Via The Cradle, 

As Atlanticists continue their commitment to a future shaped by energy scarcity, food scarcity, and war with their nuclear-capable neighbors, most states in the Persian Gulf that have long been trusted allies of the west have quickly come to realize that their interests are best assured by cooperating with Eurasian states like China and Russia who don’t think in those zero-sum terms.

With Chinese President Xi Jinping’s long-awaited three-day visit to Saudi Arabia this past week, a powerful shift by the Persian Gulf’s most strategic Arab state toward the multipolar alliance is being consolidated. Depending on which side of the ideological fence you sit on, this consolidation is being viewed closely with great hope or rage.

Xi’s visit stands in stark contrast to US President Joe Biden’s underwhelming ‘fist bump’ meeting this summer, which saw the self-professed leader of the free world falling asleep at a conference table and demanding more Saudi oil production while offering nothing durable in return.

In contrast, Xi’s arrival was greeted by a multi-cannon salute and Saudi jets painting the red and yellow colors of China’s flag in the skies over Riyadh. Beijing’s delegation of political and business elites will continue to meet with Saudi counterparts to strike long-term strategic deals in cultural, economic and scientific domains.

The visit culminated in the first ever China-Arab Summit on Friday in which Xi met with 30 heads of state. The Chinese foreign ministry described this as “an epoch-making milestone in the history of the development of China-Arab relations.”

While $30 billion in deals were signed between Beijing and Riyadh, something much bigger is at play which too few have come to properly appreciate.

Riyadh’s steps toward the BRI since 2016

Xi Jinping last visited the kingdom in 2016, to advance Riyadh’s participation in China’s newly unveiled Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A January 2016 policy report by the Chinese government to all Arab states reads:

“In the process of jointly pursuing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, China is willing to coordinate development strategies with Arab states, put into play each other’s advantages and potentials, promote international production capacity cooperation and enhance cooperation in the fields of infrastructure construction, trade and investment facilitation, nuclear power, space satellite, new energy, agriculture and finance, so as to achieve common progress and development and benefit our two peoples.”

It was only three months later that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) inaugurated Saudi Vision 2030 which firmly outlined a new foreign policy agenda much more compatible with China’s “peaceful development” spirit.

After decades serving as an Atlanticist client state with no viable manufacturing prospects or autonomy beyond its role in supporting western-managed terror operations, Saudi Vision 2030 demonstrated the first signs of creative thinking in years, with an outlook toward a post-oil age.

MBS saying goodbye to President Xi after 3 days of meetings…

Time will tell, but judging from the cold and humiliating reception of Biden, and the extremely warm reception of China, the US is no longer a close Saudi ally…

🔊music …🧐 pic.twitter.com/Pyvfb8bMeu

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) December 11, 2022

On the energy front, China Energy Corp is building a sprawling 2.6 GW solar power station in Saudi Arabia, and Chinese nuclear developers are helping Riyadh develop its vast uranium resources while also mastering all branches of the nuclear fuel cycle.

In 2016, both nations signed an MoU to build fourth generation gas-cooled nuclear reactors. This follows the UAE’s recent leap into the 21st century with 2.7 GW of energy now constructed. By early 2017, Riyadh had firmly bought its ticket on the New Silk Road with a $65 billion agreement integrating the Saudi Vision 2030 and BRI with a focus on petrochemical integration, engineering, refining, procurement, construction, carbon capture, and upstream/downstream development.

In the new post-American epoch, signs of this spirit of cooperation and bridge building have increasingly come to be felt, even while its effects have been forcibly restrained – as millions of Yemenis suffering under seven years of war can testify.

Unlike the Atlanticist fixation on Green New Deals which threaten to annihilate industry and farming, Riyadh’s post-oil outlook is much more synergistic with China’s idea of “sustained growth” that demands nuclear power, continued hydrocarbons, and robust agro-industrial development.

China’s trade with Saudi Arabia rose to $87.3 billion in 2021, which saw a 39 percent increase over 2020, while US-Saudi trade has collapsed from $76 billion in 2012 to only $29 billion in 2021. Some of this Beijing-Riyadh trade may now be conducted in the Chinese Yuan, which will only undermine the US-Saudi relationship further.

In the first 10 months of 2022, China’s imports from Saudi Arabia were $57 billion and exports to the kingdom rose to $30.3 billion. China is additionally building 5G systems and cultivating a vast technology hub with a focus on selling electronic goods, all while helping Saudi Arabia build up an indigenous manufacturing sector.

A trend of Harmonization

Despite the continued chaos in Yemen, and economic devastation in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, Beijing’s subtle trend has nonetheless been one of healing with Saudi Arabia – and regional power Turkiye. Saudi Arabia and Turkiye have often acted as rivals, and front two distinct foreign agendas with broad regional ambitions that overlap on many fronts. But despite this competitive past, higher necessities have induced both nations to harmonize their foreign policy outlooks with a new “look east” focus.

This was expressed during the Saudi crown prince’s visit to Ankara in June 2022 where the two heads of state called for “a new era of cooperation” with a focus on political, economic, military and cultural cooperation outlined in a joint communique.

