Month: February 2024

Today in ‘the de-evolution of Western society’ news, one store in San Francisco is fighting back against rampant theft and looting by requiring that customers shop with an in-store escort. 

Fredericksen’s Hardware and Paint in Cow Hollow, is now requiring customers to be accompanied by an employee while shopping to combat widespread shoplifting, according to the NY Post. The store has implemented a policy of serving customers one at a time during specific hours and has restricted access to parts of the store, creating a designated waiting area for shoppers until they can be assisted, as first reported by KRON4.

A sign at the store says: “Attention shoppers. Due to the rampant shoplifting, Fredericksen has introduced a one-on-one shopping experience: wait here and a clerk will be right with you to help you with all your shopping needs.”

Manager Sam Black commented: “It’s pretty bad. I mean, the dollar amounts are pretty significant, and with the tools and now we’re getting snatch-and-grabs when they take whole displays, so it’s getting kind of dangerous for the employees and the customers.”

“We just want to make it uncomfortable for the thieves so they go somewhere else,” he added. “Yeah, people aren’t happy. The regulars can’t believe it like we can’t believe it, but they’ve been really understanding.”

Fredericksen’s has introduced measures to restrict access to part of the store’s entrance during specific hours, requiring customers to wait for employee assistance before shopping. The store’s long-standing manager believes this strategy is beneficial for the business, its employees, and customers, KRON reported:

Black says for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening an employee will work with individual customers. A table at the front serves as a way to keep potential thieves from moving freely in and out of the store.

San Francisco supervisor Catherine Stefani commented on the situation, stating:  “This situation is tragic and embarrassing for our city, and it’s all the more reason to get serious about solving our police staffing crisis. We need more police on our streets, and we need them now. That’s why I’ll hold a series of hearings in March to push our city agencies to fill the hundreds of vacancies at the Police Department as soon as possible––to stop the bleeding, reverse the damage, and finally protect our residents and small businesses.” 

It’s not just fentanyl that is flooding the US courtesy of Biden’s open border policies: a record amount of methamphetamine was seized by US Customs and Border Protection agents at the Camino Real International Bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, which is also known locally as Bridge II.

A statement from the CBP said officers seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine valued at more than $117 million, the largest ever at a port of entry, in a single enforcement action, Fox 5 San Diego reported.

CBP says the drugs were found in a tractor-trailer that had listed its load on the customs manifest as a shipment of drying agent for piglets. A canine unit alerted officers, and a non-intrusive inspection system examination was done on the truck, which was then sent to secondary inspection where they discovered over 13,000 pounds of meth, the agency said.

“This gargantuan methamphetamine seizure, the largest ever taken down by CBP officers at a port of entry, uniquely illustrates the serious narcotics threat our officers face on a daily basis and their effectiveness at utilizing our technological enforcement tools, expertise and experience to zero-in on these threats,” said Director, Field Operations Donald Kusser, Laredo Field Office. “This seizure exemplifies our officers’ steadfast commitment to advancing CBP’s priority border security mission while facilitating lawful trade and travel.”

Bridge II is the only international bridge where cargo trucks can cross from Piedras Negras to Eagle Pass.

“For far too long, drug trafficking organizations have been raking in billions of dollars at the expense of our communities that are left ravaged by addiction, death and despair as a result of these poisonous substances,” said Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Mark Dawson, of Houston. “Thanks to the outstanding teamwork between HSI Houston, HSI Eagle Pass, HSI Mexico City and our partners at CBP, we have prevented a record-breaking amount of these narcotics from making it to Houston where they would have destroyed an untold number of lives.”

Submitted by Ahmed Bin Sulayem, executive chairman of DMCC in Dubai

How the EU/Belgium mechanism will do little to depower Russia but attempt to restore Antwerp’s ailing relevance at the cost of the wider industry.

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Almost two years ago to the day, Russia invaded Ukraine as an escalation of events that started in 2014, and to the widespread condemnation of the international community. Depending on which newspaper you read, reasons behind the invasion vary from Vladimir Putin’s grandiose, expansionist plans to restore the former glory of the Soviet Empire, through to Russia’s wider, and well established concerns about NATO enlargement; a reason perhaps unintentionally acknowledged by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, and explicitly stated by Putin during his recent interview with Tucker Carlson – his first with an American commentator since Oliver Stone’s four-part documentary, The Putin Interviews, conducted between 2015 – 2017.

As a consequence, western sanctions followed in quick succession. Primarily aimed at banks, military exports, and oil refineries, sanctions escalated to a G7 ban on Russian gold imports on 27th June 2022 and a $60-per-barrel price cap for crude oil and petroleum oils by the G7, Australia and the EU between 02nd – 07th December 2022.

For diamonds, sanctions were first imposed by the United States on 07th April 2022, aimed at Russian state-owned diamond giant PJSC Alrosa, blocking all of its US-based property and interests. In 2023, the United Kingdom imposed a general import ban on Russian diamonds, however, it wasn’t until the end of last year that a political strategy was set into motion, seemingly to seize control of the sector and allocate undemocratic, centralised authority to Antwerp.

On 06th December 2023, G7 leaders agreed to “introduce import restrictions on non-industrial diamonds, mined, processed, or produced in Russia, by January 1, 2024.” Following this initial ban, two further critical dates are now ear-marked to have far reaching effects on the diamond industry, namely 01st March when the ban extends to polished diamonds above one carat in size that originate from Russia, and finally 01st September, when a further restriction will include Russian lab-grown diamonds, as well as jewellery and watches with diamonds larger than half a carat.

