Month: January 2022

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

2022 will be the year that people in their millions jump the sinking ship of big tech and move to newer independent, and uncensored platforms. Among plenty of others, that’s the prediction of Senator Rand Paul, who is leading the charge by voluntarily quitting YouTube in favour of Rumble.

“About half of the public leans right. If we all took our messaging to outlets of free exchange, we could cripple Big Tech in a heartbeat,” Paul announced in an op ed.

“So, today I take my first step toward denying my content to Big Tech. Hopefully, other liberty lovers will follow,” the Senator added.

He continued, “As a libertarian leaning Senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, however, those of us who believe that truth comes from disputation and that the marketplace of ideas is a prerequisite for innovation should shun the close-minded censors and take our ideas elsewhere, which is exactly what I’m doing.”

Paul called his “dysfunctional” interaction with Google a “toxic relationship” where his every word is scrutinised by politicised “fact checkers.”

“Sure, I can get millions of views. But why should I allow anonymous ‘fact-checkers’ to censor my fully sourced, fact-based content?” Paul asked, adding “They don’t want to challenge or debate me with opposing views, they just want my silence.”

The Senator described the unholy partnership of corporate media and big tech as a “Medieval church” decreeing that opinions deviating from the established narrative are too “dangerous” for people to be subjected to.

“An entire generation of young people, who use these platforms exclusively for their news, will never read or hear of opinions or ideas that challenge the Big Government / Big Tech orthodoxy,” the Senator urged.

“When I gave a speech on the Senate floor asking whether Eric Ciaramella, the Vindman brothers, and Adam Schiff’s legal team conspired while working at the White House to impeach the president, YouTube chose to censor and delete the video,” Paul further notes.

Paul also addressed the wholly unscientific mantra of ‘follow the science’, noting that “A hallmark of the scientific method is to challenge and disprove a hypothesis. Yet we have abandoned science and rational debate for an almost religious adherence to the edicts of government bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci. To challenge the data is to be ‘denier’ or ‘conspiracist’ who must be silenced.”

Paul’s move comes amid yet more rampant censorship efforts on behalf of Google, which is scrambling to take down Joe Rogan’s interviews with illustrious medical experts Dr Peter McCullough and Dr Robert Malone, merely because they have questioned the viability and logic of mass inoculation. They have also been charged with altering search results to suppress the content.

Twitter has also banned Malone, and last week banned sitting Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for “repeated violations” of its Covid misinformation policy.

The move prompted podcast giant Rogan to set up a GETTR account in anticipation of censorship becoming “dumber” at Twitter.

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For those that didn’t see the headline yesterday, former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty on 4 counts of fraud and conspiracy after weeks of deliberation and a trial that almost ended with a deadlocked jury.

In a note jurors sent to the judge overseeing the Holmes trial on Monday morning, jurors said that they had been unable to reach a unanimous verdict on 3 of the 11 counts against Holmes, the WSJ reported, raising the specter of a hung jury.

But by the afternoon, the jury was able to return a unanimous decision.

Most surprisingly was that Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors, but wasn’t found guilty of any charges involving defrauding patients. As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, that is especially surprising given the nature of the testimony given by patients during the trial. 

Among the testimony was stories from numerous patients describing test results that they believed were “simply wrong”, the Journal wrote. One such result told a woman she could be HIV positive; another incorrectly told a pregnant woman that she could be miscarrying.

Scientists from drug companies testified that Theranos’ technology was “unimpressive”, the Journal wrote. One even called Holmes “cagey”. 

The trial exposed that the company was using its finger-prick method of testing for just 12 types of patient tests, despite claiming that it could run “more than 200 health tests” using their proprietary device. 

Prosecutors during the trial argued that Holmes exposed both investors and patients to harm by peddling technology that didn’t work. In his closing statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Schenk said of Holmes: “She chose to be dishonest with her investors and with patients. That choice was not only callous, it was criminal.”

Recall, we reported yesterday that Holmes had been found guilty on 4 charges, including one count of conspiracy and 3 wire fraud charges that can cost Holmes up to 20 years in prison (as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution), per count. 

The jury found her not guilty of four other felony charges. On the three remaining charges, the jury was deadlocked.

1. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud against Theranos investors: Guilty

2. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud against Theranos paying patients: Not guilty

3. Wire fraud against Theranos investors: wire transfer of $99,990 from Alan Jay Eisenman: No verdict

4. Wire fraud against Theranos investors: wire transfer of $5,349,900 from Black Diamond Ventures: No verdict

5. Wire fraud against Theranos investors: wire transfer of $4,875,000 from Hall Phoenix Inwood Ltd.: No verdict

6. Wire fraud against Theranos investors: wire transfer of $38,336,632 from PFM Healthcare Master Fund: Guilty

7. Wire fraud against Theranos investors: wire transfer of $99,999,984 from Lakeshore Capital Management LP: Guilty

8. Wire fraud against Theranos investors: wire transfer of $5,999,997 from Mosley Family Holdings LLC: Guilty

9. Prosecutors dropped this count in November, after making an error that put the count in peril.

10. Wire fraud against Theranos paying patients: wire transmission of patient E.T.’s blood-test results: Not guilty

11. Wire fraud against Theranos paying patients: wire transmission of patient M.E.’s blood-test results: Not guilty

12. Wire fraud against Theranos paying patients: wire transfer of $1,126,661 used to purchase advertisements for Theranos Wellness Centers: Not guilty

Holmes remained seated and expressed no emotion as the verdicts were read. Her partner Billy Evans likewise remained still.

By Jan-Patrick Barnert, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and commentator

The consensus narrative for stocks this year seems to be clear: Watch inflation and central banks’ reaction to it amid slowing global economic growth. But that means a lot of moving parts and when the seasonal strength in January ebbs, the path to further gains this year might not be so easy.

European equities gained on the first trading day of the year and showed a slight tilt toward cyclical value stocks, with autos being Monday’s best-performing group. However, some defensives such as food and beverages and utilities also showed up in the upper half of the sector leaderboard in a sign that aggressive positioning isn’t the way to start this year.

 
“Tightening monetary policy and decelerating growth supports our large-cap, defensive quality bias,” Morgan Stanley U.S. equity strategists led by Michael Wilson writes.

Their defensive stance is based on leading indicators that point to decelerating purchasing manager indexes in coming months, they wrote
Company fundamentals also might have seen a large part of the joy already. “Europe’s 2022 earnings-growth story is hitting a bump as omicron spikes across the region and unresolved pandemic-related issues linger into the new year,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Tim Craighead writes.

 
Estimates for growth in European earnings per share this year have ebbed to just 6%, below the S&P 500 Index’s 8%, weighed down by supply-chain issues and cost inflation challenges, Craighead says.

Goldman Sachs strategists led by David Kostin recommend focusing on stocks with high growth and high margins and avoid firms with major exposure to wage inflation.

 
Yet despite the uncertainty from monetary policy, growth and the virus’s path, bullish sentiment has prevailed recently, with two minor corrections of about 6% being bought up quickly and mirroring a phase of market calmness last seen in 2013/2014.

And while 2021 was a strong year, the Stoxx Europe 600 Index’s history doesn’t scream sell either. Since inception in 1998, the European benchmark saw five years of gains of more than 20%, including 2021. Following such gains, the index advanced twice and fell twice in the year after, with the gains outpacing the losses.

Small Caps and Nasdaq are being sold hard as the US equity cash markets opened this morning, with Nasdaq erasing all of yesterdays gains…

As Treasury yields extend their rather serious spike higher…

The dollar is now puking too…

It seems 2022 is all about volatility for now.

After nearly a full year of massive, consecutive monthly increases in job openings as employers scrambled to find qualified workers, today the BLS reported that in the past few months, the number of job openings in the US finally reached a peak, and reversed materially in November, when the latest JOLTS Job Openings and Labor Turnover data showed the biggest drop since the peak of the covid Pandemic, as a whopping 529K job openings were lost in November, the most since the 1.139 million jobs lost in April 2020. Still, even with the big drop, the total number of job openings remains a massive 10.562 million (which was below the 11.1 million expected) and not too far off the 11.1 million all time high.

Looking at the details, job openings decreased in several industries with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services (-261,000); construction (-110,000); and non-durable goods manufacturing (-66,000). Job openings increased in finance and insurance (+83,000) and in federal government (+25,000). The number of job openings decreased in the South and Midwest regions

What we find remarkable is that even despite the plunge in job openings, as a result of the parallel collapse in unemployed people, there was a new record, or 3.7  million, more vacant jobs than unemployed workers in November, confirming that the US labor market remains painfully cracked.

