May 17

Today’s News 17th May 2023

  • Lee Smith: The Durham Coverup
    Lee Smith: The Durham Coverup

    Authored by Lee Smith via leesmith.locals.com,

    Reading through the newly released Durham Report, there’s a lot to absorb and I plan to be filling several reviews in the coming days. But it struck me that the section of the report detailing an aspect of John Brennan’s role in the Clinton campaign and Obama administration’s operation targeting Donald Trump and his aides was most urgent. LS.

    John Brennan: Former CIA chief claims he briefed Obama and Biden about Clinton plans to smear Trump as Russian agent.

    The only genuine piece of Russian intelligence that US spy services ever received about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was intelligence that Russia knew Hillary Clinton backed a 2016 campaign plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent.

    According to John Durham’s 300-page report, the information reached the CIA in late July 2016. Brennan told Durham that on August 3 he briefed President Barack Obama at the White House on what the special counsel refers to as the Clinton Plan intelligence. Others in attendance at the meeting were Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey.

    Imagine Comey’s reaction when he first heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence, only days after the July 31 start date for the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, code-named Crossfire Hurricane: So, if it’s just a dirty trick staged by the Clinton campaign, I should shut down the Trump-Russia probe, right?   

    Right. There is little chance Brennan said anything about the Clinton Plan intelligence in that August 3 meeting. Reading the Durham report, it’s not even clear when Brennan first found out about it or the September 2016 CIA memo referring the Clinton Plan intelligence to the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

    Brennan’s handwritten notes memorializing his allegedly briefing Obama on the Clinton Plan and the CIA’s referral letter were both declassified by Trump’s Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in October 2020. Durham’s report sheds light on how the information and subsequent CIA memo were received, who knew about them, and perhaps more significantly who didn’t.

    According to the report, virtually none of the officials interviewed by Durham knew about the Clinton Plan intelligence or the referral memo. Former FBI general counsel James Baker “stated that he had neither seen nor heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence or the resulting Referral Memo prior to his interview” with Durham.

    Same with Supervisory Special Agent-1, reportedly FBI agent Joe Pientka. According to the report, when Durham showed Pientka the information, he became “visibly upset and emotional, left the interview room with his counsel, and subsequently returned to state emphatically that he had never been apprised of the Clinton Plan intelligence and had never seen the aforementioned Referral Memo. Supervisory Special Agent-1 expressed a sense of betrayal that no one had informed him of the intelligence.”

    The reason so few FBI officials knew of the Clinton Plan information is because it was buried. Otherwise, it would have implicated senior Obama officials — from the president and vice president and his security chiefs — and the Crossfire Hurricane team in an illegal surveillance and propaganda operation targeting a presidential campaign.

    But how did the Russians know it started with Hillary Clinton? Did they have spies buried deep inside the Democratic National Committee? Maybe Christopher Steele, British ex-spy and author of the Clinton-funded memos tying Trump to Russia, had been compromised by one of the Russian oligarchs he worked for?

    No, you wouldn’t have needed an intelligence service to find out the Clinton campaign was using Moscow as an instrument to smear the GOP candidate. By the end of July, much of the anti-Trump campaign was public.

    As I explained in my 2019 book The Plot Against the President, the media piece of Russiagate started in Winter 2016 when pro-Clinton reporters first started calling Trump and his aides Russian agents. With Franklin Foer’s July 4 Slatearticle, “Putin’s Puppet,” the press component of the Russia-collusion narrative was in full swing.

    In a July 21 Washington Post column, Anne Applebaum cited Foer’s piece and asserted that “Russia is clearly participating in the Trump campaign.” In an Atlantic article published the same day, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that Trump has chosen “to unmask himself as a de facto agent of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

    Before the end of July, scores of articles in the Weekly Standard, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, the New York Timesand elsewhere made the same case: Donald Trump, according to Times columnist Paul Krugman, was the “Siberian candidate.”

    Russiagate reporters typically referenced each other’s articles to create an unmistakable echo chamber effect. Media analysts at the Russian foreign ministry or in any Russian embassy couldn’t have missed the frequency with which the US press kept inserting their government into a vague account of the Republican candidate’s uncertain loyalties. Thus, it would not have been hard to figure out who was the beneficiary of this extraordinary amount of newsprint devoted to promoting a storyline labeling Trump a Russian agent.

    The Durham report does not disclose how US intelligence agencies found out the Russians were discussing the Clinton Plan. Perhaps it came through the signals intelligence that British agencies and other foreign services reportedly shared with Washington.

    On August 22, an FBI cyber-analyst passed the Clinton Plan intelligence on to two members of the Crossfire Hurricane team, including fixer Brian Auten. A 2019 Justice Department report faulted Auten for failing to verify the Clinton-funded Steele dossier tying Trump to Russia. In other words, he cleared the central piece of evidence, now thoroughly discredited, that the FBI used to obtain the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.

    On September 2, a US official briefed Auten and other FBI personnel about the Clinton Plan intelligence. Auten related to Durham that he told the official he wanted to see the CIA’s official referral letter. Completed September 7, the memo was addressed to Comey and FBI counterintelligence official and Crossfire Hurricane point-man Peter Strzok.

    According to Durham: “None of the FBI personnel who agreed to be interviewed could specifically recall receiving this Referral Memo, nor did anyone recall the FBI doing anything in response to the Referral Memo.” Auten said that he couldn’t remember if he shared the memo with other members of the Crossfire Hurricane team.

    If Brennan was briefed on it at the time, it seems he didn’t share it with anyone — he almost certainly had not spoken of it during the August 3 meeting with Obama and other administration officials. There’s no evidence that Brennan briefed congressional oversight committees on what US agencies had picked up from the Russians on the Clinton Plan. Nor did he say anything about it when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017.

    Most significantly, it’s not part of the intelligence that was used to produce the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election that Obama directed Brennan to finish before Trump came to office. Indeed, the Clinton Plan intelligence would serve as a powerful rebuttal to the ICA’s central conclusion that Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.

    Evidence of Brennan’s hiding the Clinton Plan intelligence and CIA referral letter would strongly suggest that he was a crucial part of the effort to target Trump as a Russian agent.

    Perhaps it was rumor of Pientka’s rage after Durham showed him the Clinton Plan intelligence and the referral memo in a July 22, 2020 interview that Brennan moved to protect himself. It was nearly a month later, August 21, when he sat for an eight-hour long interview with Durham. Brennan said that he couldn’t remember when he first received the Clinton Plan intelligence but there was evidence that he didn’t hide it — handwritten notes proving that he told Obama, Biden, Lynch and Comey all about it.

    Durham states in his report that he declined to pursue a criminal case related to the Clinton Plan intelligence because it “would face what in all likelihood would be insurmountable classification issues given the highly sensitive nature of the information itself.”

    And thus, the section on the Clinton Plan intelligence concludes: the government’s treatment of the information “may have amounted to a significant intelligence failure and a troubling instance in which confirmation bias and a tunnel-vision pursuit of investigative ends may have caused government personnel to fail to appreciate the extent to which uncorroborated reporting funded by an opposing political campaign was intended to influence rather than inform the FBI. It did not, all things considered, however, amount to a provable criminal offense.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 23:45

  • Musk's David Faber Interview: "I'll Say What I Want And If The Consequence Is Losing Money, So Be It"
    Musk’s David Faber Interview: “I’ll Say What I Want And If The Consequence Is Losing Money, So Be It”

    Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk sat down for an hour-long candid, sprawling interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday following Tesla’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas. Among many other things, Musk reflected on:

    Accusations from the left over his tweets which have been criticized as lending credence to conspiracies about George Soros and a recent mass shooting event in Allen, Texas, insisting “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.“

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    Clearly this displeased Musk’s critics, who can’t comprehend how someone who is hopes to receive major ad dollars (and thus be beholden to the largest US corporations via advertising channel) can speak his mind. In fact, according to Bethany McLean, “Elon Musk sounds like a spoiled child when he talks about free speech,” adding that  “If you run a business that depends on advertisers you might have to think about it a little bit differently and Musk seems utterly unwilling to make that distinction.” Translation: if you run a business that depends on advertisers, you can’t say anything your advertisers disagree with. Which of course is another way of being subject to the censorship of the establishment, and why traditional media is always silent when certain interests – be it of generous advertisers like Pfizer, or the Deep State, or the Bidens, or the Clintons, etc – are in question.

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    Musk defended what Faber said was the spreading of “conspiracy theories” by countering that pointing out that so many of these “conspiracy theories have turned out to be true“, and pointed to the Hunter Biden laptop suppression story, which was an example of “election interference.”

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    Naturally, the question of Musk calling George Soros Magnito came up. An incongruous Faber asks where that tweet came from, to which Musk replies “that is my opinion.” Faber then pressed: “why share it” if it could lead to less revenue/sales, and do your tweets “hurt the company”; Musk responds with a quote from the Princess Bride: “offer me money; offer me power. I don’t care.” The sad fact is that all of Musk’s peers in the media world, who aren’t independently wealthy and who do care about money (and power) will gladly be PR agents for their advertising sponsors, pretending to be independent media outlets.

