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Russia Remains Top Seaborne Oil Supplier To Europe Despite Sanctions

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Russia Remains Top Seaborne Oil Supplier To Europe Despite Sanctions

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com,

While the European Union’s seaborne imports of Russian crude oil declined by just over 12% last year, Russia still enjoyed status as the top seaborne oil supplier to the bloc, despite sanctions…

According to data from maritime sector brokerage firm Banchero Costa, last year saw the EU import 98.8 million tonnes of Russian crude via sea, down from 112.5 million tonnes in 2021 and 128.5 million tonnes in 2019.

For 2022, Russia still accounted for 21.9% of European seaborne imports of Russian crude, followed by the North Sea, which accounted for 17% and North Africa, at 15.4%.

North Sea shipments of oil to Europe were up by 19.2% year-on year, and well above 2019 numbers, while North African shipments of oil to Europe increased by 6%. Shipments from West Africa to Europe were up by 27.5% for 2022. The United States saw a 43.1% increase of crude oil exports to Europe for a record 51.4 million tonnes.

But the biggest surge came from the Arabian Gulf, registering a 76.4% increase year-on-year in 2022, though this is still down from the levels of 2019, while the U.S. exports to Europe were record-breaking.

Overall, Banchero said, citing Refinitiv data, “2022 has turned out to be a very positive year for crude oil trade, despite the surging oil prices and risks of economic recession”.

Globally, the data shows an 8.5% increase in total crude oil loadings, year-on-year. Total loadings came in at 2,047.3 million compared to 1,886.3 million for 2021 and 2,110.5 million tonnes for 2019.

Though Russia has seen its exports to the EU decline by over 12% last year, the data shows that overall it saw an increase in exports by 10.3% to 2018.5 million tonnes. That figure is only slightly below 2019 levels.

Likewise, the United States also experienced a surge in exports of crude oil, gaining over 22% in the twelve months of 2022, as did Saudi Arabia, showing an over 17% increase.

This compares to West Africa and the North Sea, both of which saw a decline in oil exports for 2022.

On the demand side of the equation, China’s intake of seaborne crude oil overall dropped by 3.6% last year, while India saw the reverse: an 11.7% increase in imports.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/20/2023 – 05:00

Morgan Stanley CEO: ‘Let’s Be Honest, Davos Is An Echo Chamber’

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Morgan Stanley CEO: ‘Let’s Be Honest, Davos Is An Echo Chamber’

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said on Thursday that the World Economic Forum at Davos is an “echo chamber,” telling Bloomberg “…this echo chamber we live in here in Davos where everybody’s basically repeating back to each other what they’ve heard from the last person. Let’s be honest.

Gorman echoed Tuesday comments by Semafor‘s Liz Hoffman, who in an article titled “Don’t bet on the Davos consensus,” writes that the annual meeting of the elites was “the world’s most expensive echo chamber, where nobody makes friends by being a bummer.”

The Davos consensus is shaped and refined as the weeklong conference goes on, passed among attendees alongside the plates of toothpicked olives and Gruyère cubes. By Friday it approaches canon.

And it is almost always wrong. An investor could do well boiling it down to a few investment theses and building a basket of assets to match — then wagering against it.

I’m hardly the first person to have pointed this out. Glenn Hutchins, the veteran investor who delights in needling his peers, says it nearly every year he’s there. -Semafor

“There’s nothing wrong with consensus views, but the key is to ask yourselves, where might we be wrong? Where are the blinders? And Davos isn’t conducive to that. You’re in an intense environment with very little time and very thin air,” said veteran investor Glenn Hutchins, who added that the right people are being asked the wrong question.

“What a potash CEO in Canada can tell me about his next 12 months of production and what that might mean for agricultural production is way more valuable than asking for his views on globalization.”

The WEF itself in 2017 actually asked two psychology professors why Davos Man is always wrong. One of them replied: “That’s actually not true…Whether the Davos Man is more accurate than the dart-throwing chimpanzee is another question.”

Gorman opines on inflation, Twitter

Giving some time to CNBC, Gorman said “Clearly inflation peaked. That’s no longer a question, it’s a fact,” adding, “The question is can they get to 2% and how hard will they try to get to 2% versus stabilizing around 3-4.”