Only days after MbS’s return from Turkiye, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi visited Jeddah to promote regional stability stating in a press release “they changed points of view on a number of issues that would contribute to supporting and strengthening regional security and stability.”

Iraq and Saudi Arabia had only re-established diplomatic ties in November 2020 due to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait 30 years earlier. Between 2021-2022, Iraq had worked hard to host bilateral talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran with five rounds of talks held and Kadhimi stating his belief that “reconciliation is near.” Tehran-Riyadh diplomatic ties were cut in the aftermath of the 2016 execution of outspoken Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, prompting the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran by angry protestors.

In March 2022, MbS stated that Iran and Saudi Arabia “were neighbors forever” and stated that it is “better for both of us to working it out and to look for ways in which we can co-exist.”

By August 23, 2022, the UAE and Kuwait created a new milestone by restarting diplomatic relations with Iran. And although nearly every Persian Gulf state (plus Turkiye) had devoted years to supporting regime change in Syria, a new reality has imposed itself with all Arab parties veering toward the Chinese BRI model of regional integration and economic development.

The Key Role of Iran

Not only is Iran a key player in the Greater Eurasian Partnership serving as a strategic hub for the southern route of China’s BRI, but it is also a keystone of the Russia-Iran-India-led International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) which has become a major force synergizing with the BRI.

Iraq and Iran themselves are in the final stages of building the long-awaited Shalamcheh-Basra railway which will unite the two nations by rail for the first time in decades while also offering a potential extension to the already existent 1500 km railway through Iraq to Syria’s border.

The climate for cooperation was undoubtedly made possible by the presence of Chinese economic diplomacy which established a 25 year, $400 billion energy and security deal with Iran – but also Russia, whose similar but smaller $25 billion, twenty-year deal with Tehran may easily expand to $40 billion in Russian investments in Iran’s vast oil and natural gas fields in the coming years.

Saudi Arabia and Russia’s relationship with OPEC+ demonstrated its potency this summer when Riyadh won the ire of Washington by not only denying Biden’s requests for increased oil production, but cutting overall oil production and driving up global prices of oil. Saudi Arabia benefited by vastly increased imports of discounted Russian oil which were then sold to a desperate Europe.

Furthermore, Saudi plans to join the global hub of multipolarity itself, BRICS+ (alongside Turkiye, Egypt, and Algeria), in addition to recently becoming a full-fledged Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) dialogue partner, have placed its destiny ever deeper into the growing Multipolar Alliance.

With the increased potential for stability and harmonization of interests across various power blocs, an atmosphere more conducive to long-term economic investments is finally presenting itself to Chinese investors who had long looked upon conflict-ridden West Asia with justifiable trepidation.

In August 2022, the Saudi state oil company Aramco and China’s Petroleum and Chemical Corporation Ltd signed an MOU expanding on the aforementioned $65 billion cooperation deal of 2017, which involves the construction of Fujian Refining and Petrochemical Company (FREP) and Sinopec Senmei Petroleum Company (SSPC) in Fujian, China, and Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company (YASREF) in Saudi Arabia.

Rail and interconnectivity

Perhaps most exciting are prospects for interconnectivity that play directly into the development corridors tied to the BRI. In Saudi Arabia, this train has moved steadily apace with the 450 km high speed Haramain Railway built by China Railway Construction Company connecting Mecca to Medina completed in 2018.

Discussions are well underway to extend this line to the 2400 km North South Railway from Riyadh to Al Haditha completed in 2015. Meanwhile, 460 km of rail connecting all Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members is currently under construction, which is driving reforms in engineering, trade schools, and manufacturing hubs across the Arabian Peninsula.

In 2021, all GCC states gave their full support to a $200 billion Persian Gulf-Red Sea high speed railway dubbed “The Saudi Landbridge,” which also dovetails another $500 billion megaproject with vast Chinese investments, dubbed the futuristic NEOM mega-city on the Red Sea.

The Eurasianists stand to gain

It can only be hoped that this new chemistry of harmonization and win-win cooperation may soon provide a key to ending the fires of conflict in Yemen and other regional states.

Further, with Russia and China both helping to broker diplomatic backchannels, and with Iran playing an active role within this process, perhaps negotiations for reconstruction can begin in this war-torn zone of conflict. It is not an extreme stretch of the imagination to see the new Persian Gulf-Red Sea rail project extending north into Egypt and south into Yemen.

Looking at a map of the region, one can imagine the reactivation of the “Bridge of the Horn of Africa” first unveiled in 2009, that would have extended rail across the 25 km Bab el Mandeb strait connecting pipelines and rail lines into Djibouti and East Africa, more broadly.

While a western-manipulated Arab Spring derailed that concept in 2011, and the Saudi war against Yemen drove it further under ground since 2015, perhaps this new spirit of inter-civilizational cooperation under a new economic architecture liberated from the Atlanticist-dominated dollar system may provide just what it takes to revive the idea once again.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

NBC News has updated a story that initially claimed President Joe Biden’s administration had a choice between freeing basketball player Brittney Griner and Marine veteran Paul Whelan in the prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Citing a person described as a “senior U.S. official,” NBC initially reported that the U.S. government wanted both Griner and Whelan freed as part of the swap.

