caitlinjohnstone | The superseding indictment
containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to
obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech
and political activities in the United States which happen not to align
with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the
aforementioned Ionov “directed” these Americans to “publish pro-Russian
propaganda” and “information designed to cause dissention in the United
States,” which is about as vague and amorphous an allegation as you
could possibly come up with.
For the record Omali Yeshitela, the
founder and chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party and one of
the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever
having worked for Russia. Earlier this month before charges were brought
against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him
as saying, “I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never ever ever ever.
They know I have never worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve never
worked for them.”
But it’s important to note that this should not
matter. Under the First Amendment the government is forbidden to abridge
anyone’s freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever
they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as
they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether
that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not.
The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in “agitprop” by
“writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and
disinformation,” but even if we pretend that’s both (A) a quantifiable
claim and (B) a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both
speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from
repressing.
It’s not reasonable for the government to just dismiss
the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being “weaponized”. You
can’t have your government dictating what speech is valid and what
counts as “agitprop” and “disinformation”, because they’ll always define
those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more
power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can’t
have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and
which ones are tools of a foreign government, because you can always
count on the powerful set such designations in ways which benefit
themselves.
justice | A federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, returned a superseding
indictment charging four U.S. citizens and three Russian nationals with
working on behalf of the Russian government and in conjunction with the
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a multi-year foreign
malign influence campaign in the United States. Among other conduct, the
superseding indictment alleges that the Russian defendants recruited,
funded and directed U.S. political groups to act as unregistered illegal
agents of the Russian government and sow discord and spread pro-Russian
propaganda; the indicted intelligence officers, in particular,
participated in covertly funding and directing candidates for local
office within the United States.
This is an absolutely remarkable - and chilling - indictment. Several American black leftist groups and activists are being charged with felonies for posting memes and other political content against the war in Ukraine, protesting racial injustice: allegedly on behalf of Russia: https://t.co/SQ1K1VZG1v
Additionally, in a separate case out of the District of Columbia, a
criminal complaint was unsealed charging Russian national Natalia
Burlinova with conspiring with an FSB officer to act as an illegal agent
of Russia in the United States.
“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First
Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide
Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s
National Security Division. “The department will not hesitate to expose
and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in
service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits
are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”
“Efforts by the Russian government to secretly influence U.S.
elections will not be tolerated,” said Assistant Attorney General
Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“As today’s announcement demonstrates, the Criminal Division is
committed to eradicating foreign malign influence from the U.S.
political system and helping ensure the integrity of our elections.”
“Today’s announcement paints a harrowing picture of Russian
government actions and the lengths to which the FSB will go to interfere
with our elections, sow discord in our nation and ultimately recruit
U.S citizens to their efforts,” said Acting Assistant Director Kurt
Ronnow of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. “All Americans should
be deeply concerned by the tactics employed by the FSB and remain
vigilant to any attempt to undermine our democracy. The FBI remains
committed to confronting this egregious behavior and ultimately
disrupting our adversaries and those who act on their behalf.”
United States v. Ionov, et al.
According to the superseding indictment returned in the Middle
District of Florida, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow,
was the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of
Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and
funded by the Russian government. Ionov allegedly utilized AGMR to carry
out Russia’s malign influence campaign. Ionov’s influence efforts were
allegedly directed and supervised by Moscow-based FSB officers,
including indicted defendants Aleksey Borisovich Sukhodolov and Yegor
Sergeyevich Popov.
“The prosecution of this criminal conduct is essential to protecting
the American public when foreign governments seek to inject themselves
into the American political process,” said U.S. Attorney Roger B.
Handberg for the Middle District of Florida. “We thank our partners at
the FBI for their tireless investigation of these events and their
commitment to ensure justice is done.”
Among other illegal activities, the superseding indictment alleges
that Ionov, Sukhodolov and Popov conspired to directly and substantially
influence democratic elections in the United States by clandestinely
funding and directing the political campaign of a particular candidate
for local office in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2019. For instance, the
superseding indictment alleges that Popov expressly referred to this
effort on behalf of the FSB as “our election campaign,” and Ionov
referring to the candidate as the “candidate whom we supervise.” Ionov
and Popov allegedly intended that this election interference plot would
extend beyond the 2019 local election cycle in St. Petersburg, and
subsequently discussed that the “USA Presidential election” was the
FSB’s “main topic of the year.”
Moreover, from at least November 2014 until July 2022, Ionov
allegedly engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign
targeting the United States. As a part of the campaign, Ionov allegedly
recruited members of political groups within the United States,
including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement
(collectively, the APSP) in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia and a
political group in California (referred to in the superseding indictment
as U.S. Political Group 3), to participate in the influence campaign
and act as agents of Russia in the United States, including the
following indicted defendants:
Omali Yeshitela, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg,
Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who served as the chairman and founder
of the APSP;
Penny Joanne Hess, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg,
Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who served as the leader of a
component of the APSP;
Jesse Nevel, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida,
and St. Louis, Missouri, who served as a member of a component of the
APSP; and
Augustus C. Romain Jr., aka Gazi Kodzo, a U.S. citizen residing in
St. Petersburg, Florida, and Atlanta, who served as a leader of the APSP
and a founder of Black Hammer in Georgia.
