The city of Seattle has implemented a new policy that prevents police officers from knowingly lying to influence suspects, after incidents in 2018 and 2020 may have contributed to a suicide, and incited chaos during the George Floyd protests, MYNorthwest reports.

Following the two incidents, the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety and City Councilmember Lisa Herbold pushed for the policy change, which Mayor Bruce Harrell (D) announced on Oct. 30.

In the 2018 case, a suspect in a Seattle automobile accident committed suicide after an SPD officer lied in a ruse, falsely telling the man’s friend that a woman was in critical condition from the crash.

The man — who has since been identified as Porter Feller — had fled from the scene of a multi-vehicle accident in May of 2018. Two officers followed up at the home his car was registered to, telling his friend, Maggie Parks, that a victim in the hit-and-run was near death, despite the fact that there no actual injuries reported from the crash. One of the officers remarked to his partner, “it’s a lie, but it’s fun.” -MYNorthwest

“Effective public safety requires community buy-in, and this new policy is an important step to build understanding with the public, demonstrating that for SPD operations to be successful, they must be paired with a commitment to unbiased, constitutional policing,” said Harrell in a statement. “This innovative new policy will lead to better police work thanks to the voices of many, including the media who brought attention to this tactic, community members who called for guidelines to match our values, and Seattle accountability and police leaders who developed a plan to make that vision real.”

According to Seattle PD Chief Adrian Diaz, the policy is the first of its kind in the US, and continues SPD’s “long tradition of public safety innovation rooted in accountability and a commitment to building public confidence.”

Remember kids, cops are allowed to lie…

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

In one fell swoop, roughly 10% of the global population appears to have had some of their most valuable personal identifiable information (PII) compromised. Yet Aadhaar continues to receive plaudits from Silicon Valley. 

An anonymous hacker claims to have breached the digital ID numbers, as well as other sensitive personal data, of around 815 million Indian citizens.

To put that number in perspective, it is more than 60% of the 1.3 billion Indian people enrolled in the government’s Aadhaar biometric digital identity program, and roughly 10% of the entire global population. Thanks to the breach — the largest single one in the country’s history, according to the Hindustan Times — the personal data of hundreds of millions of Indians are now up for grabs on the dark web, for as little as $80,000.

To register for an Aadhaar card, Indian residents have to provide basic demographic information, including name, date of birth, age, address and gender, as well as biometric information, including ten fingerprints, two eyeball scans and a facial photograph. Much of that data has apparently been compromised.

Media reports suggest that the source of the leak was the Covid-19 test data of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which is linked to each individual’s Aadhaar number.

The alarm was first raised by Resecurity, a Los Angeles-based cyber security company, which on Oct 15 included the following in a blogpost on its corporate website:

On October 9th, a threat actor going by the alias ‘pwn0001’ posted a thread on Breach Forums brokering access to 815 million “Indian Citizen Aadhaar & Passport” records. To put this victim group in perspective, India’s entire population is just over 1.486 billion people.

HUNTER investigators established contact with the threat actor and learned they were willing to sell the entire Aadhaar and Indian passport dataset for $80,000.

The data set offered by pwn0001 contains multiple fields related to the PII of Indian citizens, including but not limited to:

– name
– father’s Name
– phone Number
– other Number
– passport Number
– aadhar Number
– age
– gender
– address
– district
– pincode
– state…

One of the leaked samples contains 100,000 records of personal identifiable information (PII) related to Indian residents. In this sample leak, HUNTER analysts identified valid Aadhaar Card IDs, which were corroborated via a government portal that provides a “Verify Aadhaar” feature. This feature allows people to validate the authenticity of Aadhaar credentials,” Resecurity said…

Resecurity acquired… 400,000 records and contacted multiple victims to validate the information, as well as used the “Verify Aadhaar” feature available via official government WEB-resource in India.

The contacted victims from the acquired data set confirmed the validity of their data, and stated they have never been notified about [the breach] before.

Digital Identity Theft

A leak of such highly sensitive personal identifiable information (PII) creates a significant risk of digital identity theft, warns Security Affairs:

Threat actors leverage stolen identity information to commit online banking theft, tax refund fraud, and other cyber-enabled financial crimes. Nation-state actors are also hunting for Aadhaar data with the goal of espionage and influence campaigns that leverage detailed insights on the Indian population. Resecurity observed a spike in incidents involving Aadhaar IDs and their leakage on underground cybercriminal forums by threat actors who look to harm Indian nationals and residents.

Aadhaar (Hindi for “foundation”) is a 12-digit unique identity (UID) number issued by the government after confirming a person’s biometric and demographic information. Launched in 2012 as part of an initiative to give each Indian resident with a unique identification number, it is the largest digital identity system on the planet, with 1.3 billion UIDs issued by 2021, covering a staggering 92% of India’s population.