“But the official said Russia has treated Whelan differently because he is an accused spy, and that the Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan—or none,” the story said.

Griner was jailed because she brought, by her own admission, cannabis into Russia. Whelan is behind bars because he was convicted of espionage. Whelan has maintained his innocence.

U.S. officials have described both as “wrongfully detained.”

(Left) Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine, in Moscow on June 15, 2020. (Right) Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) basketball player Brittney Griner at the Khimki Court, outside Moscow on Aug. 4, 2022. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

After Biden spoke about the exchange, claiming there was “not a choice of which American to bring home,” NBC stealthily updated its piece without noting that it was altered, according to archived versions reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The outlet’s updated version stated, “But the official said Russia has treated Whelan differently because he is an accused spy, and that the Kremlin ultimately gave the White House the choice of either Griner or no one after different options were proposed.”

Hours later, after critics noted the stealth edit, NBC added a correction.

“An earlier version of this article misstated the choice the Biden administration was given over hostages. It was to swap for Griner or no one, not a choice between Griner or Whelan,” the correction states.

An NBC spokesperson did not respond to a list of emailed questions, including why the initial update did not include a correction and what it means when it says it “misstated the choice” the government faced.

U.S. President Joe Biden (R) speaks on the release of Olympian and WNBA player Brittney Griner from Russian custody, at the White House in Washington on Dec. 8, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

‘Left Behind’

Critics said the administration should have negotiated the release of Whelan.

“Paul Whelan has been let down and left behind at least three times by 2 Presidents,” the Bring Our Families Home Campaign said in a statement.

“He deserves better from his government, and our Campaign implores President Biden to urgently secure Paul’s immediate return using all tools available.”

White House officials have backed Biden, saying the United States did not have a choice.

“In recent weeks, it became clear that while Russians were willing to reach an agreement to secure Brittney’s release, they continue to treat Paul Whelan differently, given the nature of the totally illegitimate charges they have levied against Paul,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in Washington this week. “Unfortunately, the choice became to either bring Brittney home or no one.”

“This was not a choice for us on—of which American to bring home. That was not the choice. It was a choice between bringing home one American or bringing home none,” she added later.

“Our choices was: Brittney or no one at all. Bring home one American or no American at all.”

A senior administration official, speaking to reporters on background, offered a similar view.

“So I want to be very clear: This was not a situation where we had a choice of which American to bring home. It was a choice between bringing home one particular American—Brittney Griner—or bringing home none,” the official said.

U.S. Basketball player Brittney Griner looks through bars as she listens to the verdict standing in a cage in a courtroom in Khimki, outside Moscow on Aug. 4, 2022. (Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool via AP)

Whelan

Whelan said after the swap that he was “greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four year anniversary of my arrest is coming up.”

David Whelan, Whelan’s brother, said he was glad Griner was freed but relayed fresh disappointment, noting that Whelan was also not released in a swap that brought American Trevor Reed home earlier this year.

“As I have often remarked, Brittney’s and Paul’s cases were never really intertwined. It has always been a strong possibility that one might be freed without the other. The sentiments I shared in April about Trevor are unchanged: this is the event we wish for so much for our own family. She will be reunited with her family. Brittney is free. And Paul is still a hostage,” David Whelan said.

“But how many more times do I need to write that?”

Other Americans still in Russian custody include Marc Fogel, a teacher who was arrested in Moscow in 2021 with marijuana, which he reportedly uses as medicine following a spinal injury.

Bout was serving a 25-year sentence for conspiring to kill Americans. He was convicted in late 2011.

Bout was described by then-Attorney General Eric Holder as “one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.”

About a year ago, the nation was on the verge of another lockdown when a tidal wave of Omicron infections prompted those who use masks alone… in their car… with their windows down, to hyperventilate that covid is about to kill several million more Americans, and anyone who suggested that this was nothing more than the flu was promptly suspended from twitter most likely by this guy, er gal: Melissa Ingle.

Former content moderator employee at Twitter speaks out. Do you believe this person enforced twitter ToS fairly and equally for all persons?

pic.twitter.com/3qverDTdPK

— John Curtis  (@Johnmcurtis) November 23, 2022

… deplatformerd demonetized and canceled.

So it was with great shock that we read today that once again, all those “conspiracy theorists” were dead on: according to Chinese officials, who have continued to downplay the risks of Covid-19 as the country’s idiotic covid zero restrictions are further eased after the economy ground to a halt following two years of lockdowns, with a top medical adviser saying the fatality rate from the omicron variant of the virus is in line with influenza.

Echoing what so many mouth-breathing rednecks said for most of the past year – at least according to their far more intelligent (in their own opinion) big-city dwelling liberal peers all of whom have at least one and more mental disorders, the death rate from omicron is around 0.1%, similar to the common flu, and the infection rarely reaches the lungs, Zhong Nanshan was quoted in an interview with state news agency Xinhua. Most people recover from the variant within seven to 10 days, he said.

