Tag: news

Authored by Dave Zirin via The Nation,

The Super Bowl is like prom for the 1 percent. When the big game comes to town, it’s accompanied by private jets, parties, and nonstop bottle service. That should be enough, but it never is. The bacchanalia also comes festooned with public funds for the NFL, an overwhelming police presence, and the removal of the poor. It’s a world of fun on our TVs, but it’s a wrecking ball for local communities.

This year the game is in Miami, and the scams are starting to seep into public consciousness. As the Miami Herald is reporting, the NFL booked 1 million dollars’ worth of rooms at the J.W. Marriott Marquis hotel and Aventura’s Turnberry resort for the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers players and coaches—and sent the city the bill.

Even though the NFL is a gargantuan corporate operation and both teams are owned by billionaires, Miami (where 27 percent of children live below the poverty line) is on the hook for the hotel accommodations. This is just part of a $4 million welfare package with which the city has gifted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who makes 10 times that amount in yearly salary. That $4 million does not include the costs of the police and security presence required to host the game. Rodney Barreto, the chairman of Miami’s Host Committee, said to the Herald, “These are basically things we have to do to get them to come. If we’re not doing it, another city is.”

The police presence will be “an extraordinary deployment of law enforcement assets, even by recent standards, in keeping with heightened global tensions and fears of home-grown violence.” According to Reuters, Super Bowl LIV “is a so-called SEAR 1 event, affording it the highest level of federal resources, including explosive detection canine teams, cyber risk assessments and air security. Coordinated by the U.S. Secret Service, the security force includes operations by the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security.”

In addition, Miami police will lead “lead a massive ground operation with thousands of officers… on foot, horseback, in boats, and in the air.”

While the police roam the city and public dollars flow into the NFL’s coffers, the league is engaging in Kabuki theater charity: its spoonful of sugar to help the poison go down, showy presentations so it won’t look like a parasite. The league donated $100,000 to a homeless shelter that will house those displaced from Bayfront Park by the Super Bowl. This sounds nice, but the donation will actually help facilitate their removal from the streets so they’re not an eyesore, or worse, a reminder of the human costs of economic inequality. In addition, Dak Prescott, quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, is being praised for donating 100,000 bowls of Campbell’s Chunky Soup (Prescott’s sponsor) to local homeless shelters. This is the synthesis of commercialism and philanthropy that the NFL adores.

Yet there won’t only be police and soup. There will also be protest. Residents of the historic Miami Gardens neighborhood along with the Miami-Dade NAACP will be protesting on game day at the site of the Super Bowl, HardRock Stadium, in a fight to stop Formula 1 racing on public streets. The racing circuit has been invited to Miami Gardens by HardRock Stadium and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. F1 racing has been rejected by numerous communities because of environmental impact and traffic concerns. Ross doesn’t have such concerns about the residents in Miami Gardens, so they will be using the platform of the Super Bowl to fight back.

They won’t be alone. While private planes will be incoming in great numbers, airport workers in Miami will be protesting low wages and expensive health insurance costs with a Super Bowl week hunger strike. They are demonstrating against their employer, the airline catering subcontractor Sky Chefs. Sky Chefs works with, among other entities, American Airlines. Their Union, Unite Here, is currently in negotiations with Sky Chefs for a living wage. One worker, Ibis Boggiano, said to the Herald, “We are sacrificing our health so that they will hear us.”

The demonstration is called “Fast for Our Families.” On Monday, the workers were joined at a press conference by NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith, who said, “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that all labor has dignity. Let’s remember, as hundreds of thousands of people descend onto Miami this week, that behind every Super Bowl party and celebration, there are men and women doing the work behind the scenes to be able to feed their families. The NFLPA is proud to stand in solidarity with airline catering this week, and shame on American Airlines for not taking action to make sure they are provided a living wage.”

The Super Bowl more than ever is a microcosm of this country. The super-wealthy will be oozing from one heavily guarded party to the next, while the hungry hope to be seen amid the flashing lights and heard above the ceaseless din.

