Via CreditNews.com,

Last week, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to accelerate the forgiveness timeline for the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan.

Starting next month, eligible borrowers – those who have made at least 10 years of monthly payments and initially borrowed $12,000 or less for college expenses – will have their entire balances forgiven.

The Education Department is fast-tracking this debt relief months ahead of the original July 1, 2024 date.

“Beyond being the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever available, the Biden-Harris Administration designed the SAVE Plan to put community college students and other low-balance borrowers on a faster track to debt forgiveness than ever before,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

The Education Department urges all borrowers who originally borrowed $12,000 or less to apply for SAVE as soon as possible.

The loans of eligible recipients will be discharged automatically, requiring no action on their part.

“I want folks to recognize [that it takes] 10 minutes to fill out the SAVE plan, and you could be getting an email as early as February telling you that your debt is cleared out,” Cardona said.

SAVE enrollments are on the rise

SAVE—an income-driven repayment plan that adjusts borrowers’ monthly payments based on income and family size—has seen a massive surge in enrollment lately.

As of early January, 6.9 million borrowers had already enrolled in the SAVE Plan, more than double the number of people who enrolled in the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan that the SAVE Plan replaced in August.

Borrowers on SAVE are repaying an estimated $374 billion in federal student loans, which amounts to nearly 30% of all Direct Loans dollars in repayment, deferment, or forbearance.

SAVE enrollees have been reporting significant financial benefits compared to the previous REPAYE Plan, with 3.9 million reportedly having a $0 payment and others saving an estimated $117 a month.

“With lower monthly payments, protection from runaway interest, and faster timelines to debt forgiveness, President Biden’s SAVE plan is not only benefiting millions of current borrowers but also providing the students of today and tomorrow with a more affordable pathway to college degrees and credentials,” Cardona said.

More forgiveness to come?

The SAVE Plan forgiveness is yet another initiative by the Biden-Harris Administration to take the burden of student debt off Americans’ shoulders.

According to Creditnews Student Debt Tracker, the administration has already approved nearly $132 billion in targeted relief for over 3.6 million borrowers.

Next up are the 6.9 million SAVE borrowers, with potentially more to come as Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign goes into full swing.

Iran’s Tuesday missile and drone strikes targeting Sunni jihadists in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province have as expected unleashed a diplomatic war between Tehran and Islamabad.

Pakistan started its response by recalling its ambassador from the Iranian capital Wednesday, while also booting the Iranian ambassador from Pakistan. Pakistani officials say that two children were killed in what Iran said was a response to the January 3rd suicide bombings of Kerman city, which killed over 100 people.

“Last night’s unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty by Iran is a violation of international law and the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,” Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch has stated. “It is even more concerning that this illegal act has taken place despite the existence of several channels of communication between Pakistan and Iran.”

“Pakistan reserves the right to respond to this illegal act. The responsibility for the consequences will lie squarely with Iran,” the spokeswoman added. “We have conveyed this message to the Iranian Government. We have also informed them that Pakistan has decided to recall its ambassador from Iran and that the Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan who is currently visiting Iran may not return for the time being.”

Iranian state media has said the attack destroyed two sites belonging to the terrorist organization Jaish al-Adl. It is a region that Tehran authorities have long viewed as a hotbed of terrorism and the source of frequent cross-border attacks: 

Authorities in Balochistan province told CNN two girls had died and at least four people were injured. The girls, aged eight and 12, were killed in houses that were damaged in the attack in the village of Koh-e-Sabz in Kulag, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Panjgur district, on Tuesday evening, according to the district’s deputy commissioner Mumtaz Khetran. Khetran also said a mosque near the homes was targeted and hit in the strikes.

Koh-e-Sabz — about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Pakistan’s border with Iran — is known to be the home of Jaish al-Adl’s former second-in-command Mullah Hashim, who was killed in clashes with Iranian forces in Sarawan, an Iranian region adjacent to Panjgur, in 2018.

Interestingly, China has intervened diplomatically, urging both sides to react with calm and restraint. The Chinese Foreign Ministry Wednesday urged for both sides to “avoid actions that would lead to an escalation of tension and work together to maintain peace and stability in the region.”

To review of fast-moving events Wednesday, according to a regional correspondent:

• Pakistan recalls ambassador in Tehran, kicks out Iran ambassador
• Iranian reports on border clashes
• IRGC commander killed 
• China mediation failed: local media 
• Unconfirmed reports that border shut 
• Saudi mediating 
• India statement backs Iran

ALERT: The United States condemns Iran’s strike in Pakistan, adding Iran is the leading funder of terrorism in the region: Spokesperson for State Department, Matthew Miller. pic.twitter.com/EhttTDFDi2

— The Khorasan Diary (@khorasandiary) January 17, 2024

The United States was among those countries that condemned Iran’s attack which was deep into Pakistani territory. The situation remains dangerous also because Pakistan is a nuclear power. 

Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Florida mother of five Nicole Andrews puts it bluntly when asked why she sends her children to a charter school instead of the assigned public school for their community.

She “absolutely, desperately” wants her youngsters in charter school because it has “a different culture,” she told The Epoch Times. Other parents feel the same way.

“There is a different level of expectation and rigor” at St. Johns Classical Academy, Ms. Andrews said.

“There is a different value set. There is a different mindset as to the value of education.”

There’s also a waiting list for slots at both of the school’s campuses, in Fleming Island and Orange Park, in the northeastern area of the state. The school opened in August 2017 and is free to attend.

Ms. Andrews is among hundreds of thousands of parents across America who are making the switch from public schooling to some other form of education as part of a nationwide rallying cry for “school choice.”

