 2021.

  Dobbins points out that his client testified in her own defense, and she still asserts that she is innocent. She testified that her actions toward the boy were misinterpreted.

  The teen was a schoolmate of one of her sons, and Taub was convinced the boy was being abused, Dobbins said. She believed she was being helpful to him, as she was repeatedly contacting him after being told to stop, Dobbins said. But “she never touched him,” he declared.

  

  Prosecutors, however, said Taub “became fixated on a 14-year-old boy in 2018,” and committed the offenses.

  That was how the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office put it in a news release.

  Prosecutors issued the release in August 2021 after a jury found Taub guilty of four felonies—attempted child abduction, stalking, and two counts of dissuading a witness—plus 16 misdemeanors: a count of molestation and 15 violations of court orders to stay away from the boy.

  “Over the course of 14 months, she sent him numerous obsessive emails, created blogs directed at him, used his friends to send him messages, and eventually tried to abduct him a few blocks from his school in Berkeley,” the release said. “While the case was pending, Taub also tried to dissuade the victim from testifying.”

  DePape Lived in School Bus

  Dobbins, who was a schoolteacher before he became an attorney 14 years ago, said Taub is one of the most interesting, unusual clients he has ever encountered.

  He described her as a free spirit and a well-intentioned idealist who can be misunderstood. “She is a kind of out-there person, kind of pushing the envelope,” he said, acknowledging that her nudist, bohemian lifestyle irritates her neighbors; he said he had visited the area several times.

  

  Ryan La Coste, who resides near the house where Taub lived in the 1500 block of Woolsey St., Berkeley, Calif., told The Epoch Times that he only saw DePape “in passing,” but he believes DePape sometimes lived in a yellow school bus that is parked at the property.

  Authorities have said they believe DePape mostly was living in a garage on Shasta Street in Richmond, Calif., for the past two years.

  La Coste said DePape sporadically showed up in the Berkeley neighborhood even after Taub was incarcerated. La Coste believes he most recently saw DePape staying in the bus a couple of months ago.

  La Coste has lived in the neighborhood for five or six years. Right after he moved in, “the problems started immediately” at Taub’s house, he said.

  “Children was setting fires out here. They were dressed in like snorkeling gear and swim trunks, setting fires and smoke was coming into my house,” he said. “So I was like, trying to go tell their mother, not knowing who she was.”

  

  Later that evening, he got a call that was “super-weird,” he said. “They said I threatened to kill her children…and it just got worse and worse from there…it was just kind of like a constant flow of bugging me and disturbing me and trying to pick fights with me.”

  That stopped only after Taub was locked up on the charges involving the young boy. She is eligible for parole in January, court records show.

  La Coste described DePape and a parade of other “characters” coming and going at Taub’s property, “almost like a hippie collective.”

  “They’ve had people camping right here, trying to sell me drugs over the fence,” he said, “And, you know, they’re active nudists; they’re plastered all over the internet.”

  Even Taub’s sons have been known to be “just standing there, naked,” La Coste said, even in front of his 13-year-old niece.

  Psychedelic Experiences?

  La Coste also said he found it strange that Taub was enamored of a psychoactive substance called ibogaine—which she would go to Mexico to obtain and then frequently offered to others, including him.

  Ibogaine is found in the African rainforest shrub known as Tabernanthe Iboga. “It is unlicensed but used in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction,” according to a 2016 report in the National Library of Medicine. “However, reports of ibogaine’s toxicity are cause for concern.”

  Asked to respond to La Coste’s statements about ibogaine, Dobbins acknowledged that his client testified about the drug during her trial last year, and acknowledged that she tried to offer it to the young man she was hanging around.

  

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 21:40

• October Payrolls Preview: Expect Another Slowdown But Not Enough; Market Scenario Analysis
  October Payrolls Preview: Expect Another Slowdown But Not Enough; Market Scenario Analysis

  It’s only appropriate that one day after we saw a veritable cornucopia of mass layoff announcements…

  Layoffs announced in the last day:

  – Lyft 13% of workers
  – Opendoor 18%
  – Stripe 14%
  – Chime 12%
  – Twitter 50%
  – Morgan Stanley (% unknown)

  — Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA (@GRDecter) November 3, 2022

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

  … and on the same day that Elon Musk will fire half of Twitter employees, that the Bureau of Lies (sic) and Statistics will come up with the most grotesque “seasonal adjustment” yet, and claim that some 200K jobs were created in the US, or at least that’s what the median Wall Street consensus is; the actual reported number will likely be just fractionally below this estimate to make it seem “credible.” Alas, a representation of the actual US economic reality won’t be available until the first Friday of December, with the midterm elections now in the rearview mirror, when the BLS will have no choice but to aggressively start catching down to what the jobs number is, including aggressive prior revisions (which by then nobody will care about), in a month that will be seen as a watershed “kitchen sinking” of data, and which will furiously reprice the Fed’s hiking intentions and terminal rate.

  But before we get there, we have tomorrow’s payrolls fairy tale to get through: in his preview of what’s in store, Goldman trader John Flood writes “TYVM to Jay Pow for somewhat derisking the jobs print tomorrow. Street is looking for +200k headline print (GIR +225k, last +263k), AHE MoM .3% (GIR .35%, last .35%), U/ E Rate 3.6% (GIR 3.5%, last 3.5%) and Labor Force Participation rate of 62.3% (GIR 62.3%, last 62.3%). We are still FIRMLY in a bad data is good for stocks and vice versa setup here (and will be for the foreseeable future).”

