Bankman Fried (Priceless...,) Tried To Politically Gin Up Central Bank Support For Crypto-Shystery...,

NYTimes | FTX’s founder was called a modern-day J.P. Morgan. The analogy still works. Though one of them failed and the other died rich, both of their careers make the case for central banks.

Mr. Bankman-Fried tried to bail out a couple of smaller failed crypto firms, Voyager Digital and BlockFi Inc., drawing laudatory press that compared him to J.P. Morgan Sr.

The Morgan analogy was repeated this week even after FTX customers withdrew $6 billion in funds in the equivalent of a bank run, forcing FTX to freeze operations and stranding billions in remaining customers’ potentially lost assets.

For all of the obvious ways in which Mr. Bankman-Fried is no Pierpont Morgan, a model of discretion whose namesake firm continues to be solvent to this day, on one point they have something in common: Their careers demonstrate a need for central banks.

Morgan earned his reputation as a private rescuer in 1907, when a bank run struck the trusts (banklike associations) in New York City and then spread to traditional banks. Morgan assembled the city’s leading financiers to lend emergency funds and ease the panic.

His heroism slowed the bleeding — but some banks failed, many suspended withdrawals and scores resorted to dispensing homemade certificates in lieu of money. As each bank hoarded reserves to save itself, the stock market plunged 40 percent and the country suffered a severe recession.

Morgan’s inadequacy made plain that the United States, already an industrial powerhouse, could not depend on the benevolence of a single financier. Precisely for this reason, Nelson Aldrich, a powerful senator with close ties to Morgan, led a mission to Europe in 1908 to study the workings of the central banks in England, France and Germany.

Two years later, a group of bankers, including a senior partner of Morgan’s, the president of its rival National City Bank, and the central banking crusader Paul Warburg, gathered at Morgan’s exclusive club on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia. Meeting in secret, they plotted the outline of what Americans had resisted since Andrew Jackson’s day — a central bank. The Federal Reserve was born three years later, in 1913.

This week, The Wall Street Journal’s James Mackintosh opined, “The fundamental flaw of centralized finance is that it needs central banks to end chaotic bank runs …” This is like saying that the flaw with owning a home is that one may need the fire department.

Any monetary instrument is a form of credit, and credit will always involve risk. Mr. Bankman-Fried discovered that. His putative savior, a crypto exchange known as Binance, backed out 24 hours after it had tentatively agreed to a rescue. On Friday, FTX filed for bankruptcy. Yet had the rescue deal gone through, Binance would have been on the hook for, reportedly, up to $8 billion in claims against FTX. Who would have come to the rescue of Binance?

The point of a central reserve, which is what Paul Warburg and Nelson Aldrich had in mind in 1913, is that the pooled resources of the nation are immeasurably greater than those of any single mogul. They offer, in times of need, an ocean of liquidity to iron out the inevitable fluctuations in individual, regional, and industry-specific credit. Would anyone in their right mind wish to entrust the nation to crypto — and trade the imperfect Fed for the likes of FTX and Binance?

 

 

 

The Managed Withdrawal Eliminates The Thing DC And Kiev Were Hanging Their Hats On...,

You can’t understand military operations at any level without also understanding basic geography — especially the height of terrain features (hence the universal tactical imperative to “hold the high ground”).

The entire managed withdrawal (retreat) conversation has missed the crucial fact that the west bank of the Dnieper River is much higher than the east bank — thus there is no possibility of flooding the west side of the river. Any high water would inundate the flood plain to the east, which would cause the heavy artillery stationed there to displace and would disrupt fire support to the forces holding west of the river — not to mention also causing havoc with the supply lines leading up to the choke points of the bridges and ferries crossing the Dnieper, many of which would be damaged/washed away if the British managed to break the big Kakhovskaya dam with one of their underwater drones.

That is the problem that General Surovikin is pre-empting by his managed withdrawal from the east bank of the Dnieper now vs the chaos of a forced retreat after the SHTF from a massive dam break. The only inundation of the west bank that I can see occurs where the river just north of Kherson flows into the Dnieper, and it's relatively minor.

The article begins with the statement:
“A worst case modelling for a Russian demolition of the Nova Kakhovka Dnipro river dam show that the worst flooding will take place on the left (south east) side of the river bank.”  The animated map of the projected flooding is quite interesting, especially regarding the big backflow up the Bug River.  It shows that the majority of the water would inundate the east ban.   The right (west bank) of the river is generally higher than the east bank all the way north to Kiev. An old chestnut about WW II is that “if the Todt organization had begun fortifying the west bank of the Dnieper in 1942, the Germans would still be defending that line today….”

With Russian forces on the right bank Ukraine has good reason to combine destroying the dam with an offensive or just destroying it. Since Russia doesn’t really have the manpower applied to the conflict to do big pushes towards Nikolaev and Odessa the point of occupying the right bank at the moment is pride. And a temptation to dam busting. Ukraine might still blow up the dam, but it won’t create a huge blow to crimea and a military catastrophe along the river. The withdrawal also eliminates the legal reason for destroying the dam (it’s not legally prohibited when it serves a military purpose).

And in a weird way it eliminates the thing Kiev and DC we’re hanging their hats on. Sure, it can be said that Russia ran away but that’s a short news item. A defeat in the field was necessary; large losses, surrender, chaos. It’s not a short war anymore so it cannot be prosecuted like one. And the last thing the US needs or wants is an actual long war (funding a long insurgency is different). The Ukrainian state isn’t Russia’s problem and it’s a very big and growing problem.