In general, school choice allows parents to request that the taxpayer dollars assigned to their child for education be used for other options. That could mean transferring the money to a charter school, using it for tuition for a private school, or taking it as reimbursement for homeschooling expenses.

Recently, many states have adopted legislation to put into place some form of school choice program.

Presently, 10 states have what’s known as universal school choice, meaning it’s open to any child. Those states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina.

Many other states have a school-choice program for at least some children, with a range of criteria to qualify. Some serve children in a low socio-economic demographic. Others offer assistance to children with learning disabilities or other special needs.

In some states, programs allow public dollars set aside for each child’s education to follow a child leaving public school. Then, that money can be used for tuition for private schools. Or the money may be transferred to fund that child’s slot at a charter school.

Charter schools are publicly funded, but operate independently from the public school system.

In some states, school choice means that even parents who choose to homeschool can use public dollars allotted to educate their children on things like curriculum and tutoring.

The options vary from state to state. And the amount of public money set aside for each child usually ranges from between $5,000 to $8,000, depending on the state.

The Department of Education reports that the government spent an average of $14,295 per student in public schools from elementary through 12th grade in the 2020–2021 school year.

Many conservatives support the idea of school choice, saying it will force failing public schools to improve or lose students. And more importantly, they say, those failing schools will lose the funding they receive to educate the children who leave.

Some parents who’ve previously paid for their children’s private school tuition or homeschooling expenses on their own, with no government assistance, say school-choice programs bring about much-needed fairness.

That’s because—by paying taxes—those parents contribute to the public money used to pay for public education. But they’ve received none of the benefit, and still have to cover the costs of their children’s education.

There’s also a strong lobby movement that’s against school choice.

Public schools are deeply connected to some of the most potent activist groups in American society—the teachers’ unions.

And though polls show parents strongly favor school choice, unions are adamant in their opposition.

“Vouchers take scarce funding from students in public schools and give those resources to unaccountable private schools,” the National Education Association (NEA) states on its website.

The NEA also say that vouchers, used in school choice programs, don’t support disabled students, don’t protect the human and civil rights of students, and “exacerbate segregation.”

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) states on its website that evidence “does not support the argument that vouchers and other methods to establish a market system of schools will improve school or student performance.”

The NEA and AFT are two of America’s largest unions, with a combined total of more than 4.7 million members.

The Epoch Times contacted both unions but received no response by publication time.

Parents told The Epoch Times they hope school choice and the competition it creates will eventually make education better for everyone.

“I think that once you take an institution, and make it a public institution, and have large governmental control over it, you’re going to lose some quality,” Ms. Andrews said.

“Lord willing, public institutions will have to change their game a bit, and everyone will benefit.”

School Choice Options

School-choice programs vary widely.

Some states, such as Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, offer the use of an education savings account (ESA). An ESA gives money to parents in a bank account, and funds can be spent on educational expenses, such as school tuition, textbooks, private tutoring, and school supplies.

Other states, such as Florida, Arkansas, and Wisconsin, offer vouchers, which take the money set aside to educate children in public schools and allow parents to spend it on tuition for private schools. Voucher money also can be transferred to a charter school.

Still others offer tax-credit scholarships. These allow taxpayers to receive tax credits when they donate to nonprofits that provide scholarships to private schools. Parents can apply for these scholarships for their children.

In other states—including Alabama, Illinois, and Louisiana—qualifying parents receive tax credits for paying for their children’s private schooling.

Alaska offers state funding for some private schooling through “correspondence study programs.” These programs allow a student to receive an individualized learning program and options normally unavailable in public schools, such as resources from religious groups or private tutoring.

Many states allow families to open college savings investment accounts to help with educational expenses. These accounts allow families to deposit pre-tax money into investment accounts. Recently, some states have changed the rules on these accounts so parents can spend some of this money on childhood education expenses.

In 1990, school-choice options like these were practically nonexistent.

As of 2023, America had about 700,000 school-choice programs, according to statistics from EdChoice, an Indiana nonprofit that promotes school choice.

With so many Americans increasingly taking advantage of school-choice options, this may be just the beginning of a movement that would fundamentally reshape American public education, EdChoice president Robert Enlow told The Epoch Times.

“This year has been the year of universal choice, where we now have 10 states that basically allow every single student in the state to attend whatever setting works best with them—public, private, charter, at home, or online,” Mr. Enlow said. “We’re really excited about that growth.”

For homeschooling parents, receiving state money can make a huge difference, homeschooling mother Kimberly Ebbers told The Epoch Times.

She quit her job to give her three sons an education at home. She’s been teaching them for 22 years.

“In the beginning, we didn’t take vacations and buy new clothes and eat out,” said Ms. Ebbers, who lives in Florida. “We sacrificed so that I could stay home.

“It was just important to us to be with our children and for our children to be with each other.”

In 2023, Florida passed legislation allowing for universal school choice, which means even homeschooling children are eligible for funding from the state for educational expenses.

But surprisingly, the Ebbers family isn’t interested in using the state’s money.

State money can mean state control over education to some degree, Ms. Ebbers said.

“In the future, it may lead to them choosing our curriculum or other choices like that,” she said.

However, money from the state could be a blessing to families with children with disabilities, she said.

“I do have friends that have kids with special needs that have to have services, like speech pathology, or physical therapy, or occupational therapy. And it’s expensive, going every week to those appointments and paying out-of-pocket costs.”

Florida homeschooling mother of five Michelle Jernigan told The Epoch Times she greatly appreciates new laws that give homeschoolers aid in educating their children.