It was ostensibly created to provide people without identification a formal government ID as well as crack down on duplicate, fake or stolen IDs used to benefit from government programs and welfare schemes.

And it quickly drew interest and praise from elite quarters around the world, including Silicon Valley.

In a 2019 entry of his “Gates Notes” blog, Bill Gates lauded Aadhaar for making “India’s invisible people visible.” Three years earlier, in a lecture on Technology for Transformation, Gates had said that Aadhaar is something that had never been done before by any government, not even in a rich country. He also claimed it does not pose any privacy risks; try telling that to the 815 million people whose personal data is now up for grabs on the Dark Web!

Together with Nandan Nilekani, one of the co-founders of Indian tech giant Infosys who is widely recognised as Aadhaar’s chief architect, Gates went on to play a key role in exporting Aadhaar to other parts of the so-called Global South, much of it financed by the World Bank. The two tech billionaires also reportedly helped persuade the Modi government to embark on the disastrous path of demonetisation in order to expand cashless payment alternatives. Demonetisation is believed to have caused a 2% drop in India’s GDP growth in 2016/17 alone — the equivalent of $52 billion, according to the Sunday Guardian.

Even today, Aadhaar continues to receive plaudits from Silicon Valley, despite all of its security flaws, privacy concerns and other issues. Worldcoin, the controversial cryptocurrency project set up by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that uses an eye-scanning “orb” to give users a unique digital identity to verify whether they are human, recently said it seeks to emulate India’s Aadhaar system in its own creation of a global identity and financial network.

Ironically, both Aadhaar and World Coin were featured in a recent report by Moody’s Investor Services as examples of how not to develop a digital identity system. As I noted at the time, it is not clear whether Moody’s criticisms were merely poorly timed, given the geopolitical backdrop, or form part of a broader campaign in the Anglosphere against India’s interests. The Modi government and Indian tech businesses are desperately keen to export the so-called “Indian Stack” — the Jan Dhan Yojana, a financial inclusion program; UPI, an instant payments system launched in 2016, just six months before the government yanked 84% of India’s cash notes out of circulation in its infamous demonetisation campaign; and Aadhaar.

Mission Creep on Steroids

Aadhaar was first introduced as a voluntary way of improving welfare service delivery. But the Modi government rapidly expanded its scope by making it mandatory for welfare programs and state benefits.

The mission creep didn’t end there. Aadhaar has become all but necessary to access a growing list of private sector services, including medical records, bank accounts and pension payments. According to Security Affairs, it is the security weaknesses of many of these third parties, including utility companies, independent service providers, mobile and telecommunication operators, and lending and fintech services, that are behind many of the data breeches.

Plans are also afoot to link voter registration to Aadhaar, despite the system’s glaring security flaws. Besides the vulnerability of its data storage, India’s Aadhaar system has many other downsides, as I noted in my book Scanned:

For a start, it tracks users’ movements between cities, their employment status and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India. While the system has helped to speed and clean up India’s bureaucracy, it has also massively increased the Indian government’s surveillance powers and excluded over 100 million people from welfare programs as well as basic services.

The public body in charge of Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), is yet to comment on the latest breach. But if past form is any guide, when it does it will deny all charges. It has so far refuted all accusations of data breaches, since the Aadhaar system went fully live seven years ago, including claims from Wikileaks that the CIA might have access to the database and allegations in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019 that Aadhaar had “suffered multiple breaches that potentially compromised the records of all 1.1 billion registered citizens.”

Given the sheer number of breaches Aadhaar has suffered, this level of denialism is becoming untenable. Even Biometric Update, the most important trade publication for the biometrics industry, has warned that India is “bleeding biometric data.” And biometric data is our most valuable personal identifiable information. If it is hacked there is no way of undoing the damage. You cannot change or cancel your iris or fingerprint like you can change a password or cancel a credit card.

The chances of that data being hacked are significant given how pourous most databases are, notes Professor Sandra Watcher, a data ethics professor at the Oxford Internet Institute:

“The idea of a data breach is not a question of if, it’s a question of when. Welcome to the internet: everything is hackable.

Given the sheer number and scale of recent breaches,  the “Indian govt’s insistence that Aadhaar is secure rings hollow,” concludes Biometric Update:

A piece in Security Affairs reports that earlier this month, the cybersecurity firm Resecurity found hundreds of millions of records containing personally identifiable information (PII) for sale on the dark web. Aadhaar cards were among the data on offer.

Also in October, the PII of applicants to a program for young filmmakers at the International Film Festival of India was exposed on a government website for the event. The Deccan Herald reports that the Times of India was able to access a parent directory that contained the Aadhaar IDs, PAN cards and other PII of more than 100 people who applied through the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

Furthermore, as reported in The Hindu, a police raid on a brothel in Bengaluru found that sex workers had been given fake Aadhaar cards, and prompted an investigation into wider production of fake government IDs, voter cards and other documents.

