Weaponizing Free Speech: Picking On Old Negroes Nostalgic For The 60's and 70's...,

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.

Elderly Black LARP's Make The Empire Even More Ridiculous

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

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 19, 2023

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.

Doesn't The NYTimes Reporting Old OSINT Vetted By Bellingcat Make You Suspicious?

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.

 

Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid YKYDFU When You Take Down Your Linkedin Profile....,

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”.

How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu

— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023

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.

Protesters in Paris targeted BlackRock’s office there this week due to the company’s role in managing and privatizing pensions, which are at the heart of the French government’s recent retirement-age reforms.

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.”

 

 

Dylan Mulvaney's Mimicry Of White Women Is Absurd

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.

Clownish 25 Year Old Man Charts His Fame And "Girlhood" (REDUX 11/26/22)

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.

 

SVB Israel Sizzle: OY VEY!!!

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.

Rescuing Anything Touched By SVB Is A Catastrophic Policy Error

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 quick to point out 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.

Old Cornpop To The Rescue!!! Don't You Feel Better Now?

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.

     Oh, and then there’s Ukraine….

ChatBots Talk Shit Because Humans LOVE Shit-Talking

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.”

Scott Adams, Called Out Clowned And Cucked By Andrew Tate...,

 

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. 

 

34 Negroes -Joking On A Shitty Rasmussen Poll - FUBAR'd Scott Adams Whole Situation

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:

Update: Since we’re now making the Sunday political talk shows here are the Ok To Be White? summary crosstabs.

Handy link to report our offense in asking Americans their views on this topic is below - https://t.co/958loKUqO2 pic.twitter.com/OT1vhEEaaH

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) February 26, 2023

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.”

 

Jordan Trishton Walker : Grindr-Mediated Pfizer Gain Of Function Research Disclosures

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’s updated article, which went back up on Monday afternoon, now largely focuses on Pfizer’s response to the undercover video.

I Find It Gratifying To Watch Biden Dumbly And Angrily Glare In Response To Impertinent Kwestins...,

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.

In 2018 Hunter Biden Paid $50K/Month For The Document Stash House He Also Claimed He Owns

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_talking pic.twitter.com/L7c80MRRiS

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) January 12, 2023

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.

La CucaRacha And The UkroNazis Expect France To Self-Immolate In Order To Punish Russia

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.