Greenwald: Ukraine’s Conscript Army Being Used By West As “Cannon Fodder”
Journalist Glenn Greenwald issued some blunt and apt statements on the nature of the Ukraine war and Washington’s constant stoking of conflict, as opposed to US officials exploring serious avenues for peace. Below is his epic Twitter thread Monday in response to once again being accused of supposedly “aping” pro-Kremlin talking points [emphasis ours]…
No, the biggest victims of the war in Ukraine are the tens of thousands of Ukrainian men forced against their will as conscripts to serve as cannon fodder so that empty and weak Western losers like you can feel a sense of purpose and strength as you cheer from a safe distance.
No, the biggest victims of the war in Ukraine are the tens of thousands of Ukrainian men forced against their will as conscripts to serve as cannon fodder so that empty and weak Western losers like you can feel a sense of purpose and strength as you cheer from a safe distance. https://t.co/sAi6bDWFtL
Whenever it comes to wars people get to cheer without fighting in them — call it the Bill Kristol Syndrome — you can never underestimate the ample psychological benefits they get from feeling strong and tough but never getting near the fight.
Adam Smith [in The Wealth of Nations] warned of it in 1776:
For those who love to cheer the war in Ukraine but seem to have no idea what it’s actually about, here’s just the latest instance in which Zelensky had to increase punishments for desertion because of how unwilling much of the conscript army is to fight:
Zelensky knew there were way too few Ukrainian men willing to fight the Russian Army. That’s why he begged Westerners who “support Ukraine” to come help fight Russia.
But so few did, so they closed the border and used unwilling conscripts…
Kansas has become the first state to adopt a definition of gender with the passage of legislation that keeps men, no matter what gender they identify as, out of women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and other intimate spaces.
It also separates inmates and restricts participation in sports according to one’s sex at birth.
The move came late in the afternoon of April 27, when the state Legislature voted to override Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of S.B. 180, which became known as the “Women’s Bill of Rights.”
Under it, a female is defined as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova.” A male is defined as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
It also defines gender words calling for “woman” and “girl” to be used to refer to human females and “man” and “boy” to refer to human males. It defines “mother” as a parent of the female sex and “father” as a parent of the male sex.
The override comes a little more than a week after Kelly vetoed the bill on April 20, after it was passed by a two-to-one margin between Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate.
Kelly said she vetoed the legislation because she was concerned it would open the state up to costly discrimination lawsuits, cause a loss of federal funding, and hurt the Sunflower State’s economy.
The bill garnered support from a range of groups, including one staunchly pro-choice women’s rights group.
“Victory!” wrote the Women’s Liberation Front (WOLF) on Twitter, upon news of the veto override.
The national women’s rights organization, which helped craft the legislation, wrote on its website, “This bill takes procedural steps to write into law common sense definitions that ensure the meaning of words like ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ aren’t corrupted by unelected bureaucrats intent on pushing gender ideology.”
The group stated that members sent more than 600 messages to Kansas lawmakers in support of the bill.
Opposition Forces
The legislation also had plenty of opposition, with critics calling it anti-trans and reminiscent of racial segregation in the 1960s.
“It’s the same sayings,” state Rep. John Alcala (D-Topeka) said at a public hearing on the bill. “I don’t want you in my bathroom. I don’t want you drinking out of my water fountain. I don’t want you over at my house. I don’t want my kid hanging out with you.”
Beth Oller, a physician who testified against the bill, said the title was inappropriate and violated women’s rights. “This is [in] no way a women’s bill of rights. The bill does the opposite of protecting women; it causes harm.”
Oller said that medical doctors “for decades have agreed that there is no sufficient way to define what makes a woman.”
“Gender is not binary but is a spectrum of biological, mental, and emotional traits that exist along a continuum,” she said. “Intersex people exist.”
The bill does include a provision that recognizes intersexual individuals. “Individuals born with a medically verifiable diagnosis of disorder/differences in sex development are to be provided available federal and state legal protections,” the legislation states.
Opposition to SB 180 also came from the Kansas School Superintendents’ Association, the United School Administrators of Kansas, and Kansas Legal Services.
Six people have died and more than 30 injured in a 90-vehicle pileup on Interstate 55 in Illinois that was blamed on a blinding dust storm.
“The cause of the crash is due to excessive winds blowing dirt from farm fields across the highway leading to zero visibility,” Illinois State Police Maj. Ryan Starrick told NBC News.
Interstate 55 in southern Sangamon and northern Montgomery counties remains closed in both directions because of numerous crashes caused by a dust storm, which has greatly reduced visibility. (photo via @wics_abc20) pic.twitter.com/rYbWKndJa6
Starrick said the stretch of the interstate would be closed until tomorrow because of the high number of crashed vehicles and casualties.