And finally, there is the now-resolved case of fingerprint biometrics, digital ID numbers, identity documents, photographs and images submitted to Aadhaar being exposed by the West Bengal state government website.

The latter case is particularly pertinent since it reveals how fragile biometric identifiers can be, especially when it comes to finance. In recent years, a consortium of public and private sector players, including the Reserve Bank of India, UIDAI, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, has developed a cardless banking system called the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System, or AePS. To avail of the service, all customers need is a bank name, an Aadhaar number and the biometric identifiers captured during their Aadhaar enrolment. It’s quick, easy but not remotely safe.

A recent criminal case in Bengal has revealed that a purely biometric-enabled payment system, involving no cards and no PIN numbers, is not secure, particularly when the biometric identifiers in question and Aadhaar numbers are easily accessible on the World Wide Web. As always in these cases, enterprising fraudsters are leagues ahead of the authorities. From Business Standard:

The latest scam alert came to light after Kolkata Police uncovered cases where fraudsters are stealing data, including thumbprints, from land registries off the West Bengal Government’s land records website. Two individuals were reportedly arrested for their involvement in fraudulent transactions using the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS).

“These accused developed fake fingerprints that were used to withdraw money from the complainant’s bank account. Primarily. It has been found that the electronic data are gathered from different public domains/websites,” a senior officer of Kolkata Police told the Indian Express.

Subsequently, Kolkata Police requested the state Finance Department to conceal biometric data, including fingerprints, and Aadhaar card numbers extracted from property deeds or any other documents uploaded to the state government’s property registration website.

The response from certain banks and law enforcement agencies is revealing: they are telling bank customers to lock their biometrics at m-Aadhaar app/UIDAI portal and start using a four-digit pin to authenticate payments and prevent unauthorized access to their bank accounts. It is an open admission that biometric identifiers, on their own, are not safe enough for transaction purposes. Nor are they being stored securely by public or private entities. This should (but probably won’t) serve as a cautionary tale for all the other governments and companies around the world seeking to harness the power of biometric identifiers and digital identity.

Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched across Washington DC on Saturday to protest US involvement in the Israel-Hamas war, stopping outside the White House to shout “Allahu Akbar” , “Fuck Joe Biden,” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” –  while smearing red paint and pushing on the gate.

‘Genocide Joe!’, ‘Fuck Joe Biden!’ and ‘Genocide Joe has gotta go!’ are some of the chants outside White House #March4Palestine pic.twitter.com/kbWpXMEjOT

— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) November 4, 2023

The White House’s NW entrance has been smeared with red paint and protesters are pushing on gate #March4Palestine pic.twitter.com/D4cFNOCyiU

— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) November 4, 2023

HAPPENING NOW: PROTESTOOORS TRYING TO WAKE UP SLEEPY JOE WITH CHANTS OF ALLAHU AKBAR OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE ###pic.twitter.com/N0jHPY0Gqj

— iBankCoin, A Reliable Source (@iBankCoin4tw) November 5, 2023

Pro-Palestine protestors scale the White House fence to raise the Palestinian flag @arjunswritings pic.twitter.com/GiUJrtgsGG

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 4, 2023

They also defaced and vandalized historic monuments across DC.

Historic monuments in Washington DC were vandalized and desecrated by pro-Palestine protestors today pic.twitter.com/prGDnAeafg

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 5, 2023

Statue of President Andrew Jackson gets DESECRATED with the Palestinian flag in Lafayette Park as thousands of Palestinian protesters swarm the streets in Washington DC.

📸@stevennelson10 pic.twitter.com/orr4xE1dmq

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) November 5, 2023

🚨 BREAKING: Pro-Palestine protesters are vandalizing the statues in Lafayette Park outside of the White House pic.twitter.com/3qRiwdmvZS

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 5, 2023

Earlier Saturday, rapper Macklemore spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally in DC, in which he told the crowd that “They told me to be quiet, they told me to do my research, to go back, that it’s too complex to say something, to be silent in this moment,” referring to the pro-Israel camp.

“In the last three weeks, I’ve gone back and I have done some research, I’m teachable,” he told the crowd. “I don’t know everything, but I know enough to know that this is a genocide.”

Macklemore speaks at the “Free Palestine” rally in DC:

“They told me to do my research, that it’s too complex, to be silent … In the last 3 weeks, I’ve gone back & I have done some research, I don’t know everything, but I know enough to know that this is a genocide.” pic.twitter.com/QQcjZQcSFQ

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) November 4, 2023

Macklemore first offered Palestinians his support two weeks ago on Instagram, where he said he couldn’t “stay silent any longer.”