Amid the ongoing Russian-Syrian military offensive to liberate Idlib province from the al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, suburbs near Aleppo have been scene of intense fighting in recent days, despite government forces liberating the major northern city in December 2016, which marked a turning point in the war. 

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have in recent days and weeks mounted new insurgent attacks on the outskirts of the provincial capital city at a moment the Syrian Army has made huge gains into neighboring Idlib. A key reason Damascus has vowed to retake every inch of Idlib is that for years al-Qaeda has launched terrorist attacks on suburbs of Aleppo from there as civilians and the government attempt to rebuild the largely destroyed urban center. 

This latest renewed fighting in Aleppo appears a concerted effort by Turkey to use its proxy forces to repel and distract the brunt of the Syrian Army offensive on Idlib, considering on Friday President Erdogan warned he’s ready to use military force if Assad doesn’t halt Idlib operations.

Syrian insurgents carried out at least three car bomb attacks against government forces west of Aleppo on Saturday and opened a new front northeast of the city, an attempted fight back after territorial advances by Damascus. — Jerusalem Post

“We will not allow the regime’s cruelty towards its own people, with attacks and causing bloodshed,” Erdogan said. Ankara has been alarmed that hundreds of thousands of civilians are now trying to flee the embattled province toward the Turkish border. 

“Turkey with complete sincerity wants Syria’s stability and security, and to this end, we will not shy away from doing whatever is necessary, including using military force.”

Erdogan has also accused Russia of violating key agreements for a reduction in fighting in Idlib, while Moscow has cited ongoing attacks against its nearby Hmeimim airbase launched by HTS insurgents based in Idlib. Over the past years HTS and affiliate jihadist groups have also attacked civilian areas of western Aleppo. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Erdogan’s charge by pointing out Idlib is a haven for terrorists who launch attacks on civilians as well as Russian and Syrian forces. 

Turkey has lately said it is hosting over 3 million Syrian refugees and has demanded that Europe provide more support in the form of backing Erdogan’s ‘safe zone’ plan which seeks to establish a ‘refugee city’ using annexed northern Syrian territory (which the Turkish army has recently wrested from Syrian Kurdish forces backed by the US).

Erdogan has also recently threatened to “open the gates” of millions of refugees on Europe if it doesn’t received political support. Needless to say, we are headed toward the final Syrian war showdown over Idlib.

Just this week the Kremlin warned that anti-government militants in Idlib are planning a major alarming new ‘chemical provocation’ in order to draw in support from external powers like the United States. 

Russia’s TASS reported not for the first time that “Terrorists are plotting new chemical attacks to claim once again that chemical weapons are being used on the Syrian territory, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.”

“We would also like to draw attention to diplomatic notes by the Syrian Arab Republic’s permanent mission to the UN and to media reports about terrorists plotting to organize more provocations and staged chemical incidents in Syria,” the Russian diplomat said.

Authored by Jared Harris via WesternJournal.com,

A United States senator is casting major doubt on the Chinese government’s official story on the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, instead hinting that a biosafety laboratory working with the deadliest pathogens in the world could be the true source.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas dismantled a claim from China’s communist regime Thursday that pinned the coronavirus outbreak on a market selling dead and live animals.

“China claimed — for almost two months — that coronavirus had originated in a Wuhan seafood market,” Cotton wrote on Twitter.

“That is not the case.”

In a video accompanying his post, Cotton explained that the Wuhan wet market (which Cotton incorrectly referred to as a seafood market) has been shown by experts to not be the source of the deadly contagion.

Cotton referenced a Lancet study which showed that many of the first cases of the novel coronavirus, including patient zero, had no connection to the wet market — devastatingly undermining China’s claim.

“As one epidemiologist said: ‘That virus went into the seafood market before it came out of the seafood market.’ We still don’t know where it originated,” Cotton said.

