GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXO-D5sbRdA
14:46 min

The Promise and Threat of China's Smart Cities​

RQNsrBPt7-zWK3jq_l0_txq5aJtP140xCCJRj-QkjGiqjbtoPWKRYjmoePMndR8oqYwNQ7zx=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj

Bloomberg Quicktake: Originals
Oct 27, 2021
China's smart city technology may improve urban life and bring economic benefits. But it also advances the existing surveillance state. Now other nations are worried about its implications.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Major News on Vaccinated COVID Deaths, but the White House Decides to Lie Anyway​

By Bonchie | 3:15 PM on November 23, 2022

For years, the COVID-19 vaccines have been pushed as a magic elixir, so potent and effective that they warranted being forced onto the population by way of government mandates. Even after it became clear that the vaccines didn’t stop the spread of the coronavirus, thus eliminating their communal benefit, the White House and some Democrat-led states marched on, stubbornly promoting them and other nonsensical policies like vaccine passports.

Unfortunately, things have not gotten better with time. Dr. Anthony Fauci delivered his supposed final press conference on Tuesday, and White House COVID Czar Ashish Jha opened things up with this ridiculously false claim.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1595101166417117185
.34 min

It never ceases to amaze me how comfortable the government’s medical establishment (which is then parroted by politicians) is with just outright lying to the American people. The idea that all COVID-19 deaths can be prevented if everyone got a “booster” is so devoid of science as to mimic parody. There is not an ounce of data to back up that absolute.

And while the wisdom of natural immunity may have been worth arguing over in the past given that an initial contraction of COVID-19 presented risks, now that essentially the entire country has caught the virus at some point or another due to Omicron, things simply are as they are. Continuing to push the vaccines as an unfailing, singular remedy is an insane level of gaslighting. At the same press conference, Fauci himself baselessly asserted that if the country has an issue with COVID-19 deaths during the coming winter, it would be because of the unvaccinated.

What makes their statements all the worse, though, is that it is being reported that more vaccinated people have died of the coronavirus than unvaccinated people over the prior few months.

1669263911326.png

For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.

Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. In September 2021, vaccinated people made up just 23 percent of coronavirus fatalities. In January and February this year, it was up to 42 percent, per our colleagues Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cox told The Health 202.

Naturally, instead of admitting that they overstepped, the White House’s grand plan to combat the trend of vaccinated people dying is to, you guessed it, promote more boosters. Just get boosted again and again and again, they say, and you’ll be completely immune from the virus. To reiterate, that’s Jha’s words, not mine. Never mind that the fact that so many vaxxed and boosted people have already died completely disproves Jha’s assertion that the vaccines represent a perfect solution to COVID-19 deaths.

It would have been so simple to present the vaccines as a worthy preventative measure, highly recommended for specific, high-risk demographics. That would have preserved trust in our institutions instead of seeing that trust burned to the ground with false information meant to manipulate the public.

Instead, Fauci and his cohorts chose to tell the nation that infants needed the vaccines despite them being at no statistical risk. They ignored natural immunity for years without even a hint of humility once they were proven wrong. They have also continued to gloss over the fact that age and pre-existing conditions continue to drive COVID-19 deaths, vaccinated or not, in an effort to get multiple jabs into every arm, regardless of risk factors.

Moving back to the big picture, has anyone bothered to stop and ask why those who are boosted are dying at higher rates than those who only got the primary regime? It is simply about high-risk demographics having a higher propensity to be boosted in the first place? I’m sure that’s part of it, but it should also be asked whether these continued boosting regimes are actually diminishing immunity in the long run. To actually study that, though, would violate the religious tenants of COVID-19, and we can’t have that.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

New “Food is Medicine” Nutrition Screening, RX, Tracking and Control​

November 22, 2022 /

On September 28, 2022, The White House announced $8 billion in new commitments toward hunger, nutrition, and health. The White House hosted the conference that laid out a “transformational vision for ending hunger and reducing diet-related disease by 2030 – all while closing disparities among the communities that are impacted most.”

These “new commitments” were determined over the summer, with both private- and public-sector involvement in the funding, stemming from:

• Philanthropic contributions and donations to community-based organizations​
• Investments in new businesses that will screen and integrate nutrition into health care​
• $2.5 billion in start-up companies creating “solutions” to hunger and food insecurity​
• Over $4 billion toward “philanthropy that improves access to nutritious food, promotes healthy choices, and increases physical activity”​

The business, civic, academic, and philanthropic “leaders” were announced at this conference in September, who will allegedly end hunger and reduce diet-related disease. The narrative is to convince everyone that it is due to Covid and climate change, and therefore, these ineffective so-called leaders will suddenly have the people’s best interest at heart and finally get the job done.

The reality is, the economic decline due to the lockdowns, manufactured supply chain disruptions, putting thousands of companies out of business, intentional inflation, and health conditions exploited during and after the orchestrated plandemic is what has created a loss of income, inability to afford food and gas, and complete disruption in everyone’s well being.

In addition to the above…

On November 16, the FDA completed its pre-market consultation for Upside Foods animal cell culture technology to produce chicken from cultured chicken cells. Upside Foods recently launched their lab grown meat facility in California, and is backed by 37 investors, including Bill Gates and Temasek Holdings. As Corey’s Digs has reported for the past five years, here, here, and here, regarding lab grown meat, the FDA and USDA approved the overall process of this long ago and have been working on the overall consultations, cell lines, and labeling regulations. This more recent press release pertains to another step in the FDA approval to bring Upside Foods to market, while inviting other firms to develop cultured animal cell food from livestock, poultry, and seafood, in what they call “a food revolution.”

Jaydee Hanson, Policy Director of the Center for Food Safety, points out that the FDA’s approval is grossly inadequate. “In this ‘pre-market consultation,’ neither the company nor the FDA presented the actual data from tests looking at the effects of raising these cells in fetal bovine serum and enzymes from the intestines and pancreas of animals … while the company notes that it uses genetic engineering to keep the cells growing, it fails to share which genes are being used. This is vital information that consumers and policymakers need to know to make informed decisions in the best interests of public health. We should make certain that genes linked to cancer are not being used … this is a woefully deficient review by the FDA … who states it has ‘no further questions’ about this experimental product’s safety.”

On November 21, a new Rule by the FDA hit the Federal Register regarding “Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods.” This comes on the heels of the report Corey’s Digs did on Lab Grown Meat to Hit U.S. in 2022, Backed by FDA & USDA, Along with Smarter Food Safety Blueprint and Traceability all Underway, back in September, 2021. This new rule creates additional recordkeeping requirements for persons who manufacture, process, pack, or hold foods the FDA has designated for inclusion on the Food Traceability List (FTL). By “inclusion” they mean “regulated” to track the packing, shipping, receiving, and transforming of foods across the supply chain, under the guise of preventing foodborne illness. This rule goes into effect on January 20, 2023. The 179-page document can be reviewed here, which includes the list of food items, as well as repercussions if these rules are not followed. Some of the food items include:

various cheeses, shell eggs, nut butters, herbs, leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, sprouts, fresh cut fruits and vegetables, finfish, and crustaceans. What makes this list most interesting is the fact that the majority of it is now being grown in indoor facilities funded by the same people behind all of these control mechanism agendas, so monitoring and regulating these categories could surely be a means to knock out the competition.

Their goal is three-fold:​

1) Scoop up as many people as possible into SNAP and WIC programs in order to implement digital food tokens, control the spending and purchases, and gather data to establish the need to move everyone into this food system structure – socialism.

2) Integrate food with health so as to move policies under one umbrella to more easily create new policies, funding, and ultimate control, which will result in tying together a vaccine ID passport with an all encompassing log of each person’s health record, school, work, travel, food tokens, and of course bank accounts under a digital currency. It is one big master plan. By training thousands of physicians in this new model of “food is medicine,” rolling out nutritional screening, medical meals, and produce prescriptions, they are laying the groundwork for all of this.

3) Change food standards, categories, and so-called nutrition by removing traditional farming, converting all seeds to patented gene-edited seeds grown indoors, and regulating the ability to farm specific agriculture and cattle from being ranched, all while building a menu of insects, gene-edited food, and lab grown meat.


Rather than hash through each of these “saviors” listed below, this article will address a handful of them and point to previous reports on Corey’s Digs that provides a more comprehensive understanding for what they are attempting to achieve with this “assistance.” The White House Fact Sheet gives a short breakdown of each organization’s alleged intentions toward this 2030 goal.

Pillar 1 – Improve Food Access and Affordability
AARP
Benefits Data Trust
Bowery Farming
Chobani
Doordash
FoodCorps
FMI – The Food Industry Association
Google
Hunger Free Oklahoma
Hy-Vee, Inc.
National Grocers Association
National Head Start Association
Nayak Farms
Novo Nordisk
Publix
Rethink Food
Shipt
Sysco
The Wave Foundation
Unidosus
University of California System
Warner Bros. Discovery
Washington State Department of Health

Pillar 2 – Integrate Nutrition and Health
American Academy of Pediatrics
American College of Lifestyle Medicine
Association of American Medical Colleges and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
BayCare
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation
Boston Medical Center
Community Servings
Dohmen Company Foundation
Epic
Find Help
Foodsmart
Geisinger
Graphite Health
Higi
HL7 International
Joint Commission
Mass General Brigham
Medical Education Pledge
Meditech
National Committee for Quality Assurance
National Quality Forum
Nemours Children’s Health
Oracle-Cerner
Riverside Health System
Rush University System for Health
Saffron Labs
Sanford Health
SCAN Health Plan
SSM Health
Sync for Social Needs
Tufts Medicine
UniteUs
University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville
Wellory
Wellsky
XanthosHealth

Pillar 3 – Empower Consumers to MAKE and Have Access to Healthy Choices
Action for Healthy Kids
Albertsons Companies
Chef Andrew Zimmern
Danone
Dole Packaged Foods
Environmental Working Group
Everytable
Food, Nutrition, and Health Investor Coalition
Hispanic Communications Network
Independent Restaurant Coalition
Instacart
James Beard Foundation
Kindercare Learning Companies
Meijer
National Association of Chain Drug Stores
National Restaurant Association
Partnership for a Healthier America
Plant Based Foods Association
Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation
The Boys & Girls Club of Central Mississippi
Tyson Foods
Walgreens

Pillar 4 – Support Physical Activity for All
Community Gyms Coalition
MyFitnessPal
National Recreation and Park Association
Special Olympics
YMCA

Pillar 5 – Enhance Nutrition and Food Security Research
American Heart Association
Children’s Healthwatch
Grow Local
International Fresh Produce Association
Kroger
Rockefeller Foundation
Seafood Nutrition Partnership
University of Arkansas School of Law: Journal of Food and Law Policy

Behind The Smokescreens​

Food-is-medicine-1024x625.jpg


“Food is Medicine” are THE keywords being used to campaign, launch programs, change policies and financing, aggregate data, tie the health care industry in with the food supply, and ultimately screen, track, and control people through food. While they make the claim that it’s all about “nutrition,” after perusing many of their websites, the true words being used are:

• Produce prescriptions
• Medically tailored groceries and meals
• Nutrition incentives
• Nutritional screening
• Biometrics and tracking
• Interventions into policy and financing
• Getting people onto SNAP and WIC government programs

SMOKESCREEN 1: Food is medicine​

rx-prescription-1024x660.jpg


Launching in spring 2023, the Rockefeller Foundation has partnered with the American Heart Association and Kroger to mobilize $250 million to build the new “Food is Medicine Research Initiative” that will generate the “definitive evidence necessary” for the health sector to develop “food is medicine programs.” Their goal is to “accelerate public understanding and use of ‘food is medicine’ programs as an integral part of the health care system.” Kroger’s announcement of acquiring Albertsons couldn’t have come at a better time!

They’ve already created the “Feeding Change Food is Medicine Task Force” whose advisors are DC Greens, Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition, Harvard Law School – Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, National Produce Prescription Collaborative, The Health Initiative, Tufts University, Wholesome Wave, and Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture. The members are even more delightful:

Albertsons Companies (soon to be under Kroger)
Amazon
Anthem, Inc.
Blue Cross Blue Shield NC Foundation
Blue Cross NC
Boardwalk Collective
Centene Corporation
Compass Group, North America
CVS Health
Geisinger
Giant Food
Heal Care Service Corporation
HealthNet
Humana
Instacart
International Fresh Produce Association
John Hancock
Kaiser Permanente
Kroger
Point32Health
ProMedica
The Rockefeller Foundation
Trinity Health
Umoja Supply Chain Solutions
UnitedHealthcare
Whitman-Walker Health System

Of course food is medicine, but that’s not the true intention of this initiative.

By integrating food under medicine just imagine how this will change the landscape of the control mechanisms being put in place under the guise of health care.

This isn’t the only avenue the Rockefeller’s are using to orchestrate this shift in food control. They are also one of the major funders of the Center for Good Food Purchasing, along with W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Panta Rhea Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and the 11th Hour Project – the grant-making vehicle of the Schmidt Family Foundation – former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

The stated goal of this “Center” is to manage the Good Food Purchasing Program, which is all about getting institutions to convert over to their “supply chain transparency from farm to fork and shift towards a values-based purchasing model.” Converting schools, hospitals, and public administrations is a strong goal, for starters. They’ve established standards, certifications, and a point system as the first of its kind and are building local and national partners as quickly as they built the website.

And all of this, of course, is part and parcel of their “One Health” approach and “genomic surveillance.”

Just today, at the Codex Alimentarius meeting Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General, stated that “a transformation of the world’s food systems is needed urgently, based on a One Health approach that protects and promotes the health of humans, animals and the planet. The Codex Alimentarius has a critical role to play in guiding country regulations that promote health, while facilitating fair trade.”

One example of how the health insurance industry can incorporate the “food is medicine” approach:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina intends to grow the “food is medicine” movement across the state, which includes food vouchers and medically-tailored meals. In fact, they are laying out the template for how all healthcare providers can automatically enroll individuals in special rx food programs. One can easily see how the nutrition/healthcare tracking and insurance policies could be the leverage they need to control people’s food supply.

Blue Cross is working with Reinvestment Partners who manages the Eat Well program that provides produce prescriptions to enrolled participants. It is electronically linked to a loyalty card for access to be used at participating grocery stores.

