Today’s News 5th December 2022

• China Operating Illegal Police Stations Worldwide
  China Operating Illegal Police Stations Worldwide

  Authored by Judith Bergman via the Gatestone Institute,

  • China has set up at least 54 overseas police stations in 30 countries, including in the United States (New York), Canada, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria, according to a recent report from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO.

  • The police stations are part of China’s campaign to “persuade” Chinese citizens suspected of criminal acts – particularly telecommunications fraud, but also political “crimes” such as political dissent – to return to China to face criminal prosecution. China not only threatens the Chinese citizens themselves but also members of their families who have stayed behind in China. Such threats have been continuing for years, as FBI Director Christopher Wray pointed out in 2020, when he mentioned a case from the US in which a Chinese government “emissary” visited a target in the US and told him that he could choose between returning to China or committing suicide.

  • China’s overseas police stations purport merely to have administrative or consular functions, but function as means of threatening Chinese abroad to return to China, thereby skipping the necessary legal requirements under international law.

  • Crucially, the police stations operate without the consent and knowledge of the host countries, such as in the Netherlands, where one of the police stations operates out of a plain ground-floor apartment in Rotterdam belonging to a small Chinese handyman business.

  • Beijing, not surprisingly, has denied all wrongdoing. “The organizations you mentioned are not police stations or police service centers,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian Zhao insisted. “Their activities are to assist local Chinese citizens who need to apply for expired driver’s license renewal online….”

  • Safeguard Defenders has appealed to countries to take swift action against the police stations.

  • “Action needs also be taken to protect a quickly growing Chinese diaspora in the target countries, unless the latter are content with having a foreign government police minority groups on their territory, often to the intentional detriment of the target country and its policies, and aimed at intimidating the diaspora into obedience to the CCP anywhere in the world. Dedicated reporting and protection mechanisms must urgently be made available.” – Safeguard Defenders, January 18, 2022.

  

  China has set up at least 54 overseas police stations in 30 countries, including in the United States (New York), Canada, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria, according to a recent report from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO. Most of these police stations are located in Europe, with nine such police stations in major Spanish cities, four in Italy, and three in Paris, among others.

  According to Peter Dahlin, director of Safeguard Defenders, those are just the tip of the iceberg:

  “We are convinced that there are many more, because these only belong to two jurisdictions – Fuzhou and Qingtian, where most of the Chinese in Spain come from – and China itself admits that it has launched the project in ten. So it could be up to five times more.”

  The police stations are part of China’s campaign to “persuade” Chinese citizens suspected of criminal acts – particularly telecommunications fraud, but also political “crimes” such as political dissent – to return to China to face criminal prosecution. China not only threatens the Chinese citizens themselves but also members of their families who have stayed behind in China. Such threats have been continuing for years, as FBI Director Christopher Wray pointed out in 2020, when he mentioned a case from the US in which a Chinese government “emissary” visited a target in the US and told him that he could choose between returning to China or committing suicide.

  On August 17, China’s Ministry of Public Security stated:

  “The number of cross-border telecom fraud cases targeting Chinese residents has been significantly decreased in China, with 230,000 telecom fraud suspects being educated and persuaded to return to China from overseas to confess crimes from April 2021 to July 2022…”

  “Official guidelines explicitly outline the different tools made available to ‘persuade’ the targets to voluntarily return to China to face charges,” Safeguard Defenders wrote.

  “These include targeting the purported suspects’ children in China, denying them the right to education, as well as targeting family members and relatives in a similar fashion. In short, a full-on ‘guilt by association’ punishment to ‘encourage’ suspects to return from abroad.”

  China’s overseas police stations purport merely to have administrative or consular functions, but function as means of threatening Chinese abroad to return to China, thereby skipping the necessary legal requirements under international law. According to Safeguard Defenders:

  “These methods allow the CCP and their security organs to circumvent normal bilateral mechanisms of police and judicial cooperation, thereby severely undermining the international rule of law and territorial integrity of the third countries involved… In eschewing regular cooperation mechanisms, the CCP manages to avoid the growing scrutiny of its human rights record and the ensuing difficulties faced in obtaining the return of ‘fugitives’ through legal proceedings such as formal extradition requests. It leaves legal Chinese residents abroad fully exposed to extra-legal targeting by the Chinese police, with little to none of the protection theoretically ensured under both national and international law…

  “Openly labeled as overseas police service stations… for example in renewing Chinese driver’s licenses remotely and other tasks traditionally considered of a consular nature… [the stations] also serve a more sinister goal as they contribute to ‘resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese.'”

  The police stations are obviously also used to target Chinese abroad who disagree with the regime.

  “One of the aims of these campaigns, obviously, as it is to crack down on dissent, is to silence people,” Laura Harth, a campaign director with Safeguard Defenders said. “So people are afraid. People that are being targeted, that have family members back in China, are afraid to speak out.”

  Crucially, the police stations operate without the consent and knowledge of the host countries, such as in the Netherlands, where one of the police stations operates out of a plain ground-floor apartment in Rotterdam belonging to a small Chinese handyman business. Several countries, such as Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, Portugal and Spain, are now investigating the matter and some have already demanded the closure of the Chinese overseas police stations on their soil.

  “[We] have asked the Chinese ambassador for full clarification on the so-called police service stations carrying out tasks in the Netherlands on behalf of the Chinese government,” Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra wrote on Twitter.

  “As no permission was sought from the Netherlands for this, the ministry has informed the ambassador that the stations must close immediately. In addition, the Netherlands itself is also investigating the stations to find out their exact activities.”

  In the US, FBI Director FBI director Christopher Wray said that the FBI was investigating the matter.

  “We are aware of the existence of these stations. To me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.”

  Wray added that the FBI was “looking into the legal parameters,” and stated that the FBI has opened charges related to Chinese government harassment, stalking, monitoring and blackmailing Chinese in the US who were critical of China’s President Xi Jinping.

  “It’s a real problem and something that we’re talking with our foreign partners about, as well, because we’re not the only country where this has occurred.”

  Beijing, not surprisingly, has denied all wrongdoing. “The organizations you mentioned are not police stations or police service centers,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian Zhao insisted.

  “Their activities are to assist local Chinese citizens who need to apply for expired driver’s license renewal online, and activities related to physical examination services by providing the venue.”

  Nevertheless, the Spanish newspaper El Correo quoted an unnamed official from the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Shanghai, who reportedly acknowledged that the police stations abroad are part of how China operates:

  “The bilateral treaties are very cumbersome, and Europe is reluctant to extradite to China. I do not see what is wrong with pressurizing criminals so that they are brought to justice.”

  Safeguard Defenders has appealed to countries to take swift action against the Chinese police stations.

  “We call on Members of Parliament to raise this issue with their Governments: ask if and how this practice is being monitored; to what extent such operations take place in their country, and what measures are being formulated to counter them. Action needs also be taken to protect a quickly growing Chinese diaspora in the target countries, unless the latter are content with having a foreign government police minority groups on their territory, often to the intentional detriment of the target country and its policies, and aimed at intimidating the diaspora into obedience to the CCP anywhere in the world. Dedicated reporting and protection mechanisms must urgently be made available.”

  Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

  • Follow Judith Bergman on Twitter

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 23:50

• "Utterly False": Musk Blasts New York Times For Hate Speech Report On Twitter
  “Utterly False”: Musk Blasts New York Times For Hate Speech Report On Twitter

  Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

  Twitter owner Elon Musk blasted a New York Times report claiming problematic content and hate speech was on an “unprecedented” rise on the platform following his takeover, countering earlier claims by the billionaire.

  

  According to findings by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League, and other groups, the NY Times reported that slurs against black Americans increased from 1,282 times a day to 3,876 times. Posts against gay men and Jews went from 2,506 times to 3,964, and 61 percent, respectively during the two weeks after Musk bought Twitter.

  Musk replied in a tweet that the report was “Utterly false.”

  The NY Times report has, till now, gotten over 44,000 likes, while the Musk response garnered 346,000 likes, and nearly 21,000 retweets.

  “Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in the report. “They have reacted accordingly.”

  The outlet said that accounts related to the terrorist group ISIS were coming back on the platform, along with QAnon supporters who have received verification symbols.

  “This reporting is such garbage,” said Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute.

  “The experience on Twitter is pretty much the same as it was before, plus a few ‘edgy’ accounts being reinstated. The left-wing journalists want to create a false narrative to justify more censorship. It’s transparent and pathetic.”

  Hate Speech on Twitter

  Musk has reiterated his view that hate speech will not be tolerated on the platform, and that there will be no “free-for-all hellscape” regarding speech. However, he has also upheld free speech on Twitter by uncensoring prominent conservative personalities like former president Donald Trump, investigative news organization Project Veritas, and satire site The Babylon Bee.

  This has irked many on the left who advocate for banning these accounts under the pretext of hate speech.

  “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law,” said Musk earlier in the year.

  “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

  In a Dec. 2 tweet, Musk said, “Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth! @TwitterSafety will publish data weekly. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity.”

  He added, “There are about 500M tweets per day & billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are <0.1% of what’s seen on Twitter!”

  European Backlash, Advertiser Boycott

  A senior European Union official issued a warning to Musk that Twitter could be blocked on the continent if it fails to comply with the bloc’s regulations.

  “There is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation, and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising,” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton told Musk, according to a readout of a call between the two had on Wednesday.

  The warning comes amid a pullback by advertising from investing on the platform. Major brands such as Jeep, Mars candy, cereal maker Kellogg, pharma giant Merck, and Verizon had paused advertising according to an analysis report by The Washington Post.

  Other brands, including United Airlines, Carlsberg, Mondelez, and General Motors, have also stopped displaying ads on Twitter.

  Twitter’s policy on hateful conduct states: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 23:15

• Wuhan Whistleblower: Former EcoHealth VP Says Covid "Man Made", Escaped From Lab
  Wuhan Whistleblower: Former EcoHealth VP Says Covid “Man Made”, Escaped From Lab

  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

  Just hours after we find out that the Hunter Biden laptop not only wasn’t “Russian disinformation”, but rather was being actively covered up by social media, another “conspiracy theory” that wound up costing tons of honest truth seekers their social media accounts (including Zero Hedge, who was first to talk about the lab leak all the way back in February 2020), is inching closer toward being validated as reality.

  That’s because a scientist who formerly worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has now gone on record and has said that COVID was “man-made” and leaked from the lab.

  The claims are according to the Post, who cited The Sun, who was provided a copy of the scientist’s forthcoming book.

  The gravity of the allegations, which I have written about at length over the last year, would make the global Covid-19 pandemic cover up among the most stunning lies ever perpetrated on modern humanity.