“I’m very grateful to the state for making it so we’re able to afford things we were never able to afford before for my kids,” Ms. Jernigan said. “And it has made a big difference in their education.”

Read more here…

Bone-chilling temperatures in the US Midwest have forced oil and gas producers in North Dakota to curb output because of operational disruptions stemming from freeze-offs and shut-ins. 

Bloomberg reports 650,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil output a day have been taken offline. The state, home to the Bakken shale formation, produced 1.2 million barrels a day on average in October. 

Average temperatures across the state have averaged below zero for nearly a week. The good news: Temps are expected to rise to 30-year norms by the end of the month, but forecasts at the moment show another possible cold blast slated for early Feb. 

Average temps across the Midwest region are expected to rise from about zero to the 30-year trend of around 30F by next week. 

In natural gas markets, energy research firm Criterion Research said Rockies NatGas production is set to return to normal levels following operational disruptions.  

Within the Rockies production areas, temperatures remain brutally cold in the Williston Basin for the next three days. The DJ Basin (Colorado/Wyoming) will see a return to the 15-20F range as well by the end of the week, whereas San Juan/New Mexico temps gradually warm into the weekend.

As of today, Rockies supply levels remain at lows of 9.36 Bcf/d.

Besides disruptions to oil and NatGas production, several power grids have been under strain because cold weather has boosted heating demand to record highs. Texas’s power grid had issues earlier this week, while the Tennessee Valley Authority asked customers Wednesday morning to conserve power.

Also, in Texas, critical energy export terminals in the Gulf were disrupted earlier this week due to the cold. 

News today: Motiva Enterprises’ Port Arthur Refinery, the largest oil refinery in North America, with a capacity of 630,000 barrels per day, in Port Arthur, Texas, suffered disruptions due to cold weather. 

Winter storm throttles US shale production, causing power outages, refinery shutdowns, and production stoppages—taking hundreds of thousands of barrels offline.

TotalEnergy’s Port Arthur (Texas) refinery faces power outage, as North Dakota’s output is halved.

— OPEC News+ (@OPECnews) January 17, 2024

Someone needs to tell the unelected officials at WEF that folks in the Western Hemisphere would like more global warming ASAP.  

Authored by Savannah Fortis via CoinTelegraph.com,

As 2024 anticipates a global election cycle, OpenAI says it wants to prevent AI misuse, bring transparency, and enhance voter access to accurate voting information.

OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, released a new blog post outlining its approach to the 2024 elections on a global scale. 

Its main emphasis is to bring transparency, enhance access to accurate voting information and prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI).

While highlighting the need to protect the integrity of the collaborative nature of elections, OpenAI wants to make sure its AI service “is not used in a way that could undermine this process.”

The company said protecting the integrity of elections is an effort involving everyone, and it wants to make sure its technology “​​is not used in a way that could undermine this process.”

“We want to make sure that our AI systems are built, deployed, and used safely. Like any new technology, these tools come with benefits and challenges.”

OpenAI says it has a “cross-functional effort” dedicated explicitly to election-related work that will quickly investigate and address potential abuse.

Among these efforts include preventing abuse, which it defines as “misleading deep fakes,” chatbots impersonating candidates or scaled influence operations. It said one of its measures has been implementing guardrails on Dall-E to decline requests for image generation of real people, including political candidates. 

In August 2023, regulators in the United States were even considering regulating political deep fakes and ads generated using AI before the 2024 presidential elections.

Politicians in the U.S. have expressed skepticism that tech companies will be able to rein in their powerful AI systems.

At a congressional hearing in May where OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman testified, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) used a demonstration of his AI-generated voice reading a statement to highlight the risks.

“What if it had provided an endorsement of Ukraine surrendering or Vladimir Putin’s leadership?” he said.

Altman responded to some of the concerns by asserting that OpenAI’s chatbot was “a tool, not a creature,” and “a tool that people have great control over.”

OpenAI said building applications for political campaigning and lobbying is currently not allowed.

Already, a politician running for U.S. Congress already employs AI as a campaign caller to help reach more potential voters.

The AI developer said it’s also working on constantly updating ChatGPT to provide accurate information from real-time news reporting around the globe while directing voters to official voting websites for more information. 

AI’s influence on elections has been a major topic of discussion already, with Microsoft even releasing a report on AI usage on social media having the potential to sway voter sentiment.

Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot has already been under scrutiny after Europe-based researchers found that it gave misleading election information.

Google has been particularly proactive in its stance regarding AI and elections. In September, it made AI disclosure mandatory in political campaign ads, along with limiting answers to election queries on its Bard AI tool and generative search.

On Wednesday, just as the Biden administration has redesignated Yemen’s Houthis (or Ansar Allah movement) a global terrorist organization, the group has again launched an attack on a commercial vessel in the Red Sea, which suffered a direct hit.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued a new alert describing an incident 60 nautical miles southeast of Yemen’s Aden. The report indicates that “vessel has been hit on the port side by an uncrewed aerial system.”

This marks a handful of serious attack incidents in the vital waterway since the weekend, also following the US conducting a third round of missile strikes on Houthi launch sites on Tuesday, but which were smaller than the prior waves of attacks.

A spokesman for the Yemeni group has specifically responded to Washington’s terror designation, telling Reuters that the “attacks on ships in the Red Sea heading to Israel will continue despite the designation.”

The Wednesday announcement from the White House reverses a 2021 decision wherein the Iran-linked group was delisted, as part of efforts to achieve peace between the rebels and Saudi-UAE coalition, which have been waging a brutal war since 2015.