Screen-Shot-2022-11-22-at-9.32.06-PM-743x1024.jpg
Screen-Shot-2022-11-22-at-9.33.10-PM-1024x210.jpg


They are working hard to expand food programs and gather data to show how this can all benefit people.

Screen-Shot-2022-11-22-at-9.32.45-PM-1012x1024.jpg


The Rockefeller Foundation funds Reinvestment Partners, and are in discussions with the Veteran’s Health Administration to get produce prescriptions to more veterans. The Eat Well program currently provides $40 a month to veterans to spend solely on fruits and vegetables. Since the inception of the Eat Well program in 2018, they have already served over 70,000 people in North Carolina.

Additional Reading:
In 2020, the Rockefeller Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, MAC ADIS Fund, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation funded a study on Food is Medicine: actions to integrate food and nutrition into healthcare.

The Bloomberg American Health Initiative recently funded a study on Integrating Produce Prescriptions into the Healthcare System: Perspectives from Key Stakeholders.

Part 1 of 2​

 
Last edited:

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Part 2 of 2​

SMOKESCREEN 2: The trap​

It’s all about the SNAP Trap and WIC – getting everyone onto the free food system and into socialism and being controlled. They are even incorporating this into Medicaid. Sure, from a glance it looks like a long list of helpful conveniences to reduce hunger and suffering, but when you understand the end game, it’s easy to spot the traps, and they don’t hide their end game. To understand who “they” are, review Corey Lynn’s report on Laundering with Immunity: The Control Framework Part 1. “They” operate outside the law entirely, and the 17 Sustainable Goals for 2030 is actually 17 Goals Toward Enslavement: Exposing The Real Agendas Behind The 2030 Agenda. This is not a thought, a theory, or even a plausibility, it is FACT, and it is covered extensively in all of “their” documentation.

SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and WIC is the Women, Infants, and Children program that provide food assistance.

To put their phrase “screening and integrating nutrition into health care” in true terms of what they actually mean by this, would be to say “monitoring and controlling food access and disbursement to provide genetically modified foods, gene edited foods, bioengineered foods, bugs and insects, and lab grown meat through channels we control, while utilizing the term health care to convince people it is all for their own well being.”

A perfect example of this is the diagram that Illinois uses when describing how they would like to control people’s “healthy eating token” usage through their digital identity and digital currency, by removing a cheeseburger from a person’s shopping cart because it is an “unhealthy food purchase.” Whereas this example may be reflective of a welfare applicant, make no mistake, this is the goal all states are trying to accomplish for all people, not just those on welfare. The Illinois Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Task Force has made this goal clear in their 2018 report.

IL-digital-identity-food-program-1024x356.jpg


To bring this point home, AARP accounts for more than 38 million people over the age of 50. Their stated goal is to improve SNAP enrollment by researching non-participants that are eligible to inform policy, advocacy, and boost awareness to get more adults enrolled by 2024. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, provides families in need with funds to purchase “healthy food to move towards self-sufficiency.” They are striving to get more people on SNAP, a program that is monitored and is moving toward total control of food item purchases, but at the same time, they want people to be self-sufficient?

While AARP targets the over 50 population, Benefits Data Trust is building a toolkit to help states and higher education institutions enroll college students into SNAP, Medicaid, and the new Affordable Connectivity Program that helps people get access to internet. Food, health care, and internet may seem like a wonderful free benefit, until a college student tries to get their first cheeseburger, doesn’t get the Covid jab, or puts out “misinformation” on the internet. Watch how quickly it’s all taken away. It’s like making a deal with the Devil.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture just awarded $50 million in grants to get more people onto the WIC program and remove regulatory barriers to online shopping so that people can take advantage of that avenue as well. Of course, they are using data from the millions of online shoppers during the Covid lockdowns to justify why it is necessary. This all came after the $390 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to “upgrade” SNAP and WIC programs.

One of their concerns is that people’s participation in WIC drops as their kids get older, which is an interesting concern being as the claim is to assist people and help them become more self sufficient.

Instacart is jumping on the SNAP cart as well. They will be working with the USDA to add SNAP and TANF into its online platform, expanding these benefits to all 650+ grocery partners by 2030. And, they will be adding a new “stipend technology” called Fresh Funds that will allow organizations and health systems to allot their employees and patients a food stipend to purchase from Instacart. What a great way to pilot an all-in future program.

What happens when those “stipends” increase substantially to where employees and patients become reliant on it for their groceries, and then it gets cut back or entirely removed because they refused to get a jab, eat certain food items, were deemed a climate denier, or posted their opinion or facts on something that didn’t go along with the control narrative?

The Food Industry Association plans to make SNAP and WIC benefits more accessible.

Google is going to facilitate SNAP enrollment by making it easier for people to find local information to check their eligibility and apply.

Hunger Free Oklahoma intends to incentivize people to join SNAP and increase the number of SNAP households by 10 times the amount it currently serves. They also intend to expand WIC participation to 80 percent across the state.

Meijer grocery store is focused on providing discounts on fruits and vegetables for SNAP purchases, and Albertsons plans to get another 50,000 members enrolled into SNAP and WIC benefits. Remember, fruits and vegetables are making there way through indoor vertical growing facilities that are gung-ho for gene-edited seeds and insist it should be the future of food, while removing traditional farming.

Several other organizations are also expanding access or building campaigns to get more people enrolled in the SNAP Trap. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people who genuinely need assistance with food, especially after what’s been done to crash the economy over the past two years. It’s unfortunate that this assistance comes with a price because there is a bigger plan at play.

Read chapters 3 & 4 of Corey Lynn’s book The Global Landscape on Vaccine ID Passports to understand just how far they are taking your identity into a digital blockchain world of control, complete with a list of 180+ players involved. How do you get people to break? Control their food and money.

What is the weapon? Controlling your identity through digital means. The smart phone, QR codes, digital identities, biometrics, AI, and chips are all weapons being used against humanity.

SMOKESCREEN3: No need for traditional farming​

crickets-1024x683.jpg


This brings us to good old Bowery Farming, previously covered is Corey Lynn’s report on the New Controlled Food System is Now in Place and They Will Stop at Nothing to Accelerate Their Control. Bowery Farming is an indoor vertical farming operation with numerous locations. They develop lettuces, herbs and produce, as do dozens of other indoor vertical growing facilities, such as AeroFarms, AppHarvest, 80 Acres Farms, and others. In all cases, the focus is on produce that can be harvested indoor at rapid pace, delivering to big local grocers whom they have contracts with – all of which will be tracked and traced. The push is for gene-edited seeds and over 100 labs in Silicon Valley are working hard at achieving these goals, including Bayer/Monsanto.

AeroFarms was the first to create gene-edited produce with the CRISPR-Cas9. The goal is to eliminate traditional farms, making these giant indoor smart facilities, run by robots in many cases, the future of food.

Gene-edited food consists of isolating and removing a nucleotide, whereby the product then mutates, in the hopes that they created a more drought-tolerant or disease resistant plant. If their plan is to remove traditional farming and all of these plants are to be grown indoors, without pesticides and any outdoor contaminants, why the urgency to create gene-edited plants that can tolerate droughts? The US does not see gene-edited practices in the same manner as genetically modified (GMO), and therefore has no interest in long term studies and clinical trials to determine if forcing a mutation of a plant could cause harm to humans ingesting those plants. If the apple is shiny and no longer browns, let’s just put it on the shelf and hope for the best.

With all of that in mind, the goal of Bowery, stated by The White House, is to develop partnerships with hunger-relief organizations, and donate over 10,000 pounds of produce to food banks in Texas and Georgia, as well as East Brooklyn, NY. They will also be developing a new line of salad kits at a discount which will go in 53 corner stores in DC’s Wards 7 and 8. How generous.

Pay close attention to salad kits, because many of them now state “contains bioengineered food ingredient” on the labels at the very end of the ingredients section, which is the new label for genetically modified. Taylor Farms, Dole, Marketside, and some of Publix brand kits are just a few that have kits with this label. Even Betty Crocker has salad kits in a box with bioengineered ingredients. Apples and other produce items have been genetically modified as well, but there won’t be any mention of that on the little 1/4″ label. Get your delicious Arctic Golden and Arctic Granny genetically modified apples at Amazon Fresh!

SMOKESCREEN 4: A new diet for children​

There are several programs listed in this White House Fact Sheet that are working toward making food “more nutritional” in schools across all 50 states.

And since eating insects for “nutrition” has been formerly introduced at Codex Alimentarius by the Netherlands and US, as documented in Corey Lynn’s report on Inside Codex with Scott Tips: New Global Food Diet – Insects, Rats, and Dogs, it’s only a matter of time before the USDA and FDA take their marching orders. Already, the Netherlands is on a “taste mission adventurous proteins” campaign to feed children mealworms and insects, and Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are also implementing new exciting edible insects into children’s schools, to build the trend. If that’s not enough to concern parents, perhaps the 9-part series Corey Lynn did on the 2030 Psychological Agenda – Obedience Training for PreK-Adults Already Global with Billions in Funding for Full Control will shake things up, or the 4-part series on Exploiting Transgenders: Manufacturing an Industry will pull it altogether. The point is, public schools are indoctrination camps.

From public schools to Kindercare, boys and girls clubs, the YMCA, and the National Restaurant Association, they are all in on getting meals and “nutritional food” to children.

Even Warner Bros. Discovery is getting in on the action to provide 600 million healthy meals to children while utilizing their television group to promote narratives about food insecurity and nutrition.

But it’s not just about nutritious meals for children and changing their diets, it’s about their mental health as well. By incorporating food into health care, they are creating a whole new doorway to access children under the guise of mental health.

SMOKESCREEN 5: Training hundreds of thousands of physicians in nutrition​

Pillar 2 represents the “food is medicine” approach, which ultimately ties food and health care together. Seems logical, right? Suddenly, medical organizations, hospitals, and universities are all incredibly concerned about nutrition and the need to train hundreds of thousands of medical professionals in nutrition. One can only imagine what that training will consist of, what delicious proteins might be included, the endless campaigns on the new gene-edited produce, lab grown meat, and insects. Everyone can be certain that the “health experts” will assure the safety of all of these new food groups. And most importantly – the “screening for nutrition” process and “referring patients to federal and community nutrition resources” will make certain everyone is eating what these physicians all recommend, and if not, they’ll get you to the right place, because it’s all being tracked.

The American Academy of Pediatrics plan to train 67,000 pediatricians on screening for nutrition, while tracking its members’ comfort and referrals.

The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) will be adding course credits on nutrition and “food is medicine” to 100,000 health care providers.

Boston Medical Center is growing food on rooftops to provide patients with local produce in the cafeterias, its prescription-based food pantry. They also intend on closing the “SNAP Gap” by expanding screening on food insecurity.

Foodsmart plans to employ 10,000 nutrition professionals of color for online nutritional counseling in partnership with universities, accreditation bodies, and online continuing education companies.

10 Medical associations and pharmaceutical companies have made a pledge to train health professionals in nutrition education and boost credit value.
These are just some of the programs rolling out.

SMOKESCREEN 6: Convenience or control?​

Data collection and biometrics are at the forefront of all of this “screening.”

The Sync for Social Needs coalition is uniting leading health technology companies and health systems to standardize and share patient data “on social determinants of health, including food security.” This includes the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More specifically, they intend to “evaluate and pilot the integration of specific social screening tools in electronic medical systems” and leading health care standards-setting bodies will help scale these approaches. This coalition consists of: National Quality Forum, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the Joint Commission, HL7 International, Epic, Oracle-Cerner, Rush University System for Health, Tufts Medicine, Riverside Health System, SCAN Health Plan, Sanford Health, SSM Health, Higi, BayCare, Geisinger, Meditech, FindHelp, Wellsky, UniteUs, Graphite Health, Saffron Labs, and XanthosHealth.
The Dohmen Company Foundation’s Food Benefit Company plans to contract with companies to provide employees with nutrition coaching, biometric screening, and fresh food delivery.

Their website suggests that by avoiding running to the grocery store on the way home from work, or going to a restaurant, it would be much healthier if a person just grab their family dinner right out of the employee fridge so that a healthy meal is prepared for you. In addition to that, their comprehensive system includes personalized, biometrics-informed health coaching delivered right through a holistic app on your cell phone! Convenience doesn’t get much better than this.

MyFitnessPal plans to provide a free smartphone app to one million Americans to track their diet, enhance fitness, and educate them on nutrition and health.

SMOKESCREEN 7: Nutritious protein products​

Tyson Foods is investing $255 million to anti-hunger charities to broaden their access to “nutritious protein products,” as well as another $20 million into nutrition learning programs for children and families in over 100 communities where Tyson operates. What will they be teaching them, and are they suggesting these cultured cell lines with DNA we know nothing about are nutritious products? Surely they mean lab grown meat since they are a meat company referring to protein as “products.” During the plandemic they shut down their meat facilities for a time, while investing millions in lab grown meat.

Watch for The Traps and Watch What You Eat​

A helping hand is always nice, until it has ulterior motives. Sure, physical activity for all and the reduction of sugar in food items are both welcome approaches, but the rest of this agenda is not in the best interest of human beings. The problem is, when reviewing this Fact Sheet it may seem like a good idea, just as while reviewing a single white paper from the WEF could even sound like it has the potential to be a good thing. However, when one takes the Fact Sheet with countless white papers, websites, funding, and other internal documents and puts it all together – it paints quite a different story.

They know full well that most people won’t gather all of the pieces of the puzzle so they won’t be able to see the reality of the situation and discern the true agenda. That’s why it is so critical to do just that.

Imagine if one refuses to eat bugs – they may not receive proper health care.

Or what happens if one refuses to go on the food token program and only eat as instructed? Did they just lose their ability to receive health care?

Smokers currently pay a higher insurance premium, but one day they may not get access to insurance at all. What happens if you abide by their strict “nutritional diet” and then one day you decide to purchase a bag of chips or a cheeseburger? Uh oh. What happens if edible vaccines hit the market and they try to make it mandatory as part of ones diet? Never forget, they deemed millions of small mom and pop grocers, butchers, gyms, and other shops to be “non-essential” and had to lockdown, while keeping liquor stores open, along with the big grocers. Seem logical? Control is never about logic – it’s about control.

Just as with their other agendas that all tie into this one, the narrative control is being piped out by universities, medical associations, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, and many others to bring a whole new outlook on what a nutritional diet should look like to prevent disease. It’s as though a complete overhaul is being done on what’s “good” for human beings to ingest, and gene-edited produce, insects, and cultured cells seem to be the top priority.