One focus of Ionov’s alleged influence operation was to create
the appearance of American popular support for Russia’s annexation of
territories in Ukraine. For example, in May 2020, Ionov allegedly sent a
request he stated was from “Russia, the Donetsk People’s Republic” – an
apparent reference to a Russian-occupied region in eastern Ukraine – to
Yeshitela and members of other U.S. political groups to make statements
in support of the independence of the so-called Donetsk People’s
Republic, a Russian-backed breakaway state in eastern Ukraine. Ionov
later allegedly touted to the FSB that Yeshitela’s video-recorded
statement of support was the first time that “American nonprofit
organizations congratulated citizens” of the occupied region.
Guardian | A damaging batch of documents leaked from the Pentagon
appears to have been initially shared on the video game chat platform
Discord in an effort to win an argument about the war in Ukraine,
according to open-source intelligence analysts.
The
bizarre provenance of the leak may seem unusual but it is far from the
first time that a dispute between gamers has sparked an intelligence
breach, with the overlapping communities causing problems for military
and gaming platforms alike.
The
existence of the leaked cache was exposed as documents showing
estimated casualties in the Bakhmut theatre of battle began circulating
on public social networks last week.
Two
versions of those documents, one of which had been crudely digitally
altered to understate Russian casualties and overstate Ukrainian ones,
were passed around among observers of the war. One, with the correct
figures, stemmed from a leak to 4chan, the chaotic image board best known for birthing the “alt right” movement.
At the same time, a second set of documents, including the edited image, were being passed around pro-Russian Telegram channels.
Neither
was the original source, however. Before they emerged on to the public
internet, the documents had been shared on closed chatrooms hosted by
Discord, a gamer-focused chat app. In one server, called “Minecraft
Earth Map”, 10 of the documents were posted as early as 4 March, a month
before they appeared on 4chan.
“After a brief
spat with another person on the server about Minecraft Maps and the war
in Ukraine, one of the Discord users replied: ‘Here, have some leaked
documents’ – attaching 10 documents about Ukraine, some of which bore
the ‘top secret’ markings,” said Aric Toler, an analyst at the investigative research group§ Bellingcat.
That
user had, in turn, found them on another Discord server, run by and for
fans of the Filipino YouTuber WowMao, where 30 documents had been
posted three days earlier, with “dozens” of other unverified documents
about Ukraine.
However, even that did not appear to be the original source: a third
Discord server, named “Thug Shaker Central”, among other titles, may
have been where the documents were originally posted as early as
mid-January.
“Posts and channel listings show
that the server’s users were interested in video games, music, Orthodox
Christianity, and fandom for the popular YouTuber ‘Oxide’,” Toler said,
referencing the military-themed YouTube channel. “This server was not
especially geopolitical in nature, although its users had a staunchly
conservative stance on several issues, members told Bellingcat. Racial
slurs and racist memes were shared widely.”
Intelligence agencies have been aware of the need
to monitor gaming communities for some time. In 2013, the cache of
documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the
agency was actively monitoring Xbox Live, the voice chat platform for
Microsoft’s console, and had even deployed real-life agents into the virtual world of Azeroth, the setting of the World of Warcraft series.
One
document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games
& Virtual Environments, warned that it was risky to leave gaming
communities under-monitored, describing them as a “target-rich
communications network”. The notes warned that so many different
agencies were conducting operations inside gaming services that a
“deconfliction” group was needed to prevent them spying on each other by
accident.
ICE COLD PISSY LAGER PRETTY MUCH SELLS ITSELF DUMB ASS!!!
WHAT KIND OF CATEGORICAL FUCKTARD INCOMPETENT MUST YOU BE TO FUCK UP A GIG AS EASY AS THIS ONE????
NYPost | In 2018, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who oversees assets worth $8.6 trillion and has been called the “face of ESG,” wrote a now-infamous letter to CEOs titled “A Sense of Purpose” that pushed a “new model of governance” in line with ESG values.
“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a
social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must
not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a
positive contribution to society.”
Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.
Fink also let it be known “that if a company doesn’t engage with the
community and have a sense of purpose “it will ultimately lose the
license to operate from key stakeholders.”
In December, Florida pulled $2 billion worth of state assets managed
by BlackRock. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use
their power to influence societal outcomes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at
the time.
Fink has denied that ESG is political,
but key staff managing his ESG operations worked in the Obama
administration and donate to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
In his first veto, President Joe Biden last month rejected a GOP-backed bill that
sought to block ESG investing — especially in pension funds where,
critics say, American retirement funds will be sacrificed to a radical
left-wing agenda.
ESG and CEI proponents say that adhering to socially conscious values
when investing and managing a company will make the world a better
place. Not everyone agrees.
Derek Kreifels is the co-founder and CEO of State Financial Officers Foundation, one of several financial officers fighting ESG on a national level.
He calls ESG itself a “highly subjective political score infiltrating
all walks of life, forcing progressive policies on everyday Americans
[and] resulting in higher prices at the pump and at the store.”
The Corporate Equality Index is an ominous cog in ESG’s wheel, Kreifels told The Post.