According to details of the Wednesday terror designation:

Officials said the “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT) designation, which targets the group with harsh sanctions, was aimed at cutting off funding and weapons the Houthis have used to attack or hijack ships in vital Red Sea shipping lanes, as a response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

“These attacks fit the textbook definition of terrorism,” said one of three administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of the announcement, on condition of anonymity.

The White House’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the designation, which comes into effect in 30 days, could be reevaluated if the Houthis stop their attacks in the Red Sea.  

There are now close to 50 vessels worldwide which broadcast AIS messages stating that they have nothing to do with Israel (some; even USA), including one which won’t even pass through the Red Sea area at all as it is heading to Malaysia from the Atlantic Ocean. pic.twitter.com/xeSy8BOdfu

— TankerTrackers.com, Inc. (@TankerTrackers) January 17, 2024

With Gaza’s civilian death tolls till soaring, the Iranians are likely to also remain undeterred in funding and assisting the Houthis. In the meantime, US coalition airstrikes on Yemen are likely to continue – and simultaneously Houthi drone and missile launches will persist. 

Maritime monitoring source Tanker Trackers has observed that vessels have increasingly opted for an interesting security measure: “There are now close to 50 vessels worldwide which broadcast AIS messages stating that they have nothing to do with Israel (some; even USA), including one which won’t even pass through the Red Sea area at all as it is heading to Malaysia from the Atlantic Ocean.”

Authored by Lee Fang via RealClear Wire,

Finances at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna began to fall almost as quickly as they had risen, as most Americans resisted getting yet another COVID booster shot. The pharmaceutical company, whose pioneering mRNA vaccine had turned it from small startup to biotech giant worth more than $100 billion in just a few years, reported a third-quarter loss last year of $3.6 billion, as most Americans refused to get another COVID booster shot.

In a September call aimed at shoring up investors, Moderna’s then–chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, attributed some of the hesitancy pummeling Moderna’s numbers to uninformed vaccine skeptics. “Despite some misinformation,” Garay said, COVID-19 still drove significant hospitalizations. “It really is a vaccine that’s relevant across all age groups,” she insisted.

To get past the “misinformation” and convince the public to take continual booster shots, Garay briefly noted that Moderna was “delving down” on ways to partner “across the ecosystem to make sure consumers are educated on the need for the vaccine.”

What Garay hinted at during the call, but didn’t disclose, was that Moderna already had a sprawling media operation in place aimed at identifying and responding to critics of vaccine policy and the drug industry. A series of internal company reports and communications reviewed by RealClearInvestigations show that Moderna has worked with former law enforcement and public health officials and a drug industry-funded non-governmental organization called The Public Good Projects (PGP) to confront the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by rapidly identifying and “shutting down misinformation.”

Part of this effort includes providing talking points to some 45,000 healthcare professionals “on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream.” PGP and Moderna have created a new partnership, called the “Infodemic Training Program,” to prepare health care workers to respond to alleged vaccine-related misinformation.

The company has also used artificial intelligence to monitor millions of global online conversations to shape the contours of vaccine-related discussion. The internal files — shorthanded here as the Moderna Reports — show high-profile vaccine critics were closely monitored, particularly skeptics in independent media, including Michael Shellenberger, Russell Brand, and Alex Berenson. PGP, which was funded by a $1,275,000 donation from the Biotechnology and Innovation Organization, a lobby group representing Pfizer and Moderna, has identified alleged vaccine misinformation and helped facilitate the removal of content from Twitter, among other social media platforms, throughout 2021 and 2022.

Emails from that period show that PGP routinely sent Excel lists of accounts to amplify on Twitter and others to de-platform, including populist voices such as ZeroHedge.

The messages also suggested emerging narratives to remove from the platform. “People opposed to vaccines are capitalizing on the NYT [New York Times] article about the CDC withholding vaccine information. The articles do not contain misinformation themselves but are using the news to further prove the CDC is untrustworthy,” wrote Savannah Knell, PGP’s senior director of partnerships, in an email to a Twitter lobbyist in September 2022. In another email the following month, Kaitlyn Krizanic, PGP’s senior program manager, told Twitter to be on the lookout for “reports that Sweden is no longer recommending the vaccine for children.” In some cases, conservative accounts expressing outrage at restrictive pandemic policies, such as vaccination passports, were deemed by PGP as “misinformation” that warranted removal.

The Moderna Reports consistently show the company raising red flags about those reporting documented side effects of the vaccine the biotech company was selling. Such concerns, which may be typical of corporate public relations efforts that want their product shown in the best light, take on a darker cast when it involves medicine injected into people’s bodies.

Like the Twitter Files, the Moderna Reports highlight the push by powerful entities – especially government, Big Tech, and Big Pharma – to identify and brand dissenting opinions about establishment narratives as risky forms of speech. The growing network these efforts rely on shows the growth of what has been called the censorship industrial complex. Moderna’s faltering financials also suggest, at least for now, the limits of that project.

Public Good Projects and Moderna did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Related: Moderna Is Spying on You by Lee Fang and Jack Poulson

In an internal email sent last July, Moderna notified its team of its latest efforts to shape the vaccine debate. “We have partnered with PGP (The Public Good Projects) and Moderna’s Global Intelligence, Corporate Security, Medical Affairs, Corporate Communications, Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance teams to provide media monitoring for misinformation at scale,” Marcy Rudowitz, the company’s customer program lead, wrote. “If and when a response is needed, our team will notify the appropriate stakeholders with recommendations,” she added.

The extent to which the company may intervene to shape content decisions is not clear. PGP continues to boast close relations with establishment institutions, including major medical associations. 