This may seem like a slow burn, but they are clicking multiple pieces of the structure into place simultaneously, and when that burn finally reaches inside people’s homes, in their cabinets, fridge, and wallets, it will be too late to rollback all of the policies and regulations that have locked into place. That is why it is so critical to continue getting this information out and fighting against these control mechanisms.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Why Are We Allowing Dangerous Chinese Tech Companies To Operate On American Soil?​

BY: JOHN MAC GHLIONN
NOVEMBER 23, 2022

It’s not just TikTok and ByteDance. Chinese tech companies like Alibaba and Baidu are a major threat to U.S. national security.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is synonymous with espionage. The country’s tech companies, we’re told, give the CCP a vital edge. Companies include the likes of Baidu and Alibaba. Why, then, are both operating on U.S. soil?

Alibaba is China’s answer to Amazon. The Chinese multinational technology company specializes in e-commerce, retail, internet, and technology, to name just a few areas. The problematic company has a business presence in dozens of countries, including the United Kingdom, South Korea, Singapore, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The fact that Alibaba, very much an ally of the CCP, is operating in the U.S., China’s fiercest rival, is worrisome, to say the least.

It certainly worries Charles Dunst, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dunst recently wrote an eye-opening article that revolved around a rather sobering shopping experience. Earlier this year, the researcher was shopping at a CVS near his apartment in Virginia. At the self-checkout counter, he scanned for payment options; besides cash and credit/debit cards, other options included Apple Pay, PayPal, and Alipay, Alibaba’s online payment platform. This made Dunst stop and think.

In truth, American retailers have been offering the Alipay option of payment for years, all in an effort to attract more Chinese tourists. The app has at least 4 million users in the United States. Initially, as Dunst noted, the Alipay payment option was confined to luxury shops, “to capture the spending of well-off Chinese tourists.” However, the platform quickly expanded into your average, everyday American stores, like Walgreens, 7/11, and the aforementioned CVS.

Interestingly, some of the biggest cities in the United States now allow riders to pay their taxi fares using the app. As Dunst highlights, although this expansion is heavily focused on serving the needs of Chinese visitors, “Alipay’s presence at the center of ordinary U.S. commerce will expand the platform’s brand awareness among U.S. shoppers, possibly even winning a few adoptees in the process.”

In her new book, aptly titled, “Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty,” Aynne Kokas discusses just why the expansion of companies like Alibaba in the United States should be of genuine concern to the country’s leaders. Alibaba is first and foremost a tech company. And what do tech companies love? Data. Lots of it. Similarly, the CCP also loves data, especially Americans’ data.

Kokas, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, demonstrates how the CCP capitalizes on this data flow for political gain. A company as powerful as Alibaba can contribute greatly to data trafficking, by moving inordinate amounts of data out of the United States and back to China. This creates an environment that “not only exploits consumers,” but completely “empowers the Chinese government,” Kokas notes.

Like Kokas, Dunst believes that the United States’ failure to effectively “regulate data gathering by tech firms operating in the United States at the federal level has allowed firms from around the world to gather huge amounts of data on Americans.” In the case of CCP-backed firms, he argues, we shouldn’t be surprised if even more data ends up in the hands of those in Beijing.

To be clear, Alibaba is very much in the business of helping the CCP. Last year, the company established a corporate CCP committee. At the company’s head office in Beijing, 30 percent of employees are CCP members.

Then, there’s Baidu, China’s answer to Google. Headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian District, the Chinese multinational technology company specializes in internet-related services and artificial intelligence (AI). China has aspirations of stealing the global AI crown, currently worn by the United States. To do this though, the CCP may have to steal even more of the United States’ intellectual property.

In its quest for AI dominance, China is looking to companies like Baidu for assistance. The fact that Baidu has a huge R&D center in Silicon Valley is more than a little disconcerting. As its LinkedIn page describes, Baidu USA’s “team of elite, world-class researchers and engineers devote their time to tackling the most challenging, change-the-world projects in AI and related fields.”

In a recent testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that China poses the greatest threat to our national security. The CCP, he said, “aspires to equal or surpass the U.S. as a global superpower and influence the world with a value system shaped by undemocratic, authoritarian ideals.”

Wray seemed particularly concerned about TikTok, an app that both Democrats and Republicans have been sounding the alarm on as a major security threat for years. Just this week, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, told Fox News Sunday, “All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving, is being stored somewhere in Beijing.”

Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mike Gallagher said they’re both introducing legislation this month to ban TikTok from use in the United States.

Wray told lawmakers that he is “extremely concerned” about TikTok’s operations in the United States, and he should be. Close to a quarter of the U.S. population now uses the app. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has five offices in the United States. The increased pressure on TikTok from leaders is encouraging, but we shouldn’t forget that other threats exist. The likes of Baidu and Alibaba deserve similar pressure and much more scrutiny.

Unlike previous wars, the next one won’t be decided by boots on the ground or bomber planes in the sky. It will be decided by technology, advances in AI, quantum computing, cyber breaches, data harvesting, and so forth. These are areas that China excels. The United States must wake up before it’s too late.

Allowing dangerous Chinese companies that specialize in tech to operate unsupervised across America is, at best, unwise. At worst, it could prove to be a catastrophically costly mistake. Banning TikTok is a good start, but we must take on the likes of Alibaba and Baidu as well.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

One Million Fake COVID Tests from China En Route to Germany were Confiscated in Netherlands​

By Jim Hoft
Published November 22, 2022 at 8:00am

On Saturday, the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) in Nijmegen, Netherlands discovered a warehouse stocked with one million fake COVID tests from communist China.

According to NL Times, customs officials requested assistance from FIOD following an intelligence report that a stockpile of counterfeit self-test kits was likely being housed in a warehouse.

FIOD said that the fraudulent coronavirus test kits were manufactured in China and will be shipped to Germany.

The Public Prosecution Service, a unit responsible for investigating fraud and high-stakes seizures, is leading the criminal probe into the shipments.

COVID tests are unreliable and inaccurate, regardless of whether they are fake or certified.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning concerning counterfeit at-home over-the-counter COVID tests.

“The FDA is aware of counterfeit at-home over-the-counter (OTC) COVID-19 diagnostic tests being distributed or used in the United States. These counterfeit tests should not be used or distributed.”

In December 2021, the CDC issued a statement that after December 31, 2021, the CDC would withdraw the emergency use authorization of the PCR test for COVID-19 testing. The CDC finally somehow admitted the test does not differentiate between the flu and COVID virus.

“In preparation for this change, CDC recommends clinical laboratories and testing sites that have been using the CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR assay select and begin their transition to another FDA-authorized COVID-19 test. CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. Such assays can facilitate continued testing for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save both time and resources as we head into influenza season,” CDC wrote.

Screenshot-2022-11-22-at-2.36.51-AM.jpg


This explains the disappearance of Flu cases in the US in 2020. It also inflated the COVID cases as Dr. Fauci and the DC elites knew would happen.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in the same month that testing at the end of quarantine is no longer needed because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks.

The CDC has known about the faulty PCR tests from the beginning, but they used the tests to destroy the economy and unseat Trump.

Walensky finally admitted what we have known to be true for nearly three years: Faulty PCR tests plus long quarantine times have created a “casedemic.”

“So, what we do know is the PCR test after infection can be positive for up to 12 weeks so that is not going to be helpful,” Walensky said Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”

She continued, “You’re not going to be transmitting during all of that period of time. We’ve seen that in study after study.”

Walensky also admitted the antigen test people were taking five days after COVID infection was faulty and therefore no longer needed.

Watch the video:
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1476168350711623691
4:42 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

NEW: California to Ban Gas and Diesel Trucks by 2035​

By Cristina Laila
Published November 23, 2022 at 4:40pm

The Marxists on the California Air Resources Board are looking to ban all gas and diesel trucks.

The board boasted about being the first to adopt a rule requiring truck manufacturers to transition from diesel to electric beginning in 2024.

It is unclear how California will charge all of these vehicles when they can’t even keep the lights on during heatwaves and days with gusty winds.

There is no infrastructure to support this plan.

And what about the logistics? How will trucks be able to stick to their routes when there aren’t enough charging stations?

“Many California neighborhoods, especially Black and Brown, low-income and vulnerable communities, live, work, play and attend schools adjacent to the ports, railyards, distribution centers, and freight corridors and experience the heaviest truck traffic,” the California Air Resources Board wrote.

“This new rule directly addresses disproportionate risks and health and pollution burdens affecting these communities and puts California on the path for an all zero-emission short-haul drayage fleet in ports and railyards by 2035, and zero-emission “last-mile” delivery trucks and vans by 2040.” the board added.

The trucking and construction industries are pushing back on this new insane push to ban diesel trucks.

SF Gate reported:

A controversial new proposal to ban diesel-powered trucks in California has sparked a divisive debate among the trucking industry, the state and environmentalists.

Many representing the trucking and construction industries said that there simply isn’t enough charging capability or grid capacity in the state to move fleets over to zero-emission vehicles so quickly. (The shift away from internal combustion engines in big rigs has largely moved to battery-powered vehicles, though hydrogen fuel cell technology is also being developed.)

“The infrastructure cannot be established in the timeframe given,” said Mike Tunnell of the American Trucking Association. “Fleets will have to deploy trucks that cannot do the same job as their current trucks.”

Others pointed to logistical problems in charging electric vehicles.

“This will do damage to us. We don’t really understand how to charge these vehicles,” said construction company CEO Jaimie Angus. “Those pieces of equipment go home with those men every day, so they’ll need to be charged from home? How do you compensate that person for that?”

Meanwhile, environmentalists, including a representative from the Sierra Club, urged that the timeline be expedited to rid the roads of internal combustion engines sooner rather than later.

In August California passed a law banning new sales of gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

The Biden Regime is impressed with California and said its ban on gas-powered vehicles is a model for the rest of the country.

In September Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm touted California’s ban on gas-powered cars even though the state issued a flex alert asking Californians not to charge their electric vehicles during a sweltering heatwave to avoid rolling blackouts.

This is what Joe Biden wants for all Americans, except for the elites.

The elites will be able to charge their EVs or still enjoy their gas-powered fleets while the peasants are unable to drive or travel.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Liberty Is Worth The Fight

WEDNESDAY, NOV 23, 2022 - 08:55 PM
Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,

"There comes a time," Martin Luther King Jr. advised, "when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right."

Moral imperative, in other words, outweighs personal security, political correctness, and the psychological comfort of identifying with the crowd.

During troubling times of human violence and suffering, it is always the lonely few — either blessed with innate courage or made resolute through private, grinding struggle — who dare to take a stand against encroaching evils tacitly accepted by the many. Such is the power of individual free will when man chooses principle as his guide.

Today is a time for the voices of the few to coalesce. What is at stake is nothing less than individual control over one's life, liberty, property, privacy, and pursuit of happiness. Freedom of speech hangs in the balance, as do freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That many of these natural rights were recorded together in America's First Amendment is not accidental. They are intimately interwoven. To weaken any one, weakens them all.

To freeze the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters demanding freedom from unwanted experimental "vaccines," as was done in Canada, is to threaten speech, assembly, bodily autonomy, religious objection, property rights, and public resistance to government-caused harm.

To forbid a football coach from publicly praying is to force him to sacrifice both his religious freedom and freedom of expression; if the very things that most define us are relegated to the home, then religious identity and freedom of speech do not have far to roam.

Aside from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's efforts to create an official "Disinformation Governance Board" to "combat" free speech antithetical to the government's point of view, reports show that DHS employees have regularly met with Facebook and Twitter to suppress and censor certain facts and opinions in online discussion of numerous issues dominating public debate — including such broad topics as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19, and "racial justice."

To hand Western governments the power to decide what may or may not be published on social media deprives the public square of both unfettered free speech (within the bounds of Brandenburg v. Ohio) and a truly free press. To empower government actors with the authority to designate some thoughts as "mis-," "mal-," or "dis-" information — in other words, to permit politicians and bureaucrats to arbitrate what is true or false, helpful or harmful, protected opinion or malicious deception — is to abrogate entirely the protections of America's First Amendment. To use private sector cutouts as the government's implicit censors is not only a nefarious and cynical workaround -- it is also illegal to act as a government agent to enable it to circumvent constitutional prohibitions, in this instance limiting who may participate in the modern-day equivalent of the traditional town square.

To censor dissenting views on experimental, yet coerced, medical treatments, two-tiered economic shutdowns (during which "Big Box" stores are inexplicably "allowed" to operate while economically vulnerable neighborhood shops are not), is mass censorship in the name of public health, shielding from scrutiny monstrous tyranny draped in the false cloak of the "greater" or "common good."

When governments censor dissenting opinions from public debate, they serve no greater interests than their own. When governments claim to act for the people's "own good" while banning contrary points of view, they all too often augment their own power at the public's expense. When governments camouflage their orders behind claims of "good intentions," then the most atrocious evils can be blissfully undertaken.

If you allow yourself to be blinded by any government's "good intentions," your eyes may one day be flooded with the sights of unspeakable harms.

Hugo Chávez's socialist government made many such promises "for the good" of the people of Venezuela, while his government's endless public betrayals have left that nation's citizenry suffering immeasurably still today.

This is a pivotal moment in human history, when centuries of steady progress toward human emancipation and individual liberty will either find new, urgent momentum or suffer regrettable retreat. Either freedom means something, or it does not. Either personal agency resides in the hands of every individual, or it disappears behind a view of people as nothing more than parts of collective groups. Either self-government demands each citizen have a voice, or the many must obey the edicts of an ever-expansive government run by the few.

Either citizens are uniquely empowered to control the direction of their governments, or legal citizenship and nationality mean nothing at all. These are the simple yet serious stakes we face today. They are clear, unforgiving, and unavoidable.

The reason we are here now at this intersection in the history of liberty is not complex: it is the outcome of human nature. For most people in the West today, war and its painful consequences are unknown or have been distorted by time. Although violence and bloodshed continue uninterrupted in many places around the world, most Westerners have long been spared the horrors of war directly outside their doors. The difficulty for humans to appreciate what they cannot see has made them careless in preventing what they do not intimately know.