As an outcome, the EU has assigned the Belgian Federal Public Service of Economy as the responsible authority for all non-Russian diamond verification, which, in practical terms will likely mean the rerouting of the world’s rough diamonds for cataloguing through Antwerp – a sharp U-turn from Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo, who just over a year earlier rejected sanctions on the Russian diamond market, stating that “sanctions should focus more on the aggressor, than  ourselves.” Even entities such as the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, which previously stated that Antwerp must remain “an open door for companies who have no options”, have had a change in heart. Whether it is because they’ve found a way to make a ban on Russian diamonds work for the ailing city isn’t for me to say, however, its requirement would mean that all countries, with the potential exception of Canada, the G7’s only producing nation, will be expected to adhere to the newly proposed policy, despite its opaque structure, unanswered questions, and imminent deadline. As eloquently outlined by an industry veteran, “So far, we have been provided a ‘what’, not a ‘how’.”

Depowering Russia

Before digging into the consequences of this imperialist decree that shows little understanding or regard for the overwhelming majority of countries and stakeholders involved in the diamond industry, it is worth understanding the practical impact of how such sanctions will achieve the G7’s stated objective. By implementing such a centralised system, the G7 aims to reduce Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine, by cutting off critical funding garnered from the sale of rough diamonds. However, after a quick dive into the economies of scale, it becomes abundantly clear that the extensive, global disruption to an already increasingly well-regulated industry might not be worth the effort.

In a simple case of global supply and demand, there’s no question that Russia’s production is vast. As the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds, it accounts for about 30 per cent of the global market with Alrosa being responsible for almost all production, and while efforts to curtail diamond sales have been attempted, Alrosa reported only a 2.8 per cent year-on-year fall in output to 34.6 million carats, matching its initial production plan, “despite the negative external environment”. Financially, this translated into a marginal increase in sales to $1.9bn for the first six months of 2023, while profits were down by 35 per cent to $562.5 million. Even if we assume the impossible, that no money is reinvested into Yakutia, Russian’s primary mining region, or into the livelihoods of the people who live in sub-zero conditions for the majority of the year, it would mean Alrosa could, in theory contribute approximately $1.12bn per year to Russia’s coffers. So how does that measure up to the cost of war?

According to non-profit research organisation RAND, Russia’s direct military costs as of September 2022 were $40 billion, and are expected to amount to almost “$132 billion through 2024”. Based on these figures, on average, the Russian war machine requires approximately $126.56 million per day to mobilise, meaning a dent of just under nine days or roughly 0.85 per cent of the conflict’s total budget from 24th February 2022 to a projected date of 31st December 2024. It is also worth noting that Alrosa’s production is dominated by small diamonds, not only meaning the majority of its production wouldn’t qualify under the sanction criteria, but furthermore continue to find their way into the global supply chain without resistance.

Certainly, for the G7, even a dollar earned from diamonds is one too many, however, giving them the benefit of the doubt that curbing revenues, however small, are part of winning the battle in the context of war, it is next essential to understand the effects of such policies, particularly towards producing countries, and supply chain stakeholders.

The Impracticalities of Antwerp

Based on Russia’s known contribution, the proposed EU/Belgium mechanism will extend to the lion’s share of global, rough production, requiring all diamonds (with the possible exception of Canada) to be sent to Antwerp for cataloguing. However, several flags have already been raised by industry stakeholders surrounding diamond aggregation, traceability, transparency, scale, execution, Belgium’s notoriously difficult banking system, and of course, Antwerp’s chequered history with fraud and corruption.

Starting with aggregation, for many diamond traders, rough diamonds are mixed from different sources to create added value before being processed. Under the new proposed scheme, diamonds would need to be sent separately to ensure proper cataloguing, resulting in a major win for logistics contractors, but a major loss for producing nations and the environment.

When it comes to traceability and transparency, it is difficult to posture, as the exact details have yet to be published. Certainly, questions to which the wider industry would want answers include what information is required for each diamond, who has access, or the ability to edit data, and how much of it will be made available to the public? Given that Antwerp ceased publishing its data in January 2022, who will be responsible for supplying data and can it be relied upon as truthful and accurate?

Regarding logistics and scale, what preparation has been made by the Antwerp Diamond Office or Antwerp World Diamond Centre in terms of handling and processing, and will they have the capacity to immediately handle 70 per cent of the world’s rough diamond output? Even if suitable preparations have been made, no proof-of-concept has been tested meaning significant delays to the current processes, adding on to what was already a notoriously slow year.

According to Peter Kovacs, head of unit at the European commission, that doesn’t matter, a feeling shared by Brad Brooks-Rubin, senior advisor at the US State Department. They have been working on implementing the G7 mechanism that Antwerp lobbied for, however, when I met Peter and team in Belgium a few weeks ago, they stated they expect all markets to have issues with the new G7 policy, which will need to be ironed out in due course. When asked how long that will take, there were no concrete answers. From my experience alone, whether that’s six weeks or six months, African nations and the industry at large cannot afford to wait that long. Unfortunately, the resounding message from Peter Kovacs on behalf of the G7 was simply that sanctions had to be put in place at any cost. Having recently visited the Central African Republic and seeing first-hand the damage that global policies can have on some of the poorest communities in the world, I am deeply concerned. I can only hope that the G7 begins to properly consult with all non-Russian diamond producing nations – not just Botswana, rather than implementing an untested experiment, designed by technocrats who have no understanding of the diamond industry, and the millions of people around the world whose livelihoods depend on it.

If companies are effectively coerced into sending goods to Antwerp, will more companies be required to establish a business presence in Belgium, and or set up a bank account? If so, a lot more will need to be done to make the financial sector more diamond-friendly, bearing in mind its current stance which considers the diamond industry as ‘high risk’. Through personal contacts, I know of one highly successful Belgian businessmen who’d diversified into the diamond business, only to receive a letter from his bank stating that his account would be closed in forty days due to his new “high risk” activity. If this is the reception extended to Belgian nationals, I’m uncertain whether African-based diamond traders will fare any better.