Massive pileup on I-55 south of Springfield, Illinois has closed the interstate for nearly 30 miles. Blowing dust off freshly plowed fields led to very low visibility#ilwx
🎥: Nathan Cormier pic.twitter.com/im7QLE8BTp
Nathan Cormier was driving on the interstate and described what he saw to The Weather Channel:
“I saw the smoke cloud from a distance and I’ve driven through them before, you know, you put your hazards on, go slow … And I moved to the left lane to get away out from behind a semi. And that’s when I came across everything else stopped in the road.”
Cormier described the scene as a “dust bowl.”
“This is like 1930’s dust bowl.”
A dust storm caused a major crash on I-55 south of Springfield, Illinois earlier Monday. Truck driver Nathan Cormier joined FOX Weather to recount his experience during the pile-up. #ILwx@IanOliverWXpic.twitter.com/nWDW353IH6
We open this episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast with some actual news about the debate over renewing section 702 of FISA. That’s the law that allows the government to target foreigners for a national security purpose and to intercept their communications in and out of the U.S. A lot of attention has been focused on what happens to those communications after they’ve been intercepted and stored, with some arguing that the FBI should get a second court authorization—maybe even a warrant based on probable cause—to search for records about an American. Michael J. Ellis reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released new data on such FBI searches. Turns out, they’ve dropped from almost 3 million last year to nearly 120 thousand this year. In large part the drop reflects the tougher restrictions imposed by the FBI on such searches. Those restrictions were made public this week. It has also emerged that the government is using the database millions of times a year to identify the victims of cyberattacks. That’s the kind of problem 702 is made for: some foreign hackers are a national security threat, and their whole business model is to use U.S. infrastructure to communicate (in a very special way) with U.S. networks. So it turns out that all those civil libertarians who want to make it hard for the government to search the 702 database for the names of Americans are actually proposing ways to slow down and complicate the process of warning hacking victims. Thanks a bunch, folks!
Justin Sherman covers China’s plans to attack and even take over enemy (i.e., U.S.) satellites. The story is apparently drawn from the Discord leaks, and it has the ring of truth. I opine that DOD has gotten a little too comfortable waging war against people who don’t really have an army, and that the Ukraine conflict shows how much tougher things get when there’s an organized military on the other side. (Again, credit for our artwork goes to Bing Image Creator.)
Adam Candeub flags the next Supreme Court case to nibble away at the problem of social media and the law. The Court will hear argument next year on the constitutionality of public officials blocking people who post mean comments on the officials’ Facebook pages.
Justin and I break down a story about whether Twitter is complying with more government demands now that Elon Musk is in charge. The short answer is yes. This leads me to ask why we expect social media companies to spend large sums fighting government takedown and surveillance requests when it’s so much cheaper just to comply. So far, the answer has been that mainstream media and Good People Everywhere will criticize companies that don’t fight. But with criticism of Elon Musk’s Twitter already turned up to 11, that’s not likely to persuade him.
Adam and I are impressed by Citizen Labs’ report on search censorship in China. We’d both like to see Citizen Lab do the same thing for U.S. censorship, which somehow gets less attention. If you suspect that’s because there’s more U.S. censorship than U.S. companies want to admit, here’s a bit of supporting evidence: Citizen Lab reports that the one American company still providing search services in China, Microsoft Bing, is actually more aggressive about stifling Chinese political speech than China’s main search engine, Baidu. This jibes with my experience, when Bing’s Image Creator refused to construct an image using Taiwan’s flag. (It was OK using U.S. and German flags, but it also balked at China’s.) To be fair, though, Microsoft has fixed that particular bit of overreach: You can now create images with both Taiwanese and Chinese flags.
Adam covers the EU’s enthusiasm for regulating other countries’ companies. It has designated 19 tech giants as subject to its online content rules. Of the 19, one is a European company, and two are Chinese (counting TikTok). The rest are American.
I introduce a case that I think could be a big problem for the Biden administration as it ramps up its campaign for cybersecurity regulation. Iowa and a couple of other states are suing to block the EPA’s effort to impose cybersecurity requirements on public water systems. The problem from EPA’s standpoint is that it used an “interpretation” of a statute that doesn’t actually say much about cybersecurity.
Michael Ellis and I cover a former NSA director’s business ties to Saudi Arabia – and confess our unease at the number of generals and admirals moving from command of U.S. forces abroad to a consulting gig with the countries where they just served. Recent restrictions on the revolving door for intelligence officers gets a mention.
Justin and I debate whether Meta’s Reels feature has what it takes to be a plausible TikTok competitor. Justin is skeptical. I’m a little less so. Meta’s claims about the success of Reels aren’t entirely persuasive, but I think it’s too early to tell.
The D.C. Circuit has killed off the state antitrust case trying to undo Meta’s long-ago acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. The states waited too long, the court held. That doctrine doesn’t apply the same way to the FTC, which will get to pursue the same lonely battle against long odds for years. If the FTC is going to keep sending its lawyers into dubious battles as though they were conscripts in Bakhmut, I ask, when will the Commission start recruiting in Russian prisons?