Many politicians cavalierly embrace totalitarianism once again. Citizens, once aware of the attendant dangers to peace when large corporations and national governments work hand in glove to push "politically correct" ideas upon society, are apparently so far removed from the twentieth century's vivid lessons in fascist, communist, and Nazi propaganda that they fail to see the harm in bureaucrats and officeholders dictating to the public what it may believe.

Many Westerners have forgotten that freedom of speech and personal liberty — far from menacing "microaggressions" deserving of sanction — are the surest safety valves for mediating animosities inherent within any society before outright violence is unleashed in their stead. For many people, decades of relative peace have transformed hard-fought Western freedoms into disposable inessentials. Governments and international corporations think little of the risks to social cohesion — and probably do not even care — when they purposefully manipulate populations with mass media propaganda meant to reinforce the elite agendas of the World Economic Forum covering everything from energy use and food production to medical mandates and health passports. The same allure of ultimate power and control that fueled both world wars remains all too enticing.

Governments already acclimated to universal public surveillance and warrantless online tracking see central bank digital currencies, human tracking implants, and the imposition of social credit scores all on the horizon and believe the time for total control over citizens is near, so long as they are the ones doing the controlling.

As always, technology's liberating benefits are accompanied by its powers to threaten populations and to suppress information that its directors may abhor.

Radio and television connected the world as never before, but mass communication also rapidly fueled the rise of dictators and the spread of public indoctrination to new heights. Nuclear energy has provided both abundant power and the potential for apocalyptic destruction. Personal computers, smartphones and the internet have given ordinary individuals megaphones through which to articulate new ideas, yet that same cyberspace has opened up a brand new battlespace for government surveillance, propaganda, and mass manipulation.

Rather than ensuring citizens' economic security and fostering freer markets, some governments appear to view technology as providing not only more efficient tools for redistributing wealth, limiting personal income, and levying taxes but also the means for creating a technocratic system of total surveillance in which bureaucratic control over what consumers buy and sell and the implementation of social credit scores can both reward "politically correct" behaviors and punish "wrong" points of view.

Technological advancement provides the means for both greater human freedom and absolute human abasement. When governments are allowed to make that choice for us, they will often choose the latter. Their concern is not our personal liberty but their power. For human freedom to flourish, only the people are capable of keeping government power in check.

It is therefore imperative that Westerners not lose sight of the most important battle already raging — one pitting individual freedom against total state control. Every other issue should be scrutinized through this lens. We are, indeed, at an intersection in the history of human liberty. Even if only a small minority comprehend what is now at risk, those few would do well to fight for preserving our individual freedoms against those governments and corporations working diligently to dilute them.

Either the light of liberty is once again rekindled, or it will be extinguished until a later day.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Report: Biden Is Cutting Medicare Benefits Thru Inflation Reduction Act

JOEL B. POLLAK23 Nov 20221,513

Two economists reported Tuesday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that President Joe Biden is cutting Medicare benefits through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which cuts payments for prescription drugs for seniors.

Casey B. Mulligan and Tomas J. Philipson wrote:

President Biden has accused Republicans of scheming to cut Medicare. In fact it is his signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, that will lead to benefit cuts and premium increases for seniors. Medicare’s popular drug-coverage program is headed for a painful amputation.

The private plans participating in Medicare’s prescription-drug program, known as Part D, currently draw on three sources of revenue to finance prescriptions: out-of-pocket payments from patients, premium payments made by plan members, and subsidies from the federal government. In 2025, under the Inflation Reduction Act, both government subsidies and out-of-pocket payments by patients are scheduled to be cut sharply. The difference will have to be made up by premiums. But the statute inhibits this third revenue source, which is also subsidized, from increasing more than 6%. That’s hardly enough to cover inflation, let alone compensate for the other two revenue losses.

We estimate that beginning in 2025, plan subsidies—specifically, the reinsurance subsidies for the beneficiaries with the most drug spending—will be cut $30 billion, out of revenue that currently totals about $110 billion. With $30 billion less to finance prescription benefits, something will have to give. Plans currently have far too little profit to span the chasm that the Inflation Reduction Act opens between expenses and revenue.

Biden has claimed to want to cut the costs of prescription drugs like insulin, despite canceling — in his first week in office — an executive order by President Trump to lower the prices of insulin and epinephrine.

He and his party also claimed during the midterm elections that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, since Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wants to reauthorize all federal spending at regular intervals.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(China)


'Zero-Covid’ Has Made Protests and Riots a ‘Daily’ Occurrence in China

Members of the People's Armed Police on foreign embassy duty wear masks to protect them against the spread of COVID-19 as they march by a nucleic acid testing booth in a shopping district on November 23, 2022 in Beijing, China. In an effort to try to bring rising cases under …Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

FRANCES MARTEL23 Nov 202221

China’s repressive “zero-Covid” policy — which imposes brutal lockdowns, stays in dirty quarantine camps, police brutality, starvation, and lack of access to health care on citizens to allegedly protect them from Chinese coronavirus infections — has made protests and riots part of a new, post-pandemic new normal in the country.

While many countries around the world, including some parts of America, violated the civil rights of their citizens through much of the past two years in attempts to contain the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, communist China currently remains the only nation to insist on house arrest as a form of epidemic management, resulting in criticism even from its allies at the World Health Organization (W.H.O.). At home, years of iron-fisted rule resulting in minimal public dissent against the Communist Party began cracking in the early months of 2020, when residents of Hubei province, where the pandemic began, rioted and attacked police.

As lockdowns have persisted, so too have reports of protest signs surfacing with insults against dictator Xi Jinping, Chinese citizens marching in the streets against their regime, and imprisoned citizens brawling with “health workers,” breaking out of quarantine prisons, and flipping police cars.

1669272514990.png

Prior to the pandemic, public displays against the regime were rare and often prompted by government incompetence, not necessarily ideological differences. In recent memory, the largest anti-government outbursts occurred following the Changsheng Biotechnology vaccine scandal of 2018, in which that company watered down vaccine doses for profit, resulting in as many as 1 million children going effectively unvaccinated from potentially lethal diseases such as rabies.

The Changsheng scandal prompted an unprecedented scene in Jiangsu province in 2019: angry parents surrounding and assaulting a health worker, shouting “Beat him! Beat him!”

1669272468599.png

Such scenes have become increasingly common against coronavirus lockdowns. Now, the NGO Freedom House revealed in a report published last week, anti-communist protests are “a daily occurrence in China.”

“Not only is dissent in China frequent, it’s also widespread. Since June, people have protested in nearly every province and directly administered city,” Freedom House detailed. “Moreover, even as authorities make every effort to prevent protestors from connecting, we found many instances where people manage to form decentralized movements that increase the impact of their dissent.”

Struggling to document every instance of anti-regime protest, Freedom House launched a project, the China Dissent Monitor (CDM), specifically designed to do so. As part of its first report, the CDM confirmed 668 protest or acts of dissent in China between June and September of this year. The initiative defined acts of dissent as protests, “occupations, strikes, protest banners and graffiti, and notable online dissent such as large-scale hashtag campaigns and viral posts.”

1669272392208.png

CDM noted that the lockdowns were a small part of a longer list of complaints that Chinese citizens denounced, many of them not directly targeting Xi Jinping but all enabled or created by the communist regime.

“The issues that most often galvanized people included stalled housing, fraud, labor rights violations, [Chinese coronavirus] policies, corruption, and land rights,” Freedom House noted.

1669272344354.png

“Labor rights violations” is a category that likely includes the enslavement of thousands, if not millions, of Uyghurs and other indigenous people of East Turkistan in concentration camps and factories nationwide, manufacturing products for household-name companies such as Nintendo, Nike, and Apple. It would also include complaints such as the chaos currently engulfing Foxconn’s iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, the world’s largest, following a government coronavirus lockdown that resulted in potentially hundreds of panicked workers running out of the factory for their lives. After the government replaced some of those workers, offering lucrative bonuses, riots erupted on Tuesday and Wednesday when Foxconn did not pay them.

“Stalled housing” is likely a reference to an ongoing real estate crisis triggered by developers promising to rapidly build homes in deals that required buyers to pay mortgages, then simply not doing so. Protesting homebuyers stopped paying their mortgages en masse in July, threatening the stability of the companies affected and resulting in China’s central bank freezing funds. That same month, in Zhengzhou – where the iPhone factory is also located – a mob of about 1,000 people stormed several rural banks demanding their money be unfrozen, a chaotic situation that Chinese propaganda outlets condemned Western media for “hyping up” by noticing it.

Police mercilessly brutalized the desperate bank customers, resulted in reports of multiple hospitalizations.

No issue has prompted dramatic acts of protest, but individual and collective, in China than the lockdowns. In the former category, a man later identified as Peng Lifa hung two banners on one of Beijing’s most prominent bridges in October condemning the lockdowns, the communist government, and Xi Jinping personally, calling him a “dictator” and “traitor.” Peng reportedly snuck up onto Beijing’s Sitong Bridge, hung his banners, and started a small fire so people down below would look up and see his protest. One banners read: “No PCR tests, but food; no lockdowns, but freedom; no lies, but respect; no Cultural Revolution, but reform; no dictator, but vote; no [to being] slaves, but we the people.”

The second banner read: “students strike — workers strike — people strike — dictator traitor Xi Jinping.”

The protest was all the more notable because it occurred during the Communist Party Congress, an event that occurs every five years to appoint Party leadership and set the agenda for the next five years. Under Xi Jinping, it has become a coronation event in which no potential successors to his rule or any dissent from his cult of personality are visible.

Peng Lifa inspired a street march in Shanghai later in October, in which two people carried banners that, rather than carrying any substantive messages, read only: “Don’t Want ____ ; Want ____,” copying the structure of Peng’s banner’s text. Shanghai was subject to one of China’s most brutal lockdowns in the first half of the year, resulting in widespread confrontations with health workers and reports of suicides, food deprivation, and unaddressed medical emergencies.

The largest protest believed to have occurred this year attracted over 600 people in Ghulja, a city under lockdown in East Turkistan. After weeks of desperate Uyghurs posting videos to China’s censored social media outlets — flooding them with lockdown protests, demands for food and medicine, and even videos of the corpses of their relatives — hundreds defied lockdown orders and stormed the streets in mid-September. Authorities arrested 617 people, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA), mostly young men.

The Communist Party has responded to the protests not by announcing an end to “zero-Covid” and its lockdowns, but using loopholes and language changes to convince the world that it has eased restrictions. In Beijing, for example, the government “advised” residents to stay in their homes, but did not mandate it – a distinction without a difference in a brutal totalitarian dictatorship. Similarly, in Guangzhou, authorities have not locked down the entire city of 15 million people, but announced a man to expand quarantine facilities by upwards of 200,000 beds, essentially preparing to lock residents down outside their homes.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Moody’s Chief Economist: ‘2023 Is Going to Be a Pretty Tough Year’ Unemployment Will Rise and It’ll Take Time to See Impacts of Fed Actions​

IAN HANCHETT23 Nov 20224

View: https://youtu.be/aS-C1h9B22Q
44:22 min
On Wednesday’s broadcast of Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi predicted that 2023 “is going to be a pretty tough year” because we won’t “see the full effects of what the Fed’s done for well into” the year and “we’re going to see job growth slow, may see some declines, unemployment’s going to rise.”

Zandi stated, “You just think about these large businesses, corporations like the Moody’s organization. Six, 12 months ago everyone was hiring hand over fist. Unfilled positions were at record highs. You just don’t turn that ship around quickly. And so, I think we are going to see — we have seen some moderation in job growth and we will see some meaningfully more moderation here going forward. And it’s going to take some time. We’re not going to see the full effects of what the Fed’s done for well into next year.”

He added, “It does feel like the moment of truth here is dead ahead of us on inflation. The Fed’s going to do everything it can to get inflation and they’re going to succeed one way or the other. So, I think 2023 is going to be a pretty tough year. Certainly, we’re going to see job growth slow, may see some declines, unemployment’s going to rise. But by the time folks are running for re-election again, that’s kind of sort of the spring/summer of 2024. Inflation should be down and the economy should be coming back.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Sen. Roger Marshall Seeks to Block Biden’s Reopening Welfare-Dependent Immigration to U.S.​

JOHN BINDER23 Nov 20229

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) is looking to block President Joe Biden’s reopening of welfare-dependent immigration to the United States after former President Trump had written new regulations to make it more difficult for welfare-dependent foreign nationals to secure green cards.

In early 2020, the Trump administration finalized a federal regulation known as the “public charge” rule that made it less likely for foreign nationals to secure green cards to permanently reside in the U.S. if they had previously used welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, or taxpayer-funded housing programs.

Nearly immediately after taking office, Biden threw out the finalized public charge rule imposed by the Trump administration, blowing open the door for welfare-dependent immigration to the U.S., for which American taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill.

Now, Marshall has introduced a Congressional Review Act to ensure that Biden’s reopening of welfare-dependent immigration to the U.S. is blocked. Marshall said in a statement:

Granting citizenship to illegal aliens who would be dependent on federal benefits is a burden that American taxpayers and our national debt cannot afford. … We need to get back to policies like this if our country is going to have any hope at stopping the invasion at our southern border that started when President Biden took office.

RJ Hauman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) praised the measure as necessary to protect American taxpayers:

The Biden administration could care less about the ultimate stakeholder in our immigration system — the American people. That doesn’t only apply to a border that is being overrun, however. The public charge rule not only flouts Congress’ intent, it erodes the integrity of the legal immigration system and sticks it to American taxpayers. We encourage Senator Marshall’s colleagues to follow his lead and fight the Biden administration’s radical immigration policy agenda on all fronts. [Emphasis added]

When Trump first issued the Public Charge rule in 2019, polls found that the policy was overwhelmingly popular with Americans. About 6-in-10 Americans said they supported ending welfare-dependent legal immigration, including 56 percent of Hispanics and 71 percent of black Americans.

In 2017, the National Academies of Science noted that state and local taxpayers are billed about $1,600 each year per immigrant to pay for their welfare and revealed that immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households.

A similar Center for Immigration Studies study found that about 63 percent of noncitizen households use at least one form of public welfare, while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare. This means that noncitizen households use nearly twice as much welfare as native-born American households.


Chart via the Center for Immigration Studies

Every year, the federal government rewards about 1.2 million foreign nationals with green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. while another 1.4 million foreign nationals secure various temporary work visas to take American jobs.

