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Sunday, January 1, 2023

S&P 500 fell 19.4% in 2022, coming just shy of the -20% mark only 6 other years since 1928 have seen

 


The S&P 500 fell 19.4% in 2022, coming just shy of the -20% mark that only six other years since 1928 have seen. Here's a look at every annual price change for the S&P since 1928 grouped into 10 percentage point intervals. Read more in this week's BR: bespokepremium.com/interactive/po
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In War For Control Of Humanity, Thoughts And Emotions Are Battlefield: Dr. Robert Malone

 by Masooma Haq and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Inventor of mRNA vaccines Dr. Robert Malone, having worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for many years, warns that a war is being waged by the government for control of people’s minds, and that social media platforms are being weaponized in this war and are “actively employed” by the intelligence community to influence what people think and feel.

This new battleground, in which your mind and your thoughts, your very emotions are the battleground. It is not about territory,” Malone said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “Twitter, it’s clear now, has become the premium platform for shaping emerging global consensus about the topics of the day.”

During his work with the DOD, Malone became aware of companies researching multilingual programs that assess the emotional content of the language used on social media, which those companies then use to “map relationship clouds,” including what topics people are discussing, who the influencers are, and who is at the fringe of that cloud, said Malone.

Phenomena like being deplatformed, shadowbanned, and a “tweet” going viral is a part of this weaponizing of social media.

Twitter prevented users from sharing former President Donald Trump’s post. (Screenshot/Twitter)

By using these tools of manipulating what information, what tweets you put out, what messages you put out to your influencer cloud, they can modulate how those people behave,” he said. “You can actually very actively control what individuals are thinking, the information that they’re gathering, what they’re being influenced to do.”

The people who control information warfare weapons can modulate the messaging within the influencer clouds that can be readily mapped, Malone said.

“Your current state of mind, based on the language that you’re using and the topics that you’re talking about, can be mapped very precisely, psychologically,” he said. “It can be tied into a web of influence relationships.”

High-Tech Surveillance

Members of a specific “influencer cloud” can be tracked using the military spy technology called the Gorgon Stare, said Malone. This spy technology is capable of detecting movements including what car you drive, who gets in your car, and where you go, he said.

The Gorgon Stare is a surveillance technology, originally created to target terrorist groups, that utilizes high-tech cameras mounted on drones to capture video images of large areas, such as entire cities. Then artificial intelligence is used to analyze the surveillance footage.

Arthur Holland Michel, author of the book, “Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All,” called this technology the “pinnacle of aerial surveillance” during a 2019 interview with the CATO Institute and said the things he learned while writing the book were so troubling, they kept him up at night.

Collusion During the Pandemic

Elon Musk has brought more transparency to Twitter, but the information he revealed only confirmed that the FBI and intelligence agencies had major influence over the platform, said Malone.

Elon now is in a position where he has access to incredibly damaging information about the willingness of the U.S. government to collude with industry and compromise the First Amendment,” said Malone.

Musk’s purchase of Twitter is significant, but only time will tell what the final outcome of it will have for our democracy and the First Amendment, Malone added.

Since the start of the pandemic, Malone and his wife and fellow scientist, Jill Glasspool Malone, have become aware of the government’s breach of all guardrails, said Malone, in terms of ethics and the norms of drug development, bioethics, biodefense, and pharmaceutical development.

“We have all been subjected, over the last three years, to military-grade psychological operations that were using technology developed for offshore conflicts, and they had been deployed against the citizens of virtually the entire Western world.”

The same strategies that are used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control the Chinese citizens have been used by elites in the United States, said Malone.

We’re now seeing the documentation on a daily basis released to us by Twitter, of this intense collusion between the U.S. government, tech, and corporate media,” said Malone.

