Month: August 2022

We thought that today’s story about Ryan Cohen filing to dump his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond after sparking a massive gamma squeeze using deep OTM call options would be the most absurd meme-related story of the day. Boy, were we wrong.

In a late Wednesday article published on the FT which at first (and second, and third) read comes across as a cross between absurdist satire and a PR puff piece, we read the day’s feel-good “riches to riches” story in which a 20-year-old university student, Jake Freeman, who is an applied mathematics and economics major at the University of Southern California, managed to accumulate 6.2% of the entire outstanding stock of Bed Bath & Beyond at under $5.50 share (did we mention he is a 20-year-old university student) amounting to $27 million, which he announced in an activist 13-G letter to BBBY Management on July 21, 2022, and less than a month later sold out of his entire stake – thanks to the insane gamma squeeze in the stock – not through some prime broker but through his TD Ameritrade and Interactive Brokers accounts, making $110 million in the process!

For the sake of simplicity, here is what happened summarized in one chart.

First things first – how the FT got the idea for the story in the first place was rather inspired: they looked at the HDS page of BBBY and found that the 4th largest holder of BBBY is a completely unknown entity called Freeman Capital, which alongside only Ken Griffen’s Citadel and Federated Hermes, were the only three Top 20 holders to build out their entire stakes in the second quarter (as a reminder, shortly before the close we learned that the 2nd largest holder, Ryan Cohen’s RC Ventures, filed a 144 to dump its entire 9.450MM share-equivalent stake). And while we wait for RC Ventures to liquidate its stake, we now know for a fact that the #4 top BBBY holder already sold to unwitting retail investors.

What is remarkable is that at the same time Freeman disclosed its 6.21% (or 4,968,000) stake, the 20-year-old also sent out a 9 page activist letter (hardly the stuff 20-year-old college math majors write) to BBBY management explaining that the company is “facing an existential crisis for its survival” and that the company “needs to cut its cash-burn rates, drastically improve its capital structure and raise cash.” The first page of the letter is below (link to the full letter here). In it…

… Jake Freeman writes that his “plan for the realignment of BBBY consists of two crucial legs: cutting debt and raising capital.” He proceeds to detail his proposal for both legs, which would culminate in reducing the company’s senior debt from $1.2 billion to $500 million (through an exchange offer of the current discounted debt into far less par debt), and the issuance of converts to somehow raise $1 billion in the market (how this would have worked when the stock was trading around $5 with imploding EBITDA is anyone’s guess). But what was most remarkable is what Freeman said in the highlighted section: namely that the “US options market is pricing in high implied volatility for BBBY derivatives which can be leveraged and capitalized on in order to effect a realignment of BBBY’s debt”, in other words a debt reduction using… a gamma squeeze?

Perhaps. We don’t know who on the board (or management team) read Freeman’s letter, or what they did next, but less than ten days after the recent teenager shipped out his “activist letter” to BBBY, the stock doubled, then tripled, quadrupled and so on, from his cost basis… at which point Freeman, quite content with the 6x return he made on his initial investment of $27 million, sold his BBBY stake north of $130 million, making more than $100 million in less than a month!

By this point, readers should have some questions, like for example how did a 20-year-old get $27 million in cash to buy 6.2% of the outstanding shares of Bed Bath & Beyond, and become the 4th largest shareholder? Here, the FT comes to the rescue:

Freeman’s initial stake cost about $25mn, which he said was mostly raised from friends and family. He has invested for years with his uncle, Dr Scott Freeman, a former pharmaceutical executive. The two recently built an activist stake in a publicly traded pharmaceutical company called Mind Medicine.

There’s more:

Freeman also said he had interned for years at a New Jersey hedge fund, Volaris Capital. Just before his 17th birthday, Freeman and its founder, Vivek Kapoor, a former Credit Suisse executive, published a paper titled “Irreducible Risks of Hedging a Bond with a Default Swap”.

But we digress: let’s get this straight: “friends and family” handed a tiny $25 million (really, $27 million) to a 20-year-old math major at USC, whose extensive financial background is co-investing with his uncle “a former pharma executive” and interning at a hedge fund located above a Starbucks office in Milburn, NJ, yet which oddly enough is primarily focused on various options trading strategies.