The rapper said he was “deeply hurt for the Israelis that lost loved ones,” but didn’t believe in “killing innocent humans in retaliation.”

“This is why I am supporting the people around the world who are calling for a ceasefire. We are witnessing an unfolding genocide in Palestine at this very moment.”

At the DC event, many speakers took hits at the President, especially his pledge to send $14 billion in aid to Israel. -NY Post

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also spoke out, posting a video in which he condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” for “hitting hospitals, refugee camps, and killing thousands of innocent people.”

Israel’s indiscriminate bombing is hitting hospitals, refugee camps, and killing thousands of innocent people. It must stop now. pic.twitter.com/WA2x2Gosti

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 4, 2023

The anti-Biden backlash to US support of Israel is a serious issue for Democrats, whose support they rely on.

The leftists at The Hill panicked, framing the situation as “Sure – American Muslims might be pissed, but Trump’s worse!“

…which comes on the heels of the White House’s ham-fisted ‘strategy to combat Islamophobia,” which the DC protesters immediately saw right through.

Kamala Harris announces the “country’s first National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia” to “combat a surge of hate in America.”

pic.twitter.com/lmkb5bDISp

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 1, 2023

Oh, and Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter (whose father is Jewish) just raised $8 million for Gaza. Let’s see if that’s enough to convince protesters that $14.3 billion to Israel right now isn’t ‘funding genocide,’ as they say.

Bonus footage:

ANTIFA MEETS ISLAM pic.twitter.com/0ynFFGcRIe

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) November 4, 2023

He really spoke the words out loud… Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that the war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas is “taking away the focus” from the Ukraine conflict. 

He made the remarks in a press conference in Kiev while standing alongside EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, at a moment headlines have turned negative on the prospect of ever being able to beat back the Russians. “Of course, it’s clear that the war in the Middle East, this conflict, is taking away the focus,” Zelensky said in the surprisingly blunt admission.

He began his remarks by commenting on the front line situation, which hasn’t changed significantly in many months. “Time has passed, people are tired… But this is not a stalemate,” he said.

“No one among our partners is pressuring us to sit down with Russia, talk to it, and give it something,” he added, after reports have in the last days emerged that Washington is exploring possible concessions to the Russians behind the scenes. 

Zelensky claimed that it’s “Russia’s goal” to take global focus away from the Ukraine war. “We have already been in very difficult situations when there was almost no focus on Ukraine,” he said, before adding, “I am absolutely sure we will overcome this challenge.”

Now nearly one month after the horrific Hamas Oct.7 terror attack on southern Israel, the crisis in Gaza is completely dominating headlines. In recent weeks, news of Ukraine-Russia has actually slipped from the front page of major American newspapers.

In Saturday’s press conference he also tried to push back against the slew of recent pessimistic headlines, per Bloomberg:

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pushed back on an NBC report that US and European officials have begun pressuring Kyiv toward possible peace negotiations with Moscow. “I do not know who is publishing this and for what,” Zelenskiy said

As we explained earlier, in the wake of Ukraine’s costly and futile counteroffensive, Washington’s proxy war with Russia is facing strong headwinds at home: 

• The war between Hamas and Israel has diverted public attention and sapped the war state’s ability to propagandize voters. Indeed, Biden’s Oval Office address appealing for aid for Ukraine and Israel was originally planned to focus solely on Ukraine, NBC reports. 
• The US public’s pro-Ukraine fervor has cooled: A new Gallup poll found 41% say the US is doing too much for Ukraine — a big leap from the 29% who said that in June. Many Americans think that money should be used to improve conditions at home. 
• A growing number of congressional Republicans have put away their rubber stamp for Ukraine aid, and have thus far thwarted Biden’s request for $61 billion in additional funding for the war. Biden’s ploy of a joint funding request that combines controversial Ukraine aid with Israel aid is in grave jeopardy, as House Republicans demand separate votes. 

This is what desperation looks like…..

(Von der Leyen visiting Zelensky) pic.twitter.com/U3VePYthgx

— Richard (@ricwe123) November 4, 2023

Washington’s blank-check support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza is further straining an already Ukraine-sapped American arsenal. Tens of thousands of artillery shells that had been earmarked for Ukraine are being redirected to the IDF.

Even before Hamas attacked Israel, an increasingly severe shortage of conventional shells for the artillery-heavy war in Ukraine led Biden to give Zelensky toxic, depleted uranium shells, stirring an international outcry.

Authored by Ivan Serrano via Bitcoin Magazine,

Gold has traditionally played the role of a conservative and uncorrelated investment vehicle, but that is starting to be seriously challenged by Bitcoin…

Gold has played a vital role in economics and politics, influencing much of human financial activity through shifts in economic systems. It has proven versatile and stable across upheavals and social changes. It even became a vital tool in global trade and currency exchange as we know it today.

