Mainstream Interpretation Of The Whitehouse National Cybersecurity Strategy

Wired  |  In the endless fight to improve cybersecurity and encourage investment in digital defenses, some experts have a controversial suggestion. They say the only way to make companies take it seriously is to create real economic incentives—by making them legally liable if they have not taken adequate steps to secure their products and infrastructure. The last thing anyone wants is more liability, so the idea has never exploded in popularity, but a national cybersecurity strategy from the White House this week is giving the concept a prominent boost.

The long-awaited document proposes stronger cybersecurity protections and regulations for critical infrastructure, an expanded program to disrupt cybercriminal activity, and a focus on global cooperation. Many of these priorities are widely accepted and build on national strategies put out by past US administrations. But the Biden strategy expands significantly on the question of liability.

“We must begin to shift liability onto those entities that fail to take reasonable precautions to secure their software while recognizing that even the most advanced software security programs cannot prevent all vulnerabilities,” it says. “Companies that make software must have the freedom to innovate, but they must also be held liable when they fail to live up to the duty of care they owe consumers, businesses, or critical infrastructure providers.”

Publicizing the strategy is a way of making the White House's priorities clear, but it does not in itself mean that Congress will pass legislation to enact specific policies. With the release of the document, the Biden administration seems focused on promoting discussion about how to better handle liability as well as raising awareness about the stakes for individual Americans.

“Today, across the public and private sectors, we tend to devolve responsibility for cyber risk downwards. We ask individuals, small businesses, and local governments to shoulder a significant burden for defending us all. This isn’t just unfair, it’s ineffective,” acting national cyber director Kemba Walden told reporters on Thursday. “The biggest, most capable, and best-positioned actors in our digital ecosystem can and should shoulder a greater share of the burden for managing cyber risk and keeping us all safe. This strategy asks more of industry, but also commits more from the federal government.”

Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, had a similar sentiment for an audience at Carnegie Mellon University earlier this week. “We often blame a company today that has a security breach because they didn’t patch a known vulnerability,” she said. “What about the manufacturer that produced the technology that required too many patches in the first place?”

The goal of shifting liability to large companies has certainly started a conversation, but all eyes are on the question of whether it will actually result in change. Chris Wysopal, founder and CTO of the application security firm Veracode, provided input to the Office of the National Cyber Director for the White House strategy.

“Regulation in this area is going to be complicated and tricky, but it can be powerful if done appropriately,” he says. Wysopal likens the concept of security liability laws to environmental regulations. “You can’t simply pollute and walk away; businesses will need to be prepared to clean up their mess.”

Long Overdue Time For The U.S. To Nationalize And Modernize It's Railway Systems

commondreams  |  "The railroads, their CEOs, and the hedge fund robber barons will not listen, but railroad workers have the solution to managing and operating critical railroad infrastructure."

An alliance representing rail workers across the United States published an open letter late Thursday urging all of organized labor to support the nationalization of the country's railroad system, arguing that the private and inadequately regulated industry has "shown itself incapable of doing the job."

"In face of the degeneration of the rail system in the last decade, and after more than a decade of discussion and debate on the question, Railroad Workers United (RWU) has taken a position in support of public ownership of the rail system in the United States," reads the letter, which was published as the small town of East Palestine, Ohio is attempting to recover from the toxic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train two weeks ago.

"We ask you to consider doing the same, and announce your organization's support for rail public ownership," continues the letter, which was addressed to unions as well as environmental, transportation justice, and workers' rights organizations. "While the rail industry has been incapable of expansion in the last generation and has become more and more fixated on the operating ratio to the detriment of all other metrics of success, precision scheduled railroading (PSR) has escalated this irresponsible trajectory to the detriment of shippers, passengers, commuters, trackside communities, and workers."

PSR is a Wall Street-backed model that has taken hold across the U.S. rail industry, gutting workforces and undermining safety in pursuit of more "efficiency" and larger profits for rail carriers and rich investors. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 of the nation's trains derail every year.

In its open letter, RWU—whose ranks include workers from a number of different unions and rail professions—noted that "on-time performance is suffering" and "shipper complaints are at all-time highs" as rail carriers prioritize their profit margins over all else.

Norfolk Southern, which also owns the train that derailed outside of Detroit on Thursday, brought in record revenue and profits in 2022.

"Passenger trains are chronically late, commuter services are threatened, and the rail industry is hostile to practically any passenger train expansion," RWU's letter states. The workforce has been decimated, as jobs have been eliminated, consolidated, and contracted out, ushering in a new previously unheard-of era where workers can neither be recruited nor retained. Locomotive, rail car, and infrastructure maintenance have been cut back. Health and safety have been put at risk. Morale is at an all-time low."

The alliance also pointed to the White House-brokered contract that Congress forced rail workers to accept last year as evidence of broader industry dysfunction. At the center of the contract negotiations—which nearly resulted in a nationwide strike—was the issue of paid sick leave, which is denied to most rail workers due to PSR.

Biden DOJ Backing Norfolk Southern’s Bid To Block Lawsuits

levernews  |  A looming Supreme Court decision could end up making it easier for the railroad giant whose train derailed in Ohio this month to block lawsuits, including from victims of the disaster.

In the case against Norfolk Southern, the Biden administration is siding with the railroad in its conflict with a cancer-stricken former rail worker. A high court ruling for Norfolk Southern could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations.