  The Goldman trader also adds that “weaker employment data should lift the S&P more than stronger data will hit it (I would not have said this before yesterday’s developments)”, and provides the following NFP matrix:

  • Goldilocks: <100k headline, AHE 3.6 and Labor Force Participation rate >62.3%. S&P quickly claws back 2+%
  • Worst Case: >300k headline, AHE >.3%, U/E <3.6% and LFP <62.3%. S&P down 1.5% in a straight line but some buyers step in at these levels.
  • Base Case: 175k – 225k headline, AHE .3%, U/E 3.6% and LFP 62.3%. S&P rallies 50 – 100bps.

  A more detailed look of what to expect courtesy of Newsquawk:

  • The rate of payrolls growth is expected to moderate in October, while the jobless rate is expected to rise a little.
  • Goldman estimates non-farm payrolls rose by 225k in October (mom sa), above consensus of +195k but a slowdown from the +263k pace in September.
  • There will be attention on the wages measures; any downside could give the Fed cover to downshift the pace of rate hikes in December.
  • A weak headline could also see calls for the Fed to slow its normalization become louder, as the central bank aggressively tightens policy into restrictive territory to cap inflation, particularly as politicians have an eye on the US midterm elections next week.
  • According to Goldman, labor demand remains elevated despite declining this year, and Big Data indicators generally point to above-consensus payroll gains. The bank also believes the exit of the youth summer workforce weighed on job growth in the September report, and the absence of that headwind argues for a pickup in some low-skill services categories. Generally, job growth tends to pick back up in October when the labor market is tight, as firms frontload autumn and pre-holiday hiring.

  Estimates:

  Consensus expects 200k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US Economy in October, moderating from the 263k rise seen in September. If the consensus expectation is realized, it would be beneath the three-, six- and 12-month averages (at 372k, 360k, 474k respectively).

  The unemployment rate is seen nudging up by one-tenth of a percentage point, taking it to 3.6%; there will be focus on the participation rate to see whether the rise is a function of returning workers (participation previously fell one-tenth to 32.3%, which helped bring the jobless rate down by two-tenths to 3.5%). The Fed’s September economic projections forecast the unemployment rate would rise to 3.8% by the end of this year, before picking up to 4.4% next year, though the updated projections still see the longer-run unemployment rate at 4.0%.

  Labor Market Proxies: Claims data for the week that coincides with the BLS’ reference period in its establishment survey saw initial jobless claims were ultimately little changed at 212,250k vs 215,750k in the reference week for the September jobs report. Similarly, continuing claims climbed a little between both of those windows, from 1.381mn to 1.388mln. In its flash purchasing managers data series for October, S&P Global said employment was broadly unchanged in the month, though the seasonally adjusted Employment Index was below the neutral 50.0 level for the first time since June 2020, driven by a fall in service sector staffing numbers, while manufacturers registered a slower pace of job creation. The ISM survey is also consistent with that view of a neutral labour market in October, with its manufacturing employment index rising from 48.7 to the neutral 50.0 level (note: the services ISM has not been released at the time this preview is being published). Meanwhile, ADP’s new gauge of national employment – which analysts continue to remain critical of given that it does not forecast the official data with any deal of success – was strong, seeing 239k payrolls added, topping expectations of 195k.

  Wages: Average hourly earnings are seen rising by 0.3% M/M in October, matching the pace from the September report; the annual measure is expected to ease to 4.7% Y/Y from 5.0% – that will be encouraging Fed officials who are lifting rates to combat inflation, particularly since some analysts say that base effects will support the annual measure in October. As a point of reference, the ADP’s data for October said pay growth eased again in October, and the momentum of gains for job changers was ebbing (for these workers, annual pay growth edged down for the third straight month, to 15.2% Y/Y from 15.7% in September); for job stayers, pay gains registered 7.7% in October, in line with recent months. That would be welcome news at Fed HQ, particularly after the recent quarterly Employment Cost Index data, which suggests that pay growth was still accelerating in Q3 by some measures. Meanwhile, average workweek hours are seen unchanged at 34.5hrs.

  Arguing for a stronger-than-expected report:

  • Tight labor markets. When the labor market is tight, job growth tends to slow in September and pick back up in October, as shown in Exhibit 1. The September tendency in part reflects the loss of the summer youth workforce, which in September 2022 contributed -128k to job growth according to the household survey (mom sa). The absence of this headwind argues for a pickup in some low-skill services categories in tomorrow’s report. Additionally, the tight labor market incentivizes firms to frontload autumn and pre-holiday hiring, given the likely difficulty of finding workers in November and December

  

  • Big Data. High-frequency data on the labor market were mixed in October but generally point to strong job growth, with three of the four measures available this month consistent with above-consensus payrolls (see Exhibit 2).

  

  • Job availability. JOLTS job openings rebounded by 0.4mn to 10.7mn workers in September, swinging from below to above the level implied by alternative data (see Exhibit 3). The labor market has likely continued to rebalance at a steady pace, in Goldman’s view. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those  saying jobs are hard to get— decreased substantially relative to September but remains at a high level (-5.6pt to +32.5)

  

  • ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report increased by 239k in October above expectations for 195k.

  Arguing for a weaker-than-expected report:

  • Employer surveys. The employment components of business surveys generally decreased in October. Our services employment survey tracker decreased by 0.7pt to 51.5 and our manufacturing survey employment tracker decreased by 0.2pt to 52.7.
  • Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas increased 7.6% month-over-month in October, following a 30.0% increase in September (SA by GS).