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    How he has managed a takeover of Twitter so far and what lies ahead. Among other things, he said Twitter’s Community Notes feature has cost Twitter $40 million in business when two big clients reduced spending after their ads received community notes accusing them of false advertising. He also claimed that when the acquisition closed, Twitter had negative $3 billion in annual cash flow and $1 billion in the bank. “The analogy I was using was like being teleported into a plane that’s in a nosedive headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work….”

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    Musk said he voted for Biden but hinted he wasn’t happy with his choice, saying “I wish we could have just a normal human being as president.”

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    Asked if he believes the 2020 election was stolen, Musk said no, but countered that there certainly has been election fraud.

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    Musk even slammed the obvious CIA front Bellingcat. Discussing the recent Texas shooting, Musk said the shooter was “incorrectly described to be a white supremacist. The company that found this is Belingcat. Do you know what Belingcat is? A company that does Psyops.”

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    Going back to twitter, and the historic layoffs there, Musk said that “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” referring to the more than 6,000 job cuts. Remarkably, despite widespread calls that the end of Twitter is nigh as there is no way the company can survive with 80% of its workers fired, so far Twitter is leaner and faster than before, a testament to the epic employee bloat in Silicon Valley over the past decade.

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    His involvement in the early days of ChatGPT-developer OpenAI, saying that it exists only because he wanted a non-commercial alternative to Google’s growing dominance in AI. He expressed disappointment that the company has abandoned its non-profit roots. And he said he is no longer friends with Google co-founder Larry Page. “The final straw was Larry calling me a ‘species-ist’ for being pro-human consciousness instead of machine consciousness.”.

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    His personal views and habits when it comes to work and productivity. He said he takes only two or three days off per year, works seven days a week and gets six hours of sleep a night. He also said he believes it’s morally wrong for people in the “laptop class” to advocate for working from home when service workers, such as people who work in factories, still have to show up in person.

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    Tesla’s ability to weather rocky economic cycles. Musk said that the next 12 months will be difficult for Tesla from a macroeconomic perspective because of increased interest rates pinching consumer budgets. But he also said Tesla could take advantage of Tesla’s “real-time information on demand” for its cars to adjust pricing effectively.

    Faber asked what would happen to the global economy if China makes a move to control Taiwan. “The Chinese economy and the rest of the global economy are like conjoined twins. It would be like trying to separate conjoined twins. That’s the severity of the situation. And it’s actually worse for a lot of other companies than it is for Tesla. I mean, I’m not sure where you’re going to get an iPhone, for example.”

    Last but not least, there was a discussion of the Fed, which Musk believes is going to be too slow to lower interest rates when the economy slows, and that will hurt consumer demand. “You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly,” Musk said. “It makes a lot of things more expensive. So if the car payment or your home mortgage is absorbing more of your monthly budget then you have less money to buy other things.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 23:25

  • Head Of Ukraine's Supreme Court Arrested For "Large-Scale Corruption" 
    Head Of Ukraine’s Supreme Court Arrested For “Large-Scale Corruption” 

    Yet another large-scale corruption scandal has come out of Ukraine as the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have announced significant action taken against the highest court in the land. 

    “NABU and SAP have exposed large-scale corruption in the Supreme Court, in particular a scheme to obtain undue advantages by the leadership and judges of the Supreme Court,” the anti-corruption bodies announced on their official social media channels Tuesday. It’s a huge embarrassment given this is the highest legal body in the land, and the nation’s top judge, responsible for interpreting and upholding the law.

    Vsevolod Knyazev, file image

    The watchdog bodies stated they have “documented the head of the Supreme Court receiving a $2.7 million bribe.” An anti-corruption official revealed in a national press briefing that the head of the Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyazev, has been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes. The $2.7 million was seized in a raid on the top judges home.

    “At this time, the head of the Supreme Court has been detained and measures are being taken to check other individuals for involvement in criminal activity,” a statement said further.

    Knyazev, who was the equivalent of the US Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, has was elected to the position in October 2021. He has since been removed by a special session of other judges with a ‘no confidence’ vote.

    Further, reports in Ukrainian media suggest that additional judges might be raided and arrested amid the ongoing corruption probe. According to more details which have emerged in Ukrainian media sources, the case could be the tip of the iceberg:

    NABU Director Semen Kryvonos revealed that his bureau has documented a series of contacts between the owner of Finances and Credit Group, Kostiantyn Zhevaho, and one of the owners of an attorney group used to conceal criminal activities. These contacts involved an agreement regarding unlawful benefits in favor of high-ranking court officials for “rendering the necessary decision” in favor of the entrepreneur.

    Businessman Zhevaho denies his involvement in the multimillion-dollar bribe, as stated in a press release issued by his spokesperson to Forbes.

    “This is the most high-profile case during the tenure of NABU and SAP and the biggest exposure of a top-ranking official in the judicial branch of power,” said Kryvonos.

    He said the suspects in the case also attempted to influence the appointment of members of the Higher Qualification Commission of Judges (VKKS), the body responsible for career-related matters within the judicial branch of power.

    The past months have seen Ukraine, which consistently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world, take public steps to root out its notorious corruption problem.

    Handout image via Ukrainian government

    This as tens of billions in US taxpayer aid continues to flow through Kiev’s coffers amid the Russian invasion – also as Blackrock, the world’s largest manager of assets, has reached a tentative agreement with President Zelensky to coordinate major reconstruction investment in the war-ravaged country.

    The emerging supreme court of Ukraine scandal isn’t the first major corruption revelation since the war began, and its unlikely to be the last.

    * * *

    Earlier in the year, a major scandal was revealed in the top ranks of Ukraine’s military…

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 23:05

  • Will Abortion Kill The GOP?
    Will Abortion Kill The GOP?

    Authored by J.Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Republicans seem determined to die on the hill called abortion in 2024 – and they may take the country down with them.

    Abortion is a litmus test for millions of swing voters: nothing else matters if a candidate does not agree with them on it.

    This is not good news for the GOP: The results of the 2022 midterm elections – and current polling – show that there are significantly more pro-choice independent voters than pro-life independents.

    As a result, immigration, the state of the nation’s economy and the identity of the GOP 2024 presidential nominee may not matter all that much, as President Biden and his publicists in the press ride the abortion issue to victory.

    Democrats will then falsely claim their victory is a mandate for radical policies that are dividing and undermining our country, including unsustainable spending, suffocating regulation, open borders, lax law enforcement, and an unquenchable commitment to DEI, ESG, and all the other letters of the woke revolution.

    The intricacies of our electoral system are such that Republicans may well hold the House and win the Senate. But four more years of a Democratic presidency in control of the vast federal bureaucracy will unleash innumerable left-wing genies from their bottles, transforming the country in ways that may be impossible to reverse.

    Is there any reason for hope? I fear not.

    Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, is advising candidates to defend their pro-life values and attack their opponents. “Put them on the defensive and articulate where you stand, and that’s going to be the critical message we have to get out before 2024,” she said last month.

    But this stance is a loser in a national election. Since the Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade, 13 deep red states have passed laws essentially banning abortion. Republicans can argue that this is democracy in action – a majority of voters in those states oppose abortion. If they change their minds, they can vote in new leaders to write new laws. Their actions have zero impact on pro-choice blue states such as California, New York, and Illinois.

    But Democrats and their media allies will argue, with some justification, that Republicans are gunning for every womb. McDaniel’s suggestion that more voters will be turned off by Democrat support for later-term abortions than her party’s support of bans is wishful thinking. If you want to win the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia, which card would you rather play?

    In the short term, this is the weak hand of cards Republicans have dealt themselves.

    In the longer term there may be some hope – if the GOP stops acting like Democrats, who insist on shoving their controversial policies down people’s throats. Republicans, instead, can give themselves some room on the issue, and perhaps reintroduce some comity into the body politic, by acknowledging that many Americans do not share their objections to abortion and vowing to work harder to change their minds.

    To this end, Republicans can also make a stand for small government, states’ rights, and civil discourse by pledging that no Republican-controlled Congress or Republican president will pass a federal ban on the procedure.

    I know this position is unacceptable to those who consider abortion murder. I understand, and respect, that this is non-negotiable for them.   

    Being right is a good start, but it is not an effective strategy. Republicans and their willing pro-life allies must not squander the great opportunity Dobbs has given them to make their case.

    At heart, most Americans know that abortion is the taking of an innocent life. Yes, it’s a medical procedure; it’s also a tragedy. That is why there is little support for the Democrat position of abortion on demand with no conditions at all. Yet, a majority of Americans recoil at the idea of making women carry unwanted children to term.

    Instead of passing new laws, pro-life forces should focus on making the compassionate case for why this view is not wrong or evil, but mistaken. Championing other traditional values, they can remind Americans that sex is not just a tremendous source of intimacy and pleasure, but a deeply consequential act that binds and obligates us to our partners and our progeny.

    That may seem obvious, but it is a fact that has been lost in recent decades as our culture has cast sex as an act of personal gratification leading, among other things, to calamitous increases in unwanted pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, and single-parent homes.

