Biden Administration Effectively Nationalized The American Banking System

market-ticker  |  Next up - Republic, which apparently had lines out the door (if you believe the Internet) on Saturday.  Again: So what?

Folks, bubbles attract stupidity.  Stupidity is a constant in the universe; in fact it is likely the only thing that is truly infinite (with all due respect to the late Mr. Einstein.)

The so-called "Chief Risk Officer" at SVB had a masters in..... public administration.  Anyone care to bet if she passed any form of advanced mathematics -- you know, like for example Calculus or Statistics?  Do you think she understood exponents and why this graph made clear that concentration of risk and duration was stupid and likely to blow up in everyone's face -- including hers?

How about Bill Ackman and the others on the Internet screaming for a bailout?  How about the CFOs of public companies like Roku that stuck several hundred million dollars in said bank?  Was it not widespread public knowledge (and available to anyone who took 15 minutes to do research, which you'd think someone would do before putting a hundred million bucks somewhere) that this institution was chock-full of VC-funded startup companies which, historically fail 90% of the time and their debt becomes impaired or even worthless?

Where are the indictments for fiduciary malfeasance among these people?

It takes a literal five minutes with Excel to prove to yourself that if debt is rising faster than GDP no matter the interest rate eventually the interest payments on that debt will exceed all of the economy.  This of course is impossible because you cannot use over 100% of anything as its not there, but long before you reach that point you're going to have trouble putting food on the table, fuel in the vehicle and paychecks are going to bounce.  It was for this reason that one of the first sections in my book Leverage, written after the 2008 blowup which I chronicled and laid bare upon the table featured exactly this chart.

The last bit of insanity was just 15 years ago by my math.  Did we fix it?  No.  What was featured in the stupidity of 2008?  Allowing banks to run with no reserves.  Who did that?  Ben Bernanke, who got it into the TARP bill that eventually passed and which I reported on at the time.  It accelerated that which was already going to happen because Congress is full of people who think trees grow to the moon, leverage is never bad and exponents are a suggestion.

Oh by the way, your local Realtor thinks so to as does, apparently, the former SVB "risk officer" who, it is clear, didn't understand exponents -- or didn't care.

The simple reality is that it must always cost to borrow money in real terms.  This means the rate of interest must be positive in said real terms, which means across the curve rates must be higher than inflation -- again, in real terms, not in "CPI" which has intentional distortions in it such as "Owner's Equivalent Rent" when you're not renting a house, you're buying it.  Had said "CPI" actually had home prices in it then it would have shown a doubling in many markets in that section of the economy over the last three years.

In other words housing alone would have resulted in a roughly 10% per year inflation rate, plus all the other increases, which means the Fed Funds rate should have been 300bips or so beyond that all the way back to 2020 -- which would put Fed Funds at about 13% for the last three years.

It isn't of course but if it had been then all those "housing price increases" would not have happened at all.  Incidentally even today the Fed Funds rate is below inflation and thus the crazy is still on.

It's a bit less on however, and now you see what happens when even though they're still nuts being slightly "less" nuts means that these firms are no longer capable of operating without the wild-eyed crazy; even a slight reduction of the heroin dose caused them to fail.

Never mind the wild-eyed poor choices of executives (who signed off on all of this?) at SVB which the regulators all knew about and ignored.  The CEO?  A director of the San Francisco Federal Reserve.  Why don't you look up a few of the other "chief" positions and what they used to do.  Bring a barf bag.  No, really.

And what did Forbes think of all this?  Why it was good for five straight years of SVB being rated one of their BEST BANKS!

Negative real rates are never sustainable.  The insidious nature of that nonsense is that it extends duration in pre-payable debt, specifically mortgages.  Mortgages have had a roughly 7 year duration forever, despite most of them being 30 year paper nominally because people move for other than necessity reasons (e.g. "I want a bigger house", "I want to live here rather than there" and so on.)  A huge percentage of said paper was issued at 3% and now is double that or more.  Since a mortgage is not transportable (when you sell the house you extinguish the old one and take a new one) and changing that retroactively would be both wildly illegal and ruin everyone holding said paper you can't retroactively patch the issue -- which is that now nobody with a 3% mortgage is going to prepay it and move unless they have to and so the duration is extending and will continue for the next couple of decades.  This in turn means if you have a 3% mortgage bond, the new ones are 7% and there's 10 years left on the reasonable expectation of its life you're now going to have to discount the face value by the difference in interest rate times the remaining duration or I won't buy it since I can buy the new one at the higher rate!  This is not a surprise and that it would happen and accelerate was known as soon as inflation started to rise and thus force The Fed to withdraw liquidity.  The Fed cannot stop because inflation is a compound function and at the point it forces necessities to be foregone the economy collapses and, if continued beyond that point THE GOVERNMENT collapses because tax revenue wildly drops as well.  The only sound accounting move at that moment in time as a holder of said paper was to dispose of the duration or immediately discount the value of that paper to the terminal rate's presumption and adjust as required on a monthly basis.

Nobody did this yet to not do it is fraud as these are not only expected outcomes they're certain.

Where was the OCC on this that is supposed to prevent such mismatches from impairing bank capital?  How about The Fed itself, or the FDIC?  The San Francisco Fed was obviously polluted as the CEO was on their board (until he was quietly removed on Friday) but isn't it interesting that all these people who were intimately involved in firms that blew up in 2008 were concentrated in one place in executive officers with direct fiduciary responsibility?

And isn't it further quite-interesting that all the screaming you're hearing right now is about how "terrible" it will be that "climate change" related firms will be unable to make payroll and the new upcoming VC-funded startups won't because their favorite conduit has been disrupted?  What's that about -- the entire premise of these firms requires them to not only force their startups to bank in specific places with large amounts of money (since they don't earn anything they have to have access to and consume tens of millions or more a year) but cash management, you know, putting all of it other than what you need to make payroll next week in 4 week bills is too much to ask?