Finally, there is the spectre of fraud and corruption and while I appreciate the EU’s proposal for selecting Antwerp as the obvious choice for its sanction scheme, given its extensive history with the diamond industry, it isn’t without its well-documented cases of fraud and corruption.

On 17th May 2016, the Monstrey Case uncovered a large-scale fraud involving 220 suspects, of which 36 were brought to trial. The case included document falsification (including fraudulent Kimberley Process certificates), money laundering and criminal conspiracy to the amount of over €100 million. A year later, the Belgian Federal Police Corps’ second highest-ranking official, head of the special Diamond Task Force and UN-expert, Agim De Bruycker was arrested twice and served a custodial sentence for falsifying documents and money laundering. While I appreciate that criminality is a global issue, I am certainly not alone in thinking that if the EU/ Belgium wants to centralise an entire industry, it needs to do so through consensus, complete transparency, and with a lot more thought than is currently being presented. If the result is to utilize blockchain technology, then surely cataloguing can occur in each diamond producing nation, as opposed to the highly convoluted process of physically sending products to Belgium at great cost. Which neatly brings me on to the topic of sovereign accountability.

Stakeholder Autonomy

Having recently attended Mining Indaba in Cape Town where I met several ministers of mines, it is clear that most African nations are not only tired of having to abide by policies in which they have little to no say, but particularly over minerals which are rightfully theirs. Producing African nations not only have a right to certify and verify their own production, but furthermore are accountable to their national stakeholders in terms of protecting employment and generating wider industry development. This further extends to the artisanal and small-scale mining communities which are estimated to account for 20 per cent of the world’s gem-quality diamonds. Estimated to include between one to two million workers worldwide, the EU/ Belgium mechanism needs some considerable thought as to how its decentralised traceability solutions can be made to work for all stakeholders, without alienating the industry’s most vulnerable communities.

Then there are the world’s diamond centres, most notably Dubai, Mumbai, and Surat, which have become global hubs for trading and manufacturing rough into polished diamonds. In 2022, the UAE had a trade volume of $37 billion in rough and polished diamonds, while India remained responsible for the cutting and polishing of around 90 per cent of the market. As natural trading partners, the relationship was further boosted through its mutual CEPA policy. In the same year, the UAE’s non- Russian rough diamond trade was valued at $17.5 billion, a figure that would be put under significant threat through the current proposal.

Outside of the core trading, cutting and polishing markets, there is also little consideration shown for the largest consumer market of the U.S. To date, no dialogue has been established between the G7 and U.S customs, meaning that on the 01st March/01st September there will likely be a complete block on imports. This further extends to other issues such as how lab-grown diamonds will be identified or distinguished as non-Russian.

As major stakeholders within the diamond supply chain, it simply isn’t good enough that the EU and Belgium can expect blind compliance with policies that solely serve their best interests, and not those of the wider industry. Not only are there significant questions that need answering, but clear stakeholder disruptions that require meaningful accountability.

Two-Tiered Diamond Industry

It is also worth remembering that a potential outcome of an active Belgian/EU mechanism will be a two-tier market. On one hand, the G7 economies with their extra burden of added certification, inefficient, centralised logistics and dictated, unilateral rules, and on the other, the BRICS+ nations, which will allow all diamonds to flow freely, based only on KPCS. As the existing trade centre for diamonds and based on its highly functional relationship with the world’s largest polishing market of India, Dubai will continue to function as a bridge between diamond producing nations and all consumer markets. It is also worth noting, that according to the IMF, the BRICS+ countries already had 36 per cent of world GDP in 2022 at power-purchasing parity, against the G7’s 25 – a difference of $10.44 trillion, and a gap that is only likely to increase in the future.

My stance, however, is not to segregate, but to unite the industry, while promoting fair competition, and the complete involvement of all stakeholders throughout the value chain.

The Kimberley Process

Probably the most obvious elephant in the room is that of the Kimberley Process – the twenty-one year-old, multilateral trade regime equipped with a certification scheme that enables states to implement safeguards on shipments of rough diamonds and certify them as “conflict free”. As an organisation, the KP’s role is to cooperate and create dialogue for all matters concerning diamonds, in particular when it comes to transparency. Underpinned by the United Nations mandate, actively supported by 85 nations, and backed by the leading civil organisations, the KP has been successful in stemming 99.8 per cent of the world’s conflict diamonds. As an organisation whose chair changes every year, its existing structure and policies are the perfect fit for discussing and addressing concerns in an open, fair, and democratic manner, however, its evident ostracization would suggest the EU and Belgium have other reasons for their highly impractical proposal.

Before February 2022, Alrosa was a strategic partner to Antwerp, however, in light of international competition and the European Commission’s stance on Russian sanctions, Belgium’s Russian rough diamond imports fell by almost 70 per cent in just two years from 2021 – H1 2023. With Antwerp’s well-documented decline as a relevant hub for the world diamond industry, it could certainly be argued that the proposed mechanism is more accurately designed to reinvigorate relevance into the ailing hub by leveraging the G7’s blinkered focus on “defeating Russia”, regardless of cost or collateral damage.

In a glimmer of hope, a virtual meeting which took place between a US government official and the country’s leading jewellers on 15th February suggested that “America could accept ‘self-certification’ from its jewellers that the diamonds imported into the country have no Russian links”. The conversation further recognised that the EU’s proposed regulation had been ‘questioned by African countries and India which feel that a system of first funneling stones into Belgium before moving them to final consumption centres would push up cost, delay deals and disrupt the age-old trade.’ The fact that the U.S is considering a multi-node approach is at least a step in the right direction, however, given Antwerp’s long-standing, often dependent relationship with Alrosa, it should consider a fully transparent mechanism that avoids centralised control and provides all diamond centres with the autonomy to self-regulate.