A man using a laptop at an office of Sina Weibo, widely known as China’s version of Twitter, in Beijing on April 16, 2014. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Citizens Are Manipulated

Millions of Americans accepted a new product (the mRNA vaccine) that skipped normal safety and efficacy protocols and is still only in use under emergency use authorization because “the government felt that it was acceptable to deploy these military-grade technologies against all of us to coerce, compel, and mandate that we accept an unlicensed product that turns out to not be safe, nor effective,” said Malone.

People were coerced into taking this experimental vaccine because they were manipulated on a scale that is hard to fathom, said Malone. This is how entities like the CCP are able to carry out human rights atrocities, like live organ harvesting, where prisoners of consciousness are murdered for their organs, he added.

China grew its organ “transplant” industry from 1999 to now, with a wait time in China for a major organ transplant being months rather than the years it can take in western countries.

This happens because people cannot conceive of “the possibility that these things might be happening in this way, whether it’s organ harvesting, or it’s the darkness of what appears to be the emergence of a pharmaceutical corporatist, global, centralized state,” said Malone.

Most people cannot fathom such evil exists because they are still good, said Malone.

“Not only have we been subjected to this barrage of coordinated propaganda, we’ve been subjected to a barrage of intentional manipulation of our very language to support this initiative and this agenda,” said Malone.

Dr. Robert Malone, chief medical officer of the Unity Project, at a rally at Hagerstown Speedway in Hagerstown, Md., on Mar. 26, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

The New Book

Malone’s new book attempts to sort through the events of the last three years to understand what happened and why, which he said is important to start to chart a healthy path forward.

Each of these chapters derives from a kind of a real-time assessment of events that were occurring,” he said, and the events were also cited in Malone’s substack writings.

Readers should discern the truth for themselves by finding credible sources of information, he said, adding that his goal is to provide factual information to the public so they can make informed decisions because society is in a time when people are being inundated with “totalitarian propaganda.”

In the final third of the book, Malone suggests some concrete actions that could help restore democracy and alleviate the corruption that has besieged the federal government by changing laws to allow for term limits for the federal bureaucracy.

This has to do with things like the legal underpinning that enables the existence of this permanent cadre that we call the Senior Executive Service, these thousands of people that cannot be fired, that functionally run the government,” said Malone.

Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to reassign classification for upper-level federal employees in the state department, with his schedule F executive order, was a crucial step to restoring balance in the three branches of the government, said Malone.

However, after President Joe Biden took office, he nullified the Schedule F executive order, which Malone said was “an example of how powerful these entrenched administrative state interests are.”

Another crucial step to end government corruption is to separate the power of federal agencies to both regulate and promote the industry they are in charge of, said Malone.

“[Dr.] Peter McCullough likes to point out the FDA, under emergency use authorization, acts as both the sponsor and the regulator of these medical products,” said Malone. “And the corruption of the FDA and the CDC is at such a stage now that I think it is so self-evident that only the most hypnotized deny it.”

Envisioning a New Future

These actions alone will likely not end the deep-rooted corruption and collusion of the intelligence community within the agencies, said Malone, but it is a step forward.

People like Dr. Anthony Fauci are working in tandem with the intelligence agencies, and this can be seen by the development of the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) department, the Advance Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), said Malone.

The Epoch Times reached out to the NIH for comment.

This new department is led by a former officer with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and has a budget of about $1 billion. Malone said the purpose of the department “appears to be the advancement of transhumanism and a biometric identification and all of that agenda within NIH. It’s basically the intelligence community moving in within NIH.”

Malone asked how humans can “enable a decentralized future for all of us, as opposed to this very dark, Fourth Industrial Revolution, transhumanism central command economy.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/war-control-humanity-thoughts-and-emotions-are-battlefield-dr-robert-malone

Last Week in Ridiculous Regulations

 A massive snowstorm with heavy winds hit most of the U.S. just in time for Christmas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington and addressed a joint session of Congress. The January 6 Committee released its final report and recommended criminal charges for former President Trump, including insurrection, though the decision is the Justice Department’s to make. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from wind energy to yogurt.