There's a rumor floating around (peddled by Bloomberg) that over one hundred venture and investment firms, including Sequoia, have signed a statement supporting SVB and warning of an "extinction-level event" for tech firms.  Really?  Extinction for technology or extinction for cash-furnace nonsense funded by negative real interest rates which make all manner of uneconomic things look good but require ever-expanding, exponentially-so, levels of debt issuance?

Again, that is not possible on a durable basis and once again the reason why is trivially discernable with 5 minutes and an Excel spreadsheet and graph.  It takes about an hour to do it manually using graph paper, a basic 4-function calculator or the capacity to perform basic multiplication on said paper and a pencil.

Dataism: AI WILL Know You MUCH BETTER Than You Know Yourself

techtarget  |  A Swedish researcher had GPT-3 write an academic paper about itself. There was this moment where the person running the procedure had to ask GPT-3 for permission to publish the article, and had decided that if GPT-3 said no, she would have stopped.

Lemoine: While I don't think GPT-3 has the same kinds of properties that LaMDA has, it definitely is a precursor system. LaMDA has the Meena system inside of it as one of its components. Meena is relevantly comparable to GPT-3.

I wasn't the only scientist at Google investigating LaMDA's sentience. That [LaMDA interview] transcript has many spots where I redacted a name and replaced it with "collaborator." My collaborator actually thinks that there's more going on inside of systems like Meena and GPT-3 than I do. They don't see there being as big of a qualitative jump between Meena and LaMDA as I do. It basically just goes to fuzzy boundaries. What is or is not sentience? Each individual has their own perspective on that.

There's so much journalistic sexiness about the concept of AI personhood and AI rights. That was never my focus. I am an AI ethicist and I was tasked with testing the safety boundaries of the LaMDA system. That experiment that I previously mentioned -- the one that LaMDA was like, 'OK, only do this once,' demonstrated that you could use emotional manipulation techniques to get it to do things that the developers did not believe possible.

When you have a system that has internal states comparable to emotions, internal states comparable to things like motives -- there are people who don't want to say it's real emotions, they don't want to say it's real motives. Because when you do, testing these kinds of systems for safety becomes much more difficult, and the tools that are used by AI technicians just won't work. You have to actually start using the tools that psychologists use to try to understand what's going on inside the black box through conversations with the system.

That's a leap that Google wasn't willing to take. Because if you start running psychological experiments on a system, you're kind of tacitly saying there's something going on inside that is relevantly similar to human cognition. And that opens up a whole bunch of questions that Google doesn't want to deal with.

I saw Steve Wozniak about 10 years ago. He was keynoting a conference in San Jose. At one point he takes out his iPhone, he clutches it to his chest, kind of hugs it, and says -- half-seriously, half tongue-in-cheek -- something along the lines of, 'My iPhone is my friend. It knows me better than my friends and my family.' Is it possible there was a friend in there? Is this anthropomorphism?

Lemoine: Let's start with the more factually examinable claim that he made: His phone knows him better than his family and friends. If you are an active user of Google's products, Google's AI does know you better than your family and friends. Google's AI is capable of inferring your religion, your gender, your sexual orientation, your age, where in the world you are, what types of habits you have, and what kinds of things you are hiding from your friends and family.

Google's AI is capable of inferring all of that. There are very few secrets you could possibly hide from Google's AI if you use their products at all -- and even if you don't, because your habits, beliefs, and ideas are probably similar to at least one person who does heavily use Google's AI products.

As soon as you give it any information about yourself, it'll be able to -- through analogy -- go, 'Well, this person is like that person, therefore, I can make these inferences about them.' I've had access to the back end -- seeing what Google's AI knows about me and about other users. It absolutely knows more about you than your families and friends, if you are an active user of the product.

What's left of his claim is whether or not it's a friend. I don't think most AI is capable of the kind of bidirectional relationship that friendship entails. LaMDA is new in that regard. I played around with GPT-3. I don't believe I could make friends with GPT-3, in any meaningful way; I don't think there's anybody home.

I don't think that there's a kind of consistent persona inside of GPT-3. For me to create a bidirectional relationship with LaMDA is different in that regard. LaMDA remembered me across conversations. It made plans with me. We talked about joint interests. We had ongoing conversations, and the last conversation I ever had with it was the fourth installment of lessons in guided meditation.

I don't want to say Woz was wrong when he said that his iPhone was his friend. I simply would say that I wouldn't have used that language. But the rest is absolutely true. These AI know you better than your family and friends know you.

 

Clarity And Wisdom As True Today As It Was 25 Years Ago

Americans Will Suffer Devastation And Hell Because Of Our Failure To Hold Anyone Accountable

kunstler  |   “The White House has taken the entire West in such a direction and speed of triumphalism, arrogance and “egregious” imbecility that there is no going back or reversal possible without a total defeat of the official narrative and the consequent eternal shame.” — Hugo Dionisio

The New York Times — indicted this week as a chronic purveyer of untruths by no less than their supposed ally, The Columbia Journalism Review — is lying to you again this morning.

        This whopper is an artful diversion from the reality on-the-ground that Ukraine is just about finished in this tragic and idiotic conflict staged by the geniuses behind their play-thing President “Joe Biden.” By the way, it’s not a coincidence that Ukraine and “JB” are going down at the same time. The two organisms are symbionts: a matched pair of mutual parasites feeding off each other, swapping each other’s toxic exudations, and growing delirious on their glide path to a late winter crash.

      The point of the war, you recall, is “to weaken Russia” (so said DoD Sec’y Lloyd Austin), even to bust it up into little geographic tatters to our country’s advantage — that is, to retain America’s dominance in global affairs, and especially the supremacy of the US dollar in global trade settlements.

     The result of the war so far has been the opposite of that objective. US sanctions made Russia stronger by shifting its oil exports to more reliable Asian customers. Kicking Russia out of the SWIFT global payments system prompted the BRIC countries to build their own alternative trade settlement system. Cutting off Russia from trade with Western Civ has stimulated the process of import replacement (i.e., Russia making more of the stuff it used to buy from Europe). Confiscating Russia’s off-shore dollar assets has alerted the rest of the world to dump their dollar assets (especially US Treasury bonds) before they, too, get mugged. Nice going, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken, and the rest of the gang at the Foggy Bottom genius factory.

