Mar 31

Today’s News 31st March 2023

  • Two Decades Later, US Senate Votes To Abolish Iraq War Authorization
    Two Decades Later, US Senate Votes To Abolish Iraq War Authorization

    Via The Cradle,

    The US Senate voted 66-30 on 29 March to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that allowed former president George W. Bush to launch a military invasion of Iraq under false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The bill is now headed to the Republican-led House of Representatives, where it remains unclear if lawmakers will put it on the floor for a vote.

    “Congress has abdicated its powers to the executive for too long,” said Senator Tim Kaine, who over the past several years has authored the Senate’s efforts to repeal the Iraq AUMF. “Presidents can do mischief if there are outdated authorizations on the books,” he added.

    AFP via Getty Images

    If the bill passes a vote on the House of floor — and is signed by President Joe Biden — it will be the first repeal of a war authorization since 1974.

    Nonetheless, just last week, the US Senate overwhelmingly voted against repealing the original AUMF, which was signed into law on 18 September, 2001 by George W. Bush in response to the 11 September attacks.

    As opposed to the Iraq AUMF, the 2001 AUMF is seen as a more sweeping, blank-check legislation that was passed to target the alleged perpetrators of the 11 September attacks.

    According to the Congressional Research Service, the 2001 AUMF has been used to justify more than 40 military interventions in at least 22 countries without the approval of Congress.

    In the years after 2001, the US Congress also approved so-called ‘security cooperation authorities‘ (SCA) that have allowed the Pentagon to covertly deploy troops and wage secret wars in dozens of countries across the globe.

    According to a report by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, the SCA allows the Pentagon to “train and equip foreign forces anywhere in the world” and to “provide support to foreign forces, paramilitaries, and private individuals who are in turn supporting US counterterrorism operations,” with a spending limit of $100,000,000 per fiscal year.

    As a result of this, in dozens of countries, these programs have been used as a springboard for hostilities, with the Pentagon declining to inform Congress or the US public about their secret operations.

    “Researchers and reporters uncovered [SCA] programs not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen,” the report highlights.

    Christopher C. Miller, a former acting head of the Pentagon, said in his memoir released last month that the US should be held accountable for the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The US military-industrial complex has grown into a hydra-headed monster with almost no controls on the American war machine,” Miller writes.

    In an interview with The Hill, Miller went on to say that, “We invaded a sovereign nation, killed and maimed a lot of Iraqis, and lost some of the greatest American patriots to ever live — all for a goddamned lie.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 23:40

  • CFA Pass Rates Finally Tick Higher After Plunging To Record Lows During Pandemic
    CFA Pass Rates Finally Tick Higher After Plunging To Record Lows During Pandemic

    The pass rate for the first level of the chartered financial analyst (CFA) exam ticked up with zero pandemic related cancellations for the first time since 2021, Bloomberg reported this week. 

    38% of those who took the Level I test passed it, which was up from 36% in November 2022 and 37% in August of last year. Despite the tick higher, the numbers still come in under the 41% average pass rate over the last decade, the report notes. 

    The report says the pass rates are among “signs of improvement and waning impact from the pandemic”, which helped drive pass rates significantly lower coinciding with the onset of the pandemic. 

    Record low pass rates were recorded last year across all levels of the CFA, the report says. In February, about 17,000 candidates sat for the exam, which was administered at 459 testing centers worldwide. 

    And the CFA Institute did a bit of what public schools have been doing when pass rates drop: they reworked some of the exam earlier this month to “emphasize practical skills and reduce the amount of time candidates study, in the biggest reworking since the test was introduced in 1963”, Bloomberg wrote. 

    The record low pass rates also (conspicuously?) coincide with the CFA Institute choosing to offer the exam via computer, instead of on paper, as a result of Covid protocols. There are currently 190,000 charterholders worldwide, who took an average of 4 years to complete all three levels of the exam. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 23:20

  • Pozsar's Warning Of Dollar's Waning Sway Comes True
    Pozsar’s Warning Of Dollar’s Waning Sway Comes True

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

    In a quick succession this week, Beijing unveiled ground-breaking deals to further its efforts to promote the yuan and ditch the US dollar. It’s the kind of thing money-market guru Zoltan Pozsar had in mind when he warned that the dollar’s centrality in the world financial system is slowly being whittled away.  

    What occurred in Beijing this week was easy to overlook, but it could just as easily have a place in future history books. On Wednesday, Banco BOCOM BBM became the first Latin American bank to sign up as a direct participant in CIPS, a Chinese alternative to the US-dominated global payment system. The two countries also agreed to settle trade in their own currencies.

    Earlier this week, Saudi Aramco agreed to buy a stake in Rongsheng Petrochemical, one of China’s refining giants, in its biggest-ever foreign acquisition to expand its presence in the world’s biggest energy importer. A day later, China National Offshore Oil Corporation and France’s TotalEnergies completed China’s first yuan-settled liquefied-natural-gas trade through the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange.

    These developments followed an earlier warning by Pozsar, a former Fed and US Treasury Department official, that we could be witnessing the dusk for the petro-dollar and the dawn of the “petro-yuan.” He flagged the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — in particular in an essay in December:

    “China is proactively writing a new set of rules as it replays the “Great Game,” creating a new type of globalization with new institutions like the Belt and Road Initiative, BRICS+, and the SCO  (Shanghai Cooperation Organization)

    …the one thing that the BRICS are most aligned on is the de-dollarization of their fast-growing, bilateral trade flows…the drive to de-dollarize intra-BRICS trade and soon intra -BRICS+ trade will speed up.  Don’t tell me that doesn’t threaten the dollar’s supremacy, or that it won’t hurt the “exorbitant privilege”

    …the U.S. dollar and Treasury securities will likely be dealing with issues they never had to deal with before: less demand, not more; more competition, not less.  

    To be sure, the yuan’s market share in the global system remains minuscule. But the direction is clear. As Victor Xing at Kekselias Inc. put it: “The key characteristic of the present geopolitical development is ideological, rather than based on economic calculus. Therefore, it is harder to de-escalate, and it means the disruptions and decoupling has momentum to go on for a longer period of time.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 23:00

  • WHO Now Says COVID Vaccines Not Recommended For Healthy Kids & Teens
    WHO Now Says COVID Vaccines Not Recommended For Healthy Kids & Teens

    Yet another leading health institution has unveiled a significant Covid policy reversal this week… this time it’s none other than the World Health Organization (WHO) saying something that might have gotten an individual suspended from social media or publicly “canceled” a mere one or two years ago:

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    The revision in guidelines was put out this week by the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) – a group of scientists and officials which said they no longer recommend the Covid vaccine for “healthy” children ages 6 months to 17 years.

    “The public health impact of vaccinating healthy children and adolescents is comparatively much lower than the established benefits of traditional essential vaccines for children – such as the rotavirus, measles, and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines,” SAGE wrote.

    The new policy identifies three priority groups — high, medium and low — and puts children and teens in the low category. The definitions assess categories for “risk of severe disease and death”. The WHO still recommends that “Children who have compromised immune systems or existing health conditions should still get the vaccine.”