He also spoke to China’s “major, major pivot.”

Gorman, 64, also said he isn’t worried about the debt ceiling impasse in Washington.

I’m confident that politics will finally get to the right place,” he said. “The other option is not an option.”

And just today, the Treasury announced extraordinary measures to grapple with the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.

He also decried the “echo chamber” at Davos, saying “..this echo chamber we live in here in Davos where everybody’s basically repeating back to each other what they’ve heard from the last person. Let’s be honest.”

When asked if Morgan Stanley might end up owning Twitter – given that roughly $3.4 billion of its balance sheet is tied up with loans it made as part of Elon Musk’s acquisition, Gorman said it “could not.”

“Twitter’s a great company,” said Gorman, adding “Elon Musk is one of the greatest entrepreneurs and business people in the last century.”

On Tuesday Gorman expressed optimism over the markets – saying on an earnings call, “I’m highly confident that when the Fed pauses, deal activity and underwriting activity will go up. I would bet the year on that, in fact,” adding “We’re not of the view that we’re heading into a dark period. Whatever negativity in the world is out there. That’s not our house view.”

“There’s a lot of money sitting around waiting to be put to work. Our job is to be the flow of capital between those who have it and those who need it. So I’m pretty confident actually about the outlook.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/20/2023 – 04:15

Europeans Lowered Heating Temperatures Amid The Energy Crisis

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Europeans Lowered Heating Temperatures Amid The Energy Crisis

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com,

Households in Europe have lowered the target temperatures in their smart thermostats this winter amid high energy bills and calls from governments to conserve energy, according to data from smart thermostats installed by German firm Tado and cited by Reuters.

Authorities in many European countries last autumn called on households and small businesses to conserve energy this winter as the continent was facing a possible shortage of gas supply after the Russian pipeline deliveries were slashed and after electricity prices surged, also due to low availability of the French nuclear power-generating fleet. In many countries, the thermostats in public buildings shouldn’t exceed 19 degrees Celsius (66.2 F) this winter.

Based on data for the last four winters – including this winter – households in Europe with installed Tado smart thermostats have lowered their target temperature so far this winter.

Households in northwestern Europe lowered the target temperatures by the most—by nearly 1 degree Celsius in the UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

In the UK, where the cost-of-living crisis has been acutely felt by households, a total of 79.6% of Tado-linked homes have dialed down their temperature settings, while only 47% of such homes in Norway did, per the data quoted by Reuters.  

It remains to be seen whether the warm start to the year in most of Europe and still ample gas levels in storage in mid-January will break the resolve of the Europeans to save energy.

In Germany, the situation with gas supply looks much better now compared to the bleak expectations of authorities before the heating season began.

Still, the German Federal Network Agency, Bundesnetzagentur, continues to call for energy and gas conservation.

Klaus Müller, the president of the agency, said on Tuesday, “Even if we can be optimistic about avoiding a gas shortage for the winter of 22/23, we have to start thinking about 23/24 now. To do this, we must continue to save gas, become more energy-efficient, expand renewables, connect LNG terminals and fill storage facilities.”   

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/20/2023 – 03:30

Over 1 Million Workers Hit French Streets Against Macron’s Pension Reform

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Over 1 Million Workers Hit French Streets Against Macron’s Pension Reform

President Macron’s retirement and pension reform program has unleashed the expected mass demonstrations, strikes, and likely soon to be riots on the streets of France. 

The much anticipated reform bill headed through parliament will see the official retirement age rise by two years, from the age of 62 to 64. And just like that, it’s popping off… as French authorities brace for more chaos in the coming weeks. Previously, the unions promised the “mother of all battles”.

As a result, public transport has seen significant disruptions in service, while many schools are already closed, amid some 200+ well-attended protests all across France on Thursday. 

Various forms of public transport were brought to a standstill in Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes and Nice, due to the strikes, and the Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors as well as the protests spread.

Eight major unions had designated Thursday the “first day of strikes and protests” – with promises of many more to come.

France’s education ministry said that over 40% of primary school teachers, as well as one-third of high school teachers are participating in the strikes, forcing many to close their doors for the day, and possibly weeks ahead.