… $25 million which he invested, through his hedge fund Freeman Capital Managent, LLC, which doesn’t really exist except through a Sheridan, Wyoming-based commercial registered agent at 30 N Gould St. (where more than one registration scam has been discovered recently) and which was “founded” in May 2022 …

…. into just one high-beta, practically bankrupt stock just weeks after the company reported dismal earnings report according to which BBBY sales plunged by 25% in Q2 while its net loss widened to $358mn from $51mn, and its cash position had dwindled to just $107 million from $1 billion at the start of the year, or just a few weeks from insolvency, culminating a catastrophic trend of disappearing EBITDA.

Surely such a concentrated, undiversified investment by a young “hedge fund” guru who doesn’t even have an active Bloomberg account…

… screams “fiduciary duty”, and we can only applaud the “friends and family” who handed their $25 million to this young investing wizard, who were surely expecting a few percent returns here and there, instead of a 5x return in 3 weeks. Surely.

According to the FT, Freeman himself quite shocked by the outcome: “I certainly did not expect such a vicious rally upwards,” Freeman told the Financial Times in an interview on Wednesday. “I thought this was going to be a six months plus play . . . I was really shocked that it went up so fast.”

So young Master Freeman was expecting the 5x return to take place in “six months” but was “really shocked” it took just 24 calendar days. Come to think of it, we would be too (or maybe not, especially since the entire idea was that of Jake’s uncle Scott, M.D…. but more on that in a subsequent post. But here one additional thing is worth noting, between July 13 (when FCM BBBY HOLDINGS, LLC was registered in Wyoming by Jake Spencer Freeman) and July 20 when the 13G was filed disclosing the 5 million share stake, just 41.9 million shares traded, which means that young Master Jake was in quite a rush to build up his stake: as JC Oviedo pointed out, “to amass its stake in this time period, FCM BBBY HOLDINGS, LLC would have had to be over 11% of the average daily volume!”

That’s not only a ton of conviction where to put in every last penny of your “friends and family” money but one hell of a rush too.

Finally, what did Freeman do after making $100 million in what may be the luckiest investment ever made by a 20-year-old?

After selling the shares, Freeman went for dinner with his parents in the suburb of New York City where they live and on Wednesday he flew to Los Angeles to return to campus, he said.

We, for one, can’t wait to see how Freeman Capital Management makes its next 5x return in under a month next (actually we know how, and we will reveal it tomorrow).

Arizona and Nevada face deeper cuts on the amount of water they can draw from the drought-stricken Colorado River, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday. 

The agency responsible for managing water and power in the western US said “urgent action” is needed as water levels in the Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — continue to drop. Under the new conservation efforts, 21% of Arizona’s annual water allocation from the river system will be reduced in 2023. 

Nevada will see 8% of water deliveries reduced, and Mexico’s share will be cut by 7%. California will be spared from the new measures that begin next year. 

The reductions could be the beginning of a water crisis for the 40 million Americans in seven states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada) that heavily rely on the river for freshwater and power. 

The move comes as the western US faces the worst megadrought in 1,200 years that has decreased levels in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US, to lows not seen in eight decades. 

Lake Powell, meanwhile, could face hydropower production disruptions as soon as next year, The Guardian said. 

“Every sector in every state has a responsibility to ensure that water is used with maximum efficiency. To avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado river system and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the basin must be reduced,” said Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary of the Interior Department for water and science. 

In Arizona, the cuts will impact water flow to farmland responsible for 90% of US lettuce production. 

Farmers in Arizona, who provide more than 90% of the US’s leafy greens each November through March, have already borne the brunt of prior cuts, along with those who make a living from the state’s $23.3 billion agriculture industry. Pinal County, between Phoenix and Tucson, is likely to be hit especially hard since the area known for cotton and livestock has already seen about half its farmland go idle due to prior water reductions. – Bloomberg 

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton summed up the situation along the Colorado River: 

“The system is approaching a tipping point and without action, we can’t protect the system and the millions of Americans who rely on this critical resource.” 

Readers may recall that we noted taps in northern Mexico have run dry for several months as a water crisis looms. 

Authored by Jessie Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. pharmaceutical giant Moderna has finalised arrangements with the Australian and Victorian governments to build the world’s first mRNA production facility located on a university campus.

