Feb 09

Today’s News 9th February 2022

  • Escobar: Erdogan In Kiev, Putin In Beijing: Can Neo-Ottomanism Fit Into Greater Eurasia?
    Escobar: Erdogan In Kiev, Putin In Beijing: Can Neo-Ottomanism Fit Into Greater Eurasia?

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via TheCradle.co,

    As the world turns further over monumental announcements from the Putin-Xi summit in Beijing, Turkey’s Erdogan keeps walking a thinning tightrope between NATO and Eurasia

    The Chinese year of the Black Water Tiger started with a big bang – a live Beijing summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping – and a minor bang – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Kiev, Ukraine. And yes, it’s all interlinked.

    Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov had revealed in advance that Putin-Xi would release a very important “joint statement on international relations entering a new era,” with Russia and China in synch “on the most important world problems, including security issues.”

    Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi, who worked non-stop prior to the summit, met the day before in Beijing to finalize the joint statement. Wang stressed the increasing interconnection of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), and much to the interest of the Global South, referred to extensive discussions on BRICS cooperation, Ukraine, Afghanistan and the Korean Peninsula.

    The Russia-China joint statement (here, in Russian) did not cut any corners. The two global powers, among the summit’s key takeaways, are against NATO expansion; favor the UN and “justice in international relations;” will fight “interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries;” oppose “external forces” undermining national security; and are resolutely against color revolutions.

    A Putin Op-Ed published by Xinhua detailed the full spectrum of the Sino-Russian discussions at the highest level – from the drive to “strengthen the central coordinating role of the United Nations in global affairs and to prevent the international legal system, with the UN Charter at its center, from being eroded,” to “consistently expanding the practice of settlements in national currencies and creating mechanisms to offset the negative impact of unilateral [US] sanctions.”

    Putin resolutely defined China as “our strategic partner in the international arena,” and stressed how he and Xi “hold largely the same views on addressing the world’s problems.”

    He said this strategic partnership is “sustainable, intrinsically valuable, not affected by the political climate and not aimed against anyone. It is underpinned by respect, regard for each other’s core interests, adherence to international law and the UN Charter.” 

    The Global South – and possibly swathes of Europe, now facing a frigid winter with hiked fuel prices because of the stand off over Ukraine – will not fail to compare it with NATO’s worldview.

    Meanwhile, in Kiev, Erdogan and Zelensky were reviewing the Turkish-Ukrainian strategic partnership.

    Erdogan did perform quite a feat in Kiev. He called for “a “peaceful and diplomatic solution” in Ukraine, not exactly following the relentless War Inc. narrative. He even said the solution should be found “within the framework of the Minsk agreements, on the basis of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and international law.”

    That happens to exactly tie in with Moscow’s view. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had previously commented, “if Turkey could encourage Kiev to implement the Minsk deal, Moscow would welcome this development.”

    The Sultan swing again

    So enter Erdogan as benign messenger/peacemaker – the latest twist in the fascinating, never-ending saga of what could be interpreted as his search for a more refined post-neo-Ottomanism stance in foreign policy.

    Well, it’s not that simple. Erdogan, even before landing in Kiev, affirmed that Ankara is ready to host a live Putin-Zelensky meeting or even “talks at the technical level.”

    That was his cue to promote a possible Putin jaunt to Ankara after his meeting with Xi in Beijing: “Mr. Putin told us that he will visit Turkey after his visit to China.”

    Erdogan did invite Putin in late January. The Kremlin confirms no date has been set yet.

    The ostensible purpose of Erdogan’s visit to Kiev, part of a High-Level Strategic Council, was to sign a so-called New Generation Free Trade Agreement, including the very tricky – for Moscow – joint production of Bayraktar drones, manufactured by Baykar Makina, a company owned by none other than Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar.

    Yes, in Erdoganistan it’s all in the family. And the problem is that the Bayraktar TBT 2 combat drone – like those sold to Ukraine since 2018 – will continue to be used against the civilian population of Donetsk. Lavrov and even Putin himself have been very vocal about it vis-a-vis Ankara.

    Erdogan’s geopolitical tightrope walking includes Russian S-400s in and US F-35s out, receiving Russian gas and nuclear technology while selling those Bayraktars to Russia’s enemies, and even the support, expressed by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar in late January, to the 1936 Montreux Convention, which is very specific on restricting NATO in the Black Sea: “It is out of the question to give up on [Montreux] under today’s conditions.”

    NATO’s headquarters in Brussels won’t be amused.

    Up to now, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had been actively ditching Montreux to the benefit of the still far-fetched Canal Istanbul linking the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, “entirely under Turkey’s sovereignty,” according to Erdogan – obviously a very juicy deal from NATO’s point of view. Yet the fact is Ankara, mired in an economic/financial swamp, has no means to build the Canal.     

    The geopolitical tightrope walking still leaves in the balance the real objectives of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), formerly Turkic Council, which crystallizes the pull of pan-Turkism – or pan-Turanism. It has already gone beyond last year’s Susha Declaration, which solidified a Turk-Azeri “one nation, two states;” it now encompasses these two plus Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and has been actively courting Hungary, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and – last but not least – Ukraine.     

    The OTS met in a tightly secured island in Istanbul last November. They discussed in detail the fact that the extremely complex political environment in Taliban Afghanistan might spill over new instances of terrorism and uncontrolled migration. There were no leaks about future, practical OTS steps.    

    Way more than a bridge connecting Asia Minor and the Caucasus to Central Asia, or a sort of benign form of “dialogue” between the south Caucasus and Central Asia, the OTS, in theory, carries all the trappings of a bloc from the Black Sea to Xinjiang, under a not-too-disguised Turkish hegemony, which implies a serious Trojan Horse element: a NATO presence.

    It remains to be seen how the OTS would interface with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which congregates the “stans” as full members, as well as Iran – but not Turkey, which is just an observer. The SCO top powers are of course Russia and China, which in no way would allow, for instance, the Caspian to be open to western predatory policies, infringement of Russian and Iranian spheres of influence, and most of all a ‘security’ bloc with NATO ‘leading from behind.’     

    The talk in those palace corridors

    It’s quite enlightening to assess how Erdogan media – over 90% fully controlled across Turkey – mirrors what may be the real calculations swirling in the corridors of that 1000-room Sultanesque palace in Ankara.

    They see that Russia “invaded Crimea, and annexed eastern Ukraine,” and is trying to “solidify its position in the Black Sea and Eastern Europe.” At the same time, they see the Empire instrumentalizing Turkey as a mere ‘frontline’ in a larger war, with NATO’s strategy to ‘besiege’ Russia and China also being applied against Turkey.

    So “the fear of Turkey is now as strong as the fear of Russia and China.”

    They seem to understand that if War Inc. gets what it desperately wants, “the Black Sea will be transformed into the Eastern Mediterranean. The US and Europe fully settling into the Black Sea means they will never leave.” That “could lead to Turkey’s destruction in the medium and long term.”

    And then there’s the crucial twist: “Ukraine cannot stop Russia. But Turkey can.” That is exactly what Erdogan is playing at. “The US and Europe must be thwarted from settling into the Black Sea. Turkey-Russia relations must be preserved.” The problem is how “Ukraine’s integrity and defense must be supported.”

    All of the above perfectly ties in with Erdogan, back from Kiev with all rhetorical guns blazing, blasting that the West wants to “worsen” the Ukrainian crisis. Erdogan media frames it as “a game is being set to drive Turkey against Russia.” 

    Erdogan so far never really challenged the ‘rules-based international order.’ He always made a point of addressing two different messages to East and West. To Asia, the emphasis was on anti-imperialism, the dire consequences of colonialism, the Israeli apartheid state and western Islamophobia. To the West, he impressed his own version of dialogue of civilizations (and was branded as “an autocrat”).