    SAGE Chair Dr. Hanna Nohyn stated in explaining the updated guidelines, “Updated to reflect that much of the population is either vaccinated or previously infected with COVID-19, or both, the revised roadmap reemphasizes the importance of vaccinating those still at-risk of severe disease, mostly older adults and those with underlying conditions, including with additional boosters.”

    The United States CDC currently recommends Covid vaccines for children 6 months and up…

    It’s unclear whether the US Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will follow in adapting its recommendations to this revised WHO policy, but what is clear is that those parents who remained skeptical of putting hastily developed “Authorized for Emergency Use” mRNA vaccines into their children have been clearly vindicated… and this time by no less than the WHO.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 22:40

  • More Biden Madness: Asking Black Americans On Census if They Are Slave Descendants
    More Biden Madness: Asking Black Americans On Census if They Are Slave Descendants

    By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

    Please note another ultra-Left mad proposal is underway: U.S. Considers Asking Black Americans on Census if They Are Slave Descendants

    In a proposed update to how the government tracks Americans’ race and ethnicity, the Biden administration is asking the public for input on how it might go about differentiating Black people who are descendants of slaves in America from those whose families arrived more recently as immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean or other countries.

    Supporters of the change say one reason they are pushing it is to quantify who would be eligible to receive reparations for slavery should the government ever agree to pay them.

    The Biden administration has proposed combining existing race and ethnicity questions so that “Hispanic or Latino” would no longer be a separate question, but instead would be one of several choices on the race question. It has also proposed creating a new race question category for Americans of Middle Eastern or North African heritage.

    In its proposed rule on those broader changes, the administration asked whether the term “American Descendants of Slavery” or “American Freedmen” would be the best terms to describe the group. Some have suggested the term “Foundational Black Americans.”

    The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which is spearheading the race-category overhaul, declined to comment on the idea.

    Last Living Slave

    Sylvester Magee (claimed May 29, 1841 – October 15, 1971) claimed to be the last living former American slave. If this claim were true, Magee would not only have been the last surviving American Civil War veteran, but the oldest recorded person to have ever lived.

    Assuming the claim is true, the last slave died 52 years ago. 

    More realistically, assuming a very generous average age at death of 80 and not 130 years, nearly all slaves died 100 years or more ago. That means most of the direct descendants have passed as well.

    Thus, we are talking about reparations to descendants of descendants of descendants all of which had the benefit of growing up in the greatest country on earth, with all of the associated benefits. 

    Questions Abound

    Let’s give reparations to descendants of slaves, but let’s not even call them slaves, let’s call them “Foundational Black Americans,” muting the reason for the reparation.

    And what percentage ancestry fits the bill? 5%, 10%, 50.01%? 

    Does an 88% descendent get twice as much as a 44% descendent? Was he or she twice as harmed? Harmed at all? 

    Do we have everyone take genetic tests or do we take people’s word for it? If a boy can proclaim to be a girl, can I proclaim to be black? 

    Does the process unite or further divide the United States? 

    San Francisco Board Unanimously Supports $5 Million Per Person Reparation Payments

    On March 17, I noted San Francisco Board Unanimously Supports $5 Million Per Person Reparation Payments

    I did the math based on the number of households in San Francisco. The price tag would be $192 billion. The city budget is $13 billion.

    But note the bill did not pass. It was “supported” unanimously. 

    If the board actually approved this nonsense, I suspect everyone who voted in favor would immediately be voted out of office in special elections and the bill would be quickly struck down as unconstitutional.

    Slave State Analysis

    The 15 slave states were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

    Elsewhere, people who never owned slaves would make payments to people who never were slaves in states that never had slaves.

    Political Race Baiting

    One cannot undo a wrong of 200 years ago by taking money from people who had nothing to do with the problem and solve the wrong by giving money to people who were never harmed in process. 

    Anyone sponsoring this idea knows reparations cannot possibly pass Congress. 

    Expense bills need to garner 60 votes in the Senate. And many Democrats would not stomach a vote for it. Reparations would be  dead on arrival. 

    Seriously Crazy?

    The reparation idea seems seriously crazy. But is it? 

    Team Biden knows reparations will never pass. The proposal is nothing but race-baiting, virtue-signaling meant to further divide the United States.

    Blacks will not benefit from this. 

    No one will benefit from this except perhaps the politicians who see a benefit in further dividing the county to enhance their political goals. 

    This post originated at MishTalk.Com.

    Addendum – Biden Declares Transgender Day of Visibility

    “NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2023, as Transgender Day of Visibility.”

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/03/30/a-proclamation-on-transgender-day-of-visibility/

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 22:20

  • China And Brazil Strike Deal To Ditch The US Dollar
    China And Brazil Strike Deal To Ditch The US Dollar

    In a time when de-dollarization news are dropping fast and furious and even Elon Musk is now jumping on a bandwagon…

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    … which we first defined a decade ago, not a day goes by without some modest or not so modest shift toward a world in which the US currency – fully weaponized after February 2022 for the entire world to see and fear – is no longer the world’s reserve. And today was no exception.

    According to the Brazilian government, China and Brazil have reached a deal to trade in their own currencies, ditching the United States dollar as an intermediary entirely, AFP reported.

    The deal, Beijing’s latest salvo against the almighty greenback, will enable China, the top rival to US economic hegemony, and Brazil, the biggest economy in Latin America, to conduct their massive trade which amounts to $150 billion per year, and financial transactions directly, exchanging yuan for reais and vice versa instead of going through the US dollar. In doing so China extends its bilateral, USD-exempting currency arrangements beyond countries such as Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to now include the Latin American exporting powerhouse.

    “The expectation is that this will reduce costs… promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment,” the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) said in a statement.

    China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, with a record US$150.5 billion (S$200 billion) in bilateral trade last year.

    The deal, which follows a preliminary agreement in January, was announced after a high-level China-Brazil business forum in Beijing.

    Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was originally scheduled to attend the forum as part of a high-profile China visit, but had to postpone his trip indefinitely on Sunday after he came down with pneumonia.

    The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of Communications BBM will execute the transactions, officials said.

    To be sure, we are still a long away away from the yuan replacing the USD as global reserve currency, or maybe not so far if one reads the recent reports from Zoltan Pozsar. And yet, even such foaming Bretton Woods III skeptics as Rabobank’s Michael Every is starting to realize that he may have been wrong. From his morning note today:

    We showed in ‘Why Bretton Woods 3 Won’t Work’ (2022) that an anti-US BW3 bloc does not balance its trade internally by value or structure: BW3 can sell commodities to China; but unless they absorb the exports China now sends to the West, or China runs trade deficits like the US, then it can’t happen. Instead, we all just return to global mercantilism – which is happening, is inflationary, and ultimately suits the US – just not Wall Street (either in terms of mercantilism or monetary policy). When BW3 players no longer hold their official and unofficial savings in USD assets (if not Treasuries, then agencies or stocks, or property), and want to stash cash in Moscow and retire in China, then things are changing

    Alas, at the rate the current US ruling regime is destroying the world’s faith and confidence not only in the dollar but in what was once truly a superpower and is increasingly a third world banana republic – the latest news of Trump’s indictment for political reasons being the third world cherry on top – we won’t have very long to wait.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 22:00

  • Freeport LNG Returns To Full Power
    Freeport LNG Returns To Full Power

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

    The Freeport LNG export facility in Texas is receiving natural gas from pipelines at full capacity, suggesting that the liquefaction operations are back to full power, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing data from data provider Refinitiv.   