The Day After Gen. Mark Milley Said It Would Take Weeks - Brandon Puts It In Iraq....,

kommersant |  The Ministry of Defense reported that at 5:00 Moscow time, the transfer of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper was completed. As the department clarifies, not a single piece of military equipment and weapons was left on the right bank.

The official representative of the Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried at night to disrupt the transportation of civilians and the transfer of troops to the left bank of the Dnieper. River crossings were hit five times by HIMARS rockets.

“All Russian military personnel crossed over, no losses of personnel, weapons, equipment and materiel of the Russian group were allowed,” Mr. Konashenkov said (quoted by TASS).

According to him, the Russian military stopped the enemy at a distance of 30-40 km from the area of ​​crossings across the Dnieper. The representative of the Ministry of Defense added that the advance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the past two days in certain areas in the Kherson region amounted to no more than 10 km.

On November 9, the Ministry of Defense decided to withdraw troops from Kherson to the left bank of the Dnieper. On the same day, the authorities of the Kherson region reported the beginning of heavy fighting in the Snigirevka area near Kherson. The Kremlin stated that the Kherson region remains a subject of the Russian Federation, and there can be no changes in this status.

About what happens on the 261st day after the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine - in the online broadcast "Kommersant".

If You Had Kept Your Silence You Would Have Stayed A Philosopher...,

WaPo  | U.S. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday night that 20,000 to 30,000 Russian forces remained on the western bank of the river and that it would take time for them to withdraw. But he, too, saw “initial indicators” that the retreat was underway, he said.

“This won’t take them a day or two,” Milley said, speaking at an event at the Economic Club of New York. “This is going to take them days and maybe even weeks to pull those forces south of that river.”

Ukrainian forces have been slowly advancing toward Kherson for weeks, targeting ammunition centers, command posts and supply facilities in the region and putting pressure on Russian forces, said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

“Literally it’s no longer possible for them to stay in Kherson because they’re unable to provide munitions to their army, provide provisions,” Sak said in an interview. “It’s no longer possible for them to continue to fight.”

Despite exuberant troops posting social media videos and selfies of retaken villages, Ukrainian military commanders are reluctant to broadcast their next moves.

“The winter will be a factor,” Sak said. “It could be slower, it could be faster depending on weather conditions. But we’re not going to stop. We’re going to continue our counteroffensive meter by meter, village by village.”

Departing Russian forces are laying mines and blowing up bridges as they pull back from Kherson city, and there is concern that some troops may be hiding in the city, waiting to spring a trap, Ukrainian officials said. Advancing Ukrainian soldiers also will be within range of Russian artillery on the opposite bank of the river.

But a full retreat from Kherson city is now seen as inevitable. Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian supply lines and choked off Moscow’s ability to support front-line troops.

“The Russians can definitely organize some traps in Kherson still, but they never had enough troops or logistics to keep those right-bank positions,” said another adviser to the Ukrainian government who was not authorized to speak to the press and commented on the condition of anonymity.

Russian Withdrawal From Kherson A Tactical Necessity

sputnik  | Surovikin’s concerns about the danger posed to Kherson’s civilian population are not academic. In the opening stages of Russia’s military operation this spring, thousands were killed or injured in Mariupol, Popasnaya, Volnovakha and other urban locations after Ukrainian forces and neo-Nazi battalions dug in, often deliberately in civilian areas, hiding in or near apartment blocks, shopping centers, schools, kindergartens, and even hospitals, to lure Russian forces into bloody street battles, and receive a convenient pretext to accuse Moscow of war crimes anytime a civilian building was damaged or destroyed.

By withdrawing forces from the right bank of the Dnepr, Russian forces have signaled their rejection of this costly and bloody strategy. Over the past three weeks, as Ukrainian forces amassed troops near Kherson and intensified shelling of the city, a large-scale evacuation of civilians was kicked off. In his remarks Wednesday, Surovikin reported that over 115,000 people had been evacuated, taken to Crimea and other areas deeper inside Russia.

 

The military’s strategy of evacuation and the creation of a defensive line that can be easily secured appears to be aimed at showing that Russia is not interested in "pyrrhic victories," and that Moscow will not succumb to efforts by NATO and its clients in Kiev to drown the region in blood, kill tens of thousands, and trap Russia in a hopeless strategic and tactical situation from which it would be nearly impossible to escape.

 

In the run-up to Wednesday’s announcement, Ukrainian commanders made no secret of their assessment of the situation. On October 29, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov predicted that amid the concentration of Ukrainian forces, NATO mercs, and heavy weapons near Kherson, the “liberation” of the city wouldn’t take place “without a fight,” but be preceded by the cordoning off of the city and the isolation of Russian forces, followed by battles to gradually grind them down. The strategy is familiar to historians of the Second World War on the Eastern Front, which featured the heavy use of pincers to encircle troops, leave them without supplies, and gradually close the noose to eliminate them or take them prisoner.

In his remarks last month, Budanov even suggested that Russia might sabotage the Kakhovskaya Dam to try to slow down Ukrainian forces, apparently forgetting that terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure was more Kiev and the West’s forte (the recent attacks on Nord Stream, the Crimean Bridge, and Sevastopol Bay serving as but a few examples).