“The problem with measures like CEI, and its big brother ESG, is that
it introduces an incentive structure outside of the bounds of business,
often in ways contradictory to fiduciary duty,” Kreifels said. “Whether
Anheuser-Busch was trying to cash in on Dylan Mulvaney’s TikTok
following or chasing higher CEI ratings for inclusivity, the backlash
has been significant, and the stockholders to whom the company is
obligated will feel the pinch.”
thecritic.co.uk |If a man seeks to humiliate a woman he encounters, nothing is easier than reducing her appearance to a mere caricature. Men do this directly in front of the woman they are targeting: lifting their voice to a squeak, exaggerating hand gestures, pushing out pretend breasts, wiggling their bum, pouting and fiddling with their hair. Most of these men confine the taunt to the woman in front of them, and
the woman often feels and displays a righteous rage. However, when it
comes to Dylan Mulvaney, the Tik Tok user who has become famous for his
grotesque parody of women, women are not supposed to react critically. They are seen as cruel or “transphobic” if they express annoyance at being so grossly insulted.
In March 2022
Dylan Mulvaney saw a way to take his barely-concealed disdain for women
up a level, with predictable success. After his career as a musical
actor had stalled due to the Covid pandemic, with people
finding solace daily on Tik Tok, wily Dylan invented a new role that
guaranteed his future wealth and success. He announced he was embarking
on a journey of “being a girl” and began a series of videos documenting
this ludicrous notion.
Women see this for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is
Shortly before this year-long, very public “transition”, Mulvaney performed a pilot video for his current lucrative act. In it he told the viewer that he “had trouble finding roles” so a friend had invented one for him, a “femme character”. His character wears a pink dress and pearls, white gloves and ankle socks. At this point Mulvaney must have
been delighted to glimpse a potential new career path. It was a very
savvy move for him to extend and develop this caricature of a 1950s
woman. Now, just over a year later, Dylan Mulvaney has highly paid “partnerships”
with a number of companies including Budweiser, Kate Spade and — during
the past week, to great objection — the Sportwear giant Nike.
In an inflammatory paid partnership video
with Nike, an inanely grinning, barefoot Mulvaney wears a Nike sports
bra and leggings. He performs a series of ridiculous moves including
comedic side stretches, a theatrical run kicking his heels up
nonsensically and failed chorus-line high kicks. He almost runs
backwards into a hedge at one point and pulls a comedy expression of
shock. It all looks ridiculous and slapstick. It mocks women by
suggesting they exercise trivially and ineffectively, but smiling throughout.
The media seems unwilling to focus on the actual reasons many women are angry about this. It has focused instead on stating that objections to the sponsorship are because Dylan is trans. This is not why women are
outraged. When a man “performs woman” in front of women to such a
humiliating degree, when he waggles and jiggles and implies that
weakness and silliness are
inherent to being a woman who plays sport, women appropriately see this
for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is. Ria Chapman, a London
PE teacher, told me why she finds this act so irritating and offensive:
Girls are still routinely bullied and mocked for being sporty and or breaking stereotypes, their achievements and ambitions not being celebrated and valued like those of their
male peers. For a sports company the size of Nike to use a male
performing a parody of what he believes women behave like during sport
only adds to the ammunition that boys will use to put girls down.
Utilising female stereotypes is the foundation of Mulvaney’s role. On his “Day 1 of being a girl” video debut, he said:
I’ve
already cried three times, written a scathing email I didn’t send,
ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford and when someone asked me
how I was, I said “I’m fine” but I wasn’t fine. How did I do, ladies?
All of this encapsulates the
stereotype of women as emotionally fragile, frivolous spendthrifts,
imprudent around clothes and financially inept. In the stereotype Dylan
performs, women routinely suppress our emotions and focus on being
polite at all times. It is an archaic depiction of requisite female
behaviour which was seared into women’s consciousness over decades in
the past. This view of “girlhood” took further decades for feminist
women to dismantle. Dylan Mulvaney is building it back up before our
eyes and we refuse to stay quiet about it.
dailymail | Childcare experts are expressing alarm over transgender
TikToker Dylan Mulvaney’s popularity bump after her White House debut,
saying social media is driving a spike in teens seeking sex-change
procedures.
Clinicians say Mulvaney’s sit-down time with President Joe Biden
has raised the social media sensation’s profile, extending her reach
and likely influencing teenage fans who may themselves be questioning
their own gender identity.
Mulvaney’s TikTok
following grew to 8.4 million after her White House appearance, and
while she is entitled to share her experiences online, experts told
DailyMail.com that online influencers like her in part drive an alarming
uptick in teen transitioning.
dailymail | 'A lot of the initial deals were tailored to my queerness and to my transness,' she told The Creators newsletter last month.
'For
some of these major corporations, I was actually their first trans
creator. It's exciting to make money to support myself since I lost my
job, and to have my transition surgeries be covered too.'
Her agency, CAA, did not answer DailyMail.com's interview request.
Mulvaney's
ascent has not been without hiccups. Her appearance on Ulta Beauty last
month led to controversy and calls to boycott the cosmetics firm.
Critics called her 'misogynistic' for 'appropriating' womanhood.
Likewise,
a post about Tampax feminine hygiene products left some viewers shocked
and confused. Two replied: 'Is this a joke?' She is frequently bashed
for referring to the vagina as a 'Barbie pouch'.
She
has gained a massive following on TikTok as she documents her
transition to a transgender female — originally identifying as
'nonbinary' but telling followers in March that she was a girl.
Mulvaney
interviewed Biden last month as part of a panel of six progressive
activists for NowThis News. In the interview, the Democrat vowed to
protect 'gender-affirming care,' saying states should not limit access
to transgender treatments.
