- NATO Air Units On High Alert After Near Miss Between Russian & Polish Aircraft
NATO Air Units On High Alert After Near Miss Between Russian & Polish Aircraft
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
NATO has put its air units on high alert following a near miss between Russian and Polish aircraft, Reuters reported Monday.
A NATO official said that on Friday, a Polish jet patrolling over the Black Sea near Romania for the EU’s border agency, known as Frontex, had a dangerous encounter with a Russian aircraft.
Illustrative file image: Romanian Air Force “NATO air policing detachments were put on higher readiness in response to the dangerous behavior of a Russian military plane in the vicinity of a Polish Frontex aircraft over the Black Sea near Romania,” the NATO official said.
The Romanian Defense Ministry accused the Russian aircraft of acting recklessly. “This incident is a further proof of the provocative approach of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea,” the ministry said in a statement on the incident.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, there have been several dangerous encounters between NATO and Russian aircraft, including the incident in March that resulted in the downing of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone near Crimea.
According to The New York Times, a leaked Pentagon document revealed a near miss on September 29 that almost resulted in a Russian jet shooting down a manned British surveillance plane.
US officials said the Russian pilot fired a missile after misinterpreting what a radar operator said, but the missile malfunctioned.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/10/2023 – 02:00 - The Discord Leaks: Harmful, Embarrassing, Or Manipulation?
The Discord Leaks: Harmful, Embarrassing, Or Manipulation?
Authored by Carol Choksy & Jamsheed Choksy via RealClearWorld.com,
Once again, classified materials linked to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies have reached the public domain via the internet. But do these documents really undermine Washington and its allies by revealing information not already known to geopolitical rivals? Is there much in the leaked items that is actually, or deserved to be, top secret? Or have the revelations, embarrassing as they might be to America and its partners, been shaped and reshaped to influence rivals and the global public by demonstrating the limitations of opposing powers?
What Came Through the Discord App
The so-called top secret documents have been exposed since February 2022. They were spread by a nondescript National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, on Discord servers and chat groups to a Minecraft chat server, to the 4chan bulletin board and Russian Telegram channels, and eventually to Twitter users. Apparently, only in April did the Pentagon catch on to the online revelations.
The information leaked included intelligence analysis products about issues both related and unrelated to the war in Ukraine. Directly relevant data detailed estimates about Israel supplying equipment to Ukraine, the UAE and Egypt possibly supplying rockets to Russia, discussions by South Korean officials about supplying munitions to Ukraine, NATO plans to equip and train Ukrainian troops, personnel losses on both sides, and Russian plans to reward the destruction of NATO tanks. Other information covers topics such as a cyberattack on Canadian oil infrastructure, the Mossad’s attitude about judiciary protests in Israel, China’s hypersonic advances and its Indo-Pacific maneuvers, emerging powers seeking to stay removed from superpower rivalries, and shifting geopolitical alliances.
A Damaging Leak?
The greatest concern about this leak would be that Russia or other adversaries could figure out who collected information or how information was collected — sources and methods, in other words. Knowing sources means an adversary can remove them. Knowing methods means an opportunity to end access, or to work around it and nullify its usefulness. Should either or both these occur, U.S. ability to support Ukrainian battlefield maneuvers with effective intelligence, and to peer into the inner workings of rival nations, could fall short.
However, the leaked documents contain no great new revelations. The data sets were largely known and available through open sources. Likewise, many of the leaked analytical conclusions had already circulated beyond government circles without the need for top-secret, covertly collected data.
U.S. President Joe Biden nodded to the consequences’ lack of severity by telling the press, “I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence right now.” Unauthorized disclosure, rather than revealed knowledge of data, sources, and methods, is the focus of the U.S. government’s response. The Discord leak is a violation of law and duty by the leaker and therefore an area of concern for information security, but it is not a national security calamity.
An Embarrassing Disclosure?
The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, the Wikileaks trove by Chelsea Manning in 2010, the NSA tranche by Edward Snowden in 2013, and the Intercept report by Reality Winner in 2017, top the list of previous failures to contain top secret materials. The Discord documents leak is yet another awkward moment for the U.S. military and intelligence communities because it highlights poor information security practices. This disclosure suggests that data management has not improved significantly since previous incidents that have been damaging to national security and to foreign relations.
Content about Canada, Israel, Pakistan, India, and South Korea may be discomforting, but is not particularly consequential. The United States can conduct an apology tour of our allies and friends by our Secretaries of Defense and State. Directors of our major intelligence agencies likely will be performing their own apology tours to the other members of the Five Eyes (Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) in addition to other friendly countries named in the documents. They will carry assurances that measures have been taken to reduce the chances of such a leak happening again.
An Influence Operation?
Upon parsing the data carefully, it becomes apparent that the primary knowledge gleaned from this leak is obvious — that countries spy on each other, even among allies and partners. Moreover, as already noted, much of the so-called classified information was already available in the public domain. As such, the possibility this leaked data was reworked to unsettle global competitors, especially Russia and China, cannot be disregarded. The data show how thoroughly those governments and their military and intelligence sectors have been infiltrated by the US. Leaders and subordinates within those authoritarian regimes will now be looking at each other with greater distrust.
The Discord documents indicate that, however challenging the situation may be for Ukraine, not only is Russia losing more personnel and materiel, but its forces are also completely infiltrated by human intelligence agents, signals intelligence, and geospatial intelligence. The many ways Beijing aids Moscow in its pursuit of an unjust war, while bullying its way around East Asia and the Pacific, have also been laid bare. If some of the data leaked through the Discord server reflect an influence operation, or were reshaped to serve such purpose, the intent is to show Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Federal Security Service, as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping and his People’s Liberation Army, that they have no secrets Washington cannot purloin. Certainly, Kremlin leaders worry “this is a deliberate information dump … in essence waging a hybrid war against us.”
Outcomes
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a review of intelligence access, accountability, and control procedures. As has happened after previous revelations, more cyber defenses will be deployed, and the number of people who can receive classified intelligence will be tightened even further under more stringent protocols.
There is another related, important, question arising from the Discord leaks that needs to be addressed by U.S. intelligence agencies. Why does so much publicly available information, and inference easily reached from open-source materials, need to be classified as secret — let alone top-secret? Focusing on classifying only the much smaller, truly important, covertly obtained data sets, and analyses derived from those information caches, will make U.S. secrets easier to secure from spies, leakers, hackers, and other bad actors.
Yet government employees and contract personnel involved in the handling of top secret information would still number in the thousands. Thus, even with a zero trust approach, future leaks may be unavoidable. Whether those disclosures, like the current one, damage American capabilities, merely generate foreign policy discomfort, or can be exploited to place rivals at a disadvantage, will depend not only on the information revealed, but on how efficiently, and even covertly, responses occur.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/10/2023 – 00:00 - Ex-Russian Space Boss Finds 'No Proof' Americans Landed On Moon In 1969
Ex-Russian Space Boss Finds ‘No Proof’ Americans Landed On Moon In 1969
Russia’s former head of the Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, said he went on a quest about a decade ago to find concrete proof that the Americans landed on the Moon in 1969. After finding little evidence, he questioned whether the Apollo 11 Mission reached the lunar surface.
“About ten years ago, when I worked in the Government, I sent an official request to Roskosmos to provide me with documentary evidence of the Americans’ stay on the moon, which at that time was still at the disposal of the federal agency,” Rogozin said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
He continued, “I was painfully embarrassed by the fact that the Soviet cosmonauts returning from multi-day expeditions could barely stand on their feet and underwent a long recovery after such flights, and the Americans crawled out of their lunar ships like cucumbers from the garden. “
Rogozin claimed to have submitted multiple requests to Roscosmos for proof of NASA’s 1969 Moon landing. He said the only evidence he received was a book that contained an account by Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov about his conversation with the American astronauts and their discussions about the lunar mission.
Rogozin continued in the post:
In 2018, when I went to work at the state corporation Roskosmos, I continued to search for this evidence, but I didn’t find anything there, except for the angry accusations of some of our fans of going to America at the expense of others, academicians, that I, they say, undermine the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” I also received one angry call from a high-ranking official accusing me of “aggravating the international situation” with my doubts.
Yes, I did not undermine or aggravate anything, but only by virtue of my nature I tried to get to the bottom of the details and establish, at least for myself, the true state of affairs in the issue of exploration of the Moon by our competitors. It was not clear to me how the United States, at that level of technological development of the 60s of the last century, did what they still cannot do now?
Add Rogozin to the moon-landing denialism camp because how dare anyone question that the spacecraft with less computing power than even a modern USB-C charger could land astronauts on the Moon in 1969 — and astronauts have yet to return 54 years later.
… still there are many questions.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 23:40 - If Hunter Is Indicted
If Hunter Is Indicted
Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics./com,m
What will President Biden do if his son is indicted by the federal prosecutor in Delaware?
That’s one of three questions looming over U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ fateful choice.
The second is whether the indictment will go after a larger, coordinated family scheme of influence peddling or confine itself to smaller, tightly-confined issues like lying to get a gun permit and not registering as a foreign lobbyist.
The third is whether Attorney General Merrick Garland will approve Weiss’ proposed charges.
Significant political calculations follow from those decisions.
It’s easy enough to answer what Garland will do. He has little choice but to approve any charges Weiss proposes after the government’s multi-year investigation. Anything else would look shady, a far cry from the neutral, apolitical justice Garland’s department is charged with dispensing. Burying the charges, after Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel, would embroil his department in its nastiest controversy since John Mitchell befouled it under President Nixon.
Assuming the federal attorney proposes felony charges and Garland approves them, Joe Biden faces the toughest choice of his political life.