The construction at Melbourne’s Monash University is expected to commence at the end of 2022, with production anticipated to begin by the end of 2024.

The company said that the facility is expected to produce up to 100 million mRNA respiratory vaccine doses annually, targeting respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, seasonal influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, “and other potential respiratory viruses, pending licensure.”

“We look forward to being a part of the Monash Clayton precinct and contributing to the R&D ecosystem in Melbourne and across Australia,” Moderna General Manager Michael Azrak said in a statement on Aug. 15.

The prime minister of Australia and the premier of Victoria said that the plan for the ten-year partnership to create a “homegrown” mRNA ecosystem has been completed.

It is designed to reduce Australia’s dependence on imported mRNA vaccines, vulnerability to supply disruptions, and delays, according to the Australian ministers.

Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews said that this agreement means that Australia will be home to Moderna’s only mRNA manufacturing centre in the Southern Hemisphere.

“We’re not wasting a second in making sure we have access to the vaccines we need to keep Victorians safe,” Andrews said.

Vaccine Development Rushed

However, a professor of medicine at Australia’s Flinders University has said that, in his opinion, the mRNA development was rushed, and that this may have contributed to issues with adverse reactions.

“I think there was early leadership by Oxford University [AstraZeneca] with the adenovirus viral vector being put into human trials very quickly, you saw that similarly with Moderna and its mRNA approach,” Nikolai Petrovsky told The Epoch Times previously.

“This created a ‘follow the leader’-type mentality with (manufacturers) Sputnik and Johnson and Johnson copying the Oxford approach and Pfizer following Moderna with the mRNA approach.”

Last year, the Victorian government made a significant $50 million (US$35 million) investment to establish “mRNA Victoria,” an initiative responsible for leading the mRNA vaccine industry for future generations.

As part of this initiative, they granted Monash University $5.4 million to create the mRNA production facility on its campus.

Though America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took a turn toward Covid rationality last week, “Zero-Covid” madness is still raging in China.

Just ask the poor people who were at a Shanghai Ikea on Saturday evening. One minute they’re innocently eyeing furniture and appliances, the next they’re being told they can’t leave the store or go home. 

An announcement was made over the store’s public address system, notifying shoppers the store had been ordered to close and to prevent anyone from leaving, due to contact tracing. Shocked by suddenly being condemned to quarantine, many opted to make a run for it.

Video captured a dystopian scene in which guards attempt to close doors on the escapees, some of whom are screaming in their panic. The guards were overpowered, but it’s not clear what happened to the fleeing shoppers next. 

Yesterday, an abnormal health code case was presented at an IKEA in Shanghai, & the entire mall was suddenly blocked🥶

Some ppl forced their way out for fear of being sent to concentration camps, but there is actually nowhere to escape under #AmazingChina’s digital surveillance pic.twitter.com/MWpbTOJ3kz

— Donna Wong💛🖤 (@DonnaWongHK) August 14, 2022

Those who were trapped in the store had to first linger there for four hours — from 8pm til midnight — before being transported to quarantine hotels, reports Bloomberg. Then they faced quarantine for two days followed by five days of monitoring. 

The mass-detention was triggered merely because a close contact of a six-year-old boy who tested positive had visited the store. It’s not clear if that individual was in the store at the time. What’s more, the 6-year old wasn’t even symptomatic. 

VIDEO: Chaotic scenes at Ikea store in Shanghai with shoppers trying to escape as authorities tried to quarantine them https://t.co/sErdkVTxHs pic.twitter.com/jmKWFrUXEu

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) August 15, 2022

While the video of the incident is dramatic, it’s hardly the first such episode, as Chinese citizens continue to live in a dark game of contact-tracing roulette. Others have been suddenly detained while working in offices, exercising at gyms or dining in restaurants. 

Of China’s major cities, Shanghai has been hit hardest. Between March 10 and July 31 of this year alone, the city endured 92 days of full or partial lockdown. This spring, it got to the point where apartment-dwellers were screaming in unison from their balconies: 

Last week, the CDC updated its guidelines, with one of the bureaucracy’s epidemiologists saying “we know that Covid-19 is here to stay.” Two proclamations were particularly welcome, even if they were terribly overdue: 

• “It’s no longer recommended to screen those without symptoms.”
• “Unvaccinated people now have the same guidance as vaccinated people.” 

