May 01

Today’s News 1st May 2024

  • Maté: What 10 Years Of US Meddling In Ukraine Have Wrought (Spoiler Alert: Not Democracy)
    Maté: What 10 Years Of US Meddling In Ukraine Have Wrought (Spoiler Alert: Not Democracy)

    Authored by Aaron Maté via RealClear Investigations,

    In successfully lobbying Congress for an additional $61 billion in Ukraine war funding, an effort that ended this month with celebratory Democrats waving Ukrainian flags in the House chamber, President Biden has cast his administration’s standoff with Russia as an existential test for democracy.

    “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas,” Biden declared in his State of the Union address in March. “History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on January 6th.”

    While Biden’s narrative is widely accepted by Washington’s political establishment, a close examination of the president and his top principals’ record dating back to the Obama administration reveals a different picture. Far from protecting democracy from Kyiv to Washington, their role in Ukraine looks more like epic meddling resulting in political upheaval for both countries.

    Over the last decade, Ukraine has been the battleground in a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia – a conflict massively escalated by the Kremlin’s invasion in 2022. The fight erupted in early 2014, when Biden and his team, then serving in the Obama administration, supported the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Leveraging billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, Washington has shaped the personnel and policies of subsequent Ukrainian governments, all while expanding its military and intelligence presence in Ukraine via the CIA and NATO. During this period, Ukraine has not become an independent self-sustaining democracy, but a client state heavily dependent on European and U.S. support, which has not protected it from the ravages of war.

    The Biden-Obama team’s meddling in Ukraine has also had a boomerang effect at home.

    As well-connected Washington Beltway insiders such as Hunter Biden have exploited it for personal enrichment, Ukraine has become a source of foreign interference in the U.S. political system – with questions of unsavory dealings arising in the 2016 and 2020 elections as well as the first impeachment of Donald Trump. After years of secrecy, CIA sources have only recently confirmed that Ukrainian intelligence helped generate the Russian interference allegations that engulfed Trump’s presidency. House Democrats’ initial attempt to impeach Trump, undertaken in the fall of 2019, came in response to his efforts to scrutinize Ukraine’s Russiagate connection.

    This account of U.S. interference in Ukraine, which can be traced to fateful decisions made by the Obama administration, including then-Vice President Biden and his top aides, is based on often overlooked public disclosures. It also relies on the personal testimony of Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat and Democratic Party-tied political consultant who worked closely with U.S. officials to promote regime change in Ukraine. 

    Although he once welcomed Washington’s influence in Ukraine, Telizhenko now takes a different view. “I’m a Ukrainian who knew how Ukraine was 30 years ago, and what it became today,” he says. “For me, it’s a total failed state.” In his view, Ukraine has been “used directly by the United States to fight a [proxy] war with Russia” and “as a rag to make money for people like Biden and his family.”

    The State Department has accused Telizhenko being part of a “Russia-linked foreign influence network.” In Sept. 2020 it revoked his visa to travel to the United States. Telizhenko, who now lives in a western European country where he was granted political asylum, denies working with Russia and says that he is a whistleblower speaking out to expose how U.S. interference has ravaged his country. RealClearInvestigations has confirmed that he worked closely with top American officials while they advanced policies aimed at severing Ukraine’s ties to Russia. No official contacted for this article – including former CIA chief John Brennan and senior State Department official Victoria Nuland – disputed any of his claims.

    A Coup in ‘Full Coordination’ With the U.S.

    The Biden team’s path to influencing Ukraine began with the eruption of anti-government unrest in November 2013. That month, protesters began filling Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) after then-President Viktor Yanukovych, a notoriously corrupt leader, delayed signing a European Union (EU) trade pact. To members of what came to be known as the Maidan movement, Yanukovych’s decision was a betrayal of his pledge to strengthen Western ties, and a worrying sign of Russian allegiance in a country haunted by its Soviet past.

    The reality was more complex. Yanukovych was hoping to maintain relations with both Russia and Europe – and use competition between them to Ukraine’s advantage. He also worried that the EU’s terms, which demanded reduced trade with Russia, would alienate his political base in the east and south, home to millions of ethnic Russians. As the International Crisis Group noted, these Yanukovych-supporting Ukrainians feared that the EU terms “would hurt their livelihoods, a large number of which were tied to trade and close relations with Russia.” Despite claims that the Maidan movement represented a “popular revolution,” polls from that period showed that Ukrainians were evenly split on it, or even majority opposed.

    After an initial period of peaceful protest, the Maidan movement was soon co-opted by nationalist forces, which encouraged a violent insurrection for regime change. Leading Maidan’s hardline contingent was Oleh Tyahnybok of the Svoboda party, who had once urged his supporters to fight what he called the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia running Ukraine.” Tyahnybok’s followers were joined by Right Sector, a coalition of ultra-nationalist groups whose members openly sported Nazi insignia. One year before, the European Parliament condemned Svoboda for “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views” and urged Ukrainian political parties “not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.”

    Powerful figures in Washington took a different view: For them, the Maidan movement represented an opportunity to achieve a longtime goal of pulling Ukraine into the Western orbit. Given Ukraine’s historical ties to Russia, its integration with the West could also be used to undermine the rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    As the-late Zbigniew Brzezinski, the influential former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, once wrote: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” Two months before the Kyiv protests erupted, Carl Gershman, head of the National Endowment for Democracy, dubbed Ukraine “the biggest prize” in the West’s rivalry with Russia. Absorbing Ukraine, Gershman explained, could leave Putin “on the losing end not just in the near abroad” – i.e, its former Soviet satellites – “but within Russia itself.” Shortly after, senior State Department official Nuland boasted that the U.S. had “invested more than $5 billion” to help pro-Western “civil society” groups achieve a “secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”

    Seeking to capitalize on the unrest, U.S. figures including Nuland, Republican Sen. John McCain, and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy visited Maidan Square. In a show of support for the movement’s hardline faction, which went beyond supporting the EU trade deal to demand Yanukovych’s ouster, the trio met privately with Tyahnybok and appeared with him on stage. The senators’ mission, Murphy said, was to “bring about a peaceful transition here.”

    The Maidan Movement’s most significant U.S. endorsement came from then-Vice President Joe Biden. “Nothing would have greater impact for securing our interests and the world’s interests in Europe than to see a democratic, prosperous, and independent Ukraine in the region,” Biden said.

    According to Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian government official who worked closely with Western officials during this period, the U.S. government’s role went far beyond those high-profile displays of solidarity.

    “As soon as it grew into something, into the bigger Maidan, in the beginning of December, it basically was full coordination with the U.S. Embassy,” Telizhenko recalls. “Full, full.”

    When the protests erupted, Telizhenko was working as an adviser to a Ukrainian member of Parliament. Having spent part of his youth in Canada and the United States, Telizhenko’s fluent English and Western connections landed him a position helping to oversee the Maidan Movement’s international relations. In this role, he organized meetings with and coordinated security arrangements for foreign visitors, including U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland, and McCain. Most of their briefings were held at Kyiv’s Trade Unions Building, the movement’s de-facto headquarters in the city’s center.

    Telizhenko says Pyatt routinely coordinated with Maidan leaders on protest strategy. In one encounter, the ambassador observed Right Sector members assembling Molotov cocktails that would later be thrown at riot police attempting to enter the building. Sometimes, the U.S. ambassador disapproved of his counterparts’ tactics. “The U.S. embassy would criticize if something would happen more radical than it was supposed to go by plan, because it’s bad for the picture,” Telizhenko said..

    That winter was marked by a series of escalating clashes. On February 20, 2014, snipers fatally shot dozens of protesters in Maidan square. Western governments attributed the killings to Yanukovych’s forces. But an intercepted phone call between NATO officials told a different story.

    In the recorded conversation, Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet told EU foreign secretary Catherine Ashton that he believed pro-Maidan forces were behind the slaughter. In Kyiv, Paet reported, “there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new [opposition] coalition.”

    In a bid to resolve the Maidan crisis and avoid more bloodshed, European officials brokered a compromise between Yanukovich and the opposition. The Feb. 21 deal called for a new national unity government that would keep him in office, with reduced powers, until early elections at year’s end. It also called for the disarmament of the Maidan forces and a withdrawal of riot police. Holding up its end of the bargain, government security forces pulled back. But the Maidan encampment’s ultra-nationalist contingent had no interest in compromise.

    “We don’t want to see Yanukovych in power,” Maidan Movement squadron leader Vladimir Parasyuk declared that same day. “… And unless this morning you come up with a statement demanding that he steps down, then we will take arms and go, I swear.”

    In insisting on regime change, the far-right contingent was also usurping the leadership of more moderate opposition leaders such as Vitali Klitschko, who supported the power-sharing agreement.

    “The goal was to overthrow the government,” Telizhenko says. “That was the first goal. And it was all green-lighted by the U.S. Embassy. They basically supported all this, because they did not tell them to stop. If they told them [Maidan leaders] to stop, they would stop.”

    Yet another leaked phone call bolstered suspicions that the U.S. endorsed regime change. On the recording, presumably intercepted in January by Russian or Ukrainian intelligence, Nuland and Pyatt discussed their choice of leaders in a proposed power-sharing government with Yanukovich. Their conversation showed that the U.S. exerted considerable influence with the faction  seeking the Ukrainian president’s ouster.

    Tyahnybok, the openly antisemitic head of Svodova, would be a “problem” in office, Nuland worried, and better “on the outside.” Klitschko, the more moderate Maidan member, was ruled out as well. “I don’t think Klitsch should go into government,” Nuland said. “I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” One reason was Klitschko’s proximity to the European Union. Despite her government’s warm words for the European Union in public, Nuland told Pyatt: “Fuck the EU.”

    The two U.S. officials settled on technocrat Arseniy Yatsenyuk. “I think Yats is the guy,” Nuland said. By that point, Yatsenyuk had endorsed violent insurrection. The government’s rejection of Maidan demands, he said, meant that “people had acquired the right to move from non-violent to violent means of protest.”

    The only outstanding matter, Pyatt relayed, was securing “somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing.” Nuland replied that Vice President Joe Biden and his senior aide, Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s National Security Adviser, had signed on to provide “an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick.”

    Just hours after the power-sharing agreement was reached, Nuland’s wishes were granted. Yanukovich, no longer protected by his armed forces, fled the capital. Emboldened by their sabotage of an EU-brokered power-sharing truce, Maidan Movement members stormed the Ukrainian Parliament and pushed through the formation of a new government. In violation of parliamentary rules on impeachment proceedings, and lacking a sufficient quorum, Oleksandr Turchynov was named the new acting president. The Nuland-backed Yatsenyuk was appointed Prime Minister.

    In a reflection of their influence, at least five post-coup cabinet posts in national security, defense, and law enforcement were given to members of Svoboda and its far-right ally Right Sector.

    “The uncomfortable truth is that a sizeable portion of Kyiv’s current government – and the protesters who brought it to power – are, indeed, fascists,” wrote Andrew Foxall, now a British defense official, and Oren Kessler, a Tel Aviv-based analyst, in Foreign Policy the following month. While denying any role in Yanukovich’s ouster, the Obama administration immediately endorsed it, as Secretary of State John Kerry expressed “strong support” for the new government.

    In his memoir, former senior Obama aide Ben Rhodes acknowledged that Nuland and Pyatt “sounded as if they were picking a new government as they evaluated different Ukrainian leaders.” Rather than dispel that impression, he acknowledged that some of the Maidan “leaders received grants from U.S. democracy promotion programs.”

    In 2012, one pro-Maidan group, Center UA, received most of its more than $500,000 in donations from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and financier George Soros.

    By its own count, Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation spent over $109 million in Ukraine between 2004 and 2014. In leaked documents, a former IRF board member even bragged that its partners “were the main driving force and the foundation of the Maidan movement,” and that without Soros’ funding, “the revolution might not have succeeded.” Weeks after the coup, an IRF strategy document noted, “Like during the Maidan protests, IRF representatives are in the midst of Ukraine’s transition process.”

    Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor who advised Ukraine on economic policy in the early 1990s, visited Kyiv shortly after the coup to consult with the new government. 

    “I was taken around the Maidan where people were still milling around,” Sachs recalls. “And the American NGOs were around there, and they were describing to me: ‘Oh we paid for this, we paid for that. We funded this insurrection.’ It turned my stomach.” Sachs believes that these groups were acting at the behest of U.S. intelligence. To go about “funding this uprising,” he says, “they didn’t do that on their own as nice NGOs. This is off-budget financing for a U.S. regime-change operation.”

    Weeks after vowing to bring about a “transition” in Ukraine, Sen. Murphy openly took credit for it. “I really think that the clear position of the United States has in part been what has helped lead to this change in regime,” Murphy said. “I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovych from office.”