The rise of censorship is inextricably connected to the pandemic, which emerged in the U.S. in early 2020. As federal, state, and local governments imposed unprecedented regulations on Americans in the name of public health, efforts arose to discredit counter-narratives that could be spread easily on social media. Early in the pandemic, criticism of policies such as lockdowns and vaccine mandates came almost entirely from independent media, which faced shadowbans and outright censorship on various platforms.

When they introduced their vaccines in 2021, manufacturers such as Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson also had a powerful financial interest in bolstering such censorship.

Moderna, perhaps more than other drug firms, is overwhelmingly reliant on the continued success of its vaccine. The company announced a price hike of up to $130 a dose this month, far higher than the $15-26 for American federal contracts, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We’re expecting a 90% reduction in demand,” Modena CEO Stéphane Bancel said, when he was asked to defend the decision. “As you can see, we’re losing economies of scale.”

Far from acting as a neutral arbiter, the Moderna Reports show that the company blurred the lines between public relations and public health. In many cases, Moderna’s intelligence and communications team targeted accurate information that had “the potential to fuel vaccine hesitancy” as menacing forms of misinformation in its reports. Given the size and scope and the censorship industrial complex, it can be difficult to draw a clear straight line between Moderna’s surveillance and actions taken against specific articles, posts, and writers. Instead, as Garay suggested, the company is one stream in an evolving ecosystem aimed at undermining dissent.

Alex Berenson

Independent journalist Alex Berenson is a repeated subject of the company’s surveillance efforts. A former reporter for the New York Times, Berenson quickly emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of vaccine-related policies. He was among the earliest to cast doubt on the Biden administration’s false claim that the vaccinated people could not transmit the COVID-19 virus to others. After government pressure on Twitter, Berenson was banned from the platform in 2021, only to return after successfully litigating against the company.

He appears to still be in the crosshairs. In September 2023, Moderna flagged a tweet from Berenson that highlighted the CDC’s data showing that among 1 million mRNA-vaccinated teenagers, there were from zero to a single COVID death and up to 200,000 side effects.

The company cited Berenson’s tweet under a report headline “Attacks on pediatric COVID-19 vaccines escalate” and claimed he had “cherry-picked data.” However, the company did not directly rebut any of Berenson’s claims in its report. Rather, Moderna noted the “high-risk” danger of Berenson’s viral tweet related to the potential for low child COVID-19 vaccination rates. “Fears about side effects and long-term dangers are major reasons parents report not vaccinating their children,” the report stated. It further concluded that “resistance to COVID-19 vaccines for children can be a gateway to broader anti-vaccine beliefs.”

Other Moderna reports flag Berenson’s tweets for “misinformation about mRNA safety” and claim that he is a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting that health authorities have not properly taken into account the documented risks of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) for young men receiving the vaccine. Such questions have been posed by an increasing number of health professionals, but the misinformation reports dismiss any Berenson criticism as inherently false.

“It’s nice to know Moderna is watching me,” said Berenson, when asked about his response to the revelations. “I’m watching them too. mRNA shots carry unacceptably high heart risks for teenagers and young adults. Nearly the entire rest of the world accepts this reality and now discourages or bans people under 50 from taking mRNA Covid boosters. It is unconscionable that Moderna and Pfizer continue to market them to non-elderly adults.”

“They can call me whatever they like,” he noted, “but they can’t stop my reporting.”

Russell Brand

Russell Brand, the British commentator and comedian, is also a repeated name in the Moderna misinformation files. The left-leaning populist routinely pillories the pharmaceutical industry for exploiting the pandemic to generate unprecedented profits.

Moderna has closely monitored Brand’s criticism of the drug industry.

In various “low-risk” reports produced in August 2023, Moderna flagged videos produced by Brand twice. In one, Moderna noted that Brand had broadcast a monologue about Jonathan Van-Tam, a former senior health official who helped formulate COVID-19 policies in Britain. Van-Tam had just taken a position with Moderna, a move that raised eyebrows with many in the press. In the video, Brand noted that the company had just “made a fortune during the pandemic selling vaccines to the government,” and that the “government worker that bought all those vaccines” was now moving through the revolving door.

In another report, Moderna alleged that Brand “claimed that COVID-19 vaccine mandates were based on a lie in a recent podcast episode.” The video was broadly accurate. The monologue highlights CDC documents that had come to light showing that officials were aware that the virus would “break through” and still infect vaccinated patients. In an ironic twist, Brand finished the segment with a discussion of efforts to censor debate around the vaccine.

Moderna noted they were not yet taking action on this broadcast, but “we are monitoring with our partner, the Public Good Projects.”

The following month, several media outlets reported that several women who insisted on anonymity were claiming that Brand had abused them nearly twenty years ago. The ensuing media firestorm, which led to YouTube demonetizing his account, became fodder for other Moderna misinformation reports. The company warned that the cancellation of Brand was sparking a backlash among social media users, who believed that he may be targeted by government and corporate censors for his outspoken opposition to pandemic narratives.

In a Moderna high-risk report, the company noted that speculation was swirling that “allegations are part of a conspiracy to silence the comedian, who has been a vocal opponent of COVID-19 vaccines.” The report linked an X video of Brand sharply criticizing Moderna and Pfizer for generating “$1,000 of profit every second” in 2021. The specific claim of profiteering was a mainstream claim, a statistic that was produced by Oxfam.

Nowhere in its reports on Brand did Moderna highlight any incorrect information. But the reports noted that they monitored Brand because he “has a large platform with over 6.6 million YouTube subscribers and over 21 million followers across multiple social media platforms.” Moreover, his “videos are widely circulated in anti-vaccine spaces where he is viewed as a truth-teller and threat to authority,” and that Brand maintained support from Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk.