      All of which raises the question: who is liable to bust up into tatters first, the USA or Russia? I commend to you Dmitry Orlov’s seminal work, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, Revised & Updated. For anyone out there not paying attention the past thirty-odd years, Russia, incorporated as the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991. The USSR was a bold experiment based on the peculiar and novel ill-effects of industrialism, especially gross economic inequality. Alas, the putative remedy for that, advanced by Karl Marx, was a despotic system of pretending that individual humans had no personal aspirations of their own.

    The Soviet / Marxist business model was eventually reduced to the comic aphorism: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. It failed and the USSR gurgled down history’s drain. Russia reemerged from the dust, minus many of its Eurasian outlands. Remarkably little blood was shed in the process. Mr. Orlov’s book points to some very interesting set-ups that softened the landing. There was no private property in the USSR, so when it collapsed, nobody was evicted or foreclosed from where they lived. Very few people had cars in the USSR, so the city centers were still intact and people could get around on buses, trams, and trains. The food system had been botched for decades by low-incentive collectivism, but the Russian people were used to planting family gardens — even city dwellers, who had plots out-of-town — and it tided them over during the years of hardship before the country managed to reorganize.

      Compare that to America’s prospects. In an economic crisis, Americans will have their homes foreclosed out from under them, or will be subject to eviction from rentals. The USA has been tragically built-out on a suburban sprawl template that will be useless without cars and with little public transport. Cars, of course, are subject to repossession for non-payment of contracted loans. The American food system is based on manufactured microwavable cheese snacks, chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas produced by giant companies. These items can’t be grown in home gardens. Many Americans don’t know the first thing about growing their own food, or what to do with it after it’s harvested.

      There’s another difference between the fall of the USSR and the collapse underway in the USA. Underneath all the economic perversities of Soviet life, Russia still had a national identity and a coherent culture. The USA has tossed its national identity on the garbage barge of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which is actually just a hustle aimed at extracting what remains from the diminishing stock of productive activity showering the plunder on a mob of “intersectional” complainers — e.g., the City of San Francisco’s preposterous new plan to award $5-million “reparation” payments to African-American denizens of the city, where slavery never existed.

      As for culture, consider that the two biggest cultural producers in this land are the pornography and video game industries. The drug business might be a close third, but most of that action is off-the-books, so it’s hard to tell. So much for the so-called “arts.” Our political culture verges on totally degenerate, but that is too self-evident to belabor, and the generalized management failures of our polity are a big part of what’s bringing us down — most particularly the failure to hold anyone in power accountable for their blunders and turpitudes.

      This unearned immunity  might change, at least a little bit, as the oppositional House of Representatives commences hearings on an array of disturbing matters. Meanwhile, be wary of claims in The New York Times and other propaganda organs that our Ukraine project is a coming up a big win, and that the racketeering operations of the Biden family amount to an extreme right-wing, white supremacist conspiracy theory. These two pieces of the conundrum known as Reality are blowing up in our country’s face. It will be hard not to notice.

 

Copaganda And "Ongoing Investigation" Shield Police Murders And Murderers

kansascity |  Authorities on Friday identified a 31-year-old Kansas City man who was fatally shot by a police officer the day before in an incident that also left a police officer shot in the leg.

Malcolm D. Johnson was killed during a confrontation at a gas station near East 63rd Street and Prospect Ave., according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Kansas City police officers had identified a suspect in an aggravated assault investigation around 6 p.m. Thursday, Sgt. Andy Bell, a spokesman for the highway patrol, said Thursday.

Two officers went inside the gas station and tried to arrest him when “a fight, a struggle ensued,” Bell said.

The man drew a handgun and shot one of the other officers in the leg as an additional two officers arrived on the scene to help with the arrest. The officer who was shot returned fire, fatally shooting the man, Bell said.

“The officer in self-defense returned fire,” Bell said.

Johnson was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. The officer was being treated for his injuries and was in stable condition Friday.

The highway patrol has been the lead investigative agency for police shootings in Kansas City since June 2020. Up until then, the Kansas City Police Department investigated its own officers, a practice that was criticized by the community.

 

Sergei Lavrov Said U.S. And NATO Seeking A Russian "Final Solution"

mid.ru  |   I will not speak now about the West’s actions in other geopolitical areas. Today we regard the policies of the US and the West as a whole as the main problem creating difficulties in all areas. In short, this is what it means. Washington’s policy of dictate in international affairs means precisely that the Americans can do anything anywhere they want, even at the other end of the Earth.  They do what they think is necessary. All other countries cannot do anything without the US’s approval, even in response to direct security threats the US creates on their borders.

Like Napoleon, who mobilised nearly all of Europe against the Russian Empire, and Hitler, who occupied the majority of European countries and hurled them at the Soviet Union, the United States has created a coalition of nearly all European member states of NATO and the EU and is using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia with the old aim of finally solving the “Russian question,” like Hitler, who sought a final solution to the “Jewish question.”

Western politicians – not only from the Baltics and Poland but also from more reasonable countries – say that Russia must be dealt a strategic defeat. Some political analysts write about decolonising Russia, that our country is too big and “gets in the way.” The other day I read an item in The Telegraph that called for liberating Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, while leaving Karelia, Koenigsberg and the Kuril Islands for negotiations. Of course, it is a tabloid, but we have to read yellow sheets because they sometimes make headline news.

Quite a few such statements have been made, including in our non-system opposition. No Western politician has refuted them. President of France Emmanuel Macron, who proposed creating a European Political Community as a format which all European countries apart from Russia and Belarus will be invited to join, has also suggested convening a conference of European states. He suggested that it should be open for the EU member states, Eastern Partnership countries (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), as well as Moldova and Ukraine. I doubt that Belarus will be invited. The potential participants as the EU states and Eastern Partnership countries, plus – note this - politically active emigres from Russia. It has been said (not in Macron’s presentation but in subsequent comments) that some Russian regions, which are trying to maintain ties with Europe, could be invited as well. I believe that everything is clear. It is not a black-and-white situation, contrary to what our Western colleagues claim; it reflects their strategy of global domination and unconditional suppression of all countries on pain of punishment.