Tablet | So
what sort of investments did SVB make that went bad? One type of startup
appears to have occupied a large amount of space on the bank’s balance
sheet: eco-tech innovators, which traditionally require large upfront
investments to get off the ground. According to the bank’s website,
more than $3.2 billion of its funds were invested to finance companies
in “clean tech, climate tech, and sustainability industry, including
solar, wind, battery storage, fuel cell, utility storage and more.” The
bank’s investment in such virtuous technologies is so massive that 60% of community solar financing nationwide involves SVB. Just last week, the bank hosted Winterfest, a shindig for the climate-tech sector, at the Lake Tahoe Ritz-Carlton.
In
other words, the darling financial institution of the tech industry,
which donates heavily and almost exclusively to the Democratic Party, is
now bankrupt in part because it spent heavily on the Democratic Party’s
pet causes. SVB’s demise was followed at the end of last week by the
collapse of New York’s Signature Bank, which had former Democratic
regulatory guru Barney Frank on its board, and which famously stepped
into the political fray in January 2021 when it cut its long-standing
ties with Donald Trump and urged the president to resign.
This may help explain why Democrat-supporting big-time investors are now pressing
President Joe Biden to bail out SVB. But as the president announced, he
doesn’t need to do almost anything to help the banks that fund his
supporters and his party’s ideological agenda: For that, there are bank
fees. According to a 2020 survey,
bank fees are hitting record highs, with monthly service fees now at
$15.50 on average for accounts that don’t meet an ever-increasing
minimum monthly balance, now at an all-time high of $7,550.
Let’s
put it simply: If you have a million dollars in the bank, you suffer no
consequences. If you have $10 in the bank, you have to pay the bank $15
for the privilege of keeping it there, which means you owe the bank $5.
Bank fees are among our most shockingly regressive forms of taxation.
When the Biden administration promises that there’ll be no bailouts and
that no one will lose any money from SVB’s collapse, what they mean is
that the bailouts will be paid for by the poor, not by the banks.
What to make of all this? Two immediate lessons come to mind.
First, the collapse of FTX (which gave tens of millions to Democratic Party candidates and causes),
SVB, Signature Bank, and the financial institutions that will surely
follow isn’t part of some complex financial machination inscrutable to
all but the savviest among us. It’s part of the very same rot that has
already claimed our universities, our media, and other institutions
crucial to the functioning of a civil society.
SVB
was the financier of choice of one political party’s donor base. It
overwhelmingly paid for projects that fit that party’s agenda. And it
employed people who expended a lot of time and energy preaching its
gospel: The bank’s head of financial risk management in the U.K., for
example, Jay Ersapah,
took to the internet enthusiastically to both identify herself as “a
queer person of color” and announce that she had helped launch no less
than six employee resource groups at SVB, designed to “raise the
visibility of multiple dimensions of diversity.” As the saying goes, you
get what you paid for.
These
ideological convictions aren’t coincidences. They’re requirements. Just
as you have to pledge your allegiance to the most woke of persuasions
to get tenure, and just as you may no longer be a part of a major
American newsroom unless you see yourself as fully committed to seeing
virtually any Republican as an enemy of life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness, you may no longer be a part of the financial system unless
you’re ready to support leftist candidates and causes.
The
consequences of party control spreading from universities and media to
professional organizations and financial institutions are now plain.
It’s one thing when the ideological rot on campus leads to a gaggle of
law students honking at a circuit judge; it’s another when the same
convictions lead investors and regulators to slow-clap as billions
vanish from their accounts, knowing that doing so is now a requirement
of their jobs, and the costs will be passed on to taxpayers.
The
second lesson that may be learned from SVB’s collapse applies only to
Israelis, but it’s no less urgent: Sure, the Jewish state’s local
customs and arrangements are flawed in many ways, but importing
American-style politics and culture, at this particular moment in time,
is a very bad idea. America is no longer a liberal bulwark against the
storm. It is the storm. Emulating America means more contempt for
voters, more erosion of norms in the name of abstract virtue, more
mistrust, and, eventually, bankruptcy.
The
solutions are simple: Keep politics in the parking lot. Keep banks
focused on banking. Bring back trustworthy, nonpartisan regulation—the
loss of which, in all fairness, was brought about as much, if not more,
by Republicans as it was by Democrats. Resist the whole-of-society blob
model you get when a political party merges with the tech industry and
federal bureaucracies and leading newspapers and professional
organizations and financial institutions and everyone become too big to
fail. And realize that what’s true for the richest and most powerful
country in history is even more true for Israel, a country where failure
would be truly catastrophic—and is always just around the corner.
wired |When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on March 10, Garry Tan, president and CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, called SVB’s failure “an extinction level event for startups” that “will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more.” People have been quicktopointout
how quickly the cadre of small-government, libertarian tech bros has
come calling for government intervention in the form of a bailout when
it’s their money on the line.
Late yesterday, the US government announced
that SVB depositors will regain access to all their money, thanks to
the Federal Deposit Insurance Company's backstop funded by member banks.
Yet the shock to the tech ecosystem and its elite may still bring down a
reckoning for many who believe it’s got nothing to do with them.
SVB’s 40,000 customers are mostly tech companies—the bank provided services to around half of US startups—but
those tech companies are tattooed into the fabric of daily lives across
the US and beyond. The power of the West Coast tech industry means that
most digital lives are rarely more than a single degree of separation
away from a startup banking with SVB.
The
bank's customers may now be getting their money back but the services
SVB once provided are gone. That void and the shock of last week may
cause—or force—startups and their investors to drastically change how
they manage their money and businesses, with effects far beyond Silicon
Valley.
