Today’s News 2nd April 2023

• Escobar: The Capital Of The Multipolar World – A Moscow Diary
  Escobar: The Capital Of The Multipolar World – A Moscow Diary

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation.

  

  How sharp was good ol’ Lenin, prime modernist, when he mused, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. This global nomad now addressing you has enjoyed the privilege of spending four astonishing weeks in Moscow at the heart of an historical crossroads – culminating with the Putin-Xi geopolitical game-changing summit at the Kremlin.

  To quote Xi, “changes that haven’t been seen in 100 years” do have a knack of affecting us all in more ways than one.

  James Joyce, another modernity icon, wrote that we spend our lives meeting average and/or extraordinary people, on and on and on, but in the end we’re always meeting ourselves. I have had the privilege of meeting an array of extraordinary people in Moscow, guided by trusted friends or by auspicious coincidence: in the end your soul tells you they enrich you and the overarching historical moment in ways you can’t even begin to fathom.

  Here are some of them. The grandson of Boris Pasternak, a gifted young man who teaches Ancient Greek at Moscow State University. A historian with unmatched knowledge of Russian history and culture. The Tajik working class huddling together in a chaikhana with the proper ambience of Dushanbe.

  Chechens and Tuvans in awe doing the loop in the Big Central Line. A lovely messenger sent by friends extremely careful about security matters to discuss issues of common interest. Exceptionally accomplished musicians performing underground in Mayakovskaya. A stunning Siberian princess vibrant with unbounded energy, taking that motto previously applied to the energy industry – Power of Siberia – to a whole new level.

  A dear friend took me to Sunday service at the Devyati Muchenikov Kizicheskikh church, the favorite of Peter the Great: the quintessential purity of Eastern Orthodoxy. Afterwards the priests invited us for lunch in their communal table, displaying not only their natural wisdom but also an uproarious sense of humor.

  At a classic Russian apartment crammed with 10,000 books and with a view to the Ministry of Defense – plenty of jokes included – Father Michael, in charge if Orthodox Christianity relations with the Kremlin, sang the Russian imperial anthem after an indelible night of religious and cultural discussions.

  I had the honor to meet some of those who were particularly targeted by the imperial machine of lies. Maria Butina – vilified by the proverbial “spy who came in from the cold” shtick – now a deputy at the Duma. Viktor Bout – which pop culture metastasized into the “Lord of War”, complete with Nic Cage movie: I was speechless when he told me he was reading me in maximum security prison in the USA, via pen drives sent by his friends (he had no internet access). The indefatigable, iron-willed Mira Terada – tortured when she was in a U.S. prison, now heading a foundation protecting children caught in hard times.

  I spent much treasured quality time and engaged in invaluable discussions with Alexander Dugin – the crucial Russian of these post-everything times, a man of pure inner beauty, exposed to unimaginable suffering after the terrorist assassination of Darya Dugina, and still able to muster a depth and reach when it comes to drawing connections across the philosophy, history and history of civilizations spectrum that is virtually unmatched in the West.

  On the offensive against Russophobia

  And then there were the diplomatic, academic and business meetings. From the head of international investor relations of Norilsk Nickel to Rosneft executives, not to mention the EAEU’s Sergey Glazyev himself, side by side with his top economic adviser Dmitry Mityaev, I was given a crash course on the current A to Z of Russian economy – including serious problems to be addressed.

  At the Valdai Club, what really mattered were the meetings on the sidelines, much more than the actual panels: that’s when Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, Chinese tell you what is really in their hearts and minds.

  The official launch of the International Movement of Russophiles was a special highlight of these four weeks. A special message written by President Putin was read by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who then delivered his own speech. Later, at the House of Receptions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, four of us were received by Lavrov at a private audience. Future cultural projects were discussed. Lavrov was extremely relaxed, displaying his matchless sense of humor.

  This is a cultural as much as a political movement, designed to fight Russophobia and to tell the Russian story, in all its immensely rich aspects, especially to the Global South.

  I am a founding member and my name is on the charter. In my nearly four decades as a foreign correspondent, I have never been part of any political/cultural movement anywhere in the world; nomad independents are a fierce breed. But this is extremely serious: the current, irredeemably mediocre self-described “elites” of the collective West want no less than cancel Russia all across the spectrum. No pasarán.

  Spirituality, compassion, mercy

  Decades happening in only four weeks imply precious time needed to put it all in perspective.

  The initial gut feeling the day I arrived, after a seven-hour walk under snow flurries, was confirmed: this is the capital of the multipolar world. I saw it among the West Asians at the Valdai. I saw it talking to visiting Iranians, Turks and Chinese. I saw it when over 40 African delegations took over the whole area around the Duma – the day Xi arrived in town. I saw it throughout the reception across the Global South to what Xi and Putin are proposing to the overwhelming majority of the planet.

  In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation. Import substitution in all areas, especially agriculture, has been a resounding success. Supermarkets have everything – and more – compared to the West. There’s an abundance of first-rate restaurants. You can buy a Bentley or a Loro Pianna cashmere coat you can’t even find in Italy. We laughed about it chatting with managers at the TSUM department store. At the BiblioGlobus bookstore, one of them told me, “We are the Resistance.”

  By the way, I had the honor to deliver a talk on the war in Ukraine at the coolest bookshop in town, Bunker, mediated by my dear friend, immensely knowledgeable Dima Babich. A huge responsibility. Especially because Vladimir L. was in the audience. He’s Ukrainian, and spent 8 years, up to 2022, telling it like it really was to Russian radio, until he managed to leave – after being held at gunpoint – using an internal Ukrainian passport. Later we went to a Czech beer hall where he detailed his extraordinary story.

  In Moscow, their toxic ghosts are always lurking in the background. Yet one cannot but feel sorry for the psycho Straussian neocons and neoliberal-cons who now barely qualify as Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s puny orphans.

  In the late 1990s, Brzezinski pontificated that, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical center because its very existence as an independent state helps transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

  With or without a demilitarized and denazified Ukraine, Russia has already changed the narrative. This is not about becoming a Eurasian empire again. This is about leading the long, complex process of Eurasia integration – already in effect – in parallel to supporting true, sovereign independence across the Global South.

  I left Moscow – the Third Rome – towards Constantinople – the Second Rome – one day before Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev gave a devastating interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta once again outlining all the essentialities inherent to the NATO vs. Russia war.

  This is what particularly struck me: “Our centuries-old culture is based on spirituality, compassion and mercy. Russia is a historical defender of sovereignty and statehood of any peoples who turned to it for help. She saved the U.S. itself at least twice, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. But I believe that this time it is impractical to help the United States maintain its integrity.”

  In my last night, before hitting a Georgian restaurant, I was guided by the perfect companion off Pyatnitskaya to a promenade along the Moscow River, beautiful rococo buildings gloriously lighted, the scent of Spring – finally – in the air. It’s one of those “Wild Strawberry” moments out of Bergman’s masterpiece that hits the bottom of our soul. Like mastering the Tao in practice. Or the perfect meditative insight at the top of the Himalayas, the Pamirs or the Hindu Kush.

  So the conclusion is inevitable. I’ll be back. Soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 23:30

• These Are Asia's Richest Families
  These Are Asia’s Richest Families

  According to a ranking published by Bloomberg last week, the Ambanis remain the wealthiest among Asia’s families despite recent losses, owing their riches to the Reliance Industries conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the rest of the ranking’s top 10 is a mix of different industries, countries and also some global household names.

  The Ambanis’ wealth is still more than double that of the next clan in the ranking of Asia’s richest families, the Hartonos of Indonesia’s Djarum brand.

  It also earns them rank 6 among the world’s wealthiest families.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Two Thai families are also among the top 10, with Red Bull inventors, the Yoovidhyas, in rank 6.

  The Lee family behind South Korean electronics maker Samsung made it into rank 10.

  Chinese emigrants are quite common among the list of Asia’s most wealthy families.

  Chearavanont patriarch Chia Ek Chor came to Thailand from Southern China in 1921 and started out importing and exporting seeds, vegetables and animal products between Bangkok, China and Hong Kong. The Pao/Woo family and the inventors of Oyster Sauce, the Lee family (rank 11), made their fortunes in Hong Kong after emigrating from Mainland China, as did Singapore real estate tycoons, the Ngs (rank 12). The story is similar with the Png brothers (rank 13) and the Sy family (rank 14), conglomerate owners in Singapore and the Philippines, respectively.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 23:00

• In AI We Trust
  In AI We Trust

  Artificial intelligence in some shape or form has been a part of everyday life for years, but the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and the resulting aggressive development pace of conversational and generative AI models is, for the first time ever, putting the underlying technology into the hands of the general public.