    The Proxy War Gets Hot

    Far from resolving the unrest, Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster plunged Ukraine into a war.

    Just days after the Ukrainian president fled to Moscow, Russian special forces stormed Crimea’s local parliament. The following month, Russia annexed Crimea following a hasty, militarized referendum denounced by Ukraine, the U.S., and much of the world. While these objections were well-founded, Western surveys of Crimeans nonetheless found majority support for Russian annexation.

    Emboldened by the events in Crimea, and hostile to a new government that had overthrown their elected leader Yanukovych, Russophile Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas region followed suit.

    On April 6 and 7, anti-Maidan protesters seized government buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv. The Donetsk rebels declared the founding of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Luhansk People’s Republic followed 20 days later. Both areas announced independence referendums for May 11.

    As in Crimea, Moscow backed the Donbas rebellion. But unlike in Crimea, the Kremlin opposed the independence votes. The organizers, Putin said, should “hold off on the referendum in order to give dialogue the conditions it needs to have a chance.”

    In public, the Obama administration claimed to also favor dialogue between Kyiv and the Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Behind the scenes, a more aggressive plan was brewing.

    On April 12, CIA chief John Brennan slipped into the Ukrainian capital for secret meetings with top officials. Russia, whose intelligence services ran a network of informants inside Ukraine, publicly outed Brennan’s visit. The Kremlin and Yanukovych directly accused Brennan of encouraging an assault on the Donbas.

    The CIA dismissed the allegation as “completely false,” and insisted that Brennan supported a “diplomatic solution” as “the only way to resolve the crisis.” The following month, Brennan insisted that “I was out there to interact with our Ukrainian partners and friends.”

    Yet Russia and Yanukovych were not alone in voicing concerns about the CIA chief’s covert trip. “What message does it send to have John Brennan, the head of the CIA in Kiev, meeting with the interim government?” Sen. Murphy complained. “Does that not confirm the worst paranoia on the part of the Russians and those who see the Kiev government as essentially a puppet of the West?… It may not be super smart to have Brennan in Kiev, giving the impression that the United States is somehow there to fight a proxy war with Russia.”

    According to Telizhenko, who attended the Brennan meeting and spoke to RCI on record about it for the first time, that’s exactly what the CIA chief was there to do. Contrary to U.S. claims, Telizhenko says, “Brennan gave a green light to use force against Donbas,” and discussed “how the U.S. could support it.” One day after the meeting, Kyiv announced an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO) against the Donbas region and began a military assault.

    Telizhenko, who was by then working as a senior policy adviser to Vitaliy Yarema, the First Deputy Prime Minister, says he helped arrange the Brennan gathering after getting a phone call from the U.S. embassy. “I was told there was going to be a top secret meeting, with a top U.S. official and that my boss should be there,” he recalls. “I was also told not to tell anyone.”

    Brennan, he recalls, arrived at the Foreign Intelligence Office of Ukraine in a beat-up gray mini-van and a coterie of armed guards. Others in attendance included U.S. Ambassador Pyatt, Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, foreign intelligence chief Victor Gvozd, and other senior Ukrainian security officials.

    After a customary exchange of medals and souvenir trophies, the topic turned to the unrest in the Donbas. “Brennan was talking about how Ukraine should act,” Telizhenko says. “A plan to keep Donbas in Ukraine’s hands. But Ukraine’s army was not fully equipped. We only had stuff in reserves. They discussed plans for the ATO and how to keep Ukraine’s military fully armed throughout.” Brennan’s overall message was that “Russia is behind” the Donbas unrest, and “Ukraine has to take firm, aggressive action to not let this spread all over.”

    Brennan and Pyatt did not respond to a request for comment.

    Two weeks after Brennan’s visit, the Obama administration offered yet another high-level endorsement of the Donbas operation when then-Vice President Biden visited Kyiv. With Ukraine facing “unrest and uncertainty,” Biden told a group of lawmakers, it now had “a second opportunity to make good on the original promise made by the Orange Revolution” – referring to earlier 2004-2005 post-electoral upheaval that blocked Yanukovych, albeit temporarily, from the presidency.

    Looking back, Telizhenko is struck by the contrast between Brennan’s bellicosity in Donbas and the Obama administration’s lax response to Russia’s Crimea grab one month prior.

    “After Crimea, they told us not to respond,” he said. But beforehand, “the Americans scoffed at warnings” that Ukraine could lose the peninsula. When Ukrainian officials met with Pentagon counterparts in March, “we gave them evidence that the little green men” – the incognito Russian forces who seized Crimea – “were Russians. They dismissed it.” Telizhenko now speculates that the U.S. permitted the Crimean takeover to encourage a conflict between Kyiv and Moscow-backed eastern Ukrainians. “I think they wanted Ukraine to hate Russia, and they wanted Russia to take the bait,” he said. Had Ukraine acted earlier, he believes, “the Crimea situation could have been stopped.”

    With Russia in control of Crimea and Ukraine assaulting the Donbas with U.S. backing, the country descended into a full-scale civil war. Thousands were killed and millions displaced in the ensuing conflict. When Ukrainian forces threatened to overrun the Donbas rebels in August 2014, the Kremlin launched a direct military intervention that turned the tide. But rather than offer Ukraine more military assistance, Obama began getting cold feet.

    Obama, senior Pentagon official Derek Chollet recalled, was concerned that flooding Ukraine with more weapons would “escalate the crisis” and give “Putin a pretext to go further and invade all of Ukraine.”

    Rebuffing pressure from within his own Cabinet, Obama promised German Chancellor Angela Merkel in February 2015 that he would not send lethal aid to Ukraine. According to the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Peter Wittig, Obama agreed with Merkel on the need “to give some space for those diplomatic, political efforts that were under way.”

    That same month, Obama’s commitment gave Merkel the momentum to finalize the Minsk II Accords, a pact between Kyiv and Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels. Under Minsk II, an outmatched Ukrainian government agreed to allow limited autonomy for the breakaway Donbas regions in exchange for the rebels’ demilitarization and the withdrawal of their Russian allies.

    Inside the White House, Obama’s position on Ukraine left him virtually alone. Obama’s reluctance to arm Ukraine, Chollet recalled, marked a rare situation “in which just about every senior official was for doing something that the president opposed.”

    One of those senior officials was the State Department’s point person for Ukraine, Victoria Nuland. Along with allied officials and lawmakers, Nuland sought to undermine the Minsk peace pact even before it was signed.

    As Germany and France lobbied Moscow and Kyiv to accept a peace deal, Nuland addressed a private meeting of U.S. officials, generals, and lawmakers – including Sen. McCain and future Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference. Dismissing the French-German diplomatic efforts as an act of appeasement, Nuland outlined a strategy to continue the war with a fresh influx of Western arms. Perhaps mindful of the optics of flooding Ukraine with military hardware at a time when the Obama administration was claiming to support to a peace agreement, Nuland offered a public relations suggestion.  “I would like to urge you to use the word ‘defensive system’ to describe what we would be delivering against Putin’s offensive systems,” Nuland told the gathering.

    The Munich meeting underscored that while President Obama may have publicly supported a peace deal in Ukraine, a bipartisan alliance of powerful Washington actors – including his own principals – was determined to stop it. As Foreign Policy magazine reported, “the takeaway for many Europeans … was that Nuland gave short shrift to their concerns about provoking an escalation with Russia and was confusingly out of sync with Obama.”

    As Nuland and other officials quietly undermined the Minsk accords, the CIA deepened its role in Ukraine. U.S. intelligence sources recently disclosed to the New York Times that the agency has operated 12 secret bases inside Ukraine since 2014. The post-coup government’s first new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, also revealed that he established a formal partnership with the CIA and MI6 just two days after Yanukovych’s ouster.

    According to a separate account in the Washington Post, the CIA restructured Ukraine’s two main spy services and turned them into U.S. proxies. Starting in 2015, the CIA transformed Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, so extensively that “we had kind of rebuilt it from scratch,” a former intelligence official told the Post. “GUR was our little baby.” As a benefit of being the CIA’s proxy, the agency even funded new headquarters for the GUR’s paramilitary wing and a separate division for electronic espionage.

    In a 2016 congressional appearance, Nuland touted the extensive U.S. role in Ukraine. “Since the start of the crisis, the United States has provided over $760 million in assistance to Ukraine, in addition to two $1 billion loan guarantees,” Nuland said. U.S. advisers “serve in almost a dozen Ukrainian ministries,” and were helping “modernize Ukraine’s institutions” of state-owned industries.

    Nuland’s comments underscored an overlooked irony of the U.S. role in Ukraine: In claiming to defend Ukraine from Russian influence, Ukraine was subsumed by American influence.

    Boomeranging Into U.S. Politics 

    In the aftermath of the February 2014 coup, the transformation of Ukraine into an American client state soon had a boomerang effect, as maneuvers in that country increasingly impacted U.S. domestic politics.

    “Americans are highly visible in the Ukrainian political process,” Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky observed in November 2015. “The U.S. embassy in Kyiv is a center of power, and Ukrainian politicians openly talk of appointments and dismissals being vetted by U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and even U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.”

    One of the earliest and best-known cases came in December 2015, when Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid unless Ukraine fired its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, whom the vice president claimed was corrupt. When Biden’s threat resurfaced as an issue during the 2020 election, the official line, as reported by CNN, was that “the effort to remove Shokin was backed by the Obama administration, European allies” and even some Republicans.

    In fact, from Washington’s perspective, the campaign for Shokin’s ouster marked a change of course. Six months before Biden’s visit, Nuland had written Shokin that “We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government.”

    And as RCI recently reported:

    An Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the [U.S.] Interagency Policy Committee on Ukraine stated, “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its [anti-corruption] reform agenda to justify a third [loan] guarantee.” … The next month, moreover, the task force drafted a loan guarantee agreement that did not call for Shokin’s removal. Then, in December, Joe Biden flew to Kyiv to demand his ouster.

    No one has explained why Shokin suddenly came into the crosshairs. At the time, the prosecutor general was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that was paying Hunter Biden over $80,000 per month to sit on its board.

    According to emails obtained from his laptop, Hunter Biden introduced his father to a top Burisma executive less than one year before. Burisma also retained Blue Star Strategies, a D.C. consulting firm that worked closely with Hunter, to help enlist U.S. officials who could pressure the Ukrainian government to drop its criminal probes.

    Two senior executives at Blue Star, Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, formerly worked as top aides to President Bill Clinton.

    According to a November 2015 email sent to Hunter by Vadym Pozharsky, a Burisma adviser, the energy firm’s desired “deliverables” included visits from “influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine.” The “ultimate purpose” of these visits would be “to close down” any legal cases against the company’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. One month after that email, Joe Biden visited Ukraine and demanded Shokin’s firing.

    Telizhenko – who worked in Shokin’s office at the time, and later worked for Blue Star – said the evidence contradicts claims that Shokin was fired because of his failure, among other things, to investigate Burisma. “There were four criminal cases opened in 2014 against Burisma, and two more additionally opened by Shokin when he became the Prosecutor General,” recalls Telizhenko. “So, whenever anybody says, ‘There were no criminal cases, nobody was investigating Burisma, Shokin was fired because he was a bad prosecutor, he didn’t do his work’ … this was all a lie. No, he did his work.”

    In a 2023 interview, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, said Shokin was seen as a “threat” to Burisma. Both of Shokin’s cases against Burisma were closed after his firing.

    Ukraine Meddling vs. Trump

    While allegations of Russian interference and collusion would come to dominate the 2016 campaign, the first documented case of foreign meddling originated in Ukraine.

    Telizhenko, who served as a political officer at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, D.C., before joining Blue Star, was an early whistleblower. He went public in January 2017, telling Politico how the Ukrainian embassy worked to help Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign and undermine Trump’s.

    According to Telizhenko, Ukraine’s D.C. ambassador, Valeriy Chaly, instructed staffers to shun Trump’s campaign because “Hillary was going to win.”

    Telizhenko says he was told to meet with veteran Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa, who had also served in the Clinton White House. “The U.S. government and people from the Democratic National Committee are approaching and asking for dirt on a presidential candidate,” Telizhenko recalls. “And Chalupa said, ‘I want dirt. I just want to get Trump off the elections.’”

    Starting in early 2016, U.S. officials leaned on the Ukrainians to investigate Paul Manafort, the GOP consultant who would become Trump’s campaign manager, and avoid scrutiny of Burisma, as RCI reported in 2022. “Obama’s NSC hosted Ukrainian officials and told them to stop investigating Hunter Biden and start investigating Paul Manafort,” a former senior NSC official told RCI. In January 2016, the FBI suddenly reopened a closed investigation into Manafort for potential money laundering and tax evasion connected to his work in Ukraine.