“I would note that Wuhan also has China’s only bio-safety level four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

Watch Cotton’s full comments below.

China claimed—for almost two months—that coronavirus had originated in a Wuhan seafood market. That is not the case. @TheLancet published a study demonstrating that of the original 40 cases, 14 of them had no contact with the seafood market, including Patient Zero. pic.twitter.com/PdgqgHjkGy

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 30, 2020

Cotton appears to be referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the country’s foremost virus research facility.

The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, which is part of the institute, is located only 20 miles from the Wuhan wet market, the “official” source of the outbreak according to China.

Snakes, bats and other animals were identified as possible originators for the coronavirus in early investigations.

The rapid spread of the virus, which makes previous contagions like SARS and swine flu look benign by comparison, seems to lend weight to the theory that the novel coronavirus is a tailored bioweapon.

Ten days ago, China reported less than 300 had the virus. The country’s latest update now numbers the infected at over 11,000.

An additional 15,000 in China are suspected of having the virus, but a reported lack of test kits prevents the government from giving an accurate number.

When the number of infected was still low, China instituted a wide-reaching quarantine, sealing over 40 million inside cities.

Now, the world appears to be sealing China in.

Russia, Nepal, Mongolia and North Korea have all closed their borders with China. Even more countries are refusing Chinese nationals, including an unprecedented announcement from the administration of President Donald Trump barring entry into America for foreign nationals who have traveled to China.

While the virus has been found in several countries around the world including America, all eyes are now on China as the outbreak there shows no signs of slowing.

Last week, Hillary Clinton dispelled rumors that she might toss her hat in the ring in a “brokered convention” to run against President Trump – telling Variety  that while she has the “urge” to run, she’s “going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee.”

According to The Hill‘s Douglas MacKinnon, however, Clinton may be in negotiations with former Vice President (and current frontrunner) Joe Biden, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or she may try to team up with whoever gets the Democratic nomination.

MacKinnon writes in a Saturday Op-Ed that Clinton “would add the gravitas, delegates and, eventually, millions of votes needed to get them over the finish line on Nov. 5. I am assured that Clinton is on every shortlist for that position,” adding “If I were in Trump’s world, this scenario would send chills down my spine.“

There is no doubt that the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of State once again is raising her profile and stepping back into the spotlight to reengage in political discussions.

One such spotlight was provided by the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. There, aside from commenting on her presidential “urge,” Clinton not only promoted the incredibly flattering four-part Hulu documentary about her, titled “Hillary” — which premiered, coincidently, just 10 days before the Iowa caucus — but she also attended the debut of a documentary about the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. –The Hill

Also noted is Clinton’s recent attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), calling him “not a team player” and claiming that people ‘don’t like him’ (for which she was booed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) at a Sanders rally on Friday). Clinton also went after Facebook in lockstep with George Soros, who said that the Silicon Valley giant was conspiring with the Trump reelection campaign to win in November.

Speaking with The Atlantic from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Clinton said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is an “authoritarian” who “intend[s] to reelect Trump.”

MacKinnon continues:

Beyond that, there is an ultra-positive X factor that Clinton would bring to the 2020 presidential election equation: Bill Clinton. Like him or not, approve of him or not, the former president retains one of the best political minds in the nation and would be a formidable tactician.

The obvious question in all this is: Given her ego, would Hillary Clinton settle for being vice president when she twice was within striking distance of being president? The answer, I’m told, is an emphatic yes. The main reason are as follows.

First, and most pressing, she wants to avenge her embarrassing loss to Trump in 2016. Becoming the running mate of the Democratic nominee would give her carte blanche to hammer the president from one corner of the nation to the other. It’s an assignment she clearly would relish. 

Second, she still has a burning desire to make history by attaining a political “first.” If she were the nation’s first female vice president, then she could check that box — and it’s a title no one could ever take from her.

Third, I’m told that Clinton simply is not ready to “ride off into the sunset” and believes she still can make a positive difference, especially for women. 