As candidly shared by an Ipis researcher who acknowledged the relationship between Alrosa and the Belgian diamond market, “It’s such an important supplier, corresponding to 25 per cent of diamonds coming into Antwerp. If they lose it and Dubai (UAE) takes over, then it’s a very difficult movement to stop. Now their way is to say that the demand is reducing”.

In a similar way, should the EU/Belgium mechanism be enforced, its impact will also be difficult to stop, but most worryingly will set precedent as an authoritarian decision made to achieve the tangential goals of the few, at the cost of the many. It would seem now more than ever that this is the right time to remind the G7, the EU and Belgium that the era of colonial rule is over, even when disguised as protectionist policy.

Indian farmer protests restarted in early 2024 as talks on the producers’ demands to set more legally binding minimum support prices for agricultural products have broken down.

The borders of city state and capital Delhi have been fortified but farmers from surrounding areas seem determined to push past the barricades this week armed with heavy equipment, supplies and masks to fend off tear gas deployed by police. Ahead of the presidential elections in April and May, farmers once again want to make their grievances heard. Similar protests rocked India previously in 2020 and 2021 as farmers vehemently opposed opening up the system of government-controlled wholesale markets – so-called mandis – and limiting minimum support prices. They eventually succeeded in having laws withdrawn.

However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, while guaranteed minimum prices provide security for farmers to at least sell some of their harvest at a profit, few farmers have actually been able to take advantage of the system in the past. This is tied to the fact that the government’s ability to buy and redistribute agricultural products is limited.

Experts interviewed by Money Control lobbied to help farmers through subsidies other than price moderation, a policy very common around the world in agriculture. In fact, many countries around the world support their farmers with financial help while at the same time asking their consumers and taxpayers to pay more for agricultural products, as seen in data by the OECD.

You will find more infographics at Statista

India, however, is not among these nations. While the country’s policy issues do not exactly line up with farmers’ demands for change, the grievances of the Indian agricultural sector are plentiful in an international comparison. In its 2022 Agricultural Policy Monitoring report, the OECD notes that Indian “policies that affect farm prices provide implicit support to consumers” and that between 2020 and 2022 “restrictive domestic marketing policies and border measures reduced prices below those on international markets”.

This means that while minimum support prices can aid farmers, Indian agricultural policies as a whole disadvantage and implicitly tax them.

The OECD estimated losses to Indian farmers at $163.6 billion in 2022 even after deducting any financial support payments or discounts that producers also receive. Through keeping prices low in the wholesale markets and additionally helping consumers through programs like the Targeted Public Distribution System, which distributes food to poor families, the Indian government is saving consumers more than $100 billion per year.

In Argentina, which has a similar distribution of agriculture support, farmers’ incomes were suppressed by roughly $9.5 billion, while consumers were aided to the tune of $9.1 billion.

Authored by Thaddeus G.McCotter via American Greatness,

In yet another example of “how the more things change…”

When assessing the Domino Theory 2.0, one discovers the dominoes are in the details – or, more accurately, the lack of them.

The first incarnation of the “Domino Theory” argued that the triumph of communism in one nation would invariably lead to communism’s triumph in neighboring nations. Based on the rapid Sovietization and illegal occupations of eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II, the Domino Theory predicted the same result would occur elsewhere. Unfortunately, the theory was less of a strategic assessment than it was a myopic prism, coloring every incident abroad as proof of its predetermined conclusion and justifying its efforts to stanch communism’s advance by any means fair or foul, including the deployment of the American military. So doing, the Domino Theory proved a blunt and, ultimately, deleterious instrument for stemming the advance of that hideous, anti-human ideology.

For Americans, the Vietnam War painfully revealed the counterproductive consequences of this overly simplistic theory. Between 1965 and 1973, more than 58,000 American service personnel, 250,000 South Vietnamese troops, 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters, and close to 2 million civilians of North and South Vietnam were killed, and more than $120 billion of U.S. tax dollars were expended on the war effort. At home, Americans were torn along political and generational lines over the draft and the war; youth was radicalized; and disillusionment with and alienation from representative institutions increased throughout the citizenry. When America ultimately failed to stem North Vietnam’s conquest of South Vietnam, the ensuing decade witnessed communism’s advance around the globe. At home, many of the political divisions spawned by the Vietnam War never fully healed.

Importantly, this was during a time when the Soviet Union and its proxies were in fact bent upon expanding communism across the globe, and most Americans understood this. Nevertheless, the failure to explain the rationale for the Vietnam War to the satisfaction of Americans, especially the young men being drafted and their parents, constituted the sifting quicksand that finally engulfed America’s war effort, especially when the government’s official statements continually failed to match the reality on the ground and the war dragged on.

In the aftermath of Vietnam, policymakers did learn the hard lessons of America’s military defeat. Communism remained an existential threat to free peoples, one the Soviets continued to spread. But America and her allies gradually became more attuned to the specific conditions within a communist endangered country, and, given the American public’s chary post-Vietnam attitude toward military interventions, became more circumspect in their assessments and responses to such threats. With fits and starts, wins and losses, by 1991, this more circumspect view of how to defeat communism through a more deliberative and discerning, holistic roll-back strategy facilitated the liberation of eastern Europe from communism and the Soviet Union’s implosion.

Failure might be an orphan, but it is a better teacher than success. While making room to stuff the Soviet Union in history’s trash can, policymakers retrieved from it the garbage theory, the “End of History.” In sum, Francis Fukuyama’s “end” was the absence of an ideological opponent to western democratic capitalism, which allegedly had forever won the hearts and minds of all peoples. It seems Mr. Fukuyama didn’t consult the over 70,000,000 members of the Chinese Communist Party (or radical Islamists, for that matter).