The lawsuit in question, filed initially in a Pennsylvania county court in 2017, deals with a state law that permits plaintiffs to file suit against any corporation registered to do business there, even if the actions that gave rise to the case occurred elsewhere.

In its fight against the lawsuit, Norfolk Southern is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania’s law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent.

Oral arguments in the case were held last fall, and a ruling is expected from the Supreme Court in the coming months.

If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court — an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable.

Limiting lawsuits is exactly what the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the industry’s primary lobbying group, wants. The organization filed a brief on the side of Norfolk Southern in the case, arguing that a ruling in favor of the plaintiff would open up railroads to more litigation.

It is also apparently what the Biden administration wants — the Justice Department filed its own brief in favor of Norfolk Southern.

Should Norfolk Southern prevail, the company could use the ruling to challenge other lawsuits on the grounds that they’re filed in the wrong venue, said Scott Nelson, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which filed a brief backing the plaintiff in the Pennsylvania case.

Such a decision could affect lawsuits filed by residents exposed to hazardous chemicals as the result of accidents in other states — such as the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment disaster, which occurred five miles west of the Pennsylvania state line.

 

Trump Saying He'll Go To East Palestine Last Night Finally Got FEMA Off The Pot

wkyc  |  Just hours after saying he "[did] not expect" members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be in East Palestine, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine now confirms the government entity will, in fact, be sending a crew to assist with the aftermath of the train derailment in the village.

In a joint statement released Friday night, DeWine and FEMA Regional Administrator Thomas C. Sivak said the agency would deploy a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) to Columbiana County starting Saturday, along with a senior response official. The workers will "support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs."

"The Biden-Harris Administration has mobilized a robust, multi-agency effort to support the people of East Palestine, Ohio," the White House said in a statement of its own earlier this afternoon. "As President Biden told Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro soon after the derailment, the Federal Government stands ready to provide any additional federal assistance the states may need."

DeWine had previously requested federal help, and today the Department of Health and Human Services announced toxicologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be journeying to East Palestine to assist with public health testing. However, the governor's request for FEMA assistance was initially denied, with the agency apparently telling his office the current situation "[did] not quality for assistance."

"Although FEMA is synonymous with disaster support, they're most typically involved with disasters where there is tremendous home or property damage," DeWine told reporters in a Friday press conference, adding this would include situations like tornadoes, flooding, or hurricanes."

It is unknown what changed in the time since those remarks, but the governor did confirm he would "preemptively file a document with FEMA to preserve our rights in case we need their assistance in the future." DeWine has not declared the crash aftermath to be a federal disaster, perhaps because of concerns doing that could shield the Norfolk Southern Railway from liability.

Deeply Offended That A 3rd World Cheese Dick Controls The POTUS

kanekoa  |   The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, but it was instead Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.”

Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later, on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.

The study, which was funded to dig up the corruption of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, instead found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine.”

Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.”

In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.

Kolomoysky Owns 1+1 Media Group

Kolmoysky, who currently holds a net worth of $1.8 billion, making him the 1750th richest person in the world, owns holdings in metal, petroleum, and the media sector, where he has had a long history with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

For years, Zelensky’s company produced shows for Kolmoysky’s TV network, 1+1 Media Group, one of the largest media conglomerates in Ukraine. Zelensky achieved national fame, portraying a president on a hit television sitcom called Servant of the People, which was broadcasted on a channel owned by Kolmoysky.

In 2019, Kolmoysky’s media channels gave a big boost to Zelensky’s presidential campaign, while Kolmoysky even provided security, lawyers, and vehicles for Zelensky during his campaign. Kolmoysky’s bodyguard and lawyer accompanied Zelensky on the campaign trail as Zelensky was chauffeured around in a Range Rover owned by one of Kolmoysky’s companies.

The Pandora Papers showed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his TV production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms created in 2012, the same year Zelensky’s production company entered into a deal with Kolomoysky’s media group, which allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoysky’s Privatbank.

Zelensky’s political rival, President Petro Poroshenko, commented on their connection during the campaign trail, “Fate intended to put me together with Kolomoyskiy’s puppet in the second round of the elections.”

After Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoysky, who had spent the last few years living between Israel and Switzerland, returned to Ukraine to keep up his relationship with the new president, nominating over 30-lawmakers to Zelensky’s newly established party and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament.

The Late Great Glen Ford Foresaw War With Russia's Endgame Eight Years Ago

BAR  |  I think that President Obama’s attempt to destabilize Russia will be seen by history as disastrous as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like the Iraq war, the de facto declaration of “war by other means” against Russia will accelerate the very dynamic that it intends to halt: the steady weakening of U.S. imperialism’s grip on the world. It will increase the resolve of a host of nations to disengage themselves from American madness and to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among many countries, and not just Russia and China.

The result will be the exact opposite of Washington’s intention. The attempt to isolate and destabilize Russia, the other nuclear superpower, may appear to some to be an act of brashness, a flexing of American muscle, an act of imperial overconfidence and recklessness. People thought the same thing when Bush went into Iraq. They were shocked and more than a little bit awed. [1]  In fact, sometimes I think that Americans are more shocked and awed by the American military than anybody else. But the Iraq invasion, and the brazen offensive against Russia, as well as the so-called “Pivot Against China” and the octopus-like U.S. military entrenchment in Africa — these are really symptoms of weakness and desperation.

