Month: June 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is letting his frustration and impatience over the question of entering the NATO military alliance be known. “Our future is in the European Union. Ukraine is also ready to be part of NATO. We are waiting for NATO to be ready to accept Ukraine,” he said Thursday to journalists just ahead of a summit of the European Political Community in Chisinau, Moldova.

At the summit, he demanded that Ukraine receive security guarantees “now” and emphasized the best way to ensure this is acceptance into NATO. But the idea of ‘security guarantees’ has also long been under discussion, with French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday having explained that the country could be give “something between the security provided to Israel and full-fledged membership.”

Zelensky continued in his address to the Moldova summit, “In Vilnius, a clear invitation to Ukraine is needed” – which is a reference to NATO’s annual summit in Lithuania next month.

“Doubts must vanish. Positive decisions for Ukraine will be positive for everyone,” Zelensky stressed. “There should be no hot war or frozen conflict on our continent,” he added, telling European leaders: “When there are no security guarantees, there are only war guarantees.”

But behind the scenes the Ukrainian leader is reportedly miffed at NATO and European inaction and waffling, and his rhetoric has been more aggressive outside public addresses. 

The Financial Times wrote Wednesday, “Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has made clear to Nato leaders that he will not attend the Vilnius summit without concrete security guarantees and a road map for accession, according to people briefed on those conversations.

The has dialed up the pressure on the West and leaders of the most powerful NATO countries, The Wall Street Journal emphasized in follow-up on Wednesday.

Macron seems the first among these leaders to be responding positively, despite the fact that NATO Article 5 could trigger certain war between Western powers and Russia if Ukraine were to be formally admitted to the alliance. According to more from the FT: 

French president Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for Ukraine to be granted a Nato membership “path” next month. While he did not commit to endorsing full membership for Ukraine, it represented a potentially influential shift in Paris’ stance. Intense discussions are now under way among Ukraine’s western backers about what form security guarantees could take and how much money would be pledged towards them, said a French official. 

🚨Zelensky demands Ukraine be invited to join NATO now, before the NATO summit, or else… pic.twitter.com/E8eZeTiZ6B

— US Civil Defense News (@CaptCoronado) June 1, 2023

But Germany is among leading countries still rejecting this as a realistic approach. FT in April had cited multiple unnamed German officials who said Berlin remains against offering Kiev “deeper ties” to the alliance, and is against a potential roadmap as well.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

EU’s Thierry Breton tells US Big Tech corporations that he’s “The Enforcer” against disinformation…

Stress Test for Truth Coming Up

The Enforcer is coming after US technology companies demanding a stress test on the truth. No, this isn’t The Onion.

Politico reports EU’s Breton Wants to ‘Stress Test’ Silicon Valley Giants.

LULEÅ, Sweden — The European Union’s Thierry Breton wants Big Tech to know that he’s “the enforcer.”

The internal market commissioner will travel to California next month to carry out “stress tests” to see how social media companies are preparing for new content rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The French politician told POLITICO that he and European Commission officials would meet with Google, Twitter and Meta Platforms during his trip to the United States, most likely during the week of June 19.

At least some of those companies would participate in the informal checks to see if they are ready for the new rules, which come into force in August, and carry fines of up to 6 percent of a firm’s annual revenue.

“We are going there, but don’t want to be vocal before because I don’t want to speak too much. But we offer this and I’m happy that some platforms took our proposal,” Breton said of the non-binding compliance checks. “I am the enforcer. I represent the law, which is the will of the state and the people.”

“It’s a voluntary basis, so we don’t force anyone” to join the code of practice on disinformation, Breton said. “I just reminded (Musk and Twitter) that by August 25, it will become a legal obligation to fight disinformation.“

A Legal Obligation to Fight Disinformation

Say what?!

And who gets to decide the truth? Hunter Biden? Joe Biden? Dr. Anthony Fauci? Hillary Clinton and her totally discredited Russia campaign?

I guess the answer of the day is Thierry Breton. As “The Enforcer”, he is apparently in a unique position to understand the truth about everything.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Are we really at the shocking point where US corporations are forced to listen to French politicians who get to tramp on the US constitution, with their determination of “The Truth”?

Big tech should tell the EU to go to hell. Ironically, that is what the EU should do with Biden’s sanctions on anything and everything. 

It’s a sad day when US corporations take marching orders from EU politicians on what constitutes “the truth”. 

And where the hell is Biden on objecting to this?

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Companies announced a staggering 417,500 planned layoffs for the first five months of 2023. This is a massive acceleration and more than four times the job cuts compared to last year, according to Bloomberg, citing a report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 

Disregarding early 2020, when Covid impacted the labor market, the total number of planned job cuts through May is the highest since 2009. 

