Today’s News 8th March 2023

• New WHO Chief Scientist Made Crucial Change To Paper Claiming COVID-19 Didn't Come From Lab
  New WHO Chief Scientist Made Crucial Change To Paper Claiming COVID-19 Didn’t Come From Lab

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The World Health Organization’s new chief scientist made a crucial change to an influential 2020 paper that claimed it was “improbable” that COVID-19 came from a laboratory, a newly disclosed email shows.

  

  Jeremy Farrar, the chief scientist, was credited in one message with helping guide the paper about the origin of COVID-19, according to one email released by the U.S. House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic on March 5.

  “Thanks for shepherding this paper. Rumors of bioweaponeering are now circulating in China,” Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University professor, wrote to Farrar in the message.

  “Yes I know and in US – why so keen to get out ASAP. I will push nature,” Farrar responded.

  In the early 2020 paper, Lipkin and four co-authors claimed: “It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.”

  SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.

  A draft of the manuscript, published by Nature, included a different word, the House panel found.

  “Sorry to micro-manage/microedit! But would you be willing to change one sentence?” Farrar wrote to Kristian Andersen, who co-authored the paper, in an email just one day before publication.

  Farrar asked to insert “improbable” in place of “unlikely,” the email showed.

  “Sure,” Andersen responded.

  The paper also stated that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct” and that the authors “do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

  “This evidence suggests that Dr. Farrar was more involved in the drafting and publication of Proximal Origin than previously known and possibly should have been credited or acknowledged for this involvement,” the panel said.

  Asked for a comment from Farrar, the World Health Organization (WHO) told The Epoch Times via email he hasn’t yet started in his new position.

  The British scientist was, at the time of the messages, at the helm of the Wellcome Trust, which controls millions of dollars in funding for research in the UK.

  The WHO announced on Dec. 13, 2022, that Farrar would be the next new chief scientist and that he would start in the second quarter of 2023. Wellcome, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, has stated that Farrar was due to leave in 2023.

  

  Secret Teleconference

  Farrar helped arrange a secret Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference with Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to discuss the origin of COVID-19, previously released emails show.

  Some of the participants said details of SARS-CoV-2 indicated it didn’t originate from nature, though others favored the natural origin theory.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 03/08/2023 – 00:05

• Tennessee First State To Ban Drag Shows For Minors
  Tennessee First State To Ban Drag Shows For Minors

  Last Thursday, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to explicitly ban drag performances in public spaces accessible to minors.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law after he himself had cause some controversy when high school year book pictures of him dressed in drag resurfaced. While the state is currently the only one with such a law, this could soon change.

  According to Time Magazine, 11 more states – in the U.S. South, Midwest or West – have seen similar bills introduced. Arkansas recently passed a law restricting adult-oriented shows, but language specific to drag shows was removed previously.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The bills are all aimed at drag show performances, but differ in their specifics.

  For example, Arizona’s introduced bill looks to ban drag performances for those under the age of 15, while Nebraska wants to put that cutoff at 19.

  While a bill in Missouri only aims to outlaw drag performances on public property, most others target all public spaces where minors could be present.

  While drag performances in bars would carry an age limit of 21 in the U.S. anyways, the bills could affect drag shows for example at street festivals or theaters as well as during a format that drew special ire from conservatives – drag queen story hour.

  The initiative started by a San Francisco-based drag performer to educate and foster acceptance for the LGBT community has seen drag queens read to children in bookshops and libraries since 2015.

  While not all drag performers are LBGT (and being a drag performer is distinct from being trans), the practice has a strong history in the LGBT community, especially among gay men. 

  Today, more than 7 percent of adults in the U.S. identify as LGBT.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 23:45

• "US Is Not Yet Ready For Great Power Conflict", Yet Still Plots Against China; WSJ
  “US Is Not Yet Ready For Great Power Conflict”, Yet Still Plots Against China; WSJ

  Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

  A vivid scene came in my first year Harvard MBA course, Business, Government and the International Economy, taught in my section by George C. Lodge, son of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. George Lodge said he still remembered the day in 1968 when he realized there were limits to US power, that we could not fight a war on poverty, send a man to the moon, and fight a ground war in Asia at the same time.

  

  The lack of that insight still seems widespread inside the Beltway, with belief in American omnipotence renewed by the fall of the USSR and then the further decline of Russia in the 1990s.

  Under a story initially published with a page-wide banner headline, The US is Not Yet Ready for the Era of “Great Power’ Conflict. The article curiously omits that it is the US that has been fomenting these clashes. And even though the URL banner on the article proper reads, The US is Not Yet Ready for the Era of “Great Power’ Conflict with China and Russia, the piece treats Russia dismissively, in passing, and treats escalating with China as a perfectly reasonable thing to do, not just now. We’ll turn to Russia in due course, particularly in light of Ukraine deciding Monday to try to break into the Bakhmut cauldron.

  If you read the article carefully, you’ll see the reverse, that any meaningful improvement in US preparedness against China is based on hopium, like the US developing, manufacturing, and deploying new weapons that are on the drawing board or in early stages. Similarly, it fails to admit a huge weakness in the US dealing with China: that our Navy is badly overinvested in the floating pork known as aircraft carriers. Informed observers like Scott Ritter has said China has the capability to take them out without too much difficulty if they get within menacing range. Sinking only one aircraft carrier would result in roughly 6000 deaths, a humiliation the US would not tolerate. Ritter has long worried that our response would be to fire a tactical nuke at the Chinese hinterlands. Ritter is certain that China would immediately light up the entire US West Coast.

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  The point of this article may be to provide cover for a minor US de-escalatory move with China: that rather than having new House Speaker stir the Taiwan independence pot as Nancy Pelosi did with a visit to the island, the Taiwanese leader will instead come to the US to meet McCarthy.

  Note the article repeats the CIA claim that China intends to invade Taiwan by 2027. Ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson has warned that the agency has outsourced a tremendous amount of its purported intelligence-gathering, which in Ukraine has resulted in the government retailing Ukraine propaganda. There’s no reason to think China will invade even it decides it has had enough. A blockade would do. That would also put the US, in the eyes of the international community, as being the aggressor were it to try to do anything about it, since just about no one recognizes Taiwan.

  The belief among cynics was the CIA (or its pro-Taiwan sources) focused on 2027 as close to the end of the window when the US could challenge China over Taiwan, in light of the growth of the Chinese economy and among other things, its ship-building capability. But this piece implicitly throws cold water on this timeline and keeps hammering at the idea that the US can surpass China, when there’s no reason to think we can create and deploy a whole bunch of new-gen systems and upgrade our forces too.

  The article is also heavily anecdotal, generally not a good sign in a story on a “hard” topic like geopolitics. It start with an Air Force lieutenant general realizing as a result of 2018 wargames that China had enough missiles to do serious damage to US bases in the region. It ominously continues:

  Five years ago…the U.S. started tackling a new era of great-power competition with China and Russia. It isn’t yet ready, and there are major obstacles in the way….

  Corporate consolidation across the American defense industry has left the Pentagon with fewer arms manufacturers. Shipyards are struggling to produce the submarines the Navy says it needs to counter China’s larger naval fleet, and weapon designers are rushing to catch up with China and Russia in developing superfast hypersonic missiles.

  When the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a wargame last year that simulated a Chinese amphibious attack on Taiwan, the U.S. side ran out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles within a week.

  The military is struggling to meet recruitment goals, with Americans turned off by the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially leaving the all-volunteer force short of manpower. Plans to position more forces within striking range of China are still a work in progress

  Yet it lards that sober message with faith in eventual success via vaporware or hopium:

  The U.S. military is still more capable than its main adversaries. The Chinese have their own obstacles in developing the capability to carry out a large-scale amphibious assault, while the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine….

  New tactics have been devised to disperse U.S. forces and make them less of an inviting target for China’s increasingly powerful missiles.

  The Pentagon’s annual budget for research and development has been boosted to $140 billion—an all time high. The military is pursuing cutting-edge technology it hopes will enable the military services to share targeting data instantaneously so that U.S. air, land, sea and space forces, operating over thousands of miles, can act in unison, a current challenge….

  Many of the cutting-edge weapons systems the Pentagon believes will tilt the battlefield in its favor won’t be ready until the 2030s, raising the risk that China may be tempted to act before the U.S. effort bears fruit.

  We’ll interrupt this recap to point out that the US bizarrely assumes it will be able to gain meaningful ground on China, that China will either stand still or not progress as quickly. Yet if you look at the ASPI critical technologies study we cited yesterday, you will see China dominates in categories relevant to military hardware and battlefield coordination: advanced materials and manufacturing; artificial intelligence, computing and communications; defense, space, robotics, and transportation.

  Back to the Journal:

  Deterring China from invading Taiwan, a longstanding U.S. partner that Beijing claims as Chinese territory, defines the challenge….The U.S. needed to demonstrate it could prevent Beijing from seizing the island in the first place—a requirement included in the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy issued in 2022…

  A more recent wargame conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff showed the U.S. could stymie a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and force a stalemate if the conflict was fought later in the decade, although high casualties on both sides would result. That simulation assumed that the U.S. would have the benefit of new weapons, tactics and military deployments that are currently being planned at the Pentagon.

  So the US will only be able to fight China to a draw if US new wunderfaffen become operational soon enough and the US succeeds in executing a major revamp too.

  More on capability-building:

  The Army, which saw its electronic warfare, short-range air defense and engineering capabilities atrophy amid budget pressures and the previous decades’ wars, is moving to develop a new generation of weapons systems that can strike targets at much longer ranges. It is planning to deploy a new hypersonic missile in the fall though its utility against Chinese forces will depend on securing basing rights in the Pacific.

  The Navy, which is confronting budget pressures, personnel shortages and limits to American shipbuilding capacity, is currently planning to expand its fleet to at least 355 crewed ships, a size still smaller than China’s current navy. In the near term, the U.S. will have around 290 ships.

  A CBO report dated January 31, 2023 is much less bullish about hypersonic missiles, including their combat-ready date:

  CBO reached the following conclusions:

  Technological challenges must still be overcome to field hypersonic missiles. The fundamental remaining challenge involves managing the extreme heat that hypersonic missiles are exposed to by traveling at high speeds in the atmosphere for most of their flight (unlike cruise missiles, which fly in the atmosphere at lower speeds, or ballistic missiles, which mainly fly above the atmosphere). Shielding hypersonic missiles’ sensitive electronics, understanding how various materials perform, and predicting aerodynamics at sustained temperatures as high as 3,000° Fahrenheit require extensive flight testing. Tests are ongoing, but failures in recent years have delayed progress.

  Both hypersonic and ballistic missiles are well-suited to operate outside potential adversaries’ antiaccess and area-denial (A2/AD), or “keep-out,” zones. The Department of Defense has developed a strategy to use accurate, long-range, high-speed missiles early in a conflict to neutralize the A2/AD zones being developed by potential adversaries, such as China and Russia. Both hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles equipped with maneuverable warheads could provide the combination of speed, accuracy, range, and survivability (the ability to reach a target without being intercepted) that would be useful in the military scenarios CBO considered. However, many missions do not require such rapid strikes. For those missions, less costly alternatives to both hypersonic and ballistic missiles exist, including subsonic cruise missiles. Hypersonic weapons would mainly be useful to address threats that were both well-defended and extremely time-sensitive.