    Telizhenko, who attended a White House meeting with Ukrainian colleagues that same month, says he witnessed Justice Department officials pressing representatives of Ukraine’s Corruption Bureau. “The U.S. officials were asking for the Ukrainian officials to get any information, financial information, about Americans working for the former government of Ukraine, the Yanukovych government,” he says.

    By the time Telizhenko spoke out, Ukrainian officials had already admitted intervening in the 2016 election to help Clinton’s campaign. In August, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) released what it claimed was a secret ledger showing that Manafort received millions in illicit cash payments from Yanukovych’s party. The Clinton campaign, then in the early stages of its effort to portray their Republican rival as a Russian conspirator, seized on the news as evidence of Trump’s “troubling connections” to “pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine.”

    The alleged ledger was first obtained by Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko, who had claimed that he had received it anonymously by mail. Yet Leshchenko was not an impartial source: He made no effort to hide his efforts to help elect Clinton. “A Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times. For him, “it was important to show … that [Trump] is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world.” Accordingly, he added, most of Ukraine’s politicians were “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”

    Manafort, who would be convicted of unrelated tax and other financial crimes in 2018, denied the allegation. The ledger was handwritten and did not match the amounts that Manafort was paid in electronic wire transfers. Moreover, the ledger was said to have been stored at Yanukovych’s party headquarters, yet that building was burned in a 2014 riot by Maidan activists.

    Telizhenko agrees with Manafort that the ledger was a fabrication. “I think the ledger was just made up because nobody saw it, and nobody got the official documents themselves. From my understanding it was all a toss-up, a made-up story, just because they could not find any dirt on the Trump campaign.”

    But with the U.S. media starting to amplify the Clinton campaign’s Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, a wary Trump demanded Manafort’s resignation. “The easiest way for Trump to sidestep the whole Ukraine story is for Manafort not to be there,” Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump campaign adviser, explained.

    The 2016 Russian Hacking Claim

    The release of the Manafort ledger and cooperation with the Democratic National Committee was not the end of Ukraine’s 2016 election interference.

    A recent account in the New York Times revealed that Ukrainian intelligence played a vital role in generating CIA allegations that would become a foundation of the Russiagate hoax – that Russia stole Democratic Party emails and released them via WikiLeaks in a bid to help elect Trump. Once again, CIA chief Brennan played a critical role.

    In the Times’ telling, some Obama officials wanted to shut down the CIA’s work in Ukraine after a botched August 2016 Ukrainian intelligence operation in Crimea turned deadly. But Brennan “persuaded them that doing so would be self-defeating, given the relationship was starting to produce intelligence on the Russians as the C.I.A. was investigating Russian election meddling.” This “relationship” between Brennan and his Ukrainian counterparts proved to be pivotal. According to the Times, Ukrainian military intelligence – which the CIA closely managed – claimed to have duped a Russian officer into “into providing information that allowed the C.I.A. to connect Russia’s government to the so-called Fancy Bear hacking group.”

    “Fancy Bear” is one of two alleged Russian cyber espionage groups that the FBI has accused of carrying out the 2016 DNC email theft. Yet this allegation has a direct tie not just to Ukraine, but to the Clinton campaign. The name “Fancy Bear” was coined by CrowdStrike, a private firm working directly for Clinton’s attorney, Michael Sussmann. As RealClearInvestigations has previously reported, CrowdStrike first accused Russia of hacking the DNC, and the FBI relied on the firm for evidence. Years after publicly accusing Russia of the theft, CrowdStrike executive Shawn Henry was forced to admit in sworn congressional testimony that the firm “did not have concrete evidence” that Russian hackers took data from the DNC servers.

    CrowdStrike’s admission about the evidentiary hole in the Russian hacking allegation, along with the newly disclosed Ukrainian intelligence role in generating it, were both kept under wraps throughout the entirety of Special Counsel Robert Muller’s probe into alleged Russian interference. But when Trump sought answers on both matters, he once again found himself the target of an investigation.

    In late September 2019, weeks after Mueller’s halting congressional testimony – which left Trump foes dissatisfied over his failure to find insufficient evidence of a Russian conspiracy – House Democrats kicked off an effort to impeach Trump for freezing U.S. weapons shipments in an alleged scheme to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens. The impeachment was triggered by a whistleblower complaint about a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky two months prior. The “whistleblower” was later identified by RealClearInvestigations as Eric Ciaramella, an intelligence official who had served as Ukraine adviser to then-Vice President Biden when he demanded Shokin’s firing and to the Obama administration’s other key point person for Kyiv, Victoria Nuland.

    Yet Trump’s infamous July 2019 phone call with Zelensky was not primarily focused on the Bidens. Instead, according to the transcript, Trump asked Zelensky to do him “a favor” and cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into the origins of Russiagate, which, he asserted, had Ukrainian links. Trump specifically invoked CrowdStrike, the Clinton campaign contractor that had generated the allegation that Russia had hacked the Democratic Party emails. CrowdStrike’s allegation of Russian interference, Trump told Zelensky, had somehow “started with Ukraine.”

    More than four years after the call, and eight years after the 2016 campaign, the New York Times’ recent revelation that the CIA relied on Ukrainian intelligence operatives to identify alleged Russian hackers adds new context to Trump’s request for Zelensky’s help. Asked about the Times’ disclosure, a source familiar with Trump’s thinking confirmed to RCI that the president was indeed referring to a Ukrainian role in the Russian hacking allegations that consumed his presidency. “That’s why they impeached him,” the source said. “They didn’t want to be exposed.”

    Trump’s First Impeachment

    The first impeachment of Donald Trump once again inserted Ukraine into the highest levels of U.S. politics. But the impact may have been even greater in Ukraine.

    When Democrats targeted Trump for his phone call with Zelensky, the rookie Ukrainian leader was just months into a mandate that he had won on a pledge to end the Donbas war. In his inaugural address, Zelensky promised that he was “not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings,” and even “my own position – as long as peace arrives.”

    In their lone face-to-face meeting, held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump tried to encourage Zelensky to negotiate with Russia. “I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem,” Trump said, referring to the Donbas war. “That would be a tremendous achievement.”

    But Ukraine’s powerful ultra-nationalists had other plans. Right Sector co-founder Dmytro Yarosh, commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, responded: “No, he [Zelensky] would lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk [Kyiv’s main street] – if he betrays Ukraine” by making a peace with the Russian-backed rebels.

    By impeaching Trump for pausing U.S. weaponry to Ukraine, Democrats sent a similar message. Trump, the final House impeachment report proclaimed, had “compromised the national security of the United States.” In his opening statement at Trump’s Senate trial, Rep. Adam Schiff – then seeking to rebound from the collapse of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory – declared: “The United States aids Ukraine and her people, so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

    Other powerful Washington officials, including star impeachment witness William Taylor, then serving as the chief U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, pushed Zelensky toward conflict.

    Just before the impeachment scandal erupted in Washington, Zelensky was “expressing curiosity” about the Steinmeier Formula, a German-led effort to revive the stalled Minsk process, which he “hoped might lead to a deal with the Kremlin,” Taylor later recounted to the Washington Post. But Taylor disagreed.  “No one knows what it is,” Taylor told Zelensky of the German plan. “Steinmeier doesn’t know what it is … It’s a terrible idea.”

    With both powerful Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and Washington bureaucrats opposed to ending the Donbas war, Zelensky ultimately abandoned the peace platform that he was elected on. “By early 2021,” the Post reported, citing a Zelensky ally, “Zelensky believed that negotiations wouldn’t work and that Ukraine would need to retake the Donetsk and Luhansk regions ‘either through a political or military path.’”

    The return of the Biden team to the Oval Office in January 2021 appears to have encouraged Zelensky’s confrontational path. By then, polls showed the rookie president trailing OPFL, the opposition party with the second-most seats in parliament and headed by Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian mogul close to Putin.

    The following month, Zelensky offered his response to waning public support. Three OPFL-tied television channels were taken off the air. Two weeks later, Zelensky followed up by seizing the assets of Medvedchuk’s family, including a pipeline that brought Russian oil through Ukraine. Medvedchuk was also charged with treason. 

    Zelensky’s crackdown drew harsh criticism, including from close allies. “This is an illegal mechanism that contradicts the Constitution,” Dmytro Razumkov, the speaker of the parliament and a manager of Zelensky’s presidential campaign, complained.

    Yet Zelensky won praise from the newly inaugurated Biden White House, while hailed his effort to “counter Russia’s malign influence.” 

    It turns out that the U.S. not only applauded Zelensky’s domestic crackdown, but inspired it. Zelensky’s first national security adviser, Oleksandr Danyliuk, later revealed to Time Magazine that the TV stations’ shuttering was “conceived as a welcome gift to the Biden Administration.” Targeting those stations, Danyliuk explained, “was calculated to fit in with the U.S. agenda.” And the U.S. was a happy recipient. “He turned out to be a doer,” a State Department official approvingly said of Zelensky. “He got it done.”

    Just days after receiving Zelensky’s “welcome gift” in March 2021, the Biden administration approved its first military package for Ukraine, valued at $125 million. That same month, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council approved a strategy to recover all of Crimea from Russian control, including by force. By the end of March, intense fighting resumed in the Donbas, shattering months of a relatively stable ceasefire.

    Russia offered its own reaction. Two days after its ally Medvedchuk’s assets were seized in February, Russia deployed thousands of troops to the Ukraine border, the beginning of a build-up that ultimately topped 100,000 and culminated in an invasion one year later.

    The Kremlin, Medvedchuk claimed, was acting to protect Russophile Ukrainians targeted by Zelensky’s censorship. “When they close TV channels that Russian-speaking people watched, when they persecute the party these people voted for, it touches all of the Russian-speaking population,” he said.

    Medvedchuk also warned that the more hawkish factions of the Kremlin could use the crackdown as a pretext for war. “There are hawks around Putin who want this crisis. They are ready to invade. They come to him and say, ‘Look at your Medvedchuk. Where is he now? Where is your peaceful solution? Sitting under house arrest? Should we wait until all pro-Russian forces are arrested?’ ”

    A Whistleblower Silenced
    on Alleged Biden Corruption

    Along with encouraging a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, the first Trump impeachment also promoted the highly dubious Democratic Party narrative that scrutiny of Ukrainian interference in U.S. politics was a “conspiracy theory” or “Russian disinformation.” Another star impeachment witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who leaked the Trump/Zelensky phone call to Ciaramella, testified that Telizhenko – who had blown the whistle on Ukrainian collusion with the DNC – was “not a credible individual.”

    Telizhenko was undeterred. After detailing reliable evidence of Ukrainian’s 2016 election interference to Politico, Telizhenko continued to speak out – and increasingly drew the attention of government officials who sought to undermine his claims by casting him as a Russian agent.

    Beginning in May 2019, Telizhenko cooperated with Rudy Giuliani, then acting as Trump’s personal attorney, in his effort to expose information about the Bidens’ alleged corruption in Ukraine. During Giuliani’s visits to Ukraine, Telizhenko served as an adviser and translator.

    That same year, Telizhenko testified to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as part of a probe into whether the DNC’s 2016 collusion with the Ukrainian embassy violated campaign finance laws. By contrast, multiple DNC officials refused to testify. Telizhenko then cooperated with a separate Senate probe, co-chaired by Republicans Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, on how Hunter Biden’s business dealings impacted U.S. policy in Ukraine.

    By the lead-up to the 2020 election, Telizhenko found himself the target of a concerted effort to silence him. As the Senate probed Ukraine, the FBI delivered a classified warning echoing Democrats’ talking points that Telizhenko was among the “known purveyors of Russian disinformation narratives” about the Bidens. In response, GOP Sen. Johnson dropped plans to subpoena Telizhenko. Nevertheless, Telizhenko’s communications with Obama administration officials and his former employer Blue Star Strategies were heavily featured in Johnson and Grassley’s final report on the Bidens’ conflicts of interest in Ukraine, released in September 2020.

    The U.S. government’s claims of yet another Russian-backed plot to hurt a Democratic Party presidential nominee set the stage for another highly consequential act of election interference. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published the first in a series of stories detailing how Hunter Biden had traded on his family name to secure lucrative business abroad, including in Ukraine. The Post’s reporting, based on the contents of a laptop Hunter’s had apparently abandoned in a repair shop, also raised questions about Joe Biden’s denials of involvement in his son’s business dealings.

    The Hunter Biden laptop emails pointed to the very kind of influence-peddling that the Biden campaign and Democrats routinely accused Trump of. But rather than allow voters to read the reporting and judge for themselves, the Post’s journalism was subjected to a smear campaign and a censorship campaign unparalleled in modern American history. In a statement, a group of more than 50 former intelligence officials – including John Brennan, the former CIA chief – declared that the Hunter Biden laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter prevented the story from being shared on their social media networks.