Challenger found most layoffs occurred in the tech industry, announcing 136,800 cuts for the first five months. That came close to eclipsing the full year of 2001 when the tech industry hemorrhaged 168,400. 

Job cuts are beginning to spread like cancer from tech to other industries, including banking, retail, and media sectors. Challenger said the media industry announced 17,400 job cuts so far this year. Banking has seen a surge in layoffs. Financial firms announced 37,000 job cuts through May, more than four times the number compared to last year. 

The Federal Reserve’s 14 months of aggressive interest rate hikes have led companies to reign in costs. Challenger said many firms have embarked on a hiring freeze due to mounting macroeconomic headwinds and increasing risk of a slowdown later this year. 

Large-scale job cuts will likely continue as Challenger data shows layoffs rising at 287% YoY…

The outplacement firm reported around 3,900 jobs were lost to artificial intelligence. And the number of jobs displaced because of AI is likely to accelerate. A Goldman report recently estimated tens of millions of jobs could be lost due to AI in the coming years.  

One job recruiter recently warned on Yahoo Finance TV that the tech layoff cycle is “not done yet.” 

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

In an 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 1 decided that a union’s deliberate destruction of company property as a pressure tactic in a labor dispute is not protected by federal law.

Labor activists have said that endangering and destroying company property during a dispute is fair game that has long been protected by the law, but companies like the petitioner in this case—Glacier Northwest a ready-mix concrete company headquartered in Seattle—pushed back.

Glacier Northwest does business as CalPortland.

The new ruling will allow companies to sue striking unions to hold them accountable for damage caused during labor actions.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision (pdf) in Glacier Northwest Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174 (court file 21-1449), allows the company to sue the union in state court.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both wrote separate concurring opinions. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the third day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 14, 2020. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The case goes back to August 2017 when cement mixer truck drivers decided to strike against Glacier. They loaded the vehicles with cement and left them on the company’s premises.

According to the union, drivers left the trucks running to prevent the cement from quickly hardening, becoming useless, and possibly damaging the trucks’ drums.

The company said in its petition the union deliberately sabotaged Glacier’s business and “coordinated with truck drivers to purposely time [a] strike when concrete was being batched and delivered” in an effort “to cause destruction of the concrete.”

Sudden Cessation of Work

On the first morning of the planned strike, “Union representatives knew there was a substantial volume of batched concrete in Glacier’s barrels, hoppers, and ready-mix trucks, [and] they called for a work stoppage.”

A union official made a throat-slashing gesture to signal a “sudden cessation of work.”

The company said the labor tactic caused “complete chaos” as it scrambled “to dispose of the concrete in a timely manner to avoid costly damage to the mixer trucks and in a manner so as not to create an environmental disaster.”

The strike went on for a week before a new collective bargaining agreement was reached.

Citing Washington state law, the company sued the union for intentional destruction of property. The union countered that state-law claims were by implication preempted under the Supreme Court’s decision in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon (1959).

The company argued that although the federal National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects “peaceful methods of … economic pressure,” it does not allow a union to “enforce” its labor demands by way of “injury to property.”

The state-level trial court sided with the union, finding that the Garmon precedent shielded the Teamsters from state tort liability for intentional destruction of property.

The Washington Court of Appeals reversed that opinion, finding that “the intentional destruction of property during a lawful work stoppage is not protected activity” under the NLRA.

But the Washington Supreme Court overturned that ruling, reinstating the trial court’s dismissal of the company’s lawsuit. It found the union’s intentional destruction of company property was a “legitimate bargaining tactic” that trumps the state law’s interest in protecting property.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Washington Supreme Court and remanded the case “for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.”

‘Intent to Sabotage’ Property

Glacier depends on its drivers to deliver concrete to customers in a timely fashion but relations soured and the drivers went on strike, Barrett wrote in the court’s opinion.

The labor union “allegedly designed the strike with the intent to sabotage Glacier’s property” but the company deployed emergency measures to prevent damage to the trucks. The concrete itself went to waste and Glacier sued the union in state court for property destruction.

The lawsuit was dismissed by the state court, which reasoned that the companies’ claims were precluded by the NLRA.

But the state court should not have thrown out the case based on its concern that the company’s claim conflicted with the NLRA, Barrett wrote.

“Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier’s property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct,” Barrett wrote.

In her dissenting opinion, Jackson, a liberal, noted that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) formally accused the company of unfair labor practices, asserting that the workers’ actions were “arguably protected.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies on her nomination to become an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court during the Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 22, 2022. (Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images)

Eroding ‘Right to Strike’

The majority opinion fails “to heed Congress’s intent with respect to the [NLRB’s] primary role in adjudicating labor disputes, despite ostensibly applying Garmon, the bedrock case on that issue.”