In the 19th century, gold was the backbone of the global monetary system. Nations relied on the gold standard until the Great Depression and World War I. These events were significant inflationary catalysts, and economies, in a decades-long transition, abandoned the gold standard.

This process culminated in 1971 when the Federal Exchange could no longer exchange US dollars for gold. In 1976, the gold standard was abandoned entirely, and gold became a free asset.

Today, it is still considered a reliable store of value with a well-established market. After all, it has had the luxury of centuries—through various cycles of prosperity and economic upheavals—to prove its reputation. Gold boasts high liquidity and can be easily traded or sold in multiple forms: bars, coins, jewelry, or other representative instruments.

GOLD VS BITCOIN: THE BATTLE OF UNCORRELATED ASSETS

In retirement investments, gold is an uncorrelated asset, showing an average annual return that has reliably kept pace with inflation. In times of economic uncertainty, investors move to gold because of its reputation as a store of value and its non-correlation with stocks, which makes it ideal during market downturns.

However, today’s evolving monetary technology has provided investors with a new option: Bitcoin. Although it is a relatively new asset whose economic impact is still unfolding, Bitcoin has already been called “digital gold.” It shares many characteristics with gold, including its capped supply and its potential as a store of value.

In addition, Bitcoin offers a new type of value in the age of connectivity. It can be transferred digitally, something that physical gold cannot do. It is the world’s first digital bearer asset, a remarkable feat achieved through the convergence of economic design, cryptography, and decentralized networks.

For investors, the perfect portfolio—a balance of assets that echoes an individual’s risk preference and fits the economic climate of the times—is an ever-evolving target. All investors and professional fund managers seek new ways to add growth and diversification.

Retirees seek investments that provide diversification, preservation of wealth, and stability. On top of these, many retirees seek continued income that can only arise from growth—investments that capitalize on the opportunities of the times.

Finding the right mix of less risky, stable, and higher-risk growth assets has always been challenging for even the most experienced financial planners. Some believe Bitcoin fits into the new retirement portfolio as an added diversifier. Like gold, it can work as an uncorrelated asset and hedge against systemic risks.

BITCOIN IRAS: EXPOSURE TO THE BEST PERFORMING ASSET OF 2023

Another way to replicate current investment products is the creation of Bitcoin IRAs. The IRS considers Bitcoin and other crypto investments in retirement accounts as property. Government rules prevent Roth IRAs from holding “coins” and “collectibles,” but these do not appear to cover Bitcoin.

According to NYDIG’s most recent reports, Bitcoin tops its 2023 returns list based on asset class. As of October 6, 2023, it boasts a 63.3% increase YTD, besting US large caps (28.2%), commodities (6%), cash (3.8%), and gold (1.1%). On a countdown to its next halving—around April 2024—many investors are eyeing Bitcoin as a possible addition to their retirement accounts.

Some IRA providers are already offering crypto investments in the form of cryptocurrency IRAs—specifically Bitcoin IRAs. A Bitcoin IRA works like any traditional self-directed IRA (SDIRA) and carries the same benefits. Instead of investing in Bitcoin directly and taking charge of one’s custody, Bitcoin IRAs provide the investor convenience, security, and ease.

A Bitcoin IRA lets you buy and sell Bitcoin in a tax-advantaged retirement account. A Bitcoin IRA allows retirees to maintain traditional retirement accounts while having a separate account that invests in novel currencies like Bitcoin.

WHY ADD IT TO YOUR PORTFOLIO?

Many Bitcoin advocates promote Bitcoin as “digital gold.” This simplified view has been held and promoted by those who believe Bitcoin can serve as a reliable store of value in digital form.

Based on this view, Bitcoin investments analogous to gold products are already being created. Just as gold ETFs hold physical gold as their underlying asset, Bitcoin products are structured similarly to these ETFs and provide exposure through funds traded on stock exchanges.

The first applications of Bitcoin ETFs have been lodged in recent years, with multi-trillion asset managers like BlackRock and Fidelity providing optimism about their future. The recent verdict of a DC court on Grayscale’s bitcoin ETF application invalidating the SEC’s argument for denying its Bitcoin investment product has been interpreted as a turning point for the industry.

Proponents of Bitcoin ETFs remain vigilant as efforts to gain approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF persist from prominent asset managers. Depending on how the SEC reacts, Bitcoin ETF approvals may follow, opening the floodgates for increased demand.