Well, that was fast. Adam tells us that the Brazil court order banning Telegram because it wouldn’t turn over information on neo-Nazi groups has been overturned on appeal. But Telegram isn’t out of the woods. The appeal court left in place fines of $200 thousand a day for noncompliance. That seems unsustainable for Telegram.
And in another regulatory walkback, Italy’s privacy watchdog is letting ChatGPT return to the country. I suspect the Italian government is cutting a deal to save face as it abandons its initial position that ChatGPT violated data protection principles when it scraped public data to train the model.
Finally, in policies I wish they would walk back, four U.S. regulatory agencies claimed (plausibly) that they had authority to bring bias claims against companies using AI in a discriminatory fashion. Since I don’t see any way to bring those claims without arguing that any deviation from proportional representation constitutes discrimination, this feels like a surreptitious introduction of quotas into several new parts of the economy, just as the Supreme Court seems poised to cast doubt on such quotas in higher education.
You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@gmail.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug! The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.
The State Department has reaffirmed that an attack on a Philippine vessel in the South China Sea will invoke the US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty following a near miss between Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels in the disputed waters.
The stand-off took place on April 23 when Manila says a larger Chinese ship blocked a Philippine patrol vessel after warning it to leave the area near Second Thomas Shoal, a Philippine-controlled reef in the Spratly Islands also claimed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
The incident received a lot of publicity as the Philippine coast guard had journalists onboard during the patrol, including reporters from The Associated Press. According to AP, the Chinese ship came within 120 to 150 feet of the Philippine vessel, which had to reverse its engines to avoid a collision.
“It needs to be stressed that the Philippine vessels intruded into the waters with press staff on board. This makes it clear that it was a premeditated provocation designed to initiate friction, blame it on China and hype up the incident,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
The State Department issued a statement that said the US “stands with The Philippines in the face of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Coast Guard’s continued infringement upon freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.”
The statement went on to vow that the US was willing to go to war with China if a Philippine vessel came under attack.
“The United States stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order and reaffirms that an armed attack in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea, on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of the Coast Guard, would invoke US mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 US Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty,” the statement said.
At long last, the U.S. federal government will end the COVID-19 vaccine mandates for international travelers, federal workers, Head Start employees, and the healthcare industry. The mandates will expire on May 11, the date that President Joe Biden has designated as the formal end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
While the Supreme Court previously struck down Biden’s mandate requiring 80 million private sector employees to get vaccinated, the justices left intact the mandate for some federal employees and healthcare workers. A vaccine mandate was also still on the books for teachers who participate in Head Start, the federal preschool program, though an earlier court ruling had technically voided it.
U.S. citizens may return to the country even if they are not vaccinated, but the federal government has continued to prohibit unvaccinated non-citizens from entering the U.S. Most notably, this policy prevented international tennis star Novak Djokovic from participating in the Miami Open.
Now these policies—some of the last vestiges of the federal government’s emergency pandemic powers—will finally come to an end. On Monday, White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha made it official.
“While I believe that these vaccine mandates had a tremendous beneficial impact, we are now at a point where we think that it makes a lot of sense to pull these requirements down,” said Jha.
That’s a relief, though it’s coming far too late. We did not suddenly arrive at a point where getting rid of vaccine requirements makes sense; in fact, we are well past it.
To the extent there was any justification for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, it rested on the assumption that the vaccines were not merely protective of severe disease and death, but actually prevented the spread of the virus. When public health officials made their case for vaccine requirements, they did so according to the theory that vaccinating Person A would substantially reduce the likelihood of Person B catching COVID-19. Biden wrongly declared that “you’re not going to get COVID-19 if you have these vaccinations.” (He later tested positive, despite being vaccinated.) Mandates were intended to “stem the flood of infections,” The New York Times reported in September of 2021.
But by then, it was already becoming clear that no societal level of vaccination would eliminate the virus. The vaccines have appreciably reduced the risk of severe infections, particularly among the elderly and other vulnerable groups, but do not substantially prevent infection itself. The overwhelming majority of Americans have had COVID-19 at least once, whether they were vaccinated or not. The vaccines may reduce the severity of symptoms, and a jab appears to offer temporary protection—much like so-called natural immunity after recovering from the disease. But COVID-19 has proven itself quite capable of evading protection, which is why many people have contracted it multiple times.
The federal government should have left the choice to get vaccinated to the people themselves. At the very least, an expansive vaccine mandate ought to have been debated by legislators, not forced on Americans via a presidential declaration. But Biden declined to recognize these limits on his power, and instead attempted to intervene in private medical decisions. So much for “my body, my choice.”
The vaccine mandate was a major violation of individual rights, and the justification for it—a lasting, substantial reduction in transmission—turned out to be seriously flawed. Good riddance to an illiberal policy.