  Again to the Journal:

  The general [Clint Hinote] has pushed to equip cargo planes with cruise missiles to boost allied firepower, the use of high-altitude balloons to carry sensors and electric “flying cars” to carry people and equipment throughout the Pacific island chains—ideas that have led to experiments but so far no procurement decisions.

  He thinks a future Air Force could rely more on autonomous, uncrewed aircraft and deploy fewer fighters.

  Mind you, Russia went down that path a long, long time ago, resulting its layered offensive missiles and its best-in-breed air defense systems.

  The cheery closing thought, from Hinote:

  “I think we’ve got a recipe for blunting” a Chinese attack, he said. “I just think you have to reinvent your force to do it.”

  Now if this article isn’t worrisome enough merely based on a careful reading for relying on magic technological saves or massive operational improvements, another big red flag is its few, scathing mentions of Russia. The article does acknowledge the danger of China and Russia cooperating and Russia’s strong capabilities in hypersonic missiles. But the references to Ukraine are dismissive:

  …the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine….

  A conflict in the Western Pacific might also give Russia’s military, which has been badly battered in Ukraine, the confidence to carry out President Vladimir Putin’s goals of reviving Russian power in what it believes to be its traditional sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

  Mind you, I do not believe this take is entirely or even mainly the result of Pentagon spokescritters hewing to the party line. My impression is most of them believe it. We discussed the latest Defense Intelligence Agency’s Worldwide Threat Assessment, particularly regarding its underestimation of Russia. If we can’t get that right, when we’ve been trying to gin up a war with them since 2014, why should we have any more confidence in our assessment of China?

  The US is managing to talk itself into a different type of delusion with respect to Russia. Remember the Anthony Blinken interview with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, which was widely depicted as presenting a peace plan? In fact it did no such thing. It was a formula for keeping the conflict going, just at a lower boil. As we wrote:

  The Blinken/State vision seems to be:

  US and NATO support Ukraine > *Magic* > War ends > US and NATO support Ukraine

  We and others have speculated that Blinken’s peace gestures are insincere, merely to appease various constituencies that want to see the war end and also intended, if possible, to depict Russia as not interested in negotiating.

  The latter claim is to a fair degree true, but that is due to the now-clear Western position that the most it is prepared to do is stop a hot war but continue arming Ukraine so as to restart at a convenient time. Russia recognized that it is at war with NATO and it needs a durable solution. Given the West’s stated lack of interest in a lasting peace, plus its pride over its duplicity, Russia has no choice but to keep going until it has prostrated NATO or alternatively, increased pressure on major fault lines (for instance, Douglas Macgregor has said NATO would fracture if Poland were to enter Ukraine).

  Consider this section from a February Wall Street Journal story, in which NATO plans to make Ukraine an official, as opposed to de facto, NATO-lite member:

  Germany, France and Britain see stronger ties between NATO and Ukraine as a way to encourage Kyiv to start peace talks with Russia later this year, officials from the three governments said, as some of Kyiv’s Western partners have growing doubts over its ability to reconquer all its territory.

  U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week laid out a blueprint for an agreement to give Ukraine much broader access to advanced military equipment, weapons and ammunition to defend itself once the war ends…

  A British official said another goal of the NATO pact would be to change the Kremlin’s calculus. If Moscow sees that the West is prepared to scale up its military assistance and commitments to Ukraine over time, it could help persuade Moscow that it can’t achieve its military objectives.

  This must be one of the British officials that also believes (per British MoD press reports) that Russia has committed 97% of its armed forces to Ukraine and Wagner forces in Bakhmut are fighting with shovels

  The West is completely open that it plans to keep arming Ukraine no matter what. It expects Russia to agree to a peace deal despite Ukraine being a ticking time bomb by design. It further expects Russia to negotiate when it’s becoming obvious that the US/NATO ability to supply enough artillery and equipment will drop off even further come sometime in the summer. Recall that the press has reported that Ukraine’s daily ammo fire has dropped from 3,000 to 4,000 shells to more like 2,000 and Ukraine is demanding 250,000 shells a month. Not only can the West not provide that, but even that is not enough to match Russia’s estimated 600,000 shells a month.

  In addition, and due to the pressure of time, I was not able to confirm the sourcing, but in recent broadcast, Alexander Mercouris, citing a Western source (perhaps the BBC?) said Ukraine had only 300 artillery platforms, which he noted was down from about 1000 when the war started. If that it true, you can stick a fork in Ukraine. We pointed out that Russia had recently deployed a very effective counter-battery device called the Penicillin, which allowed Russia to detect the location of artillery fire using sound waves and ground impact. Unlike radar, the Penicillin does not put out signals that can be read, so it can’t be located and destroyed.

  Since the Penicillin was put into production, various commentators have pointed out that Russia has been taking out many more weapons platforms. My impression from Dima at Military Summary is that the average is over 2 a day.

  Even if only 2 a day, 60 platforms in a month is 1/5 of what Ukraine is alleged to have left. And as Brian Berletic has repeatedly documented, US weapons deliveries and the dollars attached to them keep falling, to the degree that the US has stopped disclosing the numbers of what it is sending, merely naming the type of weapon or support.

  And so the delusion produces confused messages. Again from the February story:

  President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he needed to start considering peace talks with Moscow when the three leaders met in Paris earlier this month, people familiar with the conversation said….

  While London, Paris and Berlin see the possibility that Kyiv may have to seek talks with Russia after an expected counteroffensive this spring that could help it regain more territory, other Ukraine backers think there should be no negotiations as long as Russian troops remain on Ukrainian soil

  Ukraine’s backers are acting like gamblers hoping they can wager their way out of big losses. No, Ukraine is not to sue for peace now. It’s to settle after a win, even if it were to prove to be a modest win, mainly for the sake of the face of its funders.

  And how is that supposed to happen?

  Russian officials have reported that Ukraine is massing more troops, up from 25,000 to now over 30,000 in Zaporzhizhia, presumably to try an offensive to the south, aimed either at Melitopol or Mariupol. The wags speculate that Ukraine will assemble 40,000 and perhaps as many as 60,000 men, with the target time expected to be late March/early April.

  But these troops will be short on tanks, ammo, and air cover. And Russia has been building major fortifications in the region since Surovkin took over in October, and per Alexander Mercouris, has about 90,000 there now. If an attack looked likely, Russia would almost certain increase its force level there.

  And while Ukraine is supposedly preparing for its big, last ditch counter-offensive, it is also wasting more men and materiel in Bakhmut. Russia has achieved operational encirclement. Men can’t get out without serious survival risk. But Ukraine announced Monday it is still contesting Bakhmut, most experts believe by attempting to force open a transportation route. But even if they succeed, to what end? If they can get enough troops out to recover the cost of forcing open a corridor, that might be a worthy gamble. But if they think they can do more than further delay the full capture of Bakhmut, it’s more evidence they have lost their minds.

  For much more detail on the grim state of play in Bakhmut, see Moon of Alabama’s new post Why Bakhmut Is Falling.

  Now of course wars are uncertain, and perhaps Russia will make a spectacular blunder. But absent that, it’s hard to see any reason for Russia to end the war before its aims are met. And the US and NATO keep feeding more cannon fodder into the Russian killing machine.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 23:25

• "Worst Violent Crime Surge In Three Centuries": Op-Ed Says Philly Dem Voters Owe The City "An Apology"
  “Worst Violent Crime Surge In Three Centuries”: Op-Ed Says Philly Dem Voters Owe The City “An Apology”

  A scathing new op-ed in the Washington Examiner this week calls for Democratic voters in Philadelphia to offer up an apology to the rest of the city for helping usher in what is being called the city’s “worst violent crime surge in three centuries of its history”. 

  The piece was written by Christopher Tremoglie and published yesterday. It opens by calling Philadelphia’s criminal justice policies and reforms “radical” and “incompetent”:

  It’s no secret that Philadelphia’s voters elected a mayor and district attorney so incompetent that the city has experienced its worst violent crime surge in three centuries of its history. This is mainly because of the radical (and incompetent) left-wing criminal justice policies and reforms that were put into effect during their terms. Nor is it a secret that Philadelphia is one of the worst poverty-stricken cities in the nation. It is consistently ranked as the “poorest” of the country’s biggest cities.

  Tremoglie writes: “As a lifelong resident of the City of Brotherly Love, its continued allegiance to Democrats boggles my mind. No matter the horrors of the reality of living in the city, Philadelphians overwhelmingly continue to vote for Democrats who just keep making things worse. Something has to change. It’s time, well beyond time really, for Philadelphia’s Democratic voters to apologize to the rest of the city for the mess they have caused.”

  He says that “Crime, poverty, and corruption are the hallmarks of cities under Democratic control, and it has been since there was an Elvis Presley (the last Republican mayor was elected in 1948). The city’s voters are to blame because they never learn.”

  

  The op-ed also pointed out recent corruption among the ranks of the city government:

  “Last week, a former Democratic City Council member was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted on bribery and fraud charges. Among his crimes was his involvement in a scheme in which he tried to force the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to use labor unions to install MRI machines. Bobby Henon attempted to extort a hospital dedicated to helping terminally ill children to make money. There were other crimes too, but this was the most egregious.”

  “Henon won his most recent election in November 2019. During the campaign, it became public knowledge that he was under federal indictment for the crimes mentioned above, including the shakedown of the children’s hospital. Yet the voters still elected him. His opponent at the time, a local community organizer named Pete Smith, tried to warn residents about Henon’s corruption. They didn’t care — they knowingly voted for a crook,” the op-ed concludes.

  “Philadelphia’s voters are harming their communities. At some point, people will have to admit that those in cities like Philadelphia who routinely vote to keep the status quo deserve the crime, poverty, and other misfortunes that result from their decisions.”

  Meanwhile, as the city crumbles in the background, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has famously all but gone on record in stating that he “hates his job as mayor”, as was reported late last year. To those who live in Center City Philadelphia and have spoken to waitstaff that have served Kenney, it appears to be an open secret that he does not, in fact, like his job.

  “I’ll be happy when I’m not here,” Kenney said back in summer 2022. “When I’m not mayor and I can enjoy some stuff”. 

  BREAKING/LISTEN: “I’m waiting for something bad to happen all the time. I’ll be happy when I’m not here. When I’m not mayor and I can enjoy some stuff.” @CoconnellFox29 follow-up question “You’re looking forward to not being mayor?” @PhillyMayor “Yeah.” @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/yC1f96Uhw9

  — Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) July 5, 2022

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

  “F- you,” Kenney more recently responded to Brian Tierney, previously the editor of The Inquirer and Daily News, at a late 2022 event, when questioned about whether or not he liked his job. 

  Tierney responded: “That’s a terrible mayor. He says he doesn’t like his job. stop it Go ahead and do something different.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 23:05

• Chicago Dad Who Spoke Out Against Porn In Schools Faces Extra Security Screening En Route To CPAC
  Chicago Dad Who Spoke Out Against Porn In Schools Faces Extra Security Screening En Route To CPAC

  Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A Chicago dad who found himself on a watchlist after opposing pornographic content in his kids’ school says he faced further harassment this weekend from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on the way to and from the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Maryland.