    The Freeport LNG export facility in Texas was shut down in June last year when a fire broke out and damaged the plant.

    Two of the three trains at Freeport LNG have resumed full commercial operations in recent weeks after receiving regulatory approval in February.  

    The third and final train at the Freeport LNG facility received regulatory approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) in early March.

    By then, the other two trains had returned to full commercial operation, reaching production levels in excess of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), Freeport LNG, the company operating the export facility, said early this month.

    At the end of this month, data on natural gas flows suggest that Freeport LNG is back to full operations.

    According to Refinitiv data, quoted by Reuters, natural gas flows from pipelines to Freeport LNG were on track to rise to 2.1 Bcf/d on Thursday, up from 1.8 Bcf/d on Wednesday. That’s as much natural gas as all three trains at Freeport can process into LNG.

    Pipeline gas deliveries to US liquefied natural gas export plants hit an all-time high this week, after the Freeport facility ramped-up service.

    Until it was forced to shut down due to the fire in June, Freeport, responsible for some 20% of total LNG exports from the United States and generating $35 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2022, served Europe well as the continent looked to squelch a growing energy crisis this winter.

    The return of Freeport LNG is set to further ease concerns about LNG supply in Europe, which has managed its gas supply and demand well this winter, mostly due to long periods of mild weather and lower consumption because of demand destruction in the industry and energy savings from households.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 21:40

  • Finland Clears Last Hurdle, Will Become The 31st Member Of NATO
    Finland Clears Last Hurdle, Will Become The 31st Member Of NATO

    Late Thursday night (local time), Turkey’s parliament approved Finland’s NATO application, which puts the Nordic country on the verge of formal membership in the Western military alliance as the 31st nation. This comes after on Monday Hungarian parliament ratified Finland’s for NATO membership.

    The unanimous Turkish vote was the last hurdle in the process, after for months both Ankara and Budapest stalled the application – but in the case of Sweden it will be left behind, this despite the Finland-Sweden bids being initially launched as a package deal. Turkey’s relations with Sweden continue to be at a low-point, suggesting its application will not move forward for a Turkish vote anytime soon.

    Finnish President Sauli Niinisto hailed the news out of Turkey, saying his country is “now ready to join NATO.” He added: “All 30 NATO members have now ratified Finland’s membership. I want to thank every one of them for their trust and support. Finland will be a strong and capable ally, committed to the security of the Alliance.” NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg also issued a statement of congratulations on Twitter…

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    Earlier this month, the Kremlin weighed in on Finland being fast-tracked for entry, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying, “We have many times expressed regret over Finland and Sweden’s move toward membership and said many times that Russia does not pose a threat to these countries.”

    “We do not have any dispute with these countries… They have never posed any threat to us and, logically, we did not threaten them,” Peskov added.

    Finland meanwhile is building a 200km fence along its border with Russia to boost security, also after reporting that Russian men fled into Sweden by the droves in order to escape conscription. The fence will reportedly be 10 feet high and topped with barbed wire.

    Sweden’s membership bid is expected to continue to stall, after deteriorating relations with Turkey in the wake of the Quran-burning incident by a far-right activist. Turkey has also demanded Swedish authorities crackdown on Kurdish political groups and operatives while alleging that Stockholm has hosted “terrorists” on its soil. But no matter what limited steps Sweden has taken thus far, none of its has satisfied Turkish leadership. 

    Hungary too is expected to continue also blocking Sweden’s application for the time being. “Hungary is holding up Sweden’s admission to NATO because of grievances over criticism by Stockholm of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s policies, the Hungarian government spokesman said on Wednesday,” according to Reuters.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 21:20

  • Tablet's Grand Opus On The Anti-Disinformation Complex
    Tablet’s Grand Opus On The Anti-Disinformation Complex

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

    Years ago, when I first began to have doubts about the Trump-Russia story, I struggled to come up with a word to articulate my suspicions.

    If the story was wrong, and Trump wasn’t a Russian spy, there wasn’t a word for what was being perpetrated. This was a system-wide effort to re-frame reality itself, which was both too intellectually ambitious to fit in a word like “hoax,” but also probably not against any one law, either. New language would have to be invented just to define the wrongdoing, which not only meant whatever this was would likely go unpunished, but that it could be years before the public was ready to talk about it.

    Around that same time, writer Jacob Siegel — a former army infantry and intelligence officer who edits Tablet’s afternoon digest, The Scroll — was beginning the job of putting key concepts on paper. As far back as 2019, he sketched out the core ideas for a sprawling, illuminating 13,000-word piece that just came out this week. Called “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century: Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation,” Siegel’s Tablet article is the enterprise effort at describing the whole anti-disinformation elephant I’ve been hoping for years someone in journalism would take on.

    It will escape no one’s notice that Siegel’s lede recounts the Hamilton 68 story from the Twitter Files. Siegel says the internal dialogues of Twitter executives about the infamous Russia-tracking “dashboard” helped him frame the piece he’d been working on for so long. Which is great, I’m glad about that, but he goes far deeper into the topic than I have, and in a way that has a real chance to be accessible to all political audiences.

    Siegel threads together all the disparate strands of a very complex story, in which the sheer quantity of themes is daunting: the roots in counter-terrorism strategy, Russiagate as a first great test case, the rise of a public-private “counter-disinformation complex” nurturing an “NGO Borg,” the importance of Trump and “domestic extremism” as organizing targets, the development of a new uniparty politics anointing itself “protector” of things like elections, amid many other things.

    He concludes with an escalating string of anxiety-provoking propositions. One is that our first windows into this new censorship system, like Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, might also be our last, as AI and machine learning appear ready to step in to do the job at scale. The National Science Foundation just announced it was “building a set of use cases” to enable ChatGPT to “further automate” the propaganda mechanism, as Siegel puts it. The messy process people like me got to see, just barely, in the outlines of Twitter emails made public by a one-in-a-million lucky strike, may not appear in recorded human conversations going forward. “Future battles fought through AI technologies,” says Siegel, “will be harder to see.”

    More unnerving is the portion near the end describing how seemingly smart people are fast constructing an ideology of mass surrender. Siegel recounts the horrible New York Times Magazine article (how did I forget it?) written by Yale law graduate Emily Bazelon just before the 2020 election, whose URL is titled “The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation.” Shorter Bazelon could have been Fox Nazis Censorship Derp: the article the Times really ran was insanely long and ended with flourishes like, “It’s time to ask whether the American way of protecting free speech is actually keeping us free.”

    Both the actors in the Twitter Files and the multitudinous papers produced by groups like the Aspen Institute and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center are perpetually concerned with re-thinking the “problem” of the First Amendment, which of course is not popularly thought of as a problem. It’s notable that the Anti-Disinformation machine, a clear sequel to the Military-Industrial Complex, doesn’t trumpet the virtues of the “free world” but rather the “rules-based international order,” within which (as Siegel points out) people like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich talk about digital deletion as “necessary to protect American democracy.” This idea of pruning fingers off democracy to save it is increasingly popular; we await the arrival of the Jerzy Kozinski character who’ll propound this political gardening metaphor to the smart set.