The president’s dilemma is why it’s so interesting to follow recent speculation by Miranda Devine, a reporter and columnist for the New York Post. She’s the most informed journalist on the Hunter Biden story. Her paper broke the news about the emails on Hunter’s laptop, three weeks before the 2020 election, and Devine has done the best follow-up reporting. To bury that story before the election took the combined, Herculean efforts of the legacy media, social media giants, and former CIA officials. Their success helped elect Biden. But the “little story that could” just keeps chugging along, mostly because the corruption is so extensive, so rich for investigation. Criminal charges now seem likely, not that the mainstream media has shown much interest.
Now, Devine is speculating that Biden is setting the stage to pardon Hunter, framing it as the actions of a loving father who backs his troubled child. “My son has done nothing wrong,” Biden told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in a rare one-on-one interview. “I trust him. I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”
Whether such sentiments presage a pardon, as Devine thinks, is still a guess. We can say something more concrete, though, as Biden weighs such a move. Four consequences stand out:
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A presidential pardon would set off a political firestorm.
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The White House will try its best to prevent any public revelation of the family’s business dealings. That means the president and his advisors want to prevent a trial, get Hunter to take a plea, and convince the judge to seal the evidence. Another option is to go trial, knowing it won’t be held until after the election.
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If Biden pardons his son this year, he’s signaling he won’t run for reelection. He wouldn’t put that albatross around his own neck if he intended to face the voters.
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If Biden does run and pardons his son after November 2024, the political impact depends on who wins the White House and Capitol Hill. The calculations are more complicated than one might expect.
Let’s consider each in turn.
First, a pardon would set off the biggest political firestorm since Watergate. It would look worse than self-dealing, bad as that is. It would look like the president is covering up his family’s corruption, not only to get Hunter off the hook but to prevent the disclosure of damning evidence in court. That evidence is likely to touch many more Biden family members than Hunter, and perhaps the president himself. The more Biden family members who are implicated, the more the whole operation looks like a concerted operation to monetize Joe’s political position. It also might threaten to shred Joe’s repeated claim that he knew nothing about any family business interests or influence peddling. The wider the sleaze, the harder it is to sell that story.
The chairman of the House committee investigating these issues has said Hunter’s corruption was merely one part of the family business. And that business was selling influence. Rep. James Comer has publicly said that his House Oversight Committee has already collected evidence that nine Biden family members are involved in sketchy business deals, including substantial payments from foreign firms. Some of those firms are closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Comer added that his committee is investigating the possible involvement of at least three more family members, as well as Joe Biden’s own role. His conclusion: “The entire Biden family” is entrapped in the financial enrichment scheme. So far, however, Comer hasn’t named names or provided the evidence. He says he will provide much more at a major press conference Wednesday.
Comer’s principle suggestion is that the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme is much broader, and their criminal actions more serious, than isolated schemes perpetrated by the president’s conniving second son. He adds that his evidence points to Joe Biden’s direct involvement, including possible payments for official actions. That is what he told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, although he hasn’t yet provided the evidence for that incendiary allegation. Comer is also attacking the FBI for desultory investigation – which ignored much of the malfeasance – and calling out the mainstream media for its concerted silence.
The Internal Revenue Service might be implicated, too, since a lot of payments – and a lot of Hunter’s income – went through what Comer calls the family’s “web of LLCs.” A senior supervisory agent at the IRS is seeking whistleblower protection to tell Congress about “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed” in investigating Hunter’s taxes. If political pressure really was applied to the IRS over Hunter’s taxes, or if senior agents acted improperly to curry favor, those would obviously be very serious matters, legally and politically. Comer and the House Republicans in the committee’s majority want that testimony under oath and are seeking responses from the IRS and DOJ.
Anticipating an indictment soon, Comer has urged the Justice Department to hold off until his committee presents more evidence to the public this week. “When you have the opportunity to see the evidence that the House Oversight Committee will produce with respect to the web of [Biden family] LLCs, with respect to the number of adversarial countries that this family influence peddled in, and this is not just about the president’s son. This is about the entire Biden family, including the President of the United States.”
However wide-ranging the indictment is, Hunter will do everything he can to strike a plea deal and seal all the evidence to prevent its disclosure at trial. That would clearly be the preference inside the White House. But it’s not in the public interest.
If the DOJ tries to seal the evidence, it would be joining in a cover-up. The Department must require that Hunter attest to all incriminating evidence and that it all be made public as part of any plea deal. The judge himself should demand it. That requirement might kill Hunter’s willingness to take the deal. Rather than reveal the evidence now, the White House would prefer kick it down the road, to a trial date after the November 2024 election.
Whether a trial happens or not, a pardon for Hunter would be politically fatal for the president, and he and his advisers must know it. That leads to a clear conclusion. If Joe pardons Hunter this year, running for reelection becomes unrealistic. Such a self-inflicted wound would be a far more powerful signal of his intentions than a speech declaring his candidacy. There’s no way Joe would eviscerate his political prospects like that if he intended to face the voters again.
Of course, Biden could delay any pardon until after November 2024. That would still invite a high-profile congressional investigation and perhaps impeachment, but the political maneuvering would depend on the election outcome. If Biden loses and the current Republican House moves quickly to impeach, Senate Democrats would be in a bind. It takes overwhelming evidence to convince senators to humiliate a president from their own party. The only thing that would do it is overwhelming fear of their constituents at the ballot box.
The situation is entirely different if Biden wins and the Republicans take both the House and Senate. The problem, in three words, is President Kamala Harris. Although the new House would have no trouble collecting votes for impeachment, they might hesitate before passing the ultimate decision to their Republican colleagues in the Senate. Do they really want to elevate Harris into the Oval Office?
None of these prospects is a happy one. Each one adds to the misery of a country beset by lawlessness on the streets, chaos at the southern border, stagnant real income, and a looming debt crisis. We need to know whether the Biden family – not just Hunter – was engaged in a series of corrupt schemes to peddle the influence of a high-ranking government official. We need to know all the family members involved and their business partners. We need to know what they were paid for doing and who paid them. What we don’t need is a weak, narrowly-drawn indictment, an official cover-up of the evidence, and, worst of all, a self-serving presidential pardon.
credittrader
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 23:20 -
- Wendy's Unveils Google-Powered AI Chatbot At Drive-Thru
Wendy’s Unveils Google-Powered AI Chatbot At Drive-Thru
Wendy’s is reportedly developing an artificial intelligence chatbot powered by Google’s natural-language software designed to automate drive-thrus.
The Wall Street Journal spoke with Wendy’s Chief Executive Todd Penegor, who said the fast-food chain’s chatbot would be rolled out in June at a company-owned restaurant in Columbus, Ohio.
The Wendy’s drive-thru chatbot “will be very conversational,” Penegor explained. He said, “You won’t know you’re talking to anybody but an employee.”
Wendy’s software engineers have been working with Google to build a large language model to understand words, popular expressions, and phrases in various dialects and accents when a customer orders. It’ll understand acronyms unique to Wendy’s, like “JBC” for a junior bacon cheeseburger.
“Google Cloud’s generative AI technology creates a huge opportunity for us to deliver a truly differentiated, faster, and frictionless experience for our customers, and allows our employees to continue focusing on making great food and building relationships with fans that keep them coming back time and again,” Penegor said in a separate conversation about the chatbot while speaking with Gizmodo.
WSJ said the drive-thru chatbot is programmed to upsell customers by asking if they want to combo the order or increase sizes. Once the order is completed, humans operating the kitchen will (which will one day be replaced by robot chefs) prepare the food before being packaged up and stuffed into a bag for pickup at the window.
Wendy’s Chief Information Officer Kevin Vasconi told WSJ that the chatbot “is probably on average better” than the company’s top customer service reps. He said the chatbot’s goal is to improve service speed and consistency at drive-thrus. About 80% of all food orders are placed at the burger chain’s drive-thrus.
Besides Wendy’s, we have outlined the move by other fast-food restaurants, like McDonald’s, to automate stores and replace humans:
- McDonald’s To Replace More Humans With Drive-Thru AI
- McDonald’s Tests AI-Powered Automated Drive-Thrus At 10 Chicago Restaurants
There’s even been a push by McDonald’s to automate a restaurant entirely:
The proliferation of automation in the fast food industry will only mean a tidal wave of layoffs is coming over this decade. According to market research firm IBISWorld, the US has more than 5 million workers.
Recall a recent Goldman report (available to pro subscribers in the usual place) that stated, “Two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”
In other words, the robots are coming, and jobs will be lost.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 23:00 - Can Trump Win?
Can Trump Win?
Authored by Dan McCarthy via AmericanMind.org,
The final RealClearPolitics polling average for the 2016 race showed Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by 3.2 points.
As of May 1, 2023, the same polling average shows Trump ahead of Joe Biden by 1 point.
Of course, Trump can’t win. Any Republican would do better. Every pundit says so. And when have they ever been wrong?
Trump didn’t enter the 2016 race until June 2015, so a direct comparison between his current polling numbers and those of the last cycle isn’t possible. But those who remember the 2016 race will remember that for most of the cycle, Trump trailed Clinton by rather more than the 3.2 points—as shown in the final RCP average. And of course, Trump won. The press underestimated his appeal.
Even in 2020, Trump significantly outperformed his polling. The final RCP average in that race showed a 7.2 point lead for Biden. His actual lead wound up being 4.5 points.
If not for all the experts saying otherwise, one would think that Trump has an excellent chance of winning the 2024 election. If the polls now are as far off as they were in 2016 and 2020, Trump will win.