And with far more job openings than unemployed workers, this meant that in November there were again less than 1 unemployed workers – a record low 0.6511 to be exact – for every job opening, down from 7841 in July, and down from 0.6689 in October and down from a record high 4.6 at the peak crisis moment last April.

Offsetting the modest drop in job openings in November, we saw a modest rebound in hiring: according to the BLS, hiring rose by 191K to 6.697 million, the highest since July’s 6.761 million.

But perhaps the most interesting highlight of today’s JOLTS report was neither the openings nor the hiring activity, but rather the number of quits, which unexpectedly soared to an all time high, jumping in November by  370K to a record 4.527 million.

Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000). The number of quits increased in the Northeast, South, and Midwest regions.

The quits rate of 3.0%, matched a series high last seen in September, as quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000). The number of quits increased in the Northeast, South, and Midwest regions.

As a reminder, this “take this job and shove it” indicator is generally seen as a real-time proxy of how marketable employees think they are, as they tend to quit jobs and look for higher paying occupations when the job market is red hot. And since it tends to lag peaks in job openings modestly, the surge in quits was probably not all that surprising.

Hundreds of motorists have been stranded on Interstate 95 in northern Virginia for at least 15 hours after the region was hammered with a major snowstorm on Monday, according to local news WTOP. 

Traffic on I-95 came to a standstill Monday between Ruther Glen, Virginia, in Caroline County and exit 152 in Dumfries, Prince William County, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) said.

#BREAKING: I-95 NB & SB CLOSED between exit 152 (Dumfries) and exit 104 (Carmel Church). More: https://t.co/KMb67sifDM pic.twitter.com/Eu70iCjS2R

— VDOT Northern VA 😷 (@VaDOTNOVA) January 4, 2022

“We know many travelers have been stuck on Interstate 95 in our region for extraordinary periods of time over the past 24 hours, in some cases since Monday morning. This is unprecedented, and we continue to steadily move stopped trucks to make progress toward restoring lanes. In addition to clearing the trucks, we are treating for snow and several inches of ice that has accumulated around them to ensure that when the lanes reopen, motorists can safely proceed to their destination,” said Marcie Parker, the agency’s Fredericksburg District engineer.

A combination of nearly a foot of snow and traffic collisions brought the stretch of highway to a standstill. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Emily Clementson, a truck driver, told NBC Washington. 

On Tuesday morning, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine tweeted that he was among those stranded.

“I started my normal 2 hour drive to DC at 1pm yesterday. 19 hours later, I’m still not near the Capitol,” Kaine tweeted.

NBC News correspondent Josh Lederman is another motorist stuck about 30 miles south of Washington, D.C. He told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that he “doesn’t have any food or water. I have gas, but how long is that going to last?” 

.@JoshNBCNews joins us from his car on I-95, where he has been stuck overnight with his dog as a result of the winter weather. pic.twitter.com/s2nN4uaqp6

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) January 4, 2022

Local television station 8News said dozens of motorists contacted them in desperation, saying this has been a nightmare with no sign of relief. 

“Everybody right now is just sleeping it off,” said Marvin Romero, who has been stranded in his car with his two daughters since 3 p.m. Monday.” [We’ve been] waiting for the time when we can finally be free from this.”

VDOT has yet to provide a timetable on when the highway congestion will free up. Meanwhile, people are starving and freezing as their car’s fuel level dangerous sinks to low.  

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Dr. Robert Malone’s assertions about “mass formation psychosis” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic are underscored by the fact that authorities in the UK admitted to using “totalitarian” methods of “mind control” to instill fear in the population.

In Canada, the military also admitted launching a psychological operations campaign against their own people in order to manipulate them into compliance with COVID-19 restrictions and mandates.

During his viral podcast with Joe Rogan after he was banned by Twitter, Malone explained how the global population was being manipulated into remaining in a constant state of hysterical anxiety via mass formation psychosis.

“What the heck happened to Germany in the 20s and 30s? Very intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad. And how did that happen?” asked Malone.

“The answer is mass formation psychosis.”