Image by Kanchanara on Unsplash

MAKE RETIREMENT PLANNING LESS COMPLEX WITH A BITCOIN IRA

Despite its status as a new asset, Bitcoin’s performance in 2023 stood out for its ability to keep a narrow trading range despite intense external pressures. It’s been trading sideways around the $25,000 to $31,000 range, resisting volatility and breakouts in either direction.

Retirees or those planning for retirement interested in adding riskier assets to their portfolios, moving with the times, and seeking avenues for future growth can add Bitcoin to their retirement investments without learning the technical nuances of keeping their Bitcoin safe.

They can set up Bitcoin IRAs either as traditional or Roth accounts. A Roth Bitcoin IRA permits tax-free withdrawals in retirement. A traditional Bitcoin IRA offers tax-deferred growth. Retirees in higher tax brackets can take advantage of this feature.

Why consider Bitcoin IRAs over purchasing and storing Bitcoin directly? Bitcoin IRAs extend to estate planning easily, providing a new advantage compared to traditional retirement accounts. Swan Bitcoin IRA, for example, offers enterprise-grade custody with insurance coverage. It provides a layer of protection essential for retirees who may not be well-versed in crypto security.

Moreover, Bitcoin IRAs provide a legal framework for individual investors, protecting them from tax issues, legal uncertainties, and non-compliance risks. Investors are assured that their investments are fully compliant with existing financial regulations.

Despite being a novel instrument, Bitcoin IRAs may provide a path for continued wealth-building during retirement. They offer the potential for growth, diversification, and tax advantages in one package within the framework of a familiar and regulated environment. They are one way to benefit from Bitcoin’s uncorrelated nature and future potential.

As with any investment, retirees should consult a financial advisor to confirm whether a Bitcoin IRA investment conforms with their resources, risk tolerance, time horizon, and financial goals. In a brave new world of retirement planning, Bitcoin IRAs offer an alternative, innovative, and compelling proposition to explore the rewards of Bitcoin investments, even for those not delving into the technological complexities of crypto.

Over the years, Warren Buffett has been opportunistic and “fluid” with his ideals and political opinions – he describes himself as a “democrat” yet without batting an eyelid will demand government bailouts for his portfolio of companies –  but he has been steadfast about one thing: he refuses to spend money on stock purchases or corporate acquisitions unless there is significant value to be exploited. In which case, one can probably conclude that the market is still woefully overvalued because earlier today Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway reported solid Q3 earnings but more importantly, revealed a cash pile that had grown by $10 billion in the third quarter to a record $157.2 billion (consisting of $30.8 billion in cash and $126.4 billion in investments in T-Bills, up from $93 billion at the end of last year), and set to overtake Apple’s own cash hoard (which as we noted earlier this week has been declining) of $162 billion as soon as this quarter.

“Cash deployment is definitely slowing,” said Jim Shanahan, an analyst with Edward Jones. “Ultimately Berkshire’s going to start feeling some pressure to put cash to work.”

Perhaps… but not yet; in fact in the third quarter, Berkshire was a net seller of stock for the fourth quarter, liquidating another $5.3 billion in shares and bringing the total sales over the past 12 months to a record $38.3 billion.

Despite ramping up Berkshire’s acquisition machine in recent years, the company has still struggled to find many of the big-ticket deals that galvanized Buffett’s renown, leaving him with more cash than he and his investing deputies could quickly deploy. After hanging back during the pandemic, he’s since snapped up shares in Occidental Petroleum (despite owning 26% of the company, Buffett has said he has no plans to acquire the company outright) and struck a $11.6 billion deal to buy Alleghany. Buffett has also leaned heavily on share repurchases amid the dearth of appealing alternatives, saying the measures benefit shareholders.

Separately, the conglomerate also reported operating earnings of $10.76 billion, a jump on the prior year, as it benefited from the impact of elevated interest rates on the cash pile and gains at its insurance businesses. However, including investment and derivatives losses, Berkshire posted a loss for the quarter of almost $12.8 billion, well above last year’s $2.8 billion loss, which largely came from a decline in its big Apple stake. Shares of the iPhone maker fell 11.7% during the quarter but have rebounded over 3% since.

Strength in Berkshire’s insurance unit, plus the inclusion of Pilot Flying J earnings which Berkshire did not include in results last year, helped drive profitability. Berkshire said its insurance businesses posted a profit of $2.42 billion versus a loss in the prior-year period, when the insurance industry was being pummeled by catastrophes.

Geico, the crown jewel of Berkshire’s insurance empire and Buffett’s “favorite child,” reported another profitable quarter as it curtailed advertising expenses by 54% year-to-date; total underwriting earnings at the unit were $1.1 billion. The auto insurer is in the middle of a turnaround after losing market share to competitor Progressive. The improvement follows efforts by the division to overhaul underwriting after struggling with higher costs for replacing or repairing damaged vehicles. The effort cost it market share — raising the question if it will seek to reclaim that ground.