    The FBI lent credence to the intelligence veterans’ false claim by launching a probe into whether the laptop contents were part of a “Russian disinformation” campaign aiming to hurt Biden. The bureau initiated this effort despite having been in possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which it had verified as genuine, for almost a year. To buttress innuendo that the laptop was a Russian plot, a CNN report suspiciously noted that Telizhenko had posted an image on social media featuring Trump holding up an edition of the New York Post’s laptop story.

    In January 2021, shortly before Biden took office, the U.S. Treasury Department followed suit by imposing sanctions on Telizhenko for allegedly “having directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign influence in a United States election.”

    Treasury, however, did not release any evidence to support its claims. Two months later, the department issued a similar statement in announcing sanctions on former Manafort aide Konstantin Kilimnik, whom it accused of being a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf.” Treasury’s actions followed a bipartisan Senate Intelligence report that also accused Kilimnik of being a Russian spy. As RealClearInvestigations has previously reported, neither the Treasury Department or Senate panel provided any evidence to support their allegations about Kilimnik, which were called into question by countervailing information that RCI brought to light. Just like Telizhenko, Kilimnik had extensive contacts with the Obama administration, whose State Department treated him as a trusted source.

    The U.S. government’s endorsement of Democratic claims about Telizhenko had a direct impact on the FEC investigation into DNC-Ukrainian collusion, in which he had testified. In August 2019, the FEC initially sided with Telizhenko and informed Alexandra Chalupa – the DNC operative whom he outed for targeting Paul Manafort – that she plausibly violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by having “the Ukrainian Embassy… [perform] opposition research on the Trump campaign at no charge to the DNC.” The FEC also noted that the DNC “does not directly deny that Chalupa obtained assistance from the Ukrainians nor that she passed on the Ukrainian Embassy’s research to DNC officials.”

    But when the Treasury Department sanctioned Telizhenko in January 2021, the FEC suddenly reversed course. As RealClearInvestigations has previously reported, the FEC closed the case against the DNC without punitive action. Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub even dismissed allegations of Ukrainian-DNC collusion as “Russian disinformation.” As evidence, she pointed to media reports about Telizhenko and the recent Treasury sanctions against him.

    Yet Telizhenko’s detractors have been unable to adduce any concrete evidence tying him to Russia. A January 2021 intelligence community report, declassified two months later, accused Russia of waging “influence operations against the 2020 US presidential election” on behalf of Trump. It made no mention of Telizhenko. The Democratic-led claims of Telizhenko’s supposed Russian ties are additionally undermined by his extensive contact with Obama-Biden administration officials, as journalist John Solomon reported in September 2020.

    Telizhenko says he has “no connection at all” to the Russian government or any effort to amplify its messaging. “I’m ready,” he says. “Let the Treasury Department publish what they have on me, and I’m ready to go against them.  Let them show the public what they have.  They have nothing … I am ready to talk about the truth.  They are not.”

    Epilogue

    Just as Telizhenko has been effectively silenced in the U.S. establishment, so has the Ukrainian meddling that he helped expose. Capturing the prevailing media narrative, the Washington Post recently claimed that Trump has “falsely blamed Ukraine for trying to help Democratic rival Hillary Clinton,” which, the Post added, is “a smear spread by Russian spy services.” This narrative ignores a voluminous record that includes Ukrainian officials admitting to helping Clinton.

    As the Biden administration successfully pressured Congress to approve its $61 billion funding request for Ukraine, holdout Republicans were similarly accused of parroting the Kremlin. Shortly before the vote, two influential Republican committee chairmen, Reps. Mike Turner of Ohio and Mike McCaul of Texas, claimed that unnamed members of their caucus were repeating Russian propaganda. Zelensky also asserted that Russia was manipulating U.S. opponents of continued war funding: “When we talk about the Congress — do you notice how [the Russians] work with society in the United States?”

    Now that Biden has signed that newly authorized funding into law, the president and his senior aides have been handed the means to extend a proxy war that they launched a decade ago and that continues to ravage Ukraine. In yet another case of Ukraine playing a significant role in domestic U.S. politics, Biden has also secured a boost to his bid for reelection. As the New York Times recently observed: “The resumption of large-scale military aid from the United States all but ensures that the war will be unfinished in Ukraine when Americans go to the polls in November.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/01/2024 – 02:00

  • US, Philippines Working On Intel Sharing Deal Amid Clashes With Chinese Vessels
    US, Philippines Working On Intel Sharing Deal Amid Clashes With Chinese Vessels

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The US and the Philippines are working on a new intelligence-sharing deal as tensions are soaring between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea.

    The Defense Post reported that US and Philippine officials discussed the potential agreement, known as the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), during talks held in Washington last week.

    Illustrative: Armed Forces of the Philippines via AP

    In a joint statement, the two nations said they wanted to conclude the GSOMIA by the end of 2024. The agreement would formalize intelligence sharing between the two militaries and create protocols for top-secret information.

    The US and the Philippines are currently conducting the Balikatan exercise, a major military drill the two nations hold annually. This year’s iteration is being billed as the most “expansive” yet and includes exercises in Luzon, a northern Philippine province that faces Taiwan, and Palawan, a province on the South China Sea.

    The South China Sea has become a potential flashpoint for a war between the US and China as Washington has committed to intervening if Philippine vessels come under attack in the waters.

    Chinese and Philippine boats often have tense encounters near disputed rocks and reefs, which sometimes end in collision.

    The US has been increasing its military presence in the South China Sea and is encouraging its allies, including Japan and Australia, to do the same. Alliance building in the region is a major aspect of the US military buildup that’s being done to prepare for a future war with China.

    The latest clash among rival coast guard patrols happened Tuesday…

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    In the joint statement released last week, the US and the Philippines committed to “expanding multilateral cooperation with likeminded countries, including through maritime cooperative activities, bilateral and multilateral exercises, and security cooperation coordination.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/01/2024 – 00:00

  • Senate Passes Ban Of Russian Uranium Imports, Risking Market "Havoc" And Soaring Prices
    Senate Passes Ban Of Russian Uranium Imports, Risking Market “Havoc” And Soaring Prices

    With shares of CCJ tumbling earlier today after the company reported soggy Q1 earnings, despite its recent initiating coverage report by an enthusiastic Goldman Sachs which sees the Uranium company at the forefront of the “Next AI trade” and slapped it with a $55 price target (as we reported previously), the uranium trade suddenly found itself in need of a miracle.

    It got that after hours, when the Senate voted late on Tuesday to approve legislation banning the import of enriched uranium from Russia – the same Russia which supplies 25% of the uranium used by the 90 US commercial nuclear reactors – and sending the measure to the White House which has said it supports efforts to block the Kremlin’s shipments of the reactor fuel and is expected to sign the deal, guaranteeing that uranium prices will soar.

    A truck carries containers with low-enriched uranium to be used as fuel for nuclear reactors, at a port in St. Petersburg, Russia

    The Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, approved by unanimous consent and which must be sign by Biden before becoming law –  would bar US imports 90 days after enactment while allowing temporary waivers until January 2028.

    Some context for what this ban would mean for the US: Russia provided almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel America’s fleet of more than 90 commercial reactors, making it the No. 1 foreign supplier, according to US Energy Department data. Those sales provide an estimated $1 billion a year to Russia, but replacing that supply could be a challenge and risks raising the costs of enriched uranium by about 20%.

    The White House had called for a “long-term ban” on Russian imports, which is needed to unlock some $2.7 billion to stand up a domestic uranium industry made available by Congress earlier this year, contingent on there being limits on the import of Russian uranium in place.

    “This is a national security priority as dependence on Russian sources of uranium creates risk to the US economy and the civil nuclear industry that has been further strained by Russia’s war in Ukraine,” the White House said earlier in a fact sheet. “Without action, Russia will continue its hold on the global uranium market to the detriment of US allies and partners.”

    The House bill was approved by voice vote in December amid growing congressional support to cut off Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. The US has banned imports of Russian oil and worked with Group of Seven allies to impose a price cap on seaborne exports of crude and petroleum products.

    To be sure, there are loopholes: the legislation, which expires at the end of 2040, permits the Department of Energy to issue waivers authorizing the entire volume of Russian uranium imports allowed under export limits set in an anti-dumping agreement between the Department of Commerce and Russia through 2027.

    Without those waivers, an approximate 20% jump is possible from the current enrichment spot price of $165 per separative work unit to a record high of as much as $200 per SWU, according to Jonathan Hinze, president of nuclear fuel market research firm UxC. Enriched uranium is measured in separative work units, or SWU, which account for the volume and enrichment density of the radioactive metal.

    “But if there is an immediate ban it could be even more extreme,” Hinze said. “There are very limited supplies available.”

    Still, since the government is now intimately involved in every aspect of the uranium procurement, it is virtually guaranteed that prices will soar, which is why CCJ stock recouped almost all of its losses after hours.

    And while the Biden admin’s decision may be mostly posturing, it’s possible Russia will respond with a unilateral export ban if the US bars imports. Last December, Tenex, a Russian state-owned uranium company, warned American customers that the Kremlin may preemptively bar exports of its nuclear fuel to the US if lawmakers in Washington pass legislation prohibiting imports starting in 2028.

    Tenex’s US subsidiary told electric companies including Constellation Energy Corp., Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy to prepare for such an outcome.

    “Tenex completely refutes as inaccurate the information regarding the alleged ‘warnings’ of a potential ‘pre-emptive’ ban on enriched uranium supplies to the United States,” Rosatom’s press office said in an emailed statement.

    As Bloomberg reported at the time, “a move to bar exports would risk wreaking havoc in uranium markets, causing prices to spike for the nuclear reactor fuel that may be harder for smaller utilities to absorb.”

    An import ban will take some time to affect operators of US nuclear power plants. Reactors are typically refueled every 18 months to 24 months, and fuel purchases are negotiated long in advance. That means most but not all utilities have already lined up enough uranium to keep their reactors running for at least the next few years. Still, negotiations for subsequent commodity procurement take place all the time, and while there is no immediate risk of scarcity, once the 2026 refueling negotiations take place, watch as Uranium stocks explode to new all time high.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 23:40

  • NYPD Raids Columbia, Protesters Arrested
    NYPD Raids Columbia, Protesters Arrested

    Update (2335ET):

    The NYPD stormed Columbia University Tuesday evening at around 9pm local time, where they began arresting students occupying Hamilton Hall and cleared a nearby protest encampment on the college’s lawn.

    Around 50 students were arrested and moved out of Hamilton Hall after activists took it over nearly 24 hours earlier amid two weeks of campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. 

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    While early reports suggested the use of tear gas, NYPD Assistant Commissioner of Public Information, Carlos Nieve, denied it – telling Axios, “The NYPD does not use tear gas.”

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    Columbia officials said that the hall was “occupied, vandalised and blockaded,” and that “we were left with no choice.”

    Some of the kids are being a tad dramatic…

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    *  *  *

    Dozens of Columbia University students broke into Hamilton Hall on the New York campus early Tuesday and barricaded themselves inside, hours after the school began suspending students who violated a deadline to disperse from a pro-Palestinian encampment.

    Demonstrators supporting Palestinians in Gaza barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements, in New York on April 30, 2024. (Alex Kent/Getty Images)

    “The safety of every single member of this community is paramount,” said Ben Chang, vice president for communications at Columbia University, in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, adding “In light of the protest activity, we have asked members of the University community who can avoid coming to the Morningside campus to do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy.”

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    As the Epoch Times‘ Katabella Roberts notes further;  According to The New York Times, the students began occupying the hall at around 12:35 a.m.

    The protesters linked arms and blocked off the main entrance to the building at the Ivy League institution after previously marching around campus to chants of “free Palestine,” according to the publication.

    A statement shared on the social media platform Instagram by student groups said the protesters had “taken matters into their own hands,” and would remain in the building until the university “divests from death.” Protesters have been urging the university to pause its investments in companies that, they claim, are profiting from Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

    The statement included video footage that appeared to show the students carrying metal barricades into Hamilton Hall as other students cheered them on.

    “This escalation is in line with the historical student movements of 1968, 1985, and 1996 which Columbia repressed then and celebrates now,” the statement read. “This action will force the university to confront the blood on its hands.”

    In the statement, the student group further accused the university of having been “complicit” in “Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza strip” for the past seven months.
    “The students are on the right side of history,” the statement continued. “We know that the university will remember them as anti-apartheid, anti-genocide activists with moral clarity.”

    Protesters Make Demands

    According to Politico, protesters hung a sign reading “intifada,” which is Arabic for uprising, from the front of the building.

    A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Politico that law enforcement officers were outside the university campus as of Tuesday; however, they declined to elaborate further on exactly how many officers were on site or whether they had authorization to enter the school grounds.