Michael Shellenberger

The Moderna misinformation reporting system reveals that the pharmaceutical firm maintained an interest in pandemic-related issues that go beyond vaccine policy, overlapping with general issues surrounding the unexplained questions that still swirl around the source of the pandemic.

The company, for instance, flagged discussions around news last year of a congressional whistleblower who came forward with allegations that the CIA suppressed an assessment from analysts that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The story has garnered widespread coverage in NBC, Science, and ABC News, among other outlets.

But Moderna’s misinformation alerts flagged Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and journalist Michael Shellenberger for distributing information about the CIA allegation. Shellenberger – with whom this reporter has worked on the Twitter Files – had exclusively reported earlier last year that U.S. government sources believed that the “patient zeros” of COVID-19 were a group of Chinese scientists at the Wuhan lab – a major revelation later confirmed by the Wall Street Journal.

Despite his work on the issue, Moderna dismisses Shellenberger in its reports as among its known “misinformation authors.”

“Moderna has spent years spreading disinformation about their vaccines and so it makes sense that they would smear the scientists and journalists who expose them as conspiracy theorists and sources of misinformation,” Shellenberger told RCI.

“The question is why is Moderna spreading disinformation on the high probability that Covid escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab?” he added. “A company that makes its money selling a coronavirus vaccine shouldn’t care where Covid came from.”

Others

Moderna closely monitored other independent voices. The company flagged left-wing comedian Jimmy Dore for simply tweeting at a New York Times call for triple-vaccination with the two-word response, “Hard pass,” as an example of misinformation. The company also warned about the appearance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the Joe Rogan podcast as well as Lex Fridman, a popular independent podcaster.

Other reports flag skeptics of vaccine efficiency and potential side effects. In September, Moderna’s system cited Megyn Kelly, the podcaster and former Fox News host, for a viral clip in which she said she regrets the COVID-19 booster after she developed an autoimmune condition that she believes was caused by the shot.

Moderna warned that such comments could “discourage people who are on the fence about getting vaccinated.”  In its alert about Kelly, the company noted that her comments added to growing concern around autoimmune disorders and COVID-19 vaccinations. The Moderna misinformation email proceeded to offer data that appeared to reaffirm, rather than debunk, Kelly’s assertions. The alert concluded with a message about an NIH report that highlights a link between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and inflammatory and autoimmune skin diseases. Moderna did not dispute the findings of the NIH study, but noted that it “is in rotation in anti-vaccine spaces online.”

The merging of public health and corporate influence peddling has concerned many academics. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University who says the government violated his free-speech rights by trying to silence his questioning of federal policies regarding COVID, told RCI: “We have a problem that social media companies and the government have allied with pharma to treat information flows around the COVID vaccine as a propaganda problem, rather than a medical issue that is best resolved by patients talking with their doctor about what’s best for them.”

Bhattacharya was one of the most prominent academics who was shadowbanned under the previous owners of Twitter because of his criticism of the lockdowns and masking policy. He is now one of the plaintiffs litigating against the U.S. government’s role in shaping content decisions on social media platforms in the Missouri v. Biden case, which is now before the Supreme Court.

Bhattacharya’s outspoken advocacy has attracted attention from Moderna as well. In October 2023, shortly after I spoke to him for an interview, Moderna flagged one of the Stanford professor’s tweets that shared a link to a new Food and Drug Administration preprint study that documented “elevated risk of seizures in toddlers and myocarditis in teenagers associated with covid mRNA vaccination.” Moderna did not directly dispute the study findings other than to note that its authors wrote that it “should be interpreted cautiously.”

In the attached report, Moderna added that it had highlighted the tweet and others like it because “concerns about safety and side effects are among the main reasons parents are hesitant about or oppose COVID-19 vaccines for their children.”

In other words, anything that might discourage children from vaccinations, despite any risks or lack of benefits, is dangerous information. That suggests a motive far from bringing truth to the vaccine debate, and far more about dominating it for financial gain.

Near the end of the Moderna call last September, as the biotech firm worked to highlight its stepped-up outreach to consumers, James Mock, the chief financial officer, spoke briefly to assure investors of the company’s ability to continue to make money.

“COVID is a very valuable product line of business and will continue to be,” said Mock, “and we’ll make it more profitable.”

A lot has changed since 2017. Back then, in what was the first recorded comments by Jamie Dimon on the topic of bitcoin and crypto, the JPM head was not shy to let the world know how he felt: back then, Dimon said the cryptocurrency “won’t end well” predicting it will eventually blow up, and called it “a fraud” and “worse than tulip bulbs.” If that wasn’t enough, Dimon also said that if a JPMorgan trader began trading in bitcoin “I’d fire them in a second. For two reasons: It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.”

Oh boy… where to begin: first of all, not only has bitcoin not ended badly, it hasn’t ended at all. In fact, since 2017 bitcoin is up over 4000%, making it the single best performing asset class in the world, if not history.

Also, unlike “tulip bulbs”, bitcoin has gone through not one, not two but at least three cycles already and has yet to be shown to be a bubble, let alone one that has burst. In fact, unlike banks which get a regular bailout from the Fed any time there is bank run contagion or a stock price crash, the crypto universe has survived everything that central banks and regulators have thrown at it, and prices are at multi-year highs. As for firing any JPMorgan trader who trades bitcoin, well, not only is Jamie now rewarding bitcoin traders at JPMorgan – which now has a dedicated crypto/bitcoin research section as well as dedicated crypto client coverage and trading desk – but the bank recently became the broker-dealer to iShares Bitcoin Trust, the ETF of the world’s largest asset manager.