Berkshire’s railroad, BNSF, however, saw a 15% decline in earnings as the railroad division grappled with lower volumes and higher costs.

Berkshire posted stronger operating earnings despite Buffett cautioning at its annual meeting in Omaha in May that earnings at the majority of its operating units could fall this year as an “incredible period” for the US economy draws to the end. Still, the Fed’s rapid rate hikes helped the firm reap huge returns on the cash it stockpiles mostly in short-dated US Treasuries.

That said, those higher rates also created headaches for some of Berkshire’s industrial businesses: the conglomerate’s building products businesses saw revenue slip 11% due to the run-up in mortgage rates.

“The effects of significant increases in home mortgage interest rates in the US over the past year has slowed demand for our home building businesses and our other building products businesses,” Berkshire said in a report detailing results. “We continue to anticipate certain of our businesses will experience weakening demand and declines in revenues and earnings into 2024.”

The jump in profits has been rewarded by the market, which pushed Berkshire’s Class B shares to a record high in September as investors sought out its diversified range of businesses as a hedge against deteriorating economic conditions. And while the shares pared some of those gains, the stock is still up almost 14% for the full year, in line with the S&P500.

A part of that boost to BRK’s stock came from the company itself: the firm spent $1.1 billion on buybacks in Q3, bringing the total for the first nine months of the year to about $7 billion. The conglomerate trimmed its overall equities portfolio in the quarter, making almost $15.7 billion on sales net of purchases.

As usual, Berkshire Hathaway asked investors to look past the quarterly fluctuations in Berkshire’s equity portfolio.

“The amount of investment gains/losses in any given quarter is usually meaningless and delivers figures for net earnings (losses) per share that can be extremely misleading to investors who have little or no knowledge of accounting rules,” the company said in a statement.

Berkshire also acknowledged the negative economic impact from the pandemic, as well as geopolitical risks and inflation pressures.

“To varying degrees, our operating businesses have been impacted by government and private sector actions to mitigate the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 virus and its variants as well as by the development of geopolitical conflicts, supply chain disruptions and government actions to slow inflation,” Berkshire said. “The economic effects from these events over longer terms cannot be reasonably estimated at this time.”

Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute,

As the long-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia stalls and a new war in Gaza draws the world’s attention, American support for funding Kyiv’s war has waned. In an effort to reverse this, the Biden administration is changing its messaging. A Politico report from last week details how White House aides are now telling members of Congress to sell Americans the lie that continuing to send money and weapons to Ukraine is good for the economy.

President Joe Biden made this point himself when he introduced a $105 billion proposal to send military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan:

We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles, with new equipment. Equipment that defends America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defense batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas. And so much more.

With this new talking point, the Biden administration is echoing Senator Mitch McConnell, who has for months been saying that the war in Ukraine is an excellent deal because American companies get paid, the Russian regime is weakened, and only Ukrainians have to die.

Setting aside the morality or practicality of Biden and McConnell’s foreign policy ambitions, the argument that all this military spending is good for the American economy relies on one of the oldest, most pervasive economic fallacies in our political discourse—the broken window fallacy.

First outlined by French economist Frédéric Bastiat in his essay “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen” and later expounded upon by economic journalist Henry Hazlitt in his book Economics in One Lesson, the broken window fallacy is the false belief that spending money on restoring things that have been destroyed can make an economy richer.

To make this point, Bastiat used the example of a broken shop window. After his careless son breaks a pane of glass, a shopkeeper is forced to hire a glazier to repair the damage. A group of bystanders reflect on the situation and question their impulse to condemn the boy. After all, they ask, “what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

In Hazlitt’s telling, the bystanders point to all the economic activity that will come from the shopkeeper’s purchase of a new $50 windowpane. “The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum.” That leads the crowd to the fallacious conclusion that because of all the resulting economic activity that his breaking of the window incited, the shopkeeper’s son should be considered a public benefactor.

The problem with this thinking, Bastiat and Hazlitt explain, is that it cites only the economic activity that can be seen to result from the broken window. What goes unseen is the cost—all the economic activity the shopkeeper would have instead spurred had he not been forced to buy a new window.

And because the shopkeeper would have preferred to spend the $50 elsewhere, the breaking of the window can only be considered a net loss. The glazier benefits from the shopkeeper’s loss, but the shopkeeper and therefore the overall economy are made poorer.

How does this relate to the Biden-McConnell talking point? After all, isn’t the destruction happening far away in Ukraine and Gaza?

It’s important not to get distracted by the act of destruction in Bastiat’s parable. The central element of his argument is not the broken window alone but the fact that the shopkeeper is forced to pay for a new one.

When the American people are forced to pay for weapons and equipment to replace those sent to Ukraine, they lose out on all the economic activity that they would have preferred to partake in, just like the shopkeeper.