But what about last year’s midterms? Didn’t they prove that Trump is a spent force?
Conservatives would have to be extremely stupid not to notice that, long before Trump came along, the Republican establishment and the mainstream media had a consensus about how to interpret elections.
Any time a right-wing candidate lost, it was always proof that the Right was unelectable and that candidate was a millstone around the Republican Party’s neck. But any time an establishment candidate lost—like John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012—nobody argued the party was too centrist or that establishment candidates were lead balloons.
When conservatives lost, it meant conservatives were losers. But when less conservative candidates lost, it was not a sign that less conservative candidates were losers. On the contrary: the reliable diagnosis from mainstream pundits and DC professionals was that the establishment Republican’s fatal vulnerability was whatever smidgen of conservatism might have crept into his campaign. The establishment, the dead center, was never to blame.
Conservative Republicans who noticed how that worked before the Trump era should recognize that a very similar pattern obtains today. The only difference is that now the liberal pundits and DC campaign consultants are joined by the professional conservative media in applying the same storyline to Trump.
When a Trump-endorsed candidate loses, Trump is to blame. When an impressionistically Trump-like candidate who isn’t endorsed by Trump loses, Trump is to blame. But when a non-Trumpian candidate loses, the lesson is never that non-Trumpian Republicans have an electability problem.
When a Republican who feuds with Trump, like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, wins a smashing re-election victory, it’s a repudiation of Trump. But when a politician who was built up by Trump and is running in a wildly pro-Trump state wins a massive re-election victory, as Ron DeSantis did in Florida, the victory is in no way to Trump’s credit.
The narrative, in both its old anti-conservative form and its new anti-Trump one, is designed to steer voters. But it also has the effect of duping its own creators. Hence their surprise when Trump beat Clinton, and their dismay that Trump seems to be well-positioned to win the Republican nomination next year. They still, however, cling to the belief that he cannot win in November 2024.
Back From the Brink
Certainly the commentariat believes that any Republican could do better than Trump—so why risk the election on him? Until recently most polls have shown Ron DeSantis performing better than Trump against Biden. And some polls have even indicated that a generic Republican would do better than Trump. The Republican Party may be poised for presidential victory next year, but if it is, that’s despite Trump, not because of him.
The argument is superficially plausible, but it doesn’t take into account the demonization that will greet any Republican who gets the party’s presidential nomination. If another candidate starts off with higher positives than Trump, there’s no guarantee that by the time the media is done with him he won’t be seen in a much uglier light. With Trump, the media has already done everything that it possibly can do to make him look like the worst thing on two legs since Adolf Hitler. What more harm can they inflict upon Trump than they already have? But there’s plenty more they can inflict on anyone else.
Then there is the testimony of history. The last non-Trump Republican to win the White House was, of course, George W. Bush. In 2004 he had every advantage: he was the incumbent, Reaganite enough to thrill movement conservatives yet “compassionate” enough to reassure centrists of both parties. The conservative movement was unified behind him (he had no primary challenger, and the few conservatives who dissented from the Iraq War at the time were tarred as disloyal to party and country). The War on Terror was still popular, and same-sex marriage was on several states’ ballots to drive turnout for “values voters.”
With all that going for him, the best George W. Bush could manage was 286 electoral votes. Not since 1916 had any re-elected incumbent fallen short of 300 votes in the Electoral College.
Even Karl Rove should have been able to recognize what that anemic number meant. The 2000s Republican electoral coalition, under perfect conditions, had no margin to spare. If the rising unpopularity of the Iraq War or the rising acceptance of same-sex marriage shifted the electorate even a little, or if there was a recession, or a Republican scandal, or simply a more charismatic Democratic nominee than John Kerry, that 17-vote margin that re-elected Bush would disappear.
2004 represented the ceiling of what the pre-Trump Republican brand could achieve. Even at the time, the ceiling was caving in and would soon collapse completely, thanks in large part to Bush’s foreign policy and the normalizing of same-sex marriage.
The Republican Party would not be better off if the Trump revolution had never happened. In 2016, Trump smashed through Bush’s electoral total with 304 votes. He did it with a more provocative personality than Bush, a different policy mix (in particular on foreign policy, trade, and immigration, where Trump’s views were closer to Pat Buchanan than to Bush’s), and a campaign that brought the candidate to Rust Belt districts long neglected by nominees from both parties. If Trump’s personal controversies were as much of a detriment as common sense suggests, then the appeal of his campaign technique and issue positions must have been even greater than those 304 electoral votes attest.
Far from dooming the Republican Party, Trump saved it from the reputation that Bush and the conservative movement of his era had left it with. The party of 2004 could never win again. The ease with which Trump defeated the heirs to that party—Jeb Bush, but also Ted Cruz and the rest of the 2016 field—was a verdict on the very philosophy of the GOP as it stood between 1992 and 2012. As a set of principles, the philosophy of the GOP couldn’t even prevail in the party itself, let alone in the wider country.
Perhaps a post-Trump GOP brand will be more popular than either Trump or the party’s pre-Trump identity. But a truly post-Trump Right doesn’t yet exist—the present alternatives to Trump in the Republican Party are either variations on Trumpish populism or regressions to pre-Trump conservatism. I was at a dinner in DC recently where all the conservatives in the room, except me, agreed that the future of the GOP was Ronald Reagan. The closest thing to a post-Trump option that most DC intellectuals can imagine involves resorting to necromancy.
Lessons to Learn
So yes, Trump can win in 2024, and the fact that he still defines the party’s identity means he is overwhelmingly likely to be its nominee. Ron DeSantis does have a shot—he argues that he’s a more competent leader for the Trump-era Right than Trump himself is. But the Trump (and Biden) era doesn’t seem to be characterized by voters placing a premium on competence, and it’s hard to convince Republicans you’re to the right of Trump when Trump is the personal symbol of the Right today. In much the same way, Reagan was the symbol of the fusionist Right—and when did a more-Reaganite-than-Reagan candidate ever win anything through the purity of his principles?
Many of my Florida friends think that the way to win Wisconsin and Michigan in 2024 is to refight the COVID battles of 2020-21 and to talk about transgenderism more than anything else. But this approach is not so different from that of my DC friends who think the way to win the Rust Belt is to talk about slashing the federal bureaucracy and reining in the Federal Reserve. The issues are important in their own right—but that doesn’t mean they drive enough votes.
Trump, however, has to learn the lessons of his own success in 2016. One lesson is the importance of a figure like Steve Bannon—someone who can concentrate Trump’s attention and translate his themes into concrete imagery. This is what Bannon did with “the wall.” As a simple, easy-to-envision policy that acted upon a broad issue (immigration), “the wall” was something that voters could remember and refer back to. Contrast that with the incredibly lengthy lists of policies that Mitt Romney used to rattle off in 2012, which were not only beyond what most voters could remember but also failed to leave any vivid impressions.
A lesson that Trump clearly has learned from his own experience, both in 2016 and 2020, is that rallies and in-person campaigning are his strength. Four years ago Joe Biden could avoid the campaign trail with COVID as his rationale. In 2024, the contrast between a vigorous, rally-leading Trump and a president without the stamina or mental acuity for prolonged public events will be striking. The advantage that his rallies conferred on Trump in 2016 should be all the more pronounced next year.
Where Trump’s advantage will be less pronounced, if he still has an advantage at all, is in pitching himself as the candidate for the industrial workforce. Biden has always understood far better than Hillary Clinton ever did how to appeal to traditional labor constituencies, and he has used the power of the presidency to enhance that appeal. His personal affinity for the state of Pennsylvania also gives Biden an edge that Clinton lacked. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania can make or break either campaign. But working-class voters don’t just want jobs or federal dollars. They also want respect. They want to feel like they’re part of a winning team called America again. Can Trump restore their confidence and win it for himself, better than Biden can, even with the largesse the incumbent can dole out? He has to try.
The failures of 2020 should also be instructive: for instance, they show that Republicans have to take non-traditional get-out-the-vote efforts far more seriously, including by running GOP campaigns for early and mail-in voting. There are principled reasons why moving away from voting in particular places on a particular day is detrimental to American democracy. Turning voting into an ongoing plebiscite is bad in absolute terms, quite apart from the risk of fraud or other forms of mischief. But the midst of an election is the wrong time to worry your own voters about the voting system. Republicans should find it just as easy as Democrats to vote early or by mail—just as easy in practice and just as psychologically easy. Otherwise, the Democrats will enjoy a field left to themselves.
Another 2020 mistake that Trump will have to avoid is being ill-prepared for the debates and investing too much in trying to embarrass Biden with the shameful lifestyle of his son Hunter. While the Biden family’s corruption is a valid issue, Trump struck too many voters as a bully picking on an old man and his troubled son—whose condition strikes many Americans in the age of opioids as painfully relatable. Trump may or may not win the debates, but he cannot afford to look as bad as he did in the last cycle’s head-to-head meetings.
Trump is inclined to talk endlessly about his own legal problems and the degree of persecution to which he feels subjected. This may or may not be a turn-off to persuadable voters—it runs the risk of reminding some of them just how many suits and investigations Trump has faced, and how much they distracted from the nation’s business. The other hazard that a preoccupation with his legal cases presents, however, is that it subtracts from the time and energy available to talk about how voters and their families feel about their own circumstances. When Trump says that his enemies go after him to get at “you,” his message has power. But he has to be mindful about connecting his woes with other Americans’.
Picking a Second
Going into 2024, Trump has more flexibility in one respect than he had the last time he took on Biden. He can now choose a new running mate. Pence made sense in 2016, when Trump needed to reassure conventional Republicans, especially religious ones, that his ticket would be good for them. In 2024 the most valuable assistance a running mate might contribute would be the chance of winning a state that otherwise would go to Biden.