    A thoughtful discussion of abortion would also allow Republicans to espouse another fading value: personal responsibility. In an era of cheap and effective birth control, we should not be creating millions of lives only to destroy them. Instead of dismissing those who become pregnant as irresponsible, we should work to educate and empower them through the message: With simple precautions, you can spare yourself, and an innocent life, from this horror.   

    It is essential that Republicans start making these arguments immediately. Although their stance on abortion is a political liability, the issue offers them a powerful opportunity to make the case against the left-wing values that are ruining our nation. Extending their compassion for unborn children to adults wrestling with complex problems is an important step toward healing America’s fractured soul.

    If we are ever going to reverse the harm Democrats are doing to our culture, we have to start listening to, and loving, and one another.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 22:45

  • Why Biden Can't Use The 14th Amendment To Raise The Debt Ceiling
    Why Biden Can’t Use The 14th Amendment To Raise The Debt Ceiling

    Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times,

    Some Senate Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to “use” the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit by executive decree. For example, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stated:

    “The 14th Amendment is not anyone’s first choice. The first choice is that the Republicans raise the debt ceiling because the United States government never, ever, ever, ever defaults on its legal obligations. But if Kevin McCarthy is going to push the United States over a cliff, then it becomes the president’s responsibility to find an alternative path.”

    As a former law professor and a senator for more than 10 years, Warren almost certainly knows that keeping the current debt ceiling doesn’t cause default. It merely forces the government to run a balanced budget—something the government should be doing anyway.

    And all Warren needs to do is read the 14th Amendment to learn that it gives the president no power to “use” it to create more debt.

    Not Raising the Debt Limit Just Means Balancing the Budget

    The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow. The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.

    Could the federal government do that? Sure.

    Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 13 percent of revenue.) Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget. I’m sure readers have many suggestions on that score.

    These facts are no secret. Moreover, they’re buttressed by experience: We have reached earlier debt limits on many occasions, but there has been no default. Mostly what happens is a few federal facilities close. (When that happened last time, the feds closed Rocky Mountain National Park. No problem: The Colorado state government took over the job.)

    Still, every time we approach a new debt limit, unscrupulous politicians and their media propagandists claim we’re at risk of default. This is so patently false that we can only conclude that what concerns them isn’t default but something else.

    What is that “something else”? That people might learn they really don’t need all that exorbitant federal spending. That they might decide they like the budget being balanced.

    The 14th Amendment

    The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, soon after the Civil War. It’s the longest amendment ever adopted, because it addressed a multiplicity of issues. One reason for the amendment was to ensure that future Congresses, even if dominated by members from former Confederate states, would honor the Union Civil War debt.

    The amendment has five sections. Sections 4 and 5 are relevant to our discussion. Here’s the pertinent language:

    “Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned …

    “Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

    Notice what this language says:

    • The validity of U.S. public debt shall not be questioned. This means that the federal government may not use any pretext for refusing to pay off debt instruments, such as savings bonds and Treasury bills.

    • The amendment grants Congress the power to pass laws to ensure our debt obligations are met.

    Now notice what this language doesn’t say:

    • It doesn’t say the government must borrow more to pay off existing debt; Congress may meet its obligations from existing revenue.

    • It doesn’t say Congress must change legal limits on borrowing.

    • Although it grants power to Congress, it grants none to the president—other than to enforce the laws enacted by Congress. This is because the Constitution requires that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3). One of those laws the president must enforce is the national debt limit.

    This Isn’t a Mere Technicality

    The principle that a government’s financial powers are lodged in a representative legislature rather than the executive is central to our political system. Many people died for that ideal.

    When, in the 17th century, King Charles I exercised financial powers without the approval of Parliament, it led directly to the English Civil War. The king lost that war and his head (literally).

    Then, in the 18th century, King George III and a Parliament not representing Americans tried to tax Americans. This led directly to the American Revolution. Again, the king lost. He did keep his head, but he lost all his power within the United States and most of it within Britain.

    Biden would be wise to consult these precedents.

    The fact that people such as Warren should even mention the possibility of the president’s violating the law and unilaterally taking on more public debt tells us what we need to know about them.

    The Makings of Calamity

    One of the talking points among those who want to raise the debt limit is that failure to do so would be a “calamity.” Or so claims Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. From experience, we know this isn’t true.

    But here’s a real recipe for calamity: Imagine that to pay current debt without cutting spending, Biden tries to sell debt instruments on his own authority. (Call them “Biden Bonds.”) When the Supreme Court strikes down this autocratic edict (as it has struck down several of Biden’s other autocratic edicts), what then would be the effect on United States credit?

    And since people in the bond market are risking their own money as Warren and Yellen are not, how many of them would be willing to purchase Biden Bonds? And if they refused to do so, what would that do to U.S. credit?

    How Can We Avoid This in the Future?

    For more than 50 years, a super-majority of the American people have favored a constitutional amendment forcing the federal government, except in rare cases, to run a balanced budget. That would stop the feds from piling up more and more debt.

    In 2017, I wrote (admittedly, a first draft) of such an amendment. It isn’t overly technical. It merely says this: Before Congress may raise the debt limit—in other words, before it runs a budget deficit—Congress must get the approval of a majority of the legislatures of states containing a majority of the U.S. population (pdf).

    There are two principal reasons we don’t have a balanced budget amendment: Congress refuses to propose one for the states to ratify, and apologists for the national oligarchy have been misleading Americans about the procedure for proposing an amendment through a convention of states.

    Eventually, Americans will get fed up with the delay and force their state lawmakers to call a convention. Let’s hope it will not be too late.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 22:05

  • Morgan Stanley Says $7 Trillion Needed To "Re-Wire" EV Battery Supply Chain In Multipolar World
    Morgan Stanley Says $7 Trillion Needed To “Re-Wire” EV Battery Supply Chain In Multipolar World

    The automotive industry is undergoing a major transformation from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles with significant implications for the Western auto supply chains. 

    Morgan Stanley’s global director of research Katy Huberty told clients in a note Tuesday that her global Autos research desk forecasts a complete “re-wiring” of the EV battery supply chain “through the lends of a multipolar world” will require $7 trillion in investment by 2040.

    Our global Autos team led a broadly collaborative analysis that revisited the investment implications of the EV battery supply chain, which they first explored in November 2021 (The New Oil: Investment Implications of the Global Battery Economy). 

    A key enhancement in their new work: They viewed the battery supply chain through the lens of a Multipolar World. They conclude that if the West wants to drive EV adoption to meet decarbonization goals, while also mitigating national security concerns, a radically new battery supply chain will need to be created, with developments in battery chemistry having the potential to widen the menu of technologies available to meet climate goals. 

    They estimate that total investment of $7 trillion would be needed in the EV battery supply chain by 2040, a figure that assumes an array of targeted regulations and policies to facilitate an onshore, decarbonized battery supply chain. They think it may require more than a decade to achieve industrialization and standardization, gated by a host of geopolitical, environmental, and economic considerations.

    Onshoring the EV battery supply chain from Asia to the West will require a massive effort by governments and corporations. They will need to invest trillions of dollars to take market share from China, which already controls 90% of the global EV battery supply chain. 

    “We cannot rely on market forces alone to drive us to an electrified, onshore future. Policy around adoption must be coordinated with policy around supply chain and sourcing, and the more acute need is on supply rather than demand, in our opinion,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a Sunday report note titled “Re-Wiring the EV Battery Supply Chain: Global Investment Implications.”

    Though the US Inflation Reduction Act has been incentivizing onshoring of critical EV supply chains, the Western world faces a significant task in rejiggering the battery supply chain to be less reliant on China. This is all in an effort to achieve clean energy targets for the transportation sector by the mid-2030s. 

    The green future sounds great, but for it to be realized, nuclear power generation capacity needs to be dramatically increased. If not, the West’s power grids will be even more unreliable and resemble ones from third-world countries. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 21:45

  • Russia Says It Took Out US-Supplied Patriot Missile In Hypersonic Strike On Kiev
    Russia Says It Took Out US-Supplied Patriot Missile In Hypersonic Strike On Kiev

    Russia’s military may have taken out a US-supplied Patriot anti-air battery in Ukraine, which if true would be a very significant first since the advanced Raytheon-made defense weapon was deployed there.

    This came as Ukrainian officials have cited an exceptionally dense attack on Kyiv overnight, which included cruise missiles and drones, and even allegedly Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Ukraine was hit by at least 18 missiles and nine drones were sent, with media reports saying some six ballistic missiles (including Kinzhal) were launched. But the Ukrainians are claiming that most or all of them were intercepted.

    Overnight major attack on Ukrainian capital, via Reuters.

    Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, described the barrage as “exceptional in its density, with the maximum number of missiles in the shortest time possible,” but that “the vast majority of enemy targets in Kyiv’s airspace were detected and destroyed.” Ukraine is now saying it successfully intercepted multiple hypersonic missiles. A previous claim to have intercepted a hypersonic from days ago was met with widespread skepticism among independent pundits. 