  The whistleblower, epidemiologist Andrew Huff, called the lab leak the “biggest US intelligence failure since 9/11″. He detailed his allegations in his book “The Truth About Wuhan”.

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  Huff is the former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, which studied coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He worked for the company from 2014 to 2016 and, per the Post:

  …said that the non-profit helped the Wuhan lab put together the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

  Meanwhile, EcoHealth Alliance has been awarded millions to continue their work as recently as this year: Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Was Just Awarded Another NIH Grant To Study Bat Coronaviruses

  “Foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he wrote in his book.

  

  Huff wrote: “China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent. The US government is to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese.

  “I was terrified by what I saw. We were just handing them bioweapon technology.”

  Fringe Finance has been covering the idea of a lab leak since the blog’s inception and we have long maintained that a leak from the lab was the most obvious explanation for Covid.

  Now the question becomes: who will be held accountable…not only for the leak but for the campaign against those who asked honest questions about the lab for the last 3 years?

  And what other “conspiracy theories” will we soon find out are closer to truth?

  You can read more here: Covid “Much More Easily Explained” By Lab Leak: Harvard PhD & Rutgers Chem Professor

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 22:40

• Alameda's Caroline Ellison Spotted In NY Amid Speculation She Is About To Roll On SBF After Hiring Iconic Clinton Lawyer
  Alameda’s Caroline Ellison Spotted In NY Amid Speculation She Is About To Roll On SBF After Hiring Iconic Clinton Lawyer

  As Sam Bankman-Fried enters day six of his whirlwind media tour in which he makes one or more daily appearances – against the advice of his lawyers – in hopes of convincing someone that he was too dumb to be a criminal mastermind with billions in crypto in cold storage and in bank accounts in Dubai and Singapore (luckily all his wire transfers can be traced), also known as the Simple Jack defense…

  So today was day one of @SBF_FTX “i am too dumb to be a criminal mastermind” world tour.

  Join us tomorrow for day two when he channels Simple Jack next to Janet Yellen and Zelenskyy at the NYT summit of totally non-criminal folks.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 30, 2022

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  … the weakest link in SBF’s defense was just spotted in a New York coffee shop, amid speculation she is preparing to blow up SBF’s entire defense strategy.

  According to Autism Capital, the former CEO of Alameda Capital (which as a reminder was ground zero of the FTX implosion after it blew up $8 billion in FTX client funds on trades gone horribly wrong), Caroline Ellison, was spotted at 8:15am this morning at the Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan. This, as AC notes, “would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody.”

  PLEASE CONFIRM: A user claims that they spotted Caroline Ellison at Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan at 8:15 AM. This would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody. pic.twitter.com/QUduYO9GfZ

  — Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

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  A statement from a barista at the coffee shop confirmed that it was in fact Caroline.

  CONFIRMED: The barista behind the counter has confirmed it was Caroline. https://t.co/BzO8KZRE8V

  — Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

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  Why does this matter? Because while the prominent Democrat donor, who reportedly is “responsible for Biden being in office” and who – at least according to Musk – donated over $1 billion to democrats…

  That’s just the publicly disclosed number. His actual support of Dem elections is probably over $1B. The money went somewhere, so where did it go?

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022

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  … continues his deluded daily media appearances while casually throwing his former alleged lover, co-worker and penthouse-mate, Caroline – and pretty much all other co-workers – under the bus by claiming he has no idea how $8 billion in FTX client funds just vaporized in SBF’s personal hedge fund, Alameda (implying that only Alameda’s CEO, Ellison, was responsible for the theft and fraud) Caroline is two-steps ahead of SBF and is already cooperating with members of the DOJ, and specifically the SDNY, which we previously reported is probing the collapse of FTX.

  The general consensus is that Caroline Ellison is likely in NY cutting a deal and cooperating with SDNY prosecutors to roll on Sam.

  — Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

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  Subsequent reports have only reinforced this rumor, and the latest is that Ellison is being represented by DC law firm, WilmerHale…

  A highly credible source claims that Caroline Ellison is currently being represented by WilmerHale, a well known DC insider law firm. Please verify.

  — Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 5, 2022

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  … best known for its Government Affairs Department Chair, Jamie Gorelick, who was the former No. 2 ranking member in the Clinton Justice Department, and in a recent interview, she referred to Garland as her “wingman.”

  If indeed Ellison is working the Feds while currying favor with SBF’s former closest friends, the days of Bankman-Fried – who may or may not soon commit Epsteincide – outside of a prison cell are numbered.

  As for SBF, who is still wasting his time “uhhhm“-ing and “like“-ing across various interviews hoping to demonstrate to the world – and his future jurors – just how bloody stupid he really was…

  … and blaming it all on messy accounting, poor risk management, and of course, Caroline Ellison – not his premeditated fraud of course – even the CEO of Coinbase is no longer buying his relentless bullshit, saying earlier that no matter how “messy you accounting is (or how rich you are) – you’re definitely going to notice if you find an extra $8B to spend” adding that “even the most gullible person should not believe Sam’s claim that this was an accounting error” (here he is referring to Bill Ackman, of course), and correctly concluded that “it’s stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple.”

  It’s stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple.

  — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 3, 2022

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  All that’s missing is the definitive proof, and if the above rumors are correct, Caroline Ellison is in the process of, or already has provided it to the Feds. Which incidentally, may explain why SBF’s “I am Simple Ja-ja-ja-jack, i’m so-so-so-sorry” tour just came to a crashing halt, when late on Sunday, the commingling masterming told Maxine Waters he won’t be voluntarily appearing before Congress – where any lie is a perjury – on the 13th (or ever for that matter).

  Rep. Waters, and the House Committee on Financial Services:

  Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain.

  I’m not sure that will happen by the 13th. But when it does, I will testify. https://t.co/c0P8yKlyQt

  — SBF (@SBF_FTX) December 4, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 22:11

• Former Global Head Of Trust And Safety At Twitter Reveals Widespead Scientific Censorship
  Former Global Head Of Trust And Safety At Twitter Reveals Widespead Scientific Censorship

  After Elon Musk’s buyout and the ongoing release of the the “Twitter files”, the cat is out of the bag, as it were, when it comes to Twitter’s extreme leftist political agenda and their collusion with the federal government and the DNC.  And, it appears that some of the people deeply involved in the platform’s censorship model are willing to discuss their tactics and motives.  One might expect them to take a more apologetic position in light of their exposed lies and trespasses against their customers and site users, but this is definitely not the case.

  Former Twitter employees, most especially former moderators and Trust and Safety employees, are unrepentant for their censorship efforts tainted with political bias and seem to loath Elon Musk for opening the door to fair debate on the social media site.

  One Twitter executive, Yoel Roth, was recently in the headlines for admitting that Twitter’s aggressive censorship of the Hunter Biden Laptop story was a “mistake.”  Roth is the former Global Head of Trust And Safety and played a direct role (along with other executives) in the suppression of the news, leading to the banning of the New York Post account merely for relaying accurate reporting.

  Presenting the event as a “mistake” rooted in the company’s concerns about “misinformation”, however, seems disingenuous.  As we now know, Twitter and the DNC were in regular contact with each other and requests were made by DNC officials to block any mention of such damaging stories.  There was round-table debate at Twitter, but it was not about whether it was morally right to censor the information.  Rather, Twitter execs debated whether or not they could get away with it.

  The trust and safety elites within Big Tech companies have no doubts about the validity and righteousness of their cause, and that’s the biggest problem.  The monstrous nature of the ideology of scientifically precise censorship is on full display in the following interview with Roth at the Knight Foundation.  Roth has no qualms about the notion of crushing free speech.

  Roth equates banned information to “malicious campaigns,” painting a picture of some nebulous organization of “trolls” with ill intent working from the shadows to spread mean words and falsehoods.  This is projection.  The only organized and shadowy efforts were performed by Twitter’s leadership and were designed to silence dissent, in some cases in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 election for their friends in the Democratic Party. 

  This is even hinted at by Roth, who explains the widespread decision within Big Tech companies after the 2016 election to focus heavily on campaign and election influence.  Roth cites the long debunked theory that Russia manipulated the 2016 election as the reason for this agenda to control election information.

  A clear case of collusion can be presented between the Democrats and Twitter to do the exact thing Roth warns about, which is the subversion of election outcomes.  But the psychology of people like Yoel Roth is disturbing beyond the issue of potential political manipulation.  For example, Roth goes on to claim that the satire inherent in organizations like Libs of Tikok and the Babylon Bee is “dangerous” and specifically suggests they threaten the lives of people within the trans community.

  Keep in mind that satire and humor are usually the first targets of any authoritarian regime clamoring for power because the greatest comedy strikes at the heart of lies and speaks truths that many people are otherwise afraid to discuss.  If a joke is based on falsehoods it’s usually not very funny.  As far as Libs of TikTok is concerned, all they do is re-post videos of leftists’ own arguments and confessions, and for that they are labeled “dangerous.” 

  The former trust and safety exec goes on to admonish the removal of covid censorship, calling it “bad and damaging” without explaining how.  One can only suggest that the leftists at Twitter were also in collusion with government officials to silence any and all facts and evidence that ran contrary to the mainstream pandemic narrative.  Much of this information, like the Biden Laptop, was labeled “conspiracy theory” and banned, only to later be revealed as absolutely true.  

  The deeper poison of Trust and Safety cultism is two-fold:  First, it is being done scientifically and with increasing precision.  It is not only based simply on community flagging; these people are exploiting algorithms and computer modeling in the hopes that they can develop predictive suppression.  They think they can “measure hate events” as if they are hurricanes and batten down the hatches before the waves hit.  The thing is, much of the “hate” they fear is all in their minds.  The “malicious campaigns” they see are often merely people disagreeing with them on the basis of facts and principles. 

  You cannot accurately measure “hate”, for one, and when that hate is perceived through a lens of delusion built on bias and zealotry, we run into a threat much bigger than hate – The threat of despotism wrapped in technocracy.  They aren’t blocking hate, they are blocking free debate.      

  The real discussion should be on whether or not Trust and Safety metrics should even exist.  Why do we need them?  Roth never questions the validity of his former job and the motivations behind it.  The bottom line is this: Big Tech censorship is founded on the argument that people cannot be trusted to make up their own minds on the information they see.  Social media leaders think that THEY should be the arbiters of information in order to protect people from themselves. 

  What qualifies them to hold this kind of power?  Nothing.  No one is qualified enough, intelligent enough or objective enough to mediate the speech of millions of people, and since Big Tech holds a veritable monopoly on modern communications, their policies become a kind of law that affects the whole of society.  Twitter by itself is only a small part of the overall picture, but the cold and calculating censorship promoted by Roth is something that is being executed by the majority of Big Tech companies right now.  We have to ask ourselves as Americans (and western culture in general needs to ask) if this kind of ideological monopoly can be allowed to persist, because it means the eventual destruction of free speech as we know it.      