Russia’s Strategy in Historical Context

The Russian military’s decision was obviously a “difficult,” forced measure, as Surovikin openly stated in his remarks Wednesday.

 

In both the strategic and historical contexts, the pullout to the left bank of the Dnepr River could be said to be based on a broader interest – winning the "proxy war" that the West has declared on Russia, not winning a single battle. During the Great Northern War against Sweden of 1700-1721, the French invasion of Russia in 1812, and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, commanders pulled back forces dozens or even hundreds of kilometers when necessary, but never lost sight of the strategic goal.

 

In the Ukrainian security crisis, unleashed by the US and the EU in 2014, time appears to be on Russia’s side, with Kiev and its Western backers facing an increasingly grim series of economic and energy crises, and Western capitals from Washington to Berlin signaling exhaustion with Kiev, and expressing growing hesitation to support the bottomless pit of weapons and cash that Ukraine has become.

 

US and European media have issued report after report detailing how NATO is literally running out of weapons to send to Ukraine. Meanwhile, capitals across Europe, including economic and political powerhouse Germany, have been overrun with cost of living protests sparked largely by Brussels’ move to slap restrictions on Russian energy.The US, which has committed $60 billion of the estimated $100 billion in military and economic support sent to Kiev over the past eight months, just held its most highly-contested midterm elections in decades, with Republicans poised to take the House, and wrangling with Democrats for control of the Senate. Last month, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned that there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine in a GOP-controlled House.

 

The Trump wing of the GOP has been even more adamant, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stressing last week that “not another penny will go to Ukraine” under the Republicans, who will instead focus Washington’s energy and resources on the US’ porous border with Mexico. Only time will tell whether the politicians will make good on their promises, or even be allowed to do so by America's powerful deep state interests.

 

Whatever happens, in a situation where Russia has the energy and food resources to survive the coming winter, and a seemingly better chance to preserve the political wherewithal to ride out the crisis, it will ultimately be up to Kiev's Western sponsors to decide whether to continue the strategy of exchanging tactical gains for strategic losses, or to finally push its clients to come to the negotiating table and address Russia's fundamental security concerns.        

“Nothing is accomplished in haste. It’s not difficult to take a fortress, but difficult to win a campaign. And for this you need not to storm and attack, but patience and time,” Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov said in the Leo Tolstoy classic "War and Peace."

More than 150 years after being written, these words have not lost their relevance.

Did Jake Sullivan Threaten The Intervention Of 90,000 NATO Troops In Ukraine?

NYTimes  |  In Ukraine, the fate of Crimea is a particularly thorny question. Ukrainian leaders insist they will retake that peninsula and other land that the Russian military seized in 2014.

Mr. Putin sees Crimea as a territory of great strategic and historical importance. At the same time, Ukraine, the United States and European nations have insisted for years that Crimea’s status is nonnegotiable. Biden administration officials have repeatedly said that one of the main reasons for supporting Ukraine is to defend the core principle that borders cannot be changed by force.

“In terms of the ultimate status of Crimea, that will be something to be negotiated or discussed between the Ukrainians and the Russians, but Crimea is Ukraine,” Colin H. Kahl, the Pentagon’s under secretary for policy, said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian military advances on Crimea, though a distant prospect for now, would stoke concern in Washington about Mr. Putin’s threats to escalate the conflict.

American and European leaders see their goal for now as keeping a protracted war contained to Ukraine and deterring Mr. Putin from using a tactical nuclear warhead or other weapon of mass destruction. Officials debate whether Mr. Putin is bluffing when he hints at using nuclear arms, but some analysts believe that control of Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, could be a red line for the Russian leader.

American officials have said for months that they are sending private and public messages to the Kremlin to warn of severe consequences if Mr. Putin uses nuclear weapons. Mr. Sullivan has been talking to Nikolai Patrushev, his Russian counterpart, since the beginning of the war to try to avert any misunderstandings around nuclear threats, the Biden administration official said.

“I have known both Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken for years,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, referring to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Mr. Khanna, who was among those who signed the progressives’ letter to Mr. Biden, continued, “I have confidence that they understand the risks of nuclear war and the risks of escalation, and are doing everything they can to stand with Ukraine while minimizing the risks of the conflict escalating.”

American officials said Mr. Zelensky’s private position has been the same as his public one: He wants to see Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory returned, and he is not interested in trading any of it for an end to the war.

Some European officials wonder privately whether that position is tenable, but others voice support for it.

“We hear many careless statements, like saying, ‘It’s not necessary to have absolute territorial integrity, we need to negotiate, we need to go for compromise so that finally we can have peace again,’” Annalena Baerbock, foreign minister of Germany, said at a policy forum last month. “I say very clearly: Such demands are naïve, and such naïve strategies already failed in 2014.”

What Has Become Of German Self-Interest And Will?