  

  Terry Newsome of Chicago, found out in December 2022 that he had been placed on a terror watch list when he tried to fly from O’Hare Airport to Phoenix. On March 1, Newsome attempted to fly to Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport and learned that, despite positive signs to the contrary, his name remained on the watch list.

  Though he is still permitted to fly, having his name on the list—which federal law enforcement agencies have not explained—means invasive and embarrassing extra screening for Newsome.

  In spite of his efforts to have his name removed from the list, Newsome continues to wrangle with the labyrinthian bureaucracies of the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and TSA.

  Ongoing Battle With Cancer

  Since learning that he had been placed on the list, Newsome has worked incessantly to restore his good name even as he was undergoing “brutal” radiation therapy for stage four cancer.

  “A week and a half ago, I finished like seven weeks of intense radiation five days a week,” Newsome told the Epoch Times in an interview.

  The treatment left his immune system weakened and left him fatigued, he said, adding that he was worried about flying with his immune system so compromised by the radiation therapy.

  “I really shouldn’t have went anywhere because my immune system is pummeled from the radiation, right?” Newsome said.

  Despite his usual opposition to masks—quipping “I’m a Republican” to explain—Newsome said he took precautions and wore a mask on the plane to protect his health.

  Though the journey made him nervous, Newsome said he felt he had to go to CPAC as part of his ongoing mission to clear his name. Thus, despite his weakened state—and defying his family’s wishes that he not go—Newsome boarded a plane to Washington last week to attend CPAC, where he hoped to find more assistance with his TSA problem.

  Invasive Screening

  On his arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare on March 1, Newsome learned that his ticket still carried the “quad-S” (SSSS) designation, despite his being a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pre-check-approved flier for over a decade before.

  Earlier, the TSA had responded to a query by Newsome, indicating at the time that he would go through “standard screening protocol” moving forward.

  In addition to much more rigorous screening of bags, SSSS fliers are typically on the receiving end of a full-body pat down. They also have their hands (and sometimes, according to some reports) their feet swabbed to check for explosives.

  

  Just how invasive this search can be depends on circumstances, but fliers with the SSSS designation can also expect to be prodded on questions like whether they packed their own bag, where they’re headed, why they’re going there, and so on.

  Newsome said that the specifics of SSSS screening are minor on their own, but that the inconveniences add up.

  On Feb. 28, 24 hours before his flight was due to take off, Newsome attempted to check in for his flight on the American Airlines app.

  As an American Platinum Flier, Newsome is entitled to several cushy benefits, including the chance for his seat to be bumped up to first class depending on availability. When he tried to check in, however, Newsome realized he couldn’t—the first indication that his flight status had not been resolved.

  Upon arriving at the airport on March 1, Newsome found that he was still having trouble printing his ticket. As it happened in December, he was required to get federal approval before the airline could print his ticket.

  “For me, it’s not like I’m just an enhanced security whatever else it is,” Newsome said. “I can’t even—not only can I not enhance [my ticket], I can’t even get a boarding pass until there’s somebody from the government to give American Airlines the approval to print the ticket.”

  Realizing that he was still on the list, Newsome decided simply to check his bag in order to avoid the embarrassment of having all his clothing, medicines, and personal items taken out of his bag in front of everyone.

  After checking his bag and receiving his ticket, Newsome proceeded to the TSA checkpoint.

  When TSA agents began going through the line examining other fliers’ boarding passes, Newsome knew they were looking for him and told the TSA agents as much. At that point, he was pulled from the line and brought to an empty line for enhanced screening.

  Newsome described his experience, citing how embarrassing the extra screening was even knowing he had done nothing wrong.

  “They stopped the whole line,” Newsome said. “They actually made everybody get out … And they had supervisors come and took me through the enhanced screening. All these people were watching.”

  Newsome and his bag were brought through a metal detector and X-ray scanner, as is the norm for most fliers.

  However, they required much more of Newsome: “I had to take off my shoes. Then they take my bags and everything else and I stand there while they go through everything.” Newsome also had his crotch area patted down in view of other fliers.

  Newsome added later, “They swabbed everything for bombs.”

  Just 30 minutes later, a similar scene played out as Newsome was trying to board his flight.

  The TSA announced over a loudspeaker near his gate that they would be checking everyone’s passports, IDs, and boarding passes before they could get on the plane. At the same moment, several TSA agents, joined by what appeared to be an undercover agent wearing sunglasses and coordinating security procedures with the TSA agents, began screening all boarders’ documents.

  

  “I just knew it was for me,” Newsome said.

  Thus, he drew attention to himself, telling a TSA agent, “It’s me, I’m the quad-S.”

  Newsome was pulled out of line at this point for further screening. Depriving him of yet another American Airline Platinum Flier benefit, Newsome was the last person to board; his ticket entitled him to be in the second group of boarders.

  Newsome said this was even more embarrassing for him than the first screening, as that could have been written off as a standard random search.

  ‘Anti-Porn, Not Anti-Gay’

  Earlier, Newsome had been politically active in his school district after learning about sexually explicit images in a book at his children’s school library—activities which Newsome believes may be responsible for his placement on the list in the first place.

  Newsome had never been involved in school board meetings or politics until mid-2021, when he attended a district school board meeting after his then-eighth-grade son came home and said his teacher had told him that “there is no American dream.”

  Newsome, a descendant of Italian immigrants who himself had lived the American dream, was shocked to hear that. He called his children’s principal to discuss the issue, and suspected that these issues would only get worse when his kids, fraternal twins, got to high school.

  In July 2021, Newsome attended his first school board meeting at Downers Grove’s Community High School.

  

  Newsome immediately began a crusade on several hot-button topics, ranging from mask mandates to critical race theory, becoming the unofficial spokesman for several concerned mothers who were more hesitant to speak out.

  “The moms are so happy to have an aggressive, type-A-personality father to join them. They had mostly fought this battle alone, against the giant system of public schools,” Newsome told The Epoch Times.

  Newsome’s most controversial activism came with his opposition to the book “Gender Queer” by Mia Kobabe, a book containing sexually explicit images that teaches children about oral sex and controversial notions of gender identity.

  Selections from the book show a biological female adolescent struggling over her “gender identity.” The girl is also depicted wearing a device known as a “binder,” a tight-fitting brassiere-like garment meant to reduce breast size. At some points in the book, the girl is shown engaging in oral sex with another biological female identifying as male.

  Newsome’s opposition to the book led to his receiving a litany of ad hominem attacks from left-wing agitators in the Chicago area. However, he has insisted throughout his activist work that he and other parents are “anti-porn, not anti-gay or homophobic.”

  Newsome has coordinated events in his area with Gays Against Groomers, an organization made up of homosexual and transsexual people who have been outspoken against inundating minors with gender ideology.

  After Newsome began speaking out against the book and the left-wing ideology that had inundated his children’s schools, he began facing attacks from all corners, ranging from threats by Antifa to opposition by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.).

  Two days after the publication of an Epoch Times article about his activism, Newsome found threatening messages against him on a locally run Twitter account called Antifascist Rumor Mill.

  “Action items announced soon in regard to Terry Newsome—time to Drop Pops and his hateful agenda,” the tweet read, referencing Newsome’s nickname “Pops.”

  “Terry trying to make a name for himself, look at his stupid face in the Epoch Times, the extreme #disinformation rag that echoed all the lies, the Big Lie, the ‘Plandemic’ lie, etc.,” said another tweet from the account.

  Newsome told The Epoch Times that many of those who have spoken against him and threatened him, including members of the school board, are in league with Casten.

  “The school board and the superintendent are all controlled by radical, radical leftists … that are very vocal in the Downers Grove Community and all supportive of Sean Casten,” Newsome said. “So anybody that speaks out with a different opinion is brutally attacked on social media and called racist, homophobic, and so forth, no matter the truth.”

  “To make a point, I’ve said it from the very beginning, through now: Me and the other parents are not anti-gay or homophobic—we’re anti-porn,” Newsome said.

  Judith Rose, communications director for the group “Gays Against Groomers,” told the Epoch Times that opposing gender ideology being imposed on children is not homophobic or bigoted.

  

  Rose explained that the goal of the organization, a group made up of gay and transgender people, is to protect children from sexual content.

  “Our goals involve getting legislation put in place to make education more appropriate for children to keep adult material away from children [and] to classify drag shows like a burlesque or strip club type situation where they have to be away from children,” Rose explained.

  Asked about Newsome’s situation, Rose called it “heartbreaking.”

  “I think it’s really heartbreaking, that there’s this wedge being formed between parents and schools,” she said. “And I just think it’s awful what’s happening, trying to classify parents as terrorists for standing up for how they want their kids to be raised or educated. Sometimes it’s not always an option to homeschool your kids.”

  Rose argued that the gender push on children was also bad for LGBT adults, saying “it creates an even bigger wedge between our community and people who don’t necessarily approve of us,” Rose said. “I respect their beliefs; I understand.

  “However, I really wish that more people could see that it’s time to put our differences aside for the children—Gays Against Groomers represents a part of the LGBT community that understands not everyone is going to accept us or wants to accept us. They have their religious beliefs, whatever it is. We respect that,” she said.

  Rose continued, “We don’t want kids to be raised in an environment where they’re heavily saturated with ‘queer ideology’ or ‘queer culture.’ And every parent deserves the right to know what’s going on with their children.”

  “We have people on the far left and people on the far right who don’t like us. We’re trying to find that middle ground—that’s really all we want to do,” she stated.

  “At the end of the day, it’s about the kids: it’s not about us, or our feelings or our identities even. It’s about making a safe environment for children.”

  Jan. 6 Rally

  Some of Newsome’s critics have in the past pointed out that he was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally.

  Newsome candidly admits that he attended the rally, but said he had no bad intentions and broke no laws that day.

  “I went to January 6, with my friend, a retired police officer,” Newsome said.

  According to Newsome, the FBI previously investigated his friend who attended the event, a retired Cook County police officer, and had cleared him of any wrongdoing.

  The officer, who asked that his name be excluded from the story, has been Newsome’s friend for decades.

  Asked whether he had observed Newsome committing any act that could be construed as a crime, he quickly said he had not, and that the two were together “100 percent of the time” in DC.

  Additionally, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy for cancer at the time, leaving him in a weakened state.

  The day before, Newsome noted, “I had been on the IV for my cancer.”

  While, at the time, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy rather than radiation treatments, he was nevertheless weakened by the treatments. He said at one point he felt so exhausted he had to lie down on the sidewalk for a few minutes before he could continue to the rally.

  Newsome and his friend said their only reason for attending the rally was to hear President Donald Trump speak and to ensure people were safe.

  “We went down there for two things, one to see our president speak. Two, because we’re both still big guys even though we’re older,” Newsome said. “We saw in November, December, families, parents overly attacked by Antifa [and] BLM in front of their hotels.”

  Newsome said he had left by the time order broke down at the rally. As proof, he provided time-stamped photos.