  Neutral/mixed factors:

  • Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims decreased during the October payroll month, averaging 212k per week vs. 220k in September. Residual seasonality (i.e., goalseeking) and other so-called “non-economic factors” explain much of the variation in initial claims over the last few months, and according to Goldman, “the overarching message from the jobless claims data is that layoff rates remained very low in Q3. Continuing claims in regular state programs increased 92k from survey week to survey week, although they may also be affected by residual seasonality.”

  Policy Implications: Recent reports indicate that the Fed may downshift to a slower pace of rate hikes from December onwards. However, for that to happen, officials have previously indicated that they would want to see meaningful progress in bringing inflation down. Accordingly, the wages data could be influential for the December debate (the market is currently shooting for 75bps in November, and then 50bps in December). This week, the latest JOLTs data (for September) showed a rise against expectations it would decline, and while that didn’t do much to change the narrative for the November FOMC meeting, expectations of where the eventual terminal rate will be moved hawkishly (the market now sees above 5.0% in May 2023, vs just above 4.8% a week earlier). On the other side of the coin, if the headline begins to show stress (for instance, if it were to come in towards the bottom, or below the 50-300k forecast range), it could reignite concerns regarding the economic slowdown, at a time when the Fed is tightening policy aggressively, which could lead to more calls for the Fed to slow the rate it is normalising policy, particularly from the political community given the US midterm elections next week. (Note: this preview is being published before the November FOMC meeting).

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 21:26

• Destroying Western Values To Defend Western Values
  Destroying Western Values To Defend Western Values

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  So it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the “cognitive infrastructure” of the population.

  

  This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the “retooling” of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” online.

  While the DHS’s hotly controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” was shut down in response to public outcry, the Intercept report reveals what authors Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein describe as “an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms” in order to “curb speech it considers dangerous”:

  According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

  Docs show Facebook and Twitter closely collaborating w/ Dept of Homeland Security, FBI to police “disinfo.” Plans to expand censorship on topics like withdrawal from Afghanistan, origins of COVID, info that undermines trust in financial institutions. https://t.co/Zb3zmI1dQF

  — Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022

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

  The report reveals pervasive efforts on the part of the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI, to push massive online platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to censor content in order to suppress “threats” as broad as fomenting distrust in the US government and US financial institutions.

  “There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use,” The Intercept reports.

  “Emails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the period leading up to November 2020,” says The Intercept. “Meeting notes show that the tech platforms would be called upon to ‘process reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.’”

  While these government agencies contend that they are not technically forcing these tech platforms to remove content, The Intercept argues that its investigation shows “CISA’s goal is to make platforms more responsive to their suggestions,” while critics argue that “suggestions” from immensely powerful institutions will never be taken as mere suggestions.

  “When the government suggests things, it’s not too hard to pull off the velvet glove, and you get the mail fist,” Michigan State University’s Adam Candeub tells The Intercept. “And I would consider such actions, especially when it’s bureaucratized, as essentially state action and government collusion with the platforms.”

  This is absolutely wild. The government is secretly transforming “national security” agencies into a new Narrative Police.

  “If a foreign government sent these messages,” said the former ACLU president, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”

  Read the story: https://t.co/9bMjDKSmcd

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 31, 2022

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  The current CISA chief is seen justifying this aggressive government thought policing by creepily referring to the means people use to gather information and form thoughts about the world as “our cognitive infrastructure”:

  Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.

  Another CISA official is seen suggesting the agency launder its manipulations through third party nonprofits “to avoid the appearance of government propaganda”:

  To accomplish these broad goals, the report said, CISA should invest in external research to evaluate the “efficacy of interventions,” specifically with research looking at how alleged disinformation can be countered and how quickly messages spread. Geoff Hale, the director of the Election Security Initiative at CISA, recommended the use of third-party information-sharing nonprofits as a “clearing house for trust information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”

  But as a former ACLU president tells The Intercept, if this were happening in any government the US doesn’t like there’d be no qualms about calling it what it is:

  “If a foreign authoritarian government sent these messages,” noted Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”

  Indeed, this report is just another example of the way western powers are behaving more and more like the autocracies they claim to despise, all in the name of preserving the values the west purports to uphold. As The Intercept reminds us, this business of the US government assigning itself the responsibility of regulating America’s “cognitive infrastructure” originated with the “allegation that Russian agents had seeded disinformation on Facebook that tipped the 2016 election toward Donald Trump.” To this day that agenda continues to expand into things like plots to censor speech about the war in Ukraine.

  [Thread]

  Hundreds of former agents of a notorious Israeli spying organization are now working in key positions at the world’s biggest tech/comms corporations, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

  My new investigation for @MintPressNews: https://t.co/blv2ieGOmS

  — Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 31, 2022

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

  Other examples of this trend coming out at the same time include Alan MacLeod’s new report with Mintpress News that hundreds of former agents from the notorious Israeli spying organization Unit 8200 are now working in positions of influence at major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon (just the latest in MacLeod’s ongoing documentation of the way intelligence insiders have been increasingly populating the ranks of Silicon Valley platforms), and the revelation that The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté were barred from participating in a Web Summit conference due to pressure from the Ukrainian government.

  We’re destroying western values to defend western values. To win its much-touted struggle of “democracies vs autocracies”, western civilization is becoming more and more autocratic. Censoring more. Trolling more. Propagandizing more. Jailing journalists. Becoming less and less transparent. Manipulating information and people’s understanding of truth.

  We’re told we need to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to preserve western values of freedom and democracy, and in order to facilitate that aim we’re getting less and less free speech. Less and less free thought. Less and less free press. Less and less democracy.

  I keep thinking of the (fictional) story where during World War II Winston Churchill is advised to cut funding for the arts to boost military funding, and he responds, “Then what are we fighting for?” If we need to sacrifice everything we claim to value in order to fight for those values, what are we fighting for?

  Dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. Public discourse is being more and more aggressively disrupted by the powerful. We’re being shaped into the exact sort of homogeneous, power-serving, tyrannized, propagandized population that our leaders criticize other nations for having.

  Any journalists or press freedom advocates out there care about a US gov’t ally, Ukraine, pressuring a media conference to cancel two journalists? https://t.co/sPwaQAIiTV

  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 31, 2022

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

  If the powerful are becoming more tyrannical in order to fight tyranny, what’s probably actually happening is that they are just tyrants making up excuses to do the thing they’ve always wanted to do.

  As westerners in “liberal democracies” we are told that our society holds free speech, free thought and accountability for the powerful as sacrosanct.

  Our leaders are showing us that this is a lie.

  The problem with “western values” is that the west doesn’t value them.

  In reality, those who best exemplify “western values” as advertised are the ones who are being most aggressively silenced and marginalized by western powers. The real journalists. The dissidents. The skeptics. The free thinkers. The peace activists. Those who refuse to bow down to their rulers.

  Our ongoing descent into tyranny in the name of opposing tyrants calls forth a very simple question: if defeating autocracy requires becoming an autocracy, what’s the point of defeating autocracy?

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 21:00

• "Here We Go Again:" Out-Of-Control Chinese Rocket Expected To Crash On Friday
  “Here We Go Again:” Out-Of-Control Chinese Rocket Expected To Crash On Friday

  “Here we go again,” Ted Muelhaupt, a reentry and debris expert at The Aerospace Corporation, told reporters at a press briefing Wednesday. For the fourth time, China’s Long March 5B core stage will make an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on Friday. 

  The Aerospace Corporation’s latest update on the predicted reentry time of the Long March 5B core stage is for Friday at 1356 ET (early afternoon):

  “Our latest prediction for rocket body reentry is: 04 Nov 2022 17:56 UTC ± 6 hours Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint.”

  Our latest prediction for #CZ5B rocket body reentry is:
  🚀04 Nov 2022 17:56 UTC ± 6 hours
  Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow here for updates: https://t.co/KZZ9Lh2VoU pic.twitter.com/IlnUTP1iX9

  — The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) November 3, 2022

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

  Here’s debris modeling of where the booster could land. 

  

  On Monday, China’s most powerful rocket carried the third and final module for the Chinese Tiangong space station into low-Earth orbit. “Because this core stage lacks the capability to relight its engines for a controlled reentry into a desolate part of the world’s oceans, the rocket could ultimately come back anywhere in the tropics and most of the mid-latitudes of the planet,” Ars Technica said. 

  Muelhaupt noted the individual risk to anyone struck by debris is extremely low:

  “You’re 80,000 times more likely to get hit by lightning,” he said. “Nobody has to alter their lives because of this unless you’re a first responder.”

  Over the last five decades, this booster ranks as the sixth largest uncontrolled reentry. 

  

  On the three previous launches of the Long March 5B booster (2020, 2021, and 2022), the boosters fell back to Earth but did not cause any damage to building structures or injure anyone. 

  It’s anyone’s guess where the booster will land tomorrow. We’re sure US officials will release statements saying how reckless the Chinese are in their space ambitions. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 20:40

• Beauty Pageant's Rejection Of Transgender Women Is Legal, Appeals Court Rules
  Beauty Pageant’s Rejection Of Transgender Women Is Legal, Appeals Court Rules

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Miss United States of America is legally able to reject men who claim that they’re women, an appeals court has ruled.

  

  The beauty pageant’s “natural born female” requirement conveys a message and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment gives the pageant the ability to voice that message and enforce the rule, Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote in a Nov. 2 ruling.

  “Forcing the Pageant to accept Green as a participant would fundamentally alter the Pageant’s expressive message in direct violation of the First Amendment,” VanDyke wrote for the majority of a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

  The ruling was against Anita Noelle Green, a biological male who identifies as transgender and sued Miss United States of America in 2019, alleging the pageant violated an Oregon law called the Oregon Public Accommodations Act (OPAA) by rejecting Green’s application to participate in the pageant.

  The appeals court upheld a 2021 ruling from U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman, a George W. Bush appointee.

  VanDyke was joined by Circuit Judge Carlos Bea, a George W. Bush appointee.

  Circuit Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee, dissented.

  Graber said it wasn’t clear whether the Oregon law applies to the pageant because the law only applies to businesses that have membership policies “so unselective that the organization can fairly be said to offer its services to the public.” The lack of clarity means the district court should have allowed discovery or briefing on the matter, she said.

  “In sum, by assuming that the statute applies to Defendant—an assumption that is not definitively supported by the extant record—the majority risks issuing an unconstitutional advisory opinion and flouts a longstanding tradition of judicial restraint in the federal courts,” Graber argued.

  “Applying our ordinary rule of constitutional avoidance, I would vacate the judgment and remand this case to the district court to determine whether the OPAA applies to Defendant before we address any constitutional concerns regarding the application of the statute.”

  Graber also said the Oregon law “neither improperly compels speech nor violates the owner’s freedom of association.”

  VanDyke authored a concurring opinion to address the dissent, finding that the pageant is protected by the First Amendment from both compelled speech and forced association.

  He referenced a previous Supreme Court ruling that enabled the Boy Scouts to exclude a gay leader because including him would “interfere with the Boy Scouts’ choice not to propound a point of view contrary to its beliefs.”

  “The case before us is not meaningfully distinguishable,” he said. Green identifies as a transgender woman and an activist who has talked about using pageant platforms to deliver a message that runs against Miss United States of America’s beliefs.