This massive legal immigration inflow, opposed by the majority of Republican voters, is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who are added to the U.S. population annually.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Railway Strike Seen as Increasingly Inevitable, Threatens to Derail Economy Ahead of Holidays​

NICK GILBERTSON 23 Nov 2022719

A national freight rail strike is viewed as increasingly inevitable as four rail worker labor unions have rejected a tentative agreement with rail companies.

In September, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh brokered a tentative deal between rail unions and rail carriers while President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were out of town. Union concerns centered around sick time and scheduling, and Walsh’s work appeared to have avoided a strike that had the potential for far-reaching consequences on the American economy. However, the deal has fallen to pieces, and the clock is ticking as a December 9 strike looms.

On Monday, members of SMART Transportation Division, the largest rail union involved in September’s negotiations, voted against the agreement, as Bloomberg Law’s Ian Kullgren reported. Three other unions rejected the proposed agreement as well, while seven unions had agreed to the terms.

If the rail companies and unions fail to broker a new deal, Congress could “intervene and impose contract terms on railroad workers,” as it did during the last rail strike in 1992, the Associated Press reported. If neither potential solution materializes, a strike would take effect early next month. In that scenario, American consumers could be plagued with far-reaching economic turmoil, and Congressional intervention would become increasingly likely.

Jared Cassity, the alternate legislative director for SMART Transportation Division, noted that he has tapered expectations regarding the rail companies’ willingness to further negotiate with unions, asserting that the potential for Congress to get involved gives the carriers leverage to withhold concessions, according to Kullgren. Cassity also implied that the strike is looking inevitable.


Devastating U.S. freight rail strike still possible as major unions split vote. (UPI)

“I’m not optimistic about the railroads’ willingness to negotiate for more,” Cassity said. “I’m hopeful, but really not that optimistic. And there’s really nothing that obligates them to give more at this point.”

“We’re at the end of the Railway Labor Act, and ultimately the end is a lockout or strike. That’s where we are,” he said.

Echoing Cassity’s sentiments, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen President Dennis Pearce stated that “Congress staying out of it would obviously giving [sic] unions leverage,” as CNN Business noted.

Biden and his fellow pro-union Democrats in Congress face a tough political predicament. A prolonged strike would have negative economic effects on Americans, who are already bearing the brunt of sky-high inflation that has not been seen in decades. If Congress does intervene, the conditions of its legislation could potentially anger the very union workers they claim to champion.

On Monday, a White House official stated that a strike would be “unacceptable,” according to Kullgren:

As the President has said from the beginning, a shutdown is unacceptable because of the harm it would inflict on jobs, families, farms, businesses, and communities across the country. A majority of unions have voted to ratify the tentative agreement, and the best option is still for the parties to resolve this themselves.

Rail companies have estimated that some $2 billion daily would bleed from the American economy during a strike, as the Associated Press reported:

Railroads haul about 40% of the nation’s freight each year. The railroads estimated that a rail strike would cost the economy $2 billion a day in a report issued earlier this fall. Another recent report put together by a chemical industry trade group projected that if a strike drags on for a month some 700,000 jobs would be lost as manufacturers who rely on railroads shut down, prices of nearly everything would increase even more and the economy could be thrust into a recession.

And although some businesses would try to shift shipments over to trucks, there aren’t nearly enough of them available. The Association of American Railroads trade group estimated that 467,000 additional trucks a day would be needed to handle everything railroads deliver.

The ability to transport crucial chemicals, packaged food for humans, food for livestock, and retail goods would be greatly undermined as families get ready for Christmas and Hanukkah.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals With HUGE “Standing” Ruling Ahead of Kari Lake Arizona Legal Showdowns

By Brian Lupo
Published November 22, 2022 at 12:05pm

Last month, The Gateway Pundit reported on a crucial Georgia Supreme Court ruling that gave standing to the voters in Georgia without individualized injury to bring suit in the state:

Justice Peterson of the GA Supreme Court:

“To that end, only plaintiffs with a cognizable injury can bring a suit in​
Georgia courts. Unlike federal law, however, that injury need not​
always be individualized; sometimes it can be a generalized​
grievance shared by community members, especially other​
residents, taxpayers, voters, or citizens.”​

The ruling would give standing back to VoterGA.org in their ongoing effort to unseal the 2020 election ballots in Fulton County, Ga. President Trump Truthed our article to his Truth Social platform:

1669273851239.png

Fast forward to November 21, 2022 and we now have a federal ruling that gives standing to “recent and future congressional candidates to challenge the constitutionality of California’s election laws, regulations, policies, and procedures” according to an article by Globe Newswire.

Globe Newswire writes:
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that Election Integrity Project®California (EIPCa), James Bradley (US Senate Candidate, Co Lead Plaintiff) and recent and future congressional candidates have standing to challenge the constitutionality of California’s election laws, regulations, policies and procedures that have weakened or removed integrity from the election process. Though the Constitution gives authority to state legislators to pass laws to manage elections and process ballots, EIPCa asserts they do not have carte blanche authority to pass laws that diminish the value of lawfully cast ballots.​
The decision remanded the lawsuit to the lower court for discovery, which is the next phase of the litigation.”​
…​
“This lawsuit is monumental because it is the first to challenge the constitutionality of California’s election laws and procedures, and we are the first to get past the standing issue,” says Mariah Gondeiro, the lead attorney who works for Advocates for Faith and Freedom. “If we win, California will be required to enforce secure and uniform vote casting and vote counting procedures.”​
…​
“For over a decade, Election Integrity Project®California has researched and documented every aspect of California’s election process and identified how these laws transformed the traditional Election Day into a 60-day election season fraught with easy to manipulate procedures,” says Linda Paine, President of EIPCa. “We are now seeing California-style laws in states across the country creating the same problems that have been witnessed and documented by EIPCa-trained observers in California for years.”​

Not only does this case rejuvenate the EIPCa’s effort to clean up California’s corrupt election law, but it may give standing to other candidates nationwide who challenge election laws. Lake v Hobbs, for example, is pending appeal in the very same Ninth Circuit. The case was dismissed in August 2022 for a lack of standing because “they have articulated only conjectural allegations of potential injuries that are in any event barred by the Eleventh Amendment, and seek relief that the Court cannot grant under the Purcell principle.”

Fast forward to the 2022 General Election ripe with widespread machine failure and/or manipulation and it seems the Lake v Hobbs case may have been rather significant in ensuring the election was safe and fair. Hopefully the Lake Campaign is given a fair opportunity to make their case, finally, in a court of “law”.

The EIP has also raised grave concern with Nevada’s voter lists as well.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

French Interior Minister Labels Italy An "Enemy" Of France After Migration Row

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 01:00 AM
Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

Following growing tensions between Italy and France over the issue of boat migrants in the Mediterranean, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has resorted to extremely harsh rhetoric, referring to the Italian government as “enemies of France.”

Darmanin made the comment in response to a question from a National Rally MP Mathilde Paris during a Q&A session in the French parliament, saying Italy is “attacking France.”

Paris was inquiring why the majority of the migrants aboard the Ocean Viking ship, which France allowed to dock, have been released from the administrative center housing them, despite the minister’s previous assurances that “(they) will not be able to leave the administrative center.” Instead of addressing the question, Darmanin claimed she was an “ally” of the “enemies” of France.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1595085427991805953
.29 min

“In fact, madam, you are not patriotic if you ally yourself with the enemies who are attacking France at the moment,” Darmanin said in response to a question by Paris. “You are siding with Madam (Giorgia) Meloni and her government who did not respect international law, instead you are attacking French policemen,” he added.

Video on website 2:38 min

The French government is being criticized for taking in the migrants, and a report shows that 26 of the 44 minors taken in have already escaped the migrant center.

War of words
The language being deployed by Darmanin is sure to add further tension between the two countries, which has been growing ever since Italy rejected taking 234 migrants from the NGO ship Ocean Viking, which had mostly North Africans on board. Italy argues that it has already accepted 90,000 migrants in 2022 alone, and even after rejecting Ocean Viking, it still allowed three NGO ships to dock and 600 migrants to disembark.

Although French President Emmanuel Macron has labeled Meloni “inhumane” for not taking in the Ocean Viking migrants, at the same time, France has now said it is retaliating by not accepting 3,000 migrants from Italy it had promised to take in. Meloni has responded, pointing to France’s CFA franc program, in which France agrees to print money for 14 African countries in exchange for mint fees, which can go as high as 50 percent. She argues that France continues to act like a colonial power, which drives Africans to migrate in the first place.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1594424235757387777
1:04 min

Italy has taken the path of allowing boats to dock, but argues that all healthy migrant males will not be allowed to disembark, which is doing little to address Italy’s problems with mass migration. With millions of young Africans looking to head to Europe, the issue is likely to dominate European politics and bilateral relations between nations like Italy and France for the foreseeable future.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Most Crucial Industrial Fuel Faces Global Shortage

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 02:45 AM

A perfect storm in global diesel markets is unfolding. Refining capacities are tight, and stockpiles are being depleted as the Northern Hemisphere cold season begins. Supply crunches could jeopardize critical transportation networks since the industrial fuel powers ships, trucks, and trains. The fuel is also used for heating homes and businesses, as well as a power generation source for utilities.

"Within months, almost every region on the planet will face a danger of a diesel shortage just as supply crunches in nearly all the world's markets have worsened inflation and hurt growth," Bloomberg warned.

The economic impact of soaring diesel prices and shortages worldwide could have devastating effects, such as an inflation accelerant that would burden households and businesses.

Both gasoline and diesel prices are linked to crude prices set on the global market. Due to supply constraints, diesel prices in many markets currently demand a hefty premium.

Mark Finley, an energy fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute of Public Policy, explained to Bloomberg that elevated diesel prices could cost the US economy $100 billion:

"Anything and everything that gets moved in our economy, diesel is there.

"Moving stuff around is one thing. People potentially freezing to death is another."

Diesel inventories in the US had plunged to the lowest level since 1982 when the government began reporting data on the fuel. Supplies for this time of year are at the lowest levels ever.

1669297111782.png

According to the Energy Information Administration, the US now has just 25 days of diesel supply, the lowest since 2008; and while inventories are record low, the four-week rolling average of distillates supplied - a proxy for demand - increased to its highest seasonal level since 2007.

1669297146131.png

Reuters' senior market analyst John Kemp noted that diesel shortages will persist until a downturn in the economy.

Prices for US diesel in the spot market of New York harbor have risen more than 265% since President Biden took the oath of office in 2021. Prices reached $5.37 a gallon in the spring of 2022 and have since slumped to $3.51.

1669297172992.png

US Northeast markets are the tightest in the US, where oil refineries have been shuttered in the last several years. This has also complicated the picture of winter heating oil and jet fuel supplies in the region.

Last month, a major fuel supply logistics company initiated emergency protocols across the Northeast and Southeast about the dangers of supplies running low that might cause delivery delays for some customers.

"While Russia's war in Ukraine sent diesel prices soaring, the current situation is partly the result of an interconnected, slow-building series of events that extends across the globe. Some analysts trace the roots of the US diesel shortage to a fire at Philadelphia Energy Solutions in 2019, which forced the refinery to shut down, taking out one of the Northeast's important diesel producers," according to the NYTimes.

Besides the US, Northwest Europe is facing low diesel supplies. Inventories in Europe are expected to plunge further after Russian crude and crude products sanctions come into play in the coming months. Global export markets are so tight right now that emerging market countries are being squeezed out of purchasing industrial fuel, such as Pakistan.

"It's certainly the biggest diesel crisis that I have ever seen," Dario Scaffardi, a former chief executive officer of the Italian oil refiner Saras SpA who spent four decades in the industry, told Bloomberg.​

The cause of the global diesel shortage is very clear:

That's partly a function of the pandemic, after lockdowns destroyed demand and forced refiners to close some of their least profitable plants. But the looming transition away from fossil fuels has also dented investments in the sector. Since 2020, US refining capacity has shrunk by more than 1 million barrels per day. Meanwhile in Europe, shipping disruptions and worker strikes have also eaten into refinery production. -Bloomberg​

The ban on Russian crude to Europe in December could worsen the situation. Then a ban on Russian diesel in February could unleash even more chaos for the continent. Reuters said traders are panic-hoarding Russian oil products before the bans come into effect. Earlier this year, the US halted Russian diesel shipments, which last year, it was a major supplier to the East Coast.

"If Russia is not a supplier anymore, that puts a big, big dent into the system, which is going to be really difficult to fix," said Scaffardi, the former Saras CEO.​

Speculation mounts that the Biden administration could halt diesel exports to boost domestic supplies, but that may not have the desired effects because diesel is a globally traded commodity. Any export ban from the US would cause unwanted market gyrations.

Labor strikes have also exacerbated diesel shortages across Europe at major refineries. French refineries experienced several labor actions this fall, and a large BP refinery in Rotterdam on Tuesday.

The diesel crunch has been "damaging to the global economy," said Amrita Sen, the head of research at Energy Aspects Ltd. She said the only way to "resolve diesel tightness ultimately needs new refining capacity."

And the bad news is that Chevron CEO Mike Wirth told Bloomberg TV this past summer that no new refineries will ever be built in the US.

Winter could exacerbate problems for the Northern Hemisphere as the worst diesel squeeze in a generation could wreak havoc on the already faltering global economy.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Black Friday Unlikely To Lift Dark Mood For Retail​

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 04:30 AM
By Heather Burke, Bloomberg Markets Live analyst and reporter

Retail’s horrible 2022 is unlikely to get any better as the all-important holiday season unofficially kicks off this week amid an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.

Retail is one of the worst-performing S&P 500 GICS 2 sectors year-to-date, down more than 30% compared with the overall benchmark’s decline of about 17%. Some of that stems from the selloff in mega-tech: Amazon.com is approximately 45% of the gauge and responsible for about 75% of retail’s decline in terms of market cap.

But even minimizing Amazon with the equal-weight S&P Retail Select Industry Index (SPSIRE), down almost 30% year-to-date, underscores the sector’s underperformance.

US retail sales posted the biggest increase in eight months in October, but some discretionary categories like electronics declined, suggesting price cuts and weaker demand are weighing on the value of sales. Inflation, while slowing, remains firmly entrenched above pre-pandemic levels, meaning people are spending more on essentials like food and gas. Lower gasoline prices may help. But consumer sentiment is fragile amid rising borrowing costs. Some spending has also shifted from goods to experiences such as travel.