  However, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, even though current large language models are primarily able to guess the best-fitting next word in a sentence based on the corpus of content they were fed, CEOs, researchers and AI experts are now urging the industry to pump the brakes on training and developing models more capable than OpenAI’s GPT-4.

  The company’s latest large language model is currently available in a limited capacity for ChatGPT Plus subscribers and will soon be integrated into Microsoft productivity and security products.

  According to an open letter signed by influential figures like Elon Musk and Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, “powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

  The letter was released by the Future of Life Institute, a non-governmental organization founded in 2014 by MIT professor Max Tegmark and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, among others. The Musk Foundation is a primary donor to the organization.

  As data from a survey conducted by KPMG Australia and the University of Queensland shows, residents of India, China, South Africa and Brazil, the biggest so-called emerging markets, are far less critical of the continued implementation of AI systems.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  75 percent of Indians surveyed between September and October 2022 would place their trust in AI, followed by 67 percent of Chinese and 57 percent of South African respondents.

  According to the accompanying study, respondents claimed to trust AI used in healthcare and security contexts the most compared to other possible use cases.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 22:00

• The 2nd Amendment's Misconstrued 'Militia'
  The 2nd Amendment’s Misconstrued ‘Militia’

  Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

  America’s latest episode of mass homicide has sparked renewed advocacy for restrictions on gun ownership. Once again, the accompanying debate has many gun control advocates claiming the Second Amendment’s reference to a “well regulated militia” narrows the amendment’s scope if not rendering it altogether moot.

  Before we examine those claims, it’s important to ensure readers have a proper general understanding of the Bill of Rights. Contrary to common misperception, these amendments do not bestow privileges upon American citizens. Rather, they are primarily a set of prohibitions against the government infringing on pre-existing human rights all people have.

  

  That’s evident in the language. For example, the First Amendment begins “Congress shall make no law…” This amendment isn’t awarding citizens the rights of religion, speech and assembly — it’s outlawing the government’s thwarting of those innate and universal human rights.

  Similarly, the Fourth Amendment asserts that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” Again, the authors are not granting those rights, they are protecting them.

  When the Bill of Rights was proposed, some feared the enumeration of a handful of rights could be misinterpreted as providing a comprehensive catalogue — and thus empowering the government to infringe on human rights not specified. That’s why they included the Ninth Amendment, asserting that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

  “Amendment II. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

  With that understanding of the Bill of Rights in mind, we see that, via the Second Amendment, the founders explicitly asserted that there is a “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

  What about that reference to “a well regulated militia”? As we set out to scrutinize the phrase, let’s first observe that the Second Amendment contains two distinct components serving two different purposes:

  • An operative clause that sets out a specific prohibition against the government’s infringement on a right: …the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

  • A prefatory clause that announces a purpose: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…

  Positioned in the prefatory clause, the “well regulated Militia” reference merely serves to provide a rationale — and not necessarily the only rationale — for the operative clause that follows.

  While the Second Amendment stands apart from the others in the Bill of Rights by having a prefatory clause, such clauses were common in state constitutions of the era.

  Prefatory clauses were used to help “sell” amendments to those being asked to approve them. In this case, the authors were pointing to the necessity of an armed populace as the well from which militias are drawn — militias seen as a vital safeguard against the federal government they were creating.

  

  In particular, America’s founders were wary of the federal government’s potential to create a standing army that could be used to destroy state sovereignty and individual liberties. Seeking to “sell” the amendment to drafting committees and state ratifying conventions, it made sense for the authors to highlight the link between militias and the people’s right to bear arms.

  Given their purpose — that is, to cite one or more of many possible rationales — prefatory clauses don’t rightly constrain operative clauses, particularly one as explicit as the Second Amendment’s, which pointedly recognizes a “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

  Even if the prefatory clause did have any teeth, those seeking to interpret it as tightly restricting the gun-eligible population run into yet another wall, in that militias are assembled from the citizenry at large.

  Indeed, one revision of James Madison’s draft of the Second Amendment drove home this point. It began, “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people…”

  Listen to Pennsylvanian Tench Coxe, as he championed the Constitution’s ratification: “The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty.” Summarizing the Second Amendment, Coxe said, “The people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

  Multiple state constitutional provisions of the era, some of which predate the Bill of Rights, offer additional confirmation that the armed right of self-defense belongs to individuals. As one representative example, consider the language of Vermont’s 1777 Constitution: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”

  Further disregarding the Second Amendment’s explicit enumeration of “the right of the people to bear arms,” some claim the existence of the National Guard renders the Second Amendment entirely moot, since, via the Guard, each state has a “militia” with its own arsenal of arms.

  In the US, you do NOT have a constitutional right to own a gun UNLESS you are in a well-regulated militia.

  The well-regulated militia is the National Guard.

  That is, literally, what the 2nd amendment says.

  — Student Loans Suck 🟥 (@Seracohw6) March 27, 2023

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

  Recall, however, that the founders viewed militias as a check on the federal government’s power, with fear that the federal government might create a standing army with the potential to tyrannize the states and the people.

  Thanks to the National Defense Act of 1916 and amendments in 1933, today’s National Guard is legally a part of the United States Army, with state governments exercising only limited government control. Enlistment oaths have evolved to reflect that, with National Guard soldiers promising to obey the orders of both the president of the United States and the governor.

  The Guard’s military training and the selection of its officers are controlled by the federal government. Troops are subject to activation pursuant to any number of federal missions, including — as we’ve seen too often — overseas combat deployments that render them useless to the states where their citizen-soldiers live.

  Clearly, under such federal control, the National Guard cannot be seen as a counterbalance against federal power, and thus does not fulfill the Second Amendment’s aspiration to enable “well-regulated militias…necessary to the security of a free state.”

  Finally, no tour of the Second Amendment’s language would be complete without addressing “well regulated” as it’s applied to “militia.” Today, people often and understandably assume that descriptor refers to regulation in the modern sense of external government control. However, in the late 1700s, “well regulated” simply meant orderly, trained and disciplined — qualities that militias should aspire to.

  To summarize:

  • The Second Amendment explicitly recognizes the existence of “a right of the people” — not just those currently in militias — “to keep and bear arms.”

  • Placed in a prefatory clause, the “militia” reference merely announces one rationale for the Second Amendment. Regardless of how “militia” is interpreted, its presence does not constrain the operative-clause prohibition of government infringement against the right of the people to keep and bears arms.

  • Today’s National Guard is part of the U.S. Army and under heavy federal control. It cannot be used by the peoples of the separate states as a counterbalance to the federal government’s standing army — and thus is not a “militia” in the sense the term is used in the Second Amendment.

  Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 21:30

• Want To 'Experience Death' In Virtual Reality?
  Want To ‘Experience Death’ In Virtual Reality?

  A new exhibit lets people experience ‘death’ in virtual reality.

  

  Artist Shaun Gladwell has created an interactive art installation at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia called “Passing Electrical Storms,” which “guides participants through a simulated de-escalation of life, from cardiac arrest to brain death,” the Daily Star reports.

  Despite all the things science tells us about life, nobody really knows what it’s like to experience death.

  However, people who have undergone near-death experiences often come back with tales of what happened after their hearts stopped—from leaving their bodies and seeing themselves from above to waking up in a meadow.

  Upon entering the exhibit, you’re asked to lie down on a replica hospital bed, where you’re hooked up to a heart rate monitor. Staff are on hand to ‘pull you out’ if things get too intense. 

  @croom12

  Its Actually pretty hectic. Doctors trying to revive you, vibrating bed and floating into space.

  ♬ original sound – Marcus

  “I can see how people would say it causes anxiety and panic. It definitely borderlines that—they do put your finger on a heart rate monitor and then tell you to raise your hand if you’ve had enough and want to quit,” said Marcus Crook, a Melbourne resident. “What happens is you’re laying down, the bed vibrates, you flatline. The doctors come over the top of you. You can see yourself in the goggles and they try to revive you—it doesn’t work. Then you float up out past them into space and it keeps going.“

  https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js

  The exhibit will be available to check out during the Melbourne Now festival which runs until August.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 21:00

• White House Refuses To Pay For Twitter Verification
  White House Refuses To Pay For Twitter Verification

  The White House won’t pay to have its staff’s official Twitter accounts verified, according to an email distributed to staffers and obtained by Axios.

  

  “It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service. Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user,” said White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty in the Friday afternoon email which was sent internally to staffers.

  The rule doesn’t necessarily apply to government agencies, however a source familiar with the White House’s plans told Axios that it may send guidance to some agencies and departments in the future.