In the heady, heedless days following the demise of the Soviet Union, the botched, venal western “shock therapy” approach to Russian reconstruction led to the rise of an authoritarian regime headed by former KGB Lt. Colonel Vladimir Putin, a foreign intelligence officer. Due to western recklessness and covetousness, democracy and capitalism had an abysmal trial run in post-Soviet Russia. The people came to view the “end of history” as a dead end for Russia. With selective nostalgia coloring their memories, they reached back out for the iron hand of a strong leader (if not a Stalin, then an Ivan the Terrible) and a Russia that was feared and respected throughout the world. Mr. Putin and his thuggish ex-KGB cronies (Siloviki) readily obliged. The result is a revanchist, neo-imperial Russia currently on display in Ukraine.

Further, in the wake of the CCP’s barbaric butchering of pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square, a similar response threw this hideous regime a lifeline: no amount of mass slaughter would stop western capitalists from enriching themselves in communist China. Throughout the ensuing years, policymakers and the elites have enriched themselves by, among other means, outsourcing American jobs to and investing in communist China, thereby making the regime both more secure and more potent as they engaged in unrestricted warfare against the United States. And a nation that, during Mao’s great famine, was still exporting wheat from the hands of starving peasants to ensure the communist regime had enough foreign reserves to advance the nation’s aims throughout the world, now holds over $850 billion of American debt. No doubt, Xi Jinping and his politburo pals will continue putting their current foreign reserves and their holding of the U.S. debt to effective, if not good, use against America.

In sum, today, policymakers and elites have now stuck the rest of us with the butcher’s bill for their arrogance and avarice: a revanchist, authoritarian Russia and an avowedly hostile, implacably aggressive communist China, both of which view the United States as their primary enemy.

This is the situation as American and other western policymakers tender their dire demands for taxpayer funding for Ukraine. For some abstruse reason, they expect the public to forget or ignore that these policymakers and their corporate cronies have been culpable for causing this crisis. These policymakers have forgotten the hard lessons of Vietnam, and in refusing to explain in detail the strategic stakes in defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, they have resorted to the Domino Theory 2.0.

Consider this February 12 tweet by Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.), in which he cites an earlier statement by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.):

“Speaker Johnson is right: ‘We can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don’t believe it would stop there. It would probably encourage and empower China to perhaps make a move on Taiwan.’”

And there it is. The assumption that an authoritarian victory will lead to another authoritarian’s invasion of another country.

Sure, the Speaker hedged with “probably.” Moreover, Senator Cornyn was citing an October 27, 2023, interview with the Speaker, wherein he, Johnson, also stated: “We’re not going to abandon them, but we have a responsibility, a stewardship responsibility, over the precious treasure of the American people, and we have to make sure that the White House is providing the people with some accountability for the dollars.” Oddly, the Speaker also hedged by adding “some accountability.”

Yet, this merely reinforces the point. The Speaker felt compelled to regurgitate the Dominio Theory 2.0. His admission that there needs to be “some accountability” underscores the absence of accountability to the American public regarding military aid to Ukraine’s. Excepting the rote invocation of the “Taiwan must be defended” mantra, it also unwittingly reveals policymakers’ almost zero discourse with the American people as to why a free Taiwan is an imperative in protecting our nation’s vital strategic interests. Instead, the public gets the Domino Theory 2.0.

It is beyond the purpose of this essay to delve into how the current efforts to aid the defense of Ukraine may or may not have already indicated to the CCP the probability of successfully subjugating Taiwan. What is obvious, however, is that despite Americans’ disapprobation for Mr. Putin and his regime, the continued funding for Ukraine’s defense is increasingly precarious, as public support is ebbing over time (due in no small part to the absence of “some accountability”).

Now consider this in light of what the Domino Theory 2.0’s proponent’s believe is the “hammer” in their argument for more Ukraine spending: the long-threatened communist Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

As the Vietnam War intensified, one of the arguments of anti-war protestors was that our kids were being sent to die in a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map. A terse expression of how policymakers had failed to adequately explain how America’s vital national security interests were involved, it was an inarguable indictment of the original Domino Theory. But it is important to note that the Domino Theory was initially sufficient for the American public to accept our nation’s involvement in Vietnam. Why?

Due to the Sovietization of eastern Europe, the communist capture of China, and the United States’ subsequent, excruciating experience in the Korean War (or maybe because of the sacrifices entailed to keep South Korea free), the American public recognized communism was an existential threat to our nation and allies. Engendering and perpetuating this recognition constituted a concerted national effort that endured over decades until America and her allies won the Cold War.

Today, this is decidedly not the case.

Feckless policymakers, in league with their rapacious corporate cronies and other greedy elitists, have divined a critical distinction between the defunct Soviet variant of the communist virus and that of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): unlike the former Soviet Union, western elites can make a buck off the communist China.

But, you may ask, what about communist China’s “unrestricted warfare” against their primary enemy, the hegemonic United States? What about the communist regime’s repression of their own people, including the genocide of the Uighurs? How can American and western policymakers and their elitist cronies do business with a totalitarian government that is leveraging their own captive people as a “market” for western corporate investment? Or threatening to invade their neighboring free republic, Taiwan?

To keep their gravy train rolling requires the public to believe the policymakers’ and the elites false narrative that the communist Chinese regime is magically not in control of their totalitarian state. Somehow, despite all evidence and communist ideology to the contrary, communist China’s business sector (one cannot call it a “private sector”) is a sufficiently independent actor to ignore the regime’s aggressive domestic and global malevolence. In short, policymakers and elites need the American public to play “let’s pretend” along with them.

This deliberate downplaying of communist China’s aims promotes the willful misperception that there is a difference between the communist Chinese regime and its economy—one that is not recognized in that nation’s laws—and has not ended the American people’s distrust of the communist Chinese state. But it has had detrimental impact. While not spurring calls for peaceful coexistence or détente, it has negated a comprehensive estimation of the threat communist China’s unrestricted warfare poses to America’s vital strategic interests, as well as the measures required to protect and defend ourselves and our allies. Truly, then, it is odd how, in pushing the Domino Theory 2.0, policy makers and the elites are aiming to leverage a fear of communist China that they’ve spend decades trying to diminish.