Zhong’s comments follow the government’s latest line on the coronavirus, which – two weeks after sporadic violent protests nearly sunk the Xi regime – has been suddenly talking down the disease’s dangers as China moves toward exiting its Covid Zero policy. The nation reported 10,514 local infections for Saturday, more than 20% lower than Friday. Doubts have been raised about the accuracy of case numbers because fewer people are being tested, but one could say the same about the numbers on the way up.

But one thing is certain: China’s covid slowdown is history.

Still, China is not in the clear just yet: on Saturday, Zhong was quoted saying that there’s an “urgent need” to increase booster-shot rates as travel during upcoming holidays will raise the risk of a large-scale spread.

“It’s unlikely people will stay put for the 2023 Lunar New Year holiday so I advise those who will travel home to get booster shots so that even if they are infected, symptoms will be mild,” he said.

The Lunar New Year holiday runs from Jan. 21 to Jan. 27 but usually lasts about 40 days as people take off before and after the official break. Hundreds of millions of Chinese return to their home provinces for family reunifications during New Year.

China issued a plan on Sunday to enhance capacity of county-level medical facilities to better protect people living in rural areas from Covid. It requested such hospitals to boost their intensive care unit capacity by the end of December. Medical staffers from pediatrics and other units need to receive training on how to look after patients in ICU, according to the plan.

Separately, in a Sunday commentary, the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily said local governments have swiftly put into practice the 10 new Covid measures announced by the National Health Commission last week, including a reduction of mass testing and loosening of quarantine rules. Regions including Chongqing, and cities in Liaoning, Shandong and Guangdong have urged schools to resume offline teaching, the paper reported separately.

These new measures will pave the way for China to further optimize Covid controls in the future and eventually claim victory over the outbreak, the commentary said.

But back to the main topic, the end of covid in China, state-backed tabloid Global Times on Sunday cited Zeng Guang, a former chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as saying that suggestions for China to downgrade its Covid control from the top Category A to Category B has gained momentum in the scientific world.

Once Chinese scientists have reached a consensus that variations of the coronavirus continue to be less dangerous, China will downgrade its Covid control at the right time, Zeng said. China currently classifies Covid-19 as a Category-B disease, but is controlling it as a Category-A disease.

China’s road to reopening could be “bumpy,” which coupled with the scenario of a mild recession in Europe and the US may lead to a tougher economic climate, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President John Waldron said via video link at Shanghai’s Bund Summit on Saturday.

“That will obviously have some negative implications for growth,” Waldron said, in remarks that underscore how lenders are gauging the impact of China’s pivot from a Covid Zero policy.

Authored by John Kiriakou via Consortium News,

I attended a panel discussion at the National Press Club last week (Monday) about the fate of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. The event happened to be at the National Press Club, but it was actually sponsored by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University. Hayden, the notorious former director of both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A., who oversaw the C.I.A.’s torture program during part of the George W. Bush administration, was front and center at the event. 

The panel, moderated by Sasha Ingber, a national security correspondent in Newsy’s Washington, D.C., bureau, included Assange’s U.S. lawyer Barry Pollack, one of the finest criminal defense attorneys in America; Gabe Rottman, a senior attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; the notorious Mark Zaid, who bills himself as a “whistleblower attorney,” but who has probably done more damage to legitimate whistleblowers than any other person in Washington; and Holden Triplett, a former F.B.I. agent and former director for counterintelligence at President Donald Trump’s National Security Council.

While acknowledging my own biases (Pollack is a genius and Zaid is a scoundrel), the one thing that surprised me was how utterly clueless Holden Triplett was. This is a guy who promotes himself as a counterintelligence expert. He runs a consulting company hilariously named “Trenchcoat Advisors.” 

Triplett claims to have been a top F.B.I. counterintelligence official in the U.S. embassies in Moscow and Beijing. And he served Donald Trump loyally for two years in a GS-14 position at the White House.  Triplett made no mention of why he left the F.B.I. before qualifying for the pension. What struck me most about Triplett was his willingness during the event to throw a rhetorical turd into the middle of the room and then to expect the audience to nod politely and agree with him. 

On more than one occasion, he made completely unfounded statements about Julian Assange, only to then have the neoliberal Washington swells nod in agreement, despite having literally no evidence to back up his assertions. He said, choosing his language carefully, for example, that “When I look at anything Julian Assange has done over the years, whatever it is has the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.” 

‘Hallmarks’ & ‘Earmarks’

Notice the language there. He didn’t say that Julian was a Russian agent. He didn’t say that WikiLeaks was working for or on behalf of the Russians. He said that it all had the hallmarks of something that Russian intelligence would do. 

The language is meant, of course, to bring the DNC/MSNBC crowd over to his point of view. And judging by the reception he got, he was mostly successful.

Triplett’s disingenuous and damaging statements reminded me very much of an open letter published in October 2019 and signed by more than 50 retired senior C.I.A. and other Intelligence Community officials, saying that the Hunter Biden laptop “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” 

They ignored the fact that Hunter Biden said that it was his laptop. These esteemed intelligence professionals offered no proof of an intelligence operation, of course, even though most, if not all, currently maintain their security clearances. They threw that same rhetorical turd into the middle of the room and expected all the rest of us to nod in agreement.