    I asked Siegel a few questions about his mammoth publication, which happily he plans to expand to a book. The following is edited for length:

    Matt Taibbi: How did you end up in Army intelligence?

    Jacob Siegel: 9/11 is the short version of the story. I enlisted right after 9/11 and intelligence was probably a mistake (laughs). I ended up switching over into the infantry. So, I started in intelligence and then finished off in the infantry.

    Matt Taibbi: Did you know anyone in intelligence who made the transition to anti-disinformation?

    Jacob Siegel: Not in the intelligence world directly. But I was at the Daily Beast right when I got back from Afghanistan, and I quickly started covering digital culture, protest politics, weird internet ideology, and national security. I was writing about ISIS’s social media campaigns and talking to Clint Watts and talking to J.M. Berger, and taking what they were saying quite seriously at the time. I was watching that transition gradually into a rubric for understanding domestic politics in a way that – frankly – I wasn’t fully aware of what I was watching until probably a few years later. I would say I saw more of that counterterrorism-to-disinformation pipeline as a journalist than I did as an army officer.

    Matt Taibbi: What gave you the idea to do this? It’s such a huge project.

    Jacob Siegel: There are whole sections from this piece that come from a draft that I started working on in 2019. I think I submitted the first version of this in late 2020. So I’ve been working on this for a long time. I moved to Israel, my son was born, shit happens, you know… I just couldn’t quite bring it all together in the original version.

    I wasn’t an immediate Russiagate skeptic. I didn’t see it and immediately think, “This is bullshit.” I saw it and thought to myself, “This is exaggerated… Adam Schiff is exaggerating, but he can’t be just lying like that (laughs) in public.” Really on a very fundamental level, in terms of my unquestioned premises, I was not capable of believing that an American national elected official could lie that brazenly, or that the intelligence agencies, which I knew to be corrupt and inefficient in a billion different ways, could be involved in a grand sort of conspiracy. It seemed too farfetched.

    Adam Schiff is a weird guy to be responsible for lifting the veil, because he’s such a schmuck. But realizing that he just kept lying over and over, something clicked for me. Probably the next big turning point was the Russian bounty story. I wrote a piece on that for Tablet at the time, and there was no going back from that.

    Matt Taibbi: What’s the reaction been to the new piece so far?

    Jacob Siegel: I would say overall very positive, but also somewhat siloed. Broadly speaking, it’s gotten a great response, but it certainly hasn’t penetrated the liberal intelligentsia yet. It hasn’t penetrated the liberal mainstream at all. Maybe I have a somewhat blinkered view of that, but I had hoped that it would.

    I don’t want to hang everything on the liberal gatekeepers, and politically, I’m not really clearly identified ideologically. I’m sometimes capable of slipping pieces through that get good receptions with various audiences over the years. And so I hope that would be the case here.

    Subscribers to Racket News can read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 21:00

  • Lockheed's Bad Week Ends With F-35 Software Upgrade Delay, Termination Of Hypersonic Missile Program
    Lockheed’s Bad Week Ends With F-35 Software Upgrade Delay, Termination Of Hypersonic Missile Program

    Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. has faced a challenging week. 

    First, the US Air Force announced that the Lockheed Martin hypersonic weapons program would be terminated due to test failures. Now, the defense contractor faces significant software delays for its stealth fighter jets. Despite Washington elites showering the defense firm with significant amounts of taxpayer funds, its ability to develop and produce cutting-edge weaponry is encountering difficulties amid threats of global conflict. 

    The latest news from Bloomberg highlights additional F-35 software delays by Lockheed for at least a year, making it 16 months behind schedule. The stealth fighter was set to receive a substantial technological upgrade, increasing processing power by 37 times and memory by 20 times, enabling it to carry more advanced weapons and enhance surveillance capabilities. 

    Representative Rob Wittman, a Virginia Republican, first disclosed the delays could last until April 2024. He said Wednesday at a House hearing:

    “We’re learned that the late delivery is now impacting existing fighter squadrons” awaiting the upgraded F-35s.

    “To quote a senior Air Force official I’ve met with on the subject: ‘We’re paying for great capability but we currently only have good capability,'” Wittman continued. 

    “The F-35 is essentially a flying computer, with more than 8 million lines of code. The delayed software upgrade is known as TR-3,” Bloomberg said. 

    Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Schmidt, F-35 program manager, told a House Armed Services subcommittee headed by Wittman that the TR-3 delivery schedule “has been affected by delays associated with hardware and software development as well as testing of the Integrated Core Processor — the brains of TR-3.”

    “The key risks ahead of us are centered around maturity and stability of the final integrated software, flight test execution with an aging fleet of test aircraft and infrastructure and delivery of TR-3 hardware to the production line,” Schmidt said. 

    The first F-35 equipped with the new software upgrade took flight in January. Around that time, readers might remember, an F-35 crashed at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. It was suspected that the problem was related to the jet’s engine.

    Besides the stealth fighter jet having hundreds of software and hardware flaws that could impact combat missions, Lockheed was busy this week with another significant issue: the UASF terminated its AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon hypersonic missile program after test failures. 

    Investors could care less about the mounting issues Lockheed has come across with its stealth jets and hypersonic missile. 

    While the US is at the forefront of developing and deploying stealth fighters and soon stealth bombers, the world’s largest military spender has yet to master hypersonic missile technology, a feat already achieved by Russia and China.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 20:40

  • North Carolina College To 'Revise Policies' After Drag Queen Lap Dances On Teenage Girl
    North Carolina College To ‘Revise Policies’ After Drag Queen Lap Dances On Teenage Girl

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

    A North Carolina public school said it’s going to “revise campus policies” after a video went viral on social media showing a drag queen invited to the school’s LGBT pride event performing a lap dance on an apparent teenage student.

    Forsyth Technical Community College campus in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. (Google Street View)

    In a clip obtained and shared by Twitter account Libs of TikTok on Tuesday, a male performer in drag is seen straddling and gyrating on top of an unidentified teenage girl, who is sitting in the middle of the floor on a chair.

    As the video pans around the room, younger children of about elementary school age can be seen among the cheering and laughing spectators.

    The footage was recorded during the March 22 LGBT pride festival hosted by Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem. The college’s main campus serves students as young as 14 years old.

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    A promotional flyer posted alongside the video by Libs of TikTok featured photos of four drag queens and advertised a “drag performance” and “free food, drinks, music & activities,” but did not include any minimum-age requirement to attend.

    The college administration confirmed that this event was open to all students on campus, initially maintaining that it didn’t do anything inappropriate.

    “Forsyth Tech is committed to being a place of promise for our students. In order to fulfill that promise, we have clearly spelled out our mission, vision and equity statements,” the school said in a statement provided to Libs of TikTok. “These students, like all college students, are open to attend any student event.”

    As the social media backlash mounted over the lap-dancing video mounted, however, the school eventually said they will consider reviseing “policies and procedures” about age restrictions in future events.

    “Parents of children under 18 were not notified of this event in advance,” the school’s chief officer of student success, Paula Dibley, told Fox News on Wednesday.

    “We have been in close contact with our early college school leadership and are talking with both leaders and parents about how we can revise campus policies and procedures regarding early and middle college students’ attendance at campus events,” Dibley added.