    The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson at Columbia University and the New York Police Department for further comment.

    The takeover of Hamilton Hall occurred just hours after the university confirmed that it had begun suspending some students. The pro-Palestinian students failed to disband before Monday’s 2 p.m. deadline.

    Students/protestors lock arms to guard potential authorities against reaching fellow protestors who barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements, in New York on April 30, 2024. (Alex Kent/Getty Images)

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    Students have occupied the lawn in the middle of campus—in which graduation ceremonies are scheduled to take place for roughly 15,000 students on May 15—for nearly two weeks while calling on the university to disclose and divest from any of its financial ties to Israel.

    They are also calling for an end to alleged “land grabs” in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City and Palestine, no more policing on the university campus, and no academic ties with Israeli universities.

    However, negotiations between university officials and student protest leaders broke down earlier in the day when the university rejected their demands, prompting officials to issue the 2 p.m. deadline.
    In a statement, Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, said that ultimately, the university will not divest from Israel, adding that the school is committed to maintaining its core principles and shared values, which include ensuring no students suffer from harassment and discrimination and no anti-Semitic language is used.

    Columbia University students protest the Israel-Gaza conflict at Columbia University in New York City, on April 27, 2024. (Emel Akan/The Epoch Times)

    School, Students Fail to Reach Agreement

    “Both sides in these discussions put forward robust and thoughtful offers and worked in good faith to reach common ground,” Ms. Shafik said. “We thank them all for their diligent work, long hours, and careful effort and wish they had reached a different outcome.”

    While the University will not divest from Israel, it has offered to “develop an expedited timeline for review of new proposals from the students by the Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers divestment matters,” Ms. Shafik noted.

    “The University also offered to publish a process for students to access a list of Columbia’s direct investment holdings, and to increase the frequency of updates to that list of holdings,” she added.

    Ben Chang, vice president for communications at Columbia University, confirmed the suspensions had begun in a press conference late Monday, USA Today reports.

    He added that students had been notified in advance that they would face disciplinary action, including suspension if they did not vacate the encampment by 2 p.m. ET and sign a form committing to abide by student politics until either June 30, 2025, or until their graduation, whichever came first.

    The site of the protests has created an unwelcoming environment for many Jewish students and faculty members, he said. It has also been a source of loud noise.

    “We’ve been suspending students as part of this next phase of our efforts to ensure safety on campus,” Mr. Chang said.

    Mr. Chang did not provide further details regarding how many students from Columbia and its affiliate Barnard College have been disciplined. However, he confirmed that those suspended would not be able to finish the semester or graduate, Axios reports.

    They will also be banned from entering any campus housing or academic buildings, he added.

    Juliette Fairley contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 23:34

  • Biden Considering Bringing Some Refugees From Gaza To The US
    Biden Considering Bringing Some Refugees From Gaza To The US

    With scenes like this spreading across the country, as standoffs at various liberal campuses turn increasingly more violent…

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    … the Biden administration appears to have gotten its Soros marching orders to pour gasoline into the fire, with CBS reporting that the White House is considering bringing “certain Palestinians” to the U.S. as refugees, a move that would offer a permanent safe haven to some of those fleeing war-torn Gaza, and would also drastically escalate what has already been the 2024 equivalent of the 2020 BLM summer of violence, only this time with spoiled, rich Marxist kids pretending they live in the 1960s and their actions can stop the war in Vietnam Middle East.

    According to the report, in recent weeks senior officials across several federal U.S. agencies have discussed the practicality of different options to resettle Palestinians from Gaza who have immediate family members who are American citizens or permanent residents.

    One of those proposals involves using the decades-old United States Refugee Admissions Program to welcome Palestinians with U.S. ties who have managed to escape Gaza and enter neighboring Egypt, according to the inter-agency planning documents.

    Top U.S. officials have also discussed getting additional Palestinians out of Gaza and processing them as refugees if they have American relatives, the documents show. The plans would require coordination with Egypt, which has so far refused to welcome large numbers of people from Gaza.

    Those who pass a series of eligibility, medical and security screenings would qualify to fly to the U.S. with refugee status, which offers beneficiaries permanent residency, resettlement benefits like housing assistance and a path to American citizenship.

    While the eligible population is expected to be relatively small, the plans being discussed by U.S. officials could offer a lifeline to some Palestinians fleeing the Israel-Hamas war, which local public health authorities say has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza.

    Needless to say, this comes from the same admin which a few days ago decided against a ban of menthol cigarettes over fears it would alienate the black vote, and today targeted the pot-smoking voters with a report the DEA was preparing to reclassify marijuana to a less dangerous drug category. The same admin which in the past 2 years has welcomed over 20 million illegals with the hope that they will illegally vote for Biden and the Democrats, and thus enshrine the current kleptofascist regime in perpetuity. So it is hardly a surprise that Biden, desperate to avoid losing the vote of the ultra-left progressive wing of the Democrat party which just happens to sympathize with Hamas, will pander to this group whose votes may end up deciding the November election.

    Naturally, news of the proposal spread like wildfire with prominent republicans slamming the idea…

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    … although as with most things republicans oppose, or at least pretend to oppose, it is guaranteed that Biden will once again get his way, even though – as so many have noted – the US is on the verge of accepting Palestinians from Gaza when not a single Arab nation is doing so.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 23:20

  • Meet The Lawyers Taking Big Government To The Supreme Court… And Winning
    Meet The Lawyers Taking Big Government To The Supreme Court… And Winning

    Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As the administrative state implements more regulations on Americans, a team of legal veterans has come together to fight the expansion of unelected government agency power.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock, Getty Images)

    Sometimes, they even win.

    The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), which consists of a team of 27 lawyers and support staff, including former judges, had four of the cases they litigated go before the Supreme Court in 2023. One case was decided in their favor, the remaining three are pending.

    Founded by Columbia Law professor Philip Hamburger six years ago, the NCLA targets cases where they believe federal agencies have blatantly overstepped their authority or violated civil liberties..

    “Normally, administrative power is understood as a separation of powers question, but it’s also a civil liberties problem because it dilutes our voting rights,” Mr. Hamburger told The Epoch Times. “We all get to vote, but the ability to make legislation is no longer in the hands of the people we elect.”

    The U.S. Constitution vests Congress with law-making authority. However, government agencies are not only making laws today, he said, they also enforce those laws, then act as judge and jury over alleged violations. Taking a historical view on this issue, Mr. Hamburger argues that such administrative “absolutism” is not a new phenomenon, but merely a modern expression of absolute power once wielded by medieval kings.

    The group’s clients include Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines, plaintiffs in the case of Murthy v. Missouri, which is currently before the Supreme Court. This case involves alleged violations of the doctors’ First Amendment rights by the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Surgeon General.

    “It deprives us of the right to a jury; it deprives us of ordinary burdens of proof; it deprives us of having an unbiased judge,” he said. “We have ALJs and commissioners instead.”

    ALJ’s are “executive judges for official and unofficial hearings of administrative disputes in the federal government,” according to a Cornell Law School definition.

    “Administrative law judges are considered part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch, and ALJs are appointed by the heads of the executive agencies.”

    In this way, Mr. Hamburger said, the administrative state has not only accumulated powers explicitly vested in other branches of government; it has consolidated within itself the power of all three branches.

    Supreme Court Taking Notice

    The NCLA’s actions have been resonating in America’s court system, particularly the Supreme Court.

    A courtroom at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 17, 2021. (Sean Krajacic – Pool/Getty Images)

    “In 2018, we started filing briefs at the Supreme Court and almost immediately we were having an effect on the discussions of administrative power,” Peggy Little, senior counsel at the NCLA, told The Epoch Times.

    In one case, SEC v. Cochran, which Ms. Little led, appellate courts took the side of the SEC. This case challenged the lifetime tenure of ALJs, who act as judges for federal agencies.

    “We battled that for five years, and we had six circuit courts of appeals against us,” she said. “We got to the Supreme Court and we won unanimously.”

    Ms. Little said she is optimistic that the tide of expanding agency power can be turned back.

    “I think we are in a very important time for rethinking how our government should operate,” Ms. Little said, “and restoring the separation of powers and guardrails on agency power, that limit it to what Congress has actually empowered the agency to do, not what the agency itself thinks would be a good idea.”

    Mr. Hamburger said the NCLA has several advantages when arguing their cases.

    “We have the truth on our side, and I think the justices understand that,” he said. “Second, we take the Constitution seriously, while many agencies view it as a minor impediment to what they want to do in regulation.”

    In addition, “the administrative state has changed,” he said..

    “It isn’t like the 1930s where it was just an addition to the law; it is now the primary mode of controlling us,” he said. “It may eventually unravel our republic.”

    The End of ‘Chevron Deference’?

    One of the pivotal court decisions behind the expansion of the administrative state was the 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

    The Supreme Court decision in that case gave broad discretion to federal agencies to interpret for themselves how much authority Congress had given them. This led to a concept known as “Chevron deference,” where courts tended to defer to agencies regarding the scope of their power.

    There appeared to be a reversal of this doctrine with the 2022 Supreme Court Decision in West Virginia v. EPA, in which the court ruled that “the Government must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ to regulate.” This case involved the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempt to regulate CO2 emissions by power generators, effectively compelling them to shift from coal and gas to so-called renewables, like wind and solar energy.

    But while this ruling may have slowed the expansion of the administrative state, it has by no means halted it. On April 25, the EPA set down a new regime for CO2 emissions, mandating that new gas and existing coal plants cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2032.

    The chimney stacks of the Capitol Power Plant, a natural gas and coal burning power plant that provides steam and chilled water for heating and cooling of the congressional buildings, sits near the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 22, 2018.

    While many U.S. presidents have pushed for greater powers for the executive branch, the Biden administration has been particularly aggressive. This includes a 2021 edict from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requiring employees of large companies to take the COVID-19 vaccine; a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandate requiring all listed companies to submit audited reports on greenhouse gas emissions; EPA mandates designed to phase out coal plants and gas-fired cars and trucks; new restrictions on consumer appliances from the Department of Energy; and several executive orders to transfer student loan debt to taxpayers.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 23:00

  • "House Destocking": China Politburo Hints New PLan To Fix BIggest Drag On The Economy
    “House Destocking”: China Politburo Hints New PLan To Fix BIggest Drag On The Economy

    China’s Politburo meeting on economic policy took place today, and as SocGen’s Wei Yao reports, the most important takeaway from the meeting is that policymakers are shifting their attention to housing destocking, as they pledged to ‘study measures’.

    As usual about 3 years behind the curve, Beijing policymakers – who burst China’s housing bubble sparking unprecedented wealth destruction across the country once the world’s largest asset class (as the chart from Goldman shows)…

    … went into freefall 3 years ago, have been alarmed by the drop in housing sales and home prices in recent months, and finally sense the urgency to provide more measures to avoid a sustained downturn, which can be harmful for household wealth and confidence, not to mention can lead to sporadic revolutions which overthrow the ruling “communist” kleptocracy made up of billionaire oligarchs.

    According to the SocGen strategist, “this change of attitude is important and with sufficient measures could help put a floor on housing. This may be THE catalyst to extend the recovery in confidence and equity markets, at least cyclically.“

    Below we excerpt several more key points from the SocGen report:

    Growth has improved but it’s not the time to reduce support. Policymakers acknowledged that the economy has improved, but demand remains insufficient and external uncertainty has risen notably. That is probably related to recent complaints from various countries on China’s overcapacities and the upcoming US election. Hence, economic policies need to avoid tightening too quickly. So we shouldn’t be concerned that policies will be less accommodative even with the improvement in 1Q GDP.

    The focus is on faster implementation of announced policies. Policymakers pledge to frontload and effectively implement macro policies that have been announced. That is in line with our expectations that no fresh stimulus will be added. These involve speeding up the utilisation of special CGBs and special LGBs, flexibly using interest rates and RRR cuts to lower financing costs, as well implementing the replacement of consumer goods and equipment. Therefore, we should see a continued recovery in infrastructure investments, while the strength of replacement policies is more uncertain as it depends on local policies. We also expect the PBoC to cut the the RRR and the 5y LPR further.

    Government to help on housing destocking? Beside countercyclical policies, the most important change is on the property sector. Policymakers pledge to study policies to support housing destocking, with no details announced. This is mentioned by policymakers for the first time, and follows more easing measures at a local level recently (e.g. relaxing purchase restrictions in Chengdu and promoting new home sales by tasking local SOEs to purchase existing homes from potential buyers). While it remains to be seen how the policies will be funded with local governments under fiscal pressure, this change of attitude is important, and can help reduce the chance of a sustained decline in house prices.

    The statement also mentioned other key policy goals, such as resolving local government debt risks (good luck). The government is focusing on reducing debt in high risk provinces, but it also stresses on growth stability, which means it will not push too hard since all growth in China is debt-funded.