  The move comes after Twitter owner Elon Musk announced that the company would begin removing legacy verified check marks beginning April 1. In order to don a blue check, users will need to pay $8 per month.

  If Elon had made the bluecheck $8 trillion, the White House would buy 2 https://t.co/yqC7ymKm8O

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 31, 2023

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

  More via Axios;

  • Official organizations, such as the White House and some government officials, will continue to be verified with a grey check mark, Twitter said. Some White House officials, like the President and Vice President, will likely continue to be verified with a grey checkmark, but an administration source said it’s unclear at this time exactly which officials will retain grey checks.
  • In his email, Flaherty noted that per Twitter’s updated policies, Twitter will no longer be able to guarantee verification for federal agency accounts that do not meet its new eligibility requirements.
  • Companies and businesses that wish to pay for verification on the enterprise level can do so on behalf of their official accounts and some employees. Those companies will be charged $1000 monthly and will be designated with a gold check mark.

  As for the White House itself, it says it won’t pay to be verified as an organization, and it won’t reimburse staff who purchase Twitter Blue on their personal social media accounts.

  “Twitter’s enterprise service, Verification for Organization, does appear to provide organization-association verification. There are ongoing trials for the program that we are monitoring, but we will not enroll in it,” wrote Flaherty.

  “Staff may purchase Twitter Blue on their personal social media accounts using personal funds.”

  Also not paying? CNN, the NY Times and the LA Times.

  CNN said it has no intention of paying for Twitter’s subscription service for its accounts. The New York Times said, “We aren’t planning to pay.” The Los Angeles Times said Twitter is “not as reliable as it once was” and they will “not be paying.”https://t.co/CI22Uhxpz9

  — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) March 31, 2023

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 20:00

• Journalist Says DOJ Targeting Him For His Aggressive Post-Jan. 6 Commentary
  Journalist Says DOJ Targeting Him For His Aggressive Post-Jan. 6 Commentary

  Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Independent journalist Steve Baker says he was recently warned that his aggressive reporting and commentary about Jan. 6 have created growing ire at the U.S. Department of Justice that could lead to his prosecution for being at the Capitol on that fateful Wednesday in 2021.

  

  Since Jan. 6, Baker, 62, of Raleigh, North Carolina, went through two hours of FBI questioning and faced the looming specter of being added to the list of now more than 1,000 Jan. 6 criminal-case defendants.

  He said his recent coverage of Jan. 6 cases and pointed criticisms of the DOJ have once again painted a target on him.

  “I got a call from another journalist who has a friendly source inside the Department of Justice there in D.C.,” Baker told The Epoch Times.

  “He called me up and said—this is a paraphrase, but he said—‘Your friend in Raleigh, tell him to be careful. He has awakened a couple of people’s attention to his work, and they’re not happy about it at all.’”

  The ominous early-morning heads-up got Baker’s attention.

  “First of all, when you get a call at 6:30 in the morning from somebody relaying that message, they must have thought that was really important to get a hold of me,” he said. “So the impact of the timing of the delivery was significant.

  

  “The journalist who gave me the information has a very large national audience and would be the kind of person who would have those types of sources,” Baker said. “…So I had to take it seriously.”

  The Epoch Times asked the U.S. Department of Justice for comment on Baker’s contention but did not receive a response.

  Documented Intense Scenes

  Baker spent much of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., capturing video for his news-and-commentary blog, The Pragmatic Constitutionalist. He had a front-row view of some intense scenes, including the initial bombardment of munitions aimed by police at the huge crowd on the Capitol’s west front.

  His video work appeared in Jan. 6 films by HBO, The New York Times, and The Epoch Times. It has been syndicated worldwide on Storyful.

  Baker filmed the debut of a Metropolitan Police Department “hard squad” and the violence that broke out as the riot-gear-clad officers rolled and rumbled through the dense crowd like a bowling ball through a 10-pin set.

  He stood in the corner of the Capitol’s south entrance as officers drew firearms near him and a group of protesters after a radio call about shots fired in the House of Representatives.

  Baker’s outspokenness was on full display. He challenged two officers who drew their service weapons and shouted at unarmed protesters. The building was on high alert after reports that someone had been shot outside the Speaker’s Lobby.

  “Are you going to use that on us?” Baker asked one USCP officer who charged at the group. “None of us have a gun. We’ve got cameras.”

  As the officer explained why the dozen or so law-enforcement officials in the lobby had weapons ready, Baker intoned dryly, “The only shots fired have been fired by you guys.”

  

  That statement turned out to be true. At the entrance to the House Speaker’s Lobby one floor above, USCP Lt. Michael Byrd shot unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, 35. She died about a half-hour later.

  What was displayed on Jan. 6 became a hallmark of Baker’s work covering the aftermath of the protests and violence at the Capitol. His analysis and commentary often cut to the quick.

  ‘Just Want the Truth’

  On podcasts and social media, Baker says things most other journalists are afraid to say. He does not suffer fools gladly. That has earned him a growing following—and some critics—from various sides of his libertarian leanings.

  He describes his approach to Jan. 6 as a drive for truth—partisanship and politics be damned. That’s a trait he learned from his father, George O. Baker, who spent more than 30 years as a private investigator based in Shreveport, Louisiana.

  “I don’t care where the facts lead,” Baker said. “To Trump’s desk, Pelosi’s desk, darker forces within the government, left- or right-wing antagonists, or simply a grand organic accident.”

  He said his latest focus has been “government incompetence that allowed it, or even a sinister plan to initiate the violence.”

  “I just want the truth,” he said. “Now I’m focusing on the weaponization of the DOJ against the innocent people who’ve been caught up in the politicized aftermath.”

  Baker said if he ends up facing DOJ prosecution for being at the Capitol, it will be just the latest example of the government targeting right-of-center journalists to the exclusion of so-called mainstream media.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 19:30

• Extinct Wooly Mammoth Meatball Made In Lab
  Extinct Wooly Mammoth Meatball Made In Lab

  The Australian company “Vow,” specializing in cultured meat, recently made headlines for producing a giant meatball from a lab using the DNA of the long-extinct woolly mammoth.  

  “We wanted to create something that was totally different from anything you can get now,” Vow founder Tim Noakesmith told Reuters, adding scientists believe the animal’s extinction was sparked by climate change 10,000 years ago (So climate change can occur without humans use of fossil fuels?). 

  

  The meatball was created using sheep cells that were inserted with a singular woolly mammoth gene called myoglobin.

  “When it comes to meat, myoglobin is responsible for the aroma, the color, and the taste,” James Ryall, Vow’s Chief Scientific Officer, explained.

  The woolly mammoth’s DNA sequence had a few gaps, so scientists completed it with African elephant DNA. 

  “Much like they do in the movie Jurassic Park,” Ryall noted.

  Reuters described the meatball, which smells like crocodile meat, and added it was not produced for consumption. 

  “Its protein is literally 4,000 years old. We haven’t seen it in a very long time. That means we want to put it through rigorous tests, something that we would do with any product we bring to the market,” Noakesmith said.

  Reuters ended the article with the idea that lab-grown meat will likely be a more sustainable alternative to real meat. 

  … and where have we seen this before? 

  

  The Great Reset plan by WEF includes the complete transformation of the global food and agricultural industries and the dieting of humans. 

  If you want to avoid a future of fake meat, find cheap land designated for agriculture and start a farm. 

  Otherwise, ‘Soylent Green,’ here we come… 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 19:00

• Trump Supporter Found Guilty, Faces Ten Years In Prison For 2016 Anti-Hillary Meme
  Trump Supporter Found Guilty, Faces Ten Years In Prison For 2016 Anti-Hillary Meme

  Authored by Robert Spencer via PJMedia.com,

  Donald Trump has been indicted, essentially for the crime of being Donald Trump and opposing the Left’s total hegemony over everything. But as Trump himself has often warned, they’re not really after him, they’re after us, and he is just in the way. A 33-year-old Trump supporter named Douglass Mackey discovered the truth of that adage in the worst possible way on Friday, the first day of America as a Leftist banana republic in which foes of the regime are targeted solely for their opposition to that regime. Mackey was convicted of election interference and faces up to ten years in prison, all because of a meme he tweeted during the 2016 election. Yes, you read that right: a meme.

  Back during the wild and woolly days of that campaign, according to a Friday press release from the “Justice” Department, Mackey, under the name Ricky Vaughn, “established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Presidential Election.” The Justice for Democrats Department didn’t bother to explain exactly what it means to have held a position so illustrious as that of the 107th most important influencer of the 2016 presidential election. How did the DOJ go about determining this? Did it somehow discover that Mackey/Vaughn had induced a certain number of people to change their votes, but that 106 other people had gotten people to change more votes?