It wasn’t flunkies who signed this letter. It was otherwise serious people, including National Press Club conference host Hayden; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former Secretary of Defense and C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta (himself a well-documented leaker); torture-supporter and former C.I.A. Director John Brennan; torture apologist and former Acting C.I.A. Director Mike Morrell; among others. 

They offered no proof of any ties between the Hunter Biden laptop and Russia, between Trump’s election as president in 2016 (which they went on about at length) and Russia, or between WikiLeaks and Russia. 

We’re just supposed to take their word for it because they’re important, smart and well-placed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the likes of these signatories say, when somebody disagrees with them, “Well, if you could only see the information that I see…,” or “If you had access to the information that I have access to … .”

It’s time to call a spade a spade. They’re lying. And they want us to believe their lies. I was at the C.I.A. too. I underwent the same training that they underwent. And if there was one thing the C.I.A. taught me, it was that if I was going to make a judgment or draw a conclusion, I had to offer proof. I wasn’t allowed to hide behind language like, “all the hallmarks of” or “leads me to believe…”. If you don’t have any proof, keep your mouth shut.

In the meantime, I was greatly heartened by the confidence that Pollack exuded at the National Press Club event. Julian Assange is in good hands. Barry will provide him with the best defense possible. 

As for these other characters, it’s up to the rest of us to counter them and their propaganda. It’s up to us to demand the truth.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

Oregon lawmakers are looking to crack down on illegal marijuana growers who aren’t abiding by the state’s 2014 laws governing recreational use and cultivation.

Year-to-date, approximately 95 metric tons of illegally grown marijuana have been seized across the state, according to the Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force. In 2019, they seized just 8 metric tons.

The 2014 legislation was supposed to eliminate problems caused by “uncontrolled manufacture” of the drug, however growers haven’t all magically agreed to the taxes and red tape that accompanied the legalization. Now, officials who have heard complaints from everyone from legal growers to the police are looking to crack down, AP reports.

Now, a draft bill set for introduction in the 2023 legislative session would double the maximum fine and prison sentence for illegal grows to 10 years and $250,000 for those growing more than 100 plants, or possession in excess of 32 times the legal limits.

The bill would also limit personal possession to 2 ounces of marijuana in a public place, and 8 ounces at home.

The measure also holds people accountable for environmental damage and prohibits use of water at locations not licensed for growing marijuana. Addressing immigrant labor, the draft bill makes it a crime for managers of an illegal grow site to confiscate a passport or immigration document, to threaten to report a person to a government agency for arrest or deportation, or withhold wages without lawful justification.

Some parts of Oregon have seen record seizures as police raid plantation after plantation. Police say foreign criminal gangs have become involved, from Mexico, Russia, China and other countries. -AP

In October, a single raid in Yamhill County yielded 76,930 pounds of marijuana –  roughly $76 million worth, the largest pot bust on record. According to the report, the haul would be worth $269 million on the East Coast.

“Investigators found the entire property had been converted to facilitate the growth, storage, processing, and packaging of marijuana to be shipped or transported out of the area,” said the sheriff’s office.

And in another October raid, Oregon State Police, with the assistance of SWAT officers, raided a property in southern Oregon – destroying around 1,000 pounds of illegal, processed marijuana. Firearms, stolen vehicles and the carcass of a black bear were found in the raid.

Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

The latest Twitter disclosures have raised potential legal liability for Twitter and its executives. No one appears more at risk than Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey

It is an ironic turn of events since Dorsey supported the takeover by Elon Musk and has called for all files to be released without filtering. Dorsey has the feel of a “designated defendant,” someone who was pushed forward by others to take any legal hit.

On its face, Dorsey has vulnerability after the latest release. He was repeatedly asked by members of Congress about censoring and shadow-banning, which has now been confirmed in these files.

In September 2018, Dorsey testified under oath and denied what these files appear to now confirm. Rep. Mike Doyle, D., Pa., asked, “Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?”

Dorsey responded, “No.”

Doyle then asked “Are you censoring people?”

“No,” Dorsey said.

“Twitter’s shadow-banning prominent Republicans… is that true?” Doyle asked.

Dorsey again said no.

Dorsey was also asked about my prior testimony on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “‘little brother’ problem, a problem which private entities do for the government that which it cannot legally do for itself.” In response, Dorsey insisted that “we don’t have a censoring department.”

It now appears that the entire company was operating as a censoring department. However, there were in fact super-censors. Dorsey did not mention the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET), which operated above what journalist Bari Weiss described as “a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper.”

That group reportedly included Vijaya Gadde, head of Legal, Policy and Trust; Yoel Roth, the global head of Trust and Safety; CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.

Notably, others at the company made similar denials as Dorsey but may not have done so under oath. In 2018, Gadde and head of product Kayvon Beykpour expressly declared, “We do not shadow-ban. And we certainly don’t shadow-ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

Even if untrue, lying in public is generally not a crime. However, when you repeat a lie to federal investigators or Congress or the courts, it becomes a federal offense.

The question is whether Dorsey was left in the dark on these decisions. He was reportedly a member of SRT-GET. However, some of the files indicate that these decisions may have been made without his knowledge. That includes the decision on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which Dorsey called a “total mistake.”