    Ultimately Erdogan is not west-toxified, much to the contrary. He sees the US-led order as a neocolonial power only interested in pillaging the resources of the lands of Islam. Of course he’s handicapped culturally – adhering, at best, to memorizing Quranic verses, listening to Ottoman military music and having his photo taken with the odd Turkish pop star. He doesn’t read; it’s all about instinct.

    A conversation about Erdoganian neo-Ottomanism in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar beats any think tank analysis. Bazaaris tell us it’s something in constant flux. In foreign policy terms, it migrated from pro-EU to frustration for being excluded, coupled with the certainty that Turkey is fed up with being a US client state. It’s as if Erdogan, instinctively, has grasped the collective west’s current, abysmal strategic debacle – thus his effort, now, to build some strategic cooperation with Russia-China.

    Has he undergone a conversion though? Considering his legendary volatility, all bets are off. Erdogan has a long memory, and has not forgotten that Putin was the first world leader to condemn the – botched – 2016 coup attempt by the usual intel suspects, and support him personally.

    It’s still a long way for Erdogan’s Turkey to become a strategic partner to Russia. Yet he has a knack of knowing which way the geopolitical winds are blowing – and that points to Eurasia integration, the Russian-conceptualized Greater Eurasia Partnership, and the primacy of the Russia-China strategic partnership manifested through BRI, EAEU and the SCO.    

    There’s even an Eurasianist mini-boom in Turkey. They are secular; anti-NATO – just like Russia-China; consider the Empire as the undisputed troublemaker in West Asia; and want closer ties with Moscow and Tehran.

    In Nostalgia for the Empire: The Politics of Neo-Ottomanism, M. Hakan Yavuz argues that “neo-Ottomanism constitutes a web of interrelationships between the dominant discourse of Islamism, the residual memories of Ottoman grandeur, and the prominent desire to reconstitute the Turkish nation as a regional power with historic roots.”   

    The money quote is “regional power”. Why not a strong “regional power” deeply integrated into a strong Greater Eurasia – instead of a mere (decaying) western vassal? No wonder Erdogan is dying to hang out with Putin in Ankara.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/09/2022 – 02:00

  • "Dismantling Democracy" To Save It: How Democrats Rediscovered The Joys Of Rigging Election
    “Dismantling Democracy” To Save It: How Democrats Rediscovered The Joys Of Rigging Election

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the Hill on frenzy of gerrymandering in various states and the selective condemnation of President Joe Biden of such practices in North Carolina.

    While denouncing gerrymandering Republicans for gerrymandering as attack on democracy, Democratic figures like lawyer Marc Elias are under attack for raising millions to support democratic gerrymandering. Elias previously declared “Republicans gerrymander like this because they do not want free and fair elections.” (Elias was previously accused of lying to conceal the Clinton campaign’s funding of the Steele dossier, has sought to reverse election results, and has been sanctioned by the courts). Notably, the raw gerrymandering in New York not only seeks to rig the coming elections but openly flaunts the will of the voters who repeatedly demanded that the practice stop in their state. 

    Here is the column:

    “Voters should choose their representatives — not the other way around.” With those words late Friday night, President Biden celebrated a decision by North Carolina’s supreme court rejecting new state legislative districts that favored Republicans. The ruling was used to support Biden’s past portrayals of Republicans as the enemies of democracy, including their use of gerrymandering.

    Biden is not alone. Former President Obama condemned Republican gerrymandering efforts as threatening democracy. The liberal Brennan Center has declared that “gerrymandering is deeply undemocratic.” Liberal commentators insist the choice is simple: “It’s restricting gerrymandering or being complicit in the dismantling of democracy.”

    Biden was careful to keep his focus on North Carolina in stating that “for too long, partisan gerrymandering has allowed politicians to rig the political process and draw districts in their favor.” Indeed, it required an impressive act of myopia to avoid noting that Democrats have engaged in raw gerrymandering in various states, too. 

    But the North Carolina decision could seriously undermine Democratic plans in other states to rig elections and gain seats in Congress.

    For example, in New York Democrats want to add four new seats through gerrymandering, to try to retain control of the U.S. House. One district is designed to guarantee the reelection of Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has held hearings on the evil of  — you guessed it  — gerrymandering.

    Gerrymandering is to politics what doping is to sports. It is universally viewed as a cheat, an effort to manipulate districts to guarantee electoral victories. Drafting coherent districts evenly and logically to divide populations is not particularly difficult. School districts usually are designed to evenly distribute populations with schools as center points; those school districts often serve as voting locations. Once you depart from such logical divisions, however, political pressures produce a grotesque progeny of malformed districts.

    The Nadler district would make Elbridge Gerry blush. In 1812, Gerry — a Founding Father, vice president and governor of Massachusetts — signed off on a district designed to guarantee a seat for the precursor of today’s Democratic Party. The district resembled a salamander, so the Boston Gazette deemed it the “Gerry-mander.”

    Notably, the original gerrymandered district looks a lot like what is now being dubbed the “Jerrymander.”

    To cite Biden, Rep. Nadler did not simply “choose his voters.” His contorted district virtually selects them individually, weaving through neighborhoods in search of support.

    Nadler’s district is not the only monstrous creature dwelling on the map. Republicans currently hold eight of New York’s 27 seats in Congress. Despite being a state in which roughly 38 percent of voters went for Trump in 2020, Republicans would have an advantage only in four districts under the redrawn map, allowing Democrats to pick up the other four. For example, Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis previously beat an incumbent, Democrat Max Rose, in the 11th District. To guarantee that Rose will now win, Democrats stretched the district to include the liberal area of Park Slope in Brooklyn.

    This was not supposed to happen.

    In 2014, New Yorkers took the extraordinary step of amending Sections 4 and 5 of Article III of their state’s constitution. They created the New York Independent Redistricting Commission to prohibit drawing maps “for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.” (N.Y. Const. art. III, § 4(c)(5)).

    However, the fix was in. After proclaiming a new day of fair and honest elections, the commission was set at ten members divided evenly. Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, admitted that the commission was designed to fail: “Of course it was. When you have an equal amount of people from either side, you are inevitably going to get a deadlock or a tie. And that’s exactly what happened here.” In other words, all the democracy stuff was a lie. When the commission inevitably deadlocked, the Democratic-controlled legislature went on a gerrymandering frenzy.

    Nevertheless, President Biden and Democrats like Nadler are seeking to take control over state election laws in the name of democracy. It does not matter if they are using the same anti-democratic measures as they accuse Republicans of wielding, because their motivations are purportedly pure even if their means manifestly are not.

    There will be challenges this year to gerrymandered districts by both parties. While the Supreme Court said in 2019 that political gerrymandering is constitutional in Rucho v. Common Cause, such changes can be struck down when they result in the dilution or suppression of minority voters. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on one such race-based challenge to new districts in Alabama. A similar challenge in Illinois failed despite districts that rival Nadler’s in fantastical, illogical shapes to gain Democratic seats.

    The North Carolina opinion could complicate things for Democrats, however, if it is applied to other states with anti-gerrymandering laws. The law was notably a gerrymandering case based on partisan rather than racial impacts. The North Carolina court acknowledged the holding in Rucho but voted 4-3 that it could strike down “excessive partisan gerrymandering” on state constitutional grounds. It found that Republican lawmakers drew maps that deprived voters of their “substantially equal voting power on the basis of partisan affiliation.”

    The New York districts also are the subject of a lawsuit under the state constitution.

    The intent of the voters could not be more clear: While the commission was rigged to fail, voters clearly did not know that and reaffirmed their intent in 2021 when Democratic legislators tried to pass a proposed constitutional amendment to regain redistricting authority if the commission failed to produce redistricting plans. The voters rejected that effort. Thus, these Democratic groups are not only seeking to rig coming elections, but are thwarting the will of voters as expressed in two ballots.

    Nevertheless, Gov. Kathy Hochul pledged to “use [her] influence to help Democrats expand the House majority through the redistricting process.” The Democrats and Hochul did precisely that in going ahead and gerrymandering the districts while continuing to condemn Republicans for trying to destroy democracy.

    Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering this year — but the blinkered outrage of President Biden to Republican gerrymandering only highlights the hypocrisy of our times. We are left, yet again, with a gang of arsonists espousing fire safety in our political system. Despite voters calling for an end to gerrymandering, their leaders continue to lie to them and frustrate efforts to end this insidious practice.

    While the National Democratic Redistricting Committee called for a “Fair Districts Pledge” to “commit to restoring fairness to our democracy,” these politicians have instead followed Oscar Wilde’s rule that “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/09/2022 – 00:05

  • College Kid Cracks Code To Track Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg's Private Jet Flights
    College Kid Cracks Code To Track Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg’s Private Jet Flights

    Tracking the private jet movements of billionaires, dealmakers, celebrities, and even politicians has never been easier since 19-year-old Jack Sweeney, the mad genius behind the Twitter account “Elon Musk’s Jet,” developed tracker bots using publicly sourced air-traffic control data. Sweeney’s tracking software is above the rest because it can track jets blocked on popular flight tracking websites, such as FlightAware and FlightRadar24. 

    Sweeney has moved from tracking the world’s richest man, Elon Musk’s private jets, to more billionaires, dealmakers, celebrities, and even politicians. He announced Monday night three new tracking bots, including billionaire Mark Cuban (@MCubansJets), Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg (@ZuccJet), and real estate mogul Grant Cardone (@CardoneJet). Those who follow the accounts can monitor the private jets of these elites who virtue signal climate change but fly around the world in their polluting jets.

    The college kid recently published a list on Twitter of all the bots he has created: 

    Sweeney joined CNBC on Tuesday to explain how he tracks private jets. 

    Sweeney also appears to be expanding into tracking politicians. He asked his followers:

    “If you have info on any politicians with their own private jets let me know with tail number. Also I’ll be creating a site for other aircraft requests soon!”

    Sweeney is exposing virtue-signaling elites who preach about climate change but fly around the world in their private jets (some of which are blocked from public view on FlightAware and FlightRadar24). According to a study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change, private jets in 2016 produced about 33.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s about 4% of total aviation emissions, equating to as much as the entire nation of Denmark emits per year. 

    Now a college kid has cracked the code to monitor (all through public data) virtue-signaling elites who fly around in private jets.

    Now, the 19-year-old is exposing in real-time the elites’ rapidly expanding carbon footprints as they demand the rest of us eat fake meat and insects, use less energy, live in tiny homes, work gig-economy jobs, and forget about reality by joining the metaverse. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 23:45

  • Border Patrol Union: Lucky If We Seize 5 Percent Of Fentanyl Pills Coming Across Border
    Border Patrol Union: Lucky If We Seize 5 Percent Of Fentanyl Pills Coming Across Border

    By Charlotte Cuthbertson of The Epoch Times

    Border Patrol agents are so busy processing large groups of illegal aliens, that in one Arizona area only four agents are available to patrol a 150-mile section of the border.

    “Now that 150 miles of border normally takes about 75 to 90 agents—we had four agents out there,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Judd testified at an unofficial House hearing at FreedomWorks in Washington on Feb. 1.

    “Cartels control the border right now,” Judd said. “They dictate to us what our operations are going to be. That should never happen.”

    National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd speaks at a press conference in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021.

    The amount of drugs being seized has correspondingly plummeted, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics.

    “If we seize even 5 percent of what’s coming across the border, we’re lucky,” Judd said, referring to a question about fentanyl pills. “And if there’s nobody there to detect you and apprehend you, the cartels are going to push it through between the ports of entry when they know that there is absolutely no chance that we’re going to apprehend that narcotic.”

    During the first three months of fiscal year 2022, agents have seized 316 pounds of deadly fentanyl coming across the border between ports of entry—more than triple that of the same period last fiscal year.

    At the ports of entry, where most drugs are seized, agents have nabbed 2,390 pounds of fentanyl so far in fiscal 2022, compared to 10,183 pounds in the same period the previous year. Two milligrams of fentanyl can be a fatal dose.

    Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine seizures are also significantly reduced this fiscal year compared to the same period in fiscal 2021.

    More than 100,000 Americans, a record amount, died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April, according to CDC data. Fentanyl was involved in almost two-thirds of those deaths.

    Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, highly addictive, and deadly. Buyers may be unaware that the drugs they buy are laced with illicit fentanyl.

    The substance is most often manufactured in Mexico using chemicals supplied from China and trafficked across the southern border by Mexican drug cartels. Fentanyl is mixed with other narcotics to increase potency as well as pressed into counterfeit pain pills that are made to look like blue Oxycodone prescription pills and are commonly known as “Mexican oxys.”

    In mid-December 2021, law enforcement authorities seized a record 1.7 million fentanyl pills in Scottsdale, Arizona.

    “There have been no new operations, policies, or programs put in place since this administration has taken office to help the border Border Patrol go after criminal cartels and the profits that they are generating,” Judd said.

    “We have allowed the criminal cartels to create billions of dollars in revenue at the expense of U.S. citizens who are dying at a record rate in 2021.”

    In a blistering indictment on the Biden administration’s management of the border, Judd said Border Patrol agent morale is “in the tank” and more agents have left the agency in the past year than were hired.

    “We go home every single day defeated. We feel like our time is wasted. Our only goal is to protect the citizens of this great nation—we are not allowed to do that at this time,” he said.

    A Border Patrol agent organizes illegal immigrants who have gathered by the border fence after crossing from Mexico into the United States in Yuma, Arizona, on Dec. 10 2021.

    Frustrated Border Patrol agents confronted Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, and Raul Ortiz, the U.S. Border Patrol Chief, in recent meetings along the border.

    “For evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. That’s exactly what’s happening here,” one agent said, according to a leaked video. “Good men are doing nothing. You’re allowing illegal aliens to be dropped off in our communities.”

    Judd said, “I would absolutely say that this administration is aiding and abetting in the smuggling of individuals to include allowing them to make false asylum claims.”

    He told lawmakers that the agency doesn’t need more funding or resources and that the immediate border crisis can be fixed through policy.

    “I would argue that we must start with the illegal immigration because if we can control illegal immigration, we can then go after the cartels and their profits.

    “But as long as our hands are continually tied with the millions—because it is millions of people that cross the border illegally—we’re always going to give the cartels the upper hand to continue to cross their products and create artificial gaps in our coverage.”

    Immediately after taking office, President Joe Biden dismantled several key border security initiatives that the Trump administration had established, ordering a freeze on deportation and construction of the border wall, as well as the “Remain in Mexico” program, which contributed to up to an 80 percent drop in “catch-and-release” by requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico until their final court judgment.

    A Supreme Court decision in August 2021, required the Biden administration to restart the Remain in Mexico program. However, Judd said fewer than 100 illegal immigrants per day are currently being registered, yet anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 are being apprehended on a daily basis. Most are being released into the United States to wait for a future court date that can be set years into the future.

    “We’re not even a speed bump,” Judd said. “We’re actually facilitating, because when we release these individuals … we are giving them a de facto legal status to be here. We are rewarding them for violating our laws.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 23:25

  • Leaked Video Emerges Of US Stealth Jet Crashing On Carrier In South China Sea
    Leaked Video Emerges Of US Stealth Jet Crashing On Carrier In South China Sea

    In late January, a $135 million single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth fighter jet designed by Lockheed Martin crash-landed aboard the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson in the South China Sea. A partial video of the incident was published days after the Jan. 24 crash but didn’t show the full impact until now. 

    A leaked video emerged on the internet on Sunday and shows what appears to be the entirety of the crash.

    The advanced F-35C stealth fighter was on approach to land on the USS Carl Vinson as flight crews can be heard calling off the landing, but it was too late, as the jet undershot the flight deck, causing its engine and tail to smack the deck and miss the tailhook. The plane exploded into flames as it slid off the carrier’s flight deck into the South China Sea. 

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    Here’s another video behind and underneath the flight deck, showing the F-35C’s engine and tail hitting the carrier. 