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 22:05

• Six Degrees From James Baker: A Familiar Figure Reemerges With Release Of Twitter Files
  Six Degrees From James Baker: A Familiar Figure Reemerges With Release Of Twitter Files

  Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

  

  As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels by Biden and Democratic officials to silence critics on the social media platform. However, one familiar name immediately popped out in the first batch of documents released through journalist Matt Taibbi: James Baker. For many, James Baker is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals.

  Baker has been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department, including the hoax involving the Russian Alfa Bank. When Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wanted to plant the bizarre false claim of a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Baker was his go-to, speed-dial contact. (Baker would later testify at Sussmann’s trial). Baker’s name also appeared prominently in controversies related to the other Russian-related FBI allegations against Trump. He was effectively forced out due to his role and reportedly found himself under criminal investigation. He became a defender of the Russian investigations despite findings of biased and even criminal conduct. He was also a frequent target of Donald Trump on social media, including Twitter. Baker responded with public criticism of Trump for his “false narratives.”

  After leaving the FBI, Twitter seemed eager to hire Baker as deputy general counsel. Ironically, Baker soon became involved in another alleged back channel with a presidential campaign. This time it was Twitter that maintained the non-public channels with the Biden campaign (and later the White House). Baker soon weighed in with the same signature bias that characterized the Russian investigations.

  Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post ran an explosive story about a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden that contained emails and records detailing a multimillion dollar influence peddling operation by the Biden family. Not only was Joe Biden’s son Hunter and brother James involved in deals with an array of dubious foreign figures, but Joe Biden was referenced as the possible recipient of funds from these deals.

  The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling, nepotism, and other forms of corruption. Moreover, the campaign was not denying that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s and key emails could be confirmed from the other parties involved. However, at the request of the “Biden team” and Democratic operatives, Twitter moved to block the story. It even suspended those who tried to share the allegations with others, including the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was suspended for linking to the scandal.

  Even inside Twitter, the move raised serious concerns over the company serving as a censor for the Biden campaign. Global Comms Brandon Borrman who asked if  the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the policy” for barring posts and suspending users.

  Baker quickly jumped in to support the censorship and said that “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.”

  Keep in mind that there was never any evidence that this material was hacked. Moreover, there was no evidence of Russian involvement in the laptop. Indeed, U.S. intelligence quickly rejected the Russian disinformation claim.

  However, Baker insisted that there was a “reasonable” assumption that Russians were behind another major scandal. Faced with a major scandal implicating a Joe Biden in the corrupt selling of access to foreign figures (including some with foreign intelligence associations), Baker’s natural default was to kill the story and stop others from sharing the allegations.

  The released documents may show why Twitter was so eager to hire Baker despite his role in the Russian collusion controversies. What likely would have been a liability for most companies seemed an actual draw for Twitter. For censors and political operatives in Twitter, Baker likely seemed like a “made man” for a company committed to systemic censorship. He would be working with the chief legal officer at the company, Vijaya Gadde, who functioned as the company’s chief censor.  Gadde was widely reviled by free speech advocates for her dismissal of free speech principles and open political bias.

  Not unexpectedly, Gadde and Baker would play prominent roles in the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal. There was hardly a need to round up “the usual suspects” in the suppression scandal when Musk took over the company. Both lawyers swatted down internal misgivings to bury a story that could well have made the difference in the close 2020 election.

  It is striking how many of the figures and institutions involved in Russian collusion claims are within six degrees of James Baker. Not only did Baker work closely with fired FBI director James Comey and other key figures at the Justice Department, but he was an acquaintance of key Clinton figures like Sussmann who pushed the false collusion allegations. He was also hired by Brookings Institution, which also has a curious Bacon-like role in the origins and development of the false Russian collusion allegations.

  None of these means that Baker was the driving force of the scandals. To the contrary, Baker earned his bones in Washington as a facilitator, a reliable ally when it came to the business of the Beltway. It is hardly a surprise that Baker found a home at Twitter where “caution” was always “warranted” in dealing with potentially damaging stories for Democratic interests.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 21:30

• Nonprofit Blood Donation Service Starts Matching Unvaccinated Patients With Donors
  Nonprofit Blood Donation Service Starts Matching Unvaccinated Patients With Donors

  Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Swiss naturopathic physician George Della Pietra believes people worldwide should be free to choose whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine injection or not.

  

  He believes the same should hold for those receiving transfusions with “vaccinated” blood.

  “The problem is right now we have no choice,” said Della Pietra, founder of the nonprofit Safe Blood Donation service in 2021, matching unvaccinated blood recipients with donors in 65 countries.

  “It was very clear from the beginning that the COVID hype was way out of control,” Della Pietra said. “It was not as dangerous as they say it was.

  “As a naturopath, I can make no sense of this pandemic, which was never really a pandemic. It leaves space for so many explanations.”

  Della Pietra believes that an mRNA injection is more dangerous than the pharmaceutical companies are willing to admit. He said the growing numbers of adverse reactions are reason to question their safety and effectiveness.

  Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that vaccinated and boosted people made up 58.6 percent (6,512) of the COVID-19 deaths in August—up from 41 percent in January.

  “We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cynthia Cox, the Vice President of the Kaiser Family Foundation told The Washington Post in an article on Nov. 23.

  Nearly 70 percent of the world’s 8 billion people have received at least one mRNA injection for COVID-19 since the vaccines began rolling out in 2021 at the height of the virus’s spread.

  Each of the three primary mRNA COVID-19 vaccines contains COVID-19 “spike protein” fragments, which bind at the cellular level to stimulate an immune response to the virus.

  Della Pietra believes these spike proteins produce “classic symptoms”—namely blood clots—that “horrified” him.

  “I’ve never seen anything similar—and I’m not talking only about spike proteins,” Della Pietra told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

  “It’s unbelievable because we never had this problem before. It’s been only two years. They want to keep the narrative [that an mRNA vaccine] is not dangerous.”

  

  Although donated blood and plasma must undergo a cleansing process before transfusion, Safe Blood Donation says this is not enough to remove all mRNA ingredients.

  “I’m talking about graphene oxide and non-declared inorganic components in the vaccine, which we can see in the blood. When I see them, I have no idea how we can get rid of them again,” Della Pietra said.

  Looking at the abnormalities in vaccinated blood, he said, “OK, we have a problem.” People are receiving the vaccine “more or less through the back door.”

  “You can not avoid it anymore.”

  In the United States alone, there are approximately 16 million units of donated blood annually. Of those units, about 643,000 are “autologous”—self-donated—and the number is increasing yearly, according to BloodBook.com.

  Della Pietra said that, to his knowledge, Safe Blood Donation, based in Switzerland, is the first unvaccinated blood donation service of its kind.

  “So, there is no blood bank with mRNA-free blood yet, not even with us,” Safe Blood Donation states on its website.

  “And, although we have already asked hundreds of clinics, at the moment—at least in Europe—all of them still refuse to allow the human right of free blood choice with them—or at least do not want to be mentioned because otherwise, they fear reprisals.”

  

  Della Pietra said the main goal of Safe Blood Donation is not to start an mRNA-free blood bank. Rather, it is to make it possible to match unvaccinated blood donors and unvaccinated recipients, “which we bring together in a clinic (medical partner) that allows the choice of blood donor.”

  Medical website Seed Scientific said that blood banks and biotech companies will offer as much as $1,000 monthly for blood donations.

  While Della Pietra said there are no unvaccinated blood banks, he sees the demand for unvaccinated blood rising.

  “This is why I decided to do [SafeBlood Donation]. I wanted to make a network for unvaccinated people looking for a blood donor because they need it—whether they have scheduled surgery or an emergency,” he said.

  Safe Blood Donation began working in the United States about a month ago, building an infrastructure of medical partners.

  However, in the current medical environment, central blood banks such as the Red Cross do not segregate their blood donations based on their vaccinated or unvaccinated status.

  

  “The American Red Cross does not facilitate designated donations for standard blood needs, as this process often takes longer and is more resource intensive than obtaining a blood product through our normal process,” the Red Cross told The Epoch Times in an email.

  “In a small number of situations, there is an exception for rare blood types where compatible blood types are extremely difficult to find. A rare blood type is defined as one that is present in less than 1/1000 people.

  “We want to emphasize that the Red Cross adheres to all donor and product requirements as determined by the FDA to ensure the safety of the blood supply and is committed to continuing to provide life-saving blood products for patients across the country.”

  The National Library of Medicine said that “across study sites, the average hospital cost per unit transfused was $155 and the average charge per patient was $219.”

  Still, the Red Cross, which provides 40 percent of the nation’s blood donations, said “no studies” demonstrate adverse outcomes from transfusions of blood products collected from vaccinated donors.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 20:55

• Wokeism Is Costume Elites Wear To 'Signal Virtue' And 'Hide Greed, Corruption': Former Levi's Executive
  Wokeism Is Costume Elites Wear To ‘Signal Virtue’ And ‘Hide Greed, Corruption’: Former Levi’s Executive

  Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The pose of wokeness is a costume that the left liberal elite puts on to virtue signal that they care about social justice and to hide their greed and corruption, said the former executive of a major brand-name apparel manufacturer.

  

  Jennifer Sey, former chief marketing officer and brand president of Levi Strauss & Co., told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program that she had “pushed back” on the public school closures due to COVID-19 for two years, and in the end, she was pushed out of the company for her advocacy.

  Sey, who was sending her children to public schools, believed that prolonged school lockdowns were harmful to children and started speaking out against them at the beginning of the pandemic.

  Sey said she and her husband were reading the data that was coming out of Italy at the start of the pandemic, a country heavily hit by the disease, and the data showed that the median age of death due to the disease was over 80.

  “Nobody was bothering to look at actual data or adhere to the pre-pandemic playbook, which said you never shut schools down for more than a couple of weeks,” Sey pointed out. “It was from day one that me and my husband, we both said, ‘Hell no, this is wrong. People are going to be harmed.’”

  

  In September 2020, Sey’s company warned her that her advocacy against school closures could be considered speaking on behalf of the company, “the implication being, there would be reputational harm to the company caused,” she said.

  At the same time, her peers began sending their kids back to private in-person schools, Sey continued.

  “I was so angry that these people would dare to say to me while sending their own kids to in-person school: ‘You can’t advocate for poor children to be in school.’”

  Sey said it was atypical for her peers—and even for employees two or three levels below her in the corporate hierarchy—to send their kids to public school in her city of San Francisco.