  Newsome’s companion backed up his story: “When the alleged insurrection happened we were already gone,” he said. “We were halfway to our hotel, which was approximately three quarters to a mile away. Halfway during the course of our walk, we saw a bunch of squad cars, lights and sirens on, going in the direction of the Capitol.”

  It was not until after the two men returned to their hotel that they learned about the Capitol breach, they said.

  Newsome’s photos and time stamps from that day show that he did not trespass on Capitol grounds and was gone before the breach ensued.

  Newsome said that he and his friend would not have attended the rally if they had known about the bad intentions some had that day.

  “It’s not a crime to have been in DC on Jan. 6, whatever the Nancy Pelosis and Liz Cheneys would like you to believe,” Ed Martin, a top attorney for Jan. 6 defendants, told the Epoch Times. “The American people are so disgusted by this stuff.”

  “If anyone that was there in Washington on Jan. 6 committed a crime in so doing, that’s a mockery of what America’s about. That’s not the standard and that’s not America.”

  Ambivalent Replies

  Newsome has gotten lukewarm or ambivalent replies, or none, from the federal agencies with which he has discussed the issue.

  Following his experience in December, Newsome sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the FBI, seeking more information about his newly discovered status as an alleged terror risk.

  The FBI refused to discuss details with Newsome.

  The FBI letter Newsome received in response to his request, says in part: “The U.S. Government can neither confirm nor deny whether a particular person is on any terrorist watch list. Maintaining the confidentiality of government watch lists is necessary to achieve the objectives of the U.S. Government, as well as to protect the privacy of individuals who may be on a watch list for a limited time and later removed. If the U.S. Government revealed who was listed on any government watch list, terrorists would be able to take actions to avoid detection by government authorities. Thus, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of your subject’s name on any watch lists pursuant to FOIA exemption.”

  Because the federal government refuses to so much as acknowledge that Newsome has been placed on a list, it is unclear why Newsome’s name was flagged for enhanced screening.

  Newsome told the Epoch Times that he thinks the addition of his name to the list may be in response to his past political activities.

  In their response to an Epoch Times inquiry about Newsome, the FBI’s press office insisted that the agency does not open investigations solely on the grounds of protected First Amendment activity.

  “The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity,” the agency wrote.

  Told about this reply, Martin immediately pointed out the key word in that reply: “solely.”

  “The wiggle word is ‘solely,’ so that means they have to say something else,” Martin explained. “So it’s not solely because you asked about the pornography, it’s because you got a speeding ticket when you were 18 that wasn’t resolved, or because you were in January 6.

  “So it’s not ‘solely’—[the FBI is saying they] would never do it solely on constitutionally-protected grounds,” Martin said, adding that the FBI had effectively named itself “the judge of what adds up to something dramatic.”

  The FBI reply continued: “We cannot and do not investigate ideology. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.”

  After hearing this reply, Martin made another observation of what he called a “wiggle” phrase: “intend to commit.”

  “[The FBI is] saying here that they’re gonna read minds, and they’re gonna tell us who is intending to commit a crime,” Martin said. “They didn’t say ‘a propensity for crime.’ At least with a ‘propensity’ you can look at some factors—if you have a previous conviction, if you have were arrested multiple times, and others—so with the word ‘propensity’ you can at least make an argument.

  “They’re gonna be the mind readers? They’re gonna read the minds of the American people? That’s insanity,” Martin ruled.

  The spokesperson expressly refused to answer questions relating to the process of placing someone on a watch list, including questions about oversight of the FBI’s ability to place Americans on flight watch lists.

  “It’s just stupid, ya know?” Newsome said of the reply. “Clearly I already know I’m on the list, that’s why I’m writing to you.”

  Additionally, Newsome also reached out to the TSA.

  In his query, Newsome requested information and tried to get back on the TSA pre-check list.

  In its reply, the TSA said he was no longer eligible for its pre-check list, but suggested that Newsome would no longer be subject to enhanced screening. Newsome thought after receiving the letter that he had been removed from the list before his most recent flight.

  “As a result of recurrent checks and based on a comprehensive background check, TSA was unable to determine that you pose a sufficiently low risk to transportation and national security to continue to be eligible for expedited airport security screening through the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program,” the reply said. “As a result, TSA has determined that you are no longer eligible to participate in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program.

  “This eligibility determination for the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program is within the sole discretion of TSA,” the letter added. “Although you have been found ineligible to continue your participation in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program, you will continue to be screened at airport security checkpoints according to TSA standard screening protocols.”

  Told about these replies, Martin sighed, “The bureaucrats will all say ‘It’s not me, it’s not me.’ At this point do we even know who has the oversight for this? Part of the problem with this government is now, when an official says ‘I’m not in charge of that,’ we can’t believe it.”

  Newsome has been in contact with other legal and political figures as well, and remains committed to clearing his name.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 22:45

• BofA CEO Says Wall Street Has "Some Work To Do" Before Embracing AI Chatbots
  BofA CEO Says Wall Street Has “Some Work To Do” Before Embracing AI Chatbots

  Recall last month, a slew of Wall Street banks blocked the use of OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT chatbot that generates text in response to a short prompt. Now Bank of America Corp. CEO Brian Moynihan has spoken out against the popular technology, saying Wall Street has “some work to do” before embracing AI chatbots. 

  During Moynihan’s virtual appearance at the AFR Business Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, he noted that ChatGPT is problematic due to its inaccuracy and deficiency in data-based responses, according to Bloomberg. He added the technology has to be “applied correctly.” 

  

  Moynihan’s comments are some of the first big bank CEOs to speak about using artificial intelligence in the office. 

  About two weeks ago, BofA executives told employees that ChatGPT is prohibited from business use. Internal meetings at the bank revealed the chatbot technology must be properly vetted before it can be used for business communications, and there were concerns about third-party software. 

  Besides BofA, Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co were other big banks that banned ChatGPT last month. 

  Moynihan also said, referring to ChatGPT, “some third party providers can create a hole in your network… No enterprise is too big or too small not to worry about” cyber attacks.

  ChatGPT has become an internet sensation in recent months. Buzz about its future potential and efficiencies in the workplace should concern some workers as AI might take over their jobs this decade. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 22:25

• America Misses The Power Objective
  America Misses The Power Objective

  Authored by Francis Sempa via RealClear Wire,

  The ideology that drives U.S. policy in Ukraine is eroding our strategic position abroad.

  

  On February 20, President Biden made a “surprise” visit to Kyiv, where he announced another half-billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, and stated, “Kyiv stands, Ukraine stands, Democracy stands.” “Americans stand with you,” Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “and the world stands with you.” Biden further remarked that U.S. support for Ukraine is “not just about freedom in Ukraine, it’s about freedom of democracy at large.”  

  What’s lacking in all of this rhetoric is a reasoned assessment of U.S. national interests in the outcome of the Ukraine War. Some supporters of increased U.S. involvement on Ukraine’s side claim that if we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, some NATO ally will be next—a revival of the “domino theory” and the “lessons of Munich” that contributed significantly to our increased involvement in the Vietnam War. The notion of Putin’s Russia, which has an economy the size of Italy’s and whose armed forces are having a difficult time holding on to two eastern provinces of Ukraine, sweeping across the European plain to the English channel is a fantasy.  

  Contrast eastern Europe with the western Pacific, where American interests are clearly geopolitical in nature. China has the second-largest economy in the world, a huge reserve of manpower, a strong and ever-growing military power at both the conventional and nuclear levels (including, according to the Pentagon, more ICBM missile silos than the U.S.), and a geopolitical program that seeks to unite huge portions of the Eurasian landmass against the United States. China’s economic and political influence extends across Central Asia and into Africa and the Middle East via the Belt and Road Initiative. Its naval power extends from the East and South China Seas, through the South Sea, and into the Indian Ocean, where it has developed ports called the “String of Pearls” that threaten to outflank southern India.

  One of America’s top Air Force Generals recently revealed in a leaked memo that China’s Central Military Commission under the leadership of President Xi held a “war council” last October related to Taiwan. And, China recently launched what is being called a “surveillance balloon” across America’s heartland, which U.S. fighters belatedly shot down off the coast of South Carolina after it had traversed the Aleutian Islands, parts of Alaska, Canada, and much of the continental United States. Naval War College Professor James Holmes called this a Chinese “trial balloon” designed to gauge U.S. reaction to this blatant invasion of its airspace. Senator Tom Cotton remarked that the balloon should have been shot down or captured once it was discovered over the Aleutians. American leaders, Holmes writes, need to recognize that China is at war with us all of the time. In the tradition of Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong, China views peacetime as nothing more than “war without bloodshed.”

  Most troubling of all is the strategic partnership between the two Eurasian giants, which is only gaining strength in response to the foreign policy of the Biden Administration. Therein lies America’s strategic dilemma of pursuing our interests or our values.

  The two motives of U.S. foreign policy—interests or values—sometimes coincide but often clash. Henry Kissinger, among others, has written about this foreign policy dilemma, most profoundly in his book Diplomacy. Kissinger says that given America’s peculiar domestic political evolution, a foreign policy that ignores one or the other of these motives will eventually lose the support of the American people and therefore become politically unsustainable.

  Historically when U.S. policymakers have been faced with the dilemma, they have chosen geopolitics over liberal values, even as they have cloaked that choice with value-laden rhetoric. Consider two examples. During the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson publicly promoted the idea of peace without annexations and national self-determination for all peoples, even as he secretly countenanced Great Britain and France carving-up territories in the Middle East. And, during the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt publicly promoted the Four Freedoms and a postwar world where peace would be enforced by the United Nations, even as he provided massive aid and military supplies to Stalin’s Soviet regime, the very antithesis of freedom and peace. In both examples, geopolitical interests trumped liberal values but the rhetoric of liberal values persisted.

  However, one looks in vain to find an American president from George Washington through Theodore Roosevelt who thought it necessary to couch geopolitical interests in the language of liberal values. The late Angelo Codevilla made this the principal theme of his last book America’s Rise and Fall Among Nations. Codevilla highlighted the foreign policy wisdom of George Washington and John Quincy Adams, statesmen who never confused geopolitical interests with liberal values, and who never thought it necessary to disguise hardheaded realism with soft-headed rhetoric.

  That notion changed in the early twentieth century, when the Progressive Movement introduced and promoted the idea that human nature was perfectible. There is no doubt that George Washington, John Quincy Adams and every other nineteenth century president would have ridiculed this idea as ahistorical and unempirical. When the idea of human perfectibility was translated into foreign policy, the ideology of “democratism” emerged, which held that Western values were universal and should be spread throughout the globe. 

  Democratism led to related ideas that human rights were universal and that American foreign policy should work to bring about an earthly Utopia. As Robert Nisbet noted in his masterful book The Present Age, “Ever since [Woodrow] Wilson, with only rarest exceptions, American foreign policy has been tuned not to national interests but to national morality.” This idea grew in strength after World War II and perhaps reached its apogee during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Carter, at least initially, made human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy, though he applied it more vigorously to America’s allies (the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua) than her enemies (the Soviet Union, Cuba). But democratism’s most vigorous champion was President George W. Bush, who reacted to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by launching a crusade for democracy in the Middle East and southwest Asia.