NLR  |  What is nothing short of astonishing is how many hawks have come out of their nests in recent months in Germany. Some figure as ‘experts’ on Eastern Europe, international politics and the military, who believe it to be their Western duty to help the public deny the approaching reality of nuclear explosions on European territory; others are ordinary citizens who suddenly enjoy following tank battles on the internet and rooting for ‘our’ side. Some of the most warlike used to belong to the left, widely defined; today they are more or less aligned with the Green party and in this emblematically represented by Baerbock, now the foreign minister. A strange combination of Joan of Arc and Hillary Clinton, Baerbock is one of the many so-called ‘young global leaders’ cultivated by the World Economic Forum. What is most characteristic of her version of leftism is its affinity to the United States, by far the most violence-prone state in the contemporary world. To understand this, it may help to remember that those of her generation have never experienced war, and neither have their parents; indeed, it is safe to assume that its male members avoided the draft as conscientious objectors until it was suspended, not least under their electoral pressure. Moreover, no previous generation has grown up as much under the influence of American soft power, from pop music to movies and fashion to a succession of social movements and cultural fads, all of which were promptly and eagerly copied in Germany, filling the gap caused by the absence of any original cultural contribution from this remarkably epigonal age cohort (an absence that is euphemistically called cosmopolitanism).

Looking deeper, as one must, cultural Americanism, including its idealistic expansionism, promises a libertarian individualism which in Europe, unlike the United States, is felt to be incompatible with nationalism, the latter happening to be the anathema of the Green left. This leaves as the only remaining possibility for collective identification a generalized ‘Westernism’ misunderstood as a ‘values’-based universalism, which is in fact a scaled-up Americanism immune to contamination by the reality of American society. Westernism, abstracted from the particular needs, interests and commitments of everyday life, is inevitably moralistic; it can live only in Feindschaft with differently moral, and in its eyes therefore immoral, non-Westernism, which it cannot let live and ultimately must let die. Not least, by adopting Westernism, this kind of new left can for once hope to be not just on the right but also on the winning side, American military power promising them that this time, finally, they may not be fighting for a lost cause.

Moreover, Westernism amounts to the internationalization, under robust American leadership, of the culture wars being fought at home, inspired by role models in the United States (although there the war may be about to be lost at least domestically). In the Westernized mind, Putin and Xi, Trump and Truss, Bolsonaro and Meloni, Orbán and Kaczyński are all the same, all ‘fascists’. With historical meaning restored to the uprooted individualized life in late-capitalist anomie, there is once more a chance to fight and even die for, if nothing else, then for the common ‘values’ of humanity – an opportunity for heroism that seemed forever lost in the narrow horizons and the hedged parochialism enshrined in the complex institutions of postwar and postcolonial Western Europe. What makes such idealism even more attractive is that the fighting and dying can be delegated to proxies, people today, soon perhaps algorithms. For the time being, nothing more is asked of you than advocating your government sending heavy arms to the Ukrainians – whose ardent nationalism would until a few months ago have seemed nothing short of repulsive to Green cosmopolitans – while celebrating their willingness to put their lives on the line, for the cause not just of regaining Crimea for their country but also of Westernism itself.

Of course, in order to make ordinary people rally to the cause, effective ‘narratives’ must be devised to convince them that pacifism is either treason or a mental illness. People must also be made to believe that unlike what the defeatists say in order to undermine Western morale, nuclear war is not a threat: either the Russian madman will turn out to be not mad enough to follow up on his delusions, or if he doesn’t the damage will remain local, limited to a country whose people, as their president reassures us on television every night, are not afraid of dying for both their fatherland and, as von der Leyen puts it, for ‘the European family’ – which, when the time is ripe, will invite them in, all expenses paid.

Handy Chart Showing George Soros Oversized Presence

opensecrets |   The top seven GOP megadonors have contributed nearly $222.7 million to Republican candidates and outside groups. Of the $185.8 million given by the top three Democratic megadonors, $128 million has come from Democratic megadonor George Soros, the top individual donor this election cycle and a frequent target of anti-semitic attacks from conservative pundits and politicians. Fund for Policy Reform, a 501(c)(4) funded by Soros, has given an additional $25 million to super PACs during the 2022 election cycle.

“There are still very active megadonors – George Soros, Ken Griffin, Richard Uihlein – and then also new ones like Sam Bankman-Fried from industries on the rise like cryptocurrency,” Bryner said. 

Soros, an emigre from Hungary after WW II, is very keen on Eastern European “democracy” and (according to his Open Society Foundation website) spent $18 billion on projects around the world since its founding around 1980. An “Open Society” (term coined by Karl Popper, who Soros claims as an intellectual father) has open borders to flows of capital, labor and information. The epitome of a “Closed Society” was the USSR (when Popper’s book was published in the ’70’s).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros has used his influence in the Democratic Party over the years to ensure that people like Madeleine Albright (parents fled Czechoslovakia) and Vicky Nuland (parents fled Ukraine) were placed in high places. I suspect he was a big supporter of Russophobes like McCain and Graham as well.

Some of Soros’s “projects” may well have borne fruit in such diverse areas as the framework for the EU (free flow of capital and labor); EU and NATO expansion; the growing dominance of Neocons throughout the DC establishment; and much more. I’m not a conspiracist, and won’t say that Soros “caused” all of these things; but in the absence of a countervailing $18 billion force, I think he surely made a difference by lubricating and tipping the balance in many ways.

 

2022 America Is What Happens When Government Is Controlled By Organized Crime

Fist tap Dale. 

The first 40 minutes of this video during which Whitney talks about l'affaire Epstein and how far back that goes is GREAT. The Davos Transhuman stuff afterword I kind of snoozed on.

The % of people (Khazarian gangsters) in favor of continued hostilities with Russia is really quite small. "it's all over but for the crying!"