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    Below is a confirmed photo of the F-35C floating in the South China Sea after sliding off the flight deck. 

    The landing mishap injured a total of seven, including the pilot who had successfully ejected and six sailors who were presumably injured while on the flight deck. 

    The US Navy has yet to verify the new video but has confirmed the leaked image above. This is the second crash of an F-35 in a matter of months at sea. Last November, a British F-35 stealth jet crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during what was described as routine flying operations from the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.

    It remains a mystery how the world’s most advanced fighter jet, equipped with cutting-edge stealth technology and radar, was able to undershoot a landing on the carrier. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 23:05

  • Taibbi Interviews Russell Brand, Who Isn't "Right Wing"
    Taibbi Interviews Russell Brand, Who Isn’t “Right Wing”

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    Had a terrific and wide-ranging talk recently with someone I’ve long admired, the comedian, actor, and podcaster Russell Brand, for his podcast Under the Skin. I don’t often end an interview and think, “Wow, I actually like that guy,” but that happened in this case, which I hope is reflected in the show. The above is a just-posted excerpt.

    Some of you may have seen, in recent days, a tweet that describes Brand and a ridiculous range of other Joe Rogan guests as “right-wing.” The list is full of people who clearly don’t fit that description, from Tulsi Gabbard to Steven Pinker and beyond:

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    This is exhibit A in a phenomenon that’s become ubiquitous in mainstream press, where “right-wing” has become a stand-in for “heterodox” or “dissenting” or even just “open-minded.” Brand’s show, which now has 4.9 million subscribers (it was 4.8 million when we spoke), has been the repeated subject of crude smear jobs describing him as an alt-right Pied Piper, with the most shameless example being a Daily Beast piece from October called, “Comedian Russell Brand Has Become a Powerful Voice for Conservatives and Anti-Vaxxers.”

    That piece went off on Brand for having “vaccine-skeptic views” and running a “conspiracy theory-laden YouTube channel,” which led one to expect an avalanche of nuttery. Then you got into the piece and found the Beast’s complaints were things like questioning mandates and “pondering whether people could trust Bill Gates.” (That last line is such a perfect artifact of aristocratic cluelessness, it belongs in a museum). Worse, according to the Beast, Brand showed interviews of vaccine skeptics without mocking or denouncing them, almost like he was interested in hearing why they think what they think. Even more treacherously, he suggested people think for themselves:

    A December 2020 video titled, “Covid Vaccine – Skepticism or Trust?,” released just as the vaccine was rolling out in the U.K., saw Brand airing a series of clips of vaccine skeptics being interviewed on the street, before sharing, “I’m certainly by no means saying ‘Don’t take a vaccine,’ neither am I saying ‘Do take a vaccine’” and railing against an increase in “government authority” and decrease in “personal liberties” that is “concerning.”

    Much like the “NBC Verification Unit” that tried to get The Federalist in hot water with YouTube over supposed hate speech, and the reporters from The Guardian and The Washington Post who just pulled the same stunt with Substack over vaccine misinformation, The Beast bragged about its (ultimately failed) efforts to get Brand stuck in YouTube timeout over these offenses:

    On Wednesday, YouTube announced it planned to crack down on content posted to its platform that spread medical misinformation, saying it had already removed more than 130,000 videos within the past year that violated its COVID-19 vaccine policies. YouTube said of Brand’s channel, “We’re reviewing the videos raised by The Daily Beast.”

    Of course, Brand’s real crime is the basis of the show’s success: a welcoming, positive tone, the breezy lack of judgment, and a refusal to denounce anyone as enemies. The opening salutation — “Welcome, you 4.9 million shimmering wonders, you awakening souls, my brothers and sisters” — is a funnier, more exultant update on radioman Lowell Thomas’s legendary salutation from a century ago, “Good evening, everybody.” Thomas set the tone for generations of media outlets that saw their programs as places where the whole population could come together for discussion and debate, as opposed to being herded into warring camps. Brand is doing the same thing, just with more panache (saying a lot, since Thomas was also a storied stage performer).

    This willingness to court all audiences is an affront to the basic formula of current commercial media, which relies upon a strategy of identifying out-groups and rallying audiences to escalating hatreds. Any show that sends an opposite message that people with differing views can and should coexist, or that people who cross conventional wisdom may be interviewed for any reason beyond being “called out,” must now themselves be considered reactionary. We’re seeing how intense the propaganda about this sort of thing can get with the Rogan situation. Make no mistake, if the Jim Acostas and Brian Stelters and Daily Beasts of the world succeed in chopping Rogan’s knees out, they will go looking for the next target, which could easily be Brand or anyone else on that list of “right wing” terrors.

    I don’t want to get into this too much, as I’ve interviewed some other people on that list and want to share their takes on this as well later on. Still, this phenomenon has now reached points of absurdity, where being antiwar or supportive of free speech or even just sort of generally chill and forgiving — all part of the liberal’s basic toolkit, once — can inspire accusations of rightist treachery.

    Transparently, this is a tactic by a political mainstream so desperate to control what people say and think that it refuses to concede there’s even a word for legitimate disagreement with its dictates. As stupid as mainstream press people are in general, this specific stratagem is clever. First, it provides a massive disincentive for left-liberal thinkers to step an inch outside conventional thinking. Secondly, while people are arguing over the superficial provocation — Hey, wait, I’m not a right-winger! — even more dubious notions are slipped in through the back door, like the idea that Joe Rogan isn’t allowed to interview conservatives, or that if he does, he must do so using some bizarre pre-approved mathematical ratio.

    No matter what, it’s definitely true now that anyone who disagrees with the standard line on anything, from Russiagate to intervention in Syria or Ukraine to whether or not Anthony Fauci lied a time or five, can sooner or later expect to wake up wearing the wrongthink tag.

    More later, but in the meantime, here’s Brand on what he thought, when he discovered that “Russ, me, the person that I live inside of,” was being described as “right-wing”:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 22:45

  • Schumer Joins Pelosi, McCarthy In Supporting Ban On Congressional Stock Trading
    Schumer Joins Pelosi, McCarthy In Supporting Ban On Congressional Stock Trading

    The Democrats’ Congressional leaders are increasingly feeling the pressure to support a ban on lawmakers’ actively trading stocks.

    And finally, it look like they’re starting to cave.

    Not long after Nancy Pelosi came forward to express support for a trading ban despite being the poster child for lawmakers who supplement their income with day trading, her counterpart in the Senate, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, has also hopped on the bandwagon.

    According to a report in Punchbowl News, Schumer has officially thrown his weight behind a ban on trading single-name stocks by lawmakers in both the House and the Senate.

    Over the past two years, pressure on lawmakers to adopt a ban on stock trading has intensified – and it’s not just Congress: a trading scandal over at the Fed led to several senior Fed official being fired by Chairman Jerome Powell after the media picked up on financial disclosure forms detailing their trading. Late last year, the SEC also adopted tighter rules governing when corporate insiders can sell their company’s stock.

    Even rabid liberal and former Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich has insisted that Democrats now have enough “momentum” to make a trading ban a reality.

    Of course, as Reich continued, it’s not just the Democratic leadership that trades; Senators from both parties, traded in 2021 as Newsweek reports.

    But how do Republicans feel about this? As it happens, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been aggressively pushing for a ban on lawmakers trading individual stocks (joined by – of all people – freshman Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff).

    Reports about lawmakers trading resulted in memes like the following image of Pelosi on her cellphone and a handful of other images, many showing Pelosi on the phone either on Capitol Hill or during the Congressional baseball game.

    76% of voters across the political spectrum believe members of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks while in office, including nearly 78% of Republicans and 80 percent of Independents.

    Last month, McCarthy and Ossoff introduced a ball barring trading in single-stock names. before that, more than two dozen Dem and GOP lawmakers signed a letter to the Democratic Congressional leadership urging them to support a trading ban.