  These are actually important questions because on Friday, Mackey was convicted “by a federal jury in Brooklyn of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.” 

  That’s what he faces ten years in prison for doing.

  Mackey’s “conspiracy” was really quite simple. While the language the Department Formerly Associated with Justice used sounds quite weighty and conjures up images of Mackey meeting in dark rooms with other sinister figures to plot ways to sabotage voting machines or prevent people from being able to enter polling places, what they’re really talking about is a meme.

  Douglass Mackey was just found guilty of a federal crime he was charged with by the DOJ for tweeting the meme on the left during the 2016 election.

  The lady on the right has never been arrested for her tweet that also came during the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/pkCz6h669U

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 31, 2023

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  One of the ten-years-in-the-slammer memes can be seen here.

  Vaughn tweeted a photo of what looked like a Hillary ad, but was actually a parody of a Hillary ad.

  The caption read: “Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

  

  The Justice Unless You Support Trump Department explained that this was a heinous crime because “Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to ‘vote’ via text message or social media which, in reality, was legally invalid.” Yeah, wow, doggonit, that sounds terrible. Thousands, maybe even millions, of people, must have been bamboozled by the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Presidential Election to send in a text and think they had voted, right?

  Wrong.

  The Justice Department, according to the Post Millennial, “was unable to provide evidence that anyone was deceived by the meme.”

  Not even a single person.

  What’s more, at least one memester on the other side did exactly the same thing, and was never arrested or tried and faces no prison time. On Nov. 8, 2016, which was election day, Kristina Wong tweeted a video of a Trump supporter with the caption: “Hey Trump Supporters! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday!”

  

  Not only was Kristina Wong never prosecuted, but her tweet is still live. Yet she did exactly the same thing Douglass Mackey did. She just had the good sense to do it against Trump, rather than against Hillary.

  The rotten, corrupt, politicized remains of the Justice Department, however, were full to the brim of their own righteousness on Friday. U.S. Attorney Breon Peace proclaimed, “Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election.” The contemporary American Left, one of the most impious and God-hating political movements in the history of the world, loves to affect piety at times like this, but Peace’s statement was a particularly nauseating example of this phenomenon. The right to vote is “sacred”? No, Peace. I’m all for voting in free, fair, unrigged elections, but be serious: the right to vote is not held as sacred in any religious tradition on the face of the earth. What you’re actually saying is that your corrupt and self-serving system is part of your secular religion, and that Mackey is a heretic from that religion; he has been duly found guilty and will be burned at the stake.

  The first amendment as we know it died today. This is a completely outrageous decision by a jury in Brooklyn to send this man to jail for tweeting a meme. We are truly living in a third world banana republic.https://t.co/XjMI3hb978

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 31, 2023

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  And this is just day one. Imagine what America will be like once the banana republic has been fully in power for a few years.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 18:30

• SoCal Sweatshop Workers Make As Little As $1.58 Per Hour
  SoCal Sweatshop Workers Make As Little As $1.58 Per Hour

  A survey of garment-sewing contractors in Southern California reveals that sweatshop workers are paid as little as $1.58 per hour.

  

  The survey, conducted by the US Department of Labor, found that workers making garments sold by some of the world’s largest fashion retailers are victims of wage theft and other illegal pay practices, Fashion United reports.

  Contractors and manufacturers included in the survey include Bombshell Sportswear, Dillard’s, Lulus, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Socialite, Stitch Fix and Von Maur.

  There more more than 45,000 workers in the Los Angeles-area garment manufacturing industry, with many working an average of 55 hours per week with no overtime pay, according to the report.

  Based on data from more than 50 contractors and manufacturers, the 2022 Southern California Garment Survey released by the department’s Wage and Hour Division found violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 80 percent of its investigations. More than 50 percent of the time, the division found employers illegally paying workers part or all their wages off the books, with payroll records either deliberately forged or not provided. -Fashion United

  The survey also found that 32% of contractors are paying workers piece-rate wages, which has been prohibited by the state of California since last year.

  “Despite our efforts to hold Southern California’s garment industry employers accountable, we continue to see people who make clothes sold by some of the nation’s leading retailers working in sweatshops,” said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Ruben Rosalez in San Francisco. “Many people shopping for clothes in stores and online are likely unaware that the ‘Made in the USA’ merchandise they’re buying was, in fact, made by people earning far less than the U.S. law requires.”

  According to investigators, one contractor was paying workers as little as $1.58 per hour, about what Bengladeshi workers make – which last month saw unions demand an increase in the minimum wage from US$75 dollars per month to US$215 amid crippling inflation.

  The U.S. Department of Labor says it found that sewing fees paid by manufacturers to contractors were – on average – not enough for the contractors to properly pay their workers’ required minimum wages. Specifically, the studies determined the average sewing fee was 2.75 dollars below the amount needed per garment for sewing contractors to comply with federal wage standards. Contractors who paid employees in compliance with the law received a higher sewing fee, ranging from 17.50 dollars to 35 dollars per garment. -Fashion United

  “The findings of the Southern California Garment Survey highlight why greater outreach and stronger enforcement are needed to combat the inequities that exist in the garment and fashion industries,” said Rosalez. “The Wage and Hour Division will continue to work and meet with advocates and industry stakeholders, and remain focused on holding accountable the manufacturers and retailers who reap significant profits while the people who did the hard work are too often not paid their rightful wages.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 18:00

• Watch: Anthropology Prof Angered After Being Mocked For Denying Ability To Tell Gender From Human Bones
  Watch: Anthropology Prof Angered After Being Mocked For Denying Ability To Tell Gender From Human Bones

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  There is an interesting controversy that has erupted at the University of Pittsburgh after Dr. Gabby Yearwood, who teaches in both the anthropology and law schools, was asked by swimmer Riley Gaines if he could tell the gender of persons from skeletal remains.

  He denied that that was possible despite the widely accepted ability to do so in his field. The answer may reflect the ongoing push in anthropology, discussed in an earlier blog column, to put an end to gender identifications. Some insist that anthropologists need to know how an ancient human may have chosen to identify themselves.

  Yearwood reportedly was asked the question by Gaines, who achieved national notoriety in opposing the inclusion of transgender athletes like the University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas in women competitions. 

  Like J.K. Rowling who has raised concerns over the threat to feminist gains from some transgender policies, Gaines is now ostracized and often prevented from speaking at events.

  To its credit, Pittsburgh refused to yield to demands to bar Gaines and others from speaking on campus. This controversy appears to have resulted during the event that many sought cancel.

  

  Gaines asked Yearwood, “If you were to dig up two humans one hundred years from now, both man and woman, could you tell the difference, strictly off of bones?”

  According to Fox, Yearwood answered “No!” and then took umbrage after the room erupted in laughter.

  He reportedly reminded them that he was “the expert in the room” and asked “Have any of you been to anthropological sites? Have any of you studied biological anthropology? I’m just saying, I’ve got over 150 years of data, I’m just curious as to why I’m being laughed at. I have a PhD!”

  The videos posted on Twitter only show the first part of that exchange.

  Gaines reportedly responded that “Every single rational person knows the answer: men have narrower hips, their skulls are different, they have an extra rib, their femurs are longer, their jaws are different.”

  When @Riley_Gaines_ asked University of Pittsburgh professor Gabby Yearwood if an archeologist could differentiate between two sets of bones as male and female, Professor Yearwood. who calls himself the “expert in the room,” answers “no” to which the entire audience laughed. pic.twitter.com/Ecxs1NMDTr

  — Independent Women’s Forum (@IWF) March 30, 2023

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  One expert is quoted by the College Fix as disagreeing with Yearwood though offering a correction also to one of Gaines’ statements.

  San José State University archaeology Professor Elizabeth Weiss said determining the sex of skeletal remains “is a critical skill in forensics and any diminishing of this skill will negatively impact criminal investigations, denying the victims and their families justice.” She added that “Riley Gaines is correct on many traits, but males do not have an extra rib. This myth comes from the Adam and Eve story.”

  Schools like Boston University note that

  “Sex is typically determined by the morphology (shape) of the pelvis or skull and long bone measurements. ‘However, many of the areas on the skeleton that are used for sex estimation may be missing or damaged due to trauma, poor preservation, animal scavenging and nature of the incident (explosive). Therefore, it is important to examine other areas of the skeleton that preserve well and are potentially sexually dimorphic (show differences between females and males),’ explained corresponding author Sean Tallman, PhD, RPA, assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology.”