Virginia, where Governor Glenn Youngkin currently enjoys an approval rating in the mid-50s, might be a prospect. Trump lost Virginia in 2020 with 1.96 million votes to Biden’s 2.4 million. Interestingly, however, in 2012 Barack Obama won the state with 1.97 million votes, and in 2016 Hillary Clinton won it with 1.98 million. In most years, Trump’s 2020 Virginia total would be a winning number, or close to it. Is it possible that Trump’s Virginia voters are more enthusiastic than they were in 2020 and Biden’s are less motivated? That Youngkin as a running mate could tip the state into the Republican column?
If not, there could still be advantages in forcing Biden to spend time and money on what might otherwise be a safe state, and Youngkin—former CEO of the Carlyle Group—might be reassuring to corporate class Republicans around the country who are alienated by Trump and populism.
Several other possible running mates, such as Senator Tim Scott, also have the potential to be useful for outreach. But Scott would also leave ideologically focused populists cold. What may work well for the math at the ballot box may prove a source of conflict in a second Trump Administration, if the vice president’s staff are not loyal to the president and his agenda. Reagan thought he had good reason to partner with George H.W. Bush in 1980. But when Bush succeeded Reagan, he fired almost everyone who had supported Reagan over himself in the 1980 primaries. The GOP’s disastrous turn to neoconservatism began with that betrayal. Electoral math can’t be the only criterion in choosing a running mate. But a pick that widens the Trump coalition will help to avoid making 2024 a replay of 2020, even if it is a rematch.
The New Trump Moment
Immigration is an even hotter issue than it was in Trump’s last two elections. President Biden has been impaled on the horns of a dilemma here. When he delivers the porous-borders policies his base expects, the results are so chaotic that a political backlash is inevitable. But when Biden tries to forestall the backlash by restoring some immigration enforcement, he winds up accused by the Left of doing exactly what Trump would do. This is a winning issue for Trump, and when the media attacks him for it, he should be prepared to point to Biden’s own half-hearted acceptance of enforcement. Even Biden knows that something has to be done and liberal policies have failed. On immigration, Biden himself makes the case for Trump.
Foreign policy also plays even better for Trump in 2024 than it did in 2016. The message is simple—Biden humiliated America in Afghanistan and has no plan to end the war in Ukraine swiftly or successfully. The war in Afghanistan went on too long and ended badly because the foreign-policy establishment pursued unrealistic aims and had no finite gameplan. The war in Ukraine is going the same way, sucking unlimited resources out of America and our allies on an open-ended timetable. The Biden Administration and bipartisan foreign-policy elite once again define victory only in the vaguest and most idealistic terms. The same means in pursuit of the same obscure end will produce in Ukraine the same results as in Afghanistan. Trump offers the only alternative.
The fundamental forces that helped to elect Trump in 2016 are more compelling than ever. America’s leadership class is unpatriotic and incompetent. It unsuccessfully tries to provide security for Afghanistan and Ukraine even as it fails to police our own cities and borders. Biden and the rest of the elite are more interested in ruling the world than re-establishing the rule of law at home. Americans have suffered the consequences. Trump may be imperfect, but voters have now seen what happens when the country reverts to a pre-Trump leader like Biden. The political class has not mended its ways. It has to be replaced, and Trump is the beginning of its replacement.
Trump is polling well enough already that he can be cautiously confident about next year. There’s a danger that he and DeSantis will drive up one another’s negatives to the point where either of them would have a much tougher time taking on Biden next November. But if that doesn’t happen, the odds are that 2024 will look more like 2016 than 2020.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 22:40 - China Retaliates After Canada Expels Its Diplomat Over 'Political Interference'
China Retaliates After Canada Expels Its Diplomat Over ‘Political Interference’
Canada and China have mutually expelled diplomats in tit-for-tat moves after Canada first booted a Chinese diplomat based in Toronto, Zhao Wei, which happened Monday.
The Canadian government has accused him of political interference, allegations first revealed in a leaked report written by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The CSIS report “found an accredited Chinese diplomat in the country had taken efforts toward targeting opposition lawmaker Michael Chong and relatives who may be in China.” Beijing has called it “lies”.
“The alleged targeting took place after Chong sponsored a motion to condemn China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority group,” according to CNN. “The intelligence was first reported by Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail earlier this month.”
The episode comes following widespread reports as well as accusations from Western officials that Chinese intelligence and diplomatic officials have engaged in intimidation campaigns abroad, aimed at political dissidents and their families.
In Chong’s case, he was apparently targeted in an intimidation campaign due to his having spent years spearheading Canada’s legislative efforts slap an official label of “genocide” on China’s human rights abuses, especially connected with treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to hold China accountable, telling reporters on Tuesday, “we will not be intimidated. We will continue to do everything necessary to keep Canadians protected from foreign interference.”
Beijing was swift in its retaliation, with the foreign ministry responding Tuesday by decrying the “smear campaign against China” rooted in “ideologically based political manipulation” that is “nonsensical” and “lies”.
Diplomat Zhao Wei has been declared ‘persona non grata’ The foreign ministry introduced “reciprocal countermeasure in reaction to Canada’s unscrupulous move” – which at this point includes expelling Jennifer Lynn Lalonde, a Canadian diplomat based in Shanghai. China has given her four days to leave the country.
Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin further said, “We advise the Canadian side to immediately stop unreasonable provocations,” Wang added. “If the Canadian side does not listen to advice and acts recklessly, China will resolutely and forcefully respond.” Thus the deteriorating situation seems primed to expand, possibly into further diplomatic expulsions, or even trade restriction measures.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 22:20 - Cypherpunks, Galt's Gulch, And Bitcoin
Cypherpunks, Galt’s Gulch, And Bitcoin
Authored by Emile Phaneuf III via The American Institute for Economic Research,
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Cypherpunks, a group of cryptographers, mathematicians, computer scientists and activists, many of whom had libertarian (or libertarian-esque) influences, worked to bring about a better world by peaceful means through mathematics and computer code. Although the identity of Bitcoin’s founder remains unknown to the general public, it is widely understood that this stateless digital currency is a direct result of their work.
In 1992, Timothy C. May, a self-described crypto-anarchist and a founding member of the Cypherpunks, published an essay called “Libertaria in Cyberspace.” May wrote that “it will be easier to form certain types of libertarian societies in cyberspace than in the real world of nations and physical locations” and that “these ‘crypto anarchy’ ideas will further erode the power of physical states to tax and coerce residents.”
May cited a number of key influences on the Cypherpunks, among them economists FA Hayek and David D. Friedman, as well as moral philosopher Ayn Rand. But crypto-anarchy as a political ideology was a recurring theme, and Ayn Rand was, according to May, “one of the prime motivators” of it. He wrote that “What [Rand] wanted to do with material technology (mirrors over Galt’s Gulch) is _much_ more easily done with mathematical technology.” But the social change they sought to bring about wasn’t just a passive interest. “Cypherpunks write code” wrote Eric Hughes, another member of the group, in his “Cypherpunk’s Manifesto.”
The idea of building a crypto-anarchist Galt’s Gulch in cyberspace was an intriguing idea. In 1998, Cypherpunk and computer engineer Wei Dai authored an essay explaining how a cryptographic money, which he called ‘b-money’, could work. In the very first sentence of the essay he wrote that he was “fascinated by Tim May’s crypto-anarchy” and that in this cryptographic cyber-utopia, government was “permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary” because “its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations.”
Nick Szabo, another Cypherpunk and computer scientist, described the digital Galt’s Gulch as a place where “you could form your own independent community and declare your independence from corrupt institutions,” a place with its own private money, where private property is protected through non-violent means, and where contracts are enforced.
As the development of a privately-issued digital currency was very much a goal of the Cypherpunks, as they were inspired in no small part by Ayn Rand, and as Rand had much to say about money, it is worth reviewing some of her writings to derive what she might have thought about Bitcoin.
Anarchy
As mentioned, Cypherpunk Timothy May’s vision of Galt’s Gulch in cyberspace was one that he described as “crypto-anarchy.” But Rand dismissed anarchy as a political system altogether, calling it “a naive floating abstraction.”
So while both Rand and some of the more influential Cypherpunks imagined what a freer society might look like – both appreciating free trade and voluntary interaction – they certainly would not have agreed about whether a minimal level of coercion is necessary to fund, say, courts and military. As such, if we view a private, digital currency as an essential part of the crypto-anarchist vision, it is difficult to imagine Rand’s supporting it. But taking a closer look at Rand’s views on property rights and money itself can provide us with a more in-depth perspective.
Property rights
Rand wrote that it is only through property rights that any other right can exist, and that without property rights “there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.”
In Bitcoin, to know something (your private key) is essentially owning it. It is, of course, possible to entrust your private keys with a third party (an exchange, for example), but this is both entirely unnecessary and highly discouraged among bitcoiners, as captured by the “Not your keys, not your bitcoins” ethos. So while it is possible to seize bitcoins by coercing someone to cough up their private keys, the nature of Bitcoin’s functionality forces the coercive party to go to much greater (violent) lengths to expropriate in the first place. As such, Bitcoin radically shifts the balance of power between the individual and the state, as the state cannot go door-to-door violently forcing information from people’s heads without falsifying the public image it promotes for itself as a “benevolent provider of social welfare.”
To take it one step further, Bitcoin’s portability allows wealth to move from one corner of the earth to another in a permissionless way. It also enables property owners to physically cross borders and carry their wealth with them, as bitcoins do not occupy physical space, and the private keys can be stored in their heads.