    What’s more, the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act has been endorsed by several leading ethics reform groups, including the Project on Government Oversight, the National Taxpayers Union, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, FreedomWorks, and Issue One.

    The law would require all Members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children, to put applicable investments into a qualified blind trust or divest them within 120 days after the law is enacted. In the future, newly elected lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children would be required to do the same within 120 days of assuming office. Covered investments that cannot be moved into a blind trust must be divested

    Readers can find the full bill below:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 22:25

  • Memphis Black Lives Matter Founder Sentenced To 6 Years For Illegally Voting
    Memphis Black Lives Matter Founder Sentenced To 6 Years For Illegally Voting

    By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times

    A Black Lives Matter organizer in Memphis was sentenced to prison after she was convicted for illegally registering to vote.

    Pamela Moses in an undated mugshot

    Pamela Moses, described by some outlets as the founder of a BLM chapter in Memphis, was sentenced to six years in prison last week after she was convicted in November 2021 for illegally registering to vote in Tennessee, according to prosecutors. Moses had felony convictions in 2015, making her ineligible to register to vote.

    Judge Mark Ward, while handing down her prison sentence, accused her of making false statements to the probation department to register to vote.

    “You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” Ward said in court last week.

    “After you were convicted of a felony in 2015, you voted six times as a convicted felon.”

    Moses in 2015 pleaded guilty to felony charges of tampering with evidence and forgery. She also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of perjury, stalking, and theft under $500, according to local media.

    Public records also show she was arrested in 2016 and charged with inciting a riot. Those charges were later dropped.

    “I did not falsify anything. All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me and the way the clerk did,” Moses said at her sentencing hearing on Jan. 26.

    A local activist in Memphis alleged that her conviction was erroneous, and her sentencing is too harsh for the crime she committed.

    “Elected officials have used incredible amounts of resources in a time when there’s a backlog in this justice system unlike any we’ve seen before. They use resources to try and … convict this woman for trying to vote,” said Josh Spickler, executive director of the left-wing group Just City, in a news conference.

    Moses previously said she never actually voted and only registered unknowingly. She faulted officials for not telling her about her ineligibility after she began probation on the 2015 charges.

    “I relied on the election commission because those are the people who were supposed to know what you’re supposed to do,” Moses told News Channel 3 in December 2021. “And I found out that they didn’t know.”

    However, prosecutors said during her trial that Moses knew that she was ineligible to vote.

    “Even knowing that order denied her expiration of sentence, Pamela Moses submitted that form with her application for voter registration and signed an oath as to the accuracy of the information submitted,” prosecutors argued. “Pamela Moses knowingly made or consented to a false entry on her permanent registration.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 22:05

  • China Falls Woefully Short Of Commitments To Purchase US Goods Amid Biden Lack Of Enforcement
    China Falls Woefully Short Of Commitments To Purchase US Goods Amid Biden Lack Of Enforcement

    Trade data released on Tuesday morning shows a massive shortfall in China’s ‘Phase 1’ purchases pertaining to 2020 trade deal promises inked under Trump, to meet a certain volume on American energy, soybeans, airplanes, and services, among other things. It suggests any claims of Biden’s ‘toughness’ on China notwithstanding, the reality appears that Beijing is seeing through the US administration’s supposed “firmness” on holding China to account. 

    Reuters observes of the numbers: “The data showed China missed by far its commitments to purchase an additional $200 billion worth of U.S. farm and manufactured goods, energy and services above 2017 levels – the year before a bitter trade war embroiled the world’s two largest economies.”

    Source: Associated Press

    Chinese leaders appear to be citing as the prime factor in the shortfall the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic, arguing that a specific clause in the trade deal necessitates consultations between the two governments “in the event that a natural disaster or other unforeseeable event outside the control of the Parties delays a Party from timely complying with its obligations.”

    According to a breakdown of the numbers reviewed in The New York Times China didn’t come anywhere close to what it pledged:

    In order to reach those targets, China would have needed to purchase at least $227.9 billion of U.S. exports in 2020 and $274.5 billion in 2021, for a total of $502.4 billion over the two years, said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

    But China did not come close, Mr. Bown said in an analysis of the trade data published Tuesday, buying only $288.8 billion, or 57 percent, of the American exports it promised.

    At the same time, a separate NY Times report detailed that “The U.S. trade deficit in goods soared to record levels in 2021, topping $1 trillion as Americans continued to spend heavily on computers, toys, bicycles, clothing, pharmaceuticals and other goods made in foreign factories during the pandemic.”

    In an illuminating and blunt assessment given to Reuters by former USTR chief of staff Jamieson Greer, who was deeply involved in negotiating the Phase 1 deal, the admin still has the legal ability to pursue “retrospective enforcement for what’s been missed,” according to language embedded in the agreement.

    “It’s in the interest of the administration to pursue enforcement,” Greer underscored. But he emphasized: “With a few kind of narrow exceptions, we haven’t really seen that much enforcement” on trade matters from the Biden administration, he concluded according to Reuters. Meanwhile, US officials are much belatedly demanding “concrete action” from China, which is likely only to continue shrugging off the feeble Biden admin demands. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 21:45

  • How Was CNN President Jeff Zucker's Resignation Covered On Television News?
    How Was CNN President Jeff Zucker’s Resignation Covered On Television News?

    Authored by Kalev Leetaru via RealClearPolitics,

    How has CNN President Jeff Zucker’s resignation been covered on television news?

    The timeline below shows total mentions of his name across CNN, MSNBC and Fox News since the start of this year, showing Fox News rapidly covering the story, then rapidly pivoting away, CNN only briefly mentioning it and MSNBC not mentioning his name at all.

    Fox News has mentioned his name 222 times since the start of this year, compared with just 24 mentions on CNN and 0 on MSNBC.

    Personality-driven shows have dominated mentions of his name, with Hannity, The Ingraham Angle and Tucker Carlson Tonight alone accounting for 52% of all mentions.

    Looking at the total seconds of airtime in which Zucker’s name was displayed somewhere in the onscreen text since the start of this month, Fox News leads with 40 minutes compared with CNN’s 13 minutes and MSNBC’s 0 seconds.

    Online news coverage surged after the announcement, dropped quickly, then rose again as breaking coverage turned into analyses, then faded.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 21:25

  • Biden Admin Funding Free Crack Pipes To Promote 'Racial Equity'
    Biden Admin Funding Free Crack Pipes To Promote ‘Racial Equity’

    The Biden administration is finalizing funding to promote “racial equity” by handing out free glass crack pipes for drug addicts to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine or any other “illicit substance.”

    Comedian Dave Chappelle as fictional crackhead Tyrone Biggums

    The new $30 million grant program from the Health and Human Services (HHS) department will provide funds to local governments and nonprofits for “smoking kits/supplies,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

    HHS said the kits aim to reduce the risk of infection when smoking substances with glass pipes, which can lead to infections through cuts and sores. Applicants for the grants are prioritized if they treat a majority of “underserved communities,” including African Americans and “LGBTQ+ persons,” as established under President Joe Biden’s executive order on “advancing racial equity.”

    Not everyone’s a fan.

    “If we look at more of a preventive campaign as opposed to an enabling campaign, I think it will offer an opportunity to have safer communities with fewer people who are dependable on these substances,” Sgt. Clyde Boatwright, president of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police told the Beacon.

    The move follows those by Democratic-run cities such as San Francisco and Seattle, which have distributed smoking kits to residents.

    This is the view of the taxpayer-funded supervised drug consumption and drug dealing site in United Nations Plaza, a public space in downtown San Francisco.

    Around this site, which was taken over without authorization, are armed and violent drug dealers whose deadly, addictive, and intoxicating products kill two San Franciscans per day.

    “We’re literally paying people in the form of cash welfare, housing, and other services to live in tents on the street, use hard drugs, defecate publicly, and commit crimes,” says Michael Shellenberger, author of “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.”

    Other municipalities such as Louisville, KY, have backed away from said programs on the grounds that they enable drug abuse.