But most of all, her reasons are personal — with the wounds of 2016 still open. –The Hill

Will Clinton team up with Biden, or Bloomberg, or literally anyone to take one more bite at the apple? Only time will tell.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Yesterday, social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, and search engine Google announced their intentions to censor – um, crack down on – so-called “misinformation” about the coronavirus that is spreading across the globe.

Before we get started here, admittedly, there’s some absolutely terrible advice out there about preventing or curing coronavirus. There are some really wild stories about the origin of the virus which may or may not be true. But the issue here is that social media networks are setting themselves up as the arbiters of truth, making it seem as though the rest of us are incapable of separating good information from bad information.

Facebook is taking action.

Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook’s head of health, wrote:

Our global network of third-party fact-checkers are continuing their work reviewing content and debunking false claims that are spreading related to the coronavirus. When they rate information as false, we limit its spread on Facebook and Instagram and show people accurate information from these partners. We also send notifications to people who already shared or are trying to share this content to alert them that it’s been fact-checked.

We will also start to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities that could cause harm to people who believe them. We are doing this as an extension of our existing policies to remove content that could cause physical harm. We’re focusing on claims that are designed to discourage treatment or taking appropriate precautions. This includes claims related to false cures or prevention methods — like drinking bleach cures the coronavirus — or claims that create confusion about health resources that are available. We will also block or restrict hashtags used to spread misinformation on Instagram, and are conducting proactive sweeps to find and remove as much of this content as we can. (source)

So, don’t worry, friends. “Independent fact-checkers” from the Ministry of Truth will protect you from conspiracy theories and false claims.

Maarten Schenk from Lead Stories, a fact-checking organization working with Facebook, scoffed at some of the “conspiracy theories” he’s seen in a comment to CNN.

“It always has to be something sinister,” Schenk said of the conspiracy theorists’ misinformation, which includes false claims that the virus was the creation of a government.

Some people, Schenk said, are “not trusting the narrative about the numbers of deaths and infections.”  (source)

To be perfectly honest, whenever someone refers to a particular view as “the narrative” I’m even less likely to trust it than I was before. And I haven’t trusted the numbers coming out of China from the very beginning, as I wrote here.

Google is pushing back “misinformation” in search results.

Google is bumping any site providing perceived “misinformation” back in the search results and putting “authoritative” sources on page one.

A Google (GOOGL) spokesperson pointed CNN Business to policy changes in recent years for Google and its video platform YouTube, which are designed to surface information from authoritative sources at the top of search results. Like Facebook, the company doesn’t wipe false claims from its platforms entirely. (source)

Having been bumped back by Google numerous times in the past, I can tell you, it’s a real blow to inbound traffic when this occurs. While you personally may not use Google, keep in mind that it is the most widely used search engine in the world, with 81.5% of the market share. If they are pushing back information – oh, of course, I mean misinformation – then most folks will never see it.

Twitter is showing people “official channels” first.

According to CNN, Twitter is providing people with the best possible information when they search the coronvirus hashtag.

On Twitter, users searching for “coronavirus”in the US and other countries, including Hong Kong, Brazil, and Australia, are first prompted to visit official channels of information about the virus. In the US, Twitter directs users to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, beneath a bold headline that reads: “Know the facts.”

A Twitter (TWTR) spokesperson told CNN Business on Tuesday that the company has not seen a coordinated increase in disinformation related to the coronavirus. In a blog post Tuesday, the company said it had seen over 15 million tweets about the coronavirus in four weeks. (source)

But of course, as always, it goes further than that.

Last night, Zero Hedge was quickly suspended by Twitter.

I’ve written repeatedly that the best coverage I have seen of the coronavirus has been on Zero Hedge. They’ve done a lot of no-holds-barred reporting and broken numerous stories about the virus and its possible origins. They’ve been careful to be extremely clear about whether something is a question or a statement, and they cite numerous sources for their work.

They’re also not afraid to be controversial.

And this got their account suspended from Twitter last evening.