Retailers including Macy’s, Gap and Ross Stores rallied last week on strong earnings; for some, measures to clear inventory with big discounts paid off.

But others said sales slowed in recent weeks and gave cautious outlooks. Ross said “we continue to expect a very promotional holiday selling season.” Target tumbled post-results as shoppers were hit by “inflation, rising interest rates and economic uncertainty,” the CEO said; discretionary categories have lagged.

And while Walmart boosted its forecast, part of that came from higher-income shoppers trading down, and a shift to groceries from general merchandise. Even Amazon is concerned, projecting the slowest holiday-quarter growth in its history.

The National Retail Federation forecasts sales rising by 6% to 8% in November and December, well below last year’s record 13.5% increase. Retailers may have to discount deeply to attract shoppers, threatening profitability at a peak period.

Black Friday, the informal start of the peak shopping season, comes this week amid the muted backdrop. A Goldman Sachs survey of 1,000 US consumers found that nearly half plan to spend less this holiday season than they did in 2021.

Retail stocks are also being battered in Europe and are among the most shorted. While the sector, like US peers, has benefited from the bear market rally, it’s still the second-worst performer in the Stoxx 600 year-to-date, with consumer confidence near a record low.

UK retail stocks have seen particular misery amid the sharpest drop in living standards. It’s one of the worst-performing FTSE 350 sectors so far this year.

October’s retail sales were worse than expected.



Consumers face higher taxes and spending cuts as the government tries to tackle inflation and rein in the budget deficit. Disposable incomes will probably fall 7% in the next two years under last week’s measures set out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Retail has become a bit of a recovery play in the recent bear market rally and US consumers have shown resilience by some measures such as credit. But with multiple retail gauges set for the worst year since the global financial crisis, it will take a remarkably strong holiday season to overcome 2022’s gloom -- and next year may not be much better.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHj-ShMQSkE
18:10 min

They Just Revealed Their Plan ( A Great Thanksgiving Story )​

OhCevGwV25_EkHsl-mrc7eHLxUpYbG-HZBcMvIS82hiO6Pt_6gFePr_Jo13ZcJWKe6BEjHwBuQ=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj

The Economic Ninja
Streamed live 10 hours ago

^^^^^

Howls Of Outrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellen​

WEDNESDAY, NOV 23, 2022 - 01:22 PM

As we discussed last night, Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in "explaining" to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion according to new FTX CEO John J. Ray) from the now bankrupt FTX, an act which left it insolvent and without liquidity, called it "loans" which were "generally" not used for "large amounts of personal consumption" (just "small amounts" used for such trivial items as $40 million penthouses and private jets).



And the only reason we don't officially call him a criminal just yet, is because he has not yet confirmed he used client money from his exchange to fund his personal hedge fund, an act which would cost any other individual decades in jail... but not prominent democrats like SBF or Jon Corzine, of course. Plus it's the US legal system's job to do that, not ours. Although we are growing increasingly skeptical this prominent Democratic donor will ever see the inside of a courtroom.

It's not just us: with much of the entire world demanding to know how this corpulent 30-year-old still has not been thrown in prison, or at least charged with a variety of crimes, the NYT just confirmed to the entire world what a farce the one-time paper of record has become, and how it is willing to whore itself out for clicks - not to mention prominent Democrat donors - because moments after SBF tweeted that he will be speaking with Andrew Ross-Sorkin moderated NYT "summit" on Nov 30...

1669338059262.png

... Sorkin quickly confirmed as much.

1669338092940.png

The answer is yes.

There are a lot of important questions to be asked and answered.

And so, instead of being under arrest, SBF will instead be treated like a luminary alongside other such other Democrat icons as Zelenskyy (who according to some may have been intimately familiar with FTX fund flows in the past year) and of course the woman who along with Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, made it all possible by blowing the biggest asset bubble of all time: Janet Yellen.

And while we are certain that the NYT - which we assume is done writing puff pieces on behalf of SBF after it became a laughing stock last week - would be quick to mercilessly cancel and expel from its "prestigious" conference anyone who had misgendered some post-op transsexual, it is willing to give this thieving pathological liar and sociopath a forum in which to profess his innocence to the entire world, and by association with other Democrat "celebrities" such as this one..

... to boost his standing within a legal system that is clearly as much as joke as the venue that he will be sharing with the following individuals:


Here are all the other "top business and policy leaders" at the NYT whitewashing summit:
  • Eric Adams, New York City mayor
  • Ben Affleck, Artists Equity C.E.O.
  • Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX founder
  • Gerry Cardinale, RedBird Capital Partners founder, managing partner and C.I.O.
  • Shou Chew, TikTok C.E.O.
  • Larry Fink, BlackRock chairman and C.E.O.
  • Reed Hastings, Netflix founder and co-C.E.O.
  • Andy Jassy, Amazon president and C.E.O.
  • Van Jones, CNN host, author and Dream.Org founder
  • Scarlett Lewis, Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement founder and mother of Sandy Hook shooting victim, Jesse
  • Mike Pence, 48th vice president of the United States and author of “So Help Me God”
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel, current leader of the Likud party
  • Priscilla Sims Brown, Amalgamated Bank president and C.E.O.
  • Secretary Janet L. Yellen, U.S. Department of the Treasury
  • President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine
  • Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder, chairman and C.E.O.
The shocked, stunned and simply disgusted reactions are still coming in:

(Too many twitter quotes cut and pastes. Must be written by a Millennial. See website for rest of article.)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxJcuEhd3uE
3:24 min

Accelerating Sustainable Finance Ep 4: The Key Role of Market Infrastructure​

AMLnZu9xjNawITaubcbG9i85j9zF5DK6fHAkDKvM8cuZI2k=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj

World Economic Forum
Nov 24, 2022
Despite their growth, less than 5% of total financial assets today are sustainable. How can barriers be eliminated to allow issuers and investors to find each other in the marketplace of sustainable finance? Lieve Mostrey, CEO of Euroclear explores how market accessibility, transparency and regional adjustments are central to accelerating sustainable finance. Accelerating Sustainable Finance is a four episode series that profiles global thought leaders on how finance can mobilize to achieve net zero. Each episode explores topics that include the required business transformation, opportunities presented by technology, the net zero transition in emerging markets and the key role of market infrastructures.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0lhWUlUuEM

Black Friday Won't Stop What's Coming...

OhCevGwV25_EkHsl-mrc7eHLxUpYbG-HZBcMvIS82hiO6Pt_6gFePr_Jo13ZcJWKe6BEjHwBuQ=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj

The Economic Ninja
Nov 24, 2022
The Economic Ninja talks about the best Black Friday Deals and how black Friday will not save the economy this time. Walmart black Friday 2022 will not be like it was in the past.

^^^^

Black Friday Unlikely To Lift Dark Mood For Retail​

(Previously posted above)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(Brazil)

BRAZIL: Millions protest against Socialist President-elect Lula da Silva, reject communism 21:21 min

BRAZIL: Millions protest against Socialist President-elect Lula da Silva, reject communism​

Rebel News Published November 24, 2022

Rebel News' Katie Daviscourt spoke with a citizen journalist in Brazil who has been covering the massive protests in the country after allegations of a rigged presidential election sparked revolts.

^^^^
11.24.22 Brazil .. for the 25th day the Brazilian people are asking the military for help .21 min

11.24.22 BRAZIL .. FOR THE 25TH DAY THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE ARE ASKING THE MILITARY FOR HELP​

Protesters demand the ineligibility of candidate Lula, justice in elections and respect for the constitution
 
Last edited:

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(Canada)

Canadian Government Preparing to Euthanize Children Without Parental Consent 5:41 min

Canadian Government Preparing to Euthanize Children Without Parental Consent​

SettingBrushfires Published November 24, 2022

(Government assisted suicide)

^^^^
Canada's State Sponsored Suicide: That's Not A Nazi Move Or Anything. Well Actually, It Is - Tucker .43 min

Canada's State Sponsored Suicide: That's Not A Nazi Move Or Anything. Well Actually, It Is - Tucker​

Red Voice Media Published November 24, 2022
"A new federal law in Canada will allow euthanasia for the mentally ill beginning in March of next year." - Tucker Carlson

"A doctor signed off on killing a guy because he couldn't afford rent." - Tucker Carlson
 
Last edited:

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Vaccine Disaster, Best Case Scenario: "We're Talking About 600 Million People Incapacitated" 2:53 min

Vaccine Disaster, Best Case Scenario: "We're Talking About 600 Million People Incapacitated"​

The Vigilant Fox Published November 24, 2022

If about 3 billion people took mRNA shots, and 7 to 15% of the batches had severe adverse events, that's around 300 million people with permanent death and disability.

And, as Dr. David Martin explains, if those 300 million people now require the 24/7 care of other individuals, that's another 300 million people dedicated to their care. "So, we're talking about 600 million people incapacitated."

Full Interview: Billions Could Be Injured or Killed By the Jab: Are You Ready? – Dr. David Martin
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(China)

China standing up against the CCP regime.. .16 min

CHINA STANDING UP AGAINST THE CCP REGIME..​

"I wish this was happening all over China and now just the iPhone factory location!"

^^^^
CHINA, Chongqing city 32 millions residents are still living in brutal lockdown. Nov 24th, 2022 .13 min

CHINA, CHONGQING CITY 32 MILLIONS RESIDENTS ARE STILL LIVING IN BRUTAL LOCKDOWN. NOV 24TH, 2022​

^^^^
Chinese media blur the spectators at Qatar World Cup. .26 min

CHINESE MEDIA BLUR THE SPECTATORS AT QATAR WORLD CUP.​

They don't want the Chinese people to know that the crowds at the stadium are mask less!
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(Australia and International Bank of Settlements)

The RBA thinks its more important to be part of a secretive banking cartel than serve the people! 2:18 min

THE RBA THINKS ITS MORE IMPORTANT TO BE PART OF A SECRETIVE BANKING CARTEL THAN SERVE THE PEOPLE!​

The RBA clearly thinks that being a part of a secretive banking cartel is more important than being open and transparent with the Australian people.
Let’s not forget this is the same mob who said interest rates wouldn’t rise until 2024 and lent $188 billion to the banks for free.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(Peru)

Because Marxist Pedro Castillo of Peru is destroying the country the truckers have gone on strike .32 min

BECAUSE MARXIST PEDRO CASTILLO OF PERU IS DESTROYING THE COUNTRY THE TRUCKERS HAVE GONE ON STRIKE​

Pedro Castillo: He attained political prominence as a leading figure in a school teachers' strike in 2017 and ran in the 2021 presidential election as the candidate of the Marxist Free Peru party.

He been impeached twice already he needs to GO!

The votes of at least 87 of the 130 lawmakers were needed to remove the president. Fifty-five voted in favor, 54 against and 19 abstained.

The lawmakers seeking to remove Castillo had noted he is the subject of three preliminary investigations into possible corruption, which under Peruvian law cannot proceed until he is out of office. There is also a separate accusation from a would-be collaborator who alleged he is part of a criminal group that receives money in exchange for public works.

Peru's president survives 2nd impeachment effort in 8 months
Peru's president survives 2nd impeachment effort in 8 months
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(Australia)

Concerns have risen over 'privacy' with new digital ID requirement for businesses
1:50 min

CONCERNS HAVE RISEN OVER 'PRIVACY' WITH NEW DIGITAL ID REQUIREMENT FOR BUSINESSES​

^^^^^
Netherlands, Rally against Digital Euro (CBDC) which will monitor every transaction over 100 Euros 1:55 min

NETHERLANDS, RALLY AGAINST DIGITAL EURO (CBDC) WHICH WILL MONITOR EVERY TRANSACTION OVER 100 EUROS​

The Hague Netherlands, Rally against Digital Euro (CBDC) which will monitor every transaction over €100. "Every transaction will be traceable, they can and will control everything." Do whatever you can to disrupt their plans
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

War On Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program For Digital Rupee

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 07:40 PM
Via SchiffGold.com,

We recently reported that the Federal Reserve plans to launch a 12-week pilot program in partnership with several large commercial banks to test the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The US isn’t alone in experimenting with digital currency. India is working on developing a digital rupee and recently announced the second phase of testing.

After successfully running a pilot program to test its digital currency at the wholesale level, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced it will test the digital rupee in a retail setting.

According to the RBI, the central bank digital currency “is a legal tender issued by a central bank in a digital form. It is the same as a fiat currency and is exchangeable one-to-one with the fiat currency. Only its form is different.”

Digital currencies are similar to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They exist as virtual banknotes or coins held in a digital wallet on your computer or smartphone. The difference between a government digital currency and bitcoin is the value of the digital currency is backed and controlled by the state, just like traditional fiat currency.

As the RBI put it, “Unlike cryptocurrencies, a CBDC isn’t a commodity or claims on commodities or digital assets. Cryptocurrencies have no issuer. They are not money (certainly not currency) as the word has come to be understood historically.”

According to a report in the Economic Times of India, the National Payments Corporation of India will host the platform for the digital rupee payment system during the testing phase. The Reserve Bank of India wants each commercial bank in the pilot to test retail use of the digital rupee with 10,000 to 50,000 users.

State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank and IDFC First Bank will participate in the pilot program. If the pilot is successful, the RBI will roll out the program to the entire Indian banking system.

“The e-rupee will be stored in a wallet, the denominations will be available as per the customer’s request, just like you request cash from an ATM. Banks are launching this only in select cities,” a person involved in the program told the Times.​

In a concept note, the RBI touted the benefits of digital currency.

It is believed that retail CBDC can provide access to safe money for payment and settlement as it is a direct liability of the central bank. Wholesale CBDC has the potential to transform settlement systems for financial transactions and make them more efficient and secure. Going by the potential offered by each of them, there may be merit in introducing both CBDC-W and CBDC-R.”​

Government-issued digital currencies are sold on the promise of providing a safe, convenient, and more secure alternative to physical cash. We’re also told it will help stop dangerous criminals who like the intractability of cash. But there is a darker side – the promise of control.

At the root of the move toward government digital currency is “the war on cash.” The elimination of cash creates the potential for the government to track and even control consumer spending, and it would make it even easier for central banks to engage in manipulative monetary policies such as negative interest rates.