Dorsey could quibble over the term “shadow-banning” but the question was obviously meant as a follow-up to the inquiry over “rigging” discourse on the platform. He could also stress other answers, where he tied “shadow-banning” to a more subjective notion of political bias. For example, Dorsey also repeated these statements in public, including an appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox, when he was asked if “Twitter has ever been involved in shadow-banning, Dorsey again categorically denied such practices: “We do not shadow-ban according to political ideology or viewpoint.”

For most people, Dorsey’s comments clearly suggested that there was no shadow-banning. However, he could claim that he knew that they were shadow-banning but that they were not doing so “according to political ideology or viewpoint.” That is clearly refuted by the new files showing a hair-triggered censorship system directed against conservative and Republican posters.

The other defense is lack of knowledge but, even if accepted, that will raise the question of whether this was a case of a designated defendant or willful blindness. 

In some cases, there is a suspicion that corporations will assign some executive to sign off on compliance or certifications as the fall guy or designated defendant if things go wrong. The chump is often a junior lawyer or executive who takes personal responsibility for certifying a false fact.

Dorsey is clearly no chump or junior executive. The question is then whether this was a case of willful blindness or an attempt by other executives like Gadde or Roth to give him plausible deniability by keeping him in the dark.  He then became the public face in unequivocally and confidently denying practices like shadow-banning.

The greatest defense for Dorsey may be found in the Justice Department itself. Any prosecution of Twitter executives could prove a hard sell for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose department has been repeatedly accused of pronounced political bias. 

While Garland has aggressively pursued contempt sanctions against Trump associates, it is not clear if he would prove as aggressive with Democratic allies like Dorsey or other Twitter executives. He could face that question if the House under the GOP pursues perjury or contempt sanctions.

Dorsey once said about Twitter that “It’s really complex to make something simple.” He may now be hoping that his answers before Congress were simple enough to make any prosecution complex.

By Marcel Kasumovich, Deputy CIO of One River Asset Management

Market Notes: Destructive Ambiguity In Regulation

“Had we over-regulated the Internet early on, we would have missed out on many innovations that we can’t imagine living without today. The same is true for blockchain. Disruptive technologies rarely fit neatly into existing regulatory considerations, and rigid regulatory frameworks have repeatedly stifled innovation. It’s likely that innovations in the Blockchain will outpace policy, let’s not slow it down.”

Brookings Institution made this declaration in 2015. It is time to heed those wise words.

But it’s money. The stakes are higher. That digital assets have lived to see their fifth bear market is already an achievement. Liberty Reserve is a reminder of how hard it is to survive. Regulatory clarity is THE issue. It’s not easy. It’s especially hard for technology built to shred powerful middlemen. Be attentive to the resilient components of the ecosystem. They matter most in disruptive downturns. Those are the building blocks. Today, it is Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Stablecoins – more than two-thirds of the market cap (Figure 1). Tomorrow, it will be the things built on those foundations.

Discussions on regulation are met with a natural first response: I’m not a lawyer. You don’t have to be. Follow the money. That trail will tell you a lot about regulatory policy and compliance. Where are my assets? Most investors want to spend time focused on price risk and portfolio construction, not operational ones. Yet, the digital financial crisis has investors reasonably going back to the basics: Custody, the foundation for institutional scale.

“Self-custody.” Aren’t digital assets about bringing users control? Yes, to a point. The concept of unhosted wallets, or “self-custody,” removes counterparty risk entirely. It pushes all the risk to the investor. The user controls the keys, and thus, the assets. For individuals, this can be a powerful tool. The keys are used to identify your place on the blockchain. However, lose the keys, and you lose your assets. It also introduces various regulatory issues, such as the Travel Rule for money under the Bank Secrecy Act. Unhosted wallets need to adhere to these rules to avoid illicit activity.

But unhosted wallets are not institution friendly. “The investor” in this case is an institutional machine. Private keys can be broken into pieces. To unlock assets requires an entire key, and diversity of the pieces can ensure security. Phrases can be stored in multiple places. Unhosted wallets could be widespread. But this isn’t where institutions start. Reasonably. State Street. BNY Mellon. These are familiar custodial arrangements and native digital players need to come as close as possible to replicating them. And they have.

Demand for hosted, third-party custody solutions has mirrored that of institutional interest in digital assets. Figure 2 illustrates industry players in custodial solutions over time. There’s a surge in 2018, just after the super-spike in digital assets in 2017. In the most recent cycle, traditional banks were drawn to provide custodial support, just in time for the peak in 2021 asset prices. The solutions are there, but not all are created equal. And investors would like tools familiar to traditional markets.

“Qualified custodian” is one of those familiar elements. Digital custodians were attracted to this standard. But there’s an issue – it is defined by the Custody Rule, regulated by the SEC, and there appears no urgency to provide clarity for digital assets. Entities seeking regulatory clarity found creative solutions through State Chartered Trust Companies. Independently capitalized. Segregated assets. 100% reserved. Deep cold storage solutions. In 2018, digital “qualified custodians” were led by the New York State Department of Financial Services. It is an institutional standard.