  “The Pageant expresses its message through its contestants—both by those who compete and those who ultimately succeed,” VanDyke said. “And the Pageant has actively and consistently enforced its eligibility requirements precisely over a concern about protecting its message. The forced inclusion of a male would therefore directly impact the Pageant’s message in a way fundamentally at odds with the Pageant’s views on womanhood.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 20:20

• 20-Pound Turkeys Will Be In Shorty Supply Ahead Of Thanksgiving, Warns US Gov't
  20-Pound Turkeys Will Be In Shorty Supply Ahead Of Thanksgiving, Warns US Gov’t

  Axios quoted US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who warned in a call with reporters that avian influenza or bird flu continues to wreak havoc on the poultry industry and could result in a massive shortage of big birds at supermarkets ahead of Thanksgiving. 

  Vilsack said finding 20-pound turkeys at supermarkets in some regions across the country could be very challenging. 

  “Some of the turkeys that are being raised right now for Thanksgiving may not have the full amount of time to get to 20 pounds,” he said, while addressing the Biden administration’s concerns on elevated food inflation.  

  Vilsack said supermarkets should be well stocked with turkeys but finding a traditional-size one (15-20 pounds) in the next two weeks will be difficult: “It’s going to be there, maybe smaller, but it’ll be there.”

  

  The primary reason behind tightening supplies of big birds is the surge in avian influenza at commercial farms this year has led to the culling of more than eight million turkeys. In total, including chickens and turkeys, and other birds, 47.7 million birds have been killed across the country this year. 

  Tighter supplies mean consumers can expect to pay $1.47 per pound this holiday season compared with $1.15 last year. On Thursday morning, Walmart released a statement that it would roll back the prices of turkeys to help consumers this holiday season amid the worst inflation in decades.

  On the retailer’s website, turkey prices have been halved. But not all consumers shop at Walmart (or maybe they soon will) and will pay the highest cost ever for Thanksgiving items. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 20:00

• China, Russia, And Iran Seek To Influence 2022 Midterm Elections: Cybersecurity Chief
  China, Russia, And Iran Seek To Influence 2022 Midterm Elections: Cybersecurity Chief

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  State actors that include China’s communist regime are seeking to influence next week’s U.S. midterm elections, according to the nation’s cybersecurity chief.

  

  China, Iran, and Russia may all seek to influence or otherwise interfere with U.S. democratic processes, according to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly.

  “We are concerned about Russia and Iran and China trying to influence our elections,” Easterly said during a Nov. 1 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

  “It’s a significant concern when you think about these adversaries who are trying to sow discord, that are trying to break us apart as Americans and are trying to undermine integrity in our elections.”

  Easterly’s comments follow closely behind several revelations in recent months regarding how hostile foreign powers are attempting to undermine stability in the United States.

  Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said in September that it had disrupted several Chinese and Russian influence operations. Those operations took place on Facebook, Instagram, and Meta competitor Twitter, and appeared largely aimed at increasing political polarization among Americans by spreading false and inflammatory posts about controversial topics including race, abortion, fascism, and gun control.

  Likewise, a report published in October by intelligence firm Recorded Future found that China-based actors were attempting to influence the Nov. 8 midterm elections by undermining confidence in lawmakers who were critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and in the U.S. system of government itself.

  Yet another report by nonprofit Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) team at New York University asserted that social media giant TikTok failed to prevent 90 percent of political ads with misleading or blatantly false election information, even as the company claims it doesn’t allow any political advertising.

  Easterly said the need to maintain strong cyber defenses against such operations is critical, and that the United States would need to be prepared for activity designed to cause instability.

  “It’s not the time to put our shields down,” she said. “We need to be prepared for potential disruptive [and] destructive activity.”

  “That’s what foreign adversaries want. They want to have disruption. They want to sow discord. They love the partisan rancor. They love the tearing apart of America.”

  Easterly, who served 20 years as a U.S. Army officer, said that there were no credible or specific threats to election infrastructure now, but the types of influence operations seen recently could contribute to the growing number of other threats being made against Americans attempting to conduct the elections.

  From physical intimidation to threats to misinformation, Easterly said the threat environment facing everyday Americans who work at the polls is more complex than ever.

  To that end, Easterly said that securing elections is a nonpartisan activity, and Americans need to work together to protect the American way of life by increasing election literacy and ensuring safe and resilient conditions for poll workers.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 19:40

• "Pivotal Moment" – JPMorgan Completes First DeFi Trade On Public Blockchain
  “Pivotal Moment” – JPMorgan Completes First DeFi Trade On Public Blockchain

  Despite Jamie Dimon’s infamous condescension of crypto, banking giant JPMorgan just executed its first-ever cross-border transaction using decentralized finance (DeFi) on a public blockchain.

  

  As Cointelegraph reports, the trade was facilitated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian on Nov. 2 – which was established as part of a pilot program to “explore potential decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in wholesale funding markets.”

  Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan issued tokenized S$100,000 ($71,000) and then traded it for tokenized yen with Tokyo-based banking firm SBI Digital Asset Holdings.

  Singapore’s largest bank – DBS Bank, and business leadership platform Oliver Wyman Forum also took part in the pilot program.

  “Today was the first step to show that we can actually trade on these public networks,” said Tyrone Lobban, head of Blockchain Launch and Onyx Digital Assets at JPMorgan, in an interview.

  “The future is really working toward scaling this pivotal moment.”