Woke Bar Loses Customers Defending Bud Light Transgender Ad Campaign
A dive bar in southern Indiana is begging for more customers after defending Bud Light and booting anyone being ‘intolerant’ following Anheuser-Busch’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvnaey.
The beer maker has received enormous backlash since the “365 Days of Girlhood” ad campaign featuring custom-made cans featuring Mulvaney’s face. In response, millions of Americans have boycotted Bud Light and other Anheuser-Busch brands.
The Fairfax Bar & Grill in Bloomington, Indiana, however, is now hurting for customers after it hypocritically declared that it supports free speech – except for anyone who criticizes Anheuser-Busch or Bud Light.
“We are tired of all of the hate. We are very open to debate and discussion and it’s truly a shame that we can’t have open conversations about this important political and cultural topic. Bars, in our opinion, exist as public spaces where ideas should be exchanged,” the establishment wrote on Facebook. “Unfortunately due to all of the bigotry and hatred that has surfaced around the Bud Light controversy any patron wanting to voice their concerns about the issue will be immediately asked to pay their bill and leave our establishment.”
The post was featured next to an image of a statement claiming the Bar & Grill welcomes “ALL people,” except those who are “intolerant.”
“We are all aware of the controversy surrounding Bud Light. We support ALL people in this establishment no matter who you are of how you identify. We will continue to sell Anheiser [sic] Busch products because we don’t care who they make special cans for,” reads the statement. “If you are intolerant of other humans of any kind, we ask that you keep your opinions to yourself. Should you feel the need to discuss this matter in public you will be asked to leave. We will not tolerate intolerance here.”
Bar owner McKinley Minniefield told WISHTV: “We were just dealing with a lot of hate speech, and people being uncomfortable. My bartenders were aggravated and we had customers that were leaving.”
“We’re a local dive bar in southern Indiana, there’s a lot of ideas that tossed around here, but I’ve never dealt with anything recently that was so overtly hateful.”
As Fox News notes, however, on Wednesday the bar’s Facebook page posted a follow-up statement to the backlash.
“While the response here has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, it’s time to reiterate why we took a stand against hate speech. In the last two weeks since sharing a post stating that we will not tolerate intolerance, our social media has been flooded with blatantly transphobic, homophobic and racist comments,” adding “We are all inclusive and welcome all kindhearted customers. After making that post, the comments on every post since include hate speech saying that transgender people are mentally ill, biological women are being erased, and showing a plethora of disgusting memes.”
“Hate speech has no place at The Fairfax,” the statement continues, before admitting that they’re hurting for customers.
“Thank you to all of you for supporting our establishment. With the departure of some of our regulars, we have needed new clientele, and you have answered. I’m not gonna lie, we still need more of you right now,” reads the page. “Please continue to consider supporting us. It’s gonna be a great year of friendship, food, drinks and live music!”
According to his policy, “playing nice” means not voicing an opposing view on this controversy. Yet, being tossed out of the bar is not considered censoring an opinion.
Notably, the ban is not on those who are shouting or engaging in disruptive conduct. It is anyone who “voices their concerns” about the transgender campaign.
Clearly, the bar has a free speech right to set such standards. Heck, we just discussed a bar that faced a boycott from the left over showing a Harry Potter game. It solved the problem with a cringing apology and promising to ban any Harry Potter images. This is not a denial of the right of the bar owner to impose his own views on patrons, but a criticism in how that right is being exercised.
Notably, many of the same people defended the right of players to kneel during the national anthem as an exercise of free speech. Yet, some support this bar tossing out those who express opposing views on the Bud Light controversy. What is maddening is for Minniefield and the bar to do so in the name of free speech.
All businesses and sites face tough choices in what to remove in terms of speech. Many blogs and newspapers like The Hill have now eliminated comment sections because it is too much work to monitor and make these decisions. On this blog, we use a WordPress system to remove profanity. We also remove a narrow range of threatening, doxing, or offensive content. However, we tend to allow a far greater range of speech than most sites, including speech that we find personally offensive and wrong.
The line drawing can be challenging. For example, most would agree that someone using racist or anti-Semitic attacks in reference to another patron should be asked to leave. However, it would be more problematic to toss out someone who is making a comment that is deemed inherently racist or intolerant. Such judgment can be highly subjective and biased.
In this case, the use of transgender advertising campaigns raises a host of issues for customers. I understand how many view this as an objection to the status of Mulvaney and a denial of her identity. However, there remains a major debate in society over the involvement of corporations to push such social agendas. We have to be able to discuss these issues. Indeed, I can imagine no more appropriate forum for discussing the Bud Light controversy than a bar. If a patron becomes loud and disruptive on either side of that debate, the bar has every reason to issue a warning and, if necessary, ask the patron to leave.
Hedge Fund CIO: “The US Will Benefit From Existential Competition With China… Provided We Don’t Destroy Each Other”
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
Survival Of: “Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space,” said the President of the United States. “We mean to be a part of it – we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding,” continued John F. Kennedy in 1962, the USSR’s Sputnik orbiting overhead, a 184-pound metallic ball, 22 inches in diameter.