    The festival was also joined by the Forsyth County Health Department, which set up a free HIV and sexually transmitted disease testing site at the event. Despite earlier support, the health agency is now trying to distance itself from the activities in the wake of intense backlash.

    “Our staff was aware that there would be drag performances but was not involved with planning the event and had no information regarding the age of the attendees,” Forsyth Public Health Director Joshua Swift said in a statement, adding that they spent $58 on supplies using its operational budget, funded locally and in-part by the state.

    “We do not condone the actions that allegedly took place during the event,” the health official said.

    Chaya Raichik, the woman behind Libs of TikTok, gained a Twitter following of over 2 million by posting unaltered videos of leftist educators discussing how they indoctrinate their usually young students into radical race and sex ideologies. She has been accused of spreading right-wing anti-LGBT conspiracy theories, although all the clips she published were originally posted on TikTok by the leftists themselves.

    “When it comes to things like radical gender theory and critical race theory, we’ve been told by the far-Left that it’s not happening,” Raichik said earlier this year in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

    “[When it comes to] the drag queen entertainment for children we’re told, ‘Oh, it’s not happening. These things are not happening. It’s a Right-wing conspiracy theory,’” she continued. “And then, I come in with firsthand evidence of teachers and drag queens talking about these things and saying, ‘Yes, I’m doing this.’”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 20:20

  • FTC Complaint Targets OpenAI's ChatGPT, Calls For Suspension Of New 'Bias Reinforcing' Chatbot Deployment
    FTC Complaint Targets OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Calls For Suspension Of New ‘Bias Reinforcing’ Chatbot Deployment

    Tech ethics organization Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday, asserting that Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI’s recently introduced ChatGPT-4 product violates federal consumer protection law. They have urged a halt on all new generations of artificial intelligence chatbots by OpenAI for commercial deployment. 

    In a complaint to the agency, CAIDP asked the FTC to investigate and suspend further deployment of OpenAI’s commercial products until the research firm complies with the FTC Guidance for AI products. 

    CAIDP stated ChatGPT-4 is “biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety.” The complaint is led by privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg who said:

    “The FTC has a clear responsibility to investigate and prohibit unfair and deceptive trade practices. We believe that the FTC should look closely at OpenAI and GPT-4.

    “We are specifically asking the FTC to determine whether the company has complied with the guidance the federal agency has issued.”

    OpenAI launched ChatGPT-4 in early March. CAIDP pointed out that the technical description of the AI chatbot describes a dozen major risks, including “Disinformation and influence operations.” OpenAI even warned that “AI systems will have even greater potential to reinforce entire ideologies, worldviews, truths, and untruths, and to cement them or lock them in, foreclosing future contestation, reflection, and improvement.”

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    CAIDP said in the complaint that ChatGPT-4 fails to meet the FTC’s standard of being “transparent, explainable, fair and empirically sound while fostering accountability.” They warned the chatbot is a potential risk to society. 

    The complaint comes days after Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio and others signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause of new AI chatbots more powerful than ChatGPT-4. 

    “We’ve reached the point where these systems are smart enough that they can be used in ways that are dangerous for society,” said Bengio, director of the University of Montreal’s Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, adding, “And we don’t yet understand.”

    Their concerns were laid out in a letter titled “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter,” which was spearheaded by the Future of Life Institute – a nonprofit advised by Musk.

    Musk – an early founder and financial backer of OpenAI, and Wozniak, have been outspoken about the dangers of AI for a while. We’ve outlined some of those dangers, such as political bias: 

    And the bias isn’t just with ChatGPT:

    Tech investor David Sacks recently revealed: “There is mounting evidence OpenAI’s safety layer is very biased… If you thought trust and safety were bad under Vijaya or Yoel, wait until the AI does it.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 20:00

  • Saudi Aramco Bets On Continuous Growth Of Chinese Oil Demand
    Saudi Aramco Bets On Continuous Growth Of Chinese Oil Demand

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

    The world’s largest crude oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, is betting big on the growing market for crude China, as Saudi oil giant Aramco is strengthening its downstream presence and crude supply market share in the world’s top importer.  

    Saudi Aramco announced this week two major refinery and petrochemical deals in China, which not only give the world’s largest oil firm a share of the Chinese downstream market but also an additional export outlet for 690,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Saudi crude in China.   

    With the two agreements, Saudi Arabia is betting on continuous growth in Chinese oil demand on the one hand. On the other hand, the Kingdom is looking to boost its market share in the world’s top oil importer, where its partner in the OPEC+ pact, Russia, has gained market share with cheap crude after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions on Moscow that followed. 

    Saudi Arabia and Russia have been neck and neck on the Chinese oil market for years, but the fight for market share has become more contested since the war in Ukraine began as Russia pivoted to Asia and now bets on China and India as the key buyers of its crude, often offered at wide discounts to international benchmarks. 

    Saudi Arabia sells its crude oil under long-term contracts, so it has a guaranteed share of the Chinese market. But Russia, having pivoted to Asia for crude and fuel sales after the Western sanctions, is offering its oil at discounts and could attract more Chinese buyers who don’t abide by the G7 price caps.

    Russia was the single largest crude oil supplier to China in January and February, overtaking Saudi Arabia, which was the number-one supplier of oil to China last year.

    As China accelerated the buying of cheap Russian crude oil at discounts to international benchmarks, Chinese imports of crude from Russia jumped by 23.8% year over year to 1.94 million bpd in January and February 2023, per data by China’s General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters.

    While Russia pushes to sell its crude—banned in the West—in Asia at discounts, Saudi Arabia is locking in long-term demand in China with stakes in refining and petrochemical projects. 

    A Saudi Aramco joint venture plans to build a $10-billion refining and petrochemical complex in China over the next three years, the Saudi oil giant said on Sunday. The complex in northeast China will have the capacity to process 300,000 bpd, of which Aramco will supply 210,000 bpd. 

    The project “represents a major milestone in our ongoing downstream expansion strategy in China and the wider region, which is an increasingly significant driver of global petrochemical demand,” Mohammed Al Qahtani, Aramco Executive Vice President of Downstream, said on Sunday. 

    On the following day, Aramco said it would buy 10% in private refiner Rongsheng Petrochemical for the equivalent of $3.6 billion and would supply 480,000 bpd of Arabian crude oil to Rongsheng affiliate Zhejiang Petroleum and Chemical Co. Ltd (ZPC), under a long-term sales agreement. 

    The two deals give Aramco a long-term export outlet to 690,000 bpd of Saudi crude to China, which would boost Saudi Arabia’s market share by locking in contracts for the coming years and decades. 

    The acquisition “demonstrates Aramco’s long-term commitment to China and belief in the fundamentals of the Chinese petrochemicals sector,” Aramco’s Al Qahtani said. 

    “It also promises to secure a reliable supply of essential crude to one of China’s most important refiners,” the executive added.  

    Russia may be attracting Chinese buyers with cheaper spot cargoes, but Saudi Arabia is playing the long game with long-term contracts to lock in oil sales for decades. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 19:40

  • Libs Of TikTok Confronts AOC For Violating Committee Ethics Rules – Her Response Is Predictable
    Libs Of TikTok Confronts AOC For Violating Committee Ethics Rules – Her Response Is Predictable

    Whenever leftists are confronted by facts and evidence, their go-to response is always to accuse their opponents of some kind of “phobia” rather than address the issues at hand.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does not disappoint in that regard when faced with an ethics violation delivered by Libs Of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik. 