Actually, it was all over way back when Russia didn't collapse. Come to think of it, that would be a good project/essay for someone to study and publish.  Is there a day/week where one could point to and ID a specific point at which the crisis passed? (Was there even actually such a point or was it just the grand cacophony of western media?)

It is clear that Russia has already won in Ukraine. Therefore, any reconciliation will be on the winner's terms and Russia cannot simply forgive and forget. They have learned a very important lesson, which is that the Anglo Saxons are not entirely in control of their political fate, and consequently, are only at liberty to respond to an overwhelming display of strength. It remains to be seen what consequences will unfold for the small minority of Khazarian gangsters who have ruled the British and U.S. Anglo-Saxon elites via extortion for the past ___ years.

After Ukraine is rolled up (in a matter of weeks?) from a combination of the US election blowout, subsequent supply termination, general winter and Russia's big push offensive, what's the point of continuation?

The military industrial complex has been the major player in US life, but in order to keep the peace domestically, energy, construction, agribusiness, automotive, travel etc. must all get their economic due as well. Russia is an absolute gold mine of opportunity - we need to consider everyone else wanting to get into the game vs the Khazarian mafia bankers keeping it to themselves. Constant terrorism, regional conflicts, arms sales and all the rest - keep the chances of nuclear escalation high. Non Americans are mistaken if they think the majority of American citizens here will accept the Khazarian status quo.

The typical American really only cares about 'getting ahead'. The usual first question when meeting someone is "what do you do?" Not out of genuine curiosity, but rather as a form of value assessment. Love it or hate it, at the end of the day it's why people would love a leader who could get gas back under $3/gallon. Doing a deal with Russia is the first big step in that direction.

"Normal" Americans are desperate to return to their one true desire: one upping friends and rivals in the quest for economic (class) achievement.  In reality, and this speaks to Russian youth as well, your everyday Russian also pretty much just wants to earn a (good) income, own a home/car/toy, score regular pussy, to party and have a good time.  If you sail, surf or travel, you will know the Russians were everywhere throughout Bali, Thailand and other party hotspots. It actually became a cliche, 'crazy Russian (chicks)'.

So when an existential crisis ends, it's time for everyone to get back to the business of enjoying life.

That's why I believe that after the electoral blowout next week, the Ukraine spigot will be turned off.

There will be calls to investigate the origins of the war as it will be used to score political points by hanging this albatross around the Biden/Blinken/Nuland regime's neck. We'll go back to trying to isolate China while attempting to bring Russia back into the fold. Levis, pop music, fast food, the whole western cultural experience (sans woke shit) for the offing.

They've got the energy, we've got $uncle bucks. The spending explosion in Moscow and other regional hotspots is just sitting there waiting to be launched. There was never any real intention to engage in a land battle over Ukraine. Rather, as has been pointed out by so many, it became an exercise is testing equipment, drawing down stores in order to acquire fresh arsenals, money laundering and career advancement.

From a US perspective, its basically off the news now. Sure, you can go find news if you so desire, but it's not being trumpeted 24/7 in your face as it was just a few months back. That both tells and reassures me of some basic American characteristics:

One, very short attention spans; No ancient Khazarian blood feuds here. Remember, everyone here is a product of people literally walking away from family/regional connections.

Two, we haven't had an actual existential fight on our land for 160 years. It's why Americans won't accept large losses - these overseas adventures are all fine and dandy if the losses are kept to a minimum. Three, dropping Ukraine doesn't mean the battle for Russia is over. Rather, it will simply transition to another theater in the so called hybrid scheme.

In fact, we could even become great pals again and include Russia in the dollar regime. As I keep saying, $usd = energy.  Russia has the energy, so why not accept a sweet heart deal that leads to an economic building boom? It's the old make or buy analysis: go your own way with all the attendant, drawn out sabotage and interference, or reach an agreement where both parties benefit today?

 

 

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.

Why Are American Jails Dangerous Hellholes Too?

themarshallproject |  In California, lawyers accused staff at the Los Angeles County jail of chaining mentally ill detainees to chairs for days at a time. In West Virginia, people held in the Southern Regional Jail sued the state, saying they found urine and semen in their food. In Missouri, detainees in the St. Louis jail staged multiple uprisings last year, while in Texas, a guard at Houston’s overcrowded Harris County Jail said she and her coworkers had started carrying knives to work for fear that they wouldn’t have backup if violence broke out.

This article was published in partnership with The Associated Press.

And while the infamous Rikers Island jail complex in New York City has been the focus of media coverage for its surging number of deaths, rural and urban lockups from Tennessee to Washington to Georgia are not faring much better.

In other words, America’s jails are a mess.

“It’s hard to believe, but it seems jails are even more wretched than usual these last few months,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “Having worked in this field for 30 years, I don’t remember any other time when there seem to be so many large jails in a state of complete meltdown.”

Several lockups denied claims about deteriorating conditions or did not respond to requests for comment. A few, including Rikers, acknowledged problems such as infrastructure issues, detainee deaths and high staff attrition.

“We are working hard to stem the rippling effect of years of mismanagement and neglect within our city’s jails,” a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Correction, which runs Rikers, said in a statement. “Turning our jails around requires a collaborative effort, transparency and time.”

Unlike prisons, most jails are funded and managed locally, so the problems they face can vary widely from one county to the next. While there’s crumbling infrastructure in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, there’s been murky brown drinking water in Seattle’s King County Jail and overcrowding in Houston because of a backlog in the court system.