The Fittest: “Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe,” said the President of the United States. “Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar,” continued Ronald Reagan, standing before the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, eighteen years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. “As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later, the Berlin Wall fell, ending the greatest national competition in human history.
Monopolies: “Today the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China and peace in the world,” said the President of the United States. “If the Senate votes as the House has just done, to extend permanent normal trade relations with China, it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China,” continued Bill Clinton in 2000, overly confident in the triumph of democracy, capitalism. “Bringing China into the WTO and normalizing trade will strengthen those who fight for the environment, for labor standards, for human rights, for the rule of law. America, of course, will continue to defend our interests, but at this stage in China’s development we will have more positive influence with an outstretched hand than with a clenched fist.”
Competitors: Nineteen years later, China landed a rover on the dark side of the moon. In 2020 it pioneered quantum-entanglement satellite communication. In 2021, Beijing released its 14th Five-Year-Plan with ambitions to achieve supremacy across exploration/research/technologies essential to national security and development. 1. Artificial Intelligence. 2. Quantum computing. 3. Semiconductors. 4. Brain Science. 5. Genomics and biotechnology. 6. Clinical medicine and health. 7. Deep space, deep earth, deep ocean, and polar research. It also included China’s vision for 2035, when the country seeks/expects to “be among the most innovative nations globally.”
Communists: “At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.” Joseph Schumpeter brought forward economic principles with piercing logic. Competition is key to progress – firms “strive to survive,” he argued. Excessive policy responses to successive financial crises have derailed that pathway by socializing financial losses, allowing incumbents to deepen competitive moats. The policy narrative is that financial losses risk economic depression, justifying the prioritization of bailouts. Yet, even at low unemployment rates, workers earn a share of the national income seen in the 1950s. Unlike previous inflations, corporate profit margins survived the most recent one due to lack of real competition. Political urgency should be squarely focused on restoring it.
Metaphors: Life expectancy in America has dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years. While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the second year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the US did not. American children are less likely to live to age 5 than children in other high-income countries. Even Americans who are not obese or do not smoke, appear to have higher disease rates than their peers in other countries. And in 2020, a Pentagon study revealed that 77 percent of young Americans do not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, drug use, or mental or physical problems. 44 of those 77 failed to qualify for more than one reason.
* * *
Anecdote: “You Americans generally do not understand the Chinese,” said the CIO from Asia, visiting us in Connecticut. “And we Chinese generally do not understand Americans,” she continued, a unique thinker, independent, aggressive, blunt. “And this is where I hunt for opportunities, in these kinds of misunderstandings,” she said, our teams brainstorming, looking for ways to work together more closely. “Do you think our countries will have a direct military conflict?” I asked, knowing that no one knows, but interested in how she would respond. “It is not in China’s interest, and it would be economically devastating, so only if there is a miscalculation, an accidental conflict,” she said. “China has too little food to feed 1.4bln people and the US is the world’s largest exporter, so this gives me hope we will avoid a great war,” I said. “China also needs energy, metals, nearly everything,” she added.
“So here is my base case,” I said, “The US is in desperate need of a worthy competitor, so we need China as badly as China needs us. The EU was designed simply to prevent another devastating war, and if it can accomplish that it will be a minor miracle. We should expect no more from them. Russia is a failed state. India is decades away from mattering. That leaves only China.”
I graduated college in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, twenty years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. With no real competitor to keep the flame alive, great cities like San Francisco are in chronic decline, our politicians are abdicating leadership to the regulators and central bankers, who in turn have short-circuited creative destruction. 77% of our youth are now unfit for military service, and the nation is needlessly divided.
“I want to see what can be accomplished by two great powers in fierce competition, using today’s technology. Imagine the incredible things we will discover, invent, produce. And perhaps, to be in true competition – the kind that awakens us from this slumber – we need to truly believe this is an existential struggle, even if it need not be. It’s probably necessary, healthy. Provided we don’t destroy each other.”
Kirby Claims Whopping 100,000+ Russian Casualties In Bakhmut Alone
In a Monday press briefing National Security Council spokesman John Kirby issued a surprisingly high estimate of Russian casualties which he said took place since December fighting in the contested Donetsk city of Bakhmut.
He said Russian forces have suffered over 100,000 total casualties – including about 20,000 soldiers killed in combat and another 80,000 wounded.
He explained that these figures were based on “information and intelligence that we were able to corroborate over a period of of some time.”
While presenting these figures he said that the Russian advance in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces had “failed” – despite most international estimates currently indicating Russia holds 80-90% of Bakhmut at this point.