  WORLD! J.P. Morgan has executed its 1st *LIVE* trade on public blockchain using DeFi, Tokenized Deposits & Verifiable Credentials, part of @MAS_sg Project Guardian 🙌🚀🔥https://t.co/XI212SG4zg Many world 1sts here, & since this is public ⛓ here’s a transparent🧵on what we did:

  — Ty Lobban (@TyLobban) November 2, 2022

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  “We clearly see what’s happening in the public domain and we can see how the innovation is creating not only new ways of doing financial transactions, but new types of products as well,” Lobban said, noting that the bank will explore using other blockchain networks over time, he added.

  MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty said the successful test was a “a big step towards enabling more efficient and integrated global financial networks”, and the latest pilot has helped develop the country’s digital asset strategy, adding that:

  “The live pilots led by industry participants demonstrate that with the appropriate guardrails in place, digital assets and decentralized finance have the potential to transform capital markets.”

  While the transaction wasn’t a crypto trade, it used the infrastructure developed by crypto firms: the Polygon blockchain, which makes transactions on the Ethereum blockchain cheaper, and a modified version of Aave, a major DeFi lending project.

  MATIC, a utility and staking token within the Polygon blockchain ecosystem, rose over 18% to $0.985 after the announcements, accompanied by an uptick in daily trading volume.

  

  Additionally, Goldman Sachs is set to unveil a data service created with global index provider MSCI and crypto data firm Coin Metrics that seeks to classify hundreds of digital coins and tokens so institutional investors can make sense of the new asset class.

  “The digital asset ecosystem has really expanded over the last couple of years,” said Anne Marie Darling, head of client strategy for Goldman’s Marquee platform, in an interview with CNBC.

  “We’re trying to create a framework for the digital asset ecosystem that our clients can understand, because they increasingly need to think about performance tracking and risk management in digital assets.”

  It seems the bulge bracket banks are starting to realize there may be ‘another way’. Are they readying themselves for a pivoting Fed’s money flood sending crypto prices soaring as institutional investors seek any haven from the central planners’ inflation?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 19:20

• "If You Believe…"
  “If You Believe…”

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  If you believed they put a man on the moon

  Man on the moon

  If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve

  Then nothing is cool

  REM – Man on the Moon

  The REM song Man on the Moon, released in 1992, is a haunting melancholy tune, with Andy Kaufmann and his life and death as the focal point. For me, the lyrics always bring me back to the simpler time of my youth, when our antenna TV could get about eight channels, we had one rotary phone, one old used station wagon, lived in a row home, and a family of five could be raised on a truck driver’s income, with a stay-at-home mom.

  

  It’s the references to the Game of Life, Risk, Monopoly, Twister, checkers, and chess, which invoke what we did for fun when we weren’t out riding bikes, playing stick-ball, roller hockey, or touch football in the streets. Were bad things going on in the world? Sure. The Vietnam War, Watergate, gasoline shortages and rationing, stagflation, and a myriad of other damaging challenges confronted the country, just as they always have throughout history.

  One of the supposed historic moments in human history was the moon landing in July 1969, when I was six years old. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the TV and thinking how cool it was and how cool that I was allowed up at 11:00 pm to watch it. Another 600 million people were also watching. At the time, no one questioned what they were watching live on their TVs. It was the penultimate human achievement, with the goal set by JFK during Camelot before he was murdered by his own government, proving our technological superiority to the evil Soviets. To fail in this mission would have been too embarrassing to the leaders of our empire, only two decades into its infancy. I believed the official narrative up until a few years ago.

  I don’t know whether Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landing on a movie set, or some other scenario, but my skepticism is based on something rather mundane. TV technology in 1969 was poor. Picture quality from stations a few miles across town were bad. The moon is 239,000 miles from earth. How could they have landed on the moon and broadcast live video that was as clear as if you were watching a TV show, when surveillance camera video in 2022, 53 years later can’t even reveal who placed those pipe bombs around Washington DC on January 5th, 2020.

  

  The government, their media mouthpieces, and most certainly the plethora of alphabet agencies wielding the real power (CIA, FBI, DHS, etc.) in D.C. created the term “conspiracy theorists” as a way to cover up their diabolical Deep State plots to rule the world from behind the curtain. The CIA coined the term in the wake of the JFK assassination as a method to discredit critical thinking Americans who questioned the validity of the Warren Report and the government cover-up of JFK’s murder by rogue elements of the U.S. government.

  This was not the beginning of manipulation of the public mind by men we have never heard of. As expounded by the master of propaganda, Edward Bernays, the manipulation was already taking place during the 1920s. With the advent of mass media technology, the ability of these malevolent Svengalis to sway the masses towards believing whatever narrative they spin has expanded exponentially.

  “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda – 1928

  Many of REM’s songs have a word salad feel to them, but bassist Mike Mills described how singer and lyricist Michael Stipe “came up this beautiful lyric that encompasses doubt, belief, transition, conspiracy and truth”. The title of the song and the lyric “if you believe” are ambiguous and can be interpreted by believers and non-believers. Those referred to as conspiracy theorists, the favorite term of the Deep State acolytes and their legacy media propaganda outlets, feel vindicated by the lyrics, while those who believe everything fed to them by their overlords believe the lyrics are making fun of conspiracy theorists.

  I was twenty-nine years old in 1992, newly married, one year before the birth of our first child, working on getting my MBA at night, trying to move up the corporate ladder, and still ignorant of how the world was run by unseen men functioning as an invisible government.

  I’ve always had a skeptical nature and knew in my teens that JFK was not killed by a lone gunman in the Book Depository building, but the hustle and bustle of life kept me from examining so called “conspiracy theories” on a deeper level. Through the 90s I was busy raising a family, working long hours, paying a mortgage, auto loans, tuition bills, and sports fees for my three boys. There was no time to breathe, let alone examine the truth behind how the world functioned.