  Beyond launching failed wars based on values over interests, the Bush administration supported the further expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders, including public support for the admission of Georgia and Ukraine to the Western alliance. Bush appeared to be oblivious to traditional notions of spheres of influence, and appeared to be equally oblivious to Russian history. Bush’s successors only compounded the problem by expanding NATO further. A comparison of maps of Europe in 1990 and 2022 reveals the geography of NATO expansion as viewed from Russia, showing, with the lone exception of Belarus, hostile and potentially hostile countries in an arc stretching from Scandinavia to the Balkans and Turkey.   

  The most strategically significant consequence of America’s unbounded democratism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century has been to push Russia into the arms of China. The old Sino-Soviet bloc split in the 1960s due to internal rivalries. Richard Nixon’s diplomacy exploited and widened that split. Now, the bloc has effectively reformed—not based on ideology but on geopolitical rivalry with the United States. As Alexander Korolev points out in the feature article in The Diplomat, that Sino-Russian strategic partnership stems not only from the cordial relationship between Xi Jinping and Putin, but from long-term structural trends that have been building since the end of the Cold War. These trends are based on geopolitics, not values. Korolev write that America’s antagonism toward both China and Russia “further contributes to the consolidation of China-Russia alignment” because “[c]onfrontation with both China and Russia results in a convergence of the two countries’ views of the U.S. as their greatest security threat.” Washington’s hostile approach to both Eurasian great powers is a strategic error.

  The Biden administration has framed both the Ukraine War and China’s actions in the South China Sea as part of a broader ideological competition between democratic and autocratic powers. Somehow, the country that once sided with Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler, and sided with Mao Zedong to help bring down the Soviet empire, is loath to even consider ending or at least softening its hostility to Putin’s Russia in order to lessen China’s strategic threat. This is the triumph of democratism and liberal values over geopolitical interests.

  Unfortunately, we have been the author of our current strategic dilemma. We have suffered the fate of other great nations who, after achieving victories in great conflicts—in America’s case, the Cold War—approached the rest of the world with hubris and arrogance. During the previous three decades, our foreign policy has helped fuel China’s rise, pushed Russia closer to China, and overextended our commitments and resources in peripheral conflicts that did little or nothing to enhance our security. We have forgotten the wise counsel of perhaps America’s greatest geopolitical thinker Nicholas Spykman, who cautioned:

               The statesman who conducts foreign policy can concern

                himself with values of justice, fairness, and tolerance only

                to the extent that they contribute to or do not interfere

                with the power objective. They can be used instrumentally

                as moral justification for the power quest, but they must be

                discarded the moment their application brings weakness.

                The search for power is not made for the achievement of

                moral values; moral values are used to facilitate the

                attainment of power.   

  America’s primary geopolitical interest should be to maintain the political pluralism of Eurasia, not foster a closer relationship between the two most powerful Eurasian countries.

  Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 22:05

• Why DeSantis Can't Announce A Presidential Run Yet
  Why DeSantis Can’t Announce A Presidential Run Yet

  Authored by Dan M. Berger via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  With the release of his book last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has begun his campaign for an office he hasn’t declared he’s seeking. It’s not officially a campaign. It’s called instead a book tour for “The Courage to be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”

  

  DeSantis will make two book-tour stops this week in Iowa, important to presidential contenders with its early primary caucuses. He’s likely to stop by in New Hampshire, with its early primary, as well.

  DeSantis has other pieces of a campaign in place. He meets with and gets checks from big donors. Meanwhile, his campaign staff has stayed in place, paid by the Republican Party.

  Why hasn’t he declared for office? He’s said he’s first concerned with Florida’s legislative session, beginning March 7 and lasting until May 5.

  There’s another reason, though. Florida law now requires him to resign as governor—in a second term he took the oath of office for just two months ago—if he runs for another office.

  Florida lawmakers have gone back and forth on that law over the past two decades. They eased it for state or local officials considering a run for federal office in the late 2000s when then-Governor Charlie Crist sought the vice-presidential nomination in 2008.

  But they changed it back in 2018, under then-Governor Rick Scott, having decided that easing it had led to costly special elections. The resign-to-run law was intended to avoid those.

  If DeSantis resigned, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez would succeed to the office.

  No bill has yet been introduced to ease the law once again. But behind the scenes, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature quietly acknowledge that a plan for that is coming together.

  And both state House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate Majority Leader Kathleen Passidomo hinted after the November elections that they favor fixing the resign-to-run problem. Neither responded to emails from The Epoch Times asking for their current positions.

  

  Legislators have kept mum on the subject.

  The law, as written, is ambiguous, and any change might be billed as an effort to clarify it.

  Florida Statute 99.012 (4)(a) states: “Any officer who qualifies for federal public office must resign from the office he or she presently holds if the terms, or any part thereof, run concurrently with each other.” The law goes on to state that resignation is irrevocable.

  What needs to be clarified is when DeSantis would have to resign if the law isn’t changed. He’d have to submit his resignation “at least 10 days before the first day of qualifying for the office he or she intends to seek.”

  It would be effective no later than the earlier of two dates—the date he would become president if elected, or the date his successor as governor would be required to take office.

  That leaves wiggle room, a lot of it, political scientists say. For most offices, the qualifying deadline is a single deadline, says Susan MacManus, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida.

  Floridians running for governor, as DeSantis did last year, or for federal offices such as Senate or Congress, had to qualify by June 17, 2022. Someone with a conflict would have had to resign 10 days before that.

  But someone running for president first runs in a host of primaries in other states. MacManus agreed Florida’s law might not require DeSantis’s resignation until 10 days before he first qualifies for a primary.

  Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida said DeSantis could push the deadline even further if he argues that seeking a party’s nomination is not the same as running for “office.”

  Under that scenario, Florida law wouldn’t require him to resign until he, assuming he won the Republican nomination, qualified for the November 2024 general election.

  “There’s some ambiguity, if the law doesn’t change, when Governor DeSantis would be required to file his resignation,” Jewett said. “It’s confusing.”

  Jon McGowan, a lawyer specializing in federal and state law, told The Associated Press the same thing. “There’s too much ambiguity.”

  The date of New Hampshire’s 2024 primary, traditionally and by state law the first in the nation, has yet to be established.

  The national Democratic Party wants to oust the state from that position and shake up its primary schedule to get states with more minorities in sooner.

  Still, New Hampshire is resisting, and the Republican party prefers the current status.

  That primary has historically been early in February.

  In 2020, it was held on Feb. 11, with a filing deadline on Nov. 15, 2019. So, assuming New Hampshire has the same qualifying period as in 2019, DeSantis would only have to resign 10 days before a date sometime in mid-November.

  Republican voices raised in opposition have all been from outside the legislature—and all supporters of DeSantis’s rival for the nomination, former President Donald Trump.

  Critics so far include former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican activist Laura Loomer, and former state Rep. Anthony Sabatini.

  Loomer has attacked DeSantis about it, most recently in a YouTube video she linked on her Twitter account on March 6.

  In it, she decried his effort to “abuse his authority,” says he “deceived Florida voters” by running for a second term he had no intention of finishing, and accused him of thinking himself “above the law.”

  She said the whole thing smacks of the “self-serving political corruption” associated with “third-world leaders, dictators, or authoritarian individuals.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 21:25

• JPMorgan, Goldman React To Powell's Hawkish Comments
  JPMorgan, Goldman React To Powell’s Hawkish Comments

  Powell’s remarks today led to the biggest jump in the dollar since November…

  

  … and a1.5% selloff in SPX, reversing almost of the gains from last Friday’s rally, and with eminis now back below 4000 all three CTA “threshold” levels are on the verge of being broken to the downside.

  

  The reason for the market spasm is that the terminal rate was repriced 16bp higher to 5.63% as Powell put 50bp back on table.

  

  As JPM’s chief economist Michael Feroli explains (in a delightfully titled note available to pro subs), the Fed chair did so by once again jeopardising the Fed’s credibility: “whereas the plan prior to that data round was to hike by 25bps until there was more evidence of disinflation, Chair Powell indicated today that they are prepared to throw out that playbook if the February data don’t reverse some of the January strength.”  In other words, yet another painful U-turn by a Fed which after ripping up the forward guidance book, is clearly even more clueless now what is going on.

  To JPM’s head of market intel, Andrew Tyler, Powell’s speech today indicates that the “Fed will heavily depend on near-term data for upcoming rates decisions. With January’s macro data mostly printing on the hawkish side, NFP Friday and CPI next Tuesday are the most critical catalysts for Fed’s decision between 25bp and 50bp. Keep in mind that the Fed will start its blackout period this Saturday so CPI will be released during the blackout period, so data itself will be more impactful in absence of guidance from Fedspeeches.” And also recall that last June, having set market expectations for a 50bps hike, the Fed was reduced to using its WSJ mouthpiece, Nick Timiraos, to alert the market 75bps was coming.

  Some more from Feroli’s full note:

  The strength of the January data seems to have spooked the Fed Chair. Whereas the plan prior to that data round was to hike by 25bps until there was more evidence of disinflation, Chair Powell indicated today that they are prepared to throw out that playbook if the February data don’t reverse some of the January strength: “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.” The phrase “totality of the data” has in the past indicated that data dependency didn’t mean just one month’s data: in this context it apparently means two months’ data. Less surprising was the Chair’s previewing that the March dots are likely to move higher: “…the latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.”

  At several points, Powell made note of monetary policy lags, such as, “In light of the cumulative tightening of monetary policy and the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, the Committee slowed the pace of interest rate increases over its past two meetings.” That reasoning, however, seems to have less sway now (hard to say how much that reflects the departure of Vice Chair Brainard).

  So, what does this mean for March and beyond? Prior to today, remarks from the centrists suggested 25bp was the base case, so that the data just needed to return to the trend prevailing prior to the January round to stick with that plan. Now that Powell has opened the door to 50bp, the bar now has likely changed such that the February data need to reverse some of the January strength to stay at 25bp. If the data push them to 50bp at the March meeting, what does that mean for the May meeting? Either they embrace the sort of hyper-data dependency that then-Governor Stein cautioned against ten years ago, or 50bp is the new incumbent, in which case they could be on a path to getting off three 50s just as the economy heads into the debt ceiling crisis in mid-summer. For now, we are sticking with 25bp for the March meeting, though that is now obviously much more contingent on what the next two weeks of data deliver.

  Bottom line: the Fed is looking to accelerate its tightening just as the US economy plaxicos itself, with a debt ceiling crisis on top.  Not for nothing Michael Hartnett said that the bear market will end with a credit event in the second half.

  And until we wait for the next collapse, here is an excerpt from JPM’s ultra bearish technician Jason Hunter (full note also available to pro subs) on how Powell’s comments could impact the market in the coming days:

  The S&P 500 Index slides to retest the key confluence of levels near 3900 after rejecting 4060-4089 tactical pattern resistance. We believe a break through the 3900 inflection can lead to accelerated selling pressure, as that area has acted as a bifurcation for the index from May 2022. It also currently aligns with several trend-following trigger levels for momentum-based strategies. We see the 3760-3764 area as an initial target for a breakdown.