“Most of these efforts have stalled and failed,” Kirby said. “Russia has been unable to seize any real strategically significant territory. “
“The only area where Russia has made some incremental gains — and I want to focus on the word ‘incremental’ — is Bakhmut,” Kirby acknowledged. “That really holds, as we’ve said before, very little strategic value for Russia. The capture of Bakhmut would absolutely not alter the course of the war in Russia’s favor, and Ukraine’s defenses in the areas surrounding Bakhmut still remain strong.”
He also said that some half of the 20,000 Russians killed there had been fighting on behalf of Wagner.
“Folks he [Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin] went knocking around on the doors in prison cells throughout Russia to throw human flesh at this fight,” Kirby said of a months-long recruitment drive by Wagner, controversially focused on Russian prisons.
But when pressed, the NSC spokesman refused to give casualty numbers for the Ukrainian side. “I’m not ever going to put anything out in the public domain that’s going to make their job harder,” Kirby said. “They are the victims here. Russia is the aggressor.”
While very clearly Bakhmut has for months been a tragic “meat-grinder” for both sides, the US could be offering this staggering and large Russian casualty count of 100,000 in order to establish a ‘pyrrhic victory’ narrative. Kirby admitted the Russians are winning in Bakhmut, but wants to paint a picture of it losing the overall conflict given the massive cost and sacrifice for Bakhmut.
But to keep this figure in perspective, which to most people is going to seem an extremely high estimate (and thus dubious), the total official American casualties in Vietnam were nearly 60,000 killed in action, and over 150,000 wounded – and that was after a decade of war.
The big news last week was Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious firing by Fox News. The reasons for Tucker’s firing are still unclear. And even Tucker’s emergence from his man cave on Tuesday for two minutes did nothing to quell the speculation.
What it did do was underscore just how much real power he amassed during his time in the prime time slot anchoring Fox’s entire evening.
I’m not the first to point out to you just how many views this thing has gotten, dwarfing his Nielsen Ratings.
This was a serious needle scratch. Something changed behind the scenes. Within an hour Don Lemon was dumped by CNN. Susan Rice left the Biden Administration that morning. Nate Silver was let go from ABC News.
Both Carlson and Lemon had stories planted about them harboring ‘toxic workplace environments’ to set the scene.
Nuts and Sluts is a time-tested method of invalidating a public figure.
It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to play. Even if only for a day or two *cough* Abby Grossman *cough*
There is every theory imaginable about what happened here and all of them have a nugget of truth to them. Dexter White and I recorded a podcast covering what we think is the beginning of the Death of the Time Slot.
And while the court politics of this are interesting, they almost feel like discussing 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination at this point. Does it matter who was behind or why Carlson was ousted from Fox? Could we not see this coming the further he went off the reservation?
In fact, I was amazed he was still on the air after all this time. I don’t think this is a Tucker-as-Icarus proxy story no matter which way you cut it. It was always about something far bigger than Tucker Carlson.
The confluence of major media and political figures leaving their posts, including now the head of the BBC Richard Sharp, over literal ancient conflict of interest issues that looks more like something taken off the shelf for the proverbial rainy day rather than some new, disturbing thing.
It never just rains when its time to change the board state. And that’s exactly what this feels like, an attempt to completely change the direction of information flow as we get ready for the next big psy-op…
… The remaking of the First Fungal President into the Next Garden Variety Wartime President.
Because this is the best chance the DNC has at this point of retaking the presidency with any degree of credibility given their approval ratings. Even if you believe our elections aren’t corrupt (sic) you at least have to admit to yourself that this is a plausibly deniable way to convince yourself of that ‘fact.’
Of course, as I said above, do any of the other whys about these events even matter? Of course not, they are, like Wartime presidents don’t lose, statistics which are simply chum for people to feed their confirmation biases and prevent any coming together of the center of the electorate to say no more.
This was Tucker’s real crime if any of us are being honest with ourselves.
And, in fact, it is the least interesting part of the whole story. Because the given proximate cause spoon fed to the ‘smart people’ in alternative media is the entire Blackrock angle.
Of course, this isn’t true but, again, it doesn’t matter. That said, there is a Blackrock angle to this story but it isn’t what people were led to believe for a couple of days.
Larry Fink, BLK CEO, is notorious for his antics in forcing heads of state and CEO’s to do his bidding while hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘I’m just a guy investing your hard-earned capital on your behalf for the good of humanity.’
Now, this is some prime Grade AA Bullshit.
Blackrock is Davos’ main arm-twisting subsidiary in the C-Suites of the S&P 500 as well as the Euro STOXXX 50 (link will need translation from German). He may as well change his first name to Don but there are some ethnic issues with this outside of Queens.
As I’ve discussed in previous Private Blog posts for my patrons and interviews Blackrock bet the farm on Obama/Biden getting rid of Jerome Powell. They went all in on their CARES Act power to access the Fed’s Discount window to procure zero-cost seed capital to buy US stocks and, by extension, real estate and everything else.
The company’s growth was turbocharged during COVID by this but it was already growing by more than $1 trillion annually before that.