French rail authority SNCF reported a “severe disruption” across the country, with metro lines in the capital having to implement partial closures. “On some rail lines, as few as one in 10 services were operating, while the Paris metro was running a skeleton service,” BBC reported.

A reported over one million people total are believed to have participated in Thursday’s protests and strikes, according to the unions, which plan to keep up the intense pressure until Macron’s bill is defeated.

Likely the demonstrations will get more and more radical and violent, as French protests tend to go

All the country’s unions – including so-called “reformist” unions that the government had hoped to win to its side – have condemned the measure, as have the left-wing and far-right oppositions in the National Assembly.

“On Thursday the walls of the Élysée palace must tremble,” Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel said on Tuesday.

In many places, crowds clashed with police, who deployed riot control measures including tear gas and batons, as they struggled to clear streets against vastly superior numbers.

Pleased with the huge turnout, the major unions are planning another nationwide strike and demonstration for January 31st.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/20/2023 – 02:45

Left-Wing German Politicians Furious At Appointment Of New Defense Minister… Because He’s A Man

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Left-Wing German Politicians Furious At Appointment Of New Defense Minister… Because He’s A Man

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Boris Pistorius’ appointment to the German Ministry of Defense contravenes Chancellor Scholz’s pledge for a gender-equal cabinet…

With Boris Pistorius set to be sworn in as Germany’s latest defense minister on Thursday, several politicians, including some within Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s own party, expressed their fury that the federal government will once again be a majority-male cabinet.

With Pistorius set to replace the outgoing Christine Lambrecht, whose reign at the German Ministry of Defense was littered with PR disasters and incompetence, the make-up of the federal government will be male-orientated — 9 males to 7 females.

The move temporarily contravenes a pledge made by then-Vice Chancellor Scholz in 2020, who tweeted:

“I am making the promise here today: At least half of the cabinet that I lead as Federal Chancellor is made up of women!”

Common sense suggests that competence should take precedence over gender quotas, particularly at a time of crisis, and Scholz believes his new man for defense has the “experience, competence, and assertiveness” needed to be “the right person for the Bundeswehr at this pivotal time.”

Other politicians, however, disagree, saying Scholz’s decision to appoint a man to the job is a dereliction of his electoral pledge for gender equality.

Maria Noichl, the chair of the Working Group of Social Democratic Women (ASF) and a member of Scholz’ SPD, demanded:

“Fifty-fifty must continue to apply. That is what the SPD stands for.”

Left-wing MP Emilia Fester, of the German Greens, tweeted on Tuesday:

“Is the Chancellor afraid of more competent women at his cabinet table? Pity!”

Transgender Greens MP Nyke Slawik blasted the fact that “several extremely qualified women were interviewed” for the role, but Scholz opted for Pistorius, adding:

“It’s a shame that the chancellor and the SPD gave up the goal they had set for themselves: parity in the cabinet.”

Sven-Christian Kindler, also of the Greens, quipped that “parity in management positions is not a ‘nice thing to have.’ It should be a matter of course in 2023.” Meanwhile, his party’s co-leader, Omid Nouripour, added, “We Greens will always make our contribution to parity — also in the cabinet.”

On Wednesday, government spokesperson Wolfgang Büchner was cited in the German tabloid Bild, insisting a “good and effective” personnel decision had been made. But he also alluded to the idea that gender parity in the cabinet may have to be restored.

The German tabloid highlighted, however, that not a single male minister in the cabinet had wanted to go on record to reveal they would be willing to make their position available to an equally qualified woman.

Pistorius will soon have the unenviable task of attempting to repair his country’s image among its Western allies as he takes charge of an ailing Bundeswehr. His challenges include overhauling the country’s security policy, but he must also face international calls to approve the sending of heavy-armored battle tanks to Kyiv, a move the Chancellor has so far refrained from making.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/20/2023 – 02:00

360-Degree Surveillance: How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships To Spy On Americans

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360-Degree Surveillance: How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships To Spy On Americans

Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry.

– Law Professor Avidan Y. Cover

In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public.

Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.  

There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.

With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.

Indeed, empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, police have become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.