So yes, a lot has changed since 2017, even if Jamie’s epic hypocrisy has remained largely unchanged. We say that because earlier today, the CEO of the largest bank popped up on the CNBC Davos livestream where he did – what else – bash bitcoin.

Responding to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s question about his thoughts on bitcoin now that the SEC has finally approved an ETFs as a result of relentless pressure from Blackrock, Jamie gave a somewhat coherent answer, responding that “Blockchain is real, it’s a technology, we use it. It is going to move money, it is going to move data, it is efficient. We have been talking about that for 12 years, i think we have wasted too many words on that.”

Then, turning to cryptocurrencies, Dimon said that “there’s two types. There is a cryptocurrency which might actually do something. Think of it as using it to buy and sell real estate, move data.” In other words, “Tokenizing things that you do something with”; here Dimon is envisioning a smart contract like Ether, which is something even he approves of (following Larry Fink’s recent vocal endorsement of ETH). And then, Dimon goes on, there is the crypto “which does nothing. I call it the pet rock, the bitcoin, or something like that. And so on the bitcoin, you know, there are use cases, fraud, antimoney laundering, tax avoidance, sex trafficking, those are real use cases and you see it being used for maybe $50, $100 billion a year for that. That is the end use case everything else is people trading among themselves.”

So far it’s mostly the usual song and dance from the CEO, although at this point, we find a clear shift in Dimon’s sentiment toward bitcoin: whereas 7 years ago he would have fired any of his employees trading it, this time – sensing the shift in sentiment across Wall Street – says that “I defend your right to do bitcoin. I don’t want to tell you what to do, so my personal advice is don’t get involved but i don’t want to tell any one of you to do, it is a free country.“

Sorkin, however, refuses to let up and after pushing Dimon why Blackrock and Larry Fink changed their view on Bitcoin, Dimon erupts “just please stop talking about this shit. I don’t know what he would say about blockchain versus currencies that do something versus bitcoin that does nothing. That’s what makes a market people have opinions.”

Well, at least he still thinks bitcoin is shit, even though his bank is directly making millions from it as for this moment.

Still, we may have finally had a breakthrough into why Dimon thinks bitcoin is shit: as he explains in the following exchange, Jamie harbors the bizarre belief that Satoshi will magically re-appear and increase the supply of bitcoin over the 21 million to which it is structurally limited.

Jamie Dimon thinks Satoshi will re-appear and increase the #Bitcoin supply over 21 million. 🤦🏻‍♂️

This guy runs the world’s biggest bank… pic.twitter.com/sIPVTANhlt

— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) January 17, 2024

Yes, the CEO of the largest US bank believes that bitcoin supply will magically expand once it hits its limit, even though as so many were quick to explain, the digital currency is literally five lines of code and nobody, not even Satoshi, can change it.

Jamie Dimon thinks Satoshi will come back one day and print more Bitcoin.

“How do you know it will stop at 21 million?” He keeps asking YEAR after YEAR after YEAR.

Bro it’s 5 LINES OF CODE and not even Satoshi can force us to change it! pic.twitter.com/315ukGolx7

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) January 17, 2024

So while we marvel at Jamie’s confusion on the most basic premise of bitcoin, at least we now understand what the basis of his hatred for bitcoin is: you see, it’s not bitcoin that Jamie hates, he hates the risk that someone – Satoshi or whoever – can just push a button and boost supply.

Well, Jamie, we have some news for you: what you are so worried about, and what is the source of all your loathing, is not bitcoin but fiat money, aka US dollars… Remember those? Remember when the US government and the Fed printed 40% of all US dollars ever created just in 2020? Yes, that was dollars, not gold, not bitcoin. Dollars.

Yes, Jamie, that’s the “shit” you are so worried about, not bitcoin, and it’s why after rising 4000% since you first lashed out at it, we expect a similar return over the next 7 years, at which point we are somewhat hopeful you will finally understand why you were so wrong all these years.

Watch the full Jamie Dimon CNBC clip below.

Authored by Stephen Green via PJMedia.com,

Did you know that chemistry changes with skin color?

I don’t mean the amount of or type of melanin a person might have in their skin, determining how dark- or light-skinned they turn out to be.

I’m talking about the actual atomic/molecular structures and processes of chemistry because those are totally different now if you’re black.

At least, that’s according to one young chemistry professor at Rice University who is teaching a new class beginning this semester called Afrochemistry, “the study of black-life matter.”

As in, Black Lives Matter. Get it? I just slapped my knee so hard I kicked a hole in the front of my desk. Dr. Brooke Johnson, who earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton and now works for Rice, is quite the wit.

I haven’t studied chemistry since high school at Missouri Military Academy and, if I’m being truthful, I did not do well in that class. In fact, I had to crib — ie, cheat — a lot. And even then I still was only able to earn (if that’s the correct word) a gentleman’s C. Let’s just say I made myself appear to put out a good-faith effort at passing and I had a very generous instructor in Maj. Waldo Roberts.

When I saw today that Afrochemistry was a thing, I thought back to 1986 and couldn’t remember learning about any racial aspects to chemistry. But, being committed to bringing my readers even uncomfortable truths, I did a little digging. Here’s what I learned about eumelanin, one of the most common melanins and also responsible for dark skin color:

Eumelanin has two forms linked to 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI) and 5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA). DHI-derived eumelanin is dark brown or black and insoluble, and DHICA-derived eumelanin which is lighter and soluble in alkali. Both eumelanins arise from the oxidation of tyrosine in specialized organelles called melanosomes. This reaction is catalyzed by the enzyme tyrosinase. The initial product, dopaquinone can transform into either 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI) or 5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA). DHI and DHICA are oxidized and then polymerize to form the two eumelanins.[6]

Furthermore, “In natural conditions, DHI and DHICA often co-polymerize, resulting in a range of eumelanin polymers.” 