Its AUM — Assets Under Management — fell in 2022 because the value of the underlying assets fell as Powell put the interest rate screws to a lot of Blackrock’s ‘investments.’ The headlines have been full of governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis going on an anti-Blackrock/anti-ESG/anti-Woke tirade which has helped see some outflow from Blackrock’s funds.
But that doesn’t do a whole lot in the face of $10 trillion in AUM. A few billion is literally a rounding error.
No, the bigger effect came from taking the Fed Funds Rate from 0% to 5% in a year.
In the late stages of the ZIRP years we saw really strong moves in the equity markets, especially coming out of COVID as the CARES Act money made its way into the economy. Normie FinTwit is always going on about the Fed subsidizing the ‘wealth effect’ as their main argument for why Powell is just ‘one more meeting away from pivoting’ off his ‘higher rates for longer’ schtick.
The ‘wealth effect’ expands not only Blackrock’s AUM but also it’s political pull in the board room. There is both coincidence and causality in my opinion, between things like Woke-a-Cola and genuflecting to every sicko with a gender fetish and the rise in Blackrock’s AUM.
So it’s no wonder that the standard FinTwit commentary on the Fed is that QE and ZIRP goose equity prices (which it does) but also that that is what the Fed wants to do all the time!
This is the part I disagree with and have been steadfast in my assessment as to why for nearly two years.
Powell was trapped by both COVID and the CARES Act to go along with extending this madness for another two years. And in the process handed Don Fink-liosi the keys to the whole rotten candy store to ensure what we’re seeing today — maximal brand destruction that defies market logic — gets ramped up to 11.
Buying a huge stake in Fox is just one more brick in the New Media Stonewall for the upcoming war.
All they had to do to seal the deal was convince everyone the global economy was still suffering because of COVID and we needed even MOAR SPENDING!! at the zero bound to reflate the economy.
Powell was supposed to be deposed and Lael Brainard installed to ensure continuity of policy with them having moved Janet Yellen back into a position of power as Treasury Secretary under “Biden.”
That has failed. Brainard is out at the Fed. She’s prepping to replace Yellen in Biden’s 2nd term.
Biden/Harris’s soft launch of their re-election campaign, was timed with Carlson’s ouster from Fox and warning shots fired at every major media outlet to toe the line like never before.
So, now, let’s really talk what’s going on with Blackrock in light of this failure to replace Powell.
For a few years now Janet Yellen and Elizabeth Warren have brought up the idea of expanding the definition of SIFI – Systemically Important Financial Institutions — to non-bank entities, like Blackrock.
Blackrock has argued for years that it cannot be a SIFI because:
“The British commissioner who took over from Barnier, Jonathan Hill, wanted the commission to work hand-in-hand with the financiers and every time a debate or a hearing was organised, BlackRock’s people were there,” recalls Daniela Gabor.
“Then I realised that it was no longer the banks that had the power but the asset managers. We are often told that a manager is there to invest our money for our old age. But it’s much more than that,” she says. “In my opinion, BlackRock reflects the renunciation of the welfare state. Its rise in power goes hand-in-hand with ongoing structural changes; changes in finance, but also in the nature of the social contract that unites the citizen and the state.”
Daniela Gabor explains that the European Central Bank, which commissions BlackRock to audit banks, has no power over the company. “BlackRock’s argument is simple: we do not do leverage, we do not act like banks, so we do not need to be regulated as a systemic institution.” {emphasis mine}
In fact, BlackRock slips under all radars. “They can be regulated for reasons known as micro-prudential, to protect their customers, but not as a financial institution tasked with ensuring overall financial stability,” she says.
This ‘conversation’ has been going on since at least 2019. It resurfaced again this week as Yellen brought this up. Now why would she do that if, as I’ve strenuously argued, she’s Davos through and through.
After all wouldn’t she continue arguing for the opposite per Blackrock and Don Fink-liosi’s instructions?
It goes back to what I’ve been saying about Blackrock for over a year now. All of that AUM rests on a very slim pile of shareholder equity, $38.2 billion to be precise.
As longtime Patrons know, when I do a balance sheet analysis of a company I strip out things like “Goodwill” and “Intangible Assets” from the asset side of the balance sheet. These are simply piles of ‘value’ leftover from previous M&A activity, brand equity, etc., that may or may not have any real value.
Stripping out the $33.6 billion BLK has in these two ‘asset’ classes that leaves Fink with less than $5 billion in shareholder equity.
I’m not saying there is no value there, but it’s reasonable to think that the actual value of Blackrock’s balance sheet is somewhere between these two numbers. I’m even willing to entertain 100% valuation for argument’s sake.
It is also staring at more than $55 billion in “Other liabilities” which, is very likely derivative exposure that the company can play very fast and loose with since it was over $90 billion in 2021, and $120 billion in both 2019 and 2020.
These are some pretty big black boxen.