This brings us face to face with the real Domino Theory of communism: namely, how the willful blindness to communist China’s avowed unrestricted warfare against our nation leads to the spread of the vile, murderous, anti-human ideology of communism at home and abroad.

For example, why should communist indoctrinators on campuses not be treated the same as Nazi indoctrinators? Why should an ideology responsible for killing more innocents than any other screed be considered acceptable in any quarter, let alone grow in popularity, especially among young Americans?

Why should Americans oppose the repressive communist Cuban regime, one that exports its hateful ideology and undermines free nations in Latin America, when the most populous and powerful communist nation in the world, China, despite being engaged in “unrestricted warfare” against the U.S., is being treated as a responsible international actor and business opportunity?

Equally, at a time when American elected officials are endangering national security by signing non-disclosure agreements with communist Chinese companies and, in the name of creating jobs their failed policies have precluded by any other means, are doling out billions in taxpayer dollars to them to locate in areas of America where it is all the better to engage in military and corporate espionage and other nefarious activities, why should the public respond to the Domino Theory 2.0’s concern for free Taiwan?

Indeed, while many policymakers, their elitist cronies, and the regime press pooh-pooh the public’s concerns about communist China buying American farmland, why would the public care about communist China invading Taiwan—let alone be prepared to risk World War III over it?

See how those dominoes fall when policymakers and their elitist cronies put money over country and sell our communist enemies the rope they will use to hang us?

Unless and until policymakers and their elitist cronies cease their remunerative apologies for the regime and commence defeating the existential threat of communist China’s unrestricted warfare, the Domino Theory 2.0 is a self-defeating piece of self-satire that merely serves to further disillusion and alienate Americans whose public support is needed to defend our republic and the entire free world.

In the end, of course, the question of whether the Domino Theory 2.0 works as the policymakers and the elites intend is a secondary consideration. The first consideration is to do what is comprehensively necessary as a nation to ensure that question never requires an answer.

On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine’s intelligence services has “transformed” the former Soviet state and its capabilities into “Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.”

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders’ communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory. 

This means that with the disclosure of the longtime “closely guarded secret” the world just got a big step closer to WW3, given it means the CIA is largely responsible for the effectiveness of the recent spate of attacks which have included direct drone hits on key oil refineries and energy infrastructure. 

“Without them [the CIA and elite commandoes it’s trained], there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” according to Ivan Bakanov, former head of the SBU, which is Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency.

A main source of the NYT revelations—disclosures which might come as no surprise to those never willing to so easily swallow the mainstream ‘official’ narrative of events—is identified as a top intelligence commander named Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy.

Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine’s forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians. And yet the revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.

While the lengthy NYT report is full of fresh revelations and confirmation of just how deeply the CIA has always been involved in Ukraine, below are seven of the biggest contained in the story…

Description of secret spy bunker

The report contains a surprisingly detailed description of one of the ‘secret’ underground command centers established by the CIA near the Russian border… location undisclosed of course:

Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed the route of an explosive drone threading through Russian air defenses from a point in central Ukraine to a target in the Russian city of Rostov.

The underground bunker, built to replace the destroyed command center in the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military.

There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the CIA.

Elite commando force

Within two years after the 2014 West-backed coup in Ukraine, the CIA had set up a training program for elite Ukrainian operatives:

Around 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)

And the CIA also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

Ukraine transformed into an “intelligence-gathering hub”

The US intelligence network in Ukraine (which is tantamount to NATO intelligence network too) has in reality been more extensive than pretty much all prior media speculation has envisioned. Ukraine has long been a massive “intelligence gathering hub” for Washington and its partners:

In more than 200 interviews, current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe described a partnership that nearly foundered from mutual distrust before it steadily expanded, turning Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering hub that intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kyiv, Ukraine, could initially handle. Many of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy.

Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kyiv, the CIA may have to scale back.

Huge NYT admission that Putin was basically right

Below is a hugely ironic excerpt from the Times report. The section begins by noting that Putin has repeatedly blamed the US-NATO for expanding its military and intelligence infrastructure into Ukraine. Not only had this precisely been going on for the past decade, as is now being admitted, but was presented by the Kremlin as a key cause of the Russian invasion of Feb.24, 2022. Putin and his officials were adamant on the eve of the invasion that NATO was militarizing Ukraine. The Times appears to now fully admit that, yes – this was actually the case: 

Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.

Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the CIA, together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.

…U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.Yet a tight circle of Ukrainian intelligence officials assiduously courted the CIA and gradually made themselves vital to the Americans. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, arrived at a meeting with the CIA’s deputy station chief and without warning handed over a stack of top-secret files.

According to a new account in the NYT:

On the night of the Maidan coup in Ukraine ten years ago, Feb. 24th 2014, Ukraine’s post-coup spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko arrived at his new headquarters and made his first call to “the C.I.A. station chief and the local head of MI6.”… pic.twitter.com/Dun8mPmnIR

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 25, 2024

2014 Coup… and Crimea

The report indirectly references this very critical period which set Ukraine and Russian on their tragic collision course: 

With violence escalating, an unmarked U.S. government plane touched down at an airport in Kyiv carrying John Brennan, then the director of the CIA. He told Nalyvaichenko that the CIA was interested in developing a relationship but only at a pace the agency was comfortable with, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

To the CIA, the unknown question was how long Nalyvaichenko and the pro-Western government would be around. The CIA had been burned before in Ukraine.

…The result was a delicate balancing act. The CIA was supposed to strengthen Ukraine’s intelligence agencies without provoking the Russians. The red lines were never precisely clear, which created a persistent tension in the partnership.