  9/11 changed all that. Something didn’t add up. Somehow the 341- page Patriot Act, creating a new agency and numerous new unlawful governmental powers, was supposedly written, and voted on within four weeks of 9/11. Only three Republicans voted against the bill – including Ron Paul, who I had never heard of at the time. The unwarranted invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on lies and propaganda, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  

  I began to read anti-establishment blogs and investigated the stories being peddled by the government, media, and Wall Street. I started reading articles and books by the likes of Ron Paul and other opponents of neocons, the Fed, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street cabal, propaganda spewing MSM, and the Deep State. I turned myself from a naïve member of the ignorant masses into an anti-government libertarian anarchist, who hasn’t believed a word uttered by any politician, MSM talking head, celebrity, or Wall Street beholden toady in the last sixteen years.

  By early 2008 I was writing articles and sending Op-Eds to my local newspapers. During the summer of 2008 I was writing articles on Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense predicting a banking crisis, financial system meltdown and global recession. Shortly thereafter, Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense began censoring my articles and my “conspiracy theorist” credentials were minted.

  I have believed less and less of what they have been selling as the years have progressed, opening my mind to the likelihood those who control the levers of society do not have my best interests at heart and are solely driven by a carnivorous desire for wealth, power, and control over the masses. I now approach life with an eyes wide open skepticism of everything and everyone. I’m not a pessimist, but a realist who only trusts data I can replicate, facts I can substantiate, and people who make cogent fact-based arguments without a bias influenced by money.

  The world is a scary place and the men constituting the “invisible government”, pulling the strings, and using their limitless wealth to buy off politicians, the media, the entertainment industry, academia, the medical industry, and so called “experts”, are satanically driven by their seemingly insatiable thirst for ruling the world. They believe their ends always justify their means. These sociopathic bastards don’t care how many people they kill or how many lives they financially ruin in their relentless pursuit of mammon. They proclaim themselves to be gods, based on the power they can wield through their ill-gotten wealth. Their arrogance and hubris know no bounds.

  

  We are currently living in an Age of Mass Deceit not seen before in human history. The advent of advanced technology and instant mass media messaging has provided these evil fiends with the means to spin their web of lies and essentially brain wash and /or terrify the ignorant masses into doing whatever they are told. The last few years have proven these psychological propaganda techniques, applied through the use of mass media, bought off politicians and “experts”, and a compliant sheep-like populace dumbed down by decades of government school indoctrination, has essentially destroyed western civilization, with the denouement of global war and depopulation of the planet still playing out.

  As it turns out, “conspiracy theorists” like me and a slew of other critical thinking individuals, have turned out to be right on just about everything we have been saying for the last fourteen or so years. The Deep State acts as if disinformation, as defined by those engineering the false narratives, is a threat to the nation and has colluded with the MSM, Facebook, Twitter, and Google to suppress any alternative viewpoints, censor those who can disprove their narratives, and de-platform anyone who dares question their authority and approved storyline. DHS and the social media tyrants coordinated to throw a presidential election, which is a traitorous act and would be prosecuted in a law-abiding system.

  During the Covid scamdemic, they achieved the goal set by CIA head William Casey in 1981. Everything the American public believed since March 2020 was false. Some people seem to be wakening from their mass psychosis formation stupor, but it may be too late. The damage is done, and the tens of millions of psychologically broken individuals are still malleable material for the Deep State.

  

  We are nothing more than disposable pieces on a game board to those calling the shots and running the show. The game of Risk has taken on a new meaning from what I knew in my youth. There is now a new narrative being spun, where all the tyrants who demanded subservience to all government dictates, lockdowns, masking, social distancing, and being coerced into becoming guinea pigs for an untested, experimental, Big Pharma enriching gene altering therapy disguised and sold as a vaccine under threat of losing your livelihood, want dispensation and forgiveness for their crimes.

  You weren’t allowed to say goodbye to your loved ones or attend their funerals, but the chosen ones dined at extravagant restaurants and allowed liquor stores and Wal-Mart to stay open. Your small business was destroyed, while Amazon made billions.

  These murderous hypocrites killed thousands of seniors by knowingly putting infected patients into old age homes, killed thousands more by putting treatable patients on ventilators and Fauci’s remdesivir, killed thousands more by not allowing safe and effective treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to be prescribed by doctors, and have killed and injured thousands more by forcing a dangerous Big Pharma toxic concoction on tens of millions through threats, mandates and a never ending stream of lies. All for a flu with a miniscule fatality rate for those under 85 years old and not morbidly obese. This was the biggest scam in human history, perpetrated by Gates, Fauci, Schwab and their willing co-conspirator minions in the media, medical industry, and government.

  

  These “experts” seeking forgiveness because they were just caught up in the “hysteria” of the moment weren’t wrong. They were lying from the outset and need to pay dearly for their crimes against humanity. Nuremberg 2.0 is the only thing that will satisfy myself and all the other dissenters who risked their livelihoods by refusing to go along. We were scorned, ridiculed, ostracized, censored, fired, de-platformed, wished dead by the authoritarian minded sheep who demanded compliance, and treated like outcasts by family members who believed the narrative hook, line and sinker.

  I don’t believe. I think. And I don’t forget or forgive these feckless tin pot dictators. They have shown their colors and now that the tide seems to be turning, we must channel our inner Conan the Barbarian. We need to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentation of their women.