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    AOC accused Libs Of TikTok of posting false information on Boston Children’s Hospital engaged in gender affirmation surgeries and inciting a bomb threat to the facility.  The Boston Children’s Hospital did in fact erase references on their website to such surgeries available to 17-year-olds after the Libs Of TikTok exposure.  Studies at the same hospital also show it approved gender-affirming chest surgeries for individuals over 15 years old and genital surgeries for those over 17 years of age.    

    While AOC accuses Raichik of being “transphobic” before running away, and Libs Of TikTok has been blocked on numerous occasions by social media platforms, it should be pointed out that the account simply re-posts the videos of leftists and their hot takes.  In other words, Libs Of TikTok is often labeled as “hate speech” merely for showing the rants of leftist activists to the world.  The irony of this cannot be ignored. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 19:20

  • BlackRock's Larry Fink And The New Post-ESG Realism
    BlackRock’s Larry Fink And The New Post-ESG Realism

    Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClear Wire,

    As regular as the turn of the seasons, each January sees Larry Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, publish a lengthy letter on the state of the world and its implications for finance and investors. This year, January turned to February, and still no letter. Instead, February saw Tim Buckley, CEO of Vanguard, global number-two asset manager, give a groundbreaking interview explaining Vanguard’s decision late last year to quit the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, which had been formed ahead of the 2021 Glasgow climate conference to reallocate capital in line with net zero emissions targets.

    “It would be hubris to presume that we know the right strategy for the thousands of companies that Vanguard invests in,” Buckley told the Financial Times, adding that Vanguard was “not in the game of politics.” He warned investors against expecting superior returns from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. “Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing.”

    Writing five days later in the Wall Street Journal, Terrence Keely, former BlackRock executive and author of Sustainable, zeroed in on the conflict of interest highlighted by Vanguard’s departure from NZAM and NZAM’s net zero goal. Swept along by climate-change fervor, an investment manager “can’t make such commitments without reneging on its fiduciary duties,” Keeley argued. Membership of an alliance committed to achieving net zero demands clairvoyance that no investment manager can promise. “If Mr. Buckley is right, then hundreds of other financial institutions with trillions of assets under management are wrong”—Keeley’s unstated implication being that if Vanguard is right, BlackRock is also wrong.

    When it came earlier this month, Fink’s 2023 letter colored in the new investment climate adumbrated by BlackRock’s chief competitor. Whereas Fink’s 2021 letter to CEOs mentioned net zero 22 times and his 2022 letter, nine times, net zero was referred to only once this year—and then, only in passing (“European governments are also developing incentives to support the transition to a net zero economy and drive growth.”) Similarly, mentions of ESG have fallen from ten in 2021, to one last year, to none this year. How times have changed.

    Two years ago, BlackRock made a blunt demand of the companies that it invests in: “We are asking”—that’s an instruction; you can hardly say no to the world’s largest investor—“companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy.” This hasn’t been entirely walked back. BlackRock, Fink says, has been vocal in the past about companies disclosing how they plan to navigate the energy transition, but the tone now is softer and less vocal. It is not the role of an asset manager like BlackRock to engineer a particular outcome in the economy, Fink writes, and it’s not its place to tell companies what to do. Forswearing the clairvoyance that Keeley criticizes, Fink says that BlackRock doesn’t “know the ultimate path and timing of the transition,” a position that is not as crystalline as Buckley’s but is hard to reconcile with BlackRock’s continued membership of NZAM. Had this been BlackRock’s position two years ago, it would have been noisily condemned by climate activists and BlackRock would have been accused of sabotaging the Glasgow climate conference. So far, there has scarcely been a murmur. The world is quietly moving on from net zero.

    So have BlackRock’s priorities. Whereas climate rates five mentions this year, compared with 27 two years ago, there are 122 mentions of clients—over four times the number in the BlackRock Global Executive Committee’s “Dear Clients” letter two years ago. Even more revealing is the change in the number of mentions of trust and fiduciary. There are 21 mentions of trust this year and one in the 2021 letter. That letter, billed “Net zero: a fiduciary approach,” contained only one other mention of fiduciary, a lapse that bears out Keeley’s argument on the incompatibility of imposing climate targets on asset portfolios and investment managers discharging their fiduciary duties.

    Fink’s emphasis has changed, too. Two years ago, Fink compared climate change with the Covid pandemic as an existential threat exposing the fragility of society. This year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heightened geopolitical tensions bring national and economic security “front and center.” In the short term, making supply chains more resilient is highly inflationary, Fink writes, and it’s fair to say that Fink doesn’t believe that the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation. “I believe inflation is more likely to stay closer to 3.5 percent or 4 percent in the next few years.”

    The crisis that Fink highlights in this year’s letter is not a climate crisis, but a silent crisis of people not saving and investing sufficiently for their retirement. Results of an Edelman Trust Barometer survey asking whether people thought their families would be better off in five years were at an all-time low in 24 out of 28 countries. “When people are afraid, they may save, but they won’t invest,” Fink observes. “We need leaders today who will give people reasons to be hopeful, who can articulate a vision for a brighter future.” Amen to that. It’s high time to end talk about existential crises to be addressed with extraordinarily costly measures that make people poorer, weaken national and economic security and, instead, turn attention to tackling soluble problems with positive solutions.

    Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow of the RealClear Foundation and author of  Climate-Risk Disclosure: A Flimsy Pretext for a Green Power Grab.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 19:00

  • Democrats Said No One Is Coming To Take Your Gas Appliances – They Lied
    Democrats Said No One Is Coming To Take Your Gas Appliances – They Lied

    In February of this year Democrats and climate activists seized on a study published by a group called Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), and the conclusions of the paper sent alarmists into a frenzy – Claiming they had evidence that natural gas based appliances including gas stoves create emissions that are dangerous to human health, causing asthma and impairing cognitive development, specifically in children.  The Biden Administration’s Department of Energy reviewed the study and discussion mounted over the possibility of an incremental ban on various gas appliances, including up to 50% of gas stove models.      

    The RMI study turned out to be yet another example of the political co-option of science as a weapon for the Net Zero agenda regularly touted by the United Nations, Democrats in the US and progressive politicians across Europe.

    Almost immediately the findings of the study were debunked.  As the American Gas Association observed in a responding statement, the RMI testing did not include real life appliance usage, and:

    “Ignored [previous] literature, including one study of data collected from more than 500,000 children in 47 countries that ‘detected no evidence’ of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”

    Rather suspiciously, Biden’s Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, met privately with the leader of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Jules Kortenhorst, in 2021.  Around a year later, the institute produced a study which defies all previous science on the health risks of natural gas appliances and which serves the interests of Biden’s climate change policies.  Granholm would later throw support behind the findings of the RMI study, stating that:  

    “We can and must FIX this…Through [President Biden’s] Inflation Reduction Act, Americans will have greater access to Electric and Induction Cooktops: keeps pollution out of the home. Cooks food faster. Helps families save money.”

    It should also be noted that RMI has been the recipient of millions of dollars of DOE funding in the past, including a $4.4 million grant in March 2022.