The majority decision “is likely to cause considerable confusion among the lower courts about what Garmon requires. And any such confusion not only threatens to encroach upon the [NLRB’s] prerogatives, as Congress has assigned them, but also risks erosion of the right to strike.”

“Garmon makes clear that we have no business delving into this particular labor dispute at this time,” Jackson wrote.

“But instead of modestly standing down, the majority eagerly inserts itself into this conflict, proceeding to opine on the propriety of the union’s strike activity based on the facts alleged in the employer’s state-court complaint.”

The majority’s “misguided foray underscores the wisdom of Congress’s decision to create an agency that is uniquely positioned to evaluate the facts and apply the law in cases such as this one.

“This case is Exhibit A as to why the board—and not the courts—should ordinarily take the first crack at resolving contentious, fact-bound labor disputes of this nature,” Jackson wrote.

A ‘prominent left-wing columnist’ from the UK accused by at least seven women of groping and other inappropriate behavior was protected by the British press after a journalist for the Financial Times was told to kill her investigation by her editor, Roula Khalaf.

The accused, recovering alcoholic Nick Cohen, had resigned from Guardian News & Media citing “health grounds” after two decades at its sister publication, The Observer. The FT journalist with evidence of Cohen’s behavior, Madison Marriage, has won awards for exposing sexual improprieties among Britain’s elite.

It was not spiked because of reporting problems. Two women were willing to speak openly, and Ms. Marriage had supporting documentation on others. Rather, Ms. Khalaf said that Mr. Cohen did not have a big enough business profile to make him an “F.T. story,” colleagues said.

Mr. Cohen’s departure and the death of Ms. Marriage’s article offer a window into the British news media’s complicated relationship with the #MeToo movement. Leading American newsrooms — Fox News, CNN, NBC, The New York Times and others — have confronted misconduct allegations. British journalism has seen no such reckoning. -NY Times

Signaling Virtue

Cohen accuser Lucy Siegle, who reported him in 2018 for groping her in the newsroom, says the death of the FT article hit particularly hard.

“It just amplified this sense that #MeToo is nothing but a convenient hashtag for the British media,” she said. “The silence on its own industry is just really conspicuous.”

Ms. Siegle had started at The Guardian around 2001 as an editorial assistant. She described standing at a photocopier when Mr. Cohen appeared behind her, cupped her bottom with both hands, grunted and breathed heavily into her ear. -NYT

Seven women told the Times that Cohen had either groped them or made unwanted sexual advances over nearly 20 years. Four of the accusers insisted on anonymity out of fear of professional repercussions, however the Times says they have “reviewed documents or otherwise corroborated their accounts” in each case.

Ms. Siegle recounted Mr. Cohen grabbing her bottom in the newsroom around 2001. Five other women described similar encounters at pubs from 2008 to 2015. One said Mr. Cohen had pressed his erection against her thigh and kissed her uninvited when they met to discuss her career. A seventh said Mr. Cohen had repeatedly offered to send her explicit photographs in 2018 while she worked as an unpaid copy editor for him.

According to 10 former colleagues, both male and female, Cohen’s reputation was well known – with one former colleague claiming that she and other female journalists had started using a different entrance to a pub to avoid being groped. Another woman said she avoided the bar downstairs because Cohen kept grabbing her knee during drinks.

Several journalists said Mr. Cohen’s reputation for groping was far from secret, and five women said he had groped them after work at pubs, including one who said he had groped her “five or six” times in 2008.

…

Another woman, a freelance journalist who had recently been homeless and had depression, said she had met Mr. Cohen at a pub in 2010 to discuss her career. As they chatted, she said, he suddenly kissed her on the mouth and pressed his erection against her thigh. She said she fled. -NYT

Another accuser, writer and commentator Rebecca Watson, says Cohen grabbed her ass at a 2009 book party, and that her former husband watched it happen but didn’t confront Cohen because he did not want to cause a scene.

“To sexually assault a stranger at a book launch, to be one of the more prominent people there, and to just assume there will be no comeuppance,” said Watson.

Cohen also tried to send dick pics to an autistic single mother who was working remotely for him as a freelance copy editor, unpaid, in 2018. She eventually told him that continuing to work together “would be at a cost too high for my own mental health,” according to text messages Cohen admitted to sending.

The Times notes two previous occasions in which the UK media canned similar reporting. In July 2016, for example, the Daily Mail reported that a court had granted a domestic violence restraining order against a former FT executive, Ben Hughes. The article then vanished from the internet without explanation.