On to the data:

  • Agencies issued 82 final regulations last week, after 74 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and three minutes.
  • With 3,108 final regulations so far in 2022, agencies are on pace to issue 3,146 final regulations this year.
  • For comparison, there were 3,257 new final regulations in 2021, President Biden’s first year, and 3,218 in 2020, President Trump’s final year.
  • Agencies issued 40 proposed regulations in the Federal Register last week, after 44 the previous week.
  • With 2,019 proposed regulations so far in 2022, agencies are on pace to issue 2,044 proposed regulations this year.
  • For comparison, there were 2,094 new proposed regulations in 2021 and 2,094 in 2020.
  • Agencies published 505 notices last week, after 392 notices the previous week.
  • With 22,185 notices so far in 2022, agencies are on pace to issue 22,456 notices this year.
  • For comparison, there were 20,018 notices in 2021. 2020’s total was 22,584.
  • Last week, 1,702 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,564 pages the previous week.
  • The average Federal Register issue in 2022 contains 322 pages.
  • With 79,212 pages so far, the 2022 Federal Register is on pace for 80,178 pages. For comparison, the 2021 Federal Register totals 74,352 pages, and 2020’s is 87,352 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (subtracting skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. There are 43 such rules so far in 2021, one from the last week. That is on pace for 44 economically significant regulations in 2022.
  • For comparison, there were 26 economically significant rules in 2021 and five in 2020.
  • The total cost of 2022’s economically significant regulations so far is for net costs of $45.28 billion to $78.05 billion, according to numbers provided by the agencies themselves. However, this figure is incomplete. Three economically significant rules issued this year do not give the required cost estimates.
  • For comparison, the running cost tally for 2021’s economically significant rules is for net costs of $13.54 billion to $19.36 billion. The 2020 figure is for net savings of $2.04 billion to $5.69 billion, mostly from estimated savings on federal spending. The exact numbers depend on discount rates and other assumptions.
  • There are 250 new regulations meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far in 2022. That is on pace for 253 significant rules for the year.
  • For comparison, there were 387 such new regulations in 2021 and 69 in 2020.
  • So far in 2022, 893 new regulations affect small businesses, on pace for 908. Sixty-nine of them are significant, on pace for 70.
  • For comparison, in 2021 there were 912 rules affecting small businesses, with 101 of them classified as significant. 2020’s totals were 668 rules affecting small businesses, 26 of them significant.

Highlights from last week’s new regulations:

The size of For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.

https://cei.org/blog/this-week-in-ridiculous-regulations-295/

Heart Benefits Begin at Well Under 10,000 Daily Steps

 Taking more steps per day is associated with a progressively lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among older adults — and the benefits accrue at well below the widely promoted threshold of 10,000 steps per day, new research shows.

Among adults aged 60 and older, those who took roughly 6000 to 9000 steps per day had a 40% to 50% lower risk of CVD compared with peers logging just 2000 steps per day.

"We hope this study will contribute evidence to future public health and clinical guidance on how many steps we need for health," Amanda Paluch, PhD, with University of Massachusetts Amherst, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

Getting in more steps per day can lower an individual's risk for heart disease — but it's not an "all or nothing" situation, Paluch said.

"The heart health benefits begin at lower than 10,000 steps per day. So, for the many adults that may find 10,000 steps a bit out of reach, it is important to promote that even small increases in steps can be beneficial for health," Paluch said.

The study was published online December 20 in Circulation.

Attainable Step Goals

As part of the Steps for Health Collaborative, Paluch and colleagues examined the dose-response relationship between steps per day and CVD in a meta-analysis of eight prospective studies involving 20,152 adults (mean age 63, 52% women).

Steps were measured in each study using one of five different commercially available step-measuring devices. Adults aged 60 years and older took a median of 4323 steps per day (interquartile range [IQR], 2760 - 6924), while younger adults walked a bit more (median 6911 daily steps; IQR, 4783 - 9794).