So I’m asking the question no one really wants asked, “Does Blackrock actually have any equity today?” Or is this all a big psy-op based on them voting our proxy for us?
And when we look at the stock price I have to wonder if Wall St. isn’t also asking that question with growing confidence?
I note on the chart the 2022 bottom in October. What else bottomed in October 2022? The Euro at $0.956 while the USDX made an important high. But look at that chart. A two-bar reversal in Oct/Nov, followed by a triple-top around $775 which turns into a one-bar reversal in February, when Powell finally turned the corner on convincing the market the Fed Put is dead.
Now we’re looking at this as a possible ‘dead cat bounce’ which needs a lot of help here to create a rally.
So, if Blackrock is in real trouble here because of falling asset prices, ESG backlash, rising rates, and falling cash flow then that would necessitate a change in the rules to allow it to be bailed out.
Remember, last year when the UK pension crisis developed which took out Prime Minister Liz Truss and forced the Bank of England to intervene, the one holding the bag on the failing assets there was none other than Blackrock.
They were the ones in trouble who sold these leveraged CLOs — Collateralized Loan Obligations — to the UK state pensions which ran out of money to pay pensioners.
Now, is Blackrock, which was built on the same premise as Silicon Valley Bank, using non-balance sheet activity to resist being regulated as a SIFI, is staring at a crisis if yields keep rising?
Who is protected by the big inversion of the US yield curve we keep staring at? Who is
So, in swoops Yellen to demand Blackrock should be a SIFI once the FUD surrounding it reaches a fever pitch. Who is everyone afraid of now? Blackrock.
Why? Because they “own the world.”
Why aren’t they regulated like the big banks? Because they sit at the High Table.
Who gets screwed if they go tits up? The little guy.
Who’s fault will it be if Blackrock went tits up? The Fed.
You can hear Elizabeth Warren setting the political stage for this now. We have to protect US workers from the evil Wall St. fat cats. So, we’ll bring them under the auspice of increased government regulation by labeling them as a SIFI.
In short, Blackrock as a SIFI becomes a protectorate of the Treasury department and it circumvents a bankruptcy.
Since Blackrock is just a pile of AUM on top of a relatively small balance sheet it can be carved up pretty easily. Its book of business can be bought by the rest of Wall St. licking their lips at the thought of all those asset management and consulting fees that generate the lion’s share of the company’s cash flow.
So now, does Blackrock want to be regulated as a SIFI after having built itself into the monster it is by evading that designation?
You can see the game here, Janet Yellen can force Jerome Powell to bail them out when their balance sheet implodes for real, holding the holes in the pension funds hostage as blackmail.
Why would they do that? Why would Fink do this?
Well, if you want to nationalize the US pension system and end the old US dollar system then you do that during a major crisis.
How did they tie Powell’s hands during COVID?
The CARES Act.
How will they tie Powell’s hands during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis?
Making Blackrock a SIFI before it happens.
What would you expect to happen between now and then?
Snuffing out any major selloff in US Treasuries by managing credit spreads between US and European debt. This relieves the pressure on Blackrock’s balance sheet and that of others.
Now let’s talk about the blowout in US Credit Default Swap Rates as well as the massive plunge in the 1-month T-Bill rate last week creating an historic 1 month/2 month spread of over 160 basis points. Yellen has been ramping up the rhetoric about the US defaulting once the Treasury General Account is empty.
“Biden” and Davos are serious about trying to stop any kind of spending cuts, because they want to balloon the US deficit to the moon to save the EU. Blackrock is more heavily exposed to Europe than the US pension systems, but still heavily exposed to both.
What did Lagarde at the ECB put in place last July? The TPI – Transmission Protection Instrument — designed to protect credit spreads within the EU, nominally, but also internationally.
What’s been happening during this major rally in the euro to $1.10 and Powell convinced the markets he’s serious about not pivoting? A collapse of US/European credit spreads indicating preferential capital movement into the US and out of Europe.
In short, I think Blackrock’s deteriorating balance sheet as well as Yellen’s intention to stiff US bondholders to save pensioners is setting us up for the biggest Lucy with the Football moment in history. It is the biggest threat to Powell’s “higher for longer” rate policy and the future of the US.
And it comes down to playing hard ball over the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts. If that happens then Yellen is winning and Powell is checkmated. If McCarthy and the GOP hold the line then the US banking interests will tear Blackrock apart and take their business in bankruptcy.
Making Blackrock a SIFI short-circuits this completely and puts the onus directly on the taxpayer, per Rickards’ analysis.
I can easily see Blackrock sacrificed on the alter of the Great Reset once it’s control over corporate interests has been turned over to the Treasury and the ECB.
In fact, it is the best play for them to nationalize all the assets they have. $9 trillion in AUM is a lot of win for the commies.
And Fink, as I said, already has his seat at The High Table.
Which is why Tucker Carlson’s firing is important but really the side show in all of this.
to attack and even take over enemy (i.e., U.S.) satellites. 