But more than a dozen employees, detainees and experts who spoke with The Marshall Project and The Associated Press highlighted two problems they’ve seen at jails across the country: too many people incarcerated, and not enough guards.

“Our jail facilities are at capacity,” said David Cuevas, president of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputies’ union. “It is truly not safe.”

The twin issues of overcrowding and understaffing have plagued jails across the country for years, and even before the pandemic many facilities were in disarray. Yet in the months after COVID-19 hit, the number of people in local lockups plummeted. People stayed home and committed fewer crimes. Police did not make as many arrests. Courts reduced bail. And jails let more people go home early. Nationally, the number of people in jail decreased by about 25% by the summer of 2020, according to data compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

But as concern about the virus faded, so did many of the measures designed to combat it — and soon jail populations began to rise. By the summer of 2022, many lockups held more people than they had in years, or became so overcrowded that detainees were forced to sleep on floors, in underground tunnels or in common areas without toilets.

 

Economics Of The American Prison System

smartasset  |  The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Combined both companies generated over $2.53 billion in revenue in 2012, and represent more than half of the private prison business. So what exactly makes the business of incarcerating Americans so lucrative?

Most of it has to do with the way the American legal system works and how it has changed over the last 40 years. In the 1970’s, lawmakers were dealing with a nationwide rash of drug-use and crime. By declaring a nation-wide war on drugs in 1971, President Richard Nixon set a precedent for hard-line policies towards drug-related crime.

New York governor Nelson Rockefeller followed suit declaring “For drug pushing, life sentence, no parole, no probation.”  His policies once put into action promised 15 years to life in prison for drug users and dealers. His policies catalyzed the growth of a colossal corrections system that currently houses an estimated 2.2 million inmates.

The runaway growth of US corrections did not come overnight, and did not come from the government alone. Since the 1970’s federal and state correction agencies have consistently struggled to meet the increased demands brought on by the US Department of Justice and strict drug laws.

In 1982, three Texas businessmen, Tom Beasley, John Ferguson, and Don Hutto saw an opportunity in the shortcomings of the Texas corrections system’s inability to deal with this influx of incarcerations. They devised and executed a plan to secure the first government contract to design, build, and operate a corrections facility from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Texas Department of Justice.

Contract in hand, the trio was given 90 days to open a detention center for undocumented aliens. As their January 28 deadline neared, Hutto, Ferguson, and Beasley had no facility, no staff and their experiment seemed doomed to fail.

On New Year’s Eve, 1983, Beasley decided to get crafty, “Well, we’ll just go to Houston and find a place,” he reportedly told Ferguson. Incredulous, Ferguson replied, “Tom, you’re crazy. There’s no possible way. This is New Year’s Day. There is no possible way we can find a place today.” Beasley simply responded, “We have to.”

The three men immediately got on a plane and began their search. After a litany of rejections they came upon the Olympic Motel at 1am on New Year’s Day and immediately began negotiations that lasted for three days.

After hiring the motel owner’s family and promising to return the motel to its original condition, the group was in business. They then converted all of the motel rooms to secure cells, procured secure transportation and opened shop on January 28, 1983 when 87 inmates were brought in. Hutto, Ferguson and Beasley formed Corrections Corporation of America, the largest prison private prison network in the United States.

With the precedent it set with the first private detention center, CCA changed the face of US corrections for good. The private sector came to be seen as a quick-fix to the problem of overcrowded, understaffed public prisons. Today, privatized prisons make up over 10% of the corrections market—turning over $7.4 billion per year.

 

No One In The Biden Administration Thought About American Dependence On Russian Diesel?!?!?

oilprice  |  Last week, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that distillate inventories were at their lowest levels since 2008. (The primary distillates are diesel, jet fuel ,and heating oil). However, in 2008 distillate levels were low coming out of spring. Currently, they are low going into fall. That’s far worse than the situation in 2008.

Distillate demand generally spikes in spring — when farmers are planting crops — and in fall, when they are harvesting those crops and people start buying fuel oil for winter. Thus, a low distillate inventory in late April 2008 isn’t quite as serious as a low inventory in October 2022. In fact, distillate inventories haven’t been this low in October since the EIA began reporting this data in 1982.

These low distillate inventories are why diesel prices are above $5.00 a gallon nationwide, even though the nationwide average price for gasoline has dropped below $4.00 a gallon.

Why is there a diesel shortage this year? There are four factors, but two of those factors are in play every year.

As mentioned above, distillate demand spikes at this time of year. But, it does that every year.

This is also the time of year that refineries are doing maintenance. They tend to do that in the spring and fall, which is when demand is lower and the weather is decent. So, refinery capacity drops at this time of year.

Third, U.S. refinery capacity has fallen in the past few years as several unprofitable refineries were closed. So, that’s a new factor that has appeared in the past couple of years.

But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S.

The loss of those Russian imports have caused problems for refineries as they struggle to fill holes in their product slates. Refineries do have a small amount of flexibility in shifting gasoline production to diesel production. But it’s a relatively small amount (e.g., ~5% in a refinery I once worked in). That also means that if refiners do shift production, that also potentially creates shortages in the gasoline market.