In China, however, there’s no sign that the Zero-Covid regime will be relaxed anytime soon, despite mounting damage to China’s economy, and despite growing Chinese discontent.  

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

A couple of days ago, I had the chance to interview my good friend Andy Schectman, President & Owner of Miles Franklin Precious Metals, a company that has done more than $5 billion in sales.

Andy is a world-renowned expert in the field of precious metals and took the time to answer some pressing questions I had about about the state of energy markets in the U.S. and the quickly shifting landscape that the global economy sits on, with the BRIC nations banding together and collectively laughing at the West since the sanctions on Russia went into effect several months ago.

In what can only be described as an extremely disturbing interview that left my jaw agape by the end of it, Andy and I have a frank discussion about:

• The price of oil and the country’s response to higher prices

• How the Fed is trapped between a rock and a hard place, between inflation and recession right now

• The BRIC nations banding together economically and challenging the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency

• Andy’s thoughts on how nearly all traditional assets – including stocks, bonds a real estate and the dollar, may wind up “vaporized”

“Inflation is everywhere and gas is just one of the places,” Andy says. “Inflation is rampant. They’ve been pointing to the prices of certain things, but inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. We have not seek peak inflation, but bringing down the price of gas $0.30 or $0.40 is encouraging, but I don’t think it’s anything substantive at all.”

When I asked about how the Biden administration was dealing with the issue, Andy said: “I think the strategic oil supply is supposed to be strategic, yet why were they selling so much oil from it to China and Pakistan?”

He continued about inflation: “I don’t think the 9.1% is the peak – not even close to it. I think the 9.1% is bullshit as well.”

Speaking about what course of action the Fed is going to wind up taking, Andy makes its clear he’s in the camp that the Central Bank is definitely going to pivot.

“I don’t think that the Fed has any intention of doing what they say, I do believe it’s a sideshow,” Andy says. “Raising [rates] to 2.25% and not doing anything in terms of QT – I think they’re showing us that they’re jawboning, they don’t want to go down in history as blowing up the whole system.”

“They just can’t do it. The minute they start to raise rates high enough, they will blow up the system. The Fed is impotent. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t,” he continued.

Andy criticized the Fed’s inability to see what they were doing, as they were doing it, stating: “When you take a step back and realize that there has to be someone with enough sense to realize that when you blow asset prices up to all time highs factored against the lowest interest rates in human history, at some point that bar tab has to be paid.”

He summed up: “We’ve milked as much from the system as humanly possible.”

Andy also thinks that global de-dollarization is on its way: “I do think the whole system could blow up with the loss of the dollar’s petro-reserve status.”

“There are certain signposts along the way, that when you see, it becomes clear we are on a path to de-dollarization,” he says. “The dollar hegemony is right about ready to break when you realize that Saudi Arabia is about to join the BRIC nations. Do you think Biden is going to fly there to ask for more oil? He went there to beg them not to join BRIC.”

“The dollar was made reserve currency only because of our protection of the Saudi kingdom,” Andy continues. He then notes that Saudi Arabia has signed new protection agreements with Russia.

“All of the Eastern European countries that have repatriated their gold. They’re all part of the EU but they all trade their own currency. They’re all going to break away from the Western system!”

If you’re not yet a subscriber of my blog, Fringe Finance, I’d be humbled to have you join and can offer you 50% off for life by using this coupon: Get 50% off forever

Finally, you can listen to my full interview here:

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Chinese troops will travel to Russia to take part in war games along with India, Belarus, Mongolia, Tajikistan and other largely anti-Western countries, China’s defense ministry said on Wednesday, adding redundantly that China’s participation in the joint exercises was “unrelated to the current international and regional situation.” (Narrator: it is related.)

Last month, Moscow announced plans to hold “Vostok” (East) exercises from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, even as it wages war in Ukraine. It said at the time that some foreign forces would participate, without naming them. It turns out that the “foreign forces” account for just under half of the world’s population.

China’s defence ministry said its participation in the exercises was part of an ongoing bilateral annual cooperation agreement with Russia, Reuters reported.

“The aim is to deepen practical and friendly cooperation with the armies of participating countries, enhance the level of strategic collaboration among the participating parties, and strengthen the ability to respond to various security threats,” the statement said.