In sum, Bitcoin serves as a radical form of property rights, and as such, it is difficult to imagine Rand’s not appreciating this aspect of it.
Money
When Rand wrote of money, she usually referred to the value of making it by creating value for others; she distinguished between money made by just means and unearned money through unjust means (e.g. through political connections). She also gave us an indication as to what kind of money she considered to be sound:
Money is the tool of men who have reached a high level of productivity and a long-range control over their lives. Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption and buys time for future production. To fulfill this requirement, money has to be some material commodity which is imperishable, rare, homogeneous, easily stored, not subject to wide fluctuations of value, and always in demand among those you trade with (emphasis mine).
From this, we can conclude that she would have appreciated Bitcoin’s scarcity (with a fixed 21-million hard cap), which facilitates its store of value proposition, but would have probably been uneasy about its volatility in purchasing power.
In Atlas Shrugged, the fictional character Francisco d’Anconia gave a passionate speech about money, arguing that “Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.” Here again we reflect on Bitcoin’s real scarcity, with nobody being able to produce bitcoins out of thin air to pay for political favors (a standard practice for fiat).
Gold is a recurring theme in Rand’s work on money. In her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Alan Greenspan authors an article entitled “Gold and Economic Freedom.” He writes: “Gold and economic freedom are inseparable…” And, “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.”
Conclusion
So, would Rand like Bitcoin?
It is difficult to know exactly. She passed away in 1982 – long before most of us had ever heard of the internet. Whatever one’s view on Rand, there is no denying her strong influence on the early Cypherpunks who “wrote code” in a decades-long attempt to realize some cyberspace version of the laissez-faire capitalism that she boldly advocated for in real space.
Rand had some important things to say about money and about the morally justifiable way of earning (making) it in the first place.
In fact, her views on money were so firmly held that she proudly wore a dollar sign ($) as a statement.
Perhaps if she were alive today and knew the extent to which Bitcoin serves as a technical solution to the political problem of a privileged class of people that live at expense of those who produce, she might have proudly embraced Bitcoin’s ₿ symbol instead. Her ideas inspired the very individuals who set out to make something like Bitcoin a reality in the first place. I like to think that she could be proud of that.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 22:00 - "An Affront To Justice" – Trump To Appeal After Jury Finds Liable For 'Sexual Abuse', Defamation
“An Affront To Justice” – Trump To Appeal After Jury Finds Liable For ‘Sexual Abuse’, Defamation
(Update 1605ET): Trump’s attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told the Epoch Times that the former president is planning to appeal the verdict which found him liable for battery and defamation charges in the E. Jean Carroll trial.
During the closing argument on Monday, Tacopina doubled down on his statement that Carroll’s case was motivated by political reasons, a claim that Carroll’s attorneys denied.
“What E. Jean Carroll has done here is an affront to justice. She has abused this system by bringing a false claim for amongst other things money, status, political reasons,” Tacopina said.
Carroll was awarded approximately $5 million in damages, including $3 million for the defamation charge and $2 million for the civil battery charge.
Meanwhile, Trump has responded in all caps:
* * *
A New York City jury has found former President Trump liable for sexual assault, but not rape, in a New York defamation case brought by accuser E. Jean Carroll.
The jury awarded Carroll $20,000 in punitive damages for a battery claim, and around $5 million in compensatory damages for defamation by Trump. The verdict came after less than three hours of deliberation by jurors in US District Court in lower Manhattan. The jury did not find Trump liable for rape, as Carroll alleged.
Trump, who has long-denied her allegation dating back to the mid-90s, accused Carroll of using false claims as a way to promote her book. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” the-then president told The Hill in an interview at the White House in June 2019.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan read instructions on the law to the nine-person jury before the panel began discussing Carroll’s allegations of battery and defamation shortly before noon.
If they believe Carroll, jurors can award compensatory and punitive damages. Trump, who did not attend the trial, has insisted he never sexually assaulted Carroll or even knew her.
Kaplan told jurors that the first question on the verdict form will be to decide whether they think there is more than a 50% chance that Trump raped Carroll inside a store dressing room. If they answer yes, they will then decide whether compensatory and punitive damages should be awarded.
If they answer no on the rape question, they can then decide if Trump subjected her to lesser forms of assault involving sexual contact without her consent or forcible touching to degrade her or gratify his sexual desire. If they answer yes on either of those questions, they will decide if damages are appropriate. -AP
The nine-member panel began discussing verdicts at 11:50 a.m. ET after Judge Lewis Kaplan gave his final instructions and a 10-question verdict form.
Carroll, 78, sued Trump in 2019, claiming the Republican sexually assaulted her in 1995 or 1996 in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Because the alleged attack happened decades ago, Carroll was originally barred from suing over sexual battery, pushing her to sue for defamation over allegedly disparaging comments Trump made about the rape allegation.
Trump denied her allegation at the time and accused her of using false claims as a way to promote her book. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” the-then president told The Hill in an interview at the White House in June 2019.
The D.C. Court of Appeals was then asked to weigh in on whether Trump was acting within the scope of his presidential duties when he denied raping Carroll and dismissed her during the interview.
Trump last October called her claims “a hoax” and “a lie.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 21:42 - An 'Asian NATO' Would Be No Good For US Foreign Policy
An ‘Asian NATO’ Would Be No Good For US Foreign Policy
Authored by Mitchell Blatt via TheCritic.co.uk,
Hyperbolic talk in Washington, DC of a “New Cold War” and the need for an “Asian NATO” is untethered from reality. This kind of rhetoric, unfortunately, has become the dominant framework Congress and officials use to shape policy.
A report from the Heritage Foundation called for initiating a “New Cold War” against China. Rep. Mike Gallagher said America is in an “existential struggle” against China. Trump administration officials Mike Pompeo and Stephen Biegun envisioned the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) as tantamount to an “Asian NATO”.
Even if President Biden doesn’t use the same terminology, his strategy is much the same. He, too, is relying on the same institutions and trying to enlist China’s neighbors in a grand coalition. His administration wasted no time in taking advantage of a deal between South Korea and Japan to call for “trilateral engagement” to address “regional issues and challenges” going well beyond North Korea’s nuclear program.
But it would be folly to try to link all of these bilateral and trilateral relationships — extensions of the old hub and spoke networks — together as a new kind of expansive initiative that pushes for America’s (perceived) foreign policy interests. That would only lead to instability and the fracturing of U.S. alliances.
What the U.S. is creating is not a singular group like an “Asian NATO” per se, but multiple initiatives, including the Indo-Pacific Strategy, the Quad, AUKUS, and the U.S.-Japan-Korea trilateral relationship, that together are intended to prevent China from challenging the American position in the region.
The U.S. ranks as the most powerful country in Asia, according to the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index, and has been for years. G. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, wrote in 2005, “Both the Atlantic and East Asian regional orders were shaped by — and today bear the deep marks of — the exercise of America’s postwar hegemonic power.”
American political leadership wants to preserve the post-Cold War balance of power where the U.S. can wield its influence uninhibited in Asia. Moreover, many in DC want to retain our role as “the most powerful country” for the sake of power itself. Sen. Marco Rubio, who spoke at the launch event for Heritage’s “New Cold War” report suggested the idea of Chinese leaders even “envision[ing] a world in which China is the most powerful country” is itself a threat to America. (The idea that China is anywhere close to that status is absurd.)
The actions of the U.S. and its relations with other members also make the case, louder than words, that it seeks to use these institutions to contain China. Take the nuclear submarine deal the U.S. made with Australia at the heart of AUKUS. Australia canceled a long-standing deal already in progress for French-made diesel-electric attack submarines and opted instead for American nuclear submarines.
The lighter and quieter diesel submarines would have been able to operate in shallow Australian coastal waters more easily without being detected. The nuclear subs are more expensive and less useful for operations in Australia’s vicinity, but they are more useful on long-range expeditions in the open seas of the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea. The deal has been criticized by multiple former Australian prime ministers concerned it sacrifices Australian sovereignty.
So what is wrong with the U.S. convincing or coercing another country to prioritize America’s own perceived national interests?
Even if you accept Washington’s received wisdom that it is in the American national interest to maintain an indomitable sense of superiority all over the world (a highly questionable proposition), tying the U.S. into long-term relationships with unreliable partners might not, in fact, help advance those goals.
The deal between South Korea and Japan that the U.S. is trying to capitalize on to link the countries is another such example. Ostensibly it was supposed to resolve a Korean court case against Japanese companies that employed forced labor during the World War II era, but it let Japan off the hook for paying compensation.
Korean President Yoon framed the outcome as a step towards trilateral cooperation to “defend freedom, peace and prosperity not only in our two countries but also around the world.”
But if this is the basis for an agreement to bring South Korea and Japan together into the U.S.-led “new cold war” coalition, it won’t last. Only 35 per cent of Koreans support the arrangement. A similar deal on comfort women in 2015 collapsed shortly after it was announced, leading to the current standoff.
Therein lies the problem with America’s expansive view of its national interest and its pursuit of hegemony in every corner of the globe. It is built on an unstable foundation. It requires the constant maintenance of inconsistent relationships and evanescent policies. Hiding the American pursuit of hegemony behind flowery words about democracy creates hypocritical imagery: shaking hands with oil sheiks and heralding a Hindu nationalist India as an upholder of a free and open Pacific. It produces resentment in the countries we deign to be helping.
The problems have been even more pronounced in Asia than in Europe because of the lack of shared historical interests and goals. The short-lived Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), SE Asia’s version of NATO, attracted just two Southeast Asian countries and fell apart after 23 years. But even in Europe, there have been problems with NATO countries failing to pay their fair share and with Turkey and Hungary using NATO as a political weapon.