Imagine if there was no cash. It would be impossible to hide even the smallest transaction from government eyes. Something as simple as your morning trip to Starbucks wouldn’t be a secret from government officials. As Bloomberg put it in an article published when China launched its digital yuan pilot program, digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with physical money.”

The government could even “turn off” an individual’s ability to make purchases. Bloomberg described just how much control a digital currency could give Chinese officials.

The PBOC has also indicated that it could put limits on the sizes of some transactions, or even require an appointment to make large ones. Some observers wonder whether payments could be linked to the emerging social-credit system, wherein citizens with exemplary behavior are ‘whitelisted’ for privileges, while those with criminal and other infractions find themselves left out. ‘China’s goal is not to make payments more convenient but to replace cash, so it can keep closer tabs on people than it already does,’ argues Aaron Brown, a crypto investor who writes for Bloomberg Opinion.”​

China launched its digital yuan pilot program last year. The Chinese government-backed digital currency got a boost when the country’s biggest online retailer announced the first virtual platform to accept the Chinese digital currency.

Economist Thorsten Polleit outlined the potential for Big Brother-like government control with the advent of a digital euro in an article published by the Mises Wire. As he put it, “the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably” if and when a digital currency is issued.

Governments around the world have quietly waged a war on cash for years. Back in 2017, the IMF published a creepy paper offering governments suggestions on how to move toward a cashless society even in the face of strong public opposition.

As with most things the government does, you should be wary of the digital dollar. It has a dark side that you can be sure the mainstream will mostly ignore.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Black Friday Chaos: Amazon Warehouse Workers Set To Strike Across 40 Countries​

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 07:05 PM

Thousands of workers across approximately 40 countries are planning to take part in 'Black Friday' protests to demand better wages and working conditions in the company's warehouses, as the global cost-of-living crisis increases



The protests will coincide with the largest holiday shopping season of the year, which means Amazon warehouse workers are going to be very busy for the next week as consumers panic buy deeply discounted items, though there might be a huge problem: less than 24 hours before the big sale begins, Bloomberg reported Amazon warehouse workers across 40 countries are about to strike.

We would note that the world's biggest retailer has longstanding ambitions to automate its warehouses - with robots that don't strike.

Amazon workers in the US, UK, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa, and across Europe are set to walk out of warehouses on Friday as they demand higher wages and better working conditions amid the worst inflationary environment the world has seen in decades.

The labor action is called "Make Amazon Pay" and is coordinated by an army of trade unions, with support from civil society and environmental groups.

"For workers and consumers, the price of everything is going up. And for everyone, the global temperature is rising and our planet is under stress. But instead of supporting its workers, communities and the planet, Amazon is squeezing every last drop it can," Make Amazon Pay's website said.

Make Amazon Pay is correct by outlining "real wages are going down"... and as we noted not too long ago, have been negative for 19 months -- hence why labor unions have gained so much traction.



"It’s time for the tech giant to cease their awful, unsafe practices immediately, respect the law and negotiate with the workers who want to make their jobs better," said UNI Global Union general secretary, Christy Hoffman.

The group also outlines Amazon's corporate greed, not paying taxes, and polluting the world. It also published a map of all the strike locations.



The company replied to the protests, saying "While we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing on these important matters you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously," pointing to the company's green ambitions to reach net zero status by 2040, which is "continuing to offer competitive wages and great benefits, and inventing new ways to keep our employees safe and healthy."

Ah, that settles it then.

Unions in France and Germany - CGT and Ver.di - are spearheading the latest collective action, with coordinated strikes in 18 major warehouses, intended to disrupt shipments across key European markets.

Monika di Silvestre, head of Ver.di’s Amazon committee in Germany, said that workers were particularly concerned about the way their productivity was closely monitored by computers, with algorithms determining targets, for example for the number of packages they need to handle per hour. -Stars & Stripes


"The workers are under a lot of pressure with these algorithms," said di Silvestre, adding "It doesn’t differentiate between workers, whether they are old or have limited mobility. Workers stay awake at night thinking only of their productivity stats."

Amazon warehouse employees have been speaking out against working conditions for years - notably complaining of low pay, pressure not to take sick leave when ill, and having to work so many hours they're forced to urinate in bottles.

It's not clear how disruptive the strikes will be for Amazon, but it's just another reason why the world's biggest retailer is full steam ahead in automating warehouse (read: "Amazon Unveils Warehouse Robot To Replace Human Pickers Amid Unionization Threats").
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

MIT Reports Breakthrough In Solid-State Lithium Battery Development​

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 06:30 PM
By Brian Westenhaus of OilPrice.com

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new discovery could finally usher the development of solid-state lithium batteries, which would be more lightweight, compact, and safe than current lithium batteries. The growth of metallic filaments called dendrites within the solid electrolyte has been a longstanding obstacle, but the new study explains how dendrites form and how to divert them. This is a goal that’s been pursued by labs around the world for years.

The key to this potential leap in battery technology is replacing the liquid electrolyte that sits between the positive and negative electrodes with a much thinner, lighter layer of solid ceramic material, and replacing one of the electrodes with solid lithium metal. This would greatly reduce the overall size and weight of the battery and remove the safety risk associated with liquid electrolytes, which are flammable.

But that quest has been beset with one big problem: dendrites.
Dendrites, whose name comes from the Latin for branches, are projections of metal that can build up on the lithium surface and penetrate into the solid electrolyte, eventually crossing from one electrode to the other and shorting out the battery cell. Researchers haven’t been able to agree on what gives rise to these metal filaments, nor has there been much progress on how to prevent them and thus make lightweight solid-state batteries a practical option.

The new research published in the journal Joule in a paper by MIT Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, graduate student Cole Fincher, and five others at MIT and Brown University, seems to resolve the question of what causes dendrite formation. It also shows how dendrites can be prevented from crossing through the electrolyte.

Chiang said in the group’s earlier work, they made a “surprising and unexpected” finding, which was that the hard, solid electrolyte material used for a solid-state battery can be penetrated by lithium, which is a very soft metal, during the process of charging and discharging the battery, as ions of lithium move between the two sides.

This shuttling back and forth of ions causes the volume of the electrodes to change. That inevitably causes stresses in the solid electrolyte, which has to remain fully in contact with both of the electrodes that it is sandwiched between. “To deposit this metal, there has to be an expansion of the volume because you’re adding new mass,” Chiang said. “So, there’s an increase in volume on the side of the cell where the lithium is being deposited. And if there are even microscopic flaws present, this will generate a pressure on those flaws that can cause cracking.”

Those stresses, the team has now shown, cause the cracks that allow dendrites to form. The solution to the problem turns out to be more stress, applied in just the right direction and with the right amount of force.

While previously, some researchers thought that dendrites formed by a purely electrochemical process, rather than a mechanical one, the team’s experiments demonstrate that it is mechanical stresses that cause the problem.

The process of dendrite formation normally takes place deep within the opaque materials of the battery cell and cannot be observed directly, so Fincher developed a way of making thin cells using a transparent electrolyte, allowing the whole process to be directly seen and recorded. “You can see what happens when you put a compression on the system, and you can see whether or not the dendrites behave in a way that’s commensurate with a corrosion process or a fracture process,” he said.

The team demonstrated that they could directly manipulate the growth of dendrites simply by applying and releasing pressure, causing the dendrites to zig and zag in perfect alignment with the direction of the force.

Applying mechanical stresses to the solid electrolyte doesn’t eliminate the formation of dendrites, but it does control the direction of their growth. This means they can be directed to remain parallel to the two electrodes and prevented from ever crossing to the other side, and thus rendered harmless.

In their tests, the researchers used pressure induced by bending the material, which was formed into a beam with a weight at one end. But they say that in practice, there could be many different ways of producing the needed stress.

For example, the electrolyte could be made with two layers of material that have different amounts of thermal expansion, so that there is an inherent bending of the material, as is done in some thermostats.

Another approach would be to “dope” the material with atoms that would become embedded in it, distorting it and leaving it in a permanently stressed state. This is the same method used to produce the super-hard glass used in the screens of smart phones and tablets, Chiang explained. And the amount of pressure needed is not extreme: The experiments showed that pressures of 150 to 200 megapascals were sufficient to stop the dendrites from crossing the electrolyte.

The required pressure is “commensurate with stresses that are commonly induced in commercial film growth processes and many other manufacturing processes,” so should not be difficult to implement in practice, Fincher added.
Fischer explained that in fact, a different kind of stress, called stack pressure, is often applied to battery cells, by essentially squishing the material in the direction perpendicular to the battery’s plates – somewhat like compressing a sandwich by putting a weight on top of it. It was thought that this might help prevent the layers from separating. But the experiments have now demonstrated that pressure in that direction actually exacerbates dendrite formation. “We showed that this type of stack pressure actually accelerates dendrite-induced failure,” he said.

What is needed instead is pressure along the plane of the plates, as if the sandwich were being squeezed from the sides. “What we have shown in this work is that when you apply a compressive force you can force the dendrites to travel in the direction of the compression,” Fincher said, and if that direction is along the plane of the plates, the dendrites “will never get to the other side.”

That could finally make it practical to produce batteries using solid electrolyte and metallic lithium electrodes. Not only would these pack more energy into a given volume and weight, but they would eliminate the need for liquid electrolytes, which are flammable materials.

Having demonstrated the basic principles involved, the team’s next step will be to try to apply these to the creation of a functional prototype battery, Chiang said, and then to figure out exactly what manufacturing processes would be needed to produce such batteries in quantity. Though they have filed for a patent, the researchers don’t plan to commercialize the system themselves, he said, as there are already companies working on the development of solid-state batteries. “I would say this is an understanding of failure modes in solid-state batteries that we believe the industry needs to be aware of and try to use in designing better products,” he said.

The research team included Christos Athanasiou and Brian Sheldon at Brown University, and Colin Gilgenbach, Michael Wang, and W. Craig Carter at MIT. The work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
***
Assuming the press release has adequate data for not being certain this work will yield a prototype battery, the odds are that there will be a successful prototype built. How many models are tried and what works in the end is very much in the air for now.

On the other hand the mechanical formation research result looks quite compelling and actually makes reasoned sense now that it is explained. That raises questions. Does the dendrite formation greatly impede the battery capacity and function or does that added dendrite surface area increase it?

Then one wonders how the dendrite formation impacts overall lifespan?

This effort isn’t over yet. But this is a significant milestone with lots of clues and hints on where further research might go. It looks like solid state lithium metal batteries are just a matter of innovation, insight and creativity away from the market.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Ridiculous Reality Of The "Russian Oil Price Cap" Debate In One Picture​

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 03:35 PM
By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk
Bloomberg reports EU Talks Stall Over Price Level for Proposed Russian Oil Cap

The EU’s executive arm proposed a level of $65 a barrel, which Poland and the Baltic nations rejected as being too generous to Moscow, the people said. But several countries with major shipping industries, including Greece, don’t want to go below $70, the upper end of the range put forward by the EU earlier Wednesday.

$70 is about where Russian oil known as Urals trades right now.


Reuters reports EU Split on Russian Oil Price Cap Level, Talks to Resume Thursday

  • Representatives of the EU's 27 governments met in Brussels to discuss a G7 proposal to set the price cap in the range of $65-$70 per barrel, but the level proved too low for some and too high for others.
  • Poland, Lithuania and Estonia believe the $65-$70 per barrel would leave Russia with too high a profit, since production costs are around $20 per barrel.
  • Cyprus, Greece and Malta - countries with big shipping industries that stand to lose the most if Russian oil cargos are obstructed - think the cap is too low and demand compensation for the loss of business or more time to adjust.
Enforcing the Cap
The kicker is amusing: "EU diplomats said most EU countries, with G7 members France and Germany taking the lead, were supportive of the price cap, worried only about the ability to enforce it."

This brings us back to how any economist can possibly think such a cap might work.

The Incentive to Cheat
For further discussion of the obvious that many economists refuse to see, please consider the Carnegie article The Flaw in the Plan to Cap Russian Oil Prices

Whenever countries on sanctions lists face difficulties in selling their natural resources, creative minds will find a way to thwart the proposed measures with help from companies prepared to turn a blind eye to the shady elements of ostensibly legal transactions. Oil shipments could be bundled with some symbolic but pricey services, such as customs services, laboratory analysis, or document translation. Another scheme would involve loading a supposedly full 80,000-ton oil tanker with only 50,000 barrels of oil, bringing the cargo price per barrel closer to the market price.

Such schemes would, of course, require some collusion on the part of intermediary countries, but that is unlikely to be a problem. In recent months, Malaysia’s oil exports to China have exceeded the country’s actual oil production by one-third. Malaysia also cooperates with Iran and Venezuela in contravention of sanctions regimes.

Paradoxically, Russia may get some help from the OPEC countries here. For them, an emerging buyers’ cartel risks potentially manipulating the entire oil market and its prices. If the cartel succeeds in forcing Russia to obey its rules, the Arab countries may be next. If Russia counters the price cap by reducing its output, therefore, Saudi Arabia may be reluctant to increase its oil exports to compensate for the reduction, whether it has sufficient available production capacity or not.

Finally, the jury is still out on whether India and China, the biggest new buyers of Russian oil, are prepared to join the price cap coalition.

Western Allies Aim to Agree on Russian Oil Price Cap Wednesday
The Wall Street Journal reports Western Allies Aim to Agree on Russian Oil Price Cap Wednesday emphasis mine.

The aim of the plan, which was pushed hard by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is to crimp Russian energy exports revenue while avoiding a surge in oil prices when a European embargo on Russian oil imports kicks in early next month. Despite European reluctance at the time, the G-7 first agreed on setting the oil price cap in June following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Aim of the Plan
The aim of the plan is to not eat Russian cake while eating Russian cake.
It's quite amazing that anyone thinks the plan can possibly work, but president Biden, the EU, Janet Yellen and even prominent economists think the cap is a good idea.

Q&A Why Not?
Q: Why not cap the price of everything and end inflation?
A: Figure it out.
Q: Is it possible a cap might seem to work?
A: Yes. If the cap is set high enough it will be meaningless.

And if by some lucky fate a cap is set where the direction of oil is headed anyway, then the economic illiterates will be hooting and cheering their alleged success.