  They pushed their agenda too far and too fast out of desperation, as the financial underpinnings of their fake world order began to strain and crumble. This desperation exposed their blatant lies to a vast array of critical thinkers across the world who have not been deterred in exposing the falsehoods on social media, blogs, and free speech websites. When the truth was censored and suppressed on Youtube, alternatives like Rumble, Bitchute, and Odysee sprung to life. When Facebook and Twitter banned truth tellers, new platforms like Gab and Truth Social were created.

  

  Writers and doctors silenced by social media platforms, like Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson, Robert Malone, and many others gravitated to the free speech forum of Substack where they are free to speak the truth and earn money through voluntary subscriptions. If Elon Musk follows through on his promises, Twitter will once again become a free speech forum rather than the social media censorship arm of the Democratic Party and the Deep State.

  I am under no illusions that the Republicans regaining the House and Senate next week will change the direction of the country. It would just be a speed bump temporarily slowing down our descent into the abyss. The Uniparty in DC, where both sides agree 80% of the time on frivolous spending, never ending wars, debasement of our currency, and limiting the rights of citizens, will continue to be funded and controlled by Soros, Gates, and other shady billionaires operating in smoky rooms where your opinions are not sought. The authoritarians will not yield without a fight. This sign in the upscale Capital section of D.C. on Halloween tells you everything you need to know about these brain damaged loons. They remain your enemy.

  

  If you still believe JFK was assassinated by a lone gunman; the official story of what really happened on 9/11; that Epstein killed himself and numerous celebrities, politicians, and financiers aren’t pedophiles; the Federal Reserve isn’t controlled by Wall Street; Klaus Schwab and his WEF acolytes are not trying to Reset the world where you will eat bugs, own nothing, and be happy; Bill Gates is not creating viruses and investing in vaccine makers, while buying up farmland, as part of his dream to decrease the “surplus” population; Soros is not funding the election of communists whose sole purpose is to destroy the cities and states they are running; scientific experts like Fauci are not swayed by the vast amounts of money they are paid by Big Pharma to fake their research and ignore the deaths from these products; Covid was not the weaponization of the annual flu with a billion dollar marketing campaign used to implement government control of the population, which will be expanded during the next engineered crisis; January 6th was an armed insurrection; Putin is literally Hitler and the U.S. did not blow up the Nordstream pipelines while waging a proxy war against Russia; a drug addict nudist from Berkley with a pride flag and BLM flag hanging outside his dilapidated bus is a MAGA underwear terrorist and not a male prostitute picked up by Paul Pelosi; and the Democrats are not cheating again in these 2022 mid-term elections, you are the real conspiracy theorists.

  

  The believers choose to willfully ignore the facts either because they are deliberately obtuse as a mechanism to combat their cognitive dissonance, or they are compensated to support and perpetuate the false narratives of their ruling overlords. I understand my opinions and writings are nothing but a drop in the ocean as this tsunami rush towards our shores. But I will continue to fight for what I believe and will not bend the knee to the malicious forces who hate me and everything I stand for. I urge everyone to heed the wisdom of two of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century and do your utmost to keep the truth alive.

  

  *  *  *
  It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can’t do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 19:00

• Chinese EV Battery Giant CATL Is Making A Global Expansion Push
  Chinese EV Battery Giant CATL Is Making A Global Expansion Push

  EV battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) is growing its global expansion yet again.

  The world’s largest EV battery producer, which had announced a $233 million factory in Germany back in 2018, has made several moves this year to increase its global footprint. Over the summer, it announced it would be building a $7.2 billion factory in Hungary. Now, plans for a factory in Mexico are also being finalized, according to Caixin. 

  The report also says that the manufacturer could be looking to expand with plants in the U.S. and Indonesia. 

  CATL was barely founded a decade ago, in 2011, but caught the tremendous wave of the EV industry in China (and its related subsidies). As the report notes, the company caught the government subsidy tailwind in 2015 and never looked back:

  In 2015, CATL was included on a government list of EV-battery makers which carmakers had to source from to be eligible for subsidies. This narrowing of the field of competition helped the company hoover up the business from domestic and international carmakers riding the wave of growth. For example, CATL was chosen to be Volkswagen’s sole battery supplier in the country, CEO Matthias Muller told Caixin in early 2018.

  CATL was able to seize this opportunity in part by achieving technological breakthroughs which made its products more competitive than its rivals. The company pioneered the use of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Though these batteries are safer, they have lower energy density, meaning that EVs powered by such batteries have lower driving range compared to those using nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) batteries. But CATL managed to improve their density by redesigning the battery packs with fewer parts.

  

  CATL’s lead among the Chinese EV market is starting to slip, dropping to 47% market share in the first 8 months of this year from 50% in 2020, the report noted. China Aviation Lithium Battery Co. Ltd. (CALB) and BYD are two major competitors in China. 

  A source told Caixin that the company’s outlook on the industry is  “you either forge ahead or drift downstream.” The company will face substantial competitive forces in places like South Korea and Japan, and will have to navigate geopolitical crosswinds when attempting to enter markets like Germany and the U.S. The company is looking to upgrade its product lineup in Germany, the report says. 

  Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act “includes provisions that stipulate EV-makers must source batteries domestically to enjoy subsidies” and in Europe, “stringent environmental rules could also present challenges”. 

  But CATL has already started to make inroads with EV companies outside of China. For example, Tesla announced last October that it would use CATL’s batteries in its cars delivered to global consumers, not just for cars in China. Ford announced in July that it would “import LFP batteries from CATL for its North American electric pickup trucks and SUVs”, Caixin wrote. 

  Liu Yanlong, general secretary at China Industrial Association of Power Sources, concluded: “By setting up production facilities, battery companies can better serve clients at their proximity by reducing costs of transportation and other logistics.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 18:40

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