An Asian NATO, explicit or implicit, would fail to fulfil its mission and create more instability.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 21:20 - Biden Admin Creates New Disinformation Office To Oversee The Rest
Biden Admin Creates New Disinformation Office To Oversee The Rest
With the Biden administration elevating disinformation to a national security threat, as codified in its first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, published in June 2021, new government (and non-government) offices dedicated to fighting foreign disinformation are cropping up everywhere.
To oversee organizations like the Pentagon’s new Influence and Perception Management Office and at least four organizations inside the Department of Homeland Security alone, the Director of National Intelligence has created a new office – the Foreign Malign Influence Center, The Intercept reports.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for the first time mentioned the creation of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, or FMIC. “Congress put into law that we should establish a Foreign Malign Influence Center in the intelligence community; we have stood that up,” Haines said, referring to legislation passed last year. “It encompasses our election threat work, essentially looking at foreign influence and interference in elections, but it also deals with disinformation more generally.”
Established on September 23 of last year after Congress provisioned funding, the FMIC was only announced publicly after The Intercept inquired. The group, operating under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), ‘enjoys the unique authority to marshal support from all elements of the U.S. intelligence community to monitor and combat foreign influence efforts such as disinformation campaigns,” according to the report.
That said, it isn’t just monitoring foreign threats... as the FMIC is also authorized to monitor “the public opinion within the United States.”
“What we have been doing is effectively trying to support the Global Engagement Center and others throughout the U.S. government in helping them to understand what are the plans and intentions of the key actors in this space: China, Russia, Iran, etc.,” said Haines, who made clear that the effort to counter disinformation has expanded beyond just elections and Russia.
“The threat to U.S. democratic processes and institutions from foreign malign influence is persistent and dynamic,” according to an undated FMIC fact sheet noted by Just the News. “Informing efforts to counter it requires constant attention, a whole-of-government approach, support from the private sector, and engagement from the public.”
More via Just the News,
Though its name starts with “foreign,” FMIC’s congressionally determined objective includes protecting American “public opinion,” suggesting the potential for policing domestic narratives.
Journalism participants in an Aspen Institute exercise before the 2020 election, intended to prevent the spread of “hack-and-dump” disinformation from foreign governments, were explicitly told their suspects were “foreign or other adversarial entities,” meaning domestic sources.
“It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance,” Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi wrote Friday. “Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets.“
The hypocritical major-media plot in advance to suppress The Post’s Hunter Biden reporting https://t.co/DJ4pO0vWYw
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 6, 2023
(Read the rest here)
* * *
Digging deeper…
2. The Foreign Malign Influence Center is operated under the ODNI
Jeffrey Wichman, former 30 year CIA agent, is the acting Director of #FMIC
Wichman, for lack of a better term, is the defacto leader of the “Thought Police” pic.twitter.com/6rFBXChKx3
— Name Redacted (@NameRedacted247) February 23, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
4. Opening of the Foreign Malign Influence Center was delayed for 2 years as disagreements remained between the Intelligence Community & Congress over its size & mission
According to a “source”, Bill Evanina offered to take #FMIC under his authority https://t.co/g8yGU8sn1m
— Name Redacted (@NameRedacted247) February 23, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
6. After widespread public outrage over the DHS Disinformation Governance Board, why is no one talking about the Foreign Malign Influence Center?
With identical missions, it has just been given a new name & operates under a different Intelligence Agency- ODNI pic.twitter.com/BSfTVho8m1
— Name Redacted (@NameRedacted247) February 23, 2023
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 21:00 - Trump Issues Warning Ahead Of CNN Showdown: 'Could Turn Into A Disaster For All'
Trump Issues Warning Ahead Of CNN Showdown: ‘Could Turn Into A Disaster For All’
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Former President Donald Trump promoted his Wednesday night CNN town hall in New Hampshire but issued a word of caution about might happen.
“I’ll be doing CNN tomorrow night, LIVE from the Great State of New Hampshire, because they are rightfully desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again. They made me a deal I couldn’t refuse!!! Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Let’s see what happens? Wednesday Night at 8:00!!!”
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower the day after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach home, in New York City on Aug. 9, 2022. (David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters) The former president did not elaborate on the “deal” he made with CNN, a network that was highly critical of Trump when he was president and after he departed the White House.
After CNN announced the Trump event, Democrats and corporate media commentators criticized the network’s decision. They repeated often-used claims CNN shouldn’t host Trump because of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach.
CNN parent company and Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav pushed back against those allegations, saying that it is an opportunity to allow “both voices” to be heard before the 2024 election. “He’s the frontrunner, he has to be on our network,” Zaslav told CNBC last Friday.
“We are a divided government. We need to hear both voices. That’s what you see. Republicans are on the air on CNN, Democrats are on the air. All voices should be heard,” Zaslav stated.
The Warner Bros chief executive did not elaborate on whether the network would have a system in place to edit or censor Trump’s comments. Last month, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. accused ABC News of editing his remarks about COVID-19 vaccines and placing a disclaimer in a move that he described as censorship. ABC later confirmed editing Kennedy’s statements that were critical of vaccines.
A CNN spokesperson told news outlets last week that “our job despite his unique circumstances is to do what we do best: Ask tough questions, follow up, and hold him accountable to give voters the information they need to sort through their choices.”
Zaslav, who took control of the media giant and installed Chris Licht to replace Jeff Zucker as the head of CNN last year, added to CNBC that the town hall will be an opportunity to show CNN is a “network about the facts … great journalism and not just politics, either.” He added, “When we do politics, we need to represent both sides.”
But on Monday, multiple MSNBC hosts targeted CNN for allowing Trump, who polls show has a wide lead on the other GOP candidates, on one of its programs.
“It feels to me like this is a pretty open attempt by CNN to push itself to the right and make itself attractive and show its belly to MAGA and to conservatives hoping that they will tune in,” leftist MSNBC host Joy Reid said.
Her guest, the editor-at-large of anti-Trump publication The Bulwark, Charlie Sykes, claimed that CNN will not be able to “filter for misinformation” and suggested that the network should “control the questions and the answers.”
“In journalism, you actually will control the questions and the answers, and you’ll have some sort of a filter for misinformation. CNN will not be able to filter or control the disinformation that Donald Trump puts out on the air live and CNN will not even be able to control the kinds of issues that are talked about,” he claimed.
In recent years, CNN has often lagged behind both Fox News and MSNBC in terms of primetime ratings, including in the all-important 25-54 age demographic. But in a news release issued last year, the channel said that it “reach[ed] more people in the U.S. in 2022” than any other cable news channel.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 20:40 - "Passed Its Peak": Nintendo Warns Of Demand Plunge Of Switch Consoles
“Passed Its Peak”: Nintendo Warns Of Demand Plunge Of Switch Consoles
Since its launch in 2017, Nintendo’s Switch console has had an impressive run, with a surge in sales during the virus pandemic. However, sales plummeted in the full fiscal year, from April 2022 to Mar. 31.
The absence of any plans for a next-generation Switch or a new console release in the near term could be a worrisome sign for the game manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan.
Nintendo expects to sell 15 million Switch devices this fiscal year, missing the average analyst estimate of 15.7 million, which takes into consideration a slowdown in hardware sales over the past several months. In addition, the company forecasts an operating income of ¥450 billion ($3.3 billion) for this fiscal year, which is close to the ¥455.3 billion average estimate.
During the last fiscal year ending in late March, Nintendo sold 18 million Switches and reported an operating profit of ¥93.8 billion for the quarter, which is a 22% decrease compared to the previous year. In addition, the company’s quarterly net sales have declined by 18% to ¥306.5 billion.
There are concerns Nintendo’s sales may have peaked due to the Switch’s age, and the buying panic during the virus pandemic may have led to a blowoff top in demand.
“Sustaining the Switch’s sales momentum will be difficult in its seventh year.
“Our goal of selling 15 million unit this fiscal year is a bit of stretch. But we will do our best to bolster demand going into the holiday season so that we can achieve the goal,” President Shuntaro Furukawa said on a call after the results.
Switch sales peaked during the pandemic and have yet to recover.
Throughout Switch’s existence, Nintendo has attempted to revitalize the console with a ‘lite’ version and upgraded screen. Yet none of this stoked demand.
“The Nintendo Switch had a fantastic run but definitely passed its peak,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based games consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.
Nintendo must maintain its ability to rake in revenue from its 114 million annual paying users. However, it said software sales totaled 213.96 million units for the year ended Mar. 31, down 9% YoY.
Analysts don’t foresee Nintendo boosting sales in the near term:
“We expect Nintendo will not release the next-generation hardware over the next 12 months.
“Nintendo’s valuation is very likely to shrink until the launch of the new hardware,” UBS Securities analyst Kenji Fukuyama wrote to clients after the earnings release.
The game maker’s shares closed flat on Tuesday and have yet to pierce the December 2007 high as Switch’s momentum wanes.
The Switch is past its peak.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 20:20 - Peter Schiff: The US Is In A Financial Crisis Worse Than '08
Peter Schiff: The US Is In A Financial Crisis Worse Than ’08
During his post-FOMC meeting press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell insisted that the US banking system is resilient and sound. He said this despite the failure of First Republic Bank just days before the Fed meeting. Peter Schiff appeared on the Claman Countdown on Fox News and argued that Powell and others are wrong. He said the US economy is in a financial crisis worse than in 2008.
Andy Brenner, head of international fixed income at National Alliance Securities, also appeared in the segment. He started things off by saying problems in the banking sector are “not over by a longshot.”