    It is also interesting to note that the tasks to support low-income groups and to build a social safety net are mentioned, but without concrete details. Other tasks include promoting new productivity, resolving smaller banks’ risks, promoting capital market development and implementing measures to reach peak carbon.

    Separately, it was also announced that the Third Plenum, which had been delayed, will take place in July and will discuss reform directions to promote “modernization of the economy.” The confirmation of the date in itself is likely to be viewed as a positive sign, even though we do not have high expectations from the plenum yet.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 22:40

  • The World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty Ignores Covid Policy Mistakes
    The World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty Ignores Covid Policy Mistakes

    Authroed by Kevin Bardosh & Jay Bhattarcharya via RealClearPolicy,

    The World Health Organization is urging the U.S. and 193 other governments to commit next month to a new global treaty to prevent and manage future pandemics. Current estimates suggest over $31 billion per year will be needed to fund its obligations, a cost most lower income countries cannot afford. But that isn’t the only reason to oppose it. Validating this treaty is a vote for the disastrous policies of the Covid years. Rather than taking time for deep reflection and serious reform, those pushing the pandemic treaty are set on ignoring and institutionalizing the WHO’s mistakes.

    From the Spring of 2020, many experts warned that the panic begun in Wuhan’s unprecedented lockdown would cause wide-ranging damage—and indeed they did. School closures deprived a generation of children—especially poor children—of access to basic education. Businesses were shuttered. Vaccine and mask mandates made public health an authoritarian exercise of power devoid of science. Border quarantines promulgated the idea that the rest of the world is unclean.  

    But few experts care to seriously dissect these errors. How many schools of public health—in America or Europe—held serious debates during the Covid response, or since? Very few.

    Opposing the treaty is a signal to the WHO and global health community that they cannot whitewash these mistakes. Next time, we need to ensure a better balance between trade-offs, evidence-based policies, and democratic rights. Such a view seeks to restore the WHO’s own definition of health into pandemic response: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

    Yet the governing philosophy of the WHO emergency program is the exact opposite. Its leaders chastise the world to “move faster’ and “do more.” Bill Gates, the agency’s single largest private donor, is convinced lockdown benefits vastly outweighed their harms. He’s wrong. 

    Read through the current draft of the treaty itself and you will find a whole section dedicated to “fighting misinformation.” There is no section focused on preventing harm. Those speaking out about these dangers have been subjected to harsh censorship. Once esteemed professionals were summarily fired for describing the reality of what was happening. The authors of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration—professors at Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford—were subject to a “devastating takedown” at the hands of Dr. Fauci and top scientific bureaucrats at the National Institutes of Health and the WHO. 

    Public health came to resemble the police, and those pushing the new WHO treaty want to go further. It calls for more mandates, more vaccine passports, and more censorship—our new global health “Lockdown Doctrine.”

    Proponents of the treaty would have you believe that it is merely a tool that countries can use to guide future pandemic response efforts, that it cannot trump national sovereignty or be used to force failed policies on entire populations. But the lifeblood of international treaties is not in the dried ink. Treaties are constantly ignored. Nonetheless, they do one thing very well: they create an illusion of consensus, signaling to those with power and influence. These priorities are then filtered down into national laws and plans where they can do tremendous damage. 

    How can national governments seriously endorse an international agreement when their own domestic Covid evaluations are ongoing? The UK Covid Inquiry is set to end in 2026. Australia’s commission is ongoing. Italy and Ireland have only recently announced them. Most have none planned. 

    The rush needs to slow down. The U.S. should avoid signing until a thorough, bipartisan review of WHO’s Covid pandemic management is accomplished. Until then, a vote for a pandemic treaty is a vote against real, positive change. 

    Kevin Bardosh is Director and Head of Research at Collateral Global. Jay Battacharya is a Professor at Stanford School of Medicine.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 22:20

  • Meet The Lifelong Felon Who Killed Four Cops In North Carolina 
    Meet The Lifelong Felon Who Killed Four Cops In North Carolina 

    A neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, was transformed into a warzone on Monday afternoon when a lifelong felon, illegally owning firearms, ambushed a US Marshals Fugitive Task Force and police officers as they were serving a warrant. 

    Three US Marshals and an officer from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department were killed in the shootout. Additionally, four police officers and one Marshal were injured.

    During a Monday evening press conference, police identified lifelong felon 39-year-old Terry Clark Hughes, Jr., who was also killed in the shootout. 

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    Has leftist corporate media identified the felon? Maybe not, because it doesn’t fit the narrative. 

    CNN has not. Fox News has. 

    According to police, US Marshals attempted to serve Hughes a warrant for firearm possession. He was also wanted for two counts of felony flee to elude out of the Charlotte area. 

    Police believe there were two other shooters in the home. A 17-year-old and a woman, both of them, were taken into police custody. 

    “We have two people of interest at the police station that are being questioned right now,” Police Chief Johnny Jennings told reporters. 

    Jennings said, “And we have confirmed that the individual that was set up that we were serving the warrant on was the individual who fired the initial shots and was deceased in the front yard at the end of all of this.” 

    America needs to restore law and order, and leftist corporate media outlets must report the news fairly. Perhaps this is why their ratings are imploding, as everyday Americans begin to see through their narrative control of misinformation and disinformation.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 22:00

  • Health Canada Asked Pfizer For DNA Fragments Size In COVID Shots, Linked To 'Probability' Of Genomic 'Integration'
    Health Canada Asked Pfizer For DNA Fragments Size In COVID Shots, Linked To ‘Probability’ Of Genomic ‘Integration’

    Authored by Noé Chartier via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Canada’s drug regulator asked Pfizer to provide data on the size of DNA fragments in its COVID-19 vaccine, due to genomic integration concerns, shortly after learning the pharma giant withheld information on DNA sequences contained in its product.

    “Concerning the residual plasmid DNA in the drug substance, provide data/information characterizing […] the size distribution of the residual DNA fragments [and] residual intact circular plasmid,” says a request for clarification Health Canada issued to Pfizer on Aug. 4, 2023.

    A sign is displayed in front of Health Canada headquarters in Ottawa in a file photo. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

    The information was released as part of records obtained through an access-to-information request. It shows, in part, that a Health Canada official was keeping the department’s counterparts in the United States and Europe apprised of the department’s interactions with Pfizer, in a bid to harmonize the regulators’ approaches regarding the recently discovered DNA fragment impurities.

    “As you are aware, the fragment size is related to the probability of integration, and the WHO guidance assumes a fragment size of generally less than 200 bp,” Dr. Dean Smith, a senior scientific evaluator in Health Canada’s Vaccine Quality Division, wrote in an October 2023 email to counterparts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

    DNA plasmids are used in the manufacturing process of mRNA vaccines and residual elements are supposed to be cleaned out below a certain threshold. Pfizer said DNA in its products is below the 10ng/dose guideline established by the World Health Organization (WHO) and followed by Health Canada, according to the official records.

    This assertion has been challenged by independent scientists, who found quantities of DNA in the vaccines to be above the threshold. They have also found the DNA fragments are larger than 200 base pairs (bp).

    Virologist Dr. David Speicher, who has studied Canadian mRNA vials, told The Epoch Times the average size of fragments his study found is 214 base pairs (bp), with some as large as 3.5 kilobase (kb).

    While small fragments frequently integrate spontaneously into the genome, these mutations are stopped through either DNA repair mechanisms or cellular death, Dr. Speicher said.

    “Larger fragments are much more problematic, especially if attached to an SV40 enhancer, because they can integrate into the genome where they can get transcribed and then translated into proteins,” he added. Independent scientists like Dr. Speicher found the undisclosed SV40 enhancer in Pfizer shots, a piece of biotechnology used to drive gene expression.

    Depending on the DNA fragment size, it can produce functional or aberrant proteins, Dr. Speicher explains. “These proteins can affect cellular metabolism, an immune response, as well as an increased risk for cancer. The risk of integration and associated health problems increases with the number of shots.”

    The Florida State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo has called for a halt of mRNA shots, citing concern about these risks. Dr. Philip Buckhaults, professor of cancer genomics and director of the Cancer Genetics Lab at the University of South Carolina, has initiated a study to investigate the risks.

    Health Canada has not studied those risks, but told The Epoch Times last summer “the presence of residual plasmid DNA in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines does not change the safety assessment of these vaccines.”

    Seeking Clarifications

    Despite providing this answer to media in the summer of 2023, Health Canada scientists were privately discussing working with international partners to have Pfizer remove DNA fragments and SV40 sequences from its vaccines and they prepared several requests for clarification to the company.

    In an August 2023 email to a colleague providing information to relay to Pfizer, Health Canada senior biologist evaluator Dr. Michael Wall said his department would “continue to work with international regulatory partners to achieve harmonization regarding removal of these sequence elements from the plasmid for future strain changes.”

    Records show Health Canada was blindsided by the presence of undisclosed genetic substances in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, almost four years after the initial emergency authorization.

    After Pfizer filed its submission for the authorization of its updated Omicron XBB.1.5 shot on July 21, 2023, Health Canada sent the company several Quality Clarifax—requests for additional information if deficiencies are identified in drug submissions—with the first one dated Aug. 4, 2023.

    Regarding the residual plasmid DNA in the COVID-19 vaccines, Health Canada asked Pfizer to provide data on the size distribution of the DNA fragments and on residual intact circular plasmid.

    Pfizer said this data was “not readily available and will require time to generate,” in a response on Aug. 11, 2023. The pharma giant added that Pfizer, the drug sponsor, and BioNTech, the manufacturer, had not been previously requested to provide this data across global markets.

    Pfizer committed to provide the data by Dec. 1, but the response is not captured in the information package released under the access-to-information regime.

    In a subsequent request for information sent on Aug. 22, 2023, Health Canada noted Pfizer’s commitment to provide the information and added a request by asking Pfizer to address “whether the residual DNA plasmid is capable of replication in bacteria.”

    Virologist Dr. Speicher, commenting on the agency’s request, noted that plasmids need to be circular to be replicated in a bacterial host, and that fragments can’t do so.

    “So if they were intact circular plasmids and injected, they could be taken up by our host bacteria, especially in the gut,” he said. “If the plasmid could propagate in bacteria into our body it could lead to a bacterial spike factory and drive kanamycin/neomycin resistance.”

    “This would cause an increase in antibiotic resistance of the bacteria including pathogens and increase spike production, and we know that spike is toxic on so many levels,” he said.

    Dr. Speicher added that Pfizer should have tested for this before putting its products to market. The fact that it did not have the data indicates it did not test for it, he said.

    SV40 Enhancer

    The request for information that Health Canada sent to Pfizer mainly focused on the presence of the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) enhancer-promoter in the Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

    Health Canada and other regulators like the FDA and EMA were not aware of its presence, since Pfizer “chose not to” disclose it, according to a separate email from Health Canada scientist Dr. Smith.

    Many sections of the Clarifax are redacted under the Access to Information Act, with reasons such as content containing proprietary information or which could lead to a material gain or loss for a third party, in this case Pfizer and BioNTech.

    The information disclosed shows that Health Canada challenged Pfizer on SV40 and asked for a “justification for the SV40 regulatory elements in the plasmid.”

    Pfizer responded that the “SV40 regulatory region sequences [redacted] in the submission since this [redacted] is relevant neither for plasmid production in E. coli nor for production of mRNA.”

    This is the position that has been adopted by Health Canada. In response to questions by the media and parliamentarians, the regulator has stated the SV40 enhancer-promoter is “inactive” and has “no functional role.”

    But Pfizer and Health Canada have not addressed why the SV40 enhancer-promoter is present in the vaccine if it is not used in the production of mRNA and has no functional role. Genomics expert Kevin McKernan has questioned this when faced with responses from regulators.

    Mr. McKernan made the initial DNA and SV40 fragments discovery and published his study in April 2023. His pre-print paper on the matter appears twice in the Health Canada information package released via access-to-information.

    Mr. McKernan has pointed out that regulators could have discovered the SV40 sequences themselves had they run the plasmid through a computer annotation tool.

    “If you ever used plasmid annotation tools, they annotate everything on the map and they don’t leave anything unannotated,” he told the International Covid Summit in February. 

    He provided his assessment to the summit of why Pfizer went this route. “They’re hiding the fact that this tool [SV40 enhancer] is used as a gene therapy tool and would classify their system as a gene therapy,” he said. “Because it’s a nuclear targeting sequence it moves DNA directly to the nucleus within hours in all cell lines.”

    The American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) classifies the mRNA injections as gene therapy, whereas Health Canada does not.