    The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) has previously dismissed the Ukrainian claims of hypersonic intercepts as “wishful thinking.”

    But the Russian side is celebrating a big victory of its own on Tuesday, saying it landed a precision strike a Patriot air defense system in the Ukrainian capital. The US-supplied systems only arrived last month, and just recently entered operation.

    The MoD said in its latest press briefing that its attacks destroyed “Ukrainian troops positions and places of storage of munitions, weapons and military hardware delivered from Western nations.”

    Russia’s RT followed by stating the following: 

    A precision strike by a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile has destroyed a Patriot air defense system in Kiev, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Tuesday. The Ukrainian government previously claimed that Kinzhal missiles had been intercepted by the US-made weapons platform.

    The Russian military did not provide further details about the strike, which was the first time Moscow claimed to have hit the long-range system supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Currently there’s speculation over whether a widely circulating video confirms the destruction of a Patriot battery amid the conflicting Russian and Ukrainian claims.

    Geopolitical analysis blog Moon of Alabama says the reports of a destroyed Patriot system are accurate:

    This is factual:

    Patriot Missiles Won’t Save Ukraine – National Interest – May 9, 2023

    Patriot systems are limited to pinpoint defense of major assets and are designed to operate in tandem with air defenses engaging targets at higher and lower altitudes. Without these additions, Patriot will have too many threats to engage and the result will either be porous coverage that doesn’t protect its defended assets, or coverage that quickly subsides when Patriot runs out of interceptors.

    Moreover, Patriot systems are themselves vulnerable. Operating a Patriot radar system gives away its location, making it an open target for Russian attacks. This means that Patriot is not a one-stop-shop for defending Ukraine’s military assets or its people.

    Those facts were proven last night…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Commenting on the video of the purported Russian direct hit on the Patriot battery, Kim Dotcom wrote on Twitter, “30 US Patriot PAC-3 MSE launch at a cost of $5 million per missile. That’s $150 million gone within 2 mins. At the end the Patriot launch platforms were destroyed by Russian missiles. Why would any military still want to buy Patriot after this failure?” 

    For these reasons, the Pentagon is unlikely to confirm the event even if true, given it consistently and almost exclusively backs the narrative advanced by Ukraine’s defense ministry. For example, last Thursday US defense officials announced confirmation of Ukraine’s claims that its military intercepted an inbound Russian hypersonic missile utilizing the Patriot system. That was the first time of the war that the Ukrainian side claimed to have accomplished the feat. The Kremlin has rejected this narrative, saying its hypersonic missiles have yet to be defeated.

    Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are still claiming they shot down six entire Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in a single night, which seems dubious given the projectiles travel at multiple times to the speed of sound and have been touted since their development as “impossible” to defend against.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 21:45

  • Ron Paul Wrecks 'Red Flag' Gun Laws
    Ron Paul Wrecks ‘Red Flag’ Gun Laws

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

    Gun control advocates continue to claim that only restrictions on gun ownership will keep people safe from mass shooters and other criminals. However, good people with guns can stop bad people with guns. And bad people will still have guns despite gun control laws. Further weakening the argument that restricting private firearms ownership will reduce violent crimes is the fact that states with “constitutional carry” — where individuals are free to exercise their Second Amendment rights without seeking permission from the government — have lower homicide rates than states with more restrictive gun laws.

    One policy that is popular among gun control supporters and some who normally support the Second Amendment but want to “do something” about gun violence is red flag laws. These laws allow law enforcement to confiscate an individual’s guns based on a report that the individual poses a threat to public safety. Red flag laws allow governments to restrict the exercise of a constitutionally protected right without due process.

    Another weakness in the argument that more restrictive gun laws will reduce violence is that many of the cities and states with the highest incidence of violent crime have restrictive gun laws. Gun control supporters try to explain this by blaming individuals who bring guns from states with more permissive gun laws into states with more restrictive gun laws. The guns can, though, at the same time be coming from states with less violent crime into states with more violent crime. But, if guns were the problem, then violent crime would be higher in states with permissive gun laws than in states with more legal restrictions related to firearms.

    The gun control debate ignores the root causes of rising violence, which is a symptom of the decline of traditional morality that respected every individual’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and property. This traditional morality has been replaced with a nihilistic philosophy that denies moral law and natural rights. Instead, it justifies doing whatever one feels is necessary to achieve one’s goals.

    This disregard for a higher moral law finds expression in a foreign policy that then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously supported while defending US sanctions that starved Iraqi children. The US is viewed as the world’s “indispensable nation,” and whatever it does is automatically considered right, regardless of the human suffering caused by the US government’s overseas interventions.

    We also see this expression of disregard for a higher moral law in support for abortion that is based on the idea that preborn do not have the right to life. Whether the baby lives or dies is called a matter of “choice.”

    Should we be surprised a society produces mass shooters and other psychopaths when government, schools, media, entertainment, and even some churches promote nihilism that devalues human life?

    While government can undermine morality, it cannot promote virtue. Any attempt to use government power to “make people good” will inevitably result in tyranny. It will also lead to a less virtuous population. Instead, those seeking to replace the nihilism with a philosophy that recognizes that all humans are born with inalienable rights should work to restore limited constitutional government that does not attempt to provide for the people’s material or spiritual needs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 21:25

  • Which States Have The Death Penalty?
    Which States Have The Death Penalty?

    According to the Death Penalty Information Center, capital punishment is on the books in 27 states but several don’t actually carry it out.

    In eight states, governors or courts have officially halted executions, while in Ohio, executions were recently cancelled due to the lack of lethal drugs. While governor-imposed moratoriums or reviews are in place in Arizona, Oregon, California and Pennsylvania, judges have halted executions in Nevada, Montana, Tennessee and South Carolina, mostly in response to controversy around new drugs used in executions by injection. In the case of South Carolina, the state even reauthorized the use of the electric chair and the firing squad in response to growing scrutiny by pharmaceutical companies and the public around how execution drugs are sourced and used. The change has now being challenged in court while executions are on hold.

    Infographic: Which States Have the Death Penalty? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Notably, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, since 2011, the EU has severely restricted exports of the key component of U.S. drug cocktails for executions. In 2016, Pfizer was the last FDA-approved pharmaceutical company to stop selling its drugs for use in the death penalty. As a result, states started to use alternative drugs and sources. Botched executions – for example in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona using the drug midazolam – received scrutiny and led to court cases.

    Execution halts were recently lifted in Kentucky, which passed a new law excluding the severely mentally ill from the death penalty; in Alabama after a review of protocols, and in Indiana, where a court case concluded that the state has to release data on its use of lethal drugs. While this technically allows Indiana executions to resume, it makes sourcing new drugs for executions almost impossible for the state. Many other states face the same problem in carrying out the death penalty by injection.

    Out of the remaining 18 states, another eight have not carried out an execution in at least ten years, either because of a lack of death row inmates, a lack of suitable drugs or a combination of the two. Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas have all executed prisoners in 2023, while the last executions in Alabama and Mississippi took place in 2022.

    Colorado in 2020 was the latest state that abolished capital punishment, following New Hampshire, which axed its law in 2019. The number of executions in the United States has fallen recently from a high of 98 in 1999 to just 18 in 2022. States carry out most executions in the country. Federal executions remain exceptionally rare despite several that were carried out in the twilight of the Trump presidency.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 21:05

  • Report Reveals ATF Misappropriated $20 Million To Pay Bureaucrat Salaries
    Report Reveals ATF Misappropriated $20 Million To Pay Bureaucrat Salaries

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    A recent report from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel revealed that the ATF unlawfully paid agents more than $20 million in wrongful benefits using taxpayer funds.

    According to that report, ATF intentionally misclassified jobs as law enforcement positions and paid those employees benefits to which they were not entitled. 

    The sum of the findings totaled about 20 million dollars over five years to 108 ATF employees. That’s around 37 thousand dollars a year in salary and retirement benefits per employee.

    As detailed by the OSC’s report, these actions were ATF leadership’s standard operating procedure for many years. 

    A quote from the report surmised that the actual cost could be much higher given that the unlawful job classifications had been common practice at ATF far longer than the five-year timeframe reviewed by investigators. 

    It’s interesting that this report was released about a week after the House Judiciary Committee hearing that ATF Director Steve Dettelbach testified at. 

    Still, Congress cannot turn a blind eye to ATF’s corruption and this rogue agency must be held accountable.

    Additionally, the OSC stated in their press release that they have notified President Biden and Congress of their findings. Yet, the Biden Administration has done nothing to withdraw its proposed budget for fiscal year 2024. Instead, The Biden Administration would rather reward ATF for its financial crimes with a 13.6% increase over the 2023 budget—raising the operating budget to nearly $2 billion. 

    Meanwhile, law-abiding gun owners applying for their tax stamps continue to suffer extremely long paperwork delays on registration forms which should not even exist in the first place.

    When it comes to ATF finances, OPM’s report states that:

    “ATF leadership had acted outside of the merit system principles and demonstrated disregard for the rule of law and regulations.” 

    The American people deserve transparency from these unelected agency bureaucrats at ATF. 