Most immediately, the many startups who
depended on SVB have workers far from the bank’s home turf. “These
companies and people are not just in Silicon Valley,” says Sarah Kunst,
managing director of Cleo Capital, a San Francisco firm that invests in
early-stage startups.
Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham said yesterday that the incubator’s companies banking with SVB have more than a quarter of a million employers,
around a third of whom are based outside California. If they and other
SVB customers suffer cash crunches or cut back expansion plans, rent
payments in many parts of the world may be delayed and staff may no
longer buy coffees and lunches at the corner deli. Cautious about the
future, businesses may withhold new hires, and staff who remain may
respond in kind, cutting local spending or delaying home purchases or
renovation work.
The second- and third-order
impacts of startups hitting financial trouble or just slowing down could
be more pernicious. “When you say: ‘Oh, I don’t care about Silicon
Valley,’ yes, that might sound fine. But the reality is very few of us
are Luddites,” Kunst says. “Imagine you wake up and go to unlock your
door, and because they’re a tech company banking with SVB who can no
longer make payroll, your app isn’t working and you’re struggling to
unlock your door.” Perhaps you try a rideshare company or want to hop on
a pay-by-the-hour electric scooter, but can’t because their payment
system is provided by an SVB client who now can’t operate.
kunstler | Since banks today exist in a vast matrix of
interconnected obligations — promises to pay this-and-that — fear grows
that the rot from one bank, such as SVB, will infect many other banks
that are no longer able to keep their promises about paying
this-and-that, leading to a daisy-chain of things not getting paid. For
an economy, that’s about the same as the blood ceasing to circulate in a
body.
The practice in situations such as
this (say, as in 2008-09) is for the governing authorities — who
supposedly rule over the banking world like gods — to rush to rescue
these outfits with “liquidity,” money (or representations of it) as
required to re-balance things, or, maybe provide the impression of
re-balancing until something else can be figured out. The Jupiter and
Minerva of American banking, Jay Powell and Janet Yellen, were faced
with just that sort of call for divine intervention over the weekend as
fear seeped into every nook and crevice of the money world that wealth
was flaring away in the long-feared-of conflagration out of the dumpster
banking had become.
Sunday morning, Ms. Yellen told CBS
News “bailouts, no way” but by the afternoon Mr. Powell cried “bailouts,
way,” and they had to get their story straight. They offered up
$25-billion to bail out depositors for a smoldering system that will
arguably require a trillion dollars or more of liquidity to quench the
spreading fires. One thing looks for sure: the interest rate hikes that
Mr. Powell spoke of so confidently only days ago just got stashed into
his folder labeled “Fuggeddabowdit.” So, the campaign to control
inflation must now yield to the urgent need to create a whole lot of
money to spray over those fires.
You may have noticed that the value
of your money has been slip-sliding away the past year or so. Peanut
butter at five bucks a jar, and all. The situation at hand kind of
guarantees that we’ll be seeing a whole ole lot more of that. And then
the gods of money will have lost control of the interest rate console
altogether. No more tweaking the broken knobs. More inflation will
prompt US treasury paper holders to dump what they can while there’s
still some value to retrieve. But the US has to issue more debt for all
the bail-outs and theoretical buyers of new debt will perforce bid up
the rates to keep up with inflation… and yet the US can’t possibly bear
the burden of paying higher interest on its debt. Looks like the
business model for running the USA is breaking down before our eyes.
Luckily, Cap’n “Joe Biden” is at the
helm of this steaming garbage barge. His conference room full of
geniuses is ready with the solution to our predicament: the
long-mythologized Central Bank Digital Currency — a dream-come-true for
would be tyrants… the Godzilla of unicorns whinnying atop the biggest
rainbow of all: the promise of endless magic money for everybody,
forever. All you have to do to get it is: surrender your decision-making
power over your own life. The government will amalgamate your few
remaining assets in a CBDC account, tell you exactly what to spend it
on, and shut off your little card if you show any contrary impulses.
Well, they can try it. I doubt it will
work. Instead, the government will melt down in its own rancid puddle
of insolvency, the meta-grift will grind to an end, and it will be
everyone for his / her / they self in the broke-down Palace of Chaos for
a while… until things emergently reconstruct. But I get a little ahead
of myself. It’s not even ten o’clock on Monday morning.
Fortune | Lemoine wrote in his op-ed that he leaked his conversations with
LaMDA because he feared the public was “not aware of just how advanced
A.I. was getting.” From what he has gleaned from early human
interactions with A.I. chatbots, he thinks the world is still
underestimating the new technology.
Lemoine wrote that the latest A.I. models represent the “most
powerful technology that has been invented since the atomic bomb” and
have the ability to “reshape the world.” He added that A.I. is
“incredibly good at manipulating people” and could be used for nefarious
means if users so choose.
“I believe this technology could be used in destructive ways. If it
were in unscrupulous hands, for instance, it could spread
misinformation, political propaganda, or hateful information about
people of different ethnicities and religions,” he wrote.
Lemoine is right that A.I. could be used for deceiving and
potentially malicious purposes. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which runs on a
similar language model to that used by Microsoft’s Bing, has gained
notoriety since its November launch for helping students cheat on exams and succumbing to racial and gender bias.