Operation Goldfish

Money and advanced tech given by the CIA has allowed the Ukrainians to establish eavesdropping operations far beyond what they would otherwise be capable of. All the while, elite commando teams were being trained by the CIA in European cities as part of a program called ‘Operation Goldfish’. The NYT reporting includes a bit of a ‘boast’ of the Ukrainians now being able to hack into Russian military networks: 

In the bunker, Dvoretskiy pointed to communications equipment and large computer servers, some of which were financed by the CIA. He said his teams were using the base to hack into the Russian military’s secure communications networks.

“This is the thing that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations,” Dvoretskiy told a Times journalist on a tour, adding that they were hacking into spy satellites from China and Belarus, too.

…The CIA began sending equipment in 2016, after the pivotal meeting at Scattergood, Dvoretskiy said, providing encrypted radios and devices for intercepting secret enemy communications.

A stunning admission: “Tiptoeing Around Trump”

Among the most interesting and curious moments of the NYT report is a description of the CIA program’s expanse under the Trump administration. The report suggests that the true scope may have even been hidden from Trump. The Russian hawks in his administration quietly did the ‘dirty work’, we are told: 

The election of Trump in November 2016 put the Ukrainians and their CIA partners on edge.

Trump praised Putin and dismissed Russia’s role in election interference. He was suspicious of Ukraine and later tried to pressure its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to investigate his Democratic rival, Biden, resulting in Trump’s first impeachment.

Official Narrative update: the idea that the CIA has been deeply involved in Ukraine for over a decade waging a secret war against Russia is no longer a conspiracy theory. pic.twitter.com/sxv2472VqY

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) February 25, 2024

The report then emphasizes, “But whatever Trump said and did, his administration often went in the other direction. This is because Trump had put Russia hawks in key positions, including Mike Pompeo as CIA director and John Bolton as national security adviser.”

And further, “They visited Kyiv to underline their full support for the secret partnership, which expanded to include more specialized training programs and the building of additional secret bases.” Given the attempt to place Trump in a negative light (he had to be ‘tiptoed around’…), it will be interesting to see how he and his campaign respond to the report. But more consequential will be the reaction of Putin and the Kremlin in the coming days.

“We are here today because California Public Safety is in crisis. Crime is steadily on the rise – and our public safety policy is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said last week while joining lawmakers in Sacramento in support of several new bills dealing with public safety.

Bianco emphasized: I want to make this clear, and I want there to be no mistake in what I am saying … this is not by accident … the driving force in our crisis is a radical Progressive agenda fraudulently called Criminal Justice Reform. This is nothing short of a sick and twisted social experiment where law enforcement is the bad guy and criminals are somehow victims of society and not responsible for their actions.”

This radical “agenda began with the passage of AB 109, the so-called Public Safety Realignment Act. The state government failed to take responsibility for prison overcrowding or their failure to build more prisons and instead forced county jails to house state inmates while simultaneously releasing thousands of felons early. This has pushed our county jails to a near collapse and caused the early release of countless criminals thousands.” 

Bianco continued: “Thousands upon thousands of criminals are being released from custody early – crime is increasing, and our governor is closing prisons instead of building new ones. It defies common sense. In 2014, a complete fraud was perpetrated in California. The so-called Safe Streets and Safe Schools initiative, Prop 47, changed many felonies to misdemeanors, basically legalized drug use, and increased the amount of petty theft to nearly $1,000. In 2016, another lie was perpetrated on voters with the naming and wording of Prop 57, tricking voters into approving the release of thousands of violent criminals onto our streets and neighborhoods. This why we are here everyone knows Prop 47 and 57 are disasters – and yet Governor Newsom adamantly touts it as a success, and lawmakers continue to refuse to fix their mistake and the problems that they have created.” 

“Once crimes are no longer crimes it allows Governor Nome and Attorney General Bon to cite completely flawed data points to support their failures. Californians are now suffering the consequences of a failed social agenda,” he said. 

The reality in California is that criminal justice reforms are an epic failure by Democrats. Now, more and more state leaders are pushing to overhaul these disastrous ballot measures that have transformed some cities in the state into third-world-like conditions. 

Footage showing chaos in California! pic.twitter.com/MAYIQ5vCPJ

— Osaka James (@osakajayms) February 23, 2024

Here’s the sheriff’s entire speech, reminding voters to support public safety after a decade of chaos:

Authored by Chris Bray via ‘Tell Me How This Ends’ Substack,

Give me five minutes to sum up a century, and to show where it leaves us.

Taylor Lorenz interviewing Chaya Raichik is an instant classic of anthropological fieldwork, and it tells us far more about the interviewer and the culture she represents than it tells us about the interviewee. I warn you that watching the whole thing rewards Taylor Lorenz with a click, but just look at the thumbnail to get started:

To get the whole flavor in condensed form, click here to watch an extraordinary five-minute excerpt.

Taylor Lorenz admits in her interview with Libs of TikTok that she hasn’t read any of the books she’s defending and attacking Chaya for trying to remove from public school libraries. She’s shocked when Chaya shows them to her. pic.twitter.com/49ZDAqEnZj

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 24, 2024

They’re talking about graphic sexual materials in schools, and Chaya Raichik shows batshit cat lady some of the images that are at the center of the debate. Then she asks batshit if she thinks it’s reasonable to show those pictures — graphic pictures of anal sex — to young children.

Batshit’s answer, around the 4:22 mark, takes a century of cultural decline and neatly distills it into a few seconds of lunatic babbling:

I guess…I don’t know. I don’t know. Because — you know who I would defer to on that, just because neither of us are sex educators? I would defer that question to a qualified professional, a sex educator, and say hey, you’re an expert, you’ve treated tons, you know, you’ve educated tons of people, you’re a full-time sex educator, you’ve really studied this. What are the appropriate boundaries? I don’t think that myself, as a journalist, or a media personality, I don’t think I’m the right one to make that decision. And I guess I’m wondering why you….I’m wondering why you feel like you’re qualified to be a sex educator when you have no background in that.