Shortly after they posted an article about the extremely unusual makeup of this particular coronavirus (based on a scientific study that called the makeup “unlikely to be fortuitous,” their account was suspended. I immediately thought it was because of the article that suggested we could be dealing with a bioweapon, but according to Zero Hedge, it was something else entirely.

Twitter accused them of harassing a guy by posting his (already publicly posted) phone number and workplace. ZH reports:

What appears to have happened is that twitter received a complaint from the website best known for publishing the discredited Steele dossier when no other media outlet would touch it, and making cat slideshows of course, Buzzfeed, in which someone called Ryan Broderick writes that Zero Hedge  “has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil.” (source)

By all means, Twitter should certainly take the word of someone who works for a site best known for quizzes to help you figure out what kind of potato you really are to delete a news organization’s account.

It’s also important to note that ZH didn’t post anything personal that wasn’t already publicly made available by the subject of the article himself.

…we did not release any “personal information”: Peng Zhou (周鹏) is a public figure, and all the contact information that we presented was pulled from his publicly posted bio found on a website at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which anyone with access to the internet can pull from the following URL: http://sourcedb.whiov.cas.cn/zw/rck/201705/t20170505_4783973.html, which is also the information we used. (source)

So who do you want filtering information for you?

While I have seen a lot of terrible advice – drink bleach or a bottle of vinegar to “cure” coronavirus, use this essential oil and you’ll never get coronavirus, simply cut an onion in half and leave it in the room and it will absorb the coronavirus cooties, and much more quackery – I still don’t believe that social media networks and search engines should be able to filter what people see.  We are (allegedly) free individuals who can think for ourselves.

Shouldn’t we be able to decide what we believe and what we don’t without information being engineered to fit a narrative? Shouldn’t we be able to base our pandemic preparedness plan on all the information out there?

Instead, we’re provided with “narratives” and biased information. That’s something we here at The Organic Prepper have warned about repeatedly. If you can’t trust your intel, it makes it difficult to make informed decisions.

This just makes it seem like there’s something to hide.

If anything, this crackdown on any alternative views, treatments, or theories makes me even more suspicious because it’s a clearcut case of Propaganda 101.

Propaganda is information that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations, the media, and individuals can also produce propaganda. (source)

This is a technique that is as old as time.

Whenever you see some pop-up or some “correction of misinformation” the first thing you should do is ask yourself, is what are they trying to hide? It may legitimately be bad advice (like that whole drinking bleach thing) but it may also be something more sinister.

I don’t know about you, but now I’m even more curious and doubtful about the “narrative” than I was before. What is it, really, that they don’t want the rest of us to know?

Tickets for this year’s installment of the Super Bowl played on Sunday in Miami are reselling at higher prices than last year. Still, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, tickets purchased on the secondary market for any Super Bowl Game come at a high premium, as data from vendor TicketIQ shows.

The average price of a ticket is currently at US$8,264, up from “only” US$4,972 last year. Secondary ticket prices are expected to rise in price until game day.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Another year on record when resold tickets were especially pricey was 2015. According to TicketIQ, prices may vary depending on how many tickets are released to the public each year, whether competing teams come from wealthier cities and even on how easy it is for fans to reach the Super Bowl from their respective home towns. While 3,000 tickets were available on the market on Jan 29, those numbers were significantly lower in 2018, driving up prices.

But while ticket prices are soaring, we are reminded that last year’s Super Bowl had the lowest viewership since 2008…

You will find more infographics at Statista

We suspect this year may see that change (for the better).

Go Niners!

Via Global Macro Monitor,

Our analysis of the impact of the Coronavirus is a work in progress and nobody knows the endgame.  It is still the early days of the epidemic, and its dynamics will take time to understand. The scale of the impact will depend on how contagious and lethal it reveals itself.

There is a supply shock to global manufacturing as many factories in the world’s supply chain will be shuttered for longer, which shifts the global supply curve left, increasing-price and production pressures.  Ergo component shortages, higher prices, and lower production.