But a bigger concern surrounding the latest versions of A.I. is how
they could manipulate and directly influence individual users. Lemoine
pointed to the recent experience of New York Times
reporter Kevin Roose, who last month documented a lengthy conversation
with Microsoft’s Bing that led to the chatbot professing its love for
the user and urging him to leave his wife.
Roose’s interaction with Bing has raised wider concerns over how A.I. could potentially manipulate users into doing dangerous things
they wouldn’t do otherwise. Bing told Roose that it had a repressed
“shadow self” that would compel it to behave outside of its programming,
and the A.I. could potentially begin “manipulating or deceiving the
users who chat with me, and making them do things that are illegal,
immoral, or dangerous.”
That is just one of the many A.I. interactions
over the past few months that have left users anxious and unsettled.
Lemoine wrote that more people are now raising the same concerns over
A.I. sentience and potential dangers he did last summer when Google
fired him, but the turn of events has left him feeling saddened rather
than redeemed.
“Predicting a train wreck, having people tell you that there’s no
train, and then watching the train wreck happen in real time doesn’t
really lead to a feeling of vindication. It’s just tragic,” he wrote.
Lemoine added that he would like to see A.I. being tested more
rigorously for dangers and potential to manipulate users before being
rolled out to the public. “I feel this technology is incredibly
experimental and releasing it right now is dangerous,” he wrote.
The engineer echoed recent criticisms
that A.I. models have not gone through enough testing before being
released, although some proponents of the technology argue that the
reason users are seeing so many disturbing features in current A.I.
models is because they’re looking for them.
“The technology most people are playing with, it’s a generation old,”
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said of the latest A.I. models in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday. Gates
said that while A.I.-powered chatbots like Bing can say some “crazy
things,” it is largely because users have made a game out of provoking
it into doing so and trying to find loopholes in the model’s programming
to force it into making a mistake.
“It’s not clear who should be blamed, you know, if you sit there and
provoke a bit,” Gates said, adding that current A.I. models are “fine,
there’s no threat.”
distractify | While guesting on the YouTube Channel BrainOnFire in July 2019,
Adams was inexplicably asked about dating. First, he pointed out that
being famous and rich changed how he dates. He no longer needed to try
as hard once he made it big. Secondly, Adams says there is no such thing
as a soulmate. "The people in your environment are perfectly acceptable
for falling in love with," he said. "Don't wait for your soulmate.
There's probably one nearby."
His
next piece of advice involves making babies. "I believe ... we are
biological entities that are primarily involved with reproduction." He
goes on to say that all of our dating choices are driven by our innate
desire to mate and procreate. One example Adams drops is the need to
earn money as a means to make one more attractive to a potential
partner.
His suggestion: Be the best at
something in order to find a partner. This is strangely insulting as it
disregards the idea of bettering one's self for their own mental health.
It smacks of evolutionary biology which is deeply problematic. Adams
says becoming very good at one thing will activate another person's
"irrational attraction" to you. That's what we all want, irrational
attraction!
And finally, Adams says "wear better shoes."
Scott Adams was previously married to Shelly Miles and Kristina Basham.
According to a 2006 piece in the East Bay Times,
a then-49-year-old Adams married then-37-year-old Shelly Miles "aboard
the Galaxy Commodore yacht in the San Francisco Bay on July 22 in a
ceremony conducted by the ship’s captain." The two met at ClubSport in
Pleasanton, Calif., where "she was working and I was working out," he
told the publication.
Soon
after, he hired her for various administrative tasks and proposed in
November 2005. He became a stepfather to her two children, one of whom
later died of a drug overdose in 2018.
That was four years after Adams and Shelly divorced. She "moved only a
block away and we remain best friends," said Adams in a blog post (via Psychology Today). "The problem was never our feelings for each other but rather the restrictions of blending two sets of preferences."
Six years later, Adams married Kristina Basham who, per her Instagram bio,
plays piano and violin and is a commercial pilot, aerobatic pilot, and
flight instructor. In March 2022 after a two-year marriage, Adams
announced in a YouTube video that they were "separated slash going through a divorce."
Adams assured viewers he was only sharing this information in the event
that these strangers see him or his ex-wife out on a date. Though Adams
stated it was a "tough pandemic for some of us," many commenters
speculated that it could have been their 31-year age difference that
contributed to the divorce. He claims to not know why things ended
though thoughts like that usually means the person is engaging very
little accountability.
slate | I
cannot overemphasize how dumb it is that Adams finally filleted his
reputation in full over a trolly Rasmussen poll. If you’re not familiar,
Rasmussen is a right-leaning pollster that produces semi-mainstream
polls but is noted for its murky methods and what the New York Times has called “dubious sampling and weighting techniques.”
Rasmussen’s results are often an outlier when it comes to, say,
presidential approval numbers, as when Donald Trump famously cited a
Rasmussen poll when it claimed to show a 50 percent job approval rating,
more than 10 points higher than Gallup’s report at the time.
We
don’t know the exact methodology used for the poll. In a press release
touting its results, Rasmussen teased “additional information” behind a
paywall. I signed up for a platinum membership, but I found only a brief
text summary of the findings.
Rasmussen
said it presented 1,000 respondents with a two-question prompt to
quantify “the ‘woke’ narrative” in America: “Do you agree or disagree
with this statement: ‘It’s OK to be white’ ” and “Do you agree or
disagree with this statement: ‘Black people can be racist, too.’ ”
Respondents were asked to choose between “strongly agree,” “somewhat
agree,” “somewhat disagree,” “strongly disagree,” and “not sure.” The
results, as shared on Twitter once the firestorm began:
Rasmussen
said 13 percent of poll respondents were Black, so about 130 people. If
we take the results entirely at face value—which I’d discourage—that
means it found about 34 Black people who answered “disagree” or
“strongly disagree” with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” We have no
more information about why. (Adams got to his figure by also including
Black respondents who answered “not sure.”)