As law professor Avidan Y. Cover explains:

A key feature of the surveillance state is the cooperative relationship between the private sector and the government. The private sector’s role is vital to the surveillance both practically and legally. The private sector, of course, provides the infrastructure and tools for the surveillance… The private sector is also critical to the surveillance state’s legality. Under the third-party doctrine, the Fourth Amendment is not implicated when the government acquires information that people provide to corporations, because they voluntarily provide their information to another entity and assume the risk that the entity will disclose the information to the government. Therefore, people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their calling data, or potentially even their emails. As a result, the government does not normally need a warrant to obtain information transmitted electronically. But the Fourth Amendment is not only a source of protection for individual privacy; it also limits government excess and abuse through challenges by the people. The third-party doctrine removes this vital and populist check on government overreach.

Critical to this end run around the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents is a pass play that allows police to avoid public transparency requirements (open bids, public meetings, installation protocols) by having private companies and individuals do the upfront heavy lifting, leaving police to harvest the intel on the back end.

Stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics, real-time crime centers, fusion centers: all of these technologies and surveillance programs rely on public-private partnerships that together create a sticky spiderweb from which there is no escape.

As the cost of these technologies becomes more affordable for the average consumer, an effort underwritten by the tech industry and encouraged by law enforcement agencies and local governing boards, which in turn benefit from access to surveillance they don’t need to include in their budgets, big cities, small towns, urban, suburban and rural communities alike are adding themselves to the surveillance state’s interconnected grid.

What this adds up to for government agencies (that is, FBI, NSA, DHS agents, etc., as well as local police) is a surveillance map that allows them to track someone’s movements over time and space, hopscotching from doorbell camera feeds and business security cameras to public cameras on utility poles, license plate readers, traffic cameras, drones, etc.

It has all but eliminated the notion of privacy and radically re-drawn the line of demarcation between our public and private selves.

Over the past 50 years, surveillance has brought about a series of revolutions in how governments govern and populations are policed to the detriment of us all. Cybersecurity expert Adam Scott Wandt has identified three such revolutions.

The first surveillance revolution came about as a result of government video cameras being installed in public areas. There were a reported 51 million surveillance cameras blanketing the United States in 2022. It’s estimated that Americans are caught on camera an average of 238 times every week (160 times per week while driving; 40 times per week at work; 24 times per week while out running errands and shopping; and 14 times per week through various other channels and activities). That doesn’t even touch on the coverage by surveillance drones, which remain a relatively covert part of police spying operations.

The second revolution occurred when law enforcement agencies started forging public-private partnerships with commercial establishments like banks and drug stores and parking lots in order to gain access to their live surveillance feeds. The use of automatic license plate readers (manufactured and distributed by the likes of Flock Safety), once deployed exclusively by police and now spreading to home owners associations and gated communities, extends the reach of the surveillance state that much further afield. It’s a win-win for police budgets and local legislatures when they can persuade businesses and residential communities to shoulder the costs of the equipment and share the footage, and they can conscript the citizenry to spy on each other through crowdsourced surveillance.

The third revolution was ushered in with the growing popularity of doorbell cameras such as Ring, Amazon’s video surveillance doorbell, and Google’s Nest Cam.

Amazon has been particularly aggressive in its pursuit of a relationship with police, enlisting them in its marketing efforts, and going so far as to hosting parties for police, providing free Ring doorbells and deep discounts, sharing “active camera” maps of Ring owners, allowing access to the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, which enables police to directly contact owners for access to their footage, and coaching police on how to obtain footage without a warrant.

Ring currently partners with upwards of 2,161 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments, and that number grows exponentially every year. As Vice reports, “Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.”

In November 2022, San Francisco police gained access to the live footage of privately owned internet cameras as opposed to merely being able to access recorded footage. No longer do police even have to request permission of homeowners for such access: increasingly, corporations have given police access to footage as part of their so-called criminal investigations with or without court orders.

We would suggest a fourth revolutionary shift to be the use of facial recognition software and artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics, clothing, behavior and car, thereby synthesizing the many strands of surveillance video footage into one cohesive narrative, which privacy advocates refer to as 360 degree surveillance.