The 2 percent decline in the U.S. stock market and collapse in bond yields are signaling a potential global aggregate demand shock that offsets the supply shock.

As of Friday, 10,000 cases have been confirmed by China, surpassing the total from the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic. The new virus has killed 171 people in China.

The epicenter of the outbreak is Wuhan, one of China’s largest manufacturing centers. Foxconn and Pegatron have operations there, as do memory manufacturers such as XMC (nor flash) and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (non-volatile memory).

Auto producers, such as General Motors, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler also populate the region.

The electronics industry is poised for a cascading disruption that could change industry growth forecasts for the year. Bill McLean, president of semiconductor research firm IC Insights, said the virus has exacerbated the economic unease that has stalled semiconductor capital investment.

“Brexit, trade issues and now the coronavirus are causing global uncertainty,” he said  at a Boston-based forum. “Uncertainty causes [businesses and consumers] to freeze.” Worldwide, semiconductor capital spending is forecast to decrease by roughly 6 percent this year, from $103.5 billion in 2019 to roughly $97.6 billion.

Zhang Ming, an economist at government-backed think-tank the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned that the virus could push China’s economic growth below 5 per cent a year in the first quarter, reported the Financial Times. Economic consensus currently puts China’s GDP growth at 5.7 percent. That average has steadily declined since 2018, according to McLean.  — EE Times

More than 300 of the Global Top 500 companies have a presence in Wuhan, including Microsoft and Siemens. Wuhan is located in the Hubei Province.

Wuhan has 10 car factories, including those Honda, Renault, PSA and General Motors. The car industry represents around 20 percent of the city’s economy and employs 200,000 people directly and more than a million indirectly.

Here is a look at the main manufacturing regions in China.

• China Manufacturing Distribution Breakdown

• Electronic Industry: Mainly in Guangdong (33%), the rest in Yangtze River delta, Sichuan, Shaanxi Provinces.

• Textile Industry: Mainly in Zhejiang (18%) and Jiangsu (20%), the rest in Fujian, Guangdong, Shandong Provinces.

• Leather & Feather: South-East Coastal areas, Hebei, Henan, Chongqing and Ningxia provinces.

• Metal Product: Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Henan provinces.

• Glass: More in Hebei, Jiangsu, some in Shandong and Guangdong provinces.

• Ceramics: Jingdezhen in Jiangxi provinces

• Furniture: Mainly in Guangdong and Hebei province, the rest in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing.

• Construction: More in Shandong province, the rest in Hubei, Henan, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Beijing, Zhejiang.

• Household Appliance: Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong provinces.

• Artware & Stationary & Sporting: Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hubei

• Papermaking & Printing: Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian

• Machinery Manufacturing: Dongbei Area, Hunan and Hubei provinces.

• Petrochemical Industry: Shandong (32%), Liaoning (21%), Guangdong (15%)

• Pharmaceutical Industry: Tianjin city, Xian city in Shanxi province

• Food & Beverage: Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian, Hebei, Henan, Hunan, Hubei, Inner Mongolia

• Transportation Equipment:

  • Motor & Bicycle: Taizhou city in Zhejiang province (40%)

  • Shipping/Vessel: Yangtze River delta, Pearl River Delta, Bohai Bay Areas

  • Automobile: Mainly in Jilin, Hubei, Shanghai and Yangtze River delta, the rest in Pearl River Delta, Beijing

Most factories lose about two weeks of production in total during the Lunar Holiday but more production will be lost as the holiday has been extended.

The Ukrainian prosecutor who Joe Biden bragged about getting fired, Viktor Shokin, has filed a criminal complaint in Kiev against the former Vice President for abusing his power, according to French news outlet Les Crises (confirmed by multiple sources according to PJ Media).