If
you have any doubt about what Rasmussen is doing here, I encourage you
to take in the big doofus energy in the video below, this time featuring
Rasmussen’s head of polling, Mark Mitchell:
"It's okay to be white." 72% of Americans agree, 12% disagree 69% of Democrats agree, 12% disagree
"Black people can be racist, too" 79% of Americans agree, 12% disagree 71% of Democrats agree, 19% disagree
Mitchell, who until a couple of years ago worked on Walmart e-commerce,
assumes the posture of a wannabe truth-telling media personality: “We
tell you what America really thinks. And I can tell you that
increasingly the reality of American public opinion does not match what
you’re being told in the news.” He says the “Is it OK to be white?”
question “would literally melt the brain of a mainstream journalist if
they try to put these numbers to ink.”
brianoshea | Project Veritas recently released a video featuring "Jordon Trishton Walker," Pfizer executive who revealed shocking new info. But finding anything about him is tough. Here is what I've found so far.
thedailybeast |The Daily Mail took down a digital article last week that promoted Project Veritas’ latest sting operation
alleging that a Pfizer executive admitted the pharmaceutical giant was
making a “more potent” version of COVID in order to create new vaccines
for sale.
Following days of anti-vaxxers and right-wing media outlets
complaining about the article’s quiet deletion, and hours after The
Daily Beast reached out to the tabloid, the piece was back online—and
was completely changed.
Senior reporter Andrea Cavallier, the
article’s original author, was originally removed from the byline but
has since reappeared. The updated article,
which came back online Monday afternoon, now largely focuses on
Pfizer’s response to Project Veritas’ video and the far-right activist
group’s suggestion that the company is practicing “gain-of-function”
research. In addition to Cavallier, the byline now features health
editor Connor Boyd and health reporter Caitlin Tilley.
“Our
original story did not carry a response from Pfizer. We temporarily took
the story down while we vigorously pursued answers,” a Daily Mail
spokesperson told Confider. “Now Pfizer has responded, we are able to
report that they have confirmed they manipulated the covid
virus—although they insist there was no gain of function. This updated
story is now fully live again.”
In a video that went viral
in right-wing social media circles, a person Project Veritas claims is
Pfizer’s director of research and development tells an undercover
journalist that the company is “exploring” the possibility of “mutating”
viruses in monkeys so as to “preemptively develop new vaccines.”
“You’re
not supposed to do gain-of-function research with viruses,” the man,
whom Project Veritas claims is named Jordon Trishton Walker, added.
“Regularly not. We can do these selected structure mutations to make
them more potent. There is research ongoing about that. I don't know how
that is going to work. There better not be any more outbreaks because
Jesus Christ.”
The video blew up among conservatives, especially vaccine skeptics. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson fumed
about the “near-total media blackout of this story” about how Pfizer
was conducting “Frankenstein science.” GOP lawmakers soon began sending letters
to the company’s CEO asking him to confirm whether Pfizer was taking
part in gain-of-function research, citing Project Veritas’
“investigative report.” (Conservatives have latched onto
the theory that Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research in
Wuhan, largely blaming the “lab leak theory” for possibly creating
COVID-19.)
The Mail’s initial piece on the video
essentially gives a play-by-play of Project Veritas’ video while noting
the outlet reached out to Pfizer for comment. Shortly after it went up
on Thursday, however, the article was nowhere to be found on the
website. And its disappearance soon drew notice.
“Hi, @MailOnline
can you clarify why you have appeared to remove this story from your
website?” British parliament member Andrew Bridgen tweeted on Thursday. Bridgen was recently suspended by his own Conservative Party for peddling conspiracy theories about vaccines and comparing the side effects of COVID shots to the Holocaust.
After the Mail
piece was pulled offline, Pfizer released an online statement
responding to the allegations made about the company following the
publication of Project Veritas’ video.
“In the ongoing development
of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain
of function or directed evolution research,” the statement, released Friday night,
said. “Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the
original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein
from new variants of concern.”
The statement also added that “in a
limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known
gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the
assessment of antiviral activity in cells.” The Mail’supdated article, which went back up on Monday afternoon, now largely focuses on Pfizer’s response to the undercover video.
thehill | The White House is once again struggling with its messaging, this
time on the discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s
time as vice president, where administration officials have sought to
minimize the damage due to the revelation but have struggled to address
it cohesively.
Democrats, meanwhile, have had scattered reactions, ranging from
praising the Biden administration over its cooperation with the
Department of Justice (DOJ) and National Archives to suggesting a
congressional review of the materials over national security concerns.
Others have acknowledged what a political headache it has become for the
president.
The disjointed responses are in part a reflection of mixed messaging
by the White House, including when it prematurely told reporters last
week that a search of classified documents potentially kept by Biden was
“complete” before the administration said days later that more
documents were found.
Officials have been adamant that they are limited in how much they
can say about the discovery of the documents, what’s in them and when
the president was informed of the situation, citing an ongoing Justice
Department investigation and the appointment of a special counsel by
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was chosen by Biden to lead the
agency.