    Another telling quote as to the extent of the issue can be found on page 4 of the report. It reads: 

    “The whistleblowers expressed their views that the report did not adequately capture the extent of ATF’s illegal practice of the full impact of the harm.” 

    This revelation only serves to highlight the double standards that exist between the treatment of gun dealers and the ATF itself. The fact is that the very agency that puts gun dealers out of business for a single infraction is itself bilking the taxpayers for millions of dollars illegally. 

    We can only hope that more brave whistleblowers continue to bring these issues to the public’s attention, and, hopefully, the attention of Congress as well. 

    *   *   * 

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 20:45

  • Von Greyerz & Macleod: Insights On The Rotten State Of The Banking System
    Von Greyerz & Macleod: Insights On The Rotten State Of The Banking System

    In this discussion between Egon von Greyerz and Alasdair Macleod, on the state of the current banking system and the importance of gold, the speakers express concerns about the system’s eventual collapse due to the excessive creation of “funny money.”

    They suggest that gold is the only currency to have survived throughout history and is thus essential for long-term wealth preservation.

    Egon and Alasdair also discuss the role of gold in the currency crisis and predict an eventual panic into gold.

    Moreover, they stress that the value of gold should not be measured in worthless, fiat money and that higher gold prices are necessary to meet future demand.

    Finally, they caution against wishing for the gold price to go up, as it would decrease the quality of life.

    Watch the full interview below:

    Timestamps:

    • 0:00 Introductions

    • 0:42 This weeks news – Banking collapse

    • 2:32 Derivatives

    • 3:07 What’s keeping the gold price high?

    • 12:10 Property rights

    • 13:30 What role does gold play

    • 19:57 Gold price

    • 22:44 Influx of wealth preservation

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 20:25

  • GOP Presidential Candidates React To Durham Report: 'Shut Down The FBI'
    GOP Presidential Candidates React To Durham Report: ‘Shut Down The FBI’

    Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer and Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two Republican presidential candidates have responded to news that special counsel John Durham’s report further discredits the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign ahead of the 2016 presidential election, saying they’re glad the facts have come out and that there’s a case to argue for shutting down the FBI.

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition in Clive, Iowa, on April 22, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    According to Durham, who has spent nearly three years probing the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign, the bureau hurried to initiate the initial investigation based on unvetted intelligence from the Australian government and the FBI did not interview the individuals connected to the intelligence used to launch a comprehensive investigation.

    Ramaswamy responded to the report telling The Epoch Times, “Enough is enough. Root out the corruption & shut down the FBI.”

    “This is achievable,” the Republican presidential candidate went on. “At the local level, we have police & prosecutors. At the federal level, we have U.S. marshals & the DOJ. An intermediary bureaucracy is rife with risk for politicized corruption & it’s been happening since J. Edgar Hoover in the 60s.”

    Fellow businessman and Republican candidate Perry Johnson told The Epoch Times that even though this exonerated his political opponent, he’s glad the truth has come out on this issue.

    “Although I am running for President as a Republican alternative to Donald Trump, I am thrilled that our former president has been rightfully exonerated by report findings,” Johnson said. “We must unite against corruption and celebrate when truth prevails.”

    The Michigander also noted that, “Democrats have never shied away from weaponizing the law for their own benefit. The Trump-Russia probe was nothing more than partisan political targeting and abuse of our legal system by the FBI.”

    Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson speaks at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition in Clive, Iowa, on April 22, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has made preparations for a presidential run in 2024 but has yet to formally announce his candidacy, expressed a similar sentiment on Twitter.

    He wrote, “The Durham Report confirmed what we already knew: weaponized federal agencies manufactured a false conspiracy theory about Trump-Russia collusion. It reminds us of the need to clean house at these agencies, as they’ve never been held accountable for this egregious abuse of power.”

    Durham’s Findings

    The much-anticipated report (pdf), a copy of which The Epoch Times obtained ahead of its public release, also delves into other controversial aspects of “Crossfire Hurricane”—the FBI codename for its investigation of the Trump campaign.

    “[T]he objective facts show that the FBI’s handling of important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient,” the report states.

    The special counsel further impugned the bureau’s error-ridden applications to surveil Trump campaign associate Carter Page. FBI agents applied to renew the secret-court warrants on Page despite admitting, both at the time and subsequently, that they had no probable cause to do so.

    Durham concludes that the FBI failed to uphold its “important mission of strict fidelity to the law.”

    The bureau also failed to examine its own databases, check with other intelligence agencies, interview essential witnesses, and did not use “any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluation raw intelligence,” the report states.

    Had the FBI followed its own rules, the bureau’s agents would have discovered that neither the bureau or the CIA had any evidence to show that candidate Donald Trump or anyone in his campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials at any time during the campaign, according to the report.

    FBI Response

    The FBI released a public statement after the report was released, saying, “The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time.

    “Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

    The FBI responded to The Epoch Times’s request for comment on the subject by including a copy of the letter (pdf) they sent to Durham in response to the report, which included their agreement that it “is important to examine past conduct to identify shortcomings.” The letter further outlined steps that the agency has taken to secure the integrity of its national security investigations and other processes.

    “In addition to the external oversight conducted by the Department of Justice, FBI considerably strengthened and expanded its internal oversight and auditing program … We also share your concern with any proposals that would ‘curtail the scope or reach of FISA or theFBI’s investigative activities …  in a time of aggressive and hostile terorist groups and foreign powers.’”

    Janice Hisle contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 20:05

  • CIA Releases Video Urging Russians To Spy On Their Own Country
    CIA Releases Video Urging Russians To Spy On Their Own Country

    In an unusual attempt at public outreach ‘spy-style’, the world’s most powerful intelligence organization is openly encouraging Russians to spy on their own country. 

    The CIA released a nearly 2-minute video Monday on its official YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram channels. The Russian-language, professionally produced video urges individual Russians to provide intelligence on their country in the midst of the Ukraine war. Watch:

    The video has a ‘patriotic’ orientation, assuring Russians they can do something to improve their country and its situation by handing over intelligence to the CIA. 

    “The CIA wants to know the truth about Russia, and we are looking for reliable people who can tell us that truth,” the agency said in the video, according to a translation. “Your information may be more valuable than you know.”

    The text on the screen of the clip further tells Russians to “Contact us. Perhaps the people around you don’t want to hear the truth. We want to.”

    Some of the narration includes the following messaging, according to a description:

    In the video – published on the CIA’s official YouTube channel and the Telegram messaging app, popular in Russia – a male voice reflects on the meaning of heroism and endurance as lone individuals are seen weighing their decisions: a man trudging through snow, a woman staring through a window.

    “We are easily swayed by lies. But we do know what our reality is. The reality we live in. And the reality we talk about in whispers,” the voice says.

    At the end, a man and a woman are shown in separate scenes with their fingers hovering over mobile phone screens with a link saying “Contact CIA”.

    “This is my Russia. This will always be my Russia. I will endure. My family will endure. We will live with dignity because of my actions,” the narrator concludes.

    The video at the end informs viewers how to submit information with a Tor browser utilizing the dark web and suggests tools for encrypted communications. 

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a daily briefing was asked about the CIA’s asset recruitment efforts. He responded, “I am convinced that our special services are monitoring this space in the necessary way.”

    He added: “We all know perfectly well that the CIA and other Western intelligence services are not reducing their activity on the territory of our country.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 19:45

  • "It's One Man": Imran Khan Blames Pakistan Army Chief For Arrest & Deadly Protests
    “It’s One Man”: Imran Khan Blames Pakistan Army Chief For Arrest & Deadly Protests

    Via The Cradle,

    Following the spectacular arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan over an alleged corruption case on May 9, Pakistan veered into anarchy and mayhem for a couple of days as enraged supporters went on a rampage, torching scores of government structures, including military posts, an air force base, and the home of the commander of the Lahore Corps.

    On Friday, following his release on bail by order of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), Khan spoke to a foreign media outlet, attributing his arrest not to the internal security agencies but to a single individual – the army chief. The much-revered Pakistani army, he claimed, had unjustly tarnished his reputation for the events that transpired in the country.

    AFP via Getty Images

    Ever since Pakistan’s parliament ousted the former prime minister through a no-confidence vote last year, Khan has been leveling serious accusations against the army’s top generals, so his latest statement is just the most recent of many. Khan’s removal from power in parliament paved the way for the formation of a government under his successor, Shehbaz Sharif – led by the eleven-party alliance known as the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) – who assumed office in early April 2022 amid widespread national polarization over the ‘soft coup.’

    Imran Khan’s ‘illegal’ arrest

    Two days after Khan’s controversial arrest, in an unexpected turn of events, the Supreme Court of Pakistan pronounced the arrest of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan “illegal” and ordered his immediate release. As a result of the court order, Khan’s supporters took to the streets again in jubilation and torched half a dozen police vehicles in different parts of the country.

    Pakistan’s apex court then ordered the PTI chief to stay put in the Police Guest House in Islamabad under court protection until his appearance before the IHC for his bail application re-hearing. Ultimately, the IHC granted Khan a two-week bail along with blanket protection against every case registered against him by the government.