“When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere,” he added.

On Joe Rogan, Dr Robert Malone suggests we are living through a mass formation psychosis.

He explains how and why this could happen, and its effects.

He draws analogy to 1920s/30s Germany “they had a highly intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad” pic.twitter.com/wZpfMsyEZZ

— Mythinformed MKE (@MythinformedMKE) January 1, 2022

“And one of the aspects of that phenomenon is that the people that they identify as their leaders, the ones typically that come in and say you have this pain and I can solve it for you. I and I alone,” Malone further explained, “Then they will follow that person. It doesn’t matter whether they lied to them or whatever. The data is irrelevant.”

“We had all those conditions. If you remember back before 2019 everyone was complaining, the world doesn’t make sense and we are all isolated from each other.”

“Then this thing happened, and everyone focused on it,” stated Malone, noting,

“That is how mass formation psychosis happens and that is what has happened here.”

Malone’s summary of how health authorities seized on the unifying threat of the COVID-19 pandemic and exaggerated its thread to create mass hysteria is backed up by leaked details of how the UK government manipulated its population during the early days of the pandemic.

As first revealed by author and journalist Laura Dodsworth, scientists in the UK working as advisors for the government admitted using what they now admit to be “unethical” and “totalitarian” methods of instilling fear in the population in order to control behaviour during the pandemic.

“Use of fear to control behaviour in Covid pandemic was ‘totalitarian’, admit scientists”

⁦From ‘A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic’ https://t.co/gD6HFUkQqW

— Laura Dodsworth (@BareReality) May 14, 2021

The London Telegraph reported the comments made by Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B), a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) the government’s chief scientific advisory group.

The report quotes a briefing from March 2020, as the first lockdown was decreed, that stated the government should drastically increase “the perceived level of personal threat” that the virus poses because “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”.

One scientist with the SPI-B admits that “In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.”

The unnamed scientist adds that “The way we have used fear is dystopian.”

The scientist further confessed that “The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”

Another separate scientist on the subcommittee professed “You could call psychology ‘mind control’. That’s what we do… clearly we try and go about it in a positive way, but it has been used nefariously in the past.”

Another scientist warned that “We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in,” adding “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise.”

🚨From the book by @BareReality:

🗣️”Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.” – SPI-B member

Story via @Telegraph,https://t.co/43oMh99H7e https://t.co/NcbxY0Gt2p

— Steve Baker MP FRSA (@SteveBakerHW) May 15, 2021

According to the report, another researcher with the group acknowledged that “Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon,” adding that “Psychology has had a really good epidemic, actually.”

Yet another scientist on the subcommittee stated that they have been “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology” over the past year, and warned that “psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative.”

“They have too much power and it intoxicates them”, the scientist further warned.

In addition to the UK government’s response, it was also revealed that the Canadian military launched a psychological operations program against their own citizens in the early days of the pandemic order to amplify government messaging and “head off civil disobedience.”

Mass Psychosis is a myth the same way military running clandestine propaganda campaigns against its citizens is public health. https://t.co/zeDThlGKJP

— Frank (@lastofthefranks) January 2, 2022

“Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public,” reported the Ottawa Citizen.

Meanwhile, following early efforts to bury the term altogether, Google is now desperately rigging its search results to return only negative articles about “mass formation psychosis” and Dr. Malone.

Google’s current top search result link for “mass formation psychosis” is a Forbes hit piece that recycles dubious claims Dr. Malone already debunked during his Rogan appearance.

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After yesterday’s disappointing Markit survey of US Manufacturing, analysts expected ISM Manufacturing to print lower and its did significantly. December ISM Manufacturing printed 58.7, well below the 60.0 expected and the 61.1 prior as it caught down to the 12-month lows of Markit’s measure…

Source: Bloomberg

Moist notably, Prices Paid tumbled in December to its lowest since Nov 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

Orders dropped modestly also. The ISM’s factory production measure slipped to 59.2, the lowest since July but robust by historical standards. The pullback may reflect disruptions due to the omicron variant.

Improved delivery times and lower input prices typically indicate softer demand. However, ISM claims that the latest declines suggest capacity constraints are beginning to loosen. That’s welcome progress for manufacturers who have struggled to keep up with demand because of materials shortages, hiring challenges and transportation bottlenecks.