Meanwhile in 2019, The Sun apologized and then deleted an article reporting that a former Guardian employee, David Pemsel, had sent messages to a former employee to pester her for a sexual relationship.

“There is so much sexism in a lot of British newspapers, and it seems, unfortunately, that many women believed sexual harassment was something you just had to put up with,” said journalist Heather Brooke, who says Cohen groped her at a 2008 awards ceremony.

But the British press covered it up…

“I assume it’s stuff I was doing when I was drunk,” said Cohen, blaming his alcoholism and adding “I’m the only person whose life is turned over because of this.”

According to Nick Cohen, he’s the real victim in all of this.

Not just Nick…

One woman, Jean Hannah Edelstein, said that while she was an assistant at The Observer from 2007 to 2009, her editor smacked her with a sex whip when she would walk by. During one ‘boozy lunch,’ she says the same editor suggested she pose naked to promote a book.

Remember, these are the same people who claim moral high ground as the arbiters of ‘truth’ – only to circle the wagon when one of their own (or a protected class) is accused of horrific behavior.

By Alex Wu of The Epoch Times

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping on May 30 told his top national security officials to be ready for “worst case scenarios” and “stormy seas”.

Xi was addressing officials attending the first National Security Commission meeting since the CCP’s 20th National Congress last year, according to state-run Xinhua.

As commission chairman, Xi  said they must deeply understand “the complexity and difficulty of the national security issues we now face have increased significantly.”  Xi called on CCP officials to carry forward the “spirit of struggle” and “must adhere to bottom-line thinking and worst-case-scenario thinking, and get ready to undergo the major tests of high winds and rough waves, and even perilous, stormy seas.”

Xi’s use of “bottom-line thinking and worst-case-scenario thinking” has drawn the outside world’s attention.

Wang He, China affairs commentator and The Epoch Times columnist, wrote: “This may be the first time in a top political meeting of the CCP that the two terms are used together. The combination of these two terms shows that the tone of the National Security Commission meeting is really combative.

“When the CCP faces the most dangerous time for it, it acts most viciously. It also means the CCP is at its weakest point and using ferocious acts to cover up its inner weakness.”

‘Complex and Grave’

Xi also emphasized the regime must speed up the modernization of the military, making it more effective in “actual combat and practical use,” as the CCP faces a “complex and grave” situation in terms of national security.

Regarding Xi’s latest assessment of the situation in the meeting, China affairs observer Zhong Yuan told The Epoch Times that this is equivalent to admitting that after the CCP’s 20th Party Congress last year, the new top national security officials were active but did not improve the situation.

“National security issues for the CCP, on the contrary, have deteriorated significantly,” Zhong said.

“This assessment is unusual, as the situation should have improved after the new national security commission came to power. But now they finally admitted the true situation, which shows that the CCP top officials are indeed more worried,” he said.

Since last year, a series of measures taken by the United States, such as the containment of the CCP in the high-tech sector, the arrests of Chinese spies, the shutdown of China’s overseas secret police stations, and sanctions against Chinese officials, are all powerful countermeasures against the regime’s global expansion and infiltration. Other countries are also following suit.

“The top circle of the CCP should obviously feel that the pressure from the international community is increasing,” Zhong said.

“Now the CCP dares not openly advocate for war, but instead claims to ‘take the initiative to shape an external security environment that is beneficial to us’. They must be really afraid of any counterattacks and being defeated.”

In the meeting, Xi also required the construction of a national security risk monitoring and early warning system, enhanced national security education, and improved data and AI security management.

“The CCP is not only afraid of external pressure,” Zhong said. “But it is also afraid of internal problems, so Xi requires maintaining political security and improving the management of data and artificial intelligence security.”

Continue reading here.

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

• Moscow signed 10 new cooperation agreements with Iran for the oil sector alone on 18 May.

• China waited for the dust to settle before it too signed new cooperation agreements with Iran on 23 May.

• China has significantly expanded its influence in the Middle East in order to secure sufficient hydrocarbon supplies to fuel its economic growth.

The last week or so has seen a flurry of major cooperation agreements – including in energy, security, and logistics – between various permutations of Iran, Iraq, Russia, and China. Like a very dark version of the old U.S. soap opera parody ‘Soap’ this real-life version is equally convoluted, albeit a lot less funny. Its key elements constitute a significant part of the new global oil market order, which is analysed in depth in my new book on the subject, but the three most recent principal cooperation agreements will have immediate consequences for oil and gas flows around the world and their pricing.