U.S. Imperialism is losing its grip on the world and responds to its weakening condition with massive campaigns of destabilization. Destabilization characterizes U.S. foreign policy today more than any other word. The purpose is to reverse the general dynamic of global affairs today in which U.S. influence and power shrinks in relative terms as the rest of the world develops. U.S. and European hegemony — and that is the ability to dictate the terms of economic and political life on the planet — has daily diminished in myriad objective ways, ways that we can measure by the numbers. China’s soon-to-be status as the world’s biggest economy is just one aspect of that decline.

The process is inexorable and it’s gaining momentum. The trajectory of imperial decline has been firmly set ever since the Western capitalists decided to move the production of things — that, is the industrial base — to the South and the rest of the planet. Inevitably power and influence follow and imperial hegemony diminishes. This is of course unacceptable to the rulers of the United States who now find themselves in objective opposition to all manifestations of collaboration and mutual development under terms that are not dictated by Washington. They are in objective opposition to all manifestations of independence by countries in the world. This applies not just to China, not just to China and Russia, but to the rest of the BRICS and to other developing nations. And it even applies to America’s closest allies.

That is because hegemons don’t really have allies. All they have are subordinates, and so the U.S. is quite prepared to do serious harm to European economic interests by pressuring them to break long established economic ties to Russia. They will ultimately do the same thing in the pacific region with China and cause great destabilization there. They do so not because of strength but because of growing relative weakness. Their desperation compels them to risk war because their only clear superiority is in weapons.

However, the net end result, if we survive these flirtations with all-out war, can only be further isolation of the United States and the further weakening of imperialism. I think there is on what passes for the left in the United States a tendency to describe U.S. aggressions like the Iraq war, like the current offensive against Russia, as mistakes and miscalculations: “They didn’t mean to do that.”

In reality the U.S. goes to the brink and beyond the brink of war because it perceives itself as having no other choice. Its soft power is fading. It has few other means beyond the military to strategically influence events. It recruits or buys allies where it can get them, be it jihadists or Nazis. As imperialism’s sway in the world shrinks, so do its options.

Globalization Is Dead And No One Is Listening

Video of TSMC founder Morris Chang's remarks at the TSMC Tool-In in Arizona cannot be found anywhere online. Videos of oxygen-thieving Joe Biden and turd-burgling Tim Wise are ubiquitous, however. Who gives a flying f*ck what either of these pantloading dipshits had to say?!?!?!?

Consequently, old video of Dr. Chang at Brookings is all I've got.

interconnected  |  The most powerful, and somewhat uncomfortable, part of Chang’s speech is his declaration that:

“Globalization is almost dead. Free trade is almost dead. And a lot of people still wish they would come back, but I really don’t think they will be back for a while.”

TSMC is arguably the one company that most epitomizes all the forces of globalization – free trade, hyper specialization, cross-border supply chain, and the assumption of geopolitical stability that lets all these forces interact and interconnect. In this world, TSMC, and manufacturers like it, would build factories wherever it deems to make the most economic sense, without needing to worry about adverse political consequences.

Chang no doubt reflected on the core nature of globalization and free trade, of which he and TSMC are beneficiaries. Witnessing TSMC’s newest fab being built in Arizona, a location TSMC would have never chosen if globalization were alive and well (a point he has made many times in the past), it is only appropriate for Chang to somberly proclaim the death of globalization (though he still hedged a bit with “almost”).

The unfortunate second-order effect of the death of globalization that no one likes to talk about is the rising cost of all kinds of goods and products – a future that may make persistent inflation even worse. Tim Cook announced to much fanfare at the same event that Apple will use chips made from TSMC Arizona. What he did not say is whether that will make the pricey iPhones and MacBooks even pricier to buy.

In Morris Chang’s own estimation, the chips produced from TSMC Arizona may cost “at least 50% more” than the chips from TSMC Taiwan. Will TSMC pass on that cost to Apple or let it eat into its margins? Will Apple pass on that cost to consumers or let it eat into its margins? No one knows right now, but as TSMC Arizona starts churning out wafers, we will know soon enough.

To be clear, this is not a critique of TSMC’s decision to build fabs in America. Given the reality of the world, it is probably the right thing to do. Morris Chang, who may be reluctant but is ultimately a pragmatist, gave his blessing by being at the ceremony. But he did not let the bigger lesson go unspoken.

“Offshoring” is out of fashion, and “onshoring” and “friendshoring” is the new black. Any wishful thinking that globalization will continue in its previous form is naive.

Made in America (in Taiwan)

The other uncomfortable yet thought-provoking part of Chang’s speech is this:

“...We hired almost 600 engineers here a year and a half ago, we sent them to Taiwan, and they were under training in Taiwan for one year to a year and a half. In the meantime, about the same number of Taiwan engineers underwent training in Taiwan also.

So before we see a single wafer, we have about more than a thousand people being trained. This, I think, is a very good sign that we are prepared.”