    Zahid Khan, spokesperson for the Awami National Party (ANP), a member of the unity government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, claims the judiciary is solely concerned with the rights of only Imran Khan because the family members of the majority of the judges are supporters of Khan’s party.

    “The judges sitting on the Supreme Court benches belonged to one province, Punjab, and they are paranoid about restoring the PTI government in Punjab to appease Imran Khan. They are least concerned with the principled stand of other smaller provinces or the national interest.”

    Zahid laments that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court greeted Khan in the courtroom during the 11 May proceedings and said, “Glad to meet you,” despite Imran being accused of massive corruption and the illegal sale of state gifts, including an expensive Graff wristwatch, gifted to Imran by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The chief justice, he says, did not ask a single question concerning the violent protests that Khan’s party had staged the day before.

    While Khan faces over a hundred legal cases, most of them are based on frivolous charges that will not withstand legal scrutiny. Instead, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan’s federal anti-corruption watchdog, has focused on two main graft cases in which they claim to have irrefutable evidence to prosecute the former prime minister.

    Khan has been trying to avoid proceeding in these cases on the pretext of health issues and security concerns. These include the high-profile Toshakhana (state gifts depository) and the Al-Qadir Trust cases.

    NAB claims that Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, persistently refused to assist in the investigation of the Al-Qadir Trust case. The pair is accused of conspiring with real estate mogul Malik Riaz to defraud the Pakistani government out of 50 billion rupees ($17.6 million). This is the same case in which the bureau sought the arrest of Khan, and with the assistance of the Rangers paramilitary force, dramatically stormed the Islamabad courthouse on May 9 to apprehend him.

    A ‘dark chapter’ in Pakistan’s history

    On May 11, the army was summoned to assist the police in maintaining law and order in several major cities, which helped to restore some semblance of normalcy. Although there were no untoward incidents that day, Khan’s PTI party’s top leaders have been detained under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Ordinance for 30 days.

    While unofficial estimates suggest a higher number, government sources claim that over half a dozen protestors were killed during the two-day period of turmoil, with hundreds of others, including security personnel, injured during the melee. In response to the vandalism and looting carried out by Khan’s partisans, over 1,400 “miscreants” have been detained over the last two days.

    At least 27 public and private vehicles, as well as 17 government buildings, including the Radio Pakistan building, a plane based at the Mianwali Airbase, the Pakistan Election Commission office, the military General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and other security agency buildings, were set on fire by small groups of demonstrators brandishing clubs and petrol bombs.

    “May 9 will be remembered as a dark chapter,” said a Pakistani military public relations press statement issued the following day. The gang, which the army described as “wearing a political cloak,” allegedly accomplished what adversaries were unable to do in 75 years, all “in the lust for power.”

    According to information gathered by The Cradle, authorities are actively engaged in identifying the individuals responsible for setting the military installation on fire during the protest campaign. They have already arrested some culprits through the use of geofencing technology and available video clips. The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is also working with security agencies to apprehend those who caused a financial loss (according to some unofficial estimates) of approximately 2 billion rupees ($7 million) to Pakistan’s exchequer.

    Who’s to blame for the unrest?

    Some analysts have questioned the armed forces’ claims of “restraint” when security agencies were apparently unable to control a small mob of a few hundred protesters who freely ransacked sensitive military sites without facing any resistance. While PTI stalwarts denounced the violent actions of the protestors, they insisted that the troublemakers were outsiders who did not belong to their party.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Asad Umer, the PTI secretary general, told The Cradle before his arrest that those involved in the incident were not PTI supporters. He speculated that the government might have deliberately inserted their own loyalists into the protests to discredit the PTI:

    “The PTI has never indulged in any illegal activities or used violence in protest demonstrations. We reserve our right to peaceful protest as guaranteed by the Pakistani constitution. During the protest campaign, the PTI leadership has specifically instructed its workers to maintain peace and refrain from causing damage to either private or public property.”

    Asad claimed that although PTI activists were understandably enraged at the party chief’s “illegal” detention, they weren’t responsible for setting fire to any public or private property.

    According to Ayesha Siddiqa, a Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and author of several books, the army chose not to intervene directly in order to avoid putting itself at risk. Instead, they allowed the police and Rangers to handle the situation.

    She informs The Cradle that “The Corps Commander’s Lahore mansion was abandoned a week ago, leading some of my contacts to speculate that the authorities may have been ignoring the vandalism on purpose,” and adds that this raises the possibility that the incident was staged by the military group backing the current army chief, General Syed Asim Munir.

    Siddiqa drew a parallel with the Egyptian military’s strategy, where they offered up President Hosni Mubarak as a scapegoat to deceive the protesting masses.

    The Egyptian military, she maintained, took back control, put on trial the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Morsi, and sentenced him to death. “PTI backers are ecstatic after driving back the army, but their happiness will not last long,” she warns.

    Why Khan failed to deliver

    Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, assumed power in a controversial 2018 election that Pakistan’s major political parties claimed was manipulated by the army – in collusion with the judiciary – primarily because the army’s top brass had developed serious differences with the disgraced, three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

    Days before that momentous general election, Sharif was sentenced to 10 years in prison in one of three corruption cases lodged against him and his family by the federal anti-corruption agency. Previously, Sharif was removed from his position as prime minister by Pakistan’s Supreme Court after a corruption investigation over his ownership of four luxury apartments in London’s exclusive Mayfair neighborhood.

    Former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and former chief of the military spy agency, Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, played a major role in instituting the graft cases against the Sharif family and in winning parliamentary support for Khan to form a government – despite his attainment of a simple majority in the hotly-debated 2018 elections.

    Post-election, Khan’s administration faced challenges in effectively governing the country, resulting in a struggling economy, mounting debts, increased unemployment, and soaring inflation throughout his four-year tenure. These challenges have shed light on the intricate dynamics between the military, political parties, and external influences that impact Pakistan’s governance at every turn. As the country looks toward the future, the key to its success lies in securing leaders with both the vision and capacity to confront and contain these influential constituents and guide Pakistan toward stability and prosperity.

    One crucial pathway to success will be to comfortably embrace Eurasian interconnectivity – as other Asian states are rapidly doing – which Khan recognized as a strategic priority for Islamabad. However, other Pakistani forces – potentially with US backing – may have perceived this vision as a threat, which is why Khan had to go and why he continues to be under attack.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 19:25

  • US X-Date Is Now June 5 As Treasury Burns $52BN Cash In One Day, Only $87BN Left
    US X-Date Is Now June 5 As Treasury Burns $52BN Cash In One Day, Only $87BN Left

    Yesterday, in her crusade to scaremonger Republicans into submission and yielding to Biden on the debt ceiling negotiations, Janet Yellen repeated that the Treasury X-Date will be in early June, potentially as soon as the first of the month. The former Fed chair then cranked up the doom to 11, and six years after predicting “no new financial crisis in our lifetimes”, Yellen said that a US default could see “a number of financial markets break – with worldwide panic triggering margin calls, runs and fire sales.” Basically all the worst parts of the bible. And incidentally, Yellen isn’t wrong: a US default would indeed be the end, but of course that will never happen as US tax receipts are more than enough to pay debt interest and maturities; the worst that will happen is that the bloated US deep state and some 25 million government workers will be out of a job, which is long overdue anyway.

    Yellen is probably also correct about the timing of the X-Date. As Bloomberg rates strategist Ira Jersey writes, he concurs with Yellen’s assessment “that the debt ceiling X-date could be as early as June 1” although his calculations suggest the date is a few days later (June 5-8), as shown in the chart below.

    And while this leaves Treasury bill maturing June 6 and 8 in the cross hairs of the debt-ceiling angst, the market is not taking any chances, and as the next chart shows, there is now a massive divergence between the yield on bills maturing May 30 and those maturing June 1, indicating that the market is now confidence that June 1 is indeed the X-date.

    Unfortunately, the bill market may end up being optimistic: today’s update showed that Treasury cash collapsed by a whopping $52 billion, from $140BN to just $87BN, bringing the TGA it back to where it was before tax receipt season.

    A monthly money market update from Barclays’ rates strategist Joseph Abate is in line with BBG’s conclusion. According to Abate, the Treasury may run out of cash and extraordinary measure capacity under the statutory borrowing limit between June 4 and 12. As the Barclays strategist shows below, Treasury resources including remaining borrowing capacity (which as of May 12 was about $230 billion), may fall below $30BN as soon as June 4, and could drop as low as $10BN on June 12.

    “The Treasury was able to restock some of its extraordinary measures (from the G-fund) in May, and it will get another $140bn in extraordinary measure capacity after June 30,” Abate wrote in the monthly report. But, he added “it will likely not have enough resources to make it beyond June 15 corporate tax date”

    Two other banks also agree: according to Deutsche Bank strategists the base case for the X-date is early June with late July becoming the hopeful scenario, while an analysis by JPMorgan’s Jay Barry concludes that the Treasury will exhaust all available resources by June 7, slightly earlier than their previous estimate of June 9. However, they see a “significant” amount of risk of an early-June X-date given large Social Security and Medicare payments that are due the first two days of the month.