  Our base-case forecast that looked for a 1H23 3500 Oct 2022 low retest to set the bottom for the cycle was in part leaning on the fact that the 5s/10s UST curve had already bottomed in Sep 2022. In the supply-constrained period of the 1970s when the sequence of inflation shocks dominated the macro environment, the equity market became positive correlated with the yield curve and bottomed within a 1–5-month period after the curve set the cycle lows. With the recent hawkish repricing pushing the curve through the Sep 2022 trough, that countdown needs to restart whenever the curve bottoms in the future. As such, we think the probability for a deeper S&P 500 Index slide to next support near 3200 and a bottom later within the first half of 2023 has increased.

  That takes care of JPMorgan, what about Goldman?

  In his market wrap analysis, Goldman trader John Flood writes that “Powell said the US central bank is prepared to increase the pace of hikes if data warrant, and sees the ultimate peak Fed rate likely to be higher than expected. In prepared testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, he said the process of getting inflation back to 2% “has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.”

  The bank’s strategist and economist Zach Pandl adds that “this adds more vol to Friday’s jobs data–on a huge print there
  is a possibility market rushes to price 50bp for next meeting.”

  And here is Goldman trader Michael Nocerino on today’s market reaction:

  Today’s commentary possibly opens the door for a 50bps hike at the next meeting. This morning the market was pricing in a 22% chance of 50bps hike…post the statement market is now pricing 63% chance.

  Yesterday felt like a build up into today and it disappointed for the bulls. Another round of hawkish commentary from Powell and hotter than expected Manheim data (wholesale used vehicle prices rose 4.3% in February (the largest for the month since 2009) spurred a largely risk off session. Off the back of the Powell commentary, rates spiked (especially on the front end, 2yr @ highest level since ’06, 2s10s most inverted since summer of ’80 ), markets rolled and investors are now bracing for the possibility of 50bps at the March meeting (higher for longer getting louder). Surprisingly, the response on the desk was muted (5 out of 10) and when taking a look at our PB the gross up in risk has been swift – investors willing to ride this out until we get more data? Asset Managers had a -19% sell skew which was highest since 2/20/23 and 92nd percentile vs previous 52 weeks. HFs had a -542bp sell skew highest since 2/16/23. All eyes are now on this Friday’s NFP, but a watchful eye remains on JOLTS where GS estimates 10,200k openings vs. 10,500 consensus.

  Putting it all together, Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius added 25bps to his forecast:

  “Whether the FOMC hikes by 25bp or 50bp, we now expect that the median dot in the March Summary of Economic Projections will rise by 50bp to a peak of 5.5-5.75% in 2023. One reason for this is that even if FOMC participants decide on a 25bp hike in March but are split on the pace, they might compromise by engineering a 50bp increase in the peak funds rate shown in the dot plot. We have raised our own forecast of the peak fed funds rate by 25bp to 5.5-5.75% as well by adding a 25bp hike in July.”

  Much more in the full notes available to professional subs.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 21:05

• Republican Senators Request All Records Behind Intel Chief's COVID Origins Report
  Republican Senators Request All Records Behind Intel Chief’s COVID Origins Report

  Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A group of Republican senators is calling on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to turn over the materials that informed her office’s latest assessment on the origins of COVID-19.

  

  In a March 6 letter (pdf), the senators—led by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Md.)—asked that Haines provide the “memoranda; emails; interim and final assessments provided by each IC [intelligence community]; and any other information” that her office considered in developing its assessment by March 20.

  Other senators who signed their names to the letter include Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

  “Congress should be able to review the independent evaluations without filters, ambiguity or interpretations of the intelligence,” the lawmakers wrote. “There is clear bipartisan support in Congress to make these assessments available immediately in full as evident by the unanimous March 1, 2023 Senate passage of the COVID-19 Origin Act to declassify information related to the origin of COVID-19.”

  Senate Vote

  The Senate voted last week to declassify all information on the origins of COVID-19 following the wide circulation of a Wall Street Journal report that the Department of Energy had concluded the pandemic likely originated from a laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China—a conclusion that the FBI has also reached.

  

  Yet the White House asserted on Feb. 28 that there is “no consensus” in the U.S. government on the origins of the pandemic, echoing the inconclusive messaging of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) previous assessment (pdf).

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 20:45

• US Moves Border Agents To North Frontier As Mexicans Do An End Run
  US Moves Border Agents To North Frontier As Mexicans Do An End Run

  U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has dispatched 25 more agents to a sector of the Canadian border that’s seeing a large increase in Mexican migrants using the northern frontier to do an end run that bypasses the southern border.  

  

  Some if not all of these agents are being temporarily reassigned from the Mexico border, NBC News reports, citing a source familiar with the resource shift. “The deployed team will serve as a force multiplier in the region and assist to deter and disrupt human smuggling activities,” a CPB spokesperson said. 

  An increasing number of illegal immigrants — mostly Mexicans — are buying one-way commercial plane tickets to Montreal or Toronto and then crossing the U.S. border. The odds of being rejected by agents on the northern frontier is lower than down south, reports NBC:

  “On a per capita basis, the Border Patrol invokes Title 42 to block migrants from claiming asylum less frequently at the northern border than at the southern border.”

  

  The burst of activity is concentrated in the “Swanton Sector,” a Border Patrol division that encompasses Vermont and parts of New York and New Hampshire, including 203 miles of land border and 92 miles of aquatic border. Along that stretch, apprehensions of illegal immigrants soared 846% from Oct 2022 through January, compared to the same period a year earlier. 

  The absolute number of migrant encounters is still relatively modest — 367 migrants stopped in January — but the explosive upward trajectory is concerning. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu this week asked state legislators to appropriate $1.4 million to bolster patrols along the Granite State’s own 58-mile stretch of border. 

  

  While the Mexican and American deserts are notoriously perilous, the northern border has its own dangers, especially during the winter. “Not only is it unlawful to circumvent legal means of entry into the United States, but it is extremely dangerous, particularly in adverse weather conditions, which our Swanton Sector has in abundance,” Swanton sector chief Robert Garcia said last month. 

  On Feb 3, as temperatures hit negative-four, Border agents encountered a family in Vermont that included a 2-year-old and an infant. 

  If Mexicans are willing to brave those winter conditions, imagine what the traffic will look like as we turn to spring…as if those invading Canadian super pigs weren’t enough to deal with. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 20:25

• Malekan: America Is Losing On Crypto
  Malekan: America Is Losing On Crypto

  Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

  I spent the weekend at the ETH Denver crypto developer conference and left feeling rejuvenated. Thousands of energetic young people, fueled by the desire to build something new and better, converging in one place to learn, code, debate and innovate. Attendance was twice last year’s event, and there was little talk of FTX, coin prices or regulatory challenges. As one friend put it, it was like all the negativity of last year never happened.

  

  Then I returned to an American regulatory crackdown best described as shambolic. Regulation of the crypto industry was always inevitable and in many ways desirable. Blockchain technology is uniquely capable of building trust in a digital setting, but the industry built on top of it has a lot of growing up to do. Sensible regulations can pave the way for growth and mass adoption.

  But that’s not what we are getting in the U.S. Here we have a hodgepodge of uncoordinated actions best described as a Pincer movement, forcing responsible companies into dangerous corners they can’t get out of. The goal, to the extent there is one, seems to be to either prevent the industry from growing or to drive it offshore. Here are a few examples:

  Banking

  For years, federal bank regulators have told the biggest American banks to keep away from crypto. This has forced the industry to rely on smaller state and regional banks for basic services. But concentration of any sector in a handful of small banks is always dangerous and risks runs, like the one that happened at Silvergate. Now those same regulators are telling small banks they need to limit their exposure to crypto as well.

  The result? Companies like exchanges and stablecoin issuers have no choice but to look offshore.

  Custody

  Most institutional investors are not allowed to custody their own assets and have been relying on fully-regulated state chartered institutions to store their coins. Now the SEC is saying those custodians may not be good enough, with the implication that registered investment advisors should look to bigger, federally regulated custodians.

  But those companies don’t want to offer crypto custody because another SEC guidance forces them to fully reserve against client assets, an unprecedented decision that makes crypto custody cost-prohibitive.

  The result? Institutions may need to go offshore for compliant custody.

  Stablecoins

  Stablecoins are arguably the killer app of crypto, offering a win-win where foreigners get access to digital dollars and the federal government gets a new source of demand for its debt. Oddly, American regulators keep trying to kill them.

  New York-based Paxos has been a pioneer in issuing fully regulated and generally trustworthy stablecoins. It is the only issuer that has a Trust charter and the first to publish transparent reserve reports down to the CUSIP. But now it is being investigated by both the New York Department of Financial Services and the SEC, forcing it to abandon BUSD, the 3rd largest dollar coin.

  Its loss has been Tether’s gain, and the unregulated offshore issuer is laughing all the way to the bank (it will make billions in profits this year but pay little American taxes). Meanwhile established payment providers like PayPal are being ordered to stay away from stablecoins.

  The result? American companies who want to offer innovative payment products can’t.

  Securities

  Governments in Europe, the Mid East and Asia have created classifications for different kinds of digital assets so they can regulate each smartly, taking into account unique features and risks. America keeps going in the opposite direction, applying a broad analogue brush to anything that lives on a blockchain. Here, we have no choice but to treat tokens needed to pay for cloud storage, U.S. dollars meant for payments and digital basketball cards the same as Apple stock. It’s absurd.

  The result? American projects have a harder time raising money, American developers have a harder time finding work, and American users are blocked from new products.

  ETFs

  Most developed countries have spot Bitcoin ETFs that give people direct exposure to the cryptocurrency via existing market infrastructure. America does not, despite repeated attempts by both crypto natives and veteran Wall Street firms to create one. What we do have are far more complex, inefficient ETFs tied to Bitcoin futures.

  The result? American ETF issuers lose out to foreign counterparts and American investors get inferior products.

  …

  The list goes on, but I’ll stop here. We can speculate on the motivations of the US regulatory apparatus, but that won’t change the outcome.

  Unless something changes, an ecosystem that began as an American phenomenon will succeed elsewhere, taking all of its jobs, tax revenues and influence with it.

  

  The U.S. has always been the envy of the world for both tech and finance. We seem content to lose the lead on both, unless Congress and the courts intervene.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 20:05

• "Shameful Case Of Weaponization": Musk Responds To FTC Demands For Journalist Info
  “Shameful Case Of Weaponization”: Musk Responds To FTC Demands For Journalist Info

  Update (2002ET): Elon Musk has responded to the Journal‘s report on the invasive FTC probe, as revealed by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

  

  “A shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!” Musk tweeted Tuesday evening.

  A shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023

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

  Musk called the Biden administration’s ‘casual violation of the First Amendment’ (as Jay Bhattacharya put it), calling it a “serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency.”

  This is a serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023

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

  *  *  *

  The Federal Trade Commission has demanded that Twitter hand over internal communications related to owner Elon Musk, including detailed information about mass layoffs he instituted shortly after his purchase of the social media giant.

  

  And what did the FTC cite as justification? Concerns that staff reductions could compromise the company’s ability to protect users, the Wall Street Journal reports.