  “I thought the lightbulb would go off, and people would see the hypocrisy if I just made it clear in a calm, nice way. But they didn’t, because the hypocrisy, in a sense, is the point.”

  “This pose of wokeness, it’s a cloak they wrap themselves in to signal virtue … to hide greed, corruption, keeping all the good stuff for themselves,” she said.

  “It’s this costume that the left, liberal elite wraps around themselves to say, ‘I care about social justice. I care about all these causes. I am a good person.’ If you threaten to expose that, you need to be banished.”

  Sacrificed Career for Speaking Out

  Around the time of the new year in 2022, Sey was told that there was no longer a place for her at the company.

  “You can’t be the CEO because of the things you’ve been saying and doing. Therefore, you can’t sit in your current chair because that is the role that ultimately becomes the CEO, so you need to leave,” Sey said she was told.

  She was offered a $1 million severance package, which she decided to turn down because it would come with the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.

  “What the nondisclosure agreement would require is that I never speak about the terms of my ousting. I was not OK with that,” she said.

  In February, Sey resigned from her post at Levi Strauss & Co. after almost 23 years with the company.

  The Epoch Times reached out to Levi Strauss & Co. for comment.

  Sey said the illiberalism that has traveled from college campuses into companies and taken hold of corporations across the country is “incredibly dangerous.”

  “If you insist on a culture where free speech is not tolerated, not only is it non-inclusive, which is problematic in and of itself, but I actually think it’s fraught and rife with the potential for corruption and fraud, like we’ve seen with Theranos and FTX and Enron,” she said,

  Theranos, a company that claimed to provide blood testing lab services with a single drop of blood, defrauded its investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme. Its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison.

  FTX, a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange, recently went bankrupt along with more than 130 affiliate companies due to insufficient liquidity. FTX users are potentially facing $8 billion in cumulative losses, while investors in the company are likely to lose their entire investment as a result of the bankruptcy.

  Enron, a Texas-based energy-trading company, went bankrupt in 2001 due to fraudulent accounting practices and conflicts of interest. Within a year, Enron’s stock price plummeted from about $90 per share to 26 cents per share, which caused billion-dollar losses to investors, thousands of job losses, and the liquidation of more than $2 billion in pension plans.

  “There were people in those companies who knew what was going on, but they didn’t feel they could say anything,” Sey said.

  “If you cannot have a conversation in the company about what is working and what is not working, what is true and what is not, you can’t innovate. You can’t move forward,” she said. “It stands in the way of progress when we can’t have these conversations because we’re all just adhering to propaganda.”

   “It is a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment,” Sey added.

  

  Wokeism Is an Ideology

  Being “woke” during the 1940s through the beginning of the 1960s meant “being awake or alert to the fact that there was racial inequality, and being part of the movement to change that,” Sey said. “It’s admirable, I have no issue with that.”

  However, in the last 10 or 15 years, and especially in the last three to five years, those beliefs have been corrupted and commodified “into an ideology which can never be questioned,” such as gender ideology, race ideology, or body positivity, Sey explained.

  Sey said that she was very supportive of transgender people working in her team. “I would never want a person to be discriminated against for anything, including being unvaccinated.”

  But someone who questions whether an 11-year-old should be on puberty blockers, when there is no research on the mid- to long-term impacts of this therapy, is considered evil and must be banished for violating this ideology, Sey said.

  “[Wokeism] has become religious in nature. Woke capitalism is really just an attempt to profit off of this ideology and the passion behind this ideology amongst primarily Gen Z and millennial consumers,” she said.

  Another example of ideology that cannot be questioned is the idea of “body positivity,” which touts that the size of the body does not affect its health, Sey said.

  “We couldn’t say during COVID that it was dangerous to be overweight. I said it, and that made me a fat-phobe,” she said.

  “We can’t say that, because the mantra is ‘healthy at any size.’ It’s ideological. And you have to be pure in the belief of that ideology, or you are evil and must be shunned.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 20:20

• 'General Public Unaware' Of Push to Normalize Pedophilia In Culture And Academia
  ‘General Public Unaware’ Of Push to Normalize Pedophilia In Culture And Academia

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

  Colorado mom Lydia Lerma feels punched when she hears the trendy new term “minor-attracted person.” Just thinking of the damage a pedophile inflicted upon her son, who was six at the time, causes pain.

  

  Creating a polite-sounding term for someone sexually attracted to children enrages her.

  Any push to normalize pedophilia or designate it as another sexual orientation to be tolerated is “unconscionable,” Lerma told The Epoch Times.

  “That’s a bunch of [expletive]!” she said of academics pushing acceptance of pedophilia.

  “They are going to face the greatest resistance that they have ever seen. Society is not going to let that happen.”

  

  But in academic circles, some have begun to argue that pedophilia should be considered just another sexual orientation, not a mental disorder.

  And a therapist who treats pedophiles told The Epoch Times that he believes pedophilia is on its way to becoming normalized.

  ‘Like Any Other Sexual Orientation’

  In 2018, medical student Mirjam Heine, who said she had a background in psychology, gave a presentation called “Pedophilia is a Natural Sexual Orientation” during a TEDx event at the University of Würtzberg in Germany. A program guide for TEDx said she was mainly guided by the works of Prof. Dr. Klaus Michael Beier, the head of the institute for sexology and sexual medicine at the University Hospital Berlin, and the prevention network “Kein Täter Werden.”

  In her remarks, Heine said pedophilia is an “unchangeable sexual orientation,” just like heterosexuality.

  “No one chooses to be a pedophile; no one can cease being one,” Heine argued during her talk. “The difference between pedophilia and other sexual orientations is that living out this sexual orientation will end in a disaster.”

  Most countries in the world, including the United States, outlaw adults having sexual contact or intercourse with children in most situations.

  The term minor-attracted person grabbed headlines after professor Allyn Walker used it during a discussion on pedophiles in November 2021. Walker, a woman who transitioned to live as a man, was discussing her book: “A Long Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.

  In the interview with the Prostasia Foundation—a San Francisco organization focused on child sexual abuse—Walker said it’s less stigmatizing to use the term minor-attracted person than pedophile when referring to people “who don’t act on their urges to have sex with children.”

  The interview drew fiery criticism. Within weeks, Walker resigned from her job as an assistant sociology and criminal justice professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

  After stepping down, Walker said in a prepared statement that her research was “mischaracterized” by some in the media. Walker blamed the public outcry on intolerance for her transgender identity and said the research aimed to prevent child sexual abuse.

  Later, Johns Hopkins University hired Walker to work at the Moore Center for Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse in Baltimore. She did not immediately respond to an Epoch Times email through the Moore Center requesting comment.

  

  Two former colleagues at Old Dominion defended Walker in the journal of the American Society of Criminology.

  “Our friend and colleague, Dr. Allyn Walker, was the victim of a trolling attack on their research and their person that resulted in the loss of their position at Old Dominion University (ODU),” wrote Ruth Triplett and Mona Danner.

  The attacks, they wrote, were “centering around misinformation and links to Dr. Walker’s identity as non-binary, transgender, and Jewish.”

  Growing Cultural Acceptance

  The fashion house Balenciaga faced backlash recently after running an ad campaign depicting little girls holding a Teddy bear wearing bondage gear. One ad shows pages from a child pornography court ruling. Balenciaga later apologized for the advert.

  A November headline from a Washington Post theater review read: “‘Downstate’ is a play about pedophiles. It’s also brilliant.” The off-Broadway play characterizes pedophiles as complicated and troubled victims of harsh punishment.

  Jon Uhler is a 30-year veteran counselor who has worked with sex offenders in the Pennsylvania and South Carolina prison systems. Throughout his career, he has assessed hundreds of pedophiles.

  Uhler, a member of the Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), said he’s afraid pedophilia is on the road to normalization.

  Sex offender treatment specialists are now trained to view sex offenders as victims of trauma, he said.

  The idea is that pedophiles are reenacting their trauma by choosing a victim of the age they were when abused, Uhler said. But that’s not accurate, he added.

  Researchers are taking information from interviews with pedophiles and considering it to be true,  instead of realizing they’re dealing with the “world’s greatest deceivers,” Uhler said.

  Even so, Walker’s ideas have permeated sex offender treatment circles, he said. Walker spoke at this year’s ATSA conference.

  Creating a Protected Class

  Normalizing pedophilia ultimately could lead to a major cultural change—elevating pedophilia to a protected class.

  “They are going to push to have it recognized as a sexual orientation, which would grant it civil rights status,” Uhler said.

  If that happens, employers could no longer discriminate against pedophiles in areas such as employment, he said.

  And if teens are given the legal right to decide if they want to have a sex-change operation or take hormones to try to appear as the other sex, that could help make it legal for pedophiles to act on their sexual urges, he predicted.

  If children legally can decide what they can do with their bodies, then pedophiles could argue that they should be able to consent to a sexual relationship, he said.

  “They’re jackals that are feeding off the carcasses of these kids,” he said. “The predator’s interest is ultimately lowering the age of consent.”

  The general public doesn’t understand what is happening, he said. It’s one of the defining issues of our time, he added.

  Scott Clark, a minister who teaches church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary in California, has called the destigmatization of pedophilia the last stage of the “neo-pagan sexual revolution.”

  Clark hosts the Heidelcast podcast and writes The Heidelblog. Both tackle religious and moral issues facing modern society.

  “There’s a pretty obvious move to normalize pedophilia,” he said. “This invariable comes from adults. It’s not coming from children.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 19:45

• "Even Our Labor-Friendly Party Does Not Have The Stomach For The Resurgence Of Union Power"
  “Even Our Labor-Friendly Party Does Not Have The Stomach For The Resurgence Of Union Power”

  By Eric Peters CIO of One River Asset Management

  “Right now, people’s wages are being eaten up by inflation,” said Jay Powell. “So what you want to do is you want to have inflation stable and then have a very strong labor market where the biggest wage gains are going to the people at the bottom end of the spectrum,” continued the Fed Chairman.

  No doubt that’s right. With the pendulum now retreating from peak inequality, there are two ways to narrow the divide. The fastest, of course, is through making the wealthy poor, or at least less rich in real terms, which started this year in earnest and has a very long way to go. The preferable way is to raise the poor.

  To sustainably lift low earners requires our economy to become more productive, so laborers receive a higher share of the nation’s economic pie. An economy that is deglobalizing will become less productive, at least for some years. So the rebalance must come through a shift in the distribution of America’s economic pie from capital owners to laborers, which lifts inflation, shrinks corporate profit margins, and lowers multiples.

  This week’s intervention by Democrats in Congress to limit our rail worker’s negotiation ability demonstrates that even our labor-friendly party does not have the stomach for the resurgence of union power.