If you read between the lines, what Chang is really saying is TSMC cannot find enough qualified American talent to do the jobs TSMC needs to operate. So it must spend extra money (more cost) to send every new hire in America to Taiwan to get trained. Furthermore, due to this talent shortage, additional engineers from Taiwan must be hired, trained, and deployed to America to make TSMC Arizona function (with doubled salaries and extra benefits to boot). These trainings are not some two-to-four week corporate offsites, but up to one and a half years long!

Yet, despite all this extra cost and personnel hassle, Chang believes this is a “very good sign” and the right thing to do. That’s because these are the “people problems” and “cultural problems” that he learned the hard way 25 years ago when trying to open TSMC’s first American fab, located in Camas, Washington – an experience he called “a dream fulfilled became a nightmare fulfilled”. TSMC Arizona is now investing up front to avoid the same mistakes.

Beyond the talent shortage problem, there is also an equipment shortage and supplier shortage problem, so much so that TSMC has been shipping as many tools and equipment as possible, directly from Taiwan to Arizona. TSMC has voiced these and other concerns in a letter last month, sent to the NIST bureau of the Commerce Department (an agency I happened to have served in during the Obama administration). Of course, you wouldn’t hear about any of this if you only listen to Gina Raimondo.

The wafers that TSMC Arizona will produce – and be proudly labeled “Made in America” – are looking very “Taiwanese”.

Useless And Impotent Biden Administration Forces El Paso Mayor To Declare A State Of Emergency

NYPost  |  The mayor of El Paso declared a state of emergency Saturday ahead of Wednesday’s deadline to lift a COVID-era policy that is expected to result in more than 6,000 migrants crossing the border a day into an already overwhelmed city where hundreds are already sleeping on the streets.

“Our asylum seekers are not safe,” said El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser at a specially called press conference to announce the emergency measures. “We have hundreds and hundreds on the street and that’s not the way we treat our people.”

Temperatures have dipped into the 20s in the city, he said, and migrants who have been released into the city are sleeping on downtown streets.

“I want to make sure that people are treated with dignity,” Leeser said, adding that he made the decision to call a state of emergency after a conference call with federal, state and municipal officials. The city government is working with local non-profits that are helping newly arrived migrants travel to other parts of the country where many have family.

“We all talked about what was best for our community,” he said, adding that more than 1,500 migrants have been crossing the border daily into the city ahead of the Dec. 21 lifting of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that saw migrants sent back into Mexico.

The sober press conference was in sharp contrast to the one called on Thursday. Leeser walked off with the microphone to avoid answering questions after he was challenged about not calling a state of emergency to cope with the migrant influx. At the time, he said that the federal government had promised the beleaguered city $6 million to help it cope with the crisis.

“We were able to get the funding without having to [declare an emergency],” Leeser claimed Thursday.

On Saturday, Leeser did not rule out using a nearby military base to house some of the migrants, and that the city was cooperating with state and federal authorities to address the situation.

 

Karinne Jeane Pierre Once Again Haplessly Sacrificed On The Alter Of Expendable Token Ass-Clownery

NYPost |  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday it was “not healthy” for Twitter owner Elon Musk to publish internal company files revealing Twitter’s censorship of The Post’s 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“What is happening — it’s frankly, it’s not healthy. It won’t do anything to help a single American improve their lives. And so look, we see this as an interesting, you know, coincidence, and you know, it’s a distraction,” Jean-Pierre concluded during her Monday briefing, offering a lengthy denunciation of Musk’s Friday reveal of how Twitter execs decided to suppress The Post’s damning expose.

“We see this as an interesting, or a coincidence, if I may, that he would so haphazardly — Twitter would so haphazardly push this distraction that is full of old news, if you think about it,” Jean-Pierre said, brushing off the politically motivated denial of free speech protections raised by Musk’s document dump.

“And at the same time, Twitter is facing very real and very serious questions about the rising volume of anger, hate and anti-Semitism on their platform and how they’re letting it happen.”

The voice of the Biden administration did not note that the Musk-led Twitter booted rapper Kanye West last week for tweeting a swastika after making a series of anti-Semitic remarks — or that as of Monday, the nation’s most famous Jew-basher’s 18.4 million-follower account on Facebook-owned Instagram remains active.

Jean-Pierre’s denunciation of Musk’s moves toward transparency came in response to questions from Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.

“On Twitter, because you guys said you’re keeping a close eye on Elon Musk’s ownership and this is the first time we’ve talked to you since he released the files a few days ago — is it the White House view that decisions at Twitter were made appropriately in terms of decisions to censor this reporting ahead of the election?” Heinrich asked.

 

 

What EXACTLY Were The FBI And Twitter Talking About At Their Weekly Meetings?

jonathanturley |  The internal company documents released by Musk reinforce what we have seen previously in other instances of Twitter censorship. A recent federal filing revealed a 2021 email between Twitter executives and Carol Crawford, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s digital media chief. Crawford’s back-channel communication sought to censor other “unapproved opinions” on social media; Twitter replied that “with our CEO testifying before Congress this week [it] is tricky.”

At the time, Twitter’s Dorsey and other tech CEOs were about to appear at a House hearing to discuss “misinformation” on social media and their “content modification” policies. I had just testified on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “‘little brother’ problem, a problem which private entities do for the government that which it cannot legally do for itself.” In response, Dorsey insisted that “we don’t have a censoring department.”