    “The mRNA from the vaccines does not enter the cell nucleus or interact with the DNA at all, so it does not constitute gene therapy,” said Health Canada in a response to a parliamentarian on Dec. 13. The ASGCT also says the mRNA doesn’t alter the “recipient’s generic material” and is only present in the body “transiently.” However, because the vaccine introduces “new genetic material into cells for a short period of time to induce antibodies,” the American organization considers it gene therapy.

    Pfizer said in a response to the Aug. 4 Health Canada request for information that the “SV40 promotor/enhancer DNA does not contain known oncogenes, infectious agents, or regions that could lead to functional transcripts, the DNA does not present any specific safety concerns.”

    Health Canada also said in a document tabled in Parliament in March that “any claims the presence of the SV40 promoter enhancer sequence is linked to an increased risk of cancer are unfounded.” Health Canada itself has not studied the risks.

    ‘Drive Gene Expression’

    A senior Health Canada’s scientist’s view on the role of SV40 fragments is captured in an Oct. 26 email written in response to questions from Chief Medical Officer Dr. Supriya Sharma.

    Dr. Tong Wu of Health Canada’s Vaccine Quality Division responded that the “SV40 promoter enhancer is widely used to drive gene expression in mammalian cells.” He added, however, that it “serves no purpose in the manufacturing of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.”

    Dr. Wu said it was unexpected to find the sequence in the finished product, since “Pfizer did not identify the presence of SV40 promoter enhancer on the plasmid template used to produce mRNA, in their original filing.”

    Dr. Wu also said that “to the best of our knowledge,” no other vaccine approved in Canada contains the SV40 sequence.

    Pfizer was contacted for comment, but the company hasn’t responded to inquiries.

    Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 21:40

  • Employers Must Honor Preferred Pronouns, Bathrooms For Employees Identifying As Transgender: Feds
    Employers Must Honor Preferred Pronouns, Bathrooms For Employees Identifying As Transgender: Feds

    Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Biden administration has rolled out a set of new guidelines, under which an employer would be deemed liable for harassment for referring to a worker by an unwanted pronoun or requiring the worker to use a restroom that aligns with his or her biological sex.

    Signage identifies the men’s and women’s restrooms at a business in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Jan. 13, 2023. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

    The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published the new workplace harassment guidelines on Monday after approving them in a party-line 3–2 vote on Friday. The new document enshrines gender identity as a category protected against harassment, just like sex, race, religion, or disability.

    “Harassing conduct based on sexual orientation or gender identity includes … repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering) or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity,” the new guidelines state.

    Joining Chairwoman Charlotte Burrows to vote in favor of the updated harassment guidance were two other Democrat commissioners, Jocelyn Samuels and Kalpana Kotagal. The two Republican members, Keith Sonderling and Andrea Lucas, voted against the changes.

    “Women’s sex-based rights in the workplace are under attack—and from the EEOC, the very federal agency charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination at work,” Ms. Lucas said in a statement on Monday.

    “The commission’s guidance effectively eliminates single-sex workplace facilities and impinges on women’s rights to freedom of speech and belief,” she added, accusing her Democrat colleagues of disregarding “biological realities, sex-based privacy and safety needs of women.”

    Legal Implications

    A guideline is not legally binding in the same way as laws passed by Congress or rules issued by government agencies. The EEOC website describes guidance as “official agency policy and explains how the laws and regulations apply to specific workplace situations.”

    However, Monday’s guidance communicates the EEOC’s position on legal issues, meaning an employee could potentially refer to the new guidelines in the event of a restroom or pronoun dispute.

    “Harassment, both in-person and online, remains a serious issue in America’s workplaces,” said Ms. Burrows in a statement Monday. “The EEOC’s updated guidance on harassment is a comprehensive resource that brings together best practices for preventing and remedying harassment and clarifies recent developments in the law.”

    The new federal guidance comes about three years after the EEOC suffered a legal defeat in its attempt to create exceptions for employees identifying as LGBT from workplace policies on restrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes.

    In August 2021, a coalition of attorneys general from 20 states sued to have the LGBT exception blocked, arguing that authority over such policies “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people.”

    “The guidance purports to resolve highly controversial and localized issues such as whether employers … may maintain sex-separated showers and locker rooms, … and whether individuals may be compelled to use another person’s preferred pronouns,” the complaint read. “But the agencies have no authority to resolve those sensitive questions, let alone to do so by executive fiat without providing any opportunity for public participation.”

    The lawsuit was led by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery. He was joined by attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia.

    In July 2022, a federal judge in Tennessee ruled in favor of the coalition to enjoin the EEOC guidance from going forward. Later that year, a separate federal court in Texas vacated and set aside the proposed guidance, determining that the EEOC misinterpreted the scope of the U.S. Supreme Court landmark 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which concluded that it is unconstitutional for sexual orientation and gender identity to be considered as factors in employment decisions.

    The EEOC did not appeal those rulings.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 21:00

  • Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Caught Trafficking Fentanyl For Sinaloa Cartel
    Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Caught Trafficking Fentanyl For Sinaloa Cartel

    A former Riverside County Sheriff’s deputy, who was apprehended last year as part of an investigation into the Sinaloa cartel, has been found to have been working for “El Chapo” himself. 

    25 year old Jorge Oceguera-Rocha resigned from his position with the Sheriff after being caught with over 100 pounds of fentanyl pills and a firearm during a traffic stop in Calimesa, in September of last year, KTLA reports.

    Authorities did not specify how they discovered his alleged involvement in drug trafficking, but he was identified as a “corrupt Riverside County Correctional Deputy” mentioned in a press release about Operation Hotline Bling.

    Operation Hotline Bling “culminated last week with 15 arrests and significant drug seizures, including methamphetamine and quantities of fentanyl that potentially could produce 10 million lethal doses,” according to the DEA:

    In March 2023, the Drug Enforcement Administration Riverside District Office and the Riverside Police Department, with assistance from the United States Postal Inspection Service, initiated Operation “Hotline Bling.” During the investigation, agents seized a total of approximately 376 pounds of methamphetamine, 37.4 pounds of fentanyl, 600,000 fentanyl tablets, 1.4 kilograms of cocaine, and seven firearms. The drugs seized in this investigation have an estimated “street value” of $16 million.

    This operation targeted Sinaloa cartel activities in the Inland Empire, resulting in 15 arrests and the seizure of $16 million worth of narcotics. The Sinaloa cartel, once led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is renowned for its influence akin to that of Pablo Escobar in the 1980s and early ’90s.

    Oceguera-Rocha faces multiple local felony charges and the Sheriff’s Department confirmed his involvement in trafficking narcotics within Riverside County while off duty.

    Although federal prosecutors didn’t press charges, Riverside County officials charged him with possession and transportation of narcotics, with enhancements for the drug’s weight, and possession of a firearm in connection with narcotics.

    The initial report on the arrest noted he was being detained at the John Benoit Detention Center with a $5 million bail, justified by the drug’s weight and potential flight risk. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in jail.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 20:40

  • First Cases Of HIV Transmitted Through Cosmetic Needles Identified: CDC
    First Cases Of HIV Transmitted Through Cosmetic Needles Identified: CDC

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Multiple people contracted human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through cosmetic needles after receiving facials at an unlicensed spa in New Mexico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

    An ampule with Botox, with the European name “Vistabel,” at a cosmetic treatment center in Berlin in this Jan. 29, 2007, file photo. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

    Three women who received platelet-rich plasma (PRP) microneedling facials, also known as vampire facials, at the spa contracted HIV and an investigation pointed to the facials as the method of transmission, a new paper from CDC scientists states.

    The spa in question, the since-shuttered VIP Salon, was dubbed spa A in the paper.

    “This investigation is the first to associate HIV transmission with nonsterile cosmetic injection services. A common exposure to spa A among clients without behaviors associated with HIV acquisition helped identify a possible cluster association, and analysis of additional data suggested that HIV transmission likely occurred via receipt of PRP with microneedling facial procedures,” said the scientists, who worked with New Mexico health officials.

    The source of the contamination remains unknown, they said.

    PRP microneedling facials involve taking blood from a person and separating out PRP. Then, a microneedle makes holes in the person’s skin, and the PRP is applied to the holes.

    The procedure is said to help treat acne and have other health benefits.

    New Mexico authorities announced in 2019 that they were investigating the VIP Spa after people contracted HIV following visits to the spa. Officials were providing free testing of any people who received treatments, including the microneedling facials, at the spa.

    An inspection by authorities led to the closure of VIP Spa after the identification of unsafe practices.

    Maria de Lourdes Ramos de Ruiz, former owner of the spa, was later hit with felony charges, including practicing medicine without a license. She pleaded guilty in 2022 to five counts.

    “This is a warning to those who place profit over the health and safety of New Mexico consumers, and I remain highly concerned that these procedures are not being regulated at the state and federal level,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said at the time.

    Investigation

    New Mexico officials described two HIV cases among spa visitors previously. A wider investigation identified additional patients, scientists with the state and the CDC said in the new paper.

    Through calls, surveys, and other methods, authorities found five people with HIV, four of whom received microneedling at the spa in 2018. The fifth was in a sexual relationship with a spa client. Analysis of the patients’ blood showed that their cases were all related to the facility.

    The cases involving the man and woman in a sexual relationship were stage 3 or chronic HIV, which suggests “that their infections were likely attributed to exposures before receipt of cosmetic injection services,” according to the scientists.

    But no alternative explanations for the infections among the other three female patients were discovered.

    “The other three patients in this cluster had no known social contact with one another, and no specific mechanism for transmission among these patients was confirmed,” scientists said. “Evidence suggests that contamination from an undetermined source at the spa during spring and summer 2018 resulted in HIV-1 transmission to these three patients.”

    HIV is a virus that attacks immune systems and can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) if not treated. Symptoms include sore throat, fatigue, and ulcers in the mouth. Most people who contract the illness are gay or bisexual. While there is no cure for HIV, it can be controlled through available treatments.

    Nearly 200 other spa clients and their sexual partners were tested through 2023 as part of the investigation but none tested positive for HIV, hepatitis B, or hepatitis C, according to the paper.

    The findings highlight the importance of looking at “novel sources of HIV transmission among persons with no known HIV risk factors,” the scientists said.

    They also encouraged facilities to implement practices to control infections to try to prevent the transmission of bloodborne pathogens.

    Inspection Results

    When the spa was inspected in 2018, authorities saw troubling practices.

    Lying on a kitchen counter, for instance, were a centrifuge, a heating dry bath, and a rack of unlabeled tubes containing blood.

    In a refrigerator, stored with food, authorities found tubes of blood without labels, as well as medical injectables such as Botox.

    Unwrapped syringes were located in multiple places, including in drawers.

    No steam sterilizer was present and certain items designed to be disposable were cleaned and reused by staffers at the spa, authorities said.

    The investigation was hindered by disorganized records, including the lack of a system for scheduling appointments, according to the paper. Such systems usually include contact information for clients. Investigators combed through handwritten records and other documents to identify people who may have undergone the microneedling procedure.

    “Incomplete spa client records posed a substantial challenge during this investigation, necessitating a large-scale outreach approach to identify potential cases, as opposed to direct communication with all clients,” researchers said. “Requiring maintenance of sufficient client records to ensure adequate traceback by regulated businesses that provide injection services could ensure adequate capability to conduct traceback.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 20:20

  • Independent Candidate RFK Jr. Clinches Spot On California Presidential Ballot
    Independent Candidate RFK Jr. Clinches Spot On California Presidential Ballot

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. secured his spot on the California presidential ballot after receiving a nomination from the American Independent Party (AIP).

    Mr. Kennedy said in a video released Tuesday that he and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, are officially qualified to appear on the ballot in California, the most populous state in the United States.

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    He said that “ironically” the AIP was initially the party of Alabama’s former Gov. George Wallace, known for his segregationist politics in the 1960s, but that the party had undergone “its own rebirth” before he came along.

    “It’s been reborn as a party that represents not bigotry and hatred, but rather compassion and unity and idealism and common sense,” Mr. Kennedy said in the video posted on social media platform X.

    “When they learned about my candidacy, they had just drafted a new charter for their reborn party where they could use their battle line for good for helping independent candidates to unite America without being blocked by the two-party duopoly,” he added.

    The AIP is California’s third-largest qualified political party, with more than 835,000 registered voters in the state, according to the party’s press release.

    AIP state chairman Victor Marani said he had filed all the necessary paperwork with the California Secretary of State to put Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Shanahan on the state’s ballot.

    “Our party is pleased to provide the opportunity for all 22 million voters in California to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President. Voters crave a real leader who will unite America,” he said in a statement.

    Joe Cook, the regional field director-west for the Kennedy Campaign, said the AIP has “redefined its purpose and offers inspirational candidates a pathway to elected office outside the major parties.”

    “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the perfect candidate to embody this new shift to independent leaders that serve the common good,” he added.