  In fairness to Yearwood, experts have said that determining gender occurs along a spectrum of analysis because some women may easily be mistaken for men. Indeed, there was research showing an overcounting of male skeletons in research by famed anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička, who helped found the modern study of human bones and served as the first curator of physical anthropology at the U.S. National Museum.

  This controversy is part of a wider debate unfolding on our campuses.

  University of Kansas Associate Professor Jennifer Raff argued in a paper, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,”  that there are “no neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals.”  Her best selling book has been featured on various news outlets like MSNBC.

  Raff is not alone. Graduate students like Emma Palladino have objected  that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

  Professors Elizabeth DiGangi of Binghamton University and Jonathan Bethard of the University of South Florida have also challenged the use of racial classifications in a study, objecting that “[a]ncestry estimation contributes to white supremacy.”  The authors write that “we use critical race theory to interrogate the approaches utilized to estimate ancestry to include a critique of the continued use of morphoscopic traits, and we assert that the practice of ancestry estimation contributes to white supremacy.”

  It is not clear if this movement influenced Yearwood’s answer. He has been a leader in calling for “critical engagement” and “activist research” to change the field of anthropology.

  

  Dr. Yearwood’s bio shows that he is widely published and known in his field.

  “Gabby M.H. Yearwood is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Managing Faculty Director for the Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice in the Law School at the University Pittsburgh. He is a socio-cultural anthropologist earning his Ph.D from the University of Texas at Austin in Anthropology focusing in Black Diaspora Studies and Masculinity. His research interests include the social constructions of race and racism, masculinity, gender, sex, Black Feminist and Black Queer theory, anthropology of sport and Black Diaspora. Dr. Yearwood holds a secondary appointment with the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at Pitt.  Dr. Yearwood is also a teaching member of the Pitt Prison Education Project.”

  Among his courses is “Activist Anthropology” the description of which reads:

  “[T]his course will teach students that ‘critical engagement brought about by activist research is both necessary and productive. Such research can contribute to transforming the discipline by addressing knowledge production and working to decolonize our research process. Rather than seeking to avoid or resolve the tensions inherent in anthropological research on human rights, activist research draws them to the fore, making them a productive part of the process. Finally, activist research allows us to merge cultural critique with political action to produce knowledge that is empirically grounded, theoretically valuable, and ethically viable.’ (Speed 2006). This course will teach students both the importance and value of conducting research that moves outside of the “ivory tower” of academia. “[A]ctivist scholars work in dialogue, collaboration, alliance with people who are struggling to better their lives; activist scholarship embodies a responsibility for results that these “allies” can recognize as their own, value in their own terms, and use as they see fit.” (Hale 2008) This course will explore major conceptual work on the role and ethical responsibility of anthropological research and social justice issues.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 17:30

• The US Government Sold Almost 10,000 'Silk Road' Bitcoin Last Week
  The US Government Sold Almost 10,000 ‘Silk Road’ Bitcoin Last Week

  The United States government has been selling bitcoin confiscated from the Silk Road case in 2013. 

  

  As Turner Wright reports at CoinTelegraph.com, a March 31 filing with U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York regarding the sentencing of James Zhong stated U.S. government authorities had begun liquidating roughly 51,352 BTC seized in the Ulbricht case.

  According to the filing, officials sold roughly 9,861 BTC for more than $215 million on March 14, leaving roughly 41,491 BTC.

  “The Government understands [the seized Bitcoin] is expected to be liquidated in four more batches over the course of this calendar year,” said the court filing.

  “The Government understands from IRS Criminal Investigation – Asset Recovery & Investigative Services that the second round of liquidation will not be sold prior to Zhong’s sentencing date.”

  In November, Zhong pled guilty to wire fraud charges related to executing a scheme to steal Bitcoin from Silk Road in 2012. U.S. authorities seized more than 50,000 BTC – worth more than $3 billion at the time – from his Georgia home in November 2021. It was one of the largest crypto seizures by the government until the February 2022 recovery of roughly $3.6 billion connected to the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

  The Silk Road marketplace, which has been defunct for 10 years, originally allowed users to buy and sell illicit goods, including weapons and stolen credit card information.

  However, the marketplace also drew the attention of U.S. authorities, who arrested Ulbricht in 2013. He is currently serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

  I was arrested at the age of 29 and today I turn 39. I’ve lost my 30s to prison.

  During that time, I’ve done my best to learn from my mistakes, better myself, and help others do the same.

  I hope someday I can make amends as a free man as well.

  — Ross Ulbricht (@RealRossU) March 27, 2023

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  The price of BTC has had a volatile month, dipping below $20,000 on March 10 and moving above $29,000 on March 29. At the time of publication, BTC’s price was above $28,000.

  

  While the government has been selling bitcoin, other institutions like MicroStrategy have been acquiring it.

  👀

  — Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) March 31, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 17:00

• Investigation Reveals 'Revolving Door' Of DOJ, Big Tech Employees
  Investigation Reveals ‘Revolving Door’ Of DOJ, Big Tech Employees

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

  In the midst of an ongoing lawsuit against the Biden administration alleging collaboration with social media companies to censor Americans, a new report has detailed the extent to which former Justice Department (DOJ) employees are now working at “Big Tech” firms.

  

  The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) investigated the resumes of recent hires and found that more than 360 current employees of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook/Meta are former DOJ employees. Likewise, more than 40 DOJ employees, many of them in senior roles, previously worked at Big Tech firms.

  According to the report, since President Joe Biden took office, Google hired 40 former DOJ staffers, Amazon hired 61, Microsoft hired 26, and Meta hired 53.

  While staff often move between government and the private sector, “this case is different because unlike government and industry moving expertise back and forth (knowledge about procurement rules for example) what we have seen moving back and forth between DOJ and tech is a shared political agenda, specifically to silence conservative voices,” Yitz Friedman, AAF communications manager, told The Epoch Times.

  “Sadly, it is evidence that in the Big Tech community, corporate policy is the government’s policy.”

  This concern is heightened by recent evidence of collaboration between the DOJ and Twitter to silence Americans, particularly regarding political speech.

  After buying social media platform Twitter, Elon Musk released thousands of internal emails that allegedly showed collusion between Twitter and DOJ officials to censor speech, including banning a report by the New York Post before the 2020 election that reportedly incriminated then-candidate Joe Biden in illicit payments scandals.

  ‘Campaign of Public Threats’

  The release of the “Twitter files” follows a lawsuit by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt that alleges illegal collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech companies to suppress free speech.

  In a November 2022 interview with The Epoch Times, Landry stated that, because of the First Amendment, “the government doesn’t have the ability to censor speech, especially political speech. And so they can’t go out there and force these companies [to do it].”

  Plaintiffs in this case filed a 364-page “finding of fact” document showing a “campaign of public threats against social-media platforms to pressure them to censor more speech on social media.” This document will be discussed in a congressional hearing on March 30 on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 16:30

• Vax Mandate For Boston City Workers Was Legal, State Supreme Court Rules
  Vax Mandate For Boston City Workers Was Legal, State Supreme Court Rules

  The city of Boston’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for city workers was legal, according to a March 30 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, after the city claimed that the ability to adequately combat the virus outweighed the risk of irreparable vaccine injuries to workers who were facing termination.

  

  “The potential harm to the city and the public resulting from the spread of COVID-19 clearly outweighed the economic harm to the employees,” wrote Justice Elspeth Cypher in the ruling.

  The 2021 mandate required proof of vaccination or weekly testing – the latter of which was dropped after the Omicron variant emerged. This prompted a challenge from unions which claimed that the city had not properly negotiated the change.

  Boston Mayor Michelle Wu was under advisement from Dr. Bisola Ojikutu – who told the court that the update was necessary because testing was likely insufficient to combat COVID-19 despite the fact that the vaccine performed terribly against Omicron and its subvariants.

  The new ruling supercedes and overturns a 2022 preliminary injunction.

  Workers who failed to get a COVID-19 vaccine under the mandate faced repercussions, including termination. Unions asked for a preliminary injunction so workers could not be punished. Their bid was initially rejected, with a trial judge finding plaintiffs had not demonstrated irreparable harm absent an injunction. Massachusetts Appeals Court Judge Sabita Singh reversed that ruling, finding that workers faced “substantial harm” if the mandate was not blocked and that the city’s failure to negotiate the policy meant plaintiffs were likely to succeed.

  Singh said the case differed from others because it implicated issues of “bodily integrity and self-determination.”

  Singh “abused her discretion” in issuing the injunction, which remained in place until Thursday, the state’s top court said.