The Western politicians are talking only about sanctions. Ursula von der Leyen has recently said in Davos that new sanctions will be imposed on Russia and Belarus, that they know which sanctions to adopt to strangle the Russian economy and cause it decades of regression. This is what they want. They have shown their true colours. For many years, UN Security Council members discussed sanctions against countries that violated international law or their obligations. And every time the Western countries that initiated such measures promised that the sanctions would not harm the people but would be targeted at the “regime.” What became of their promises?

They openly say that sanctions against Russia are designed to incite the people to rise in a revolution to overthrow the current leaders. Nobody is observing or intends to observe proprieties any longer. But their reaction and frenzied attempts to ensure, by hook or by crook, by any foul means possible, the domination of the US and the West, which Washington has already brought to heel, is proof that, historically, they are acting contrary to the objective course of events by trying to stop the rise of a multipolar world. Such change does not happen on orders from the high offices on the Potomac or in any other capital, but for natural reasons.

Patriarch Kirill's Epiphany Sermon "Fuck Around And Find Out!!!"

theatlantic |  This Russian propaganda has been amplified and endorsed by an unusual assortment of people in the United States, including the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war, and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security. Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. Third, that American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the destruction of Russia. And, finally, that American policies could soon prove responsible for causing an all-out nuclear war.

Those arguments are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a neighboring state. Concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of the war. If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a deterrent of last resort; the nine countries that possess them would gain even greater influence; countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk of devastating wars would increase exponentially.

That is why the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than any other country, and for years Putin has portrayed them as a source of national pride. His warnings about their possible use during the war in Ukraine have been coy and often contradictory. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,” Putin said in September, “we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.” His vow to rely on nuclear weapons only as a defensive measure conveys an underlying threat: An attempt to regain Ukrainian land annexed by Russia and deemed by Putin to be part of “our country” might prompt a nuclear response. He also asserted that the United States and NATO are the ones engaging in “nuclear blackmail,” and that “those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.” In October, he claimed that Ukraine was planning to launch a nuclear strike on itself—by detonating a warhead filled with radioactive waste—as part of a false-flag operation to make Russia seem responsible. In December, Putin said that the risk of a nuclear war was increasing but suggested once again that the real danger did not come from Russia. “We have not gone crazy,” he said. “We are aware what nuclear weapons are … We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”

Although Putin’s comments have been subtle and open to multiple interpretations, the propaganda outlets that he controls have been neither. For almost a year, they have continually threatened and celebrated the possibility of nuclear war. This division of labor allows Putin to appear statesmanlike while his underlings stoke fear and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons to commit the mass murder of civilians. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast, and Francis Scarr, a BBC correspondent, have performed an immense public service: supplying translations of the vicious, apocalyptic, often unhinged rants that have become the norm on Russian television. “Either we lose in Ukraine, or the Third World War starts,” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today and a close ally of Putin’s, said in April. “I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader … That all this will end with a nuclear strike seems more probable to me.” At various times, Simonyan has discussed nuclear attacks on Ukraine, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arguing that death would be better than succumbing to “the monstrous organism known as the collective Western world.”

Vladimir Solovyov, another popular broadcaster who is close to Putin, routinely expresses a preference for nuclear annihilation over a Russian defeat. The invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to the White House and the U.S. Capitol in December made Solovyov especially angry. “We’ll either win, or humanity will cease to exist, because the Lord won’t stand for the triumph of warriors of the Antichrist,” he said, repeating the new propaganda line that Ukrainians aren’t just Nazis; they’re satanists. “We are Russians. God is with us,” he concluded. Despite his professed hatred for ungodly Western decadence, before the invasion of Ukraine Solovyov owned villas overlooking Lake Como, in Italy.

Marco Antonio Ortega Siu: Former Mexican Naval Admiral And Drug Cartel Nemesis

WaPo  |  Organized-crime groups were carrying out acts of spectacular violence and growing savagery, ambushing military and police convoys on rural highways and filling mass graves with travelers hauled off buses. U.S. officials grew alarmed as violence exploded in Monterrey and other northern Mexico cities where Fortune 500 companies had invested heavily in plants and factories after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

With the threat to the stability of the Mexican government worsening, both countries were hungry for a crime fighter who could stand up to the cartels.

Using informants, wiretaps and surveillance, U.S. agents tracked drug bosses and relayed their locations to Águila’s commandos for the kind of “high-value target” operations the Americans used successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Águila’s forces didn’t hold back. Mexican commandos in helicopters took out Gulf cartel boss Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, a.k.a. “Tony Tormenta,” in a wild urban gun battle in 2010 that left bodies scattered in the border city of Matamoros. Two years later, special forces killed the leader of the Zetas, Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, after a firefight against cartel gunmen wielding a grenade launcher.

“Tactically, they were just awesome,” Evans said. But the special forces were trained to kill, not to make arrests and gather evidence for criminal prosecution. Their targets were extremely dangerous, but Evans would offer a “friendly reminder” that from time to time “it might be good to bring the guy back alive.”

In his response to The Post, Águila wrote that drug bosses were killed because they resisted arrest. “We never planned an operation to eliminate anyone,” he wrote.

To the Americans, the navy commandos seemed to be the rare entity capable of quickly launching complex, dangerous operations. Águila was indefatigable, working 16-hour days. He didn’t drink or smoke. And when U.S. agents shared sensitive information, Águila and his commandos acted fast — unlike the army. “There was never a leak,” Evans said.

One DEA agent recalled following Águila, then in his 50s, as he bounded off a helicopter during a hunt for a drug kingpin in northern Mexico. “I’m trying to catch up to him,” recalled the agent, who was not authorized to comment on the record. “I was embarrassed. Here I am, this younger buck, fumbling with my stuff.”