What is perhaps most interesting about the news is that the war games will see India and China participate together, although as the Hindu times notes, it remains unclear if Indian and Chinese troops – hardly the closest of friends – will be present together or if they will participate in different drills, which will be spread across 13 different training grounds.

Indian and Chinese troops have remained in a stand-off that has lasted for more than two years along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh following the transgressions by the PLA in April 2020. Disengagement has taken place in some areas along the LAC but talks to restore the status quo in the remaining friction areas such as Hot Springs, Demchok, and Depsang have been slow moving.

Under Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Beijing and Moscow have grown increasingly close especially following the start of the Ukraine war which Xi sees as a grand rehearsal for the invasion of Taiwan. Last August, Russia and China held joint military exercises in north-central China involving more than 10,000 troops. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu praised the Sibu/Cooperation-2021 drills in China’s Ningxia and suggested they could be developed further.

In October, Russia and China held joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan. Days later, Russian and Chinese warships held their first joint patrols in the western Pacific. The next month, South Korea’s military said it had scrambled fighter jets after two Chinese and seven Russian warplanes intruded into its air defense identification zone during what Beijing called regular training.

Just days before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow announced a “no limits” partnership, although U.S. officials say they have not seen China evade U.S.-led sanctions on Russia or provide it with military equipment.

Russia’s eastern military district includes part of Siberia and has its headquarters in Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border.

Climate science has been so suffocated by ideological zealotry it’s becoming difficult just to find normal objective analysis these days.  Any piece of data that contradicts the man-made climate change narrative is surrounding by a spin machine that either dismisses the information or obscures it in a deluge of global warming propaganda, inoculating the reader well before they get a chance to digest the news that maybe climate change is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Whenever high temperatures are reported in the US or Europe the news is hyperinflated into wild theories of climate Apocalypse by the media, but weather history suggests that the panic is fabricated rather than justified.  In fact, any hot weather event you can pick out in recent years is likely overshadowed by a much worse event decades or centuries before “man-made carbon pollution” was ever a thing.    

For example, the media is frantic over the current drought and “record temps” in Europe this summer, warning that it could become the “worst drought” in 500 years.  Of course, this claim opens the door to a question that climate scientists and propagandists don’t want to answer:  What happened 500 years ago? 

A similar level of global warming hysteria was present during a heat wave in Europe in 2003, as well as in 2018.  The few climate scientists still not bought and paid for by governments and the UN have had to point out that these droughts are nothing compared to the living hell that was the drought of 1540.  This event is often termed a “mega-drought” because the region suffered historically hot temps while receiving almost no rain for a year.

Temperatures that year averaged 5°C to 7° C  above average temperatures in Europe in the 20th century.   In US terms, that means daily summer temps of around 104° F.  Hundreds of historic accounts written at the time describe around half a million deaths, along with vast wildfires and a winter in Italy that “felt like July.”  Keep in mind that carbon levels in Europe in 1540 were 30% LOWER than they are today, yet, the region suffered perhaps the worst warming event in its recorded history. 

Today’s climate data is based on records held by the NOAA and other institutions, and these records only go back to 1880.  So, whenever you hear the mainstream media rant about record temperatures, they are using a tiny sliver of global weather history going back a little over a century.  Any honest scientist in this field will tell you that the Earth’s climate record is vast compared to the limited data used by global warming ideologues, and the majority of destructive weather crises have occurred well before man-made carbon emissions.   

It certainly wasn’t carbon pollution from cars, farming and industry that caused the crisis in 1540.

Try doing any research on the 1540 event and you will be buried in a pile of mainstream articles that acknowledge the disaster but then try to use it as an example of why we must comply with carbon restrictions and climate authoritarianism in 2022.  They say “Look at what happened to Europe in 1540.  You don’t want that to happen again, do you?”  

Of course, humanity had no say or control over the weather in 1540, just as we have no say or control over the weather today.  There was no carbon based global warming back then, and there is no carbon based global warming now.  

Scientists still have no idea what caused many of the warming events of the past including the crisis of 1540, so why should we have blind faith in their claims that carbon is the cause of warming in recent years?  In fact, the NOAA and other climate research institutions still offer no concrete proof of a relationship between carbon emissions and rising temperatures.  Their argument is that they have excluded all other possible causes, leaving only carbon as the remainder.  This is not science, this is haphazard guesswork.  