    As the truth about the RMI findings was revealed and the data found inadequate, pressure mounted from various groups, including conservatives, for the White House to abandon plans to restrict gas appliances.  The White House seemingly relented.  Democrats screeched about the “paranoia” of conservatives, asserting that no one was coming to take people’s gas stoves.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that:

    “This is about a decision about what may be sold and regulations in the far future, OK? So everyone, just take the temperature down a little bit. No secret government agency is going to bust down your door and take your gas stove away…”

    This kind of gaslighting (no pun intended) has become the standard response by Democrats when they are caught in a compromising position.  When a strategy falls apart, they assert that the attack never happened and it was all in our minds.  However, after the failure of Democrats to implement restrictions at the federal level, they have simply moved on to other avenues.  

    The reality is that the RMI study was never about public health, it was only a means to frighten Americans into accepting climate change controls on petroleum and gas.  The plan is obvious – Start with something small, such as gas stoves or gas heat, and then use that as a springboard to eventually ban or tax all carbon based energy.

    Multiple Democrat controlled cities and states are now instituting restrictions or timed bans on natural gas appliances, including San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Seattle and New York.  These cities are phasing out gas in new homes within the next 5 years.  California is planning to phase out gas appliances by 2030.  The state of New York under Kathy Hochul is nearing a deal to ban gas appliances in new homes by 2025.  As is often the case, progressive cities and states tend to act as test cases for future bans at the national level.

    To get insight into what climate change authoritarians intend for the US in the future, one need only look at Europe and the UK.  In Britain, households are to be financially penalized if they do not switch away from gas under net zero policies to be unveiled soon.

    The UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said:  “If we want people to switch to an electricity-based economy, it would be better if [levies] were shifted onto the gas side of things…It automatically makes the economics of an electric-driven economy better.”

    In the US, over 38% of all households rely on natural gas for energy.  In states like California it is estimated that energy usage would have to plummet (along with living standards) if all homes used electricity only.  For global carbon standards to be met, climate scientists argue that population growth will have to stop, and over time human numbers would have to be systematically reduced through birth control methods.  

    Setting aside the fact that climate science is itself rooted in numerous inaccuracies and fallacies, the logistics of shifting the population away from oil and gas energy are impossible without placing massive strain on existing electrical grids and destabilizing the economy.  This is perhaps why Democrats and climate alarmists often lie about their intentions and use subversion and incrementalism to enact policy – They don’t want to be forced to admit the true cost of their Net Zero world and risk a furious response from the public.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 18:40

  • "This Is Political Persecution": Trump Rages, DeSantis 'Won't Extradite', McCarthy Cries 'Injustice' Over Indictment
    “This Is Political Persecution”: Trump Rages, DeSantis ‘Won’t Extradite’, McCarthy Cries ‘Injustice’ Over Indictment

    Update (2040ET): According to Trump’s attorneys he is expected to be arraigned as early as Tuesday, the NY Times gleefully reports.

    *  *  *

    Update (1827ET):

    Trump has responded to the lawsuit, saying in a statement: “This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

    Full statement:

    ‘This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hardworking men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement. You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.

    ‘The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.

    “Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.

    “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!

    “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley opined on the indictment in a Thursday interview with Fox News.

    “Bragg reportedly has secured his indictment. He has made history, but it is an inglorious moment where even some on the left have criticized the effort.  This is a patently political prosecution. Bragg and NY AG James ran on bagging Trump. This has fulfilled that pledge but, if the indictment follows the course described in coverage, it is deeply flawed theory. We will have to wait to see the indictment. …The objection is not to the prosecuting of a misdemeanor but the reported effort to extend the statute of limitations under an unprecedented bootstrapping theory. We have not heard of an alternative criminal theory.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, has issued a statement condemning the “weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda,” adding that Florida “will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda.”

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has weighed in as well, tweeting; “Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election.

    “As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump.”

    The President of El Salvador chimes in;

    Tucker Carlson opines;

    *  *  *

    A Manhattan Grand Jury has voted to indict former President Donald Trump over hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels, according to the NY Times, citing four people familiar with the matter.

    The still-sealed felony indictment, which comes as 2024 campaign season comes into focus, makes Trump the first former president in US history to face criminal charges.

    The exact charges are not yet known, however the Times expects them to be announced in the coming days by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Prosecutors working for DA Alvin L. Bragg will ask Trump to surrender and face arraignment on said unknown charges.

    [U]nlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

    Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign. –NY Times

    The move also comes just before the grand jury takes a one-month break until late April.

    Interestingly, as The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reported, this month-long delay came after an attorney in former President Donald Trump’s orbit who testified in front of a Manhattan grand jury earlier this month believes that there has been a shift in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the 45th president.

    “Well, I think I got through to them, because [Monday] I understand they called back another witness by the name of David Pecker, who used to run the National Enquirer,” Costello, a former Michael Cohen attorney, told Newsmax on Tuesday.

    “Basically, what they’re doing is really gerrymandering this,” he said of Bragg’s probe into Trump.

    Costello said he had represented Cohen, himself a former Trump lawyer, and told reporters last week that he does not believe Cohen is a credible witness against Trump.

    Sounds like that wasn’t the case.

    The prosecution’s star witness in the case is former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about sleeping with Trump. Cohen said that Trump directed him to buy her silence (contrary to a 2018 letter from his lawyer claiming the opposite), and says that the Trump organization helped cover it up.

    The case brought by Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, is far from a sure bet. Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., and federal prosecutors each passed on charging Mr. Trump in a stand-alone case related to the hush money. If the case goes to trial, a conviction would almost certainly require a jury to credit the testimony of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who has faced his own legal troubles and pleaded guilty to an array of federal felonies in 2018. Among them was a campaign-finance offense for the porn-star payment, as well as charges of lying to a bank and to Congress. -WSJ

    Meanwhile, this didn’t age well…

    Did Alvin Bragg just make Trump into even more of a martyr?

    As Techno Fog writes via The Reactionary…

    The indictment is an absolute scandal, the banana republic on parade, the prosecutor using the weapons of his office to attack his political opponent.

    Bragg and his predecessor’s slow-walking of the investigation, with its inception by Manhattan DA goes back to 2019, evidences both the dubious nature of the case against Trump and the political motivations for prosecuting Trump. Theoretically, this should be a simple case. Yet the investigation went on for nearly five years, despite what they’ve possessed: overzealous prosecutors who wanted to charge Trump with racketeering, the cooperating witnesses, the likely millions of pages of materials from the Trump Organization.

    Now suddenly, the insanely pro-criminal Manhattan DA, who demanded his prosecutors reduce charges for violent criminals, is prioritizing law and order. It’s hard to believe there are legitimate reasons – for prosecutors, that means seeking justice – for that transformation. Why bring the case now? It’s the start of the 2024 presidential campaign season.

    You can’t help but think of the political calculations that went on in Bragg’s head. Not only does he benefit personally, now elevated to a liberal folk hero after being the prosecutor to finally get Trump (a campaign promise he keeps), but this throws a grenade into the Republican race. Will the GOP base rally to Trump? How will the other candidates respond?

    And what will this do for the undecideds and the independents and the swing voters – those who are essential to victory in 2024? 

    Some of those questions will be answered in the short term. Some of them won’t be answered until election day, assuming Trump gets the GOP nod.