The implications of these documents becomes more serious once the Biden campaign became the Biden administration. These documents show a back channel existed with President Biden’s campaign officials, but those same back channels appear to have continued to be used by Biden administration officials. If so, that would be when Twitter may have gone from a campaign ally to a surrogate for state censorship. As I have previously written, the administration cannot censor critics and cannot use agents for that purpose under the First Amendment.

That is precisely what Musk is now alleging. As the documents were being released, he tweeted, “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.”

The incoming Republican House majority has pledged to investigate — and Musk has made that process far easier by making good on his pledge of full transparency.

Washington has fully mobilized in its all-out war against Musk. Yet, with a record number of users signing up with Twitter, it seems clear the public is not buying censorship. They want more, not less, free speech.

That may be why political figures such as Hillary Clinton have enlisted foreign governments to compel the censoring of fellow citizens: If Twitter can’t be counted on to censor, perhaps the European Union will be the ideal surrogate to rid social media of these meddlesome posters.

The release of these documents has produced a level of exposure rarely seen in Washington, where such matters usually are simply “handled.” The political and media establishments generally are unstoppable forces — but they may have met their first immovable object in Musk.

 

Name Stealer Scientology One Helluva Drug: Bankman-Fried And Zelensky Not Going To Jail....,

He didn't make the mistakes his predecessor Bernie Madoff made. 

1. He took great care to buy off the regime in power, acting as their bagman for the Ukro-Khazarian money laundering scheme. 

Maxine Waters just blew @SBF_FTX a kiss. Safe to say that went well.😘 pic.twitter.com/C8I90fdmqW

— chochaymon (@ElliottFryback) December 8, 2021

2. He took great care not to rip off his Khazarian co-religionists, who wield outsize influence in America (to the point where an outsider might legitimately assume it is an almost entirely Zionist country). 

And, of course, he must have a substantial amount of blackmail information about Bidencorp's Ukrainian money laundering scheme. 

He's either going to be allowed to flee to a non-extraditable exile - or - commit suicide by a bullet to the back of the head.

astral-codexten |  Tyler Cowen linked Milky Eggs’ excellent overview of the FTX crash. I’m unqualified to comment on any of the financial or regulatory aspects. But it turns out there’s a psychopharmacology angle, which I am qualified to talk about, so let’s go.

1: Was SBF Using A Medication That Can Cause Overspending And Compulsive Gambling As A Side Effect?

 

Probably yes, and maybe it could have had some small effect, but probably not as much as the people discussing it on Twitter think.

Milky Eggs reports a claim by an employee that Sam was on “a patch for designer stimulants that mainlined them into his blood to give him a constant buzz at all times”. This could be a hyperbolic description of Emsam, a patch form of the antidepressant/antiparkinsonian agent selegiline. The detectives at the @AutismCapital Twitter account found a photo of SBF, zoomed in on a scrap of paper on his desk, and recognized it as an Emsam wrapper.

 What’s the blue-green bottle to the left of the red circle?

Here the detectives on r/NootropicsDepot recognized it as their company’s old brand of adrafinil7. Adrafinil is a prodrug of modafinil, an unusual stimulant-like drug. That is, your body metabolizes adrafinil and turns it into modafinil after you take it.

So was SBF effectively on modafinil? Seems likely - many traders are. I won’t lie - modafinil is a good stimulant, during medical residency some doctors (including me) would use it to stay alert through the night shift. It’s not any better than Adderall or anything, just a bit different and easier to get.

Does it affect attitudes to risk? Hopefully you can already predict my answer to that question: all dopaminergics affect attitude to risk in complicated ways we don’t really understand, but for most people these effects will be too small to notice. There’s one case report of modafinil causing pathological gambling, and various contrived studies where neuroscientists investigate how modafinil shifts some technical parameter in a risk curve; these kinds of studies often don’t replicate. I think you can really just stick to your prior of “all dopaminergics affect risk curves in ways we don’t understand, but it’s usually fine when your job doesn’t require perfectly-tuned risk awareness”.

Except - was he taking the selegiline and adrafinil at the same time?

Selegiline prevents the body from breaking down dopamine. Modafinil works by preventing cells from reabsorbing dopamine. If you can’t break it down, and you can’t reabsorb it, what happens? Does it just build up forever until it explodes and you die?

This is what happens with serotonin. If you take a drug that prevents serotonin breakdown (like a traditional MAOI) and a drug that prevents serotonin reuptake (like an SSRI) at the same time, you definitely die. Lots of doctors have noticed that the MAOI + stimulant situation is pretty similar and decided you shouldn’t take these at the same time either. So some people following the FTX situation have wondered whether this combo might have been very dangerous - either to Sam’s health or to his risk-management ability.

 

Larry Johnson Boldly Dot-Connecting Demo-krainian Fustercluckery

Larry Johnson asserts that the Poles have had many casualties in Ukraine recently.

He points out an intriguing tangle, something like how Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security – Is Sam Bankman the Fried a bag man extraordinaire, now exposed? Quoting Johnson: “The United States, by contrast, is exercising great caution. Part of the reason for that hesitancy is the financial collapse of FTX, which is exposing evidence that the Democrats, some Republicans, the Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme. The scheme involved promising members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine a hefty contribution in turn from a Democrat benefactor. In this case, the owner of FTX. ”

Others have hinted. Johnson is boldly connecting the dots.