  In 12 letters sent to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover, the FTC also asked the company to “identify all journalists” granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service, the documents show.

  The FTC is also seeking to depose Mr. Musk in connection with the probe. -WSJ

  “We are concerned these staff reductions impact Twitter’s ability to protect consumers’ information,” wrote an FTC official in a Nov. 10 letter to Twitter attorneys, shortly after the company’s initial wave of layoffs.

  The demand letters were obtained by the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee which published limited excerpts in a Tuesday staff report concerning the ‘weaponization’ of federal agencies.

  As recently as January, the FTC felt that Twitter was engaging in a “troubling pattern of ongoing delay” which raised “serious concerns about its compliance.”

  In response to the Journal‘s questions, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar said that “Protecting consumers’ privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do,” adding that the agency is “conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company.”

  The FTC inquiries have raised concerns over whether the company can comply with a $150 million settlement related to allegations of privacy violations which predated Musk’s purchase of the company.

  According to the Judiciary Committee report, “There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” adding “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”

  According to a November statement from Musk to Twitter employees, the company will follow both the letter and the spirit of the 2022 FTC settlement. In December, he announced that the company’s headcount had been reduced from roughly 8,000 employees to 2,000.

  In letters ranging from Nov. 10 through Feb. 1, the FTC asked Twitter to quantify the number of layoffs and resignations, and requested an in-depth accounting of what new executives are responsible, and who would be overseeing privacy and security matters.

  One letter pressed for an explanation of the departure of Jim Baker, the former Justice Department official who until December was a senior Twitter lawyer with responsibilities for ensuring compliance with the FTC order.  

  The FTC also asked for all internal Twitter communications “related to Elon Musk,” or sent “at the direction of, or received by” Mr. Musk.

  Mr. Musk was scheduled to be deposed by the FTC on Feb. 3 but had a potential conflict related to court testimony in a securities lawsuit, according to a Jan. 24 FTC letter. The deposition hasn’t happened, said a person briefed on the matter. -WSJ

  On Dec. 13, the FTC asked Twitter for information regarding journalists Musk has granted access to view internal communications as part of the so-called “Twitter Files” disclosures. The agency asked Twitter to describe the “nature of access granted each person,” and explain how allowing access “is consistent with your privacy and information security obligations under the Order.” They also asked if Twitter conducted background checks on the journalists, as well as whether they could access the personal messages of Twitter users.

  Finally, as The Wall Street Journal points out, the Judiciary panel’s report accuses the FTC of overstepping its authority at the urging of progressive groups unhappy with Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the company.

  Given the depth of the demands above, it is hard not to see their point.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 19:45

• 'As Easy As Ordering Pizza': How Fentanyl-Laced Pills Are Killing America’s Youth
  ‘As Easy As Ordering Pizza’: How Fentanyl-Laced Pills Are Killing America’s Youth

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

  On the morning of July 25, 2020, Matthew Thomas took what he believed was a Percocet, a prescription drug for pain relief. He died moments later, the victim of fentanyl poisoning.

  

  On Jan. 26, 2019, Austen Babcock took what he believed was cocaine. Unbeknownst to him, it was laced with fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid. He died shortly after, another victim of fentanyl poisoning.

  April Babcock, Austen’s mother, and Wendy Thomas, Matthew’s mother, have both become activists to raise awareness about illicit fentanyl. Babcock is the founder of Lost Voices of Fentanyl, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness on illicit fentanyl, and Thomas is the founder of Mathew’s Voice.

  Both told The Epoch Times that obtaining illicit fentanyl is as easy as ordering a pizza.

  “I talk to all these moms [in Lost Voices of Fentanyl], and their kids go on social media and literally ordered drugs just like a pizza. It’s just like Uber Eats. Well, now it’s like Uber drugs,” Babcock said.

  “Some of these parents in the group literally saw the dealer on their Ring. They’d pull up into their driveway, and their kid would run out. I mean, these pills are cheap.”

  “We got fake Adderall pills on social media. Fake Xanax. Fake Percocet. I mean, all the pills are fake. These kids just don’t realize they’re literally buying death. They don’t know,” Babcock said.

  

  Thomas agreed and added that when she’s given presentations at schools, kids have told her they hear about Percocet and Xanax in music videos, and when they buy pills over social media, that’s what they think they’re getting.

  “But it’s not,” Thomas said.

  “They need to know that six in 10 pills are … potentially deadly,” she said, citing Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) data.

  Undercounted

  Families Against Fentanyl reports that in 2021, fentanyl poisoning was the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45.

  And, in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 4,765 children and young adults aged 14–23 died from synthetic opioids/fentanyl use—more than double the 1,984 deaths in 2018.

  Babcock believes the number of overdose deaths from fentanyl is significantly underreported.

  “There’s a family… that’s pretty definite their kid died from fentanyl because they found fentanyl at his house. But guess what? He was never tested!” Babcock told The Epoch Times. “[The death certificate] says he died from cocaine. No, he didn’t. He died from fentanyl.

  “So [that family] is trying to pass a bill in Maryland, so every hospital has to test for fentanyl. And, you know, I know there’s places that still don’t test for fentanyl, but I had no idea that was going on in my own state, and that’s criminal! Those stats are a very lowball number.

  “I hear it all the time, ‘They didn’t test for fentanyl.’ How are we ever going to get the right data? ” Babcock said.

  Babcock started Lost Voices of Fentanyl, a Facebook group, in 2020. The group now has over 24,000 members, and every day, Babcock said she hears from parents who’ve lost a child to fentanyl poisoning.

  “Why isn’t our government warning the public? They’re not warning them!” Babcock said. “I mean, I know certain states are doing it. Like I know, in my state, Maryland, I’ve seen two fentanyl commercials. And that’s great. That’s fine and dandy, but it’s not good enough. You know, teenagers don’t watch that anyway. We need a COVID-like response from our government for fentanyl.”

  Growing Misunderstood Problem

  In 2020, there were a reported 91,799 total drug-related deaths, according to the CDC. By 2021, that number had climbed to 106,719. In both years, approximately 82 percent of deaths involved at least one opioid, with fentanyl being the most common.

  “I started Mathew’s Voice because my son Matthew died of fentanyl poisoning in 2020, in July. He was 20 years old,” Thomas told The Epoch Times.

  “He took what was supposed to be Percocet, and it was fentanyl. And so, I decided to go ahead and focus on high schools. I’ve been to several high schools in North Carolina, and the biggest thing that surprises me is that most of them have not even heard of illicit fentanyl.

  “I thought maybe if Matthew had heard about it sooner…”

  Babcock concurred, “What I’m seeing is most of these people have no idea what fentanyl is. They’re getting their [deceased] kids’ toxicology reports back, and they had no warning to even warn their kids about fentanyl. Like they just didn’t know.”

  Thomas and Babcock are both quick to point out that what they’re talking about isn’t the pharmaceutical fentanyl prescribed to treat severe pain—often post-surgery and for advanced-stage cancer. Instead, they’re talking about illicit fentanyl found in counterfeit pills.

  In 2022, the DEA issued a public safety alert, warning that six out of 10 fake prescription pills contained “a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 19:25

• "Extremely Mixed Messages": Morgan Stanley Ponders Resilient Auto Market Despite Restrictive Conditions
  “Extremely Mixed Messages”: Morgan Stanley Ponders Resilient Auto Market Despite Restrictive Conditions

  The latest note from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas does anything to instill confidence in an auto industry that, as we have been noting, has been part and parcel to a tidal wave of rising consumer debt. 

  The note, released Tuesday morning, notes that “auto loan delinquencies have moved through pre-COVID and GFC highs, yet US auto demand remains extremely resilient on an adjusted basis”.

  First, the note says that unit sales have been depressed, with Jonas writing: “US light vehicle sales are materially off their pre-COVID highs. Trailing 3-month US SAAR as of Feb 2023stands at 15.0mn units, which is 11% below Feb 2020 3-month trailing average of 17.1mn units, and improvement from Feb 2022 where 3-month trailing average of SAAR was 17% below Feb 2020 levels.”

  

  But the “mixed messages” come in when one looks at pricing, Jonas says. “Recent conversations with dealers have suggested demand for new and used vehicles remains strong despite rising interest rates, deteriorating credit metrics and a pull-back in financial institution willingness to lend,” he writes. 

  The U.S. value of SAAR is at an all-time high despite the restrictive monetary conditions. “On a value-of-SAAR basis, the US auto consumer is currently purchasing new vehicles at an all time record high rate. A feat even more impressive given the movement in average interest rates.”

  Jonas asks how much longer consumers can handle the sky-high prices for vehicles, and notes that while auto pricing remains firm, housing is falling. Generally, we’d expect autos to fall first, as one Zero Hedge contributor wrote this week, but that isn’t the case so far.

  Jonas writes: “Initially lower housing starts was offset by median prices that climbed through Nov 2022, but since the pricing peak, median home prices have fallen 14% through January, resulting in the value of housing being down 21% through January from its peak. This differs from autos where continued increases in pricing have completely offset the decline in unit sales.”

  “We are the first to admit we would have thought there would have been more weakness at these levels for this long, but at least some significant portion of the auto consumer is showing to be more resilient than we would have thought.”

  

  Despite the fact that Jonas sees mixed messages, it still remains relatively clear to us that a cool-off of major proportions for the auto industry is likely on its way. First, remember that, as we noted months ago, current purchases could be coming at a cost: one industry CEO said that taking on a second vehicle financing while defaulting on the first was becoming commonplace in the industry. 

  And as we noted two weeks ago, total household debt in the fourth quarter of 2022 rose by 2.4% or $394 billion, the largest nominal quarterly increase in twenty years, to a record $16.90 trillion. Among that debt, auto loan balances increased by $28 billion in the fourth quarter, consistent with the upward trajectory seen since 2011.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 19:05

• 'Hawkish' Powell Pummels Stocks, Oil, & Gold; Yield-Curve Collapses As Terminal-Rate Soars
  ‘Hawkish’ Powell Pummels Stocks, Oil, & Gold; Yield-Curve Collapses As Terminal-Rate Soars

  A more hawkish than expected Jay Powell sparked chaos across markets that had desperately hoped for some dovish bones. Although Powell really didn’t say anything new at all, the reaction was visceral as hopes for a pause any time soon were destroyed with the market’s expectation for The Fed’s terminal rate soaring up to 5.65% (up a stunning 300bps from July 2022 expectations)… For context, the market is pricing an additional 105bps of tightening in Fed Funds before this is over…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Goldman now expects that the median dot will rise by 50bp at the March meeting to show a peak rate of 5.5-5.75% in 2023; and has raised their own forecast of the peak rate by 25bp to 5.5-5.75% as well.

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Additionally, the market has now priced in 75bps of hikes by May…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  With March odds now above 60% of a 50bps hike…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Stocks tanked on Powell’s prepared remarks, extended losses, but as soon as he stopped talking at the hearing, stocks bounced higher but that didn’t hold. The Dow was the biggest loser, followed by the S&P 500. Small Caps very modestly outperformed Nasdaq but everything was red…

  

  Dow broke below its 100DMA…

  

  S&P tested down to its 50DMA…

  

  The machines battled hard to get the S&P back above its 50DMA for the close… but failed…

  

  0DTE Call-buying surged right after the initial knee-jerk lower reaction to Powell’s hawkish prepared remarks. Stocks drifted down to their 50DMA and then some 0DTE call-buying (and put-selling) stepped in.