    Since announcing last October that he would leave the Democrat Party’s presidential primary and run as an independent, Mr. Kennedy has said multiple times that he would appear on the general election ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

    To combat anticipated challenges from Democrats and Republicans regarding the validity of signatures, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign has said they are collecting 60 percent more signatures than required in every state.

    Some members of Mr. Kennedy’s family have previously denounced his decision to run for president as an independent candidate, calling it “perilous” and “dangerous to our country.”

    During an interview with CNN on March 25, his sister, Rory Kennedy, explained that they viewed his independent bid as dangerous because they believed his campaign was “siphoning” votes from President Joe Biden, potentially bolstering former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning.

    2024 presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks with his vice presidential pick Nicole Shanahan in Oakland, Calif., on March 26, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    “I feel strongly that this is the most important election of our lifetime. And there’s so much at stake, and I do think it’s going to come down to a handful of votes and a handful of states,” she told the news outlet.

    “And I do worry that Bobby just taking some percentage of votes from Biden could shift the election and lead to Trump’s election,” said Ms. Kennedy, the youngest daughter of late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 19:40

  • South Korea's Central Bank Says May Buy Gold In The Mid To Long-Term
    South Korea’s Central Bank Says May Buy Gold In The Mid To Long-Term

    Back in 2011, around the time gold hits its previous cycle high, South Korea surprised the fiat world when it revealed that it had spent more than a billion dollars in its first gold purchase in more than a decade, as uncertainty about global growth and sovereign debt push central banks around the world to diversify foreign reserves. It then proceeds to buy a lot more gold (relatively speaking) for the next year and a half before halting purchases indefinitely once again in 2013. It now holds 104.4 tonnes of gold in its foreign exchange reserves, or $4.8 billion, accounting for 1.1% of its total $419.3 billion in reserves at the end of March.

    That may change soon, however, because with gold hitting a new all time high in recent weeks, South Korea’s central bank may consider buying more gold in the mid- to long-term, even if it is not thinking of immediately buying more after a recent surge in prices of the precious metal, a bank official said on Tuesday.

    The bank’s rare comments come after this month’s record high of $2,431.29 an ounce in spot gold as growing Middle East tension drove investors to seek safe-haven assets. The metal has risen 13% this year, building on a gain of 13% in 2023.

    “We don’t have any immediate plans to buy gold now,” Kwon Min-soo, head of the Bank of Korea’s reserve management group told Reuters, adding that numerous factors needed to be weighed to ensure the right circumstances for such purchases.

    “Foreign exchange reserves must be on a sufficiently increasing trend, and the foreign exchange market must be stable in order to ‘consider’ purchasing additional gold as an asset, which is why we would consider them only in the mid- to long-term,” he said.

    Translation: South Korea will buy more gold, but only after spot prices have jumped another several hundred dollars.

    In a blog post earlier, the bank’s Reserve Management Group said it needed to be cautious when investing in gold, but advantages offered by the precious metal included its role as a hedge against inflation and an alternative to the US dollar.

    Recent gains in gold prices were due mostly to purchases by central banks of countries such as China, Russia and Turkey, which are trying to become less dependent on the US currency or guard against war, the bank said.

    The thaw in sentiment toward gold is a reversal from the BOK’s June 2023 position when the central bank said it was more desirable to maintain dollar liquidity than boost its gold holdings, after its first inspection of gold holdings at the Bank of England.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 19:20

  • Appeals Court Says State Health Policies Excluding Transgender Surgeries Violate Constitution
    Appeals Court Says State Health Policies Excluding Transgender Surgeries Violate Constitution

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against two state-level health policies that exclude so-called “gender-affirming” treatments, teeing up potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court…

    Judge Roger Gregory, an appointee of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, wrote in his majority opinion that the policies’ exclusion of surgeries such as vaginoplasties for certain diagnoses violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

    “The coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest,” he said.

    The 8–6 decision affirmed lower court decisions against West Virginia’s Medicaid policy and the North Carolina State Health Plan for Teachers and State Employees. Both aimed to preclude coverage of procedures or treatments pursuant to attempts at changing one’s gender.

    During oral arguments in September, at least two judges said it’s likely the case will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Judge Gregory’s opinion rejected the idea that the policies didn’t discriminate on the basis of gender identity merely because they focused on diagnoses rather than individuals experiencing that condition.

    “Appellants argue that the district courts’ equal-protection analyses were flawed because, they say, the exclusions distinguish on the basis of diagnosis,” he said.

    He added that “in this case, discriminating on the basis of diagnosis is discriminating on the basis of gender identity and sex.”

    Later in the opinion, Judge Gregory wrote that “gender dysphoria is so intimately related to transgender status as to be virtually indistinguishable from it. The excluded treatments aim at addressing incongruity between sex assigned at birth and gender identity, the very heart of transgender status.”

    He later added that in “addition to discriminating on the basis of gender identity, the exclusions discriminate on the basis of sex.”

    “Certain gender-affirming surgeries that could be provided to people assigned male at birth and people assigned female at birth are provided to only one group under the policy. Those surgeries include vaginoplasty (for congenital absence of a vagina), breast reconstruction (post-mastectomy), and breast reduction (for gynecomastia).”

    Criticism

    Judge Gregory’s opinion encountered three separate dissents, including one in which Judge Harvie Wilkinson, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, argued “the science behind gender dysphoria care is far from settled.”

    He suggested the majority overstepped its authority in encroaching on state decisions about health care.

    “Providing the best possible care to adults and youth struggling with gender dysphoria is a challenging task for our States,” he said.

    “But it is one that they are entitled to perform without premature judicial interference.”

    Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the Conscience Project, said in a statement to The Epoch Times that the decision “cries out for reversal from the Supreme Court.”

    She warned that Judge Gregory’s reasoning “surely will be cited in attempts to force private insurance plans to do the same.”

    Judge Marvin Quattlebaum, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said the majority “improperly” declared statements from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health “to be facts.”

    “Individually and combined, these missteps improperly stack the deck, effectively ignoring the fair-minded debate about the medical necessity and efficacy of the treatments the plaintiffs seek,” he added.

    Lambda Legal, which challenged both states’ policies, declared victory.

    “We are pleased with the Court’s decision, which will save lives. It confirms that discriminating against transgender people by denying critical medical care is not only wrong but unconstitutional,” Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli said in a press release.

    “No one should be denied essential health care, but our clients in both cases were denied coverage for medically necessary care prescribed by their doctors just because they’re transgender.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 19:00

  • Apollo Slapped With Lawsuit Alleging "Widespread Fraudulent Human Life Wagering Conspiracy" 
    Apollo Slapped With Lawsuit Alleging “Widespread Fraudulent Human Life Wagering Conspiracy” 

    Apollo Global Management has been entangled in a scandalous lawsuit and accused of acquiring illegal life insurance policies on senior citizens through a complex web of shell trusts. 

    The company allegedly used an affiliate, Financial Credit Investment, to manage about a $20 billion portfolio of stranger-originated life insurance policies, effectively engaging in what the lawsuit claims:

    “In short, Apollo has been carrying out a widespread fraudulent human life wagering conspiracy designed to not only hide its involvement, but to create the false appearance that the policies it owns are somehow legitimate.” 

    The complaint continues:

    “Worse still, when Apollo senses a claim is going to be brought, it attempts to dissolve its shell entities to give itself yet another layer of protection.”

    This scheme was designed to give the policies the illusion of legitimacy. Martha Barotz’s estate initiated the legal action filed in Delaware’s Chancery Court last Friday. It raises serious questions about Apollo’s ethical practices.

    “In this way, the senior citizens have no idea who owns a policy on their life, and who wants them dead,” the suit said, adding, “Apollo was fraudulently and illegally using these shell entities to perpetuate human life wagers not only on the life of Mrs. Barotz, but on the lives of hundreds (if not thousands) of other senior citizens.”

    Bloomberg first reported on the lawsuit. Responding to BBG’s note, Joshua Rosner, a  Graham Fisher & Co. managing partner, wrote on X that Apollo’s actions are “mind-bending and horrifying.” 

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    “Apollo should have its insurance licenses pulled in every state by the @naic. They predate retirees and pensioners through pension risk transfers and now we find they take out life insurance policies against seniors. @AARP,” Rosner said. 

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    Rosner asks one heck of a question: “With Apollo managing hospitals, nursing & hospice facilities & also the retirement accounts of seniors, are they essentially taking a straddle position on seniors by buying life insurance policies on them?” 

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    One X user asks: “Did they take out life insurance on Alfred Villalobos and Jeffrey Epstein?” 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 18:40

  • DoJ Charges 'Bitcoin Jesus' With Tax Fraud
    DoJ Charges ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ With Tax Fraud

    Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

    The early crypto investor, often called ‘Bitcoin Jesus,’ faces extradition to the U.S. after being charged with evading nearly $50 million in taxes.

    Officials with the United States Department of Justice announced charges against early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver, known by many as ‘Bitcoin Jesus.’ 

    In an April 30 notice, the Justice Department said authorities in Spain had arrested Ver based on criminal charges in the United States, including mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns.

    The U.S. government alleged Ver defrauded the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) out of roughly $48 million with his failure to report capital gains on his sale of Bitcoin and other assets.

    According to the indictment filed on Feb. 15 but unsealed on April 29, Ver allegedly took control of roughly 70,000 BTC in June 2017 – before the now famous bull run – and sold many of them for $240 million. U.S. officials said they planned to extradite Ver from Spain to the United States to stand trial.

    Reactions to Ver’s arrest on social media were mixed.

    However, Bitcoiner Dan Held, the former growth lead at Kraken, claimed Ver “deserves everything that he’s about to get” after he “nearly destroyed Bitcoin.”

    “Roger attacked my livelihood by trying to get me fired, called up others to hurt my relationships, and attacked my reputation,” said Held on X.

    “He misaligned expectations around Bitcoin so much that it led to a civil war.”

    A cryptic message was Ver’s most-recent post on X, reading:

    Source: Roger Ver

    Ver was also a proponent of Bitcoin Cash.

    In 2022, he became embroiled in a scandal with crypto investment platform CoinFlex, which claimed he owed them $47 million in USD Coin.

    He had not commented on social media regarding the Justice Department charges at the time of publication.

    Ver has previously pleaded guilty and served time for selling explosives on eBay.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 18:20

  • Blackrock's Larry Fink Jumps On "Next AI Trade", Warning World Will Be "Short Power"
    Blackrock’s Larry Fink Jumps On “Next AI Trade”, Warning World Will Be “Short Power”

    At the start of April, we penned a lengthy report for premium subs discussing why artificial intelligence data centers, the electrification of the economy, and onshoring trends will result in a major upgrade of the nation’s power grid. We followed the note up on Monday with a report titled Everyone Is Piling Into The “Next AI Trade.” 

    Now , BlackRock Chairman and Chief Executive Larry Fink has jumped on the “Next AI Trade” theme at a World Economic Forum event on Monday. 

    “I do believe to properly um build out AI. We’re talking about trillions of dollars of investing. So data centers today could be as much as 200 megahertz – and they’re now talking about data centers being one gigawatt. That powers a city,” Fink told the audience. 

    He pointed out that he spoke with the head of one tech company, who said their data centers currently require about 5 gigawatts of power. By 2030, the person told Fink that number could jump to 30 gigawatts. 

    “The amount of power that’s needed to use AI has a huge impact on society,” Fink said. 

    He then asked: “So where’s that power going to come from? Are we going to take it off the grid? What does that mean for elevated energy prices?” 

    Fink then said the surge in power demand because of AI data centers is a “huge investment opportunity.” 

    He warned: “The world is going to be short power – short power – and to power these data companies you cannot have this intermittent power like wind and solar.” 

    “You need dispatchable power because they can’t turn off and on these data centers,” he continued. 

    So what kind of clean, reliable energy could Fink be hinting at? 

    Well, nuclear, as we’ve explained to readers as early as December 2020: “Buy Uranium: Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze.”

    This week, the nuclear power industry appears to be gaining a major comeback. The federal government is expected to continue restarting shuttered nuclear power plants in the coming years, according to Jigar Shah, director of the US Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, who spoke with Bloomberg on Monday. 

    In March, Shah’s office approved a loan to Holtec International Corp. to reopen the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan. This was a historical shift, and it was the first nuclear power plant to be reopened in the US, setting a precedent for atomic energy to make a triumphal comeback. The plant could begin producing power as early as the second half of 2025.

    Shah said, “A lot of the other players that have a nuclear power plant that has recently shut down and could be turned back on are gaining that confidence to try.” He declined to give specifics about which plants were slated to reopen. 

    Now, the head of the world’s largest asset manager, with $10 trillion in assets under management, is a believer in the “Next AI Trade,” as everyone is seriously piling in. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 04/30/2024 – 18:00

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