  The harm the plaintiffs were facing is solely economic because “they could have continued to refuse to become vaccinated and instead challenged the decision both in court and before” the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board (CERB), the court said. -Epoch Times

  “Given the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and its threat to the health and safety of the public, the decision to remove the testing alternative in the defendants’ COVID-19 policy constituted a nondelegable policy decision that could not be the subject of decision bargaining because any such requirement would have impinged directly on the defendants’ ability to provide essential public safety services to city residents,” reads the ruling.

  Meanwhile, Boston recently agreed to drop the mandate for the plaintiffs, firefighters and superior officers because “the parties desire to resolve this matter without the expense and uncertainty of further litigation, and in promotion of harmonious labor relations between them,” according to the Boston Herald.

  Sam Dillon, president of Boston Firefighters Local 718, told the Epoch Times: “I respect the Court’s decision to lift the injunction however I do not see it having any impact on our Union and members given the agreement we reached with the City in February.”

  “The Court’s decision in no way impacts the recent agreement between Local 718 and the City, and the Covid-19 mandate remains unenforceable to the members of Local 718,” added Leah Barrault, who represented the plaintiffs in the case.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 16:00

• "They're All Libertarians" Until Their Deposits Are At Risk
  “They’re All Libertarians” Until Their Deposits Are At Risk

  Authored by Roy Sebag via GoldMoney.com,

  Refresh the Page and it’s Gone

  On July 11, 2008, news broke out that California based IndyMac Bank suddenly failed and was to be shut down by banking regulators. Within minutes, thousands of bank depositors swarmed their local branches. A jarring video covering the event can still be viewed online. In it, a puzzled CBS news reporter approaches people queueing in the streets and asks them why they have showed up en masse to withdraw their funds from the bank.

  The reporter approaches Lisa Hester Lerner, a female depositor who rushed to the scene after having discovered that everything above the insured limit in her online bank account had disappeared. She had this to say: “I think it’s mass hysteria. I think this is similar to what happened in the Great Depression. And I think that everyone wants their money, and they want to touch it and hold it and see it.”

  

  Nearly fifteen years after the 2008 financial crisis, retail bank depositors have been plunged into a renewed sense of fear as bank runs abound from Silicon Valley to Manhattan to Zurich. Last week, Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate and Signature Bank New York failed. The US Treasury, FDIC, and the Federal Reserve were forced to step in by providing an “emergency rescue” package that will guarantee as much as $400 billion of uninsured deposits. Over the weekend, the Swiss government forced a merger of Credit Suisse with UBS by changing the country’s laws in an effort to halt a bank run on the 166-year-old institution.

  These privileged bailouts, which were not offered to those unfortunate IndyMac depositors in 2008, have rightfully evoked a conversation about moral hazard which is eerily reminiscent to the Occupy Wall Street movement years ago. While the financial conditions which led to the recent bank runs are in some ways very different to the conditions underlying the start of the 2008 financial crisis, many in the public square today feel that much of the underlying anxiety, anger, and confusion from that defining period of a generation has never really disappeared.  

  Nassim Taleb, the author of the bestselling book The Black Swan is one of those people. According to Taleb, the 2008-9 bailouts were a “blatant case of corporate socialism and a reward to an industry whose managers are stopped out by taxpayers”.

  Taleb continued: “Remember that bailouts come with printed money, which effectively deflate the wages of the middle class.”

  It was not surprising then to see Taleb criticize the recent bailouts with similar perspicuity. Last week he blamed venture capitalists for taking inordinate risk by banking with Silicon Valley Bank, causing a bank run when they noticed the institution was on the brink of insolvency, and then begging the government for bailouts when they realized they would be unable to withdraw their uninsured deposits in time. “They are all libertarians until they are hit by higher interest rates,” he concluded.  

  In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur turned US 2024 Presidential Candidate, similarly blasted the recent bailouts. He argued that the issues at the banks were a “simple case of bad risk management”, and that they were, at best, a case of incompetence, or at worst, a case of moral hazard where bank executives took on excessive risks with the knowledge that a bailout would materialize in the case of failure. According to Ramaswamy, Silicon Valley Bank’s “real hedge was to curry favour with the Biden administration.” 

  On the other side of the debate were three notable voices: David Sacks and Gary Tan, both venture capitalists based in Silicon Valley, and Bill Ackman, the New York based hedge fund manager. Over the weekend of March 10, 2023, these three flooded social media with hysterical warnings about the risks to society and the need for the government to step in before markets opened on Monday. Some commentators have observed how these sensational appeals for government action placed a great deal of political pressure on the Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve William Powell to take radical action, which of course, they did. Tan, went so far as arguing that this was “an extinction level event” that demanded an urgent solution.

  In David Sacks’ own words: “The only reason people are being stubborn about this point is because Silicon Valley Bank has the name Silicon Valley in it. If this was a farmers’ bank and it was 40,000 farms, small business farms that were on the hook, everybody would understand. The arguments being made would be: we can’t let 40,000 farms go out of business. They didn’t do anything wrong. They just trusted when they put their money in a bank that it was safe.”

  Bill Ackman, echoing Sacks, said that the government did not “bailout” Silicon Valley Bank because, unlike in the 2008 financial crisis, the government did not inject taxpayer money into the banks.

  To his mind, the government “did the right thing for the country.”

  The position advanced by Sacks and Tan is patently false. As Roger Lowenstein pointed out last week in his own opinion piece for the NY Times: “In the rescue of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday and of Signature Bank in New York two days later, the FDIC overtly ignored the cap and rescued all depositors, irrespective of size. This is a breathtaking leap.” In response to Ackman’s line of thinking, Lowenstein had this to say:

  “Federal officials have seized on a technicality to claim that it is not a bailout…. However, in the sense that banking customers are a pretty big group, the ‘public’ will be affected. Once you take risk out of a part of a bank’s operations, it is hard to let market principles govern the rest… the bailout does nothing to address the condition that fostered financial instability: inflation. It may even exacerbate it.”

  While the discourse is certainly polarized, with those firmly in the bailout camp and others firmly opposed, it seems that both sides are swiftly focusing on surface level talking points. The conversation, it seems, is being positioned in the financial media and from the institutional class in the following way: The recent bank runs have been caused by price declines from mostly safe assets. Therefore, monetary authorities need to focus on low contagion risk, decisive banking facilities to limit systemic damage, and the need to improve the health of bank balance sheets.

  The party lines will tow their diagnoses and purported cures. But isn’t there a bigger problem?

  Peering deeper into the cultural tension and anxiety, what feels different for many of the Occupy generation, and what you likely won’t hear in much of the financial media, is not that this was another unexpected bank crisis and bailout, but that an entire, mostly unvoiced group of people find both the bank failure and the bailout entirely predictable. But they feel they have no alternative in the matter, or even a voice. This is just the way the system is.

  These are people like Lisa Hester Lerner who just want to touch, hold, and see their money. This desire for a tangible solution reflects the real tension that many of us feel to be at the heart of things: that our abstract financial system is out of balance. And out of balance with what? With nature itself.

  The ideal relationship between humans and nature is obvious enough. We work with the land, forage for food, till the soil, produce crops, and after the laborious harvest season, we enjoy the fruits of the land, and conserve the surplus for the winter months. Unexpected calamities may occur – a drought, a rough season, a case of blight or disease – but, sure enough, with care and patience, the cycle reassumes its course, and we reap what we sow in time.

  Most of us today don’t work with nature anymore. We go to offices, sit at desks, take home paychecks, feed our families and pay the bills, and hopefully come away with something at the end of the month to put away into the family nest egg. Yet the basic principle still stands: it is entirely natural for us to store away a portion of the harvest into “savings” and conserve it for the colder seasons.

  But the human institution today is no longer harmonious with the natural economy. The money in the paycheck is not as real as the food we harvest and eat. This is because our modern society has been collectively systematized into the abstract. Your savings is no longer grain in a storehouse, nor is it silver in a purse or gold in a vault – it’s a number on the screen of a bank’s website. Refresh the page and it may be gone.

  This isn’t populist anger. It is plain enough that the abstract system is already out of balance with the natural economy. It speaks an entirely different language. Instead of a physical reward, earners are given a nominal sum – and you better hope that sum isn’t capped at a wage while the government’s pool of printed money drowns its real purchasing power. Instead of savings that are concrete and ready-to-hand for the future, savers are forced to put away their time and labour into the black hole of risk otherwise known as a bank.

  Throughout history, great civilizations collapse when human institutions mistake themselves to be unaccountable to any objective standard of measure and reward, or when they think themselves to float above the tides of nature. To believe that we are exempt from this universal law is either a sign of great imprudence or perilous maleficence.

  In my book, The Natural Order of Money, I argue that there are two economies: the real economy and the service economy. The role of money is to balance the relationship between these two sectors in relation to our shared environment of the natural world. My conclusion is that only natural money can achieve this function.