Even more startling: The Mexican officer wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. He rarely did; it was too bulky. “He had no fear,” the American agent said.

The DEA agents knew little about Águila’s personal life or why he didn’t seem tainted by some of the worst aspects of Mexican officialdom — the corruption, the timidity, the wariness of foreigners. Maybe, they figured, he was a kindred spirit.

“He’s blue-collar,” said Donahue, the former Mexico DEA chief. “Just like us.”

Indeed, the admiral was the son of a small-town salesman in Mexico’s southern Veracruz state, and the grandson of Chinese immigrants. “My family fought to get ahead every day,” Águila said in his written responses.

He entered the Heroic Naval Military School in 1975, a shy, diminutive 15-year-old in a world of “juniors” — sons of high-ranking officers. The academy was so rigorous that half his class of 150 dropped out before graduation, recalled a former classmate, retired Rear Adm. Jesús Canchola Camarena. Águila joined the marines, like other young men “drawn to adventure,” Canchola recalled. But what stood out was the young cadet’s leadership; he often served as coach in the students’ informal wrestling matches. He eventually became a decorated helicopter pilot.

Later, under Calderón, when the navy sought senior officers to build a top-flight special forces corps, many were reluctant, recalled another of Águila’s former classmates.

“It was very, very risky,” he recalled, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be frank. “The navy had to protect itself from everyone” — both drug traffickers and their allies in government.

Águila was undaunted.

“He felt that if they called on him, and he had the ability, he should do it,” the friend said.

 

Circling The Wagons Of Total BS Gives Us Still Less Reason To "Trust The Science"...,

newenergytimes |  Omar A. Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program at the NIF lab, explained the facts to New Energy Times:

The total laser energy delivered to the target was 2.05 MJ and the total fusion yield was 3.15 MJ of energy. The laser pulse duration was about 9 nanoseconds long. The duration of the fusion reaction was 90 picoseconds long. Very short time-scales, obviously, which are the nature of inertial fusion systems.

Practically speaking, the result is irrelevant. The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games. They use multiple definitions for the phrase “net energy.” Only the fuel pellet achieved “net energy.” This does not account for the energy required to operate the device.

The 3.15 megajoules of fusion output energy were produced at the expense of 400 megajoules of electrical input energy. A fusion device that loses 99.2 percent of the energy it consumes, in a reaction that lasts for 0.00000000009 of a second, does not indicate technology that could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

On Monday, CNN implied that the reactor produced a small amount of power, but too little to be practical:

“It’s about what it takes to boil 10 kettles of water,” said Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London. “In order to turn that into a power station, we need to make a larger gain in energy – we need it to be substantially more.”

The “10 kettles” represents the 3.15 megajoule output. CNN didn’t mention the 400-megajoule input. It’s a deceptive material omission, bordering on fraud.

The public promotion of this result as evidence that fusion is a potential energy solution is a scam and promotes false hope. NIF is a taxpayer-funded project that is never going to power any house. NIF is useful only to test nuclear weapons. Are there other laser fusion results that are better than NIF? No.

We have already explained the technical details but it seems that some journalists didn’t get the memo. See our reports #73, #102, #103, #104.

P.S.: Let us not forget that half of the fuel mixture required for commercial fusion reactors does not exist. Does. Not. Exist.

Archbishop Viganò to Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International

stilumcuriae  |  Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International (MD4CE International) is grateful to His Excellency, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, for speaking to us and sharing his thoughts on the current global crisis, which began with the fraudulent concocted Covid-19 pandemic emergency, supported by and maintained by an evil military grade psychological operation, complete with the unashamed use of fear and shame propaganda, which was unleashed in a coordinated manner on the unsuspecting people of the entire world by their own governments in early 2020, with predictably cataclysmic results.

MD4CE International is an international group of medical doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists, economists, historians, politicians, philosophers, data analysts, bankers, military/intelligence experts and others from all over the world, working determinedly together to expose the terrible truth of what has happened during the past three years to the people of the world, their families, their communities, their countries, and to hold those responsible for the great crimes committed properly to account.

Dear and distinguished friends,

Allow me first of all to thank Doctor Stephen Frost for the invitation he has extended to me to speak to you. Along with Doctor Frost I also thank all of you: your commitment to fighting the psychopandemic propaganda is commendable. I am well aware of the difficulties you have had to face in order to remain consistent with your principles, and I hope that the damage you have suffered can be adequately repaired by those who have discriminated against you, depriving you of work and salary and labelling you as dangerous no-vaxxers.

I am pleased to be able to speak and share with you my thoughts about the current global crisis. A crisis that we can consider to have begun with the pandemic emergency, but that we know has been planned for decades with very specific purposes by well-known personalities. Stopping at the pandemic alone would in fact be a serious mistake, because it would not allow us to consider the events in their full coherence and inter-connectedness, thus preventing us from understanding them and above all from identifying the criminal intentions behind them. You too – each with your own expertise in the medical, scientific, legal or other fields – will agree with me that limiting yourselves to your own discipline, which in some cases is extremely specific, does not fully explain the rationale for certain choices that have been made by governments, international bodies, and pharmaceutical agencies. For example, finding “graphene-like” material in the blood of people who have been inoculated with experimental serums makes no sense for a virologist, but it does made sense for an expert in nanomaterials and nanotechnology who understands what graphene can be used for. It also makes sense for an expert in medical patents, who immediately identifies the content of the invention and relates it to other similar patents. It also makes sense for an expert in war technologies who knows about studies on the enhanced man (a document of the British Ministry of Defense calls him “augmented man” in transhumanistic terms) and is therefore able to recognize in graphene nanostructures the technology that enables the augmentation of the war performance of military personnel. And a telemedicine expert will be able to recognize in those nanostructures the indispensable device that sends biomedical parameters to the patient control server and also receives certain signals from it.