If there was ever a field that defies the logic, reason and analysis commonly associated with the scientific method, it is climate science.   

Set aside the fact that billions of dollars in funding are paid out to climate scientists every year, but only those scientists that operate from the assumption that climate change is caused by human beings.  That is to say, there are numerous incentives for scientists to discount other causes for global warming.  They are not scientists, they are paid political activists.  Luckily, temperatures are not that high.  The NOAA’s own data shows that the average temperature of the Earth has risen less than 1°C in the past century.  This is nothing, so why all the panic?

Let’s just say that carbon controls are a powerful tool for micromanaging the population and justifying authoritarianism in the name of the “greater good.”  If the public is convinced to accept false climate change narratives, then government would have the ability to control every aspect of daily life, from the amount of electricity we use, to the food we eat, to the businesses we can run, to the level of production and the size of the population.  This is not fiction this is reality, and it is happening much faster than many people realize, all in the name of saving the planet from a threat that doesn’t exist.    

Authored by Carol Cassis via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Faculty at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law have created a database to identify and record efforts to block critical race theory (CRT) being taught in schools across the country.

The database, called the CRT Forward Tracking Project, allows users to “track attacks on critical race theory” and filter the information as part of an effort to “support anti-racist education, training and research,” according to the school.

The project was created by UCLA’s Critical Race Studies Program, founded in 2000 as the first law school program in the nation dedicated to critical race theory.

CRT, according to the school, is “the study of systemic racism in law, policy and society,” and suggests efforts need to be made to fix these alleged injustices.

Meanwhile, critics say CRT pushes a controversial worldview related to Marxism that analyzes all aspects of life through a racial lens instead of through the concept of class struggle.

UCLA Law announced earlier this month it would track anti-CRT activity through the database at all levels of government across the nation.

“The project was created to help people understand the breadth of the attacks on the ability to speak truthfully about race and racism through the campaigns against CRT,” said Taifha Natalee Alexander, project director of CRT Forward, in a statement.

The database analyzes these efforts to determine where the activity is happening and how opponents are taking action, such as protesting curriculum at the school board level.

It also includes the type of CRT content being restricted, such as a course being taught at a public school, as well as the institution or group being targeted and enforcement mechanisms being used to regulate the content.

For example, the Placentia-Yorba Linda School Board voted to ban the teaching of CRT in classrooms this past April, ending months of debate in the Orange County district.

Prior to the narrow 3-2 vote, supporters for the ban asserted CRT is a divisive ideology that pushes a political narrative. Other trustees at the April 5 school board meeting, however, claimed such efforts amounted to censorship, according to public comments.

The UCLA program claims that many of those who are against these concepts being taught in K-12 schools are using the term CRT “incorrectly,” and have “affected plans to include ethnic studies more broadly for students before they get to college.”

In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation making ethnic studies a statewide requirement for high school graduation starting in the 2029–30 school year, amid debate among parents and teachers about whether ethnic studies curriculum includes elements of CRT.

Tracking Results

As of Aug. 2, the UCLA database has screened nearly 24,000 media articles and identified 479 instances of anti-CRT activity since August 2021.

The database team found this activity is “much more pervasive and extensive than generally reported,” according to the school, with such policies either proposed or enacted in 49 states.

The project also found that most anti-CRT proposals have occurred in Florida, Virginia, Missouri, and the U.S. Congress, while local school board measures make up more than 20 percent of the activity in the database.

Most such measures at the school board level have been introduced in California, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with Californians enacting five out of the eight proposed measures.

The study also found the most common anti-CRT enforcement measures include withholding funding or issuing fines against individual teachers, administrators, schools, and districts for engaging in “prohibited conduct,” the school says.

CRT Controversy

Noah Zatz, faculty director of the UCLA Law’s Critical Race Studies Program, is helping to spearhead the tracking project. CRT Forward staff also include law librarians and undergraduate and law school research assistants.

“We need critical race theory to understand this assault on racial justice, where even naming structural racism gets portrayed as unfair to white people. And we need CRT to develop legal theories of education and free speech that not only blunt these attacks but place anti-racism at the center of a democratic society,” said Zatz in a statement.