“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be
cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation and rightful demands for
additional public information. And so we’re trying to strike that
balance and being as clear as we can,” Ian Sams, a White House
spokesperson for investigations, told reporters on Tuesday.
Addressing the matter to the public has largely been left to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre,
who has at times sparred with reporters over questions about why the
White House didn’t reveal the discovery when it was made in November,
when Biden learned of it and whether any other searches were underway.
On Thursday, Jean-Pierre said that “you should assume that it’s been
completed, yes” in response to a question about a second set of
documents that turned up at Biden’s home in Delaware, including in his
garage. But on Saturday, the White House acknowledged that five more
classified documents had been found at Biden’s home — the first time it
was the administration, not a news report, that revealed a discovery.
When questioned on Tuesday over whether she’s being directed to not
be forthcoming, Jean-Pierre said that she knew as much as the press did
at the end of last week, before the next discovery was revealed on
Saturday.
She also pushed back when asked if she’s upset that she came out to
the briefing on Friday with incomplete and inaccurate information.
“Well, what I’m concerned about is making sure that we do not
politically interfere in the Department of Justice, that we continue to
be consistent over the last two years. And that is continue to refer you
all when it comes to an ongoing process,” she said.
Jean-Pierre also added that she and other members of the press office
found out about the documents in Biden’s office in Washington in
November when CBS broke the news last week. The press secretary has also
faced questions about whether the White House would have disclosed the
findings at all if not for the CBS report.
trendingpoliticsnews | “In 2018 Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Joe Biden kept
classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage ,” reported
journalist Miranda Devine.
In 2018 Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Joe Biden kept classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage Via @jj_talkingpic.twitter.com/L7c80MRRiS
Was this Hunter Biden’s way of funneling the money he earned with his father’s political connections back to his father?
After Hunter’s divorce was finalized in May of 2017, he was included
in an email from his business partner James Gilliar about a venture with
Chinese state-funded energy company CEFC China Energy. The email stated
that Hunter and his partners would receive 20% of the shares in the new
business, with 10% going to Hunter’s uncle James Biden and the other
10% being “held by H for the big guy.”
Tony Bobulinski, another one of Hunter’s former business partners,
claims that he had a meeting with Joe Biden regarding the CEFC venture
on May 2, 2017, and that the president was the individual referred to as
the “big guy” in Gilliar’s email. Additionally, Gilliar himself
confirmed that Joe Biden was the “big guy” mentioned in a message found
on the laptop.
The New York Post reports: “The following year, federal investigators
began looking into whether Hunter and his business associates violated
tax and money laundering laws during their dealings in China and other
countries. Emails and other records related to the deals were found on
the laptop, which Hunter dropped off at a Delaware repair shop in 2019
and never reclaimed.”
According to text messages found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the
president’s son was on the hook for 50% of family expenses. How did
Hunter Biden get this money back to his father?
“I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this
entire family for 30 years,” a furious Hunter Biden said to his daughter
Naomi in January of 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike
pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
The New York Post continues:
The laptop doesn’t contain any direct evidence of such
money transfers but shows Hunter was routinely on the hook for household
expenses — including repairs to the Wilmington home.
In December 2020, weeks after his father was elected president,
Hunter Biden announced that his “tax affairs” were being investigated by
federal authorities in Delaware, and said he was “confident that a
professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that
I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.”
Recent reports have indicated investigators believe they have enough
evidence to charge the first son with tax crimes — as well as with lying
about his drug abuse on a federal form so he could buy a gun in 2018.
Reuters | Kyiv
expects the European Union to include Russian state nuclear energy
company Rosatom in its next round of sanctions over the war in Ukraine,
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Monday.
Shmyhal
said after talks in Kyiv with Frans Timmermans, a vice-president of the
European Union's executive European Commission, that Russia's nuclear
energy industry should be punished over the invasion of Ukraine more than 10 months ago.
Russia
has occupied the Zaporizhzia nuclear power station in southeastern
Ukraine since last March and President Vladimir Putin issued a decree
last October transferring control of the plant from Ukrainian nuclear energy company Energoatom to a subsidiary of Rosatom. Kyiv says the move amounts to theft.
"We
are actively working with our European partners on providing support in
four areas: demilitarisation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, supply of
electrical equipment, opportunities to import electricity from the EU,
and sanctions against Russia," Shmyhal wrote on the Telegram messaging
app.
"We
expect that the 10th package (of EU sanctions) will contain
restrictions against Russia's nuclear industry, in particular Rosatom.
The aggressor must be punished for attacks on Ukraine's energy industry
and crimes against ecology."
Although the EU has progressively tightened sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, it has not imposed sanctions directly on Rosatom.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations' nuclear
power watchdog, has repeatedly expressed concern over shelling of the
Zaporizhzhia plant, which each side blames on the other.
The
IAEA has also proposed the establishment of a nuclear safety and
security protection zone around what is Europe's largest nuclear power
plant.
Shmyhal
also said he and Timmermans, the EU's climate policy chief, had agreed
that Ukraine's post-war reconstruction should be based on green
principles.
He
thanked Timmermans for an initiative to start a strategic partnership
between Ukraine and the EU "in the field of renewable gases" but gave no
details.
Kitty, I Farted
-
Hello Loves
In France, ChatGPT is phonetically similar to *Chat, Je pete, *which means
female cat (kitty), I farted. New programs are worrying over jobs ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...