Finally, Wandt sees autonomous cars equipped with cameras that record everything around them as yet another revolutionary expansion of surveillance to be tapped by police.

Yet in the present moment, it’s those public-private partnerships that signify a watershed moment in the transition from a police state to a surveillance state and sound a death knoll for our privacy rights. This fusion of government power and private power is also at the heart of the surveillance state’s growing stranglehold on the populace.

As always, these intrusions into our personal lives are justified in the name of national security and fighting crime. Yet while the price to be paid for having the government’s so-called protection is nothing less than our right to privacy, the guarantee of safety remains dubious, at best.

As a study on camera surveillance by researchers at City University of New York concluded, the presence of cameras were somewhat effective as a deterrent for crimes such as car burglaries and property theft, but they had no significant effect on violent crimes.

On the other hand, when you combine overcriminalization with wall-to-wall surveillance monitored by police in pursuit of crimes, the resulting suspect society inevitably gives way to a nation of criminals. In such a society, we are all guilty of some crime or other.

The predatory effect of these surveillance cameras has also yet to be fully addressed, but they are vulnerable to being hacked by third parties and abused by corporate and government employees.

After all, power corrupts. We’ve seen this abuse of power recur time and time again throughout history. For instance, as an in-depth investigative report by the Associated Press concludes, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. As the AP reports, federal officials have also been looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.

These cameras—and the public-private eyes peering at us through them—are re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear and, in the process, empowering “people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers,” creating not just digital neighborhood watches but digital gated communities.

Finally, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity. As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.

No one knows, but it’s a pretty good bet that the surveillance state will be keeping a close watch on anyone seen as a threat to the government’s chokehold on power.

It’s George Orwell’s 1984 on a global scale.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, Orwell’s dystopian nightmare has become our looming reality.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/20/2023 – 00:00

Long Chinese Stocks Seen Among Most-Crowded Trades

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Long Chinese Stocks Seen Among Most-Crowded Trades

By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporter and analyst

What a difference two months can make. In November, selling short Chinese stocks was considered by fund managers in a Bank of America survey as one of the most crowded trades. Now, bullish bets on Chinese equities made the list. It underscores the tremendous volatility Chinese assets have endured in recent months.

The BofA survey published this week showed that 12% of investors believed going long Chinese equities was one of the most-popular positions in global markets. It trailed only long-dollar and long-ESG positions, which garnered 32% and 17% of the votes, respectively. Two months ago, fund managers considered betting against Chinese stocks to be the second-most crowded trade after long-dollar positions.

The 180-degree shift in sentiment is hardly a surprise. Until late October, investors had been dumping Chinese assets as Covid restrictions sank the economy and President Xi Jinping installed his loyalists to the top leadership at the Party Congress. Over the past two months, China abandoned the Covid Zero policy, propped up the ailing housing market and turned more supportive on tech companies. Since hitting the lowest since 2009 in late October, the Hang Seng Index has jumped 48% in dollar terms as the best performer among the world’s major stock benchmarks.

A crowded position is generally viewed as a negative. When many investors are positioned the same way, there’s no marginal new buyers to push the market higher. And when the fundamental story changes and everyone heads for the exit, it exacerbates the selloff.

So should we be worried about investors being too sanguine? Not necessarily.

On the positioning front, the BofA survey does show fund managers are “unabashedly bullish” on China. A net 91% of fund managers expect a stronger Chinese economy, the highest percentage in 17 years.

In a separate survey of Asian managers, 42% said they are overweight China, up from 14% in October. In addition, 90% of them think Chinese stocks can deliver positive returns this year, even if US equities fall.

Still, it’s debatable whether the perception of China being crowded is accurate. While Asian investors are more bullish, US investors haven’t been fully on board with the “everything is great” narrative. A recent Morgan Stanley analysis showed that American fund managers have actually kept their underweight positions on China unchanged in recent months.

Secondly, there’s no clear catalyst to threaten the China recovery narrative when people are just returning to their work and when the policy objective is to get the economy going again. Until the recovery is well underway, it’s hard to prove the markets’ expectations on growth are unreasonable.