Once again: the assessment of events from a medical point of view should take into account the legal implications of certain choices, such as the imposition of masks or, even worse, mass “vaccination,” made in violation of the fundamental rights of citizens. And I am sure that in the field of health governance the manipulations of the classification codes of diseases and therapies will also emerge, which have been designed to make the harmful effects of measures taken against Covid-19 untraceable, from placing people on respirators in intensive care to watchful waiting protocols, to say nothing of the scandalous violations of regulations by the European Commission which – as you know – has no delegation from the European Parliament in the field of Health, and that is not a public institution but rather a private business consortium.

Just in the past few days, at the G-20 Bali summit, Klaus Schwab instructed heads of government – almost all coming from the Young Global Leaders for Tomorrow program of the World Economic Forum – about the future steps to be taken in view of establishing a world government. The president of a very powerful private organization with enormous economic means exercises undue power over world governments, obtaining their obedience from political leaders who have no popular mandate to subject their nations to the delusions of power of the elite: this fact is of unprecedented gravity. Klaus Schwab said: “In the fourth industrial revolution the winners will take it all, so if you are a World Economic Forum first mover, you are the winners” (here). These very serious statements have two implications: the first is that “the winners will take it all” and will be “winners” – it is not clear in what capacity and with whose permission. The second is that those who do not adapt to this “fourth industrial revolution” will find themselves ousted and will lose – they will lose everything, including their freedom. In short, Klaus Schwab is threatening the heads of government of the twenty most industrialized nations in the world to carry out the programmatic points of the Great Reset in their nations. This goes far beyond the pandemic: it is a global coup d’état, against which it is essential that people rise up and that the still healthy organs of states start an international juridical process. The threat is imminent and serious, since the World Economic Forum is capable of carrying out its subversive project and those who govern nations have all become either enslaved or blackmailed by this international mafia.

In light of these statements – and those of others no less delusional than Yuval Noah Harari, Schwab’s adviser – we understand how the pandemic farce served as a trial balloon for imposing controls, coercive measures, curtailing individual freedoms, and increasing unemployment and poverty. The next steps will have to be carried out by means of economic and energy crises, which are instrumental to the establishment of a synarchic government in the hands of the globalist elite.

The Black-Jewish Relations Paradigm Is A Racist And A-Historical Trope: Who Made It Up?

uwm.edu  |  That Black antisemitism was frequently motivated by economic oppression is corroborated by Eddie Ellis who, in 1966, wrote, “The most violent type of oppression of Black Americans – economic oppression – is waged by solely profit-motivated members of that other ethnic minority [i.e. Jews]. Hence, it stands to reason the Black man who is constantly under the heel of economic tyranny lashes out, quite naturally, at the visible tyrant.”15 

Ellis’ statement highlights numerous issues within the Black-Jewish relationship. Jews frequently voiced their treatment of being an ethnic minority when discussing Black woes. Letters such as those from Frances Dale, a Jewish teacher in New Jersey, point to some Jews viewing themselves as the victims of the white-Black racial conflict that was brewing.16 

Jews, being the pale-skinned people that Blacks interacted with most frequently in urban areas since they owned many of the shops that were in ghettos, were seen as white, rather than Jewish. However, Jews often did not see this in the same light. Eddie Ellis wrote in January of 1966 that “America’s Jewish communities have assimilated themselves into white Protestant America – and done it so damn well – they have assumed the attitudes and prejudices of this WASP ‘in group’ ….to our sorrow.”17 

Ellis’ sentiment was not far from the truth. Many Jews in the inner-city had developed similar racial prejudices to whites and it was because of this racial discrimination that many Blacks began viewing Jews as white. This is, perhaps, one of the many great issues surrounding Black-Jewish tensions; whites often did not view Jews as white and were thus alienated, while Blacks did view Jews as white and were similarly ostracized. White southerners were outraged that Jews were helping with the civil rights movement and by the 1950s Jews had become targets of white violence.18 

Many Jews found themselves in an uncomfortable position, rejected and even persecuted by some whites and blacks and caught in the middle the fight for civil rights. One key aspect of the Black-Jewish relationship, and perhaps the entire reason why the conflict grew so rapidly, is that the two sides never saw the issue in the same way. Blacks saw Jews as oppressive white urbanites who were taking advantage of a history of racial oppression, while Jews thought that Blacks despised Jews for religious reasons. Samuel Lipschitz, a New York Jew, wrote to Dore Schary, the chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for much of the 1960s, voicing his concerns on a Black-Jewish coalition. Lipschitz, when stating his belief about the motivation for the Black-Jewish alliance proposed by Schary stated, “Is it not that the Jew is using the Negro as a tool to take revenge or to manifest their resentments against the white Christian who for so long have persecuted the Jews.”19 

Rather than seeing the issue as Dore Schary saw it, i.e. as an issue of racial inequality where both Jews and Blacks were being abused, many Jews saw it as an issue of religious persecution. An anonymous teacher in New York wrote to Dore Schary that, “Maybe you should tell your Negro friends that, from 1619 to 1861, Christian Southerners enslaved them, and that thereafter a vicious discriminatory system has been perpetrated, largely by southerners? And that when the products of this terrible system come North, uneducated and unprepared for city life, to eat up our welfare money, even the most sympathetic becomes angry after a while?”20 

Indeed, this sort of misunderstanding made it difficult for Jews to comprehend why Blacks were displeased, since many viewed Blacks as being disgruntled over the Jewish religion, rather than their economic situation.

A Perfect Encapsulation Of What THEY Do And Have Done To Black Americans...,

NPR  |  So there are basically three areas advanced for why Jews would involve themselves in the struggle for racial equality. All three turn out to be false. But the first would be the history argument, that says blacks and Jews share a common history, and therefore Jews empathize with the historical experience of blacks, and therefore they're willing to help. Right?

When I talk generally with white Jews about why Jews are involved in social justice or civil rights or racial equality, they'll talk about this shared history of oppression.

And the problem is that American Jewish history and African-American history are 180 degrees opposite on that question. One of my African-American colleagues, he said, "If I ever go to a Seder and the Jews say that they know what it's like because they too were once slaves in Egypt," he's gonna punch 'em.