Liz Claman asked Peter why the Fed raised rates another 25 basis points despite the shakiness in the banking sector. Peter said they did it because that’s exactly what the market expected.
That’s what the Fed does — what the markets expect.”
But Peter said the move by the Fed isn’t going to do anything to bring inflation down.
The elephant in the room with respect to inflation is the fiscal policy – the debt, not the ceiling – but the fact that we’re running these massive deficits. But until the Federal government reduces spending, these quarter-point increases are going to be completely ineffective.”
Peter said the problem is Powell refuses to call Congress out and mention that the driving force behind all of the inflation is reckless government spending.
And as long as the government keeps spending, inflation is going to get worse, and so is the current financial crisis. Nobody wants to admit we’re in a financial crisis. It’s worse than the one we had in 2008. It’s just getting started. Ultimately, the Fed is going to cut. But it’s going to cut as inflation is accelerating.”
Liz played a clip of Jerome Powell saying that the Fed is now paying particular attention to tightening credit conditions and its impact on bank lending. She also pointed out that Peter has previously said that the Fed has screwed up everything that is a function of interest rates. So how will these things specifically impact the economy moving forward? Peter said it was going to affect banks in particular.
I have warned for years that the banks could start collapsing for the precise reason that they’re collapsing now. The Fed kept interest rates at zero for so long. That’s what allowed these financial institutions to load up on overpriced, low-yielding Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, and other loans. Plus, US government auditors from the FDIC encouraged the banks to buy these long-term Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities because they gave them favorable accounting treatment. The banks didn’t have to mark them to market as long as they could pretend they would hold them to maturity. So, the whole house of cards was erected by the Fed and the US government. And now it’s collapsing, and they’re acting like they have nothing to do with it. They’re trying to figure out how to put out a fire that they lit. And of course, they’re not putting out the fire. They’re pouring gasoline on it.”
Brenner noted that there are about $1.9 trillion in unrealized losses on bank books. Liz pointed out that a study from Stanford and Columbia Universities found 186 US banks are in distress. Brenner reiterated, “No question, the banking crisis is not over by a longshot.”
Peter said everybody who has debt is going to feel the pain of rising interest rates.
It makes that debt hard to service. And of course, there’s a lot of debt that is still low because it hasn’t matured yet. A lot of corporations, a lot of people in the real estate market, particularly commercial real estate, borrowed money two, three, four, five years ago at a really low rate. And the higher rates are when those loans mature, it’s going to be that much harder for them to get the financing to roll them over. And then you have the prospect of very disorderly bankruptcies throughout the economy.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 20:00 - Israel Launches New Gaza Strikes, Killing At Least 15 Palestinians
Israel Launches New Gaza Strikes, Killing At Least 15 Palestinians
In its biggest military operation since last August, Israel launched major airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing at least 15 Palestinians, among them eight civilians and three senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commanders, according to statements of Palestinian officials.
Last week witnessed over 100 rockets fired on southern Israel by Islamic militant factions in the strip following the news of the death of prominent Palestinian detainee Khader Adnan, who did last Tuesday after an 87-day hunger strike in Israeli prison. Israeli officials are calling this new operation ‘retaliation’ for last week’s rocket launches.
Adnan is being treated as a martyr, and widespread protests began throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted 10 different PIJ military facilities in Gaza, especially those used for producing rockets or weapons storage.
The IDF additionally stated that Khalil Bahatini, the PIJ commander in the northern Gaza Strip, is a prime target given his role in last week’s rocket bombardment. The operation has been dubbed ‘Shield and Arrow’.
Interestingly, it appears Israel is specifically conveying to Palestinian officials that it doesn’t wish for a wider war, and is seeking to avoid targeting Hamas, instead taking aim only at PIJ:
A senior Israeli official said Israel conveyed messages to Hamas via private channels through mediators that Tuesday’s operation was only against the Islamic Jihad group and Israel wouldn’t target Hamas if it doesn’t get involved in the fighting.
However, the Israeli military is warning that it’s prepared for a protracted conflict if need be, but that this is the choice of the militant factions.
VIDEO: Israel launches deadly pre-dawn air strikes on Gaz.
The Israeli army says it launched pre-dawn air strikes Tuesday against the militant group Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The strikes killed 12 people according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian… pic.twitter.com/IwMLgLdhAd
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) May 9, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Israeli schools in the south of the country have been closed ahead of Wednesday, with the education ministry announcing, “Schools within a 25 mile (ca. 40 km) radius from the Gaza Strip will not open tomorrow, meaning some 300,000 children will not be in school.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned Tuesday that more rocket fire could come, “to areas near the Gaza border and far from it, and with significant intensity.”
WATCH: @IDF strikes #Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets throughout the #Gaza Strip as part of Operation Shield and Arrow.
👉More here: https://t.co/d2vSALkpTO pic.twitter.com/36dsQjwezP
— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) May 9, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
He emphasized: “The defense establishment is prepared for any scenario, including a prolonged campaign.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 19:40 - Americans Suffering Sharply Higher Levels Of Financial Anxiety
Americans Suffering Sharply Higher Levels Of Financial Anxiety
Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,
Many Americans say they are suffering sharply from higher levels of financial anxiety as the economy takes a downturn.
Money is now the prime cause of stress for most Americans, according to May 8 survey by Bankrate.
At least 52 percent of respondents reported that personal finances have had a negative impact on their mental health, a significant increase from 42 percent a year ago.
Fears over high inflation, rising interest rates, and a pending recession have filtered down into the everyday lives of millions of Americans still recovering from the disruptions caused by the pandemic lockdowns.
The American economy has been taking a hit over the past year, with many economists predicting that the situation will decline by the end of 2023.
“There are several sobering statistics in this report … with inflation at the center of many of these money worries. Despite a strong job market, wage growth has not kept pace with the rising cost of living. Debt has been rising and savings have been dwindling,” said Ted Rossman, a Bankrate Senior Industry Analyst.
Twenty dollar bills are being counted. (Elise Amendola/AP Photo)
Economic Stress Worsens Early 2023
As financial worries take hold of American taxpayers, about 82 percent said that feelings of stress, anxiety, worrisome thoughts, loss of sleep, depression, etc., have been caused by economic factors.
The greatest cause of concern was inflation at 68 percent, followed by rising interest rates at 31 percent, and unstable finances or job security at 29 percent.
Inflation remains the greatest source of financial anxiety since last year, with analysts expecting a long-term negative impact on American consumers well after it reaches its peak, said Bankrate.
Meanwhile, respondents who said that their money fears have worsened over the past year was at 57 percent, while 47 percent admitted that paying for everyday expenses was the greater concern.
At the same time, 41 percent of those surveyed claimed they lacked enough emergency savings.
Almost all those who said that money occasionally impacted their mental health told surveyors that at least one of those three concerns has worsened over the past year.
Those Most Affected by Inflation
The survey noted that older Americans, women, and lower earners were more likely to point to rising prices as a cause for their money-related stress.
Seventy-nine percent of baby boomers and 68 percent of Gen Xers were more likely to cite inflation as a crisis.
This is compared to the 64 percent of millennials and 52 percent of Gen Zers who blame inflation for taking a toll on their mental health.
The fact that most Gen Xers are 10 to 20 years away from retirement is the main reason for concerns, Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, a financial therapist and author, told Bankrate.
She said that many in that age cohort are more than likely to be caring for their elderly parents and their families simultaneously.
“They’re at this double whammy disadvantage of not just caring for themselves, but also often caring for children and their aging parents, and getting toward the later half of their earning years,” said Bryan-Podvin.
“So of course, they’re experiencing higher rates of financial anxiety,” she explained.
Women are also more likely than men to have issues with rising prices, at 72 and 63 percent, respectively.
Lower-earning households, those with an annual household income below $50,000, are more likely than the higher-earning households with income above $100,000 to raise concerns, at 72 and 60 percent, respectively.
“Often lower income earners are working hourly wage jobs, which means that if they get sick or can’t work, they’re not getting paid. They might be putting expenses on a high-interest credit card,” said Bryan-Podvin.
“The stakes are just literally so much higher because they don’t have the financial cushion,” she added.
[ZH: If only these miserable Americans just followed President Biden’s tweets… they’d know just how lucky they were…]
This is what happens when you invest in America.
We have more work to do – but this is real progress. pic.twitter.com/Pur91mu3Pf
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 5, 2023
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 19:20 - Tumbling Chinese Commodity Imports Signal Two-Speed Recovery
Tumbling Chinese Commodity Imports Signal Two-Speed Recovery
Futures are limping lower after overnight China reported that export growth moderated from 14.8% in March to 8.5% in April, slightly better than market expectations, and unchanged from the 1Q23 average, while Imports unexpectedly collapsed, badly missing expectations.
Both export and import value declined sharply in April in sequential terms (exports: -5.4% sa non-annualized, imports: -5.1%, USD-denominated). The sequential decline in exports is in line with historical patterns for this year’s earlier-than-normal Lunar New Year.
According to SocGen, the decline in exports was to be expected as the March exports received a strong boost from a backlog of orders, thanks to easing supply disruptions. But the pace of expansion was still healthy and better than other major Asian economies, such as South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, with exports in contraction of over 10% in April.
By product, electronics and machinery equipment (EME) products eased from 12.3% to 10.4%. The moderation was driven by products outside high-tech products (e.g. machinery). There were some improvement in consumer electronics: smartphones improved from -32% to -13%, and PC and parts recovered from -26% to -17%. But the contraction in integrated circuits intensified from -3% to -7%. Meanwhile, autos remained a bright spot and accelerated strongly from 59% to 83%, thanks to growing demand for NEVs. Traditional consumer goods slowed, with apparel down from 32% to 14%, furniture down from 14% to 0% and footwear down from 32% to 13%, though they still maintained pretty solid expansion.