  “And we had that at the end of the very long expansion that ended with the pandemic. That’s not what we have now. Now, for most workers, wages are being eaten up by inflation,” explained Powell, nervous, without the tools to mediate this rising conflict.

  “That’s not true at the bottom end, where wage increases are higher than inflation, a good thing. But if you want to have a sustainable, strong labor market where real wages are going up right across the wage spectrum, especially for people at the lower end, you’ve got to have price stability,” he explained, unsure how to achieve it given the arc of this pendulum. “And until we restore that, we can’t, we can’t get back to that place where we, where we kind of were for the two years before the pandemic hit.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 19:10

• Reversal Of Long-Standing Policy Keeps Key Documents On Hunter Biden’s Business From Congress
  Reversal Of Long-Standing Policy Keeps Key Documents On Hunter Biden’s Business From Congress

  Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Congressional investigators are being denied access to 148 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed with the Department of the Treasury by banks concerning financial dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, Jim, according to incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

  “Most Americans have never heard the term ‘Suspicious Activity Reports.’ These are actual reports that financial institutions file with the Treasury Department when they see suspicious activity,” Jordan told Epoch TV’s Joshua Phillip in an interview for the “Newsmakers” program.

  “Typically, it’s money laundering type of activity, so most Americans don’t get these. Or if they do, there is a good reason for it. But there are 150 of them on Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the President’s brother, and that to me is a big concern,” Jordan said.

  

  Only two of the 150 have been made public and the Biden administration through the Department of the Treasury is refusing to make the other 148 SARs available to congressional investigators, Jordan explained.

  “It used to be before the Biden administration, if the committee wanted to see that information, whether it was Democrats on the committee or Republicans on the committee, they could have access to it … until the Biden administration,” Jordan told Phillip.

  “So the Biden administration hasn’t complied with any of the correspondence, any of the letters and requests that came from [incoming House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.)]. They have changed the policy on SARs for the ability of committees to review that information,” Jordan continued.

  “So we’ll see if we get access. Maybe we’re going to have to go to the banks to get that information, and not through the Treasury Department,” he said.

  A Treasury Department spokesman did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for an explanation of the Biden administration’s 2021 decision to end a long-standing process whereby SARs and other reports provided under the Bank Secrecy Act whenever requested by a congressional committee with appropriate jurisdiction.

  Following the administration’s decision, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) introduced, and the House subsequently approved, H.R. 7734, the “Timely Delivery of Bank Secrecy Act Reports Act.”  The Waters bill was approved by the House July 26, 2022, on a 349-to-70 vote, with majorities of both parties supporting the measure.

  The Waters measure would require the Treasury Department to provide copies of SARs to requesting congressional officials within 30 days and requires financial institutions to turn over requested copies upon receipt of a congressional subpoena.

  The Waters bill was introduced in the Senate and referred to the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), but no action has been taken on the bill since being referred to the Ohio Democrat’s panel.

  Biden administration officials have offered several cumbersome alternative processes that would only allow congressional aides to go to reading rooms at the Treasury Department to view SARs, but they would not be allowed to make copies of the documents.

  The bill report on the Waters measure explained why House officials rejected the Biden administration’s suggested alternatives.

  “Unfortunately, Treasury and [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] FinCEN have recently severely restricted congressional access to Suspicious Activity Reports by requiring congressional staff to review all material in a reading room at Treasury, prohibiting the copying of materials for purposes of highlighting, ongoing reference, or margin notation, and restricting information collection to note taking.

  “As an alternative, Treasury and FinCEN have offered to bring the material to the requesting committee and then take the material back to Treasury when the review is completed.

  “The restrictions that they have imposed upon congressional access to SARs and related materials are unworkable given the complexity and amount of information contained in such materials, and severely impairs Congress’ responsibility to carry on its oversight work in a timely and effective fashion.”

  Despite the overwhelming House vote for the Waters measure that would have effectively restored congressional access on a par with what it was prior to President Joe Biden taking office, the Treasury Department continues to withhold access to SARs, except as decided on a case-by-case basis.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 18:35

• Rate Hikes: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Declines
  Rate Hikes: The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Declines

  Stagflationary crisis events are relatively rare in modern history, and the average mainstream economist will have very little input to give on why they happen and how they can be solved.  Their knowledge is limited on the issue and their experience is non-existent.  

  It has been argued by alternative analysts for several years now that the majority of banking executives, investors and economists entering the field in the past decade have never worked within a financial environment without direct monetary intervention by central banks.  They can’t even comprehend a world where the Federal Reserve does not artificially support equities, bonds and other elements of the system.  They have no concept of consequences.

  This dynamic is finally being acknowledged by those in the mainstream. Alison Harding-Jones, vice chair of corporate and investment and head of M&A in EMEA at Citigroup, recently noted that the majority of junior bankers had never worked in an investment world without the existence of cheap money. These people are about to experience a rude awakening beyond anything they can imagine.   

  It was the long term existence of central bank support that conditioned many economists into assuming the easy money party would never end.  The Fed will step in, they say, because the Fed has always stepped in and nothing will ever change.  But things always change, and the notion that the Fed cares about the longevity of the markets is naive.  The past year alone has debunked that little theory, with rates continuing to climb.

  

  A cycle of cope has formed with a predictable set of reactions – The Fed suggests hikes will continue, the mainstream freaks out.  The Fed then suggests that “one day” the hikes might stop, maybe sooner maybe later.  The mainstream rejoices and interprets the comments to mean that the Fed is about to pivot, markets rocket higher.  Then, the Fed does not pivot, and they freak out again.

  No one is asking the question that really matters here:  Why is it so important what the Fed says about rate hikes?  Why is the entire system dependent on their whims?  This is not how it should be.  

  The US economy is addicted to cheap money like that money is heroin, and many elements of the system just can’t let it go.  People thought that the central bankers, our resident drug dealers, would never stop providing the fix.  They thought that there was incentive for the Fed to continue dealing that delicious fiat.  But the easy money drug has diminishing returns and the addict is acclimated.  The negative health effects are starting to set in, the addict is beginning to die, and the dealer wants to distance himself from the corpse.

  Stagflation has arrived and now there is no reason for the central bank to continue providing easy money because there is nothing to be gained.  

  The circumstances surrounding stagflation are chaotic.  Certain sectors of the economy will go into steep decline while others will appear to remain resilient.  For example, US jobs numbers came in far hotter than expected this month (some might suggest a little too hot for reality), inspiring the Biden White House to claim a victory in the midst of fiscal defeat.  At the same time, the US is facing an unprecedented manufacturing slowdown, a housing market sales implosion, a GDP sinking back into contraction, a rising poverty rate, an explosion in homelessness, etc. 

  It might be confusing – Why is there better than expected employment numbers and in some cases retail numbers while there is also a major contraction across the board in multiple other areas of the economy?  That’s what happens when a central bank pumps over $8 trillion into the veins of the system in only two years, on top of tens of trillions of dollars over the past decade.  That money is circulating rapidly and wearing down the gears of the machine, some parts break while others still function.  

  These are the effects of stagflation, as well as the effects of a central bank which is now abandoning the inflation game and actively seeking to create a deflationary event.  Without the endless trillions in free money which kept the system on life support since 2008/2009, they will get what they want eventually, but it will take time.  

  Meaning, the Fed is going to continue with rate hikes well into next year until there is a hard landing; there will be no “soft landing” and Jerome Powell knows this.  He openly warned about it back in the October Fed meeting of 2012, stating that the economy would not know how to function without stimulus measures because those measures had been active for so long.  That was 10 years ago; imagine how bad things are today.

  Powell is all too aware of the effects of rate hikes into economic weakness and stagflationary crisis.  He knows what is about to happen, and Joe Biden’s economic advisers likely know as well.  

  In the meantime, an important issue that the Fed and many mainstream economists don’t want to discuss is that prices continue to remain painful on most necessities no matter how high interest rates go.  Rent is high, food is high, energy prices fell due to Biden’s market manipulation but are still high, home prices are high, vehicle prices are high, everything is incessantly expensive for the average consumer.  This is not going to stop anytime soon.  

  Once stagflation takes hold it hangs on like a bad rash.  When jobs numbers finally hit a wall (and they will, probably by the second quarter of next year), costs will still be suffocating the public’s savings.  If the goal is truly an engineered deflation event that reduces money velocity and drags down prices, we have to ask ourselves how long will that take to accomplish?  Two years?  Five years?  How high will rates have to go?  Maybe only 5%, maybe 10%, maybe more.  How much damage will be done to the middle class and the poor as this process unfolds?  

  The Fed does not care.  Those hoping for an immediate pivot should understand that the rate hike beatings will continue until morale declines.  The quantitative tightening will stop when the contraction has fully pummeled the jobs market and the populace in general.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 18:00

• UC San Diego Students Say Strike Disrupting Classes, Exams
  UC San Diego Students Say Strike Disrupting Classes, Exams

  Authored by Micaela Rocaforte via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As finals week commences, students at the University of California–San Diego say they are feeling the impact of the largest academic worker strike in U.S. history, now in its third week.

  

  After months of negotiating pay raises, 48,000 researchers and student employees across all 10 University of California (UC) campuses launched a strike Nov. 14, demanding pay raises due to cost-of-living increases.

  This has left some classes without instructors and professors without teaching assistants to grade assignments ahead of end-of-semester exams.

  

  Tarah Lachmandas, a third-year communications major at UC–San Diego, said that while faculty in her department supports the strike, they have adapted final exams to accommodate the absence of teaching assistants.

  “Our assignments were not graded. They were just marked complete or incomplete,” Lachmandas told the Epoch Times. “And in another class, the professor removed essay questions from the final exam, so it’s just going to be all multiple choice.”

  Tristan Fhaardo, a second-year chemical engineering major, said the structure of his classes were upset by the strike.

  “Attendance in a lot of my lectures has gone down, since teaching assistants were the ones to [take] attendance,” Fhaardo said. “Assignments have been more lenient because [there’s no one to] grade them, and classes have felt a lot more jumbled and disorganized since the strike started.”

  However, for Desi—a graduate student and neuroscience researcher on strike, who declined to provide his last name—that’s the goal.

  “The whole point of the strike is to cause disruption,” Desi told The Epoch Times. “It takes a collective action to create change. … We’re not doing this because we don’t want to work … We’re doing this because we deserve to be able to pay our bills and rent.”

  

  Other graduate students disagreed with the United Auto Workers’—the union representing the strikers—methods of negotiating higher wages.

  Philip Zhu, a chemistry graduate student and teaching assistant who did not strike, told The Epoch Times he thought students still deserved to get the education they paid tuition for.

  “Although the strike is intended to pressure the university, students are the direct victims,” Zhu said. “I believe if the bargaining team cares … there will be better strategies that don’t place all the power in ‘doing damage’ to force the other party to do what they demand.”