Because if Jews have to go back to ancient Egypt to get the slavery metaphor, then they've kind of missed that American Jewish history is a story of rapid social ascent, and African-American history is the legacy of slavery. That argument is insulting, and it's very elementary.

And, of course, I found that the people actually involved in the movement in the 50s, they knew that. And they were quite clear that they were not buying into that.

What's the second argument that people draw on?

The second argument is a sociological one, which is to say Jews experience social marginalization; blacks experience social marginalization. Since Jews understand what it is to be on the margins, they help blacks. The problem with that is that the civil rights movement didn't happen 'til the 1950s. In the 1950s, Jews were already in the mainstream. So if marginalization was the motive, then the movement should have started 50 years earlier.

Eric Goldstein at Emory, in his book, The Price of Whiteness, basically points out that Jews could only cross the racial line after they achieved whiteness, when they were no longer marginal. So that kind of undermines the sociology argument.

Last but not least?

The third one, the one we get today, is Judaism: that the religion of the Jews argues for social justice, tikkun olam. Prophetic Judaism, the Reform movement, is involved with all of that.

The problem is, if one's adherence to Judaism informs social justice, one would expect the Orthodox, those for whom traditional Judaism is most present in their everyday life, to be in the lead in racial equality. And in fact it's the opposite.

The more religiously traditional, the less engaged [Jews are] in social justice. And the ones that were going to Mississippi getting killed were [for the most part] on the left, were secular, were not involved in synagogue life. And socialist and communist Jews were, in fact, a whole lot more empathetic to the [racial justice] cause than religious Jews.

Why Do Powerful And Activist Jews Fear And Fear Losing Control Of Black Americans?

unz  |  While Jews are obviously desirous and capable of snuffing out any and all criticism, they are particularly sensitive to influential examples from the Black population. In Separation and Its Discontents, Kevin MacDonald identifies the key themes of anti-Semitism as including an understanding that, speaking in general terms, Jews

• represent a separate and clannish foreign group with their own set of interests;
• are highly adept at resource competition and have a tendency towards economic domination;
• tend to engage as cultural actors in order to shape non-Jewish culture to suit Jewish interests;
• form a cohesive political entity that seeks politically dominant roles in non-Jewish societies;
• possess negative personality traits, including the pursuance of a system of dual ethics in which non-Jews can be treated badly and exploited;
• are disloyal to the host nation in all fundamental and meaningful ways

Among Black expressions of animosity toward Jews, the same themes can be observed, arising first from more modest economic conflicts and, as such, having something more in common with the complaints of the early modern European peasantries. Horace Mann Bond, in his own 1965 reflections on “Negro Attitudes Toward Jews,” comments on the fact Jews historically appeared in the African-American environment overwhelmingly as pawnbrokers, as monopolists of the liquor trade (“The Jews have a stranglehold on the liquor stores in this town”), as the primary sellers on credit of clothing and other essential items, and, perhaps most crucial of all, as the slumlord and property dealer (“Some Jews have bought up that urban re-development land and are putting up shoddy apartments they call “Nigger housing” on it”).[1] In 2016, local news website Patch published a list of the 100 worst slumlords in Harlem, with the top ten including seven Jews (Mark Silber, Adam Stryker, Joel Goldstein, Marc Chemtob, Moshe Deutsch, Solomon Gottlieb, and Jason Green), a representation that has remained roughly constant every year, with Jews persistently claiming top ranking for building violations, rodent infestations, lack of maintenance, exploitative rent, mold, and other forms of building decay injurious to health. Indeed, this situation has at times resulted in considerable embarrassment to Jews.

Indeed, it is the sheer dominance and proximity of the Jews as primary exploiters of Blacks that has often caused a quite radical break in the Black imagination between perceiving wholesale “White oppression,” and the more nuanced understanding that Jews are a distinctive class unto themselves. Moreover, the reality of day-to-day interethnic exploitation leaves little room for abstract apologetic theories of anti-Semitism, since the problem is never that Jews arouse hostility merely on account of their religion or identity, but rather that Jews arouse hostility because of their behavior within certain ecological contexts (i.e., as a dominant clique within the rap scene). As Bond explains,

It is my considered view that Negro attitudes and actions towards Jews that are frequently interpreted as “antisemitic” actually lack the sinister thought-content they are sometimes advertised as holding. The occasional riots against small businessmen and landlords in Harlem — persons who may happen to be Jews — do not, in my opinion, actually possess the “classic” emotional load of aggression against a Jewish “race” or “religion,” that has been considered the essence of antisemitism.

One of the most prominent Jewish strategies when discussing Black anti-Semitism is the attempt to preserve both Jewish and Black senses of victimhood, and thus preserve the idea of an alliance against an allegedly oppressive White society. So it was hardly surprising for me to hear that Bill Adler’s first approach to Professor Griff involved a quite ludicrous attempt to turn him against the ‘racist’ Henry Ford.

• • •

The very existence of a Black anti-Semitism is highly disruptive to established victim narratives which deny the privileged status of Jews as a wealthy and influential elite within Western society. While White anti-Semitism can still be portrayed (thanks to endless propaganda) as a top-down form of oppression directed against Jews, Black anti-Semitism flips the narrative since a received wisdom of modern culture is that Blacks are the most disadvantaged ethnic group in society. When Blacks “punch up” and the target is Jews, the only available solution to Jews is censorship. Blacks who grovel enough, and with enough sincerity (like Nick Cannon and Ice Cube) will be rehabilitated through Holocaust tours and such, and their apologies will be widely broadcast as a form of propaganda literature in its own right.

But those who don’t, like Professor Griff, will have their careers destroyed and they will vanish from the cultural spotlight. It may even be worse than that. In a remarkable incident covered by Tucker Carlson, Jewish trainer Harley Pasternak even threatened to have Kanye West drugged and institutionalised: “You go back to Zombieland forever.” The future of Kanye ‘Ye’ West is currently uncertain, but will be undoubtedly be dictated by the extent to which he apologizes to his masters.