One more money-laundering operation out of Ukraine, that Epitome of Direct Democracy (and Deposits) of Central Europe? Should I be shocked?

And was Hunter Biden involved?

Further down, I've embedded a long and readable (though unrollable) Jason Choi twitter thread: “Here’s more information on the shady “Mind the Gap” bundler operation founded by @SBF_FTX’s mother, Barbara Fried, and led by @Stanford faculty, funneling millions of dollars from Silicon Valley to the Democrat Party:”  If anyone wants to know what happened, send them this.

sonar21  | Tuesday marks the largest Russian bombardment of Ukraine with precision guided missiles and drones. The Ukrainian equivalent of the Pentagon reported was struck in Kiev. And Western media now is reporting frantically that Russia fired a missile at a target in Poland. Russia denies it vehemently and initial pictures of the “device” that landed in Poland appear to show a S-300 anti-air defense missile.

The big unanswered question is whether this was an error, i.e., Ukraine fired at incoming Russian missiles and the S-300 missed its target and fell inside Polish territory, or was it an attempt to manufacture a false flag, i.e., blame Russia for firing the missile and create a pretext to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty and bring the rest of NATO into the war to stop Russia. The jury is still out.

Neither Poland nor the Brits appear inclined to wait for facts to develop and are rattling swords about the need to invoke article 5 of the NATO Charter.

The United States, by contrast, is exercising great caution. Part of the reason for that hesitancy is the financial collapse of FTX, which is exposing evidence that the Democrats, some Republicans, the Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme. The scheme involved promising members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine a hefty contribution in turn from a Democrat benefactor. In this case, the owner of FTX. Once the U.S. dollars were credited to Ukraine’s account, President Zelensky and his partners diverted some of the proceeds to purchase crypto currency from FTX. FTX, in turn, sent some of that funds back to the cooperating members of Congress and the Democrat National Committee. This scheme is unraveling. The dummies mistakenly believed that crypto is untraeable. Nope. Thanks to block chain, eminently traceable.

The Definitive Thread on FTX

I met SBF before FTX started, and witnessed their rise and fall. I can't stand @nytimes's puff piece.

If anyone wants to know what happened, send them this.

— Jason Choi (@mrjasonchoi) November 15, 2022

If article 5 is invoked because of the alleged attack on Poland then we are facing a major, dangerous escalation of the war in Ukraine. A lot of Polish troops have been killed in Ukraine over the last month and I doubt the leaders in Warsaw are in the mood to negotiate.

Meanwhile, President Zelensky gave a schizophrenic speech about the missiles smashing throughout Ukraine.

On the one hand he acknowledges that the Russian missiles have knocked out electrical power in many cities, which also affects the ability to supply water and heat to more than 10 million Ukrainians. But then he makes this odd claim, i.e., boasting that Western air defense systems have shot down most of these Russian missiles. Really? Take a look at these two successive missiles striking Kiev earlier today:

American Politicians Can Make A Name-Stealer Blush....,

BAR  |  It isn’t incompetence that keeps the democrats from fully realizing their political power. The terrible truth is that they prefer horse trading over the issues of importance to their donor class than they do meeting the needs of the people. Why does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi constantly speak of the need for a “strong republican party?” She needs a strong republican party, that is to say one which doesn’t resemble the January 6th rabble that frightened most of the nation. A more respectable and traditional republican party is one she can compromise with, and both sides of the aisle can represent the interests of the U.S. oligarchy while pretending otherwise.

Claims that every election is the most important in history, or a test of democracy, is a line meant for gullible rubes. They tell us so themselves. As president, Barack Obama presented republicans with a “grand bargain” of austerity so bad that Congressional Black Caucus member Emmanuel Cleaver referred to it as a “sugar coated satan sandwich.” As part of this plan Obama convened a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that was soon dubbed “the catfood commission.” Yet Obama hit the 2022 mid-term election campaign trail and condemned republicans for wanting to cut social security, which is exactly what he proposed doing ten years earlier.

Democrats raise millions of dollars for their presidential campaigns but come up empty in those state races which have a great impact on Americans’ lives. They don’t want to transform the country on behalf of the people. They are always on the side of their donor class and that is why the national leadership aren’t very concerned when republicans control state capitals. They will actually take a dive and then use their own corruption as a fundraising tool, pointing fingers at the republicans they have declared villains while secretly hoping they have to share power with them.

The inevitable result is senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia being in a close race with Herschel Walker, a former football player who mouths right wing, that is to say white wing, talking points on every issue. Warnock should have been further ahead but close races are guaranteed when there is no minimum wage increase while inflation runs rampant.

Of course inflation is high. Corporations gouge the public as much as they like because there is no major political party opposing them. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act won’t reduce inflation by itself, but clever marketing is one of the tools used to keep the people fooled about how politics really work.

Why are margins so close in the House and the Senate when the people prefer what democrats claim to offer? The democrats are the ultimate cynics. They know what the people want and campaign accordingly, but once in office use the senate parliamentarian, arcane rules, or the bad cops among them to say that their hands are tied. The charade is a perfect crime.

Whatever the outcome of the races still to be decided, it is clear that the people must look to themselves and not at Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or former president Obama, to guard their interests. They have different interests which are antithetical to those of the people. Electioneering fanfare cannot cover up this terrible but obvious truth.