  UC officials struck a tentative deal with postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers Nov. 29—though they say they will not return to work until the demands of the graduate students are met.

  However, the union’s demands for graduate and student workers could prove to be a bit more complicated.

  UC Provost Michael Brown said Nov. 14 that two of the group’s demands—tying compensation to housing costs and waiving nonresident tuition for out-of-state and international students—could cost the UC system up to several hundred million dollars per year and be unfair to resident students, since nonresident students would be given a larger compensation package for the same workload.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 17:25

• Bipartisan Group Of US Senators Warns CCP Over Quelling Of Protests
  Bipartisan Group Of US Senators Warns CCP Over Quelling Of Protests

  Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As protests continue to rage throughout China over the regime’s harsh COVID-19 policies, and the police respond with notable force, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has sent a sharply worded letter to Beijing’s ambassador to Washington, Qin Gang, warning of “grave consequences for the U.S.-China relationship” if the communist regime carries out a crackdown reminiscent of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

  

  One of the lead signers, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), said in a statement accompanying the letter’s publication on Dec. 1 that the world’s response to Beijing’s efforts to quell the protests has been “tepid at best.” Hence Sullivan and the other signers saw a need to speak out and warn Beijing about what would happen if it failed to respect the right of citizens to signal their opposition to the severe COVID policies that have deprived millions of Chinese of freedom of movement.

  The letter emphasizes the nonviolent character of the protests going on in China, implying that any abusive and violent conduct on the part of the regime’s forces will be illegal and unethical.

  “We are following the current peaceful protests in China over your government’s policies very carefully. We are also closely watching the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) reaction to them,” the letter states.

  The letter goes on to remind Ambassador Gang about the notorious events of June 1989, which drew worldwide condemnation and became a synonym for excessive force on the part of an authoritarian regime.

  “In 1989, the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army undertook a violent crackdown on peacefully protesting Chinese students, killing hundreds, if not thousands,” the letter states, before issuing a stark warning.

  “We caution the CCP in the strongest possible terms not to once again undertake a violent crackdown on peaceful Chinese protestors who simply want more freedom. If that happens, we believe there will be grave consequences for the U.S.-China relationship, causing extraordinary damage to it,” the letter concludes.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 16:50

• Antifa Aims To Disrupt Florida Rally Opposing The Sexualization Of Children
  Antifa Aims To Disrupt Florida Rally Opposing The Sexualization Of Children

  Authored by Jannis Falenstern via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A rally organized to out activism that encourages children to question their gender identity and sexual orientation has inspired fury.

  

  Now, threats of a rage-filled counter-protest have rally organizers requesting law enforcement officers to attend their planned gathering on Dec. 3 at a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

  Conflict bubbled up after three very different groups organized the Protect the Children rally to display solidarity against policies aimed at sexualizing children, alienating them from their parents, and helping them pursue gender-transition treatment. They plan to gather at Fort Lauderdale Beach on the corner of Las Olas Boulevard at 11 a.m.

  Local chapters of Moms for Liberty, Fathers for Freedom, and Gays Against Groomers wanted to come together to peacefully speak against “radicalized sexual curriculum, gender ideology, child grooming, parental alienation, and ‘gender-affirming care,’” said Eulalia Jimenez, president of the Moms for Liberty Miami chapter.

  But when Antifa members heard of the gathering, they urged their peers in Twitter posts to “confront this hatred” and “protest against hate.” They referred to Protect the Children rally organizers as “fascists” proliferating “stochastic terrorism,” and spread fliers that read, “We can’t allow this kind of bigotry to go unchecked.”

  The term “stochastic terrorism” refers to public demonization through so-called “hate speech,” which some say can be used to incite violence against a person or group.

  

  A flier for the Antifa response urges, “Assert your right to exist! Counter protest against far-right bigotry and stand with the LGBTQ+ community. Bring masks, signs, and rage. Stand against those who aim to erase your existence.”

  Jimenez isn’t surprised. Antifa members often disrupt Moms for Liberty gatherings and shout down parents speaking at local school board meetings, she said.

  The Protect the Children rally was planned at the beach because it’s a place where people congregate, a “good spot to spread awareness, empower others, and create unity,” Jimenez said.

  She hopes the event will be about peace, unity, “empowering others and informing parents and citizens,” she said. “We feel children should have the right to be children.”

  The rally isn’t meant to be against other groups.

  “It’s not about ugliness and nastiness,” Jimenez said. “And unfortunately, the other side, that’s the way they roll.”

  Hijacking LGBT

  Antifa’s rhetoric harms the gay community, said Anthony Raimondi, a board member of Gays Against Groomers (GAG).

  “As an organization, we want to protect the LGBT community in the sense that the community has been hijacked,” Raimondi told The Epoch Times.

  Years ago, gay people erroneously were assumed to be pedophiles, he said.

  “We have come so far” in dispelling that assumption, he said. But in the current culture, as many gay people and others oppose efforts to block the sexualization of children, “it’s almost like we’ve been set back,” Raimondi said.

  On social media, GAG founder Jaimee Michell has described her group as “a coalition of gays against the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children.”

  Gays Against Groomers posted on its Twitter feed that the gay community has “fought for decades to dismantle binary gender stereotypes, just for radicals to build them up again, and butcher and sterilize children who don’t abide by them.”

  Michell also has posted on Twitter, “There is no such thing as a trans kid.”

  

  Jimenez understands the frustration. She’s not just the local leader of the conservative group Moms for Liberty. She’s also the mother of a gay daughter. So she values groups like Gays Against Groomers, she says, because they’ve “stood up and said, ‘No! You’re not going to use us.’”

  Jimenez respects that they assert, “We choose [whom] to love, but we don’t push anything on the kids.”

  She also has compassion for those participating in Antifa activities. Many, she said, are kids who are just being used.

  “Many of them don’t even understand what is really going on,” Jimenez said. “They’re just so desperate for love and attention, and they’re going about it the wrong way.

  “Others,” she continued, “are just plain—in my opinion—evil and they do not care who they hurt and what they have to do to get what they want.”

  Antifa has the right to assemble, says Florida Fathers for Freedom organizer Elon Gerberg. He’s not worried about the group’s so-called “counter-protest,” calling it nothing more than a “distraction.”

  The Protect the Children rally is “about coming together to bring attention to this attack on our children,” Gerberg told The Epoch Times. “In my opinion, they are our most precious commodities and our future leaders. If we can’t stand up for them, who can you stand up for?”

  In signing the Parental Rights in Education bill in March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, “put his head on the chopping block for parents and the children of the state,” Gerberg said.

  Before it was signed into law, the five-page legislation was debated around the country and was reviled by its opponents, who misleadingly referred to the measure as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”

  Despite what opponents said, the bill doesn’t prohibit teachers or students from discussing a child’s questions about sexual orientation or gender identity, and it doesn’t keep them from talking about LGBT loved ones in class.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 16:15

• Stocks Have "Considerably More Downside" & Commodities Have A "Brand New Tailwind" In 2023
  Stocks Have “Considerably More Downside” & Commodities Have A “Brand New Tailwind” In 2023

  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

  Friend of Fringe Finance Mark B. Spiegel of Stanphyl Capital released his most recent investor letter last week, with his updated take on the market’s valuation and Tesla.

  Mark is a recurring guest on my podcast (and will be coming back on again soon hopefully) and definitely one of Wall Street’s iconoclasts. I read every letter he publishes and only recently thought it would be a great idea to share them with my readers.

  Like many of my friends/guests, he’s the type of voice that gets little coverage in the mainstream media, which, in my opinion, makes him someone worth listening to twice as closely.

  

  Photo: Real Vision

  Mark was kind enough to allow me to share his thoughts from his November 2022 investor letter.

  Mark’s Thoughts On Macro

  Despite the stock market’s recent rally (we were up a hell of a lot more this month before today!) we  continue to carry a large SPY short position, as I believe the major indexes—although not all individual  stocks—have considerably more downside to go, the inevitable hangover from the biggest asset bubble in U.S. history.

  For far too long, the Fed printed $120 billion a month and held short-term rates at zero while the government concurrently ran a record fiscal deficit. Now, thanks to the massive inflationary  hangover from those idiotic policies (November’s “not as bad as feared” data not withstanding), the Fed is reducing its balance sheet and raising interest rates, and although the current rate of high-7% year over-year inflation is unsustainable, the eventual end of China’s “zero-Covid policy” and its November reversal on bailing out its real estate industry combined with the end of Biden’s SPR drawdowns will give commodity prices a brand new tailwind in 2023.

  Longer term, the war on fossil fuel, expensive “onshoring,” fewer available workers and perpetual government budget deficits make a new baseline of  around 4% inflation (double the Fed’s 2% target) likely. 

  Even a 2023 Fed interest rate “pause” at 4.75% (and remember, a “pause” is not a “pivot”!) would,  combined with $90 billion a month in ongoing QT, make current stock market valuations unsustainable,  as stocks are still expensive.

  [QTR’s note: This echos Kenny Polcari’s sentiments & my sentiments of recent.]

  According to Standard & Poor’s, with 97% of companies having reported, Q3 S&P 500 GAAP earnings came in at around $44.79, which annualizes to $179.16. (And these were the sixth  highest quarterly earnings in history; i.e., they were not “trough.”)

  A 16x multiple on that—generous for  a rising rate, recessionary (or even just slow-growth) environment—would bring the S&P 500 down to 2867 vs. November’s close of 4080.11. And remember, just as in bull markets, PE multiples usually overshoot to the upside, in bear markets they often overshoot to the downside. A bottom formed at a  considerably lower multiple is not unfathomable. 

  Additionally, we can see from CurrentMarketValuation.com that the U.S. stock market’s valuation as a  percentage of GDP (the so-called “Buffett Indicator”) is still very high, and thus valuations have a long way  to go before reaching “normalcy”:

  

  Regarding sentiment, we can see from Ed Yardeni that in the Investors Intelligence poll the highest the “bear percentage” got so far in the current market was only around 45% (in the most recent poll it was just 31.5%), yet there were multiple times during the 1980s, 1990s and 2008 that it climbed much higher: 

  

  Also, we can see from this old academic paper that during the grinding bear market of 1973 to 1975, when  the S&P 500’s GAAP PE multiple dropped from 18x to 8x, the bears in the Investors Intelligence poll climbed to around 75% and went over 80% during the bear markets of the 1960s.

  So if you think that based on this bear market’s sentiment we’ve “seen the bottom,” I wish you luck!