For Slow Folks: If Diesel Doesn't Get To The Pump, Neither Does Gasoline...,

Newsweek |  Diesel inventories in the U.S. have not been so low since 2008, with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reporting that, as of October 14, the country had 25.4 days left of distillate supplies—which include diesel, jet fuel and heating oil.

The supply crunch is particularly severe in the East Coast, according to analysts who previously talked to Newsweek.

Mansfield Energy, a major fuel supply and logistics company based in Georgia and operating in every U.S. state, wrote in a recent news release that the "East Coast fuel markets are facing diesel supply constraints due to market economics and tight inventories."

According to the fuel supply company, extremely high diesel prices—which have surged due to low inventories combined with high demand—are concentrated in the North East, while supply outages are currently hitting the Southeast.

These shortages, write Mansfield Energy, are due to a combination of "poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel inventories."

Mansfield Energy identified the most acute shortages to be in these seven states:

• Alabama
• Georgia
• Maryland
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Virginia

These seven states have been given an Alert Level 4 by the fuel supply company "to address market volatility," while the entire Southeast was moved to Code Red, which requires a 72-hour notice for fuel deliveries when possible "to ensure fuel and freight can be secured at economical levels."

"Normally, East Coast markets would have about 50 million barrels of supply in storage throughout the market—and sometimes much more," wrote Mansfield Energy in a news release published on October 27.

"This year, however, the East has less than 25 million barrels on hand. That means that when bulk traders go to pull their inventories, they may not find much left in the tank. For East Coast fleets, then—now is the critical time to make sure your supplier has a plan for the winter to keep your equipment running. Outside the East Coast, markets could face some challenges, but most of the biggest issues will be concentrated eastward."

Does Any Rational American Care What Zombie J. Puppet Prattles About....?

Guardian |   Millions of Americans are currently working two or more jobs in order to make ends meet, as global inflation and corporations jacking up prices have sent prices of food, gas, housing, health insurance and other necessities soaring in the past year.

Cashe Lewis, 31, of Denver, Colorado works two jobs and is currently trying to find a third job to cover the recent $200 monthly rent increase to her apartment. She works days as a barista at Starbucks, but claims it’s been difficult to get enough hours even with taking extra shifts whenever she can due to scheduling cuts as part of the crackdown on union organizing by management.

At night she works at a convenience store because the hours are reliable, and works six days a week, often 16 hours a day.

“I’m exhausted all the time,” said Lewis. “On the one day I have off a week, I donate plasma for extra money. I’m literally selling my blood to eat because I have no choice.”

Her partner suffers from epilepsy and can’t work full-time hours because of it. Even with insurance, their medication is expensive and she spends about half of a two-week paycheck at Starbucks to cover the health insurance premiums.

Over the past five years, she has struggled with homelessness, and was previously fired from her job for sleeping in her car behind her place of employment.

“All of my friends and family work multiple jobs as well, just trying to keep our heads above water. Nothing is affordable and the roadblocks set up to keep people in the cycle of poverty benefit the most wealthy members of our society,” added Lewis. “We aren’t living, we’re barely surviving and we have no choice but to keep doing it.”

More Americans have been working two or more jobs over the past few decades, according to data from the US census, with women more likely than men to have multiple jobs and multiple jobholders most prevalent among low-wage workers.

Laura Richwine of Omaha, Nebraska, works two jobs, one in fraud prevention and the other doing administrative work, and had previously been working three jobs to keep up with hefty medical bills she’s been facing since being hit by a car in 2014.

“It’s rough and I barely have any energy to keep up with much else,” said Richwine. “I’ve got a bachelor’s degree and have been working for over 10 years, but up until this year I had never had a job that paid more than $15 an hour. Many places around me still only offer Nebraska minimum wage, which is $9 an hour. You can hardly even buy food with that amount.”

Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 400,000 Americans work two full-time jobs. In September 2022, 4.9% of all the more than 164 million US workers held two or more job positions, over 7.7 million workers.

Though US census data estimates these rates and numbers to be much higher, at 7.8% in the most recent year where data is available, 2018, about 13 million workers, while BLS data at the time estimated 5.0% of the workforce holding multiple jobs.

Both data sets are considered an underestimate of the number of multiple jobholders in the US labor market due to constrictions on what is defined as a multiple jobholder and the lack of data on self-employment, such as gig workers.

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."

 

I Have Never Used Twitter - But At Arms-Length - Its Goings-On Amuse Me

nymag |  While the sort of value Musk got out of Twitter — monetary, reputational, significant — is rare and has little to do with the most common experience of the platform, his relationship to the platform is aspirationally relatable to the people he interacts with in real life and on the site himself. Musk and his small cadre of sympathetic advisers narrowly but correctly understand Twitter as a tool that can be used by public figures to make money and acquire power. Venture capitalists use it because it helps them build public profiles but also because it helps them with deals. (Some pay good money for ghostwritten tweets!) Politicians use it because it lets them bypass the press — it’s hard to imagine Trump’s term in office without it, and its value to him was immense. Pundits and some journalists owe Twitter for raising their profiles, which has made coverage of this whole situation fraught and occasionally embarrassing. (In fairness, a direct and accurate way to describe this situation is that a very wealthy and powerful person has functionally purchased a tool that is extremely valuable to the function of the free press around the world.)