However, opponents contend that CRT is not needed and does not teach hard history, but is instead an approach to analyzing that history with the intent to dismantle modern systems that proponents claim are white supremacist.

“Those that are upset about proposed bans on CRT in our schools have been misled to think that states that have banned CRT from being taught will no longer teach about Jim Crow Laws, the displacement of Native Americans, or even slavery in America. This is simply not true,” according to a CRT guide written by former California teacher Kali Fontanilla. “On the contrary, banning CRT will remove a dangerous twisting and rewriting of American history.”

The UCLA project is funded by a $400,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation, a private, Indianapolis-based foundation with about $1.4 billion in assets, according to the nonprofit’s website.

On Tuesday Russian President Vladimir Putin weighed on on major security issues ranging from the ongoing war in Ukraine to China-US tensions over Taiwan in a televised speech. Speaking before defense officials and regional think tank analysts at the Tenth Moscow Conference on International Security, among the most notable assertion of his is that NATO is moving “further east”.

Within days prior to launching the Feb.24 invasion of Ukraine, he gave what was essentially a war speech emphasizing that urgent military action was needed to prevent NATO’s further expansion into Ukraine. But it seems that in his latest comments Tuesday, he sees the threat of NATO influence at work as far as southeast Asia as well.

In the fresh remarks, Putin continued his prior theme of a turn from unipolar to multi-polar world order, based on the decline of the United States and West. He said as translated in state media: 

“Western globalist elites are provoking chaos by rekindling old and inciting new conflicts, implementing a policy of so-called containment, while undermining any alternative, sovereign paths of development. Thus, they are desperately trying to preserve the hegemony and power that are slipping out of their grasp, trying to keep countries and peoples in the grip of a neo-colonial order.”

He blasted this Western “hegemony” as what in the end will result in global stagnation. Further he said:

“NATO’s war machine is moving, approaching Russia’s borders closely… Russia has been trying for 30 years to negotiate NATO non-expansion to the east…”

The Russian leader continued, “Any means are used. The United States and its vassals rudely interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states by organizing provocations, coups d’état and civil wars. Threats, blackmail and pressure are resorted to in a bid to force independent states to submit to their will.”

The Kremlin has long emphasized that the 2014 overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was the real start of hostilities in Ukraine, and that it was fundamentally Washington and its EU allies behind it. The West, however, has rejected this narrative – emphasizing the Maidan events as a spontaneous democratic uprising. 

On expanding East, he said of NATO:

“The so-called collective West is deliberately destroying the European security system, putting together new military alliances. The NATO bloc is expanding East, building up its military infrastructure, deploying missile defense systems and increasing the strike capabilities of its offensive forces.”

In this context he again stressed that just before Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine, Moscow repeatedly submitted requests for security ‘guarantees’ to NATO, but that this was ignored. He said this is what has damaged European security. He also charged that the West in the end sees the Ukrainian people as “cannon fodder” for its proxy war.

Putin’s defense minister has also of late been stressing the role of the West in planning and executing Ukrainian military actions, also as Crimea has recently come under rare attack…

🧵
Russian Defense Minister Shoigu: “Operations of the Ukrainian armed forces are planned in Washington and London. pic.twitter.com/VMloU3FqXt

— The Eurasianist ☦️ (@Russ_Warrior) August 16, 2022

Interestingly, in the speech he turned his attention to rising China tensions, charging that the US is still trying to add “fuel to the fire” over the Taiwan issue. This echoes precisely Beijing’s own line, as the two countries continue to grow lockstep while under the crosshairs of Washington. He called Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan a “carefully planned provocation” meant to whip up tensions.

China will without doubt applaud Putin’s fierce defense of Beijing’s point of view: 

Vladimir Putin sounds the alarm about the West’s creation of NATO in the Asia-Pacific region

This message will appeal strongly to China, as will Putin’s scathing attacks on Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit at the Moscow International Security Conference

— Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) August 16, 2022

“The American reckless gamble in relation to Taiwan is not just a visit by an individual irresponsible politician, but part of a purposeful, conscious US strategy to destabilize… the situation in the region and the world, a brazen demonstration of disrespect for the sovereignty of other countries and for its international obligations. We see this as a carefully planned provocation,” Putin said.