But leaving aside the question of whether the China trade is crowded or not, the volatility that the Chinese markets has shown over the past year clearly reduces the attractiveness for long-term investors.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/19/2023 – 23:40

After Teacher Shot By 6-Year-Old, Staff And Parents Blame Tolerance Of Violent Kids

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After Teacher Shot By 6-Year-Old, Staff And Parents Blame Tolerance Of Violent Kids

Shock over the shooting of a teacher by a 6-year-old in Newport News, Virginia has turned into anger, as both parents and staff say district officials tolerate violent students to bolster school ratings. 

On Jan. 6, a first-grader fired a single pistol shot at his 24-year-old teacher, Abby Zwermer. A bullet passed through her hand and into her chest, sending her to a hospital with a life-threatening wound. Last week, school officials say a staff member searched the shooter’s backback earlier that morning — after someone tipped them to the possibility he was armed — but didn’t find the weapon. 

Tuesday brought the first board meeting of Newport News Public Schools since the incident — and a stream of angry teachers and parents took to the podium to condemn a culture in which the pursuit of favorable district statistics means fostering an increasingly dangerous environment.  

Teacher Djifa Lee speaks at Tuesday’s Newport News Public Schools board meeting as superintendent George Parker listens (Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)

Former school psychologist Amber Thomas left the district after a 10-year career.  “A school counselor and I were often called to intervene with explosive behaviors, and the administrator would see what was going on and turn around and walk the other way,” Thomas told the board. 

“We see students being assaulted (and) we see teachers being assaulted…daily,” said elementary teacher Djifa Lee. “[Disciplinary] referrals are so closely tied to accreditation, and this puts educators and office staff or administrators in a tough position.”

A former employee told WAVY that, on multiple occasions, she initiated disciplinary referrals, but administrators failed to schedule follow-up meetings with parents and teachers. She says peers had similar experiences. 

“Every day in every one of our schools, teachers, students and other staff members are being hurt,” said high school librarian Nicole Cooke. “Every day, they’re hit. They’re bitten. They’re beaten. And [violent children] are allowed to stay so that our numbers look good.”

In a November board meeting, the district touted a 40% decline in disciplinary incidents and a 19% decrease in students being removed from instruction.  

“Ask any teacher in this school division why discipline incidents decline, and I have a feeling the response will be the same: Infraction numbers are down because incidents are not always officially reported,” said Cindy Connell, a middle school teacher in the district. 

Wary of officials’ focus on making the district’s statistics look better, Sarah Marchese, president of a high school Parent Teacher Student Association, asked for an external investigation of the disciplinary policies to be reviewed by an outside, impartial party. 

“Our administrators are under an intense pressure to make everything appear better than it is in reality,” Connell told AP.

The incident was the third shooting in the district since September 2021. “Enough is enough. What will it take? I pray it is not a fourth shooting, because that blood will be on your hands,” said parent John Krikorian. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/19/2023 – 23:20

CDC Knowingly Left Serious Adverse Events Off Post-Vaccination Surveys, Documents Show

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CDC Knowingly Left Serious Adverse Events Off Post-Vaccination Surveys, Documents Show

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

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) didn’t include serious adverse events like heart inflammation on post-vaccination surveys even though the agency knew the issues could be linked to COVID-19 vaccines, documents show.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images)

Even before the surveys were rolled out in December 2020 after the first vaccines were authorized, the CDC knew that myocarditis—a form of heart inflammation since confirmed as being caused by the Pfizer and Moderna shots—and other serious adverse events were of “special interest” when it came to the vaccines, according to a newly disclosed version of the protocol for the survey system.

The Nov. 19, 2020, protocol (pdf) for V-safe, the survey system, lists myocarditis, stroke, death, and a dozen “prespecified medical conditions.” The protocol was obtained by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit that seeks transparency around health information. All of the conditions can cause severe symptoms.

V-safe is a system of surveys that was introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to monitor vaccine safety. It was developed and is managed by the CDC.

Updated versions of the protocol list the same 15 adverse events.

None of the conditions were included in the actual surveys.

Respondents could check boxes if they experienced certain symptoms, but only 10 lower-level problems such as fever and nausea were listed as options.