    That’s because the case won’t go away. It’s illegitimate and political, but it’s here to stay for the time being. Don’t be surprised if the trial date is set for the first half of 2024. And don’t understate the danger to Trump, who will face a jury of Biden voters. Biden won Manhattan 86.7% to 12.3% according to the New York Times. The jury of Trump’s peers will be friendly to the prosecution. That’s all the Manhattan DA might need to secure a conviction. Trump could very well win on appeal but the damage – which carries national repercussions – might already have been done.

    And that’s the whole point of this dirty scheme.

    Click here to subscribe to The Reactionary

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 18:28

  • Twitter Restricts Conservative Accounts Over 'Trans Day Of Vengeance' Posts
    Twitter Restricts Conservative Accounts Over ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ Posts

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Twitter has restricted multiple accounts belonging to prominent conservatives in recent days after they posted about  an upcoming rally called the “Trans Day of Vengeance.”

    Twitter logo and Elon Musk silhouette in an illustration taken on Dec. 19, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

    On Tuesday, the Elon Musk-owned company restricted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) congressional account for seven days after she repeatedly posted an image of a poster about the rally. In the same post, Greene alleged that Antifa was organizing the event, which is being hosted by the Trans Radical Activist Network.

    After her congressional account was restored by Twitter, Greene issued another post from the account that read, “My Congressional Twitter account was suspended today. @elonmusk, how is it ‘violent speech’ to expose the ‘Trans Day of Vengence’ [sic] a day after a mass murder committed by a transgender shooter? And to call on the DOJ to investigate it? I condemned the incitement to violence & demanded a federal law enforcement investigation in the Tweet.”

    Her account was then promptly suspended for seven days.

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

    “My Congressional account was suspended for 7 days for exposing Antifa, who are organizing a call for violence called ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’” Greene said in a post on her personal Twitter account on Tuesday. “The day after the mass murder of children by a trans shooter.”

    Following the ban, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, said on Twitter that the platform is removing images of the poster due to concerns that it could incite violence.

    “We had to automatically sweep our platform and remove >5000 tweets /retweets of this [‘Trans Day of Vengeance’] poster,” Irwin wrote. “We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them. ‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”

    Officials have identified the suspect in Monday’s Nashville Christian school shooting incident as 28-year-old Audrey Hale as Nashville Police released surveillance footage, seen above, on March 28, 2023. (Nashville Police Department)

    More Accounts Restricted

    Elsewhere, The Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis was reportedly locked out of his account for allegedly violating Twitter’s rules regarding “violent speech.”

    Prior to the account block, Davis had posted: “The cold-blooded mass murder at a Christian school in Nashville by an apparent transgender person came just days before a planned ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network.”

    According to the publication, Twitter has already taken down the tweet but informed Davis his account will remain locked until he manually deletes himself.

    Davis reportedly filed an appeal with Twitter to reinstate his account but the platform rejected it, meaning he is permanently banned from accessing his account until he removes the tweet in question.

    “This is deliberate censorship and gaslighting designed to memory-hole the FACT that the Nashville shooter targeted and murdered Christian children and teachers just days ahead of a scheduled ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,” Davis said in a statement. “Twitter is lying about the facts and defaming those of us who reported on them.”

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    Daily Wire journalist Luke Rosiak was also suspended from Twitter on Tuesday after he posted a link about the event, according to the publication.

    Twitter removed a post from Rosiak linking to an article he wrote earlier this month about the activists organizing the event.

    “The shooting of a Christian school by a transgender comes the same week that activists scheduled a ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’ with the group also raising money for firearms training,” the post read.

    Twitter told Rosiak that the post violated “rules against violent speech.”

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    People pay their respects at a makeshift memorial for victims at the Covenant School building at the Covenant Presbyterian Church following a shooting, in Nashville, Tenn., on March 28, 2023. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

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    Police Say Nashville Shooter Was Transgender

    “He was told that he must delete the original post to regain access to his account; he appealed the decision, observing that he was not ‘advocating for violence’ but rather ‘stating a fact and noting disapprovingly’ that others had been calling for violence,” the Daily Wire reported.

    Elsewhere, Journalist and author Andy Ngo was reportedly locked out of his Twitter account for reporting on the upcoming event.

    Trans Radical Activist Network still retains its account on Twitter, although its tweets are protected, meaning only approved followers can see content posted on the account.

    According to its official website, the Trans Radical Activist Network is a “nationwide network of activists and community organizers for transgender/non-binary rights.”

    “The Trans/Non-Binary/Gender Non-Conforming/Intersex communities are facing astronomical amounts of hate from the world. At least a 100 Gender Affirming care ban bills have been proposed,” the website states. “So far in 2023, 12 lives have been lost, [sic] 2022 we lost over 60 people. Our community has a stigma attached and significantly impacts marginalized communities at a higher intensity. There are members of our own communities that have turned against the true meaning of Pride,” it adds.

    The Trans Day of Vengeance is scheduled for April 1, according to the website, just days after 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who police say identified as transgender, opened fire at Covenant Christian Academy, shooting dead three children and three adults.

    However, the organizers note that the protest is “about unity, not inciting violence” and adds that it does “not encourage violence and it is not welcome at this event.”

    Trans activists have also noted that the “trans day of vengeance” is a meme that has been around in the trans community for years and is not a call to violence, The Associated Press reports.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 18:20

  • Huge Block Of Gulf Of Mexico Auctioned For Oil Drilling, Infuriating Biden's Climate Activists
    Huge Block Of Gulf Of Mexico Auctioned For Oil Drilling, Infuriating Biden’s Climate Activists

    As required by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) auctioned oil and gas drilling rights across 73.4 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico despite the Biden administration’s pledge to end new leasing as part of climate change initiatives. 

    According to BOEM, 32 companies participated in the Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 259, submitting $309,798,397 in total bids. Reuters pointed out that Chevron Corp, ExxonMobil Corp, and BP Plc were among the top bidders. 

    The Guardian said the size of Lease 259 is comparable in size to Italy. 

    Source: The Guardian 

    The auction was a requirement in President Biden’s IRA, which safeguards federal oil and gas leasing and mandates lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of March. 

    Revenues received from offshore oil and gas leases will be paid to US Treasury, Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) and local governments, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the Historic Preservation Fund. 

    The auction comes weeks after Biden authorized a large ConocoPhillips oil project in northwest Alaska.

    A little awkward, considering he has pledged during the election campaign: “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.”

    New oil and gas developments in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska have infuriated climate activists:

    “For the first half of his presidency, Joe Biden led on climate with transformative vision but in the second half he seems to be signaling a disastrous climate U-turn,” Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club and a prominent progressive, said.

    For instance, Alaska’s $8 billion Willow oil field development project has a 30-year lifespan. The projects in the Gulf also have years, if not more than a decade, lifespan. The notion that Biden wants to ban oil and gas is ‘malarkey,’ and his staunchest climate supporters are getting wind the president is failing on his word. 

    “If he’s making a political calculation, he’s making a wrong one. He’s breaking a major promise on drilling and by going back on his word he will inspire many young people to stay at home rather than voting in 2024. His decisions appear to be rooted in the political and economic calculus of the last century, not this one,” Jealous added. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/30/2023 – 18:00

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