  

  HIRO Indicator | SpotGamma™

  Treasuries were mixed on the day with the long-end outperforming (and lower in yield) as the short-end blasted higher (2Y +13bps, 30Y -2bps)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  10Y yield hit 4.00% and reversed…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  2Y yield surged all day, topping 5.00% for the first time since June 2007…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  2s10s broke below -100bps for the first time since Sept 1981 (-103bps today)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  As a reminder, the 2s10s curve was over +150 two years ago (March 2021)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The 2s30s curve extended its collapse too, down to -113bps (a record inversion)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Powell’s strong anti-inflation stance did have some ‘positive’ effects, reducing the market’s short-term (1Y) inflation expectations (having hit the cycle highs yesterday)…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bond market volatility has soared in recent days while equity market volatility has fallen… until today…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  DXY Dollar Index rallied hard, breaking above its 100DMA…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  China’s offshore yuan tumbled back above 6.99/USD to its weakest level of the year…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Bitcoin was battered back down below $22,000… bounced… then was told to stay down one more time…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  Crude prices crashed almost 4% with WTI back to a $77 handle – its biggest daily drop in two months…

  

  WTI broke back below its 100DMA and 50DMA today…

  

  Gold was clubbed like a baby seal today, suffering some issues overnight on Perth Mint headlines, a stronger dollar, and then Powell’s hawkishness…

  

  Finally, to put the last month in context, the market’s expectations for The Fed’s terminal rate has shifted from June 2023 at 4.895% to Oct 2023 at 5.63%. Additionally, expectations for rates at 2023 year-end are up over 105bps to 5.535%…

  

  Source: Bloomberg

  The market is still expecting a Fed pivot however, but not until 2024… and very gently – quite a shift from the pivot and puke expectation just a month ago – before a big payrolls print.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:55

• DeSantis Denounces Florida Legislator's Blogger Registry Proposal
  DeSantis Denounces Florida Legislator’s Blogger Registry Proposal

  Update (1845ET): During his “State of the State” news conference Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis denounced state Sen. Jason Brodeur’s bill, which would require bloggers to register with the state.

  

  As the New York Post reports, DeSantis distanced himself from his fellow Republican’s proposal, saying it was “not anything I’ve ever supported,” while adding that “I don’t control every single bill that has been filed.”

  BREAKING— @GovRonDeSantis just struck down the ‘Blogger Bill’ that forces Bloggers to Register With State

  READ MORE https://t.co/bsC2wfxhht#FlPol #Florida pic.twitter.com/HbQ4gTM9Oh

  — Javier Manjarres (@JavManjarres) March 7, 2023

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  As The Daily Caller reports, DeSantis isn’t the first prominent GOP figure to condemn the blogger registration bill. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took to his personal Twitter account to disavow the bill, going a step further than DeSantis by admonishing Brodeur.

  “It is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately,” Gingrich wrote.

  *  *  *

  As Jonathan Turley detailed earlier, there is a deeply disturbing legislative proposal in Florida where Sen. Jason Brodeur of Lake Mary has called for bloggers to register with the state if they want to write about the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials.

  

  It is a highly intrusive, dangerous, and presumptively unconstitutional effort. Yet, it is also important to note that this is just a proposal from a single legislator with little real chance of passage. What I find interesting is the historical underpinnings of such a law. The comparison is not favorable for Sen. Brodeur.

  The bill would require bloggers to file periodic reports with the state if they are paid for posts about the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials. They could be fined $25 for each day the report is late, up to a maximum of $2,500 for each report. The legislation would exempt content on “the website of a newspaper or other similar publication.”

  It is a vague and unnecessary law. In a Twitter post, Brodeur explained that he simply wants to bring greater transparency to blogs that advocate or lobby for specific causes. He notes that it is directed at those who are paid to write about elected officials in Florida.

  In fairness to Sen. Brodeur, there are requirements for media to obtain press credentials to get full access to press areas in the federal or state capitals. However, the requirements are minimal and press can always cover events without such credentials by using public access.

  Moreover, bloggers cover a wide range of speech and speakers. Blogs are part of the new media with a wide array of people covering or opining on contemporary events. It can range from the popular “citizen journalist” to minor “influencers” to satirical writers. Many blogs are now quite large and rival traditional newspapers or media outlets. They are a new and critical component in our free speech community.  Many look to blogs as an alternative to what they see as a biased mainstream media.

  I understand Brodeur’s motivation and his concern for bloggers who hide paid agendas or serve as surrogates for others. However, this is a really bad idea and it is not a new idea.

  At the creation of our Republic, free press advocates like Thomas Paine were focused on state licensing laws that were abused in England by the Crown to control the media.

  The licensing laws became a rallying cause in 1644 for many after John Milton wrote his famous pamphlet Areopagitica. Milton objected to the requirement of prior licensing of writers with the Crown, objecting that “debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their title.” The licensing law ended in 1694. It was a defining moment of press freedom in fighting the need to secure permission to publish. Figures like Thomas Paine wrote against prior restraints and licensing systems as the core threats to free speech and the free press.

  The Florida proposal would return us to mandatory licensing or registry as a prerequisite for free speech or the free press. I have no reason to assume that Sen. Brodeur has nefarious or authoritarian motives in this ill-conceived effort. However, he is on the wrong side of history in proposing a registry and should withdraw his bill.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:48

• GOP To Use "Power Of The Purse" Against FBI: Rep. Jim Jordan
  GOP To Use “Power Of The Purse” Against FBI: Rep. Jim Jordan

  Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times,

  House Republicans will use its spending power to restrict funding to the FBI, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), head of the lower chamber’s Judiciary Committee and its weaponization subcommittee, said on Sunday.

  

  Jordan said on Fox New’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that Republicans in the lower chamber will use its “power of the purse,” or spending power designated to it by the Constitution, to restrict federal funding sent to the FBI, as the weaponization subcommittee progresses further in investigations into FBI conduct.

  “We’re going to look to propose legislation, and in the end, the real power of Congress, the real power of the legislative branch, is the power of the purse,” Jordan told host Maria Bartiromo.

  “And we’re going to have to use that both on this issue where we think the government’s been targeting the very people it’s supposed to serve. But also, frankly, on the border—I think we’re going to have to look at ways to use the appropriation process to deal with the border situation.”

  ‘Egregious Behavior’

  Driving the Republican lawmaker’s proposed move is a long list of what Jordan describes as “egregious behavior” by the FBI.

  A recent example was revealed when FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle told lawmakers that the FBI created “threat tags” to target pro-life protesters, the lawmaker said, citing Boyle’s interview with Fox published on March 2, 2023. Before using the tags to track pro-lifers, the FBI used the threat tags to track potential threats to the Supreme Court following the court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Boyle told Fox.

  “A tag is merely a statistical tool to track information for review and reporting,” the FBI said in a statement to Fox.

  “The creation of a threat tag in no way changes the long-standing requirements for opening an investigation, nor does it represent a shift in how the FBI prioritizes threats.”

  

  A seal reading “Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation” is displayed on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington on Aug. 9, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

  Other allegations Jordan touched on in the Sunday interview include the FBI’s involvement in alleged political censorship on social media, the agency’s lack of transparency with intelligence on COVID-19 origins, alleged targeting of parents protesting at school boards and traditional Catholics, and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which Jordan characterized as election interference.

  As a response to these allegations, the Judiciary Committee is laying the groundwork and collecting relevant information before eventually approaching the compulsory subpoena process targeting the FBI, the lawmaker said. He added that the legislative branch could prohibit the FBI from using federal funding for certain purposes.

  “[We can] say, this funding can’t be used for X, this funding can’t be used for Y, or limit the funding overall,” Jordan said. “Those are things you have to do, or you don’t have the leverage to change, again, this egregious behavior we’re seeing from these agents.”

  FBI Whistleblowers

  Jordan said the committee has spoken to three FBI whistleblowers who are willing to go public with their interviews and a couple of dozen others who choose to remain anonymous.

  Currently, the Judiciary Committee is seeking to speak with 16 FBI employees for “transcribed interviews,” to inform potential legislative reforms to the FBI’s operations and activities, according to a March 3 letter Jordan sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray. The letter was first reported by Breitbart News.

  The Epoch Times has contacted Jordan’s office for comment.

  

  The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington on July 21, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

  Agency Response

  In response to a press inquiry from The Epoch Times on Jordan’s claims, a spokesperson from the FBI said the agency does not “conduct investigations based on a person’s views.”

  “The men and women of the FBI devote themselves to protecting the American people from terrorism, violent crime, cyber threats, and other dangers,” the FBI spokesperson said.

  “We focus on violence, threats of violence, and other illegal activity regardless of the underlying motivation or what side of an issue a person is on. We do not conduct investigations based on a person’s views. While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work,” the spokesperson added.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:45

• Schumer Demands Murdoch Pull Fox's Tucker Carlson Off-Air "Because Our Democracy Depends On It"
  Schumer Demands Murdoch Pull Fox’s Tucker Carlson Off-Air “Because Our Democracy Depends On It”

  ‘…thou doth protest too much, methinks’ is about the most perfect summary of the spectacle that erupted today after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exposed some realities (and all the falsities) of the events of January 6th.

  From Mitch McConnell to Mitt Romney, and every RINO and uniparty member in between, Carlson was pilloried using the standard ‘conspiracy theory’ narrative – though oddly, not one those that spoke out actually refuted any of the never-before-seen footage.

  

  And yet, the so-called ‘mainstream media’ – which ate up every second of the January 6th Committee’s endless charade, fell silent:

  NY Times. WaPo. WSJ. LA Times.

  Front page blackouts of explosive new footage showing Americans were lied to about January 6.

  This is why legacy media is dying.👇 pic.twitter.com/oOOgsHb8Bm

  — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) March 7, 2023

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  But one man stood above it all and demanded this horrific show of free speech be brought to an end – enter Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stage left…

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain,” Schumer said.

  “And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to.”

  Then with trembling voice, Schumer set forth his demands…

  “These lies continue tonight, Rupert Murdoch, who has admitted they were lies and said he regretted it, has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight, now that he’s seen how he has perverted and slimed the truth, and from letting him go on again and again and again,” Schumer said.

  “Not because their views deserve such opprobrium, but because our democracy depends on it.”

  If Democracy did really depend on stopping Tucker Carlson from revealing the truth about how Democrats have been lying about this subject for three years, it would deserve to fall.

  — John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) March 7, 2023

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  Enjoy his full performance below…

  Schumer: “Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight [and] from letting him go on again and again and again [because] our democracy depends on it.” pic.twitter.com/uld6eaCl3C

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 7, 2023

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  Schumer concluded by claiming that Carlson manipulated his audience by cherry-picking sequences.

  To that we simply say – Pot meet Kettle, Chuck, old boy.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:28

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