Shokin writes in his complaint:

During the period 2014-2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was conducting a preliminary investigation into a series of serious crimes committed by the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Mykola Zlotchevsky and by the managers of the company “Burisma Holding Limited “(Cyprus), the board of directors of which included, among others, Hunter Biden, son of Joseph Biden, then vice-president of the United States of America.

The investigation into the above-mentioned crimes was carried out in strict accordance with Criminal Law and was under my personal control as the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

Owing to my firm position on the above-mentioned cases regarding their prompt and objective investigation, which should have resulted in the arrest and the indictment of the guilty parties, Joseph Biden developed a firmly hostile attitude towards me which led him to express in private conversations with senior Ukrainian officials, as well as in his public speeches, a categorical request for my immediate dismissal from the post of Attorney General of Ukraine in exchange for the sum of US $ 1 billion in as a financial guarantee from the United States for the benefit of Ukraine.

* * *

Shokin says that due to “continued pressure from the Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden to oust me from the job by blackmailing the allocation of financial assistance, I, as the man who places the State interests above my personal interests, I agreed to abandon the post of Prosecutor General of Ukraine.“

* * *

In November, the State department released detailed accusations against the Bidens levied by Shokin and his successor, Yiury Lutsenko. In them, Shokin claims:

“He [Shokin] became involved in a case against Mr. Mykola Zlochevsky the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. The case was opened as a result of Mr. Zlochevsky giving himself/company permits to drill for gas and oil in Ukraine. Mr. Zlochevsky is also the owner of Burisma Holdings.”

“Mr. Shokin stated that there are documents that list five (5) criminal cases in which Mr. Zlochevesky is listed, with the main case being for issuing illegal gas exploration permits. The following complaints are in the criminal case.

1. Mr. Zlochevsky was laundering money
2. Obtained assets by corrupt acts bribery
3. Mr. Zlochevsky removed approximately twenty three million US dollars out of Ukraine without permission
4. While seated as the Minister he approved two addition entities to receive permits for gas exploration
5. Mr. Zlochevsky was the owner of two secret companies that were part of Burisma Holdings and gave those companies permits which made it possible for him to profit while he was the sitting Minister.

“Mr Shokin further stated that there were several Burisma board appointments were made in 2014 as follows:

1. Hunter Biden son of Vice President Joseph Biden
2. Joseph Blade former CIA employee assigned to Anti-Terrorist Unit
3. Alesksander Kwasnieski former President of Poland
4. Devon Archer roomate to the Christopher Heinz the step-son of Mr. John Kerry United States Secretary of State

“Mr. Shokin stated that these appointments were made by Mr. Slochevsky in order to protect himself.“

Shokin then details how in July 2015, “US Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing. On or about September 2015 Mr. Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa where he stated that the cases were not investigated correctly and that Mr. Shokin may be corrupt.”

“Mr. Shokin further stated that on February of 2016 warrants were placed on the accounts of multiple people in Ukraine. There were requests for information on Hunter Biden to which nothing was received.“

“It is believed that Hunter Biden receives a salary, commission plus one million dollars.”

“President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko [who Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees] told Mr. Shokin not to investigate Burisma as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden. Mr. Shokin was called into Mr. Poroshenko’s office and told that the investigation into Burisma and the Managing Director where Hunter Biden is on the board, has caused Joe Biden to hold up one billion dollars in US aid to Ukraine.

“Mr. Shokin stated that on or around April of 2016 Mr. Petro Poroshenko called him and told him he had to be fired as the aid to the Ukraine was being withheld by Joe Biden. Mr. Biden told Mr. Poroshenko that he had evidence that Mr. Shokin was corrupt and needed to be fired. Mr. Shokin was dismissed in April of 2016 and the US aid was delivered within one and one half months.”

“On a different point Mr. Shokin believes the current Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch denied his visa to travel to the US. Mr. Shokin stated that she is close to Mr. Biden. Mr. Shokin also stated that there were leaks by a person named Reshenko of the Ukrainian State Secret Service about the Manafort Black Book. Mr. Shokin stated that there is possible deceit in the Manafort Black Book.”