Should we sodomize kittens? Should old men recruit toddlers for dildo play? Should you invite middle-schoolers you meet on the street to your golden showers party in Vegas? Look, who can even say, right? I mean, do you even have a graduate degree in the field? There are simply no questions about appropriateness or decency or propriety that you can even begin to think about until the committee approves your dissertation. Bend over and defer, because you don’t have the credentials to understand the question.

Fuck these people, and fuck the hole they’ve dug.

Chaya Raichik’s response:

“I don’t want to be a sex educator — I just don’t want to give kids porn in school.”

Of course. You know right and wrong, and the babbling idiot asking if you’re a credentialed sex educator knows it too. Leave children alone, scumbags, and stop pretending it’s complicated.

Remember that Christopher Lasch wrote about the displacement of family functions by the “helping professions,” starting with the Progressive Era, and remember what Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote about bread, discussed in the middle of this post. The long descent into rule by experts is a project of cultural disempowerment, in which you — you personally — are being gaslit into abandoning your own eyes and your own mind.

Q: Should we show graphic sexual pictures to very young children at school?

A: Well, I don’t know, what are your credentials?

No more of this. Not another second. No more.

In late 2016 the city of San Francisco attempted a sweeping boycott program aimed at building their public image as a leftist “Utopia” while also giving a middle finger to red state economies.  The project was called “Chapter 12X” and was authored by California state Senator Scott Wiener (pictured below).

 

Even though progressive boycotts have been consistently unsuccessful over the years, this did not stop them from making yet another attempt at the height of the Trump vs Clinton election frenzy.  Perhaps they believed the tide was shifting even further to the political left and they were getting ahead of the game.

The goal of San Francisco’s effort was to ban all city employees from doing business with companies based in states with policies and laws contrary to progressive dictates.  Companies in states with abortion restrictions, states that prevented “trans identifying people” from using the bathroom or locker room of their choice, states that required identification proving citizenship before voting, states that don’t obey the tenets of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology, states that refused to implement climate change laws and companies that did not disclose carbon impact reports were not allowed to do contract business in San Francisco.  

For SF bureaucrats the assumption was that access to the city’s market was the prize and through a boycott they would teach red states a lesson.  In reality, SF was not the prize, efficient red state production was the prize.  Failure of the program became evident in 2023 after seven years of inflated costs from doing business with progressive friendly companies in blue states with high taxes and high operating overhead.  The city could have saved millions by simply outsourcing to red states. 

Another problem was the fact that many “blue” companies in blue states were not as “pure” as activists in SF wanted; most had associations with red state businesses, and this undermined the political message that the city wanted to send.

In the aftermath of a repeal on the boycott, San Francisco is trying to understand why their plan failed while also still trying to institute some kind of ideological filter on city business dealings.  Can SF find companies in red states that follow their progressive religion while also giving them low low prices?

The end of the contract ban is expected to decrease citywide expenditures by at least 20% in 2024 – In the midst of a stagflationary crisis every penny counts.  

The lesson to be learned here?  Democrats often argue that red states would collapse without blue state and blue city economies.  The truth is the exact opposite.  Without the production capabilities and lower costs of doing business in red states, progressive enclaves suffocate under the weight of their own taxes, legal restrictions and lack of self reliance.  They need conservatives far more than conservatives need them.  

By John Liu and Zheng Wu, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and analysts

Three things we learned last week:

1. China stocks continued to rally as Beijing escalated its efforts to stabilize the market, starting just before the Lunar New Year. The benchmark CSI 300 index has climbed for nine straight days in the longest run of gains since 2018, taking its advance from a February low to about 10%.

The sudden replacement of the nation’s chief securities regulator underscored the leadership’s determination to stem a rout that has erased some $4 trillion from the market value of equities and undermined confidence in the economy.

Wu Qing, the new chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, got down to work right away by cracking down on short sellers, and even froze the accounts of a major quantitative hedge fund after it dumped $360 million of shares within a minute. Wu also sat down with retail and institutional investors to gather their opinions.

But, there is no room for complacency despite Wu’s initial success. His predecessor Yi Huiman had tried repeatedly to end China’s stock meltdown since last summer but failed to deliver a sustained recovery. History suggests that the selloff will resume if investors find that policy support is underwhelming.

2. Chinese lenders announced a larger-than-expected quarter point reduction in the five-year loan prime rate. The move was clearly aimed at supporting the housing market as the bulk of the nation’s $5.3 trillion outstanding mortgage loans use the rate as a pricing benchmark. New funding support was also made available for property projects placed on the authorities’ “white list.” To be clear, some traders thought the People’s Bank of China could have done more earlier. Authorities held the key one-year policy rate at 2.5% this month even as the 10-year government bond yield dropped to a two-decade low and consumer-price deflation persisted.

The PBOC may have been mindful of the yuan’s weakness and the squeeze on banks’ margins when it decided not to ease more aggressively. Given the competing factors at play, the central bank was probably looking to deploy the most effective stimulus without abandoning its restrained approach to supporting growth. The overall picture remains subdued. China’s home prices declined again in January, and car sales probably dropped 15.7% in February. Banks’ margins narrowed to a record low last quarter. All this shows that while the stock market has staged a strong rebound, it will take much more to revive the economy.

3. HSBC took a $3 billion impairment charge on its holding in a Chinese bank. The lender’s Hong Kong-listed stock underperformed the Hang Seng Index last week even after CEO Noel Quinn described the charge as “a technical accounting issue.” The financial impact should be limited to HSBC although the case served as a reminder of the potential pitfalls of having an exposure to Chinese assets. But as Bloomberg Intelligence noted, the impairment reflected China’s deteriorating economic outlook and shouldn’t have come as a surprise.