The best place to start here is at the end point of what China wants in its grand scheme of things, as delineated in its multi-generational power-grab project, ‘One Belt, One Road’. What it wants is to turn the Middle East into a large oil and gas station by which it can fuel its economic growth to overtake the U.S. as the number one superpower by 2030. The three biggest oil and gas reserves in the region belong to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, so it wants to control those to begin with. For Russia, which already has lots of oil and gas – over which China already has significant control – the objectives in the Middle East are more varied. One objective is to continue to exert influence in several countries that it regards as being key to maintaining some of its hold over the Former Soviet Union states. Another, more recent one, is to use this influence to bolster its position as a partner of note to China. As for the other countries in this soap opera –Iran, and Iraq, and now also more clearly, Saudi Arabia – they are in this new global alliance partly for the economic and political support from China (and to a lesser degree, Russia) and because their political systems are naturally much closer to the authoritarian regimes of China and Russia than they are to the democratic ones of the U.S. and its allies.

To the money shot, then, which was Iran and Iraq signing a new set of oil and gas agreements within the last two weeks. As also analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order, Iran has long exerted enormous influence over its neighbour directly and indirectly through its political, economic, and military proxies. Iraq was always pre-disposed to such cooperation in the energy sector, as the two countries share several of their biggest oil reservoirs. These include Azadegan (on the Iran side)/Majnoon (on the Iraq side), Azar/Badra, Yadavaran/Sinbad, Naft Shahr/Naft Khana, Dehloran/Abu Ghurab, West Paydar/Fakka and Arvand/South Abu Ghurab. This has long proven extremely useful to Iran in avoiding sanctions, as oil from its side of these reservoirs can easily be re-branded as non-sanctioned Iraqi oil and then shipped anywhere in the world. It has also proven a useful tool for Iraq through which it can extort billions of dollar from the U.S. by promising to stop the import of Iranian electricity and gas, only to renegue on those promises the second the money hits the downtown Baghdad bank accounts. The latest cooperation agreements strengthen all these ties between Iran-Iraq further.

Cue the other recent cooperation agreements aimed at making sure that whatever is Iran’s (including control over Iraq’s oil and gas reserves) it is also China’s and Russia’s. First up was Moscow, signing 10 new cooperation agreements with Iran for the oil sector alone on 18 May. According to a source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry spoken to exclusively last week by OilPrice.com, the agreements comprise six memorandums of understanding, two contracts, one broader military cooperation roadmap, and another roadmap related to bilateral cooperation in the fields of industry, transfer of technology and oil recovery enhancement. In essence, these add up to a renewal and extension of the previous five-year and 10-year rolling agreements between Russia and Iran as also analysed in full in my new book. These allow Russia (together with China in separate agreements, to be covered in a moment) to have its firms present in any oil and gas field in Iran that Moscow chooses. It also allows for the exchange of the most promising military officers between the two countries and for Russia to have full access to Iran’s airports and seaports. Additionally, it allows for continued cooperation in other military and security matters, including intelligence, equipment and technology sharing. 

Russia’s man in Iran – Deputy Prime Minister and co-chair of the Permanent Russian-Iranian Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, Alexander Novak – stressed as well that the two countries are working on on banking interactions and using their national currencies in bilateral transactions. Further progress was also made on the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC), with several agreements reached in the rail, road, maritime, and air transport sectors. Moscow is interested in developing the corridor all the way to India and beyond. Aside from boosting trade between Russia and Iran through the Caspian and Persian Gulf regions, these routes would also provide many opportunities for ‘dual purpose’ use – both civilian and military – of the airports and seaports.

Always looking to make a big entrance, China waited for the dust to settle before it too signed new cooperation agreements with Iran on 23 May. According to the Iran source spoken to by OilPrice.com, these agreements were simply nailing down some of the remaining details on financial, investment, and energy cooperation contained in the ‘Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’ first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject and covered in depth as well in my new book. In the 25-Year Agreement, China is guaranteed oil and gas prices from Iran at least 30 percent lower than the relevant oil pricing benchmarks. However, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China has been demanding an extra discount on Iranian oil to the 30 percent discount at which it can currently also buy Russian oil, according to the Iran source. “On average, the Chinese discount for Iranian crude oil to the international benchmark over the last 12 months has been around 44 percent,” he said. “But, it is even worse for Iran, as – from 11 November 2022 – China has been paying Iran in non-convertible Yuan, that is Yuan that can only be used inside China and/or spent buying Chinese goods,” he added. “Worse still is that whilst Yuan is the key instrument in payment, China is also using the currencies of Angola, Zambia and Kenya to pay Iran, and China is doing this as a means to induce Iran to buys goods from these countries so that these countries, in turn, can service their loans to China,” he concluded.