Your Betters Consider Your “Cognitive infrastructure” Part Of Their Remit

theintercept  | Under President Joe Biden, the shifting focus on disinformation has continued. In January 2021, CISA replaced the Countering Foreign Influence Task force with the “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation” team, which was created “to promote more flexibility to focus on general MDM.” By now, the scope of the effort had expanded beyond disinformation produced by foreign governments to include domestic versions. The MDM team, according to one CISA official quoted in the IG report, “counters all types of disinformation, to be responsive to current events.”

Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”

“We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the Twitter Rules,” a spokesperson for Twitter wrote in a statement to The Intercept.

There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

DHS’s mission to fight disinformation, stemming from concerns around Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, began taking shape during the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine policy during the coronavirus pandemic. Documents collected by The Intercept from a variety of sources, including current officials and publicly available reports, reveal the evolution of more active measures by DHS.

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”

The inclusion of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is particularly noteworthy, given that House Republicans, should they take the majority in the midterms, have vowed to investigate. “This makes Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the Armed Services Committee, adding that finding answers “will be a top priority.”

How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech.

 

Who Owns The CDC?

amidwesterndoctor |  In democratic republics, it should not be possible for unelected groups to forcefully dictate the lives of citizens without those policies being legalized by the legislative process. Unfortunately, our bureaucracy has bypassed that process by allowing committees (whose members are appointed rather than being elected democratically) to craft “guidelines” (as this is the limit of their authority), and then have the rest of the government (and media) treat those guidelines as law. Unfortunately, the members of these committees tend to be individuals who have been bribed and inevitably arrive at conclusions that support their sponsors. 

Two excellent recent examples were the NIH panel (directly appointed by Fauci) recommending remdesivir while prohibiting ivermectin while having extensive financial ties to remdesivir’s manufacture, and that of the committee which made the highly questionable guideline for almost everyone to take statins having extensive financial ties to the statin manufacturers.

Although guidelines should only be treated as advice rather than law (this in fact was the decision of a federal judge), there has instead been a continual push to strengthen the guidelines and force ones that border upon absurdity onto the American people. In California for example, the state chosen to pioneer vaccine mandates for our nation, countless parents have been forced to flee the state so their children can remain in school, and parents who are not financially advantaged have been forced to make many very difficult decisions because of these mandates (many of these stories are quite tragic).

Recently this guideline-based governance ratcheted up another notch as California passed a law that stated anyone physician who provides advice to a patient that conflicts with a CDC guideline is guilty of professional misconduct. As you can imagine, this sets a variety of concerning precedents, such as how “advisement that does not carry the weight of law” can be allowed to supersede our sacred constitutional freedoms that have been enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and previously have been consistently upheld by our courts.

Throughout its history, the CDC and its advisory committee the ACIP, have consistently voted to approve each vaccine presented before them, regardless of the evidence against doing so (and as Steve Kirsch recently proved, its leadership has willfully disregarded that evidence). This raises an obvious question; why is it that the ACIP always acts in this way?

When examining complex questions, one helpful strategy, Occam’s Razor, is to first consider the simplest explanation and see if it fits relatively well to addressing the question at hand. In many areas of medicine (e.g. journal publications, research findings, and medical practices chosen by physicians or hospitals), there is a tendency to adhere to the financial interests of the involved parties. Not surprisingly, this is also the behavior guideline committees typically follow so the question naturally becomes: what are the financial conflicts of interest of the CDC?

LATimes Whines "OPEC Members Need To Decide Whose Side They're On!!!"

LATimes |  On Wednesday, OPEC+ announced a dramatic reduction in production quotas, by 2 million barrels per day. According to oil ministers, the goal is to boost crude prices and “encourage investment” in the sector — making it sound like they are doing the world a favor. In fact, this is an extraordinarily harmful step that will push oil prices up — when the global economy is in a precarious state amid persistent inflation pressures.

Americans may first notice the effects at the gas pump, especially Californians already affected by some refinery shutdowns. Gasoline prices hit record highs in Los Angeles this week. A cut to global oil supply usually translates into even steeper increases in fuel prices and rising costs for goods.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has no incentive to drive the world into deep recession, so what are its members thinking?

Pushing up oil prices at this moment is an expression of support for OPEC+ member Russia, presumably aiming to build a deeper relationship between this major oil producer and core OPEC member states, most of which are in Africa and the Middle East.

That strategy already appears thoroughly wrongheaded. The likelihood of Russian defeat in Ukraine, increasing daily with Ukrainian advances, will change the global picture for oil considerably, and OPEC members need to decide whose side they are on for what comes next.

If you question Russia’s fate on the battlefield, look carefully at reports from the front lines from Russian military bloggers on Telegram and other messaging channels. It is an interesting irony that Ukraine, a free country with a free press, has strong operational discipline when it comes to the use of social media close to the conflict — and it’s from Russia, an authoritarian country with tightly state controlled and censored media, that we see a flood of videos, text updates and maps that show what is really going on.

If OPEC’s leaders were paying attention, they would see that Russian forces are in the process of being defeated in several regions in the air and on the ground. The Ukrainians have more drones, better armor, longer-range artillery and higher morale. Russian forces are greatly depleted and increasingly in danger of becoming trapped and overwhelmed on multiple fronts.