    Funding for the program comes from the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan, which narrowly passed along party lines. It also includes money for other equipment such as condoms, fentanyl strips and disease screenings. It will last three years and includes 25 awards of up to $400,000.

    Perhaps Hunter Biden can be his father’s new crack czar – for which he’s infinitely more qualified than serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 21:05

  • Tanker Rates Turn Negative For First-Time Ever As US LNG Flocks To Europe
    Tanker Rates Turn Negative For First-Time Ever As US LNG Flocks To Europe

    Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    The spot charter rates for shipping U.S. liquefied natural gas to Europe have just turned negative, suggesting that there are now too many LNG vessels in the Atlantic region but fewer requirements, according to LNG freight price assessor Spark Commodities.

    In December and January, dozens of cargoes of U.S. LNG flocked to Europe, which had a record-high natural gas price amid the gas and energy crisis. The crisis pushed regional LNG prices way above the Asian LNG benchmark and 14 times higher than the U.S. Henry Hub price. Tankers were not only traveling between the U.S. and Europe, but many were also diverted away from Asia to Europe as spot sellers took advantage of the higher gas prices in Europe.

    As the number of available LNG tankers in the Atlantic basin surged, freight rates plummeted. On Tuesday, Spark Commodities assessed its first-ever negative spot LNG freight rate at -$750/day for the Spark30S Atlantic assessment.

    The negative freight rate “Highlights how current vessel charter payments do not cover the fuel cost of ballasting the vessel back to load port. Lots of ships and few requirements,” Spark Commodities noted.

    Last week, LNG freight rates continued to slide on the back of weak vessel demand and increasing availability in both the Atlantic and Asia Pacific basins, according to Spark Commodities.

    “There just aren’t enough charter requirements to keep these ships fully utilized,” Tim Mendelssohn, managing director of Spark, told Bloomberg on Tuesday, commenting on the negative rates for Europe.

    The recent slide in LNG tanker rates is a dramatic shift from late last year when freight rates reached an all-time high with Asia stocking up for the winter and Europe desperate for any gas supply in the crisis.

    Now the soaring European imports from the U.S. have sent spot freight rates below zero.

    Europe was the top destination for U.S. LNG exports in January, for a second month running, ahead of Asia, according to Refinitiv data cited by Reuters last week. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. LNG exports traveled to Europe last month after 61 percent of American LNG shipments went to Europe in December.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 20:45

  • Situation At Nikola "Starting To Look Dire" As Company Puts Hiring Freeze In Place, Loses Key Executives: Electrek
    Situation At Nikola “Starting To Look Dire” As Company Puts Hiring Freeze In Place, Loses Key Executives: Electrek

    Nikola shares are plunging late in the day on Tuesday after EV blog electrek put out a report claiming that the company has lost its “whole supply chain leadership” and that the company’s “situation looks dire”.

    “Electrek has learned that the supply chain department is in shambles,” the report reads, noting that four of the company’s top supplier chain executives have left the company in the last few months. The report says that the following employees have left the company:

    • Matthew Jenkins: Director of Supply Chain & Purchasing (Cab, Thermal, HMI & Controls, ADAS
    • Mike Chaffins: Global head of Supply chain
    • Mike Gallager: Director of Purchasing (Chassis, Powertrain, Indirect, CAPEX)

    Rather than the executives leaving because the company wanted to shift to outside suppliers, the report claims they were “critical” to “Nikola’s shift to relying on companies like Proterra for battery packs, Bosch for fuel cell systems, and IVECO for manufacturing.”

    Nikola CFO Kim Brady was responsible for the leadership leaving, the report says. 

    The report also noted that the company has put a hiring freeze in place, stating that during the time the company was dealing with founder Trevor Milton’s indictment, “the controversies took away from the actual work that the company was trying to accomplish.”

    The article also says that Nikola has given up on internally developed technologies and is now “highly dependent” on suppliers. 

    Nikola still trades with an over $3 billion market cap. Its last 10-Q filing shows no revenues for the 3 months ended September 30, 2021. During that time, the company posted a $271.8 million loss from operations. 

    Its founder, Trevor Milton, sold hundreds of millions of dollars in stock in 2021. 

    Nikola is, of course, the company that famously pushed the Nikola One prototype down a hill and filmed a promotional video saying the truck was operational. In September, Milton voluntarily stepped down from his roles as executive chairman and a member of the company’s board after being charged with fraud in late July. He stands accused of three counts of fraud for lying about the operational capacity of the Nikola truck.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 20:25

  • Alberta To Scrap Vaccine Passport Program, Announces Path To Lifting 'Almost All' Restrictions
    Alberta To Scrap Vaccine Passport Program, Announces Path To Lifting ‘Almost All’ Restrictions

    Update (2013ET): And just like that, the honkening may be coming to an end – as Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced on Tuesday that he’s ending the province’s vaccine passport system.

    The program will end by midnight tonight, according to Kenney.

    As the Toronto Star notes:

    The passport system, dubbed as the Restrictions Exemption Program, is the first of the province’s current public health restrictions to go in a phased approach laid out by Kenney at a press conference Tuesday.

    “Now is the time to begin learning to live with COVID,” said Kenney. “These restrictions have led to terrible division.”

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    “We cannot remain at a heightened state of emergency forever. We have to begin to heal.”

    Kenney announced a three-stage approach for the loosening of public health measures.

    First, the province will remove nearly all restrictions for children, including the kindergarten to Grade 12 mask mandate, by the coming weekend. Children who are 12 and under also won’t have to abide by the general mask mandate in Alberta. The general mandate still applies for the rest of the population.

    “It is time to let kids be kids,” Kenney said.

    As the Star reports, after three weeks, authorities will determine if the province can move to Stage 2, which would see “almost all the remaining restrictions lifted,” including the mask mandate, capacity limits, and work-from-home orders. Kenny is hopeful this can be accomplished by March 1.

    The final stage would see all restrictions lifted – however this could be paused if the healthcare system is under too much stress from Covid.

    “The threat of COVID-19 to public health no longer outweighs the damaging impact of public health restrictions,” said Kenney, adding “We are well positioned to live with the virus.“

    That said, Rebel News’ Ezra Lavant says Kenney is “He’s still going to have the QR codes. And he will still allow other entities, including private businesses, to discriminate based on those QR codes.”

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    The announcement marks a significant divergence from an clearly rattled Justin Trudeau.

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    *  *  *

    Update (1340ET): More than 48 hours into protesters blocking the Ambassador Bridge that connects Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit, there are new warnings the auto industry might come to a “screeching halt” this week. 

    “Basically, if there’s a shutdown of transportation routes, the auto industry comes to a screeching halt in about two days,” Robert Wildeboer, executive chairman of Martinrea International Inc., said Tuesday on BNN Bloomberg Television.

    Martinrea is a major auto parts manufacturer based in Vaughan, Ontario. It manufactures engine blocks, transmissions, cases, housings, suspensions, chassis components, and body paneling for automotive companies in Detroit. 

    “We have 38 trucks cross at the Detroit border per day and 16 in Sarnia,” Wildeboer said. Since protesters have shuttered the border crossing, it appears Martinrea’s ability to cross into Detroit has become challenging. 

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    So far, Martinrea’s shares trading in Toronto has yet to react to the disruption. 

    “A closure of the bridge would be catastrophic for the Canadian economy,” Brian Kingston, president, and chief executive officer of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, told Bloomberg. “It’s responsible for approximately 25% of our goods trade, it is far and away the most important border crossing between Canada and the U.S.”

    * * * 

    A group of protesters have blocked one of the busiest international land border crossings in Canada – the Ambassador Bridge which links Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, for the second day in a row.

    As the CBC reports, “Dozens of demonstrators lined Huron Church Road, which feeds traffic to the international crossing from Highway 401, with trucks and vehicles starting Monday afternoon and into Tuesday morning with local police asking people to avoid the area.”