  A bank run can and will take place even if natural money is used, but there is a great distinction in the possible actions available to the government. A modern bank run predicated on fiat money, as we have seen by the recent bailouts, no longer provides a “check” on the system. Rather, it consolidates the system into smaller but more powerful central banking institutions. While central banks swiftly print new money to provide liquidity to the banks facing runs, this digital money is just as swiftly withdrawn from the failing bank into a larger, systemically important bank, or instead into a government bond. In other words, the bailouts reinforce the system itself by socializing the failure and privatizing the gains.

  With natural money, a bank run has to be respected, it cannot be papered over by devaluing the purchasing power of society’s savers. This in turn would allow the government and central banks to actually complete the task they set out for themselves last year, which was supposed to be to fight inflation, not print more currency.

  When central banks are compelled by social media trending hashtags and evanescent hysteria to bailout failed banks, they fail in their primary duty to society as the privileged administrators of money as a social contract. The result of this folly is another deferral of the inevitable re-balancing of our abstract economies with the natural world.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 15:30

• China Sends 18 Warplanes & 4 Vessels Toward Taiwan Amid Tsai's US Visit
  China Sends 18 Warplanes & 4 Vessels Toward Taiwan Amid Tsai’s US Visit

  China has made good on its threats vowing retaliation for Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s tour of the US and Central American allies, now a few days in. On Saturday the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent 18 aircraft and four naval vessels toward the self-ruled island.

  Tsai first landed in New York on Wednesday, and is currently in Central America – specifically Guatemala and Belize, after which she’s expected in L.A. for a planned meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The McCarthy visit may prove the most controversial part of her trip.

  

  Beijing warned of an even greater response should the Taiwanese leader go through with the McCarthy meeting. Only has 13 countries across the globe currently keep official diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

  While PLA violations of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, and even the Taiwan Strait median line have been a weekly occurrences for much of the past year or more, the past days have seen China ramp up the flights.

  Reuters reported Friday that “Nine Chinese aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line on Friday carrying out combat readiness patrols, Taiwan’s defense ministry said, days after Beijing threatened retaliation if President Tsai Ing-wen meets U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.”

  The Taiwan defense ministry statement said it has deployed in own jets and ships to monitor the PLA movements, however, sought to caution that it’s “not escalating conflicts or causing disputes” with China.

  “The communist military’s deployment of forces deliberately created tension in the Taiwan Strait, not only undermining peace and stability, but also has a negative impact on regional security and economic development,” it added, condemning “such irrational actions”.

  HAPPENING NOW: Taiwan President Tsai @iingwen arrives in Guatemala. Taiwan and Guatemala have been allies since 1960, and maintain robust commercial and trade ties. pic.twitter.com/uDRlNYzYrC

  — TaiwanPlus (@taiwanplusnews) March 31, 2023

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

  It must be recalled that China’s PLA military had launched its largest-ever ‘encircling’ live-fire exercises around Taiwan when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in August. Likely ahead of April 5, when Tsai is expected to meet the Republican House Speaker, China will ratchet its muscle-flexing around the self-ruled island even more.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 15:00

• The Warnings Unheeded Now Threaten Our Fundamental Freedoms
  The Warnings Unheeded Now Threaten Our Fundamental Freedoms

  Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClearPolitics.com,

  The First Amendment is at a critical juncture. Recent congressional hearings on the Twitter Files brought the matter into full public view. Freedom of speech and of the press are hanging by a precarious thread. Do we want a future in which information flows freely, or one in which an information elite controls those flows “for our own good?” The choices we make over the next few years will determine which of those futures we get.

  It’s tragic that we have let the problem reach this dangerous state. What heightens the tragedy, however, is that the war against America’s most cherished freedoms was predictable and preventable. If those of us who value freedom want to win, we’re going to need a strategy grounded in a clear understanding of what’s happening and why.

  The Twitter Files story is shocking. Allegations that big tech and social media manipulate information have been around for as long as we’ve had tech and social media companies. Allegations of bias among the mainstream media are even older. In recent years, however, both the allegations and the supporting evidence have ratcheted upward to unprecedented levels.

  When Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he opened his company’s internal archives to scrutiny. He assembled a team of journalists with a curious pedigree: registered Democrats with a distaste for Donald Trump and his supporters, whose track records skewed considerably left of center, and whose recent work has demonstrated deep concern about the politicization of journalism.

  Musk gave them unfettered access. They found a deep, broad, and disturbing pattern of collaboration between big government and big tech designed to promote “official stories” on multiple issues, throttle competing theories and arguments, and sanction those who dared to question government propaganda.

  

  When two of those journalists – Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger – testified before Congress, their Democratic inquisitors sought to belittle their credentials, question their motives, and tar them as part of some Republican-funded, far-right conspiracy. The still-left-leaning journalists are trying to absorb their shock at the depths to which the formerly civil-libertarian left has fallen.

  Far from shocking, however, that fall was predictable – and predicted. In 2001, amidst the public disgust with tech companies following the collapse of the dotcom bubble, I set out to make sense of life during the transition from the late industrial age to the early information age. I analyzed what I called the first four front-page stories of the information age: the dotcom bubble, the Microsoft antitrust trial, the rise of open-source software, and the Napster-driven wars over digital music. Contrary to popular opinion of the time, I believed that these stories were far from distinct. I saw them as four manifestations of a single underlying phenomenon. My goal was to understand that phenomenon.

  I found it. It appeared most clearly in the digital music arena, but it ran through all four stories – and through much that has happened since. It appears just as clearly in today’s war on free speech. It involves an entirely predictable pattern of opportunity, action, and reaction.

  The starting point is digitization and quantification. The Internet changed the economics of information. Throughout human history, information was scarce, hard to acquire, and expensive to process. Skilled professionals – spies, scholars, lawyers, accountants, clerics, doctors – could command a premium for their knowledge. When the Internet went public, anything that could be digitized and quantified suddenly flowed freely. Information was there for the asking. The premium shifted to filtering – the ability to discard unwanted information and arrange what remained.

  Economic shifts generate massive opportunities for creative, entrepreneurial people and bring glorious benefits to millions of consumers. The Internet was no exception in this regard, and neither was the predictable backlash against it. Anything that benefits new businesses and empowers consumers is a warning shot across the bow of powerful incumbents who’d grown accustomed to serving those consumers in a predictable, profitable, manner.

  In the music industry, anything that let individual consumers share digital music files reduced the revenues, profits, power, and control of record labels. Pre-digitization, these powerful incumbents determined what music got recorded and how it was packaged, distributed, presented, and priced. It was a comfortable business model that gave us the music industry “as we knew it.” The Internet undermined it entirely.

  Powerful incumbents never fade quietly into the night when challenged. They fight, using whatever weapons they can muster. In our society, the most effective ways to undermine new technological and economic opportunities tend to lie in law, regulation, and public policy. The record labels fought – largely successfully – to apply and reinterpret existing laws and to change laws in ways favorable to their interests.

  There’s the pattern: Technology creates opportunities. New businesses exploit those opportunities. Consumers benefit. Powerful incumbents fear their loss of control. Threatened incumbents seek allies in government. Government changes laws and regulations to protect incumbent interests. Media campaigns “educate” the public on the merits of the new policies. The new laws ensure that the next wave of technological change runs largely through the powerful incumbents, rather than against them.

  By 2003, I had distilled this pattern, showed numerous ways that it had already unfolded, predicted that it would soon hit parts of our economy and our lives far more significant than the music industry, and suggested some ways that we might prepare ourselves for the coming battles.

  It took another two years to get my analysis published. It went largely unnoticed. Twelve years later, then-Senator Ben Sasse described the ways that this pattern had forever disrupted the dynamics of employment. This, too, went largely unnoticed.

  Today, we see that disruptive pattern threatening the most basic of our civil liberties. Its manifestation in the arenas of speech, propaganda, and censorship is clear. Consider how each step in the process I identified above has played out here:

  • Technology creates opportunities. The Internet opened entirely new vistas for the creation and exchange of ideas, information, theories, opinions, propaganda, and outright lies.

  • New businesses exploit those opportunities. The companies founded since 1995 that created and control the world’s most important conduits for information have joined the ranks of history’s most powerful entities.

  • Consumers benefit. The centrality of these communication systems to our lives (for better or for worse) proves that they confer real value.

  • Powerful incumbents fear their loss of control. The twin political shocks of 2016 – Brexit and Donald Trump – highlighted the extent to which official channels had lost control of the narrative. With the entirety of elite media, government, big business, and the intelligentsia aligned behind Remain and Hillary, the newly empowered masses understood – for the first time – that there were viable alternatives to the official story.