    In short, the market is now acting as if June 1 is the X-date, with some uncertainty over the day to day cash needs which could push out the X-date a few days, or even a week, but not beyond that.

    And while the math is rather straightforward, the chance of a political mistake is far higher than during previous standoffs due to the game of chicken being waged by both sides, a game that has been largely ignored by the market, which in turn is , the government failing to make a payment to someone.

    Finally, while the Treasury Department makes no secret it will be loath to prioritize any payments, and it claims there are no plans to do so, Bloomberg calculates that if push came to shove, if the government were to immediately cut total spending by 25% starting June 1, it would have a surplus until the March 2024 tax refunds. Which, as we said before…

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    …. means there is no crisis: there is just a question of whether or not 25 million bureaucrats and deep state operatives need to be paid billions every day.

    Appendix: for those asking how it is possible that the US Treasury burned through $52.5 billion in cash in one day, here is the answer.

    There is much more in the Barclays presentation which is a must read for those closely following the nuances in the debt ceiling drama, and which is available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 19:04

  • IEA Lift Global Oil Growth Forecast On Record Chinese Demand
    IEA Lift Global Oil Growth Forecast On Record Chinese Demand

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    The world’s oil demand is set to rise by 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) this year to a record 102 million bpd, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday, revising up its forecast by 200,000 bpd as China’s demand hit a record.

    The Chinese recovery continues to exceed expectations, the agency said in its Oil Market Report today, noting that China set an all-time record for its oil consumption in March 2023 at 16 million bpd.  

    In last month’s report, the IEA also expected the world to see record demand for oil this year but pegged the growth at 2 million bpd in 2023 compared to last year.

    Demand in the developed economies in the OECD, which was weak in the first quarter of this year, is expected to return to growth this quarter, and demand growth in OECD is set to average 350,000 bpd this year. But this small increase “pales in comparison” with an expected growth of 1.9 million bpd in non-OECD oil demand, the IEA said.

    The current pessimistic mood on the market, due to macroeconomic concerns, clashes with expectations of a tight market later this year, when demand is set to outstrip supply by almost 2 million bpd, the agency added.

    Global observed oil inventories declined in March, also setting the stage for a tighter market later in 2023. Per IEA estimates, those inventories fell by 7.9 million barrels in March as a surge in oil on water and a slight increase in non-OECD stocks failed to offset a massive decline of 56 million barrels in the OECD.

    “Led by a sharp draw in products, OECD industry stocks fell to a six-month low of 2 753 mb to 89 mb below their five-year average,” the IEA said.

    Supply issues have compounded in recent weeks, with the halt of oil exports from Kurdistan, outages in Nigeria, and wildfires shutting in part of Canadian output. These would add to the new OPEC+ oil production cuts, which began this month and will continue until December.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 18:45

  • Wagner Chief Says American Killed Fighting In Bakhmut
    Wagner Chief Says American Killed Fighting In Bakhmut

    The controversial founder and head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary firm, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has on Tuesday announced the death of an American citizen who allegedly was killed fighting in the embattled city of Bakhmut, in Donetsk oblast. 

    He made the claim in a video posted on the Wagner Telegram group. The video is introduced with another narrator saying, “we are advancing to the advanced positions of the PMC Wagner in the western regions of Artyomovsk [Bakhmut]”.

    Image source: The Christian Science Monitor

    The video continues with an apparent mortar attack, and with men shouting: “Into the shelter. Mortar attacks from the western side.” Prigozhin is then seen inspecting a body, looking at what are purported to be US identification documents.

    “So we will hand him over to the United States of America, we’ll put him in a coffin, cover him with the American flag with respect because he did not die in his bed as a grandpa but he died at war and most likely a worthy [death], right?” Prigozhin says in the video.

    The video presents the man as having died while returning fire against Russian forces. “He was shooting back; he died in the battle, so we will hand over his documents tomorrow morning and pack everything, right?” Prigozhin poses.

    The State Department hours after the Wagner claims hit global headlines weighed in by saying it is “aware” of the reports and is looking into the matter:

    “We are aware of the reports of the death of a U.S. citizen in Bakhmut and are seeking additional information,” said a US State Dept. spokesperson. “Our ability to verify reports of deaths of U.S. citizens in Ukraine is extremely limited.”

    So far at least 12 Americans have been verified killed while fighting in Ukraine. In January the death of Daniel Swift was widely reported, given he was a former US Navy SEAL. And more recently, “Earlier this month, a former Marine was killed in Bakhmut after he was hit with a mortar round on a route used to resupply Ukrainian troops and evacuate civilians,” The Hill has noted.

    There are unconfirmed reports that the man was former US Army…

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    While the US has never actively encouraged US citizens to go to Ukraine to join the country’s foreign legion and other volunteer forces, it did nothing to block or prevent what was an early, robust social media campaign to attract American volunteers to join the fight. Early in the conflict, UK leadership actually seemed to actively encourage it. 

    But volunteers going to Ukraine have greatly slowed compared to the opening months of the war, and at a moment of initial waves of enthusiasm in support of Ukraine coming generally from Western populations. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 18:25

  • Escobar: US Empire Of Debt Headed For Collapse
    Escobar: US Empire Of Debt Headed For Collapse

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed.

    Prof. Hudson’s main thesis is absolutely devastating: he sets out to prove that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – the pillars of Western Civilization – set the stage for what is happening today right in front of our eyes: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within.

    And that brings us to the common denominator in every single Western financial system: it’s all about debt, inevitably growing by compound interest.

    Ay, there’s the rub: before Greece and Rome, we had nearly 3,000 years of civilizations across West Asia doing exactly the opposite.

    These kingdoms all knew about the importance of canceling debts. Otherwise their subjects would fall into bondage; lose their land to a bunch of foreclosing creditors; and these would usually try to overthrow the ruling power.

    Aristotle succinctly framed it: “Under democracy, creditors begin to make loans and the debtors can’t pay and the creditors get more and more money, and they end up turning a democracy into an oligarchy, and then the oligarchy makes itself hereditary, and you have an aristocracy.”

    Prof. Hudson sharply explains what happens when creditors take over and “reduce all the rest of the economy to bondage”: it’s what’s called today “austerity” or “debt deflation”.

    So “what’s happening in the banking crisis today is that debts grow faster than the economy can pay. And so when the interest rates finally began to be raised by the Federal Reserve, this caused a crisis for the banks.”

    Prof. Hudson also proposes an expanded formulation: “The emergence of financial and landholding oligarchies made debt peonage and bondage permanent, supported by a pro-creditor legal and social philosophy that distinguishes Western civilization from what went before. Today it would be called neoliberalism.”

    Then he sets out to explain, in excruciating detail, how this state of affairs was solidified in Antiquity in the course of over 5 centuries. One can hear the contemporary echoes of “violent suppression of popular revolts” and “targeted assassination of leaders” seeking to cancel debts and “redistribute land to smallholders who have lost it to large landowners”.

    The verdict is merciless: “What impoverished the population of the Roman Empire” bequeathed a “creditor-based body of legal principles to the modern world”.

    Predatory oligarchies and “Oriental Despotism”

    Prof Hudson develops a devastating critique of the “social darwinist philosophy of economic determinism”: a “self-congratulatory perspective” has led to “today’s institutions of individualism and security of credit and property contracts (favoring creditor claims over debtors, and landlord rights over those of tenants) being traced back to classical antiquity as “positive evolutionary developments, moving civilization away from ‘Oriental Despotism’”.

    All that is a myth. Reality was a completely different story, with Rome’s extremely predatory oligarchies waging “five centuries of war to deprive populations of liberty, blocking popular opposition to harsh pro-creditor laws and the monopolization of the land into latifundia estates”.

    So Rome in fact behaved very much like a “failed state”, with “generals, governors, tax collectors, moneylenders and carpet beggars” squeezing out silver and gold “in the form of military loot, tribute and usury from Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt.” And yet this Roman wasteland approach has been lavishly depicted in the modern West as bringing a French-style mission civilisatrice to the barbarians – while carrying the proverbial white man’s burden.

    Prof. Hudson shows how Greek and Roman economies actually “ended in austerity and collapsed after having privatized credit and land in the hands of rentier oligarchies”. Does that ring a – contemporary – bell?

    Arguably the central nexus of his argument is here:

    “Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors – euphemized today as ‘security of property rights’. Public expenditure on social welfare was minimized – what today’s political ideology calls leaving matters to ‘the market’. It was a market that kept citizens of Rome and its Empire dependent for basic needs on wealthy patrons and moneylenders – and for bread and circuses, on the public dole and on games paid for by political candidates, who often themselves borrowed from wealthy oligarchs to finance their campaigns.”

    Any similarity with the current system led by the Hegemon is not mere coincidence. Hudson: “These pro-rentier ideas, policies and principles are those that today’s Westernized world is following. That is what makes Roman history so relevant to today’s economies suffering similar economic and political strains.”