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    As of Tuesday morning, Police announced in a tweet that one lane of US-bound traffic is open.

    “I’m here for my kids, just to get it back to normal. They haven’t played hockey, it’s been a disaster. Just end, give us back what we need to live again. Trudeau, Doug Ford, just listen to us,” said Sam Kovak of Woodslee, Ont.

    “”I was in Ottawa the past two weekends, all the people I talked to were vaccinated. It’s got nothing to do — just give us our freedom back,” he added. “Now we’re in the exact same position two years ago, my kids are still sitting at home, my wife is still sitting at home.”

    “We’re sorry, but we have to make a stand.”

    The Ambassador Bridge is one of the busiest international land border crossings in Canada and a major route for transport trucks.

    Access to two schools on Huron Church Road near the bridge is limited Tuesday, prompting the Catholic school board to send a notice to families Tuesday.

    Police are asking students and parents to avoid the road, and access the schools from California Avenue. 

    “The Windsor Police have assured that they have no concerns for student or staff safety at this time. They will have two police officers at the school to assist us with the situation this morning,” the memo read. –CBC

    *  *  *

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Following the tactics used by Canadian truckers in Ottawa, a growing number of trucker-inspired protests appear to be gaining momentum worldwide—with groups in the Netherlands, Austria, the United States, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand forming.

    The Ottawa protest, known as the “Freedom Convoy,” aims to do away with Canadian COVID-19 vaccine mandates, namely for truckers crossing the U.S.–Canada border. On Sunday evening, the mayor of Ottawa declared an emergency, while police started making arrests and seizing the truckers’ fuel.

    In New Zealand, truckers reportedly launched a convoy from both the North and South Islands. They are slated to converge at the country’s capital, Wellington, according to the New Zealand Herald.

    One of the truckers, who only called herself Jess, told the Toronto Star that she is attempting to organize a trucker protest in New Zealand, which has some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in the world, because “her country needed to hear the call to stand up.”

    She confirmed that the two groups will converge in Wellington in the near future after communicating with truckers via social media.

    Farm vehicles joining the trucker convoy protest against COVID-19 mandates parked in Ottawa on Feb. 5, 2020. (Courtesy of Simon Alary)

    “I think you’re starting to see what will become a big global movement to end these mandates,” Brian Brase, co-organizer of the U.S. protest, told Fox News on Sunday, referring to vaccine requirements.

    “It’s a violation of your human rights to be mandated to take this vaccine. If you want it, go get it, but being mandated to get it, we’re standing up against that. We think it’s wrong.”

    Last week, organizers of a U.S. freedom convoy criticized Facebook after the social media giant removed a page organizing protests. The truckers told Fox News that they were planning to drive from California to Washington, D.C.

    Truckers in the United Kingdom will also demonstrate against mandates in a Glasgow suburb and will drive to Edinburgh, the capital, before heading to London, organizers told the Scottish Daily Express newspaper. Freedom Convoys will also depart in the English cities of Manchester, Exeter, Bristol, and Bournemouth, as well as in cities in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.

    In the Netherlands, according to the local NL Times, dozens of trucks and other vehicles gathered in Leeuwarden to protest local COVID-19-related mandates and restrictions on Sunday. A video posted by the “Freedom Convoy Nederland” showed the group.

    Protesters demonstrating against COVID-19 mandates gather as a truck convoy blocks the highway at the U.S. border crossing in Coutts, Alta., on Feb. 2, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh)

    Elsewhere in Europe, Aram Lemmer, a business owner and organizer in Austria, told the outlet that he got commitments from about 2,500 vehicles to drive to Vienna, the capital, to protest against mandates. Recently, Austria passed a law that will mandate vaccinations for all eligible people aged 18 and older or they’ll face hefty fines.

    And police in the Australian Capital Territory say they expect crowd sizes for the “Convoy to Canberra” to peak on Feb. 8 when Australia’s Parliament resumes. Protesters led by truckers are expected to gather outside Parliament House.

    It comes as Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency on Sunday, alleging a “serious danger” posed by the trucker protest. Protest organizers say their movement is peaceful.

    “IMPORTANT: Anyone attempting to bring material supports (gas, etc.) to the demonstrators could be subject to arrest. Enforcement is underway,” Ottawa police also said in a statement on social media Sunday.

    The decision was panned by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a group representing the truckers.

    “In a free and democratic society that is governed by the rule of law, citizens can freely associate with each other, including the giving and receiving of goods and gifts. There is no law that would allow the Ottawa Police to arrest people for giving fuel or food to another Canadian,” Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer Nicholas Wansbutter said in a statement.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 20:14

  • China's "National Team" Is Good At Killing Stock Volatility
    China’s “National Team” Is Good At Killing Stock Volatility

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live strategist and commentator

    Chinese state-backed funds reportedly intervened in the stock market on Tuesday, helping stem the biggest intraday loss since August 2021.

    Since the bursting of the stock bubble in 2015, Bloomberg has reported at least seven occasions when the so-called “national team” came to the rescue when the market was cratering. The efforts didn’t always stop the bleeding immediately. But what they are good at is smothering volatility, which may be the very purpose of the intervention.

    State-related funds stepped into the market to buy local shares Tuesday afternoon, after the benchmark CSI 300 index slumped 2.4%, Bloomberg reported, citing people with direct knowledge. Shares of financial firms, including brokerages, were among those purchased. The CSI has lost about 7% this year, disappointing investors who had expected policy stimulus would boost stocks.

    The most-recent prior appearance of the “national team” occurred in March 2021, when the surge in U.S. yields hammered some highly-valued Chinese stocks during the National People’s Congress. They also intervened during the U.S.-China trade war in 2018 and 2019, and in 2016 in the aftermath of the stock crash.

    How effective is the national team’s rescue? On average, stocks continued to decline over the next three months, but at a slower pace. The CSI 300 fell by an average of 2.3% in the month after the reported intervention, compared with a loss of 5.1% in the previous month. The stock market did fare better over the ensuing six-month period, returning 5.5% on average.

    What’s more compelling is that the intervention consistently reduced market swings. State funds typically came in when 10-day volatility surged above at least 20. On average, volatility jumped by 9 points a month before the intervention, and declined by almost 14 points in the following month.

    In addition to volatility, there could be other clues to predict when the national team may step in. The recent episodes were related to external factors, such as tariff announcements in August 2018. On a few occasions, there seems to have been coordinated efforts by state media to talk up markets before the official intervention, although there have been plenty of false alarms. For instance, two weeks ago, state papers, including Shanghai Securities Journal, called for investors not to overreact to the market decline, saying A-shares have solid support from policies and fund flows.

    The old adage is don’t fight the central bank. In China’s context, it’s don’t fight the national team when they want to kill volatility.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 20:05

  • The CCP Goes VC
    The CCP Goes VC

    There may be no better example of how Chinese Communist Party officials have shifted their interest toward Venture Capital than the municipal government of Hefei, who acquired a 17% stake in EV maker Nio at a time when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

    The investment prompted the company to move to the eastern China city and to produce vehicles there. Nio turned its first profit and Hefei was able to cash out at up to 550% gains from its original investment – in less than a year of its purchase, Bloomberg reported. 

    Yu Aihua, the top Communist official in the city told Bloomberg: “From our investment in Nio, we ruthlessly made money. Making money for the government is not an embarrassment: It’s making money for the people.”

    Hefei has led the way for China since the 1950’s, with its “shrewd investments” helping it transform “from a relative backwater to a bustling metropolis of about 5 million people”, Bloomberg writes. It has made it China’s fastest growing city.

    The municipality made its first winning bet on on BOE Technology Group Co. after the 2008 financial crisis. The company wound up building a local plant in the city and, Hefei wound up with an 18% stake in the company. Hefei continued to invest in coming years and BOE’s presence in the city grew. 

    Now, in 2021, BOE just overtook Samsung as the world’s top manufacturer of LCD screens used in flatscreen TVs. 