  Meanwhile, interest costs on the Federal debt are already set to grow massively. Does anyone seriously think this Fed has the stomach to face the political firestorm of Congress having to slash Medicare, the  defense budget, etc. in order to pay the even higher interest cost that would be created by upping those rates to a level commensurate with crushing even just 4% inflation?

  Powell doesn’t have the guts for that, nor does anyone else in Washington; thus, this Fed will likely be behind the inflation curve for at least a  decade. And that’s why we remain long gold (via the GLD ETF). 

  Mark On His Fund’s Positions (Positions May Change At Any Time)

  We continue to own automaker Stellantis (STLA), which has a great balance sheet with plenty of net cash (and a 7% dividend yield!) and which—at a current price of $15.62/share—sells for only around 3x 2022 earnings estimates of $5.26/share.

  I believe Jeep alone (which in September announced a full  electrification strategy) could be worth more than what we paid for the entire company, which also  includes Dodge, Chrysler, Ram, Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot, Opel, Alfa Romeo, Vauxhall, Lancia and Maserati. And if current EV sales are your interest, Stellantis already has Europe’s best-selling mass-market model. 

  We continue to own Volkswagen AG (via its VWAPY ADR, which represent “preference shares” that are  identical to “ordinary” shares except they lack voting rights and thus sell at a discount). VW currently sells  for around 4.2x estimated 2022 earnings due to a combination of “recession fears” and short-term issues obtaining energy (until either the Ukraine war is over or alternative supplies are in place), but it controls a massive number of terrific brands including Porsche, of which it recently IPO’d a small percentage at  a $73 billion valuation, thus valuing the rest of the company at only around $10 billion; I believe Audi  alone is worth 4x that! And a Lamborghini IPO may be next. Additionally, VW will pay a January special  dividend of around $1.90 per VWAPY share in proceeds from Porsche’s IPO, and the regular yield is  currently over 5%!

  Meanwhile VW Group’s EVs (several of which are more technologically advanced than  any Tesla) combine to heavily outsell Tesla in Europe and by 2025 may outsell Tesla worldwide.

  We continue to own General Motors (GM), which currently sells for only around 6.5x the $6.26/share  midpoint of its 2022 GAAP EPS guidance (which was reiterated in November). GM is doing all the right  things in electric cars, autonomous driving (via its Cruise ownership) and software, yet it’s cheap because,  as with other established automakers, many investors have (for now) forsaken it in favor of “electric car  pure-plays,” a sector which has thus become the largest valuation bubble in history.

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  And regarding  “autonomy,” keep in mind that unlike Tesla, which sells a LiDAR-less fraud to rubes, Cruise is already  running a fleet of fully autonomous cars in San Francisco (and soon Phoenix and Austin); you can see many  videos of this on its YouTube channel. GM will also benefit more than any other manufacturer from the  proposed new EV tax credit, as it will soon have the largest variety of North American-made (a requirement of the credit) EV models fitting within the new price restrictions. Additionally, in August the  company reinstituted a modest dividend.

  I thus consider these positions (Stellantis, GM and VW) to be both “freestanding value stock buys” and “relative-value paired trades” against our Tesla short.One oft heard knock against “the autos” is a belief  that their recent earnings have been “peak,” but keep in mind that due to supply chain issues they all  sold around 20% fewer cars than they otherwise could have. Thus, I believe those recent earnings are more like “strong midcycle” and should likely have around a 10x run-rate PE, not the current 3x to 6x. Also, thanks to those same supply chain issues they’re much lighter on inventory than they’d normally  be heading into a recession. Therefore, I believe these stocks have considerable upside from here. 

  We continue to own Fuel Tech Inc. (FTEK), a seller of air and water pollution control technologies, which in November reported a solid Q2, with revenue up 6.1% year-over-year (although at a lower gross margin),  .01/share in GAAP earnings and around $600,000 in free cash flow. At a current price of $1.24/share with  30.3 million shares outstanding and $33.9 million in cash and Treasuries (and no debt), this is a 43% gross  margin business selling for an enterprise value of only around 0.14x 26.4 million in TTM revenue. This is  the kind of company that will either ignite growth and its stock will take off (its new “Dissolved Gas  Infusion” water treatment technology is a potential medium-term catalyst for that), or it’s so cheap that  it will make for a good strategic acquisition target, as removing the costs of being an independent public  company could make it instantly earnings-accretive while allowing the buyer to acquire a nice chunk of  revenue very cheaply. In short, I think it’s a good “value stock” in which to park some money and see what  happens. 

  And now, Tesla… 

  Despite big, margin-slashing price cuts in both China and Europe, Tesla delivery wait times worldwide  have declined substantially, down to just one week in China while in the U.S. (where Musk’s Twitter boondoggle is rapidly destroying the brand) Tesla is choking on Model 3 inventory and offers December Model Y delivery, while Europe’s backlog is expected to be completely gone by year-end. This means Tesla’s production capacity now outstrips its rate of incoming orders despite the new German and Texas  factories producing at only around 10% of capacity! 

  Meanwhile, combined deliveries for the last two quarters (Q2 & Q3 2022) were lower than those for  the previous two quarters (Q4 2021 & Q1 2022). As Tesla slashes prices it will undoubtedly sell more  cars (I expect Q4 deliveries to be in the range of around 400,000 vs. previous quarters in the 300,000s,  thanks to the cuts plus a rush to beat year-end expiring EV incentives in China, Germany and France), but any other car company can slash prices and do the same thing. (Welcome to the auto business,  which currently sells for around 5x earnings!) Tesla’s apparent market saturation rate of around 1.6 million cars/year worldwide (at least until it slashes prices yet again!) is massively below its current factories’ production capacity, much less the bulls’ absurd expectations of adding a new factory every six months for the next ten years!

  For some valuation perspective, BMW sells around 2 million cars a year with very high margins  (including the best electric SUV now on the market (the new iX), the best luxury EV( the new i7), and  among the best small luxury EVs (the new i4), and has a market cap of around $59 billion. If Tesla grew annual deliveries to the size of BMW’s and had BMW-level margins, at BMW’s current market cap it  would sell for less than $19/share vs. this month’s closing price in the $194s! (Remember: Tesla now  has 3.16 billion shares outstanding!) 

  Meanwhile, Elon Musk remains the most vile person ever to head a large-cap U.S. public company, and  we remain short Tesla, the biggest bubble-stock in modern market history, because: 

  1) It has a sliding share of the world’s EV market and a share of the overall auto market that’s less than 2%, yet a market cap almost as big the next 6 largest automakers (by market cap) combined. 

  2) It has no “moat” of any kind; i.e., nothing meaningfully proprietary in terms of its electric  car technology (which has now been equaled or surpassed by numerous competitors) and its previously proprietary Superchargers are being opened to everyone), while existing  automakers—unlike Tesla—have a decades-long “experience moat” of knowing how to  mass-produce, distribute and service high-quality cars consistently and profitably. 

  3) Excluding working capital benefits and sunsetting emission credit sales Tesla generates only  minimal free cash flow. 

  4) Growth in sequential demand for Tesla’s cars is at a crawl relative to expectations.

  5) Elon Musk is a pathological liar. 

  In October Tesla claimed that it had Q3 GAAP earnings of around .87/share excluding sunsetting emission  credit sales. If you believe that after viewing this chart (courtesy of Twitter user @Keubiko), I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn:

  

  Orange is revenue, green is operating expenses

  Furthermore, Tesla’s minimal depreciation of its new factories appears fraudulently low, as does its  warranty reserve. 

  Even if you believe Tesla’s clearly nonsensical earnings number, it annualizes to only $3.48/share, which  based on November’s closing price of $194.70 = a run-rate PE ratio of around 56 for a now slow-growing (or growing-but-margin-slashing) car company in an industry with a current average PE of around 5. 

  Meanwhile, Tesla has objectively lost its “product edge,” with many competing cars now offering comparable or better real-world range, better interiors, similar or faster charging speeds and much better quality. (Tesla ranks near the bottom of Consumer Reports’ reliability survey while British consumer  organization Which? found it to be one of the least reliable cars in existence.) Thus, due to competitors’ temporary production constraints, waiting times are now longer for many of Tesla’s direct EV competitors than they are for a Tesla.  

  In fact, Tesla is likely now the second, third or fourth choice for many EV buyers, and only maintains its  volume lead though a short-lived edge in production capacity that will disappear over the next 12 to 36 months as competitors rapidly increase the ability to produce their superior EVs. Tesla’s poorly-built  Model Y faces current (or imminent) competition from the much better made (and often just better) 

  electric Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Ford Mustang Mach E, Cadillac Lyriq, Nissan Ariya, Audi Q4 e-tron, BMW  iX3, Mercedes EQB, Volvo XC40 Recharge, Chevrolet Blazer EV & $30,000 Equinox EV and Polestar 3. And  Tesla’s Model 3 now has terrific direct “sedan competition” from Volvo’s beautiful Polestar 2, the great  new BMW i4, the upcoming Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Volkswagen Aero, and multiple local competitors in  China. 

  And in the high-end electric car segment worldwide the Porsche Taycan (the base model of which is now  considerably less expensive than Tesla’s Model S) outsells the Model S, while the spectacular new BMW  i7, Mercedes EQS, Audi e-Tron GT and Lucid Air make it look like a fast Yugo, and the extremely well  reviewed new BMW iX, Mercedes EQS SUV and Audi Q8 eTron (as well as multiple new Chinese models)  do the same to the Model X. 

  Indeed, for years I’ve said “Tesla is Blackberry”—the maker of a first-generation version of a product  that—once the market was proven—would be supplanted into niche obscurity by newer, better versions;  now I can provide a much more recent analogy: Tesla is Netflix.

  For years Netflix had an absurd valuation  based on its pioneering position in streaming media, but once it proved that such a market existed myriad  competitors swarmed all over it, and this year the stock collapsed when we learned that not only is Netflix  no longer in “hypergrowth” mode but for the first time since 2011 (when it transitioned from physical  DVDs) it actually lost subscribers. I believe Musk knows that Tesla is “the next Netflix” (hence his recent  “Twitter buying distraction”), with VW, Hyundai/Kia, Ford, GM, Stellantis, BMW, Mercedes, BYD & other  Chinese competitors and, in a few years, Toyota & Honda, being the Disney, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount +, etc., of the electric car market, stealing Tesla’s share and eventually  pounding its stock price down 90% or so from today’s, into the valuation of “just another car company.”

  Despite this obvious “writing on the wall,” many Tesla bulls sincerely believe that ten years from now the  company will be twice the size of Volkswagen or Toyota, thereby selling around 20 million cars a year (up  from the anticipated Q4 annualized run-rate of around 1.6 million); in fact in May Musk himself even  raised this as a possibility. Setting aside the absurdity of selling that many cars into the limited market of Tesla’s high price points, the “logistical absurdity” of selling 20 million cars/year in ten years means that 

  in addition to 2.4 million cars a year of sold-out existing claimed production capacity (once the German  and Texas factories are fully operational), Tesla would have to add 35 more brand new 500,000 car/year  factories with sold out production; i.e., a new factory approximately every single quarter for the next ten years! Only a Teslemming could be dumb enough to believe this! 