While exports chugged along, the big surprise in today’s release was imports, which plunged from -1.4% to -7.9%, against expectations for a small improvement.
The weakness was mainly attributed to commodities (also because of price effects of nearly -2%). In volume terms, oil imports slowed from +22% to -1%; iron ore dropped from +15% to +5%; and coal normalised from +151% to +73%. Copper was the only key product that improved, from -19% to -13%. EME products held up better but still saw a contraction of 16%. Within that, IC imports remained in contraction of c.20%; PC parts recovered from -25% to -12%, consistent with the trend in exports; autos weakened notably from -15% to -41% due partly to base effects.
Overall, while exports remained resilient, the weak commodity import data, also with the latest below-50 manufacturing PMI, highlights that contrary to Beijing’s publicly stated strategy, China is experiencing a two-speed recovery, with strong consumption (especially services), also evident in the Labor Day holiday data, but not-so-robust industrial activity, which still faces headwinds from external demand and a slow recovery in property investment. With upstream price pressures still subdued, policymakers will keep policy accommodative, although few expect fresh easing measures.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 19:00 - The Flight From The US Dollar
The Flight From The US Dollar
Authored by Ted Snider via AntiWar.com,
On March 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In his article in the Russian media preceding the meeting, XI enthused that “China-Russia trade exceeded 190 billion U.S. dollars last year, up by 116 percent from ten years ago.” Though it has reached 190 billion US dollars, it is no longer all being traded in US dollars. In his article in the Chinese media, Putin said that “the share of settlements in national currencies” of all that trade “is growing.” 65% of that massive China-Russia trade is now being conducting in their Russian and Chinese currencies.
Though the US sees Russia and China as the largest threats to its position in the world, it is not just America’s enemies that are fleeing the dollar. Its closest friends have hinted at it too. Following his meetings with XI in China, French President Emmanuel Macron likely stunned and angered the US by calling for Europe to reduce its dependency on the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”
These calls for a flight from the US dollar are not merely economic, they are geopolitical. They are calls to reshape the world order by challenging US hegemony and advocating multipolarity. The monopoly of the dollar has not just assured US wealth: it has assured US power. Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. That dollar dominance has often allowed the US to dictate ideological alignment or to impose economic and political structural adjustments on other countries. It has also allowed the US to become the only country in the world that can effectively sanction its opponents. Emancipation from the hegemony of the dollar is emancipation from US hegemony. The flight from the US dollar is a mechanism for replacing the US led unipolar world with a multipolar world.
As the US has recently demonstrated in Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, the monopoly of the dollar allows it to be very powerfully and quickly weaponized. Countries’ funds can be held hostage, and countries can be coerced and starved into falling in line by sanctions. Recent demonstrations of that power have awoken many countries to their own vulnerability.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said that “There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar.” She explained that “Of course, it does create a desire on the part of China, of Russia, of Iran to find an alternative.”
And that’s just what it’s done. But Yellen is still missing the larger effect of US dollar warfare. It is not just China, Russia and Iran that are now seeking to escape the pressure. America’s enemies, but also its friends and everything in between, are considering taking flight from the dollar.
China and Russia are doing it. NATO ally France is calling for it for Europe. Nonaligned countries are also either talking about it or already doing it.
India is a growing economic power. And, like China, India has massively increased its trade with Russia. India and Russia have now begun discussions on a free trade agreement between India and the Russian led Eurasian Economic Commission. The two countries are now engaged in “advanced negotiations” for a new bilateral investment treaty. Russia has expressed interest in using “national currencies and currencies of friendly countries” for trade. India, too, “has been keen on” moving toward leaving the dollar behind by “increasing the use of its rupee currency for trade with Russia.” And India has recently begun purchasing some Russian oil in Russian rubles.
US dollar hegemony has also been threatened right in America’s backyard. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has proposed escaping dollar control by “creat[ing] a Latin American currency.” While in China for meetings with XI, Lula asked, “Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?” He then answered his own question. In March, Brazil and China escaped the US dollar by each assigning one of its banks to conduct their bilateral trade in the Brazilian real and the Chinese yuan.
Pakistan is now also trading with China in its own currency. Iran and Russia have taken flight from the dollar and are now settling trade in rials and rubles. They recently announced that they have circumvented the US financial system by linking their banking systems as an alternative to SWIFT for trading with each other. Saudi Arabia has said that it sees “no issues” in trading oil in currencies other than the US dollar. Robert Rabil, Professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, says that the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel have all made some movement away from the US dollar.
The Eurasian Economic Union has agreed on “a phased transition” from settling trade in “foreign currency” to “settlements in rubles.”
Perhaps more surprisingly for the US was the decision at the March 30-31 meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to reduce reliance on the US dollar. ASEAN is made up of Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Brunei. The meeting produced a joint statement to “reinforce financial resilience . . . through the use of local currency.” But what must have been most unsettling for the US was the explanation given for the decision by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Widodo said that the move is necessary to protect from “possible geopolitical repercussions.” What did he mean by that? “Be very careful,” he explained. “We must remember the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia.”
Yellen was right. Widodo said that US sanctions on Russia exposed just how vulnerable countries are if they rely on US dollars and US foreign payment systems. He said that using ASEAN’s Local Currency Transaction system to trade in local currencies would help address the need for Indonesia to prepare itself for the possibility that the US could similarly sanction it.
The EEU and ASEAN are not the only organizations mapping their flight from the US dollar. BRICS is a massive international organization whose primary purpose is to balance US hegemony in a new multipolar world. Comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, it represents 41% of the world’s population. BRICS, too, is talking about conducting trade in the currencies of its members or even in a new BRICS’ currency.
Lula recently suggested that “the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries” so that countries are not compelled “to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies.” Russian State Duma Deputy Chairman Alexander Babakov also recently said that BRICS is working on creating its own currency.
A BRICS currency could challenge the dollar beyond the borders of BRICS. “Because each member of the BRICS grouping is an economic heavyweight in its own region, countries around the world would likely be willing to do business” in the currency, suggested a report in the Financial Post.
One such region is Africa. In July, the Russia-Africa summit will be held in St. Petersburg. Olayinka Ajala, senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Leeds Beckett University and the author of “The Case for Neutrality: Understanding African Stances on the Russia-Ukraine Conflict,” told me in a recent correspondence that a “main focus of Russia and China at the moment is to get African countries to support the proposed BRICS currency.” He says that “this will be a major topic in the upcoming conference.” Ajala explains that “Africa is a consuming continent, meaning they import lots of goods and services.” He says that “with a population of over 1.2 billion, if Russia and China are able to convince African countries on the need to ditch the dollar, it will be a huge blow to the US.”
From Africa to Southeast Asia and Latin America, from Russia and China to India, Iran and Saudi Arabia, countries are mapping their course for a flight from the US dollar. As a mechanism for transition from US hegemony to a multipolar world, the economic effects would be great, but the geopolitical effects could be even greater.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 18:40 - National Police Association Joins Others In Suing For Nashville Shooter's Manifesto
National Police Association Joins Others In Suing For Nashville Shooter’s Manifesto
Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times,
The National Police Association (NPA) has joined the groups suing the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County for all records related to the March 27 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
“We have asked for any manifestos, emails, and any communications related to the case,” Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the National Police Association, told The Epoch Times.
Tennessee resident Clata Renee Brewer working with the NPA, filed the lawsuit on May 5. Theirs is at least the second lawsuit filed over the shooting.
A young girl moves toward the items left in front of the photo of Hallie Scruggs, one of three nine-year-olds killed along with school staff at The Covenant School shooting in Nashville on March 27. (Chase Smith/The Epoch Times)
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) reportedly has a manifesto and other writings by the woman who killed three children and three adults during the March 27 shooting.
The police department has waffled on releasing the documents. Shortly after the crime, the police indicated the writings would be released. Then the department claimed that the writings would be held as part of an ongoing investigation, even though no criminal charges were expected to be filed since the police had killed the shooter on the day of the shooting.
This image shows bodycam footage of police responding to an active shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., on March 27, 2023. The former student who shot through the doors of the Christian elementary school and killed three children and three adults had drawn a detailed school map. (Metropolitan Nashville Police Department via AP)
On May 1, the Tennessee Firearms Association filed a lawsuit against MNPD over a previously denied public records request for the Hale documents to be released. Then, MNPD claimed its lawyers had advised withholding the writings because a lawsuit had been filed.
In its lawsuit, combined with the TFA action, the NPA claims the police department has a history of finding creative ways to avoid releasing public records.
“Metro Police Department has a demonstrated history of willfully failing to comply with the Public Records Act by creating its own policies and procedures directly contrary to the Public Records Act,” the lawsuit reads.
Brantner Smith said the request would do more than require a local agency to comply with its state’s Public Records Act. She said the writings could contain essential information that could be used to address or prevent future shootings more quickly. With rumors that the FBI may have taken the writings, Brantner Smith said the lawsuit could clarify if and why a federal agency got involved.
All Communications Requested
“We believe that American law enforcement deserves to know, and the American people deserve to know,” she said.
That is why the NPA has asked for all emails, letters, and any other communications related to the writings and the writings themselves.
“We believe it will help law enforcement deal with these situations better,” Brantner Smith said.
The combined lawsuits ask the court to order MNPD to turn over the requested records and pay all the attorney fees.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/09/2023 – 18:00
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