Are you still awake? Because I nodded off out of boredom/bewilderment sometime around “the oxidation of tyrosine.” Stuff like this is exactly why I had to cheat and charm my way into a C that I didn’t deserve. 

That’s when I did a double-take on Professor Johnson’s position at Rice.

It took a minute to sink in, but despite Johnson’s doctorate in chemistry, she doesn’t work in Rice’s renowned chemistry department. Johnson works in the university’s DEI department.

In Chem 125, Johnson will instruct her undergrads – who are expected to pony up around $78,278 for the privilege of attending during the 2022-23 academic year — on how to “apply chemical tools and analysis to understand black life in the US,” along with her “personal reflections and proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical education.”

In other words, Tom Lehrer can teach you more about chemistry for free in 85 seconds than Professor Johnson can for thousands of dollars over an entire semester.

But forget all that sciencey stuff.

“What does it look like to do science on one’s own terms?” is a question raised in the flyer promoting Chem 125.

Another is, “What does justice look like in chemistry?”

And you thought Johnson would teach quaint chemistry principles like covalent bonding or the atomic structures of the known elements?

Chem 125 is not a chemistry class. Rice – which, with its reputation as a serious research school, ought to know better – should have named Johnson’s class Agitprop 101. 

By Greg Miller of FreightWaves

Red Sea diversions mean container lines need more ships to carry the same amount of cargo. The security situation — which is even more precarious in the near term due to coalition air strikes in Yemen — has already driven spot container freight rates much higher. Now it is starting to push up the price container lines pay to rent ships.

“This week saw a scramble for prompt tonnage,” said MB Shipbrokers (formerly Maersk Broker) in a market report on Friday, referring to ships that can be chartered immediately.

“Owners have certainly become more bullish and are pushing for higher-than-last-done levels in all segments and most regions.” Charter rates are headed higher, “specifically for short periods of three to six months’ duration,” said MB Shipbrokers.

Shipbroker Braemar reported Sunday: “Chartering activity [has] further improved. Various prompt vessels across all sizes and regions [are] seeing increased interest. Charter rates as well as periods are witnessing a firming trend.”

Analytics group Alphaliner commented on charter-market strength in a report last Tuesday, noting that the Red Sea effect is now “starting to show.”  

“Despite a continued influx of newbuilding tonnage of all types, demand for most sizes of charter-market ships … remains strong. The crisis in the Red Sea, with most carriers now avoiding the area, is in part contributing to the market’s brisk activity,” said Alphaliner.

Spot freight rates rise much faster than charter rates

The initial diversions away from the Red Sea caused delays in return trips to Asia, prompting liners to charter ships for short terms as “extra loaders” to pick up the slack.

Now that diversions are more ensconced, liners will need to add additional vessels to service strings to maintain weekly schedules, given the longer voyage distance around the Cape of Good Hope.

To the extent newbuildings and existing fleets don’t fill the gap, they would need to charter or buy more ships.

The Harpex index, which measures six- to 12-month charter rates for ships with capacity of up to 8,500 twenty-foot equivalent units, has risen 12% since mid-December.

That pales in comparison to Red Sea-driven moves in freight rates. The global spot freight indexes of both Freightos and Drewry have more than doubled over the same stretch. 

But 2024 was supposed to be a very weak year for charter rates given the tidal wave of newbuilding deliveries, and thanks to the Red Sea effect, the Harpex index is now 28% higher than it was in January 2019, pre-COVID.

“Obviously, a persistent crisis in the Red Sea and, to a lesser extent, ongoing problems at the Panama Canal could partially cushion the risk of overcapacity thanks to the demand for extra tonnage they will generate,” said Alphaliner.

Few container ships available to charter

The challenge in today’s chartering market is that there are very few vessels available to charter. Most of the tonnage is already tied up on long-term leases.

Liners were desperate for ships during the supply chain crisis. The more ships they controlled, the more containers they could carry at stratospheric freight rates, and the more profits they could reap.

The companies that charter ships to liners — so-called non-operating owners (NOOs) — could dictate the terms. Not only did NOOs demand historically high charter rates during the peak of the COVID-era boom, they also forced liners to take the ships on multi-year charters. Most of those leases are still in place.

Among the U.S.-listed NOOs, Danaos (NYSE: DAC) has 90% of its fleet already locked up on charters through the end of 2024. Charter coverage of Costamare (NYSE: CMRE) is 87% for 2024, with Global Ship Lease (NYSE: GSL) at 82% and Euroseas (NASDAQ: ESEA) at 70%.

Another source of chartered tonnage is “relets” — ships that liners have on long-term charter from NOOs that they opt to re-charter to other liners. But some of these relet opportunities are now being withdrawn, reported MB Shipbrokers.

In general, “the limited availability of prompt tonnage” is keeping chartering activity “at a low level,” it said.

Liner stocks up more than NOO stocks

Liner company stocks should benefit more from Red Sea disruptions than NOO stocks, given that freight rates have risen much faster than charter rates, and so many ships are already locked into existing leases.

Shares of liner operator Zim are up 65% from mid-December through Friday, with Hapag-Lloyd up 45% and Maersk up 19%. In contrast, shares of GSL are up only 9% over the same period, with Costamare rising 10% and Danaos 11%. Shares of Euroseas, which have the most open exposure to the 2024 charter market of the four companies, have performed the best, rising 37%.