It's Against The Law For The Government To Violate Your Rights Via Corporate Proxie

Jim Hoft and The Gateway Pu... by Jim Hoft

.

 

All You Beaners Are Like Breakfast Tacos In A Bronx Bogida...,

dailymail |  As distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio - is your strength,' she said, mispronouncing the word 'bodega.'

'We are not tacos. Our heritage as Latinos is shaped by a variety of diasporas, cultures and food traditions, and should not be reduced to a stereotype,' the National Association of Hispanic Journalists said in response.

The gaffe came as President Biden's popularity among Latino voters continues to plummet. 

According to a recent Quinnipiac opinion poll found that Biden's approval rating among young Hispanic voters is around 26%. 

San Antonio is home to one of the largest Latino communities in the United States, with a population of nearly 1.5 million people that is 65 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census data.

In April 2021, Biden made a similar gaffe when she mispronounced the phrase: 'Si se puede' (Yes we can) to a group of farmworkers in Delano, California. 

During the same speech on Monday, Biden also made reference to a recent visit that she made to Uvalde, Texas in the wake of the May 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School.

She said: 'I stood in front of those 21 crosses and touched the pictures of the bright, beautiful faces that would never again laugh, or open birthday presents, or tell their parents that they love them. And I knew that a piece of Uvalde would always be a part of me.' 

The first lady also touted her husband's modest gun reform law saying that the president 'will do everything he can to call on Congress to act, including on measures to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.'

Biden added: 'A ban on guns that only belong on the battlefield. The right to make our own decisions about our own bodies,' to rapturous applaus

 

More Shady Connections Than Hunter Biden And Jeffrey Epstein Combined...,

Click on the image below to watch the video on Bitchute.

Meet Nathan Wolfe (5 mins)

expose-news  |   Dr. Nathan Wolfe was a founding citizen of Ghislaine Maxwell’s TerraMar Project; a member of the Edge Foundation; a self-proclaimed “virus hunter” whose area of research is zoonotic diseases with a special focus on bats; with links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance; who previously bungled epidemic responses while selling pandemic insurance; whose company Metabiota which is funded by Rosemont Seneca, Google, The Skoll Foundation, among others, was awarded a sub-contract with the US Military’s DTRA program for work in Ukrainian biolabs.

A few days before the end of March Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marija Zakharova published a timeline of US-Ukraine bioresearch headed “BioBiden.”  Of the 23 timeline points she listed, Nathan Wolfe or organisations associated with him – Metabiota and Global Viral – were explicitly mentioned in 8 of them:

• 2007 – US DoD employee Nathan Wolfe founded Global Viral Forecasting Institute (subsequently – Global Viral), a biomedical company. The mission stated in the charter is non-commercial study of transborder infections, including in China.
• 2014 – Metabiota, a private commercial organisation specialising in the study of pandemic risks is detached from Global Viral. Neil Callahan and John DeLoche, employees of Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners are appointed to the board of Metabiota. Global Viral and Metabiota begin to get funding from the US Department of Defence.
• 2014 – Metabiota shows interest in Ukraine and invites Hunter Biden to “assert Ukraine’s cultural & economic independence from Russia”.
• 2014 – Metabiota and Burisma Holdings begin cooperation on an unnamed “science project in Ukraine”.
• 2014 – Metabiota, Global Viral and Black & Veatch Special Projects begin full-fledged cooperation within the US DoD programmes.
• 2014-2016 – Implementation of Metabiota and US DoD contracts, including a $300,000 project in Ukraine.
• 2016 – former US Assistant Secretary for Defence Andrew Weber is appointed head of Metabiota’s global partnerships department.
• 2016 – EcoHealth Alliance, a Global Viral founder Nathan Wolfe’s structure, is engaged in the study of bat-transmitted coronaviruses at the research centre in a Wuhan laboratory, China.

Considering the accusation is US political elites’ involvement in the military biological activity in Ukraine, it perhaps indicates Moscow has identified Nathan Wolfe as a person of interest in what Zakharova termed “this truly diabolical plan.”

Read more: Russian Foreign Ministry Releases Alleged “BioBiden” Timeline of US Bioresearch in Ukraine, The Gateway Pundit, 29 March 2022

Meet Nathan Wolfe

“If an alien visited Earth, they would take some note of humans, but probably spend most of their time trying to understand the dominant form of life on our planet –microorganisms like bacteria and viruses.”

Nathan Wolfe, Business Continuity and The Pandemic Threat Robert A Clark (2016)

From 1999 to 2006 Wolfe conducted research as a postdoctoral student and then as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University.  There he worked with American epidemiologist Donald Burke, who suspected that the practice of hunting bushmeat in Africa had exposed a source of HIV. Based in Cameroon, Wolfe studied the local hunters and their hunting practices.  In 2004 he and his colleagues found that 1% of bushmeat hunters were infected with the simian foamy virus – a virus that is closely related to HIV and carried by nonhuman primates.

In 2006 he joined the department of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began pursuing ways to monitor, predict, and prevent animal-to-human transfer of viruses and conducted projects in Africa and Southeast Asia. In China, he collaborated with scientists to investigate wet markets (food markets that sell live animals) as a source of zoonoses (diseases from wild animals).

Read more: Nathan Wolfe, Britannica