  • Threatened incumbents seek allies in government. A coalition of elite forces assembled quickly, laser-focused on stomping out the populist threat. Masses empowered to conduct their own analyses, draw their own conclusions, and share their opinions among themselves threatened the stability of the power structure “as we know it.”

  • Government changes laws and regulations to protect incumbent interests. Prior to Musk’s Twitter, the entirety of Silicon Valley committed itself to “protecting” the public from “disinformation,” roughly defined as anything that threatened to undermine an official, sanctioned narrative. Allies throughout the administrative state, Congress, and the Biden White House are working to embed those “protections” in law.

  • Media campaigns “educate” the public on the merits of the new policies. The same mainstream media that vilified Napster, Grokster, and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing is now working to turn public opinion against the evil purveyors of alleged “disinformation.”

  • The new laws ensure that the next wave of technological change runs largely through the powerful incumbents, rather than against them. We’re now entering the stage in which censoring technologies provide strong, effective, and legally mandated protection against anything that runs against the “consensus” of government propaganda or enlightened elite opinion.

  The backlash is nearing its last stages. We’re rapidly heading towards locking in a technological, economic, and legal regime of information control, censorship, surveillance, and vilification.

  That’s the predictable pattern. That’s the threat. That’s the precipice on which we now stand. We’re on the verge of deciding whether we want to restore information monopoly and dominance to a powerful elite, or reverse the trajectory of recent law, regulation, and public policy to enshrine an architecture of open discourse.

  Will the information age be an era of informed, empowered citizens – or an era of a dominant, information-controlling elite? Stay tuned. That’s the question we need to answer.

  *  *  *

  Bruce Abramson, PhD, JD, is a principal at JBB&A Strategies and B2 Strategic, a director of the American Center for Education and Knowledge, and author of the forthcoming book “The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America” (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 14:30

• Ivy League Schools Are Now Pushing $90,000 Per Year In Tuition
  Ivy League Schools Are Now Pushing $90,000 Per Year In Tuition

  Inflation is showing up just about everywhere, but it’s becoming even more prominent and noticeable at the nation’s Ivy League universities where, according to a new report from Bloomberg, prices for tuition are now approaching $90,000.

  Prestigious universities like Yale, Dartmouth and Brown have raised tuition between 4% and 5%, the report notes, even as full costs for many of these colleges are already “well into the $80,000” range. This means a full, four year education costs over $300,000 in many cases.

  As Bloomberg note, the cost of attending a university like Brown is now, on a per year basis, “well above what the typical US household earns”. This means that financial aid must make up the difference in many cases.

  

  Beth Akers, an economist who focuses on higher education, told Bloomberg: “At some point, that math stops working out. We get to a place where these degrees are just no longer worth it.”

  The University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, Columbia University and Brown University all have price tags over $80,000 per year, as of 2022. Yale breached this mark last academic year, as well. But despite the price hikes, demand has not yet showed signs of waning. 

  In addition to trying to get the most from federal subsidies (“at least 50% of students receive some sort of financial aid,” the report says), universities are also facing a rise in costs, just like every other industry over the last 18 months. The cost of running a college is up 5.2% in fiscal 2022, Bloomberg reported. This figure marks the largest rise since 2001. 

  Per the report, here are the costs for attending some of the most well known Ivy League schools:

  • Brown Cost of Attendance: $84,828
  • Cornell Cost of Attendance: $84,568 
  • U Penn Cost of Attendance: $84,570
  • Dartmouth Cost of Attendance: $84,300
  • Yale Cost of Attendance: $83,880
  • Duke Cost of Attendance: $83,263
  • Stanford Cost of Attendance: $82,406
  • Columbia Cost of Attendance: $81,680
  • MIT Cost of Attendance: $79,546
  • Harvard Cost of Attendance: $76,763
  • Princeton Cost of Attendance: $76,040 

  In most cases, more than 40% of students receive some form of financial aid. At schools like Stanford and Princeton, that number is between 60% and 70% of all students. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 14:00

• The Trump Indictment: Making History In The Worst Possible Way
  The Trump Indictment: Making History In The Worst Possible Way

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in Fox.com on the Trump indictment. There is a report of 34 counts against former President Donald Trump, which may be count stacking based on individual payments or documents.

  We will have to wait to see.

  In the meantime, the prosecution came about in the most overtly political way from Bragg campaigning on charging Trump to a public pressure campaign to indict from his former lead prosecutor.

  

  Here is the column:

  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has finally made history. He has indicted former President Donald Trump as part of an investigation, possibly for hush money payments. We are all waiting to see the text of the indictment to confirm the basis for this unprecedented act. But history in this case — and in this country — is not on Bragg’s side.

  The only crime that has been discussed in this case is an unprecedented attempt to revive a misdemeanor for falsifying business documents that expired years ago. If that is still the basis of Thursday’s indictment, Bragg could not have raised a weaker basis to prosecute a former president. If reports are accurate, he may attempt to “bootstrap” the misdemeanor into a felony (and longer statute of limitations) by alleging an effort to evade federal election charges.

  While Trump will be the first former president indicted, he will not be the last if that is the standard for prosecution.

  It is still hard to believe that Bragg would primarily proceed on such a basis. There have been no other crimes discussed over months, but we will have to wait to read the indictment to confirm the grounds.

  What we do know is the checkered history leading to this moment.

  

  The Justice Department itself declined to prosecute the federal election claim against Trump.

  There was ample reason to decline.

  The Justice Department went down this road before and it did not go well. They tried to prosecute former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on stronger grounds (which I also criticized) and failed. In that case, campaign officials and donors were directly involved in covering up an affair that produced a child.

  At the time, Edwards’ wife was suffering from cancer. The prosecution still collapsed. The reason is that you need to show the sole purpose for paying hush money in such a scandal. For any married man, let alone a celebrity, there are various reasons to want to bury a sexual scandal.

  For Trump, there was an upcoming election but he was also a married man allegedly involved in an affair with a porn star. He was also a television celebrity who is subject to the standard “morals clause” that’s triggered by criminal conduct or conduct that brings “public disrepute, scandal, or embarrassment.” These clauses are written broadly to protect the news organizations and their “brand.”

  Various presidents from Warren Harding to Bill Clinton have been involved in efforts to hush up affairs. They also had different reasons for burying such scandals, including politics. However, scandals are messy matters with a complex set of motivations. Showing that Trump only acted with the future election in mind — rather than his current marriage or television contracts — is implausible. That was likely the same calculus made by the Justice Department.

  That is also why the use of the “bootstrapping” theory as the primary charge would be an indictment of the prosecution and its own conduct. The office has already been tarnished by the conduct of the prosecutors who pushed this theory.

  

  When Bragg initially balked at this theory and stopped the investigation, two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned from the Manhattan DA’s office. Pomerantz then did something that some of us view as a highly unprofessional and improper act. He published a book on the case against Trump — a person who was still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted, of any crime.

  It worked. Bragg ran on his pledge to bag Trump and Pomerantz ramped up the political base to demand an indictment for a crime. It really did not matter what that crime might be.

  While other crimes have not been discussed in leaks or coverage for months, it is always possible that Bragg charged Trump on something other than the state/federal hybrid issue in his indictment. There could be other business or tax record charges linked to banks or taxes. Ironically, the bank and tax fraud issues were also a focus of the Justice Department, which again did not charge on those theories. Moreover, Bragg could face the same statute of limitation concerns on some of the issues previously investigated by the Justice Department.

  Finally, Bragg could stack multiple falsification claims to ramp up the indictment. There are reports of 34 counts of business record falsification. But multiplying a flawed theory 34 times does not make it 34 times stronger. Serial repetition is no substitute for viable criminal charges.

  Bragg could have something more than the anemic bootstrapping theory — and it would be more defensible. Conversely, if Bragg moves primarily on that theory, the Democrats are inviting a race to the bottom in political prosecutions. That is something that we have been able to largely avoid in this country.

  Bragg had a choice to make. He cannot be the defender of the rule of law if he is using the legal process for political purposes. That is what would be involved in a formal accusation based largely on the bootstrap theory. The underlying misdemeanor could pale in comparison to the means being used to prosecute it.

  We have already watched the unseemly display of Bragg’s former lead prosecutor in publishing a book and publicly calling for charges during an ongoing investigation.

  Proceeding solely on the bootstrap theory would be a singularly ignoble moment for the Manhattan District Attorney.

  What is clear is that whatever comes out of that gate next week, it will not just be Trump who will face the judgment of history.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 04/01/2023 – 13:30

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