    The municipality controls land sales and shares in the profit from state owned companies. It also has close ties to state-owned banks, the report says. And other municipalities have emerged as “white knights”, helping rescue strapped Chinese companies. The focus recently has been on technology, including semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

    These are all industries at the center of China’s plans to double the size of its economy by 2035. 

    Researchers at the University of Chicago, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, after looking at 37 million companies in China, say that companies owned by state agencies have been increasing partnerships with private companies. This has led to the average state stakeholder investing in nearly double the amount of companies as it did 10 years ago.

    The EV space remains a hallmark example. China’s six largest EV companies have sold more than 435,000 cars in 2021. Five of those names have local governments as minority investors, the report says. 

    In other words, the state owned VC model is starting to spread throughout the country. In turn, this means that “China’s biggest entrepreneurs are more connected with the state,” an obvious benefit for the CCP. 

    Chang-Tai Hsieh, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, told Bloomberg these companies are “not fully state-owned firms but also not really private firms,” adding that: “It’s this murky gray area, which I think is the dominant corporate structure in China today.”

    “Thirty years ago they [state government-owned companies] ­produced stuff that nobody wanted to buy. Now they are more like venture capital firms,” he concluded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 19:45

  • Hoax Alert: Black Illinois Student Criminally Charged For Racist Notes
    Hoax Alert: Black Illinois Student Criminally Charged For Racist Notes

    Authored by Jonathan Draeger via TheCollegeFix.com,

    Investigation involved the Secret Service

    Illinois law enforcement announced Friday that Kaliyeha Clark-Mabins, a black female college student, will be charged with three counts of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report.

    Kevin Schmoll, the chief of police for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, made the announcement on Friday. 

    The College Fix had started asking questions about the investigation last week.

    The notes said “DIE BITCH” and “BLACK PEOPLE DON’T BELONG” according to charging documents provided to The Fix by the Madison County State’s Attorney office.

    “SIUE Police received [on January 23] a report of a hate crime involving the posting of hand-written notes on the door of a room in Woodland Residence Hall, along with an alleged anonymous text message thread from fall 2021 containing threatening and racially hostile content,” campus Director of Media Relations Megan Wieser said in an email to The Fix. Police responded to reports of disorderly conduct and suspicious activity, according to the crime blotter.

    The investigation included not just the campus police, but the “Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Secret Service,” the email said.

    The investigation cleared two white students falsely accused of involvement, Amanda Jerome and Jimmi Thull.

    The Fix emailed Wieser and Schmoll on Saturday and asked why the Secret Service was involved but did not receive a response. Neither provided photos of the notes.

    Black students demand expulsion – when they thought white teens were to blame

    A closed Change.org petition called for the expulsion of the initially suspected perpetrators.

    “A black teen and her sister has had their lives threatened by some white teens on campus and have had no justice,” a user by the name of “Justice for Us” stated.

    Black activists rallied for the expulsion of the alleged perpetrators when they thought white teens were to blame.

    “They say it’s under investigation but I feel like she shouldn’t be on campus period. Because you threatened to lynch students on this campus,” David Daniel, the vice president of the Black Student Union, told KDSK 5.

    “David organized a demonstration where students chanted and held up posters,” KDSK reported.

    The Fix reached out to the Black Student Union through its club email and to Professor Howard Ramsby, its advisor on February 3, prior to the filing of criminal charges. The Fix asked for photos of the notes, if BSU could put The College Fix in touch with the alleged victim and what it thought should happen to the perpetrator.

    Ramsby and BSU did not respond to a follow-up request for comment on February 4 after the announcement of the criminal charges.

    The SIUE Code of Conduct states that “a felony criminal charge with a nexus to campus and/or that involves other SIUE students” will lead to “automatic interim separation, pending further investigation.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 19:25

  • Capitol Police Spies 'Dressed Like Construction Workers' To Surveil GOP Congressman's Office
    Capitol Police Spies ‘Dressed Like Construction Workers’ To Surveil GOP Congressman’s Office

    Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) has lodged a bombshell accusation against the Capitol Police, who he says broke into his office without his knowledge and photographed sensitive documents.

    Two days later, three intelligence officers dressed like construction workers ran into a member of Nehls’ staff while trying again during Thanksgiving week to enter the office – questioning the staffer as to the contents of a photograph they illegally took two days earlier.

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

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    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAccording to The Federalist, “In November 2021, a USCP officer entered the congressional office of Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Tex., and took a photo of a whiteboard in Nehls’ legislative office detailing various legislative plans being considered by Nehls and his staff.”

    The officer claimed in a police report several days later that he was conducting routine security patrol on Saturday, Nov. 21, and ‘discovered that one of the doors to Nehls’ office was open.’

    The report claimed that the officer entered Nehls’ office and found a whiteboard that contained “suspicious writings mentioning body armor[.]” The officer reportedly took a photo of the whiteboard, which was then passed around to analysts within USCP. The following Monday, USCP dispatched three plain-clothed intelligence officers to Nehls’ office and questioned a staffer who was there about the whiteboard and the legislative proposals it contained. -The Federalist

    Interestingly, the Washington Post had run a story days earlier about a Texas federal contractor who defrauded the United States by supplying Chinese-made body armor vs. armor made in the US.

    The Federalist also reports that the inspector general for the US Capitol Police (USCP) has launched an investigation into whether there has been inappropriate surveillance of elected members of Congress, their staff, and visitors to their officers.

    The opening of the investigation follows news reports and accusations from lawmakers that USCP has overstepped its bounds as it tries to recover from the January 6 riots that tarnished both the Capitol and the reputation of the law enforcement agency that was supposed to keep it safe.

    USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger confirmed the opening of the inspector general investigation in his response to congressional inquiries about USCP police tactics, reported in a January 24 article published by Politico, including surveilling and compiling intelligence dossiers on members of Congress, their staff, and visitors. -The Federalist

    “While I am confident in our methods, I am asking the USCP Office of the Inspector General to review the USCP’s programs related to these security assessments to assure both this Committee, the Congress as a whole, and the public that these processes are legal, necessary, and appropriate,” Manger wrote to seven GOP lawmakers.

    Read the rest of the report here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 19:07

  • Elon Musk Blasts Mainstream Media For "Relentless Hatestream" Of "Careless Negativity"
    Elon Musk Blasts Mainstream Media For “Relentless Hatestream” Of “Careless Negativity”

    Few people have received the kind of love-hate treatment from the media that Elon Musk has. Initially lionized for his role in building Tesla into the world’s preeminent manufacturer of electric cars, Musk saw his public image darken as the media fixated on his increasingly contrarian and – dare we say it – conservative viewpoint on politics, the climate and society.

    As a result, Musk took to Twitter Tuesday morning in Asia to criticize the traditional media for pumping out a “relentless hate-stream” of bad news. Musk lamented that it’s “so hard to find out what’s going on in the world without being bombarded with news that makes one sad & angry!”

    Furthermore, Musk lashed out at the media for “focusing relentlessly” on bad news, claiming that it doesn’t give an accurate representation of reality. In a reply to another user, the billionaire said “careless negativity (destruction) is much harder than thoughtful positivity (creation).”

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    Musk’s tweets arrived just a few hours after Brett Winton, director of research at Ark Investment Management (a major Tesla bull that has seen the value of its funds collapse in recent months), tweeted “it is deeply weird that the Internet tried to bully, threaten, extort and browbeat us into giving up on Tesla.”

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    Musk replied that “the insane tweet FUD campaign & press hatestream of 2017-2019 is still easily found.”

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    Musk’s anti-media tweets arrived at a particularly difficult time for Tesla: the media just reported that the SEC had sent Tesla and Musk another subpoena back in November over Musk’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet from August 2018.

    The Tesla CEO also sent another one of his infamous dogecoin-pumping tweets…

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    …but before ending his tirade, he apparently signed off with a Monty Python reference.

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    The subtext is obvious: perhaps instead of being so morbid all the time, the press should try writing about something positive.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/08/2022 – 19:05

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