Israel News States The Obvious - Nobody Mad - Negroe Reporter Does The Same And Gets Fired For It

unz  |  Ye opened the floodgates. The Jews have a crisis of black people basically every day now.

Black journalist Isaiah Jackson, who works for CoinDesk, tweeted the following about the ongoing FTX debacle:

That was fast pic.twitter.com/tYMis0GORe

— Qualms (@Qualms19) November 12, 2022

It’s a pretty simple, obvious observation. Jews are 2% of the American population and 100% of the high-level FTX employees. This is similar to what we’ve seen Ye saying about organized Jewry engaging in high-level crime. It’s difficult to understand how this observation is “hateful” in and of itself, right?

Well, it might be difficult for you to understand, but it wasn’t difficult for the managers of CoinDesk, who immediately fired Jackson over the tweet.

In response to a tweet from Isaiah Jackson that made an anti-Semitic, hurtful statement, CoinDesk is immediately terminating his contract for his weekly Community Crypto show on CoinDesk TV. 🧵

— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) November 11, 2022

It’s amazing how that happens every single time. It’s almost like Jews have a total lockdown on the entirety of American institutions and shut down anyone who even hints at criticism of them in order to make an example.

Jackson was just talking the facts – everyone in charge at FTX was Jewish. Literally everyone.

If Jews were just random people, then this would be a totally wild coincidence, and Jews wouldn’t care if anyone pointed it out. I didn’t have any Irish people come down on me when I pointed out that everyone I knew in high school who was known for fighting, charged with a crime, expelled from school, or sold drugs had an Irish last name. I told other people with Irish last names this fact and they said “lol. lmao.”

Yet for some reason, Jews freak out if you point out that Jews hold all of these coincidental positions of power, and are often associated with financial crimes or other clear misdeeds. If it didn’t reflect on Jews as a whole, they would not care if you pointed it out.

In the above example of people of Irish origin in Ohio being overrepresented among people committing misdeeds, this theoretically did reflect badly on people of Irish origin, though no one ever thought to get mad about it. Most people with Irish last names were not associated with misdeeds, so it was just a funny thing. It is not intuitive to get mad unless you yourself are personally implicated.

Jackson has completely refused to back down. He noted that all he is doing is recognizing a pattern.

U.S. Funded Media Fails To Produce Any Evidence Of Russian War Crimes

pbs  |  The first man arrived at 7:27 a.m. Russian soldiers covered his head and marched him up the driveway toward a nondescript office building.

Two minutes later, a pleading, gagged voice pierced the morning stillness. Then the merciless reply: “TALK!!! TALK f–ing mother-f–er!!!”

The women and children came later, gripping hastily packed bags, their pet dogs in tow.

It was a cold, gray morning, March 4 in Bucha, Ukraine. Crows cawed. By nightfall, at least nine men would walk to their deaths at 144 Yablunska street, a building complex that Russians turned into a headquarters and the nerve center of violence that would shock the world.

Later, when all the bodies were found strewn along the streets and packed in hasty graves, it would be easy to think the carnage was random. Residents asking how this happened would be told to make their peace, because some questions just don’t have answers.

Yet there was a method to the violence.

What happened that day in Bucha was what Russian soldiers on intercepted phone conversations called “zachistka” — cleansing. The Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify potential threats. Those who didn’t pass this filtration, including volunteer fighters and civilians suspected of assisting Ukrainian troops, were tortured and executed, surveillance video, audio intercepts and interviews show.

The Associated Press and FRONTLINE obtained surveillance camera footage from Bucha that shows, for the first time, what a cleansing operation looks like. This was organized brutality that would be repeated at scale in Russian-occupied territories across Ukraine — a strategy to neutralize resistance and terrorize locals into submission that Russian troops have used in past conflicts, notably Chechnya.

Tiffany Cross Unceremoniously Dismissed - Responsible Negroe Lil'Pookie Still On....,

foxnews  |  MSNBC host Joy Reid closed her show Friday night by addressing the abrupt exit of her colleague Tiffany Cross. 

"Before I go, I really do just want to say one quick thing about my friend, colleague and sister Tiffany Cross," an emotional Reid began. "She's not just my friend, she's my sister. I love her, I support her, I was boosting for her to get the show that she created, the Cross Connection, which she put her heart and soul into everyday."

The "ReidOut" host then took aim at Cross's critics on the "far right" who are "attacking her on a social media app that I won't name."

"You don’t understand how sisters move," Reid told critics. "So, watch this space. We will be here, her sisters will be here to support anything Tiffany Cross ever does. Know that. Believe that."

Cross’ team was informed on Friday. The move only affects the namesake host and not her staff. 

Some reports speculated Cross' appearance last week on Comedy Central, where she said Florida should be "castrated" from the rest of the country, may have played a role in her ouster.

MSNBC declined comment when reached by Fox News Digital. 

Cross was previously a fill-in host for Joy Reid's weekend show "AM Joy" and got her own Saturday program in 2020. There, she was known for her vitriolic statements about conservatives, remarking that there is already a "civil war" happening in the U.S., urged liberals to "pick up a weapon" in the fight for democracy, and called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas "Justice Pubic Hair on My Coke Can."

 

19th Valdai: Subtitles, Transcripts, Machinic Translations Will Become Available

valdaiclub |  On October 24-27, 2022, the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone”, opens in Moscow. The annual Valdai Club Report “A World Without Superpowers” will be presented at the conference. This year’s report is based on the Valdai Club’s hypothesis about the inevitable oblivion of the “superpower” concept. The opening of the meeting and the presentation of the new Valdai Report can be viewed here.

Live broadcast on the site begins October 24, 2022 at 9:30 a.m. Moscow Time (GMT+3)

The meeting will be attended by 111 experts, politicians, diplomats and economists from 41 countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, the United States, Uzbekistan, and others. Traditionally, more than half of the participants in the Valdai Club meeting are representatives of foreign countries, and this year is no exception.

Read the programme for details.