Why Won't Caps Work?
  • China, India and other countries will not go along. That's enough right there to show the ridiculousness of the idea.
  • Countries in the EU have an incentive to cheat.
One of Two Things
  1. The cap will fail and do nothing.
  2. The cap fail spectacularly and drive up the price by re-routing oil headed to the EU to China and India instead. Then the EU will have to get oil from the US or OPEC over longer routes increasing the cost.
The above two points are in isolation. But things should not be viewed in isolation. Given a pending global recession, oil prices are likely to drop anyway.

If they do, then as noted above, the economic illiterates will be hooting and cheering the alleged success of caps.

Related Articles
That third bullet point is from June 27. The US and EU have been struggling since then trying to get agreement on price caps. The bloc still needs approval from all 27 nations on a precise cap.

Many of the above points were also in my November 22 post Under Pressure From the US, EU Agrees to Cap the Price of Russian Oil.

The struggle to get agreement stems from the impossibility of the goal to not eat Russian cake while eating Russian cake. That alone tells you the plan is doomed: this cap idea is so stupid that only economists and politicians are dumb enough to believe it can work.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Biden Allocates $1.1 Billion To Keep California’s Nuclear Power Plant Operating

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 01:50 PM
Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

California’s last operating nuclear power plant was given another funding boost Nov. 21 as operators seek to keep it running for another eight years.

The U.S. Energy Department awarded Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant $1.1 billion from the Civil Nuclear Credit Program funded by an infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2021.

“This is a critical step toward ensuring that our domestic nuclear fleet will continue providing reliable and affordable power to Americans as the nation’s largest source of clean electricity,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement on Nov. 21.

Nuclear power provides half of the nation’s carbon-free electricity, according to the agency. Since 2013, 13 reactors across the United States have shuttered.

Final terms of the funding will need to be finalized by the Energy Department, officials said. The plant produces about 15 percent of California’s renewable energy.

It produced about 9 percent of the state’s energy last year, according to the state’s energy commission.

Politicians applauded the funding that will help extend the life of the once-doomed power plant located in central California near San Luis Obispo.

“This investment creates a path forward for a limited-term extension of the Diablo Canyon Power plant to support reliability statewide and provide an onramp for ore clean energy projects to come online,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom signed legislation Sept. 1 to reverse plans to terminate the plant, which was scheduled to close in 2025.

The bill was essential to prevent rolling blackouts and increased electricity prices in California, according to author Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa). It allows Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to continue operating the plant until 2030. It also authorized a forgivable loan of $1.4 billion from the state to help extend the operations.

PG&E agreed six years ago to close the San Luis Obispo plant amid pressure from environmental groups and the local community.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement she welcomed the news.

“This short-term extension is necessary if California is going to meet its ambitious clean-energy goals while continuing to deliver reliable power,” Feinstein wrote. “This is especially critical as California’s electric grid has faced increasing challenges from climate-fueled extreme weather events.”

Read more here...
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Socialism Sounds Good On Paper But It Was Deadly For The Pilgrims

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 12:40 PM
Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

When I was a kid, we used to say some things only “sound good on paper.” In other words, they seem like good plans, but there is no way they’re going to work in the real world.

That’s socialism in a nutshell.

The Pilgrims found this out the hard way during their first couple of years in North America. Their experiment in socialism turned out deadly.

Turns out, you can’t just ignore economics and human nature.

Socialism really does sound good on paper though, right? We’re all going to own everything together and take care of each other. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.“

It sounds so nice. And we all want to be nice, right? People are emotionally drawn to socialism because it sounds so good. It sounds fair. It sounds — nice.

But do you know what’s not nice?

Corpses.

That’s exactly what happened the Pilgrims got when they took a stab at socialism.

Most Americans don’t know that the Plymouth colony was originally an experiment in socialist utopianism and were it not for a complete 180 a couple of years in, we probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the bountiful feasts most of us will indulge in today. There would have been no Thanksgiving because there would have been nobody left to give thanks.

When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts on November 11, 1620, they placed all their food and provisions in a “common store.” These folks were forward thinkers. They didn’t even have Marx’s scribblings to appeal to. They set things up on the socialist principle of, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Things got off to a bad start in the new world. Conditions were miserable, as William Bradford described them.

That which was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, so as there died sometimes two or three of a day, in the aforesaid time; that of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained.”​

Now, the Pilgrim’s initial struggles didn’t really have anything to do with socialism. They just had the misfortune of landing in Massachusetts at the onset of winter. If you live in New England, you understand their pain.

But even after their first summer, things didn’t improve much. The following fall, the Pilgrims harvested their first crops and again, they all went into the common store.

Now, wasn’t that nice? No greed. Nobody getting any more than they should. Of course, nobody was getting much of anything at all – but still – they had to feel good about themselves, right? Because, after all, the system was fair.

So, in November the ship Fortune arrived with more than 30 new settlers, mostly young men. More manpower was welcome, but according to accounts, they brought “not so much as a bisket-cake” with them. Now they had a meager supply of food in the common store and even more mouths to feed.

The future looked bleak as food supplies ran out and the “planned socialist” community faced starvation yet again.

The following year, the harvest was poor in spite of the added manpower. Nevertheless, the pilgrims again put the meager harvest in the common store. Because, you know, it’s going to work this time!

It didn’t.

That winter, they starved.

The colonists were learning economics the hard way.

Richard Grant in his book The Incredible Bread Machine wrote:

“For two years the Pilgrims faithfully practiced communal ownership of the means of production. And for two years nearly starved to death, rationed at times to “but a quarter of a pound of bread a day to each person.” Governor Bradford wrote that “famine must still ensue the next year also if not some way prevented.” He described how the colonists finally decided to introduce private property:​
[The colonists] began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. [In 1623] after much debate of things, the Gov. (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set down every man for his own … and to trust themselves … so assigned to every family a parcel of land. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Gov. or any other could use, … and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”​

Reflecting on the experience of the previous two years, Bradford goes on to describe the folly of communal ownership:

“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Platosand other ancients, applauded by some of later times; — that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young-men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more indivision of victuals and cloths, than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice…”​

Woah! Some people resented doing all the work? They didn’t work as hard when they knew they weren’t going to directly benefit?

Shocking.

Actually, it’s not shocking at all. It’s human nature. And we all know it.

Now, we can lament the fact. We can say it shouldn’t be that way. We can finger-point and talk about greed. We can get all holier-than-thou and say we wouldn’t act that way (in other words lie). But people will still be people.

Here’s a harsh truth: good intentions and feel-good policies can’t trump basic economics. You can dream of unicorns and lollipops all day, but it won’t change reality.

Scarcity. Human behavior. Incentives. The experience of the Pilgrims vividly demonstrates basic economic principles. Their good intentions could not overpower the cold hard realities of economic principles. They never have. They never will.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, Or Home Alone?

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 09:45 AM
According to the Statista Global Consumer Survey and more than 1,000 U.S. respondents between the ages of 18 and 89, Thanksgiving with the family is still the way to celebrate the holiday this year.

Friendsgiving - or celebrating Thanksgiving with friends - was the next popular plan, with 17 percent of Americans saying they would celebrate this way. Friendsgiving was most popular with the 25-34 age group.

1669350586626.png
Infographic: Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving or Home Alone? | Statista
You will find more infographics at Statista

Almost one in eight Americans said they would likely celebrate alone - here older Americans were overrepresented. Only 3 percent said they would not celebrate at all, while 6 percent planned to be out at a restaurant.

According to the survey, 64 percent of respondent thought that the meaning of Thanksgiving was to spend time with family, while 61 percent saw it as a time to be thankful. 40 percent said they where out to have a good meal, 18 percent found meaning in watching football and 17 percent liked to remember the history of the celebration.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Housing Market Obliterated: Pending Home Sales Post Record Drop As Deal Cancelations, Price Cuts Hit Record High​

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 07:25 AM
Last week, we observed that delusion and hope can only last so long (even when one's salary depends on it) as US homebuilder confidence crashed to COVID lockdown lows in November after failing (or refusing) to see what was obvious to everyone for months, and what homebuyers were clearly feeling as prices soared along with mortgage rates and record low affordability for most Americans. And don't get us started on homebuyer confidence: just look at the red line below which has taken out all previous record lows (including the post-2006 housing bubble) and is hitting new record lows every single month...



Well, slowly but surely this epic collapse in sentiment is spreading to market metrics, and while it will take between 6 and 9 months for real-time data to reach the badly lagging government-level CPI and PCE data, what's taking place in the US housing market right now is nothing short of a meteor strike, with RedFin reporting in its latest market forecast that pending home sales fell the most on record in October and deal cancellations and price cuts hit record highs as buyers were spooked by the biggest mortgage-rate jump in over four decades.

Pending sales dropped 32.1% year over year last month, the largest decline since at least 2013, when Redfin’s records begin.



Nearly 60,000 home-purchase agreements fell through, equal to a record 17.9% of homes that went under contract.



Meanwhile, almost one-quarter (23.9%) of homes for sale experienced a price drop, double the rate of a year earlier.



Surging mortgage rates also caused would-be sellers to stay put due to the lock-in effect. The average 30-year-fixed mortgage was 6.9% in October, up 3.83 percentage points from 3.07% one year earlier—the largest year-over-year increase during any month since 1981. That contributed to a 24% year-over-year drop in new listings, the steepest decrease on record aside from April 2020, when the onset of the pandemic brought the housing market to a near halt.



“The Fed’s actions to curb inflation are causing the housing market to slow at a pace not seen since the financial crisis,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao. “There are already early but promising signs that inflation is cooling, which caused mortgage rates to drop last week. If that progress continues, buyers who recently backed out of deals may return to the market and sellers may be less inclined to slash their prices.”

Still, sale prices are only now just starting to fall as sellers, having held out until now, are starting to feel the need for liquidity and are increasingly hitting whatever bid they can see. And while the median U.S. home sale price declined 1.4% month over month—the largest slowdown during any October since 2012—it was still was up 4.9% from a year earlier. That will change very soon.



Prices may ease as listings linger on the market and competition slows. Homes that sold in October were on the market for a median of 35 days, up from 21 days a year earlier, and less than half (44.6%) of home offers written by Redfin agents faced competition. That compares with more than two-thirds (67.3%) in October 2021.



Here are the October highlights tabulated:



Again, none of this will show up in official US Dept of Commerce/BLS data until some time in the summer by which point the Fed may have hiked to 6% pushing the US into an all out depression.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Foxconn Offers Workers $1,400 To Leave China iPhone City After Mass Chaos​

THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 06:15 AM

Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn Technology Group has begun distributing 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to newly recruited workers to leave the world's largest iPhone factory in central China to quell the unrest, reported Bloomberg.

Late Wednesday, Foxconn proposed the payout plan to new hires, pleading with workers to return to their dormitories after days of chaos erupted at the factory in Zhengzhou. By Thursday morning, the move appeared to work as clashes with security guards seemed to have diminished.

A message obtained by CNN and Financial Times advised workers to "please return to your dormitories," and in return, they would receive 8,000 yuan if they agreed to leave Foxconn. Then another 2,000 yuan would be distributed to workers once they boarded the busses home.

Bloomberg noted one of the significant factors behind the unrest, which began on Tuesday, was that newly recruited workers were highly disappointed with false promises about higher wages. Then Foxconn 'apologized' for a "computer glitch" Thursday that led to an "input error" for some staff to get paid less. The Apple supplier said it would honor contractual obligations.

"Foxconn promised big money — up to Rmb15,000 a month — to quickly recruit thousands of new workers, but it doesn't seem to have materialized. That is why workers were so disappointed.
"The company is known for claiming to provide high wages then breaking their promises," Jenny Chan, a China labor expert at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told FT.

Videos went viral of the unrest at the iPhone factory on Wednesday.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1595484847023308805
.25 min

One blue-collar worker told FT, "We're happy" to take the 10,000 yuan deal to leave the plant over pay disputes but also because of Covid concerns.

China's strict "zero Covid" policy has already led Apple to warn about delays in iPhone production at the Zhengzhou factory. The latest round of unrest, and the most severe, could worsen the situation.

"We have Apple team members on the ground at our supplier Foxconn's Zhengzhou facility.

"We are reviewing the situation and working closely with Foxconn to ensure their employees' concerns are addressed," the company said in a statement to Bloomberg.


Bloomberg's breakdown of Apple's supply chain shows Foxconn (otherwise known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.) is a top supplier. Any manufacturing disruption in China could leave AT&T, Best Buy, and Verizon stores without iPhones.



Analysts estimate about 60% of all iPhones are produced at the Zhengzhou plant, which employs 200,000 workers. Apple has been shifting some production to India. There's still no official statement on how large the disruption will be.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
(China)

Beijing Is Back In Lockdown, Expect Turmoil

BY QUOTH THE RAVEN
THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 7:42
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

This morning I wanted to share some thoughts from my friend, former sell side analyst Anton Wahlman.

He wrote me this morning making note of news I had already seen earlier today. Namely, that Beijing, the most prominent and well-known Chinese city with a population of 22 million, was going back into Covid lockdown.

“CGTN, a Chinese state-run news channel has just announced Beijing and other cities are going back into lockdown. Schools, restaurants, gyms and other facilities closed this week to stop the Omicron variant,” he wrote me.

Recall, back in April of this year, I wrote an article called “Something Is Rotten In The State Of Shanghai’s Latest Covid Lockdowns”, asking the question of why the country continues to be so interested in being able to lock down and open up its economy like Xi Jinping flipping a lightswitch on and off.

Anton wrote this morning that one of the great unsolved mysteries is why China keeps doing this. He asked “They can’t be this stupid or evil, can they?”

Well, maybe the answer is found inside Occam’s Razor: Yes, they really are this stupid and evil.

Imagine how much stronger China would be without this nonsense. Why do they keep doing this to themselves? It’s like watching a crazy-person hit himself in the head with a hammer over and over again.

In a way, the Chinese leadership is doing us a favor. They are showing the rest of the world what we don’t want to become. It is a fresh reminder that QR codes and hall passes are alien to liberty and sanity.

Up until January 2020, I used to think that even if the Chinese leadership was evil, they were at least smart or cunning: “They have a great plan for taking over the world in 1 century, not 1 decade.” After having seen what they did over the last 3 years, I have lost all respect for their intelligence. Now I associate any references to “Chinese government” with “braindead morons.”

Anton told me he thinks the best description of the contrast between open society and authoritarian paranoia was stated by...(READ THIS FULL ARTICLE HERE).

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
 
Top