It’s deeply troubling that the CDC would construct V-safe in a manner that does not permit it to be able to easily assess the rate of harm from adverse events the CDC had already identified as potentially being caused by these products,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer representing ICAN, told The Epoch Times. “This calls into question what the CDC was really trying to accomplish with V-safe. Was it trying to assess the actual safety of these products? Or was it trying to design a system that would be more likely to affirm its previous public pronouncements regarding the safety of these products?”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

V-Safe Data Finally Made Public

The CDC rolled V-safe out in December 2020. Americans were told to use the surveys, which are only available through smartphones, to report how they felt after vaccination.

“Through V-safe, you can quickly tell CDC if you have any side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine,” one poster promoting the tool stated.

Users were asked how they felt, whether they had a fever, their temperature, and common symptoms. They were also asked whether they were unable to work or go about their daily activities, and whether they needed medical care.

About 10 million people signed up through July 31, 2022.

The CDC has described the results of V-safe in multiple studies, but refused to release the raw data until ICAN brought litigation against it. Data released to ICAN in October 2022 showed that more than 3.2 million people sought medical attention or missed school, work, or other normal activities following vaccination.

The CDC posted some of the v-safe data on Dec. 1, 2022, several months after a self-imposed deadline passed.

Hiding Free-Text Entries

V-safe users could report the serious adverse events, but only if they wrote them out in a free-text field.

The prompt was, “Any other symptoms or health conditions you want to report.”

The CDC has resisted releasing the results from the field, insisting that it would be too onerous to review the 6.8 million entries for personally identifiable information (PII), according to a joint status report made to the court in November 2022.

The agency declined a request from ICAN to provide a random sample of a few hundred entries, which plaintiffs say would back their argument that the entries likely hold little or no PII such as names and addresses.

The entries are important because they would show how many respondents reported experiencing the prespecified adverse events like heart inflammation.

The CDC instead offered to review all the entries and convert them into medical codes, according to the filing.

“It was apparently willing to do this because, even though it would have been more time consuming and complex then simply reviewing for PII, this approach would permit the CDC to hide from the public most of what is actually written in the free-text fields,” ICAN said in the document.

Read more here…

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/19/2023 – 23:00

US Finalizing Next Ukraine Military Aid Package At $2.6 Billion

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US Finalizing Next Ukraine Military Aid Package At $2.6 Billion

The US is in the final stages of preparing a massive new military aid package to Ukraine which will total as much as $2.6 billion, the Associated Press previewed Wednesday night, and its to include nearly 100 Stryker combat vehicles – marking the first time the Stryker will be introduced to the Ukrainian battlefield – and at least 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

File image, USAF

It could be announced by the end of the week, and is expected to rank among the biggest single packages unveiled since the start of the war. When pressed for further details, State Department spokesman Ned Price simply said, “Two words: stay tuned.”

Similar to Bradley vehicles, the Stryker moves infantry across the battlefield, but are lighter and faster than the Bradley. “What we’re trying to look at is the mix of armored and mechanized forces that make sense,” undersecretary of defense for policy Colin Kahl said separately on Wednesday.

The Russians are really digging in. They’re digging in. They’re digging trenches, they’re putting in these dragon’s teeth, laying mines. They’re really trying to fortify that that FLOT, that forward line of troops,” Kahl continued.

“To enable the Ukrainians to break through given Russian defenses, the emphasis has been shifted to enabling them to combine fire and maneuver in a way that will prove to be more effective.”

But the real question is whether Washington will sign off on going past the ‘light tanks’ or mere troop carriers that it has currently limited itself to providing. The Scholz government of Germany surprised allies this week in saying it’s ready to approve sending German-manufactured Leopard tanks to Ukraine only if Washington leads the way in approving its own heavy tanks.

“Germany won’t allow allies to ship German-made tanks to Ukraine to help its defense against Russia nor send its own systems unless the U.S. agrees to send American-made battle tanks, senior German officials said on Wednesday,” according to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

But given Berlin knew that the Biden administration has shut the door on approving American M1 Abrams (at least for now), this could have been a ploy to effectively end the debate and take the pressure off the Scholz government.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/19/2023 – 22:40