Yet, there are roadblocks imposed by regulators. The Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121 took banks out of the custody business. “The staff believes that Entity A should present a liability on its balance sheet to reflect its obligation to safeguard the crypto-assets held for its platform users.” Traditional custody is off balance sheet. Custodial services are uneconomic as banks are capitalized to gross balance sheets. A win for digital custodians? Not quite. The Bulletin required disclosure that custodial assets may not be protected in bankruptcy, adding uncertainty rather than clarity.

Pulling on the disclosure thread takes us down another regulatory path – the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) that governs all US commercial transactions. Digital assets do not fit neatly into UCC. We learned the same with our Digital Income strategy. And there has been little effort to provide clarity to date. Service providers are now spelling it out for users. Agreements are being updated to state the applicability of UCC Article 8. That article implies custodial assets are bankruptcy remote from general creditors. This is the same legal protection offered in traditional asset markets.

Clarity is being realized by enforcement. The wave of bankruptcy is bringing clarity to custody issues – Celsius’s segregated customer assets are being returned to the customer. And precedent is being set on the value of regulatory clarity. LedgerX, a derivative intermediary, was part of the FTX family and excluded from the bankruptcy filing. It has been subject to CFTC regulatory oversight since 2017. Simple things followed. Communication lines between LedgerX and the CFTC. Capital requirements to meet operating costs. Segregation of client assets. Regulation worked.

Don’t let any crisis go to waste. The transformative potential of digital assets is driven by their resiliency – the foundations can’t be easily killed. Big thinkers on money, like Hayek, contemplated the issues holistically. When in doubt go back to those. Hayek’s thinking was simple – competition is good. Why should money and its regulations be different? Hayek evaluated innovation in the monetary sector through digital currencies long before their existence. His last revision on the topic was in 1990, at the age of 91. Life is long. Live it.

Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

You might call it the “battle of BlackRock.”

The conflict, which pits Republican officials in states across the country against the world’s largest asset manager, has only intensified in recent months.

Just days ago, Florida became the latest state to pull money from BlackRock—in its case, $2 billion in state-controlled assets.

The state’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, explained that “using Florida’s cash to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something we signed up for.”

Now, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell has taken the rhetoric up another notch.

In a Dec. 9 letter to BlackRock’s board of directors, he called for the firm’s CEO, Larry Fink, to “resign or be removed” from his position.

Folwell argued that BlackRock’s focus on “environmental, social and corporate governance” (ESG) under Fink’s leadership runs contrary to its fiduciary duty—in other words, its legal obligation to serve its clients’ best interests.

Those many clients include the North Carolina Retirement System, for which Folwell serves as sole fiduciary. Of the $111.4 billion fund, $14 billion is presently managed by BlackRock, according to the letter.

ESG is an investment philosophy that aims to embed particular values—for example, concern about climate change—into the financial system. Its conservative critics argue that it distorts the economy by privileging politically correct sentiment over the hard realities of the market.

Folwell warned that Fink’s “pursuit of a political agenda has gotten in the way of BlackRock’s same fiduciary duty.”

“A focus on ESG is not a focus on returns and potentially could force us to violate our own fiduciary duty,” he added—a broad hint, perhaps, at a potential future willingness to divest from the asset manager.

Florida’s divestment from BlackRock isn’t the only such move in the last several months.

Under Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now the Show Me State’s senator-elect, millions in Missourians’ retirement dollars were taken out of BlackRock’s hands.

Louisiana, Utah, and Arkansas have followed similar courses of action.

The biggest concern from many of those states has been BlackRock’s efforts to steer investors away from fossil fuels, out of a stated concern with climate change driven by human activity.

In his 2020 Letter to Shareholders, Fink wrote that “in the near future—and sooner than most anticipate—there will be a significant reallocation of capital.

Fink went on to tout BlackRock’s “initiatives to place sustainability at the center of our investment approach.”

A subsequent list of those initiatives included “exiting investments that present a high sustainability-related risk, such as thermal coal producers” and “launching new investment products that screen fossil fuels.”

Treasurers, attorneys general, and other officials from fossil fuel-producing states have argued that BlackRock’s ESG-related commitments undermine the prosperity and stability of their own communities.

BlackRock, for its part, has responded to the ongoing pressure campaign from state-level officials with a website, “Energy investing: Setting the record straight.”

There it argues that it identifies climate change as a long-term risk it needs to protect its clients’ interests from.

“Our consideration of the risks and opportunities of a transition to a low-carbon economy is in the interest of realizing the best long-term financial results for our clients and entirely consistent with our fiduciary duty,” that website states.

Many environmental groups argue that the big banks and asset managers targeted by Republican officials are not doing enough to promote fossil fuel divestment. They’re among the biggest supporters of ESG-like policies to transform the private sector under President Joe Biden, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposal to mandate climate-related disclosures from publicly traded companies.

A Dec. 8 article from the Sierra Club, for example, praised BlackRock for “starting to push back” against Republican officials’ campaign against ESG.

Yet they noted that BlackRock continues to manage fossil fuel investments on behalf of its clients.

The Epoch Times has reached out to BlackRock for further comment.