  Meanwhile, in June the NHTSA announced that its investigation of Tesla’s deadly Autopilot has  expanded into “an engineering analysis,” the last required step before (finally!) demanding a full recall,  and in October it was reported that this deadly scam is being investigated by both the SEC and the DOJ.  The refund liability potential for Tesla for this is in the billions of dollars, and possibly even the tens of  billions if a class action lawsuit proves that the cars involved were purchased solely due to the  (fallacious) promise of “full self-driving.”

  And, of course, there will be a massive “valuation reappraisal”  for Tesla’s stock as the world wakes up to the fact that Tesla’s so-called “autonomy technology” is deadly, trailing-edge garbage. In fact, the NHTSA has reported a slew of Autopilot-related deaths just  since last year. For all Tesla deaths cited in the media—which is likely only a small fraction of those that  have occurred—see TeslaDeaths.com. And Tesla has sold this trashy software for over six years now: 

  

  …and still promotes it on its website via a completely fraudulent video!

  Another favorite Tesla hype story has been built around so-called “proprietary battery technology.” In fact  though, Tesla has nothing proprietary there—it doesn’t make them, it buys them from Panasonic, CATL and LG, and it’s the biggest liar in the industry regarding the real-world range of its cars. And if new-format 4680 cells enter the market some time in 2024 (as is now expected), even if Tesla makes some of its own,  other manufacturers will gladly sell them to anyone, and BMW has already announced it will buy them  from CATL and EVE. 

  And oh, the joke of a “pickup truck” Tesla previewed in 2019 (and still hasn’t shown in production-ready  form) won’t be much of “growth engine” either, as by the time it’s in mass-production in 2024 it will enter  a dogfight of a market; in fact, Ford’s terrific 2022 all-electric F-150 Lightning now has over 200,000 retail  reservations (plus many more fleet reservations), GM has introduced its fantastic 2023 electric Silverado which already has nearly 200,000 reservations, Rivian’s pick-up has gotten excellent early reviews, and  Ram will also be out with a great truck in 2024.

  About Mark Spiegel

  Mark manages Stanphyl Capital, established in 2011, a deep-value equity & macro long-short investing fund based in New York City. Mark can be reached at mark@stanphylcap.com or at @StanphylCap on Twitter.

  Disclaimer: This letter was not reproduced in full. I may own Tesla call and put options and may be long/short TSLA and or any names mentioned. You should assume I have positions in any names I publish about. I have no position in Mark’s funds. Mark is a subscriber to Fringe Finance via a comped subscription I gave him and has been on my podcast. The excerpts from Mark’s letter, above, shall not be construed as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to sell, any securities or services. Any such offering may only be made at the time a qualified investor receives formal materials describing an offering plus related subscription documentation. There is no guarantee the Fund’s investment strategy will be successful. Investing involves risk, and an investment in the Fund could lose money.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 15:40

• "He Turned His Back": Rail Workers Fume After Biden Forces Unions To Accept Deal
  “He Turned His Back”: Rail Workers Fume After Biden Forces Unions To Accept Deal

  Rail works are furious after President Joe Biden on Friday signed bipartisan legislation into law to avert an industry strike that could have had grave economic fallout.

  

  One rail worker, Justiun Schaaf, told AP that he had to choose between getting dental work or attending his son’s 7th birthday party.

  “Ultimately I decided to take the day off for my kid’s birthday party,” he said, adding “Then when I am finally able to get into the dentist four, five, six months later, the tooth is too bad to repair at that point, so I have to get the tooth pulled out”

  According to Schaff, if he had the option of taking a sick day, he “would have never been in that situation.”

  In comments after he signed the legislation, Biden acknowledged that more work needs to be done, Fox News reports.

  “Look, I know this bill doesn’t have paid sick leave, that these rail workers and, frankly, every worker in America deserves. But that fight isn’t over,” he said.

  Roadway mechanic Reece Murtagh was more direct, telling CNN Friday that unionized workers’ collective bargaining rights have been “trampled on.”

  “Their voice has not been heard, they voted against the contract,” Murtagh said. “We have a pro-labor president who loves to, you know, pat himself on the back for that, and when the going got tough, he turned his back on the people he’s supposed to be looking out for.” -Fox news

  The deal struck by Congress, which is now law, would raise workers’ pay by 24% over five-years, between 2020 and 2024, which includes an immediate payout on average of $11,000 each once ratified. It was approved by eight of the 12 transportation unions involved in the negotiations – with the four dissenting unions arguing that it was unfair because it included insufficient paid-sick leave, of which they wanted seven. Congress nixed that demand from the bill despite efforts by mostly progressive lawmakers to amend the legislation.

  

  “What was negotiated was so much better than anything they ever had,” Biden said during a news briefing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.

  The rail unions said they weren’t able to get more concessions out of the railroads because the big companies knew Congress would intervene and railroads refused to add paid sick days to the deal because they didn’t want to pay much more than a special board of arbitrators appointed by Biden recommended this summer. 

  In addition, the railroads said that unions have agreed over the years to forego paid sick leave in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits. -Fox News

  “ou hear when you hire out on the railroad you’re going to miss some things. But you’re not supposed to miss everything,” said retired engineer Jeff Kurtz, an active participant in the Railroad Workers United Coalition. “You shouldn’t miss your kids growing up. You shouldn’t miss the seminal moments in your family’s life.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 15:05

• Twitter Staff To Be Grilled Before Congress For Censoring Hunter Biden Laptop Story: Rep. Comer
  Twitter Staff To Be Grilled Before Congress For Censoring Hunter Biden Laptop Story: Rep. Comer

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

  The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee said that Twitter staff involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential elections will face Congress and testify about their actions.

  

  Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the GOP ranking member on the Committee, made the remarks in a Friday appearance on Fox News after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk dropped part one of the so-called “Twitter Files,” an expose of the inner workings of Twitter’s censorship machine.

  “Every employee at Twitter who was involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story will have an opportunity to come before Congress and explain their actions to the American people,” Comer told program host Sean Hannity.

  Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday unveiled a series of internal Twitter communications that give insight into steps taken by staff at the social media platform around suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.

  Republicans have long accused Twitter—and some media outlets—of suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, which included reporting that bolstered claims that the president lied when he said he had no involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings.

  

  ‘Marking This as Unsafe’

  In order to suppress the Hunter Biden report, Twitter executives marked it as “unsafe,” limiting its spread and even blocking it from being directly shared via the platform’s direct message function, Taibbi said in comments on the disclosures. He noted that such extreme restrictions were reserved for content such as child pornography.

  Messages between executives in Twitter’s communications and policy departments, shared by Taibbi in screenshots, show some confusion about the actions taken, with a communications executive writing: “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.”

  The disclosures show that both Democrats and Republicans had access to Twitter’s censorship system and each side lodged various requests and complaints with the social media platform’s staff. But because of Twitter employees’ predominantly left-leaning political convictions, Democrats had more avenues to press their case, Taibbi said.

  The Epoch Times has been unable to independently verify the content of the disclosures shared by Musk and detailed by Taibbi.

  

  ‘Just the Beginning’

  Comer, in his interview on Fox News, said that the Twitter Files expose shows that the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop is “being vindicated.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 14:30

• Apple Accelerates Plans To Shift Production Out Of China
  Apple Accelerates Plans To Shift Production Out Of China

  Apple has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside of China, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing insiders.

  The company has been reportedly telling suppliers to ‘actively’ plan on assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia – primarily India and Vietnam, as the company looks to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers spearheaded by Foxconn.

  The company’s goal is to ship 40-45% of iPhones from India, vs the current single-digit percentage, according to TF International Securities analyst, Ming-chi Kuo. Vietnam is also expected to shoulder more of the manufacturing of other Apple products, such as AirPods, smartwatches and laptops.

  

  The decision was sparked by turmoil at “iPhone City” inside Zhengzhou (a ‘city-within-a-city’), where as many as 300,000 workers assemble iPhones and other Apple products as a Foxconn-run factory, which produces roughly 85% of the iPhone Pro lineup, according to Counterpoint Research.

  In November, violent protests hit the Zhengzhou factory – as workers upset over wages and Covid-19 restrictions began rioting and throwing things at the police. All of this poses a risk to Apple, which has relied on the factory as a stable manufacturing center.

  

  “Apple no longer feels comfortable having so much of its business tied up in one place,” according to the report.

  So no, Apple isn’t moving production out of concerns over human rights abuses, censorship, or other types of oppression.

  “In the past, people didn’t pay attention to concentration risks,” said former US-based Foxconn executive, Alan Yeung. “Free trade was the norm and things were very predictable. Now we’ve entered a new world.”

  One response, say the people involved in Apple’s supply chain, is to draw from a bigger pool of assemblers—even if those companies are themselves based in China. Two Chinese companies that are in line to get more Apple business, they say, are Luxshare Precision Industry Co. and Wingtech Technology Co. 

  On calls with investors earlier this year, Luxshare executives said some consumer-electronics clients, which they didn’t name, were worried about Chinese supply-chain snafus caused by Covid-19 prevention measures, power shortages and other issues. They said these clients wanted Luxshare to help them do more work outside China. -WSJ

  The concerns over production revolve around new product introduction (NPI), which requires teams to work with contractors to translate blueprints and prototypes into a detailed manufacturing plan. According to the report, Apple has put its manufacturing partners on notice to start trying to do more of this outside of China.

  That said, unless places like Vietnam and India can excel at NPI as well, they will ‘remain stuck playing second fiddle’ according to supply chain specialists.

  For now, consumers doing Christmas shopping are stuck with some of the longest wait times for high-end iPhones in the product’s 15-year history, stretching until after Christmas. Apple issued a rare midquarter warning in November that shipments of the Pro models would be hurt by Covid-19 restrictions at the Zhengzhou facility. -WSJ

  

  The shift marks a massive change in the relationship between Apple and China – which for decades have been engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship.

  According to Kup, the supply-chain analyst, iPhone shipments in the fourth quarter of this year were likely to reach between 70 and 75 million units – around 10 million fewer than market projections before the Zhengzhou riots.

  “Apple is going to have to find multiple places to replace iPhone City,” said Dan Panzica, a former Foxconn executive who now advises companies on supply-chain issues. “They’re going to have to spread it around and make more villages instead of big cities.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/04/2022 – 13:55

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