Among the 400,000 or so verified Twitter users, there are plenty who use Twitter in transactional or profitable ways without paying for advertising: brands, people who think of themselves as brands, people who have to be there for their jobs, people looking for jobs, people looking for dates, people running scams. There’s something to the idea that you can’t understand Twitter’s full value without taking into account its external influence — again, consider Trump, whose campaign paid for Facebook ads but who actually attempted to govern with Twitter — as well as the related observation that YouTube, a social network that creates and distributes immense value within its marketplace, in the form of creator payouts, seems to exert much less direct influence on the broader culture relative to its massive size and revenue. Most Americans don’t use Twitter at all. But they certainly hear about it.

It’s an insight! Is it a business plan? The vast majority of people who are on Twitter don’t derive much or any material value from the platform, which, according to Twitter’s most recent public filings, prices their attention to advertisers at about two dollars a month. The few that do will soon be given a choice to make based on admittedly imperfect information: Is whatever they’re doing there worth it? And will it stay that way? By asking heavily invested users to pay to remain or become verified and to remain or become visible — to maintain their brand, whatever it is — Twitter is treating this group of users almost exactly the way it has treated its other most important customers for years: advertisers. You get what you pay for. 

Jessica Lessin, founder and editor of subscription tech site the Information, tweeted, “Watching @elonmusk + Co take over Twitter is like watching a business school case study on how to make money on the internet. Amazing that at some level it is so basic.” Among the obvious lessons, she said, was charging power uses “what they are willing to pay.” And maybe it will really turn out to be so simple! Musk charges, blue checks pay, most everyone else sticks around, and then, uh, some other stuff happens and Twitter is worth its $44 billion price tag and more.

But whatever “@elonmusk + Co” believe they understand about Twitter’s captive upper echelons risks obscuring what makes the platform interesting, or even tolerable, to a much larger base of users. There’s been plenty of indignation from verified users about Musk’s ransom, and, whether Musk ends up calling their bluffs, they do have a point: Their work contributes to Twitter’s bottom line, and thousands — in some cases millions — of other users have explicitly expressed interest in their presence. I expect a lot of those users will still pay; I also expect that their conversion into de facto advertisers will make their relationship with the platform worse, and worth less, to them and their followers.

It's The "Help" That's All Atwitter About The Goings-On With Twitter

politico |   The mass firing represents the next stage in Musk’s takeover of the social network that remains a mainstay in how political leaders from President Joe Biden to French President Emmanuel Macron to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei communicate with a global audience.

In the hours after acquiring Twitter in late October, Musk fired the company’s board, including its chief executive Parag Agrawal, as well as Vijaya Gadde, who ran the social media company’s legal, policy and trust teams.

In a bid to increase revenue at the social media network that has historically struggled to turn a profit, Musk also wants to charge people $8 a month so that their accounts can be verified via the company’s now-iconic “blue tick” logo. The mass layoffs announced Friday are also part of these efforts to make the company more profitable.

The world’s richest man has become a lightning rod in the battle over free speech and content moderation. He’s tried to reassure advertisers that he wouldn’t let the platform devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape.” But some major advertisers have called for a pause in business with the platform, particularly after Musk shared a false story about an attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

“He specifically said to us that he does not want Twitter to be a hate amplifier,” said Yael Eisenstat, head of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society, who participated in a call with Musk alongside other civil society groups this week. “We will continue to watch to make sure that those actions actually happen.”

 

Social Media Giants Are Eroding Our Consensus Reality And Pushing Our Democracy To The Brink!!!

igorchudov  |  Pfizer is “pausing advertising on Twitter” because it is “concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform.”

Pfizer was one of the most significant sources of revenue for Twitter. I constantly saw Pfizer ads and promoted posts, such as this creepy one:

Pfizer Inc. @pfizer

It’s easy to get distracted by misinformation these days, but don’t worry…Science has got your back. #ScienceWillWin

9:27 PM ∙ Nov 9, 2021

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4,666Likes1,661Retweets

(If you are not sure why “the human brain” becomes so sweaty once pink “science” grabs it firmly from behind, neither am I)

What is interesting is that this advertising pause involves not only Pfizer but other large multinationals with no specific issues related to Twitter censorship, such as General Mills, a producer of popular but unhealthy breakfast cereals.

Who is behind this? Meet a new “action coalition” called “Accountable Tech” that is directing efforts to withhold advertising money from misbehaving technology companies. You may be very surprised, or not, but “Accountable Tech” is packed with Democratic operatives:

Accountable Tech is spearheading this letter to Twitter advertisers:

Accountable Tech joined more than 25 groups to deliver the below message in a letter to Twitter’s top advertisers to demand nonnegotiable requirements for their ad business in the midst of Elon Musk’s acquisition:

To whom it may concern:

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized.  

The undersigned organizations believe that Twitter should continue to uphold the practices that serve as guideposts for other Big Tech platforms. We call on you – Twitter’s top advertisers – to commit to these standards as non-negotiable requirements for advertising on the platform:

1. Keep accounts including those of public figures and politicians that were removed for egregious violations of Twitter Rules – such as harassment, violence, and hateful conduct – off the platform

All these coalitions attempt to influence large advertisers into doing their bidding by withholding ad money from tech companies that “Accountable Tech” wants to punish.

I understand why Pfizer, a company selling the fraudulent “Covid vaccine” and relying on censorship for continued sales, has a vested interest in Twitter continuing to censor vaccine skeptics. However, other companies mentioned above do not have such reasons.