Identical twin sisters who were accused of cheating on their year-end medical school exams have been awarded $1.5 million in a defamation case against the Medical University of South Carolina.

Kayla and Kellie Bingham were accused of “academic dishonesty” in May 2016 after test proctors deemed their exam performance to be too close to be a coincidence – with identical answers to 296 out of 307 questions, including 54 wrong answers. University officials launched an investigation, and a school “honor council” alleged the sisters were “signaling one another and passing notes,” according to court documents. The school ultimately ruled they had cheated on the exam.

“It was an eight-hour exam during which we exhibited normal test-taking behavior,” Kayla Bingham told CBS MoneyWatch.

The Binghams successfully appealed the decision and filed a lawsuit against the university, arguing that for years they had behaved and performed similarly academically and in athletics. After a four-day trial in November, a South Carolina jury decided the school had defamed the sisters and awarded them a total of $1.5 million in damages. 

The Binghams’ legal case hinged on the theory that it is common for identical twins to perform similarly on tests given their genetic profiles. Nancy Segal, who runs California State University, Fullerton’s Twin Studies Center and who testified in the case, said numerous studies show that identical twins often perform similarly on a range of cognitive tests. -CBS News

“There is a wealth of psychological research that shows that identical twins do perform very similarly on tests of intelligence, information processing and speed of response, and I was not at all surprised they turned in very similar exams,” said Segal. “When identical twins perform very differently it catches our attention.”

“When they perform alike, it’s very consistent with the literature. I would have been surprised if they hadn’t scored alike.”

The Binghams claimed that the allegations of cheating caused them psychological distress, which included panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It was a very hostile environment. People we had known, sat next to and studied with for two years would not speak to us,” Kellie Bingham told CBS. “They knew our work ethic and study habits but refused to hear our side of the story. People we trusted completely turned their backs on us.”

The university’s accusation and the events that ensued also interfered with the Binghams’ plans to become doctors. The two now work as government affairs advisers at the same South Carolina law firm.

And according to Kayla, “We came to understand that once word gets out, even if it’s not accurate, it damages your reputation as a person. So we completely switched tracks,” adding that she “wanted to fight back because I had been wronged.”

The Biden administration says it is still engaging with Moscow in an ongoing attempt to secure detained Marine veteran Paul Whelan’s release from the Russian prison where he’s serving a 16-year sentence, which reportedly involves hard labor.

On Sunday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC’s “This Week” the US is still “negotiating” for his release – confirming that recently a “very serious, specific proposal” was made to the Russians.

He further gave some background on the Brittney Griner release while seeking to deflect widespread criticisms that Whelan was left behind for the less serious case of WNBA star Griner. Biden has been accused of simply choosing her for her fame and the bigger PR campaign rallying behind her.

Kirby described that for months the White House pushed hard to gain Whelan and Griner’s release together, but “it just didn’t land anywhere… with the Russians,” he explained in the Sunday comments.

“As we progressed through this summer and into the fall… it was clear that they were treating Paul very separately, very distinctly because of these sham espionage charges they levied against him.” Kirby said that just before Griner’s release it became clear that Whelan’s release would remain unlikely. 

“It really occurred to us that there was just no chance of doing it last week… we had been trying all the way up until the moment we actually secured the deal that got Brittney home, we were still trying to get Paul out,” he said.

Days ago CNN cited US officials who listed some of the Russian names that could potentially be included in a future Whelan swap: 

US officials made quiet inquiries to the Germans about whether they might be willing to include [Vadim] Krasikov in the trade, a senior German government source told CNN earlier this year. But ultimately, the US was not able to secure Krasikov’s release. The German government was not willing to seriously consider including Krasikov –who assassinated a Georgian citizen in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019 – in a potential trade, the German source said.

The US made several other offers to the Russians, sources said, to try to get them to agree to include Whelan in the swap. Among the names floated by the US was Alexander Vinnik, a Russian national extradited to the US in August on allegations of money laundering, hacking and extortion. The US also offered to trade Roman Seleznev, a convicted Russian cyber-criminal currently serving a 14-year sentence in the US, sources said.

“We’re going to keep trying as hard as we can,” White House’s John Kirby tells @MarthaRaddatz after U.S. was unable to negotiate release of Paul Whelan.

“This business of getting wrongfully detained Americans home, there’s nothing easy about it.” https://t.co/xc7EPeqf8J pic.twitter.com/eZX9CARGwQ

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 11, 2022

The biggest name on that list is Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from Russia’s domestic spy organization. He’s serving out a life sentence in Germany for murder after being convicted in the assassination of a former Chechen fighter, Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, which was carried out in a Berlin park.

Kirby used the Sunday morning media interviews to lash out at the White House’s critics who point to the Russians getting the deal of the century in Viktor Bout’s release.

“They weren’t on the phone. They weren’t watching the incredible effort and determination by [Roger Carstens] and his team to try to get both Paul and Brittney out together,” Kirby said. “In a negotiation, you do what you can. You do as much as you can. You push and you push and you push. And we did. And this deal we got last week, that was the deal that was possible. It was the deal we could get now. Now was the moment we could get it, and we executed it.”