During follow-up lasting an average of 6.2 years, a total of 1523 CVD events were reported.

In the final adjusted model, for older adults, compared with those in quartile 1 who got the fewest steps per day (median 1811), the risk of CVD was 20% lower in those in quartile 2, who got a median of 3823 steps per day (hazard ratio [HR], 0.80; 95% CI, 0.69 - 0.93).

CVD risk was 38% lower in older adults in quartile 3 who got a median of 5520 steps per day (HR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.52 - 0.74) and 49% lower in those in quartile 4 who walked the most (a median of 9259 steps per day; HR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.41 - 0.63).

Restricting the analysis to individuals without known CVD at baseline showed similar results.

Among six studies that excluded adults with a history of CVD at baseline, compared with the lowest quartile, the HR for incident CVD events was 0.74 (95% CI, 0.60 - 0.91) in the second quartile, 0.60 (95% CI, 0.47 - 0.77) in the third quartile, and 0.55 (95% CI, 0.40 - 0.76) in the fourth quartile.

Despite the inverse association of steps with CVD in older adults, there was no association in younger adults. The researchers caution, however, that CVD is a disease of aging, and the follow-up period in these studies may not have been long enough to capture CVD incidence in younger adults.

Stepping rate (pace or cadence) was not associated with CVD risk beyond that of total steps per day. However, only four of the eight studies reported data on stepping rate, so this finding should be viewed as preliminary, Paluch and colleagues say.

Start Small and Go From There

Paluch said the take-home message from this study and numerous others is simple.

"Move more and sit less! Being physically active, by getting in your steps, is an important part of keeping your heart healthy," she told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

For adults who are currently inactive, Paluch suggests finding small ways to get in a few more steps per day. "It does not need to be drastic changes. Consider a brief 5- to 10-minute walking break at lunch, taking the stairs, or playing a game of hide and seek with the grandchildren," Paluch advised.

"For adults starting at 3000 steps a day, set a goal of 4000, and then 5000. Each improvement can lead to better heart health," Paluch said. "And for those who are already active, keep it up as there are benefits with higher volumes of steps per day as well."

Support for this research was provided by the Intergovernmental Personnel Act Agreement through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors have reported no relevant financial relationships.

Circulation. Published online December 20, 2022. Abstract

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/986371

How To Start Your New Year

 The recent post pointed to how recent research and practice in psychology can help us develop spiritually.  Our ability to detect patterns in the world crucially hinges upon our state of consciousness.  Jumping from dataset to dataset, trading pattern to trading pattern, and journal entry to journal entry merely adds to the clutter inside our heads.  The caterpillar is transformed into the butterfly, not by becoming a better creepy-crawler, but by withdrawing from the world and emerging as a different creature.


As the Radical Renewal book points out, it is no coincidence that the world's great religions make space for periods of "sabbath", when we stop doing and instead reflect.  If making changes were as simple as writing goals in a journal and re-viewing our actions, we would all be butterflies.  What we learn from research in psychology is that important life changes are inevitably preceded by significant emotional arousal.  It is the pain of hitting a dead end and the resolution to do things differently that leads us to abandon what isn't working and embrace a new and different future.  But in between acknowledging our dead-ends and finding our new paths is a difficult period when we are withdrawn in our chrysalis, neither caterpillar nor butterfly.

"There is nothing as whole, or as perfect, as a broken heart," Menachem Mendel of Kotsk observed.  It is the broken heart that energizes lasting efforts at change.  That is why members of Alcoholics Anonymous embrace the idea of "hitting bottom".  One key to success in developing as a trader:  hitting bottom--again and again--without depleting your capital.

Then, from that low spot, study, study, study what you did well in markets in 2022:  every good idea, every successful trade.  Look for the patterns to your success, your glimpse into a future built upon the best of who you are:  the butterfly you're meant to be.

Happy--and successful--2023!