    Prof. Hudson reminds us that Rome’s own historians – Livy, Sallust, Appian, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, among others – “emphasized the subjugation of citizens to debt bondage”. Even the Delphic Oracle in Greece, as well as poets and philosophers, warned against creditor greed. Socrates and the Stoics warned that “wealth addiction and its money-love was the major threat to social harmony and hence to society.”

    And that brings us to how this criticism was completely expunged from Western historiography. “Very few classicists”, Hudson notes, follow Rome’s own historians describing how these debt struggles and land grabs were “mainly responsible for the Republic’s Decline and Fall.”

    Hudson also reminds us that the barbarians were always at the gate of the Empire: Rome, in fact, was “weakened from within”, by “century after century of oligarchic excess.”

    So this is the lesson we should all draw from Greece and Rome: creditor oligarchies “seek to monopolize income and land in predatory ways and bring prosperity and growth to a halt.” Plutarch was already into it: “The greed of creditors brings neither enjoyment nor profit to them, and ruins those whom they wrong. They do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them.”

    Beware of pleonexia

    It would be impossible to fully examine so many precious as jade offerings constantly enriching the main narrative. Here are just a few nuggets (And there will be more: Prof. Hudson told me, “I’m working on the sequel now, picking up with the Crusades.”)

    Prof. Hudson reminds us how money matters, debt and interest came to the Aegean and Mediterranean from West Asia, by traders from Syria and the Levant, around 8th century B.C. But “with no tradition of debt cancellation and land redistribution to restrain personal wealth seeking, Greek and Italian chieftains, warlords and what some classicists have called mafiosi [ by the way, Northern European scholars, not Italians) imposed absentee land ownership over dependent labor.”

    This economic polarization kept constantly worsening. Solon did cancel debts in Athens in the late 6th century – but there was no land redistribution. Athens’ monetary reserves came mainly from silver mines – which built the navy that defeated the Persians at Salamis. Pericles may have boosted democracy, but the eventful defeat facing Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) opened the gates to a heavy debt-addicted oligarchy.

    All of us who studied Plato and Aristotle in college may remember how they framed the whole problem in the context of pleonexia (“wealth addiction”) – which inevitably leads to predatory and “socially injurious” practices. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates proposes that only non-wealthy managers should be appointed to govern society – so they would not be hostages of hubris and greed.

    The problem with Rome is that no written narratives survived. The standard stories were written only after the Republic had collapsed. The Second Punic War against Carthage (218-201 B.C.) is particularly intriguing, considering its contemporary Pentagon overtones: Prof. Hudson reminds us how military contractors engaged in large-scale fraud and fiercely blocked the Senate from prosecuting them.

    Prof. Hudson shows how that “also became an occasion for endowing the wealthiest families with public land when the Rome state treated their ostensibly patriotic donations of jewelry and money to aid the war effort as retroactive public debts subject to repayment”.

    After Rome defeated Carthage, the glitzy set wanted their money back. But the only asset left to the state was land in Campania, south of Rome. The wealthy families lobbied the Senate and gobbled up the whole lot.

    With Caesar, that was the last chance for the working classes to get a fair deal. In the first half of the 1st century B.C. he did sponsor a bankruptcy law, writing down debts. But there was no widespread debt cancellation. Caesar being so moderate did not prevent the Senate oligarchs from whacking him, “fearing that he might use his popularity to ‘seek kingship’” and go for way more popular reforms.

    After Octavian’s triumph and his designation by the Senate as Princeps and Augustus in 27 B.C., the Senate became just a ceremonial elite. Prof Hudson summarizes it in one sentence: “The Western Empire fell apart when there was no more land for the taking and no more monetary bullion to loot.” Once again, one should feel free to draw parallels with the current plight of the Hegemon.

    Time to “uplift all labor”

    In one of our immensely engaging email exchanges, Prof. Hudson remarked how he “immediately had a thought” on a parallel to 1848. I wrote in the Russian business paper Vedomosti: “After all, that turned out to be a limited bourgeois revolution. It was against the rentier landlord class and bankers – but was as yet a far cry from being pro-labor. The great revolutionary act of industrial capitalism was indeed to free economies from the feudal legacy of absentee landlordship and predatory banking — but it too fell back as the rentier classes made a comeback under finance capitalism.”

    And that brings us to what he considers “the great test for today’s split”: “Whether it is merely for countries to free themselves from US/NATO control of their natural resources and infrastructure — which can be done by taxing natural-resource rent (thereby taxing away the capital flight by foreign investors who have privatized their natural resources). The great test will be whether countries in the new Global Majority will seek to uplift all labor, as China’s socialism is aiming to do.”

    It’s no wonder “socialism with Chinese characteristics” spooks the Hegemon creditor oligarchy to the point they are even risking a Hot War. What’s certain is that the road to Sovereignty, across the Global South, will have to be revolutionary: “Independence from U.S. control is the Westphalian reforms of 1648 — the doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other states. A rent tax is a key element of independence — the 1848 tax reforms. How soon will the modern 1917 take place?”

    Let Plato and Aristotle weigh in: as soon as humanly possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 18:05

  • Murdered Cash-App Founder Was Attending Underground Sex, Drug Parties With Sister Of Alleged Killer
    Murdered Cash-App Founder Was Attending Underground Sex, Drug Parties With Sister Of Alleged Killer

    Murdered Cash App founder Bob Lee – who was found staggering around a San Francisco neighborhood at 2:30 a.m. April 4th after being stabbed – allegedly frequented underground sex and drug parties with the sister of his accused killer.

    While initial reports suggested that Lee was a random victim, his friends say it was the result of his wild lifestyle among the upper echelon of Bay Area elites in which cocaine and swinging are common, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    In certain wealthy tech circles it is known as “The Lifestyle,” an underground party scene featuring recreational drug use and casual sex.

    A successful tech executive named Bob Lee liked to hang out with that crowd, according to people who also participated. So, too, did Khazar Momeni, the wife of a prominent plastic surgeon, these people said.

    On the afternoon of April 3, a Monday, the partying took a dark turn. According to San Francisco prosecutors, Ms. Momeni’s older brother confronted Mr. Lee about her. Was she taking drugs or doing anything inappropriate, he wanted to know. Hours later the brother, Nima Momeni, stabbed Mr. Lee with a kitchen knife and left him to bleed out in the street, prosecutors alleged. Mr. Momeni, who was arrested on suspicion of murder, is being held without bail. He plans to plead not guilty, his attorney said. -WSJ

    According to an autopsy report from the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Lee had cocaine and ketamine in his system when he died. According to court documents, Khazar texted Lee around the time of his murder to check oh him.

    Results of Bob Lee’s toxicology report from the office of the chief medical examiner in San Francisco. Photo: Photo illustration: WSJ; Photos: San Francisco Chief Medical Examiner, istock (2)

    “Just wanted to make sure you’re doing ok Cause I know Nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you,” she wrote. “And thank you for being such a class manhandling it with class. Love you Selfish pricks.”

    Nima Momeni, the accused killer, wasn’t seen as part of the elite crowd, but he did use drugs according to the report. According to investigators, Lee and Ms. Momeni were casually sleeping together. Three years prior, Lee had been sleeping with a different woman that his accused killer had been dating, friends say. 

    Nima Momeni, the man charged in the fatal stabbing of Bob Lee, makes his way into the courtroom. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/Pool San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press

    “There are many rumors circulating around this case, many of them untrue,” said Ms. Momeni’s attorneys. “Ms. Momeni loves and supports her brother. What happened here is a tragedy, and Ms. Momeni is deeply saddened at the suffering of the Lee family as they deal with their terrible loss.”

    Khazar Momeni and her husband, Dr. Dino Elyassnia, attend a court appearance by her brother Nima Momeni in San Francisco on April 14. Photo: Justin Katigbak

    According to Dana Wagner, a friend of Lee’s and former general counsel of Square, said that Lee was hung out with many different crowds, and that he “saw the best in everyone.”

    “He was also hanging out with people who weren’t great people, and that was part of what happened in the end,” she said, who says he didn’t know the Momenis, adding “There are a lot of swingers, cheaters and liars in that crowd.”

    On top of the casual drug use, Lee allegedly slept with multiple women at the parties, including Kazar.

    Friends say Lee was passionate about the tech industry and extremely generous – buying his friends meals, Ubers, trips to Mexico, and even bought a girlfriend a Tesla.

    Mr. Lee with Gift Kerati in Mexico and with Dana Wagner at a stadium in California. Gift Kerati; Dana Wagner

    To some, “The Lifestyle” is narrowly focused to describe people who might engage in various sexual activities with different partners. In San Francisco, it is used more loosely to describe an underground party scene that has evolved since the city’s early days as an incubator of the countercultural movement. 

    “It started with the hippies, who were not sober people, trying to expand their brains and the tech people came in and gentrified it like they did everything else,” said Mr. Reed of General Galactic. -WSJ

    According to Lee’s friend, Dana Wagner, “Bob was the dumbest smart person I knew.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/16/2023 – 17:45

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