And although, like the glazier, the five prime defense contractors benefit from the influx of tax dollars, the American people as a whole can only be made worse off. There is no growth, only a forced transfer of wealth to the weapons companies.

We have so far been forced to pay for over $44 billion worth of weaponry for Ukraine and $3.3 billion per year in military aid to Israel. Now another $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Israel have been proposed. This spending would increase the burden that has already been forced on the American people. If Biden, McConnell, and their supporters think Americans have an obligation to shoulder that cost, they should at least have the decency not to pretend it’s making us more prosperous.

In keeping with the stereotype that only the absolute classiest people in the world take cruises, a couple on a Carnival Cruise Line from Baltimore to Bermuda has been accused of stealing nearly $13,000 in sculptures.  

Carnival’s ships feature “an ever-changing collection of fine art”, their website says. The company even conducts art auctions, with ABC News pointing out that the company’s marketing materials invite customers to “[s]ip some champagne, browse the gallery and bid on a piece to take home as a trip memento.”

But now the FBI says two pieces worth $13,000 were taken by one couple…without them bidding on it. 

According to ABC, in legal papers submitted this past Tuesday to a federal court in Baltimore, the FBI reveals that an art auctioneer aboard a ship stumbled upon the disappearance of two art pieces on Oct. 1, a day following the vessel’s return to Baltimore after a week’s voyage. 

The absent artwork includes a Lucite sculpture valued at $6,200, crafted by the American artist Robert Wyland and titled “Kiss the Sea,” which showcases two sea turtles and is comparable in size to a small rucksack.

The second piece, a marginally smaller work by American artist Marcus Glenn called “Tappin’ the Keys for the Love,” presents a man at a piano with a heart backdrop and has an estimated worth of $6,600, as stated by the FBI.

Subsequent analysis of the ship’s security camera recordings by Carnival’s security team revealed footage of two individuals. Captured slightly after 2 a.m. a couple of days prior, these two are seen entering the art gallery with nothing in hand and departing shortly thereafter, clutching items resembling the absent artworks, the article says. 

Following a deeper probe, court records indicate that the suspects are a trucking firm worker and his female partner. A Facebook scan by an FBI agent revealed a photo of the male suspect wearing attire matching that in the security footage. Upon receiving judicial consent, the FBI conducted searches at the suspects’ residences, leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks, as confirmed by a U.S. Attorney’s Office representative in Baltimore.

While their names haven’t yet been released, the FBI is considering pressing federal charges pertaining to theft and transporting stolen items. The cruise line even jokes about the quality of its auctions on its website, writing they are far from the “room of too-serious old men, many wearing monocles, paying top-dollar for priceless antique works of art.”

We can already see the couple’s defense now: “So, what’d ya expect us to do?”

Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Black Voices for Trump leader Harrison Floyd’s legal team intends to prove his innocence of claims he unlawfully participated in an election subversion plot in Fulton County, Georgia, by showing that former President Donald Trump won the state’s 2020 presidential election.

Mr. Floyd was charged on Aug. 14 alongside the 45th president and 17 other co-defendants with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings, and influencing witnesses.

He was the only defendant to spend time in jail due to the indictment before he was released on bond on Aug. 30.

“Your Honor, this case isn’t about whether you or I think that Donald Trump lost the election. It’s about what Mr. Floyd believed at the time,” noted Chris Kachouroff, one of Mr. Floyd’s defense attorneys, at a Nov. 3 hearing before Judge Scott McAfee.

Materials the attorneys requested included the ballot images and envelopes for all absentee ballots cast in the 2020 general election, all absentee ballot application forms, reports from the Dominion voting machines used, and all laptops and poll pads used by election workers, along with other documents, files, and drives.

Attorneys also requested all documents and recordings concerning the secretary of state’s post-election investigation into allegations of election fraud.

“The state chose to open this door,” Mr. Kachouroff said. “It is a broad and sweeping complaint. They opened the door wide open for us to walk in and ask for these things.”

The attorney noted that the 98-page indictment repeatedly asserts as fact that President Trump lost the 2020 election in Georgia, and the charges against Mr. Floyd are predicated on that claim. But if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is wrong and President Trump actually won the election, then Mr. Floyd cannot be guilty of soliciting “false statements and writings” that conveyed as much.

The indictment also maintains that Mr. Floyd and the other co-defendants were aware that President Trump lost the election and that their actions constituted an unlawful conspiracy to change the results in his favor.

That assertion, Mr. Kachouroff said, would also be undermined by proof that the former president won or even just proof that the election’s outcome is uncertain. And the subpoenaed materials, he argued, are likely to contain that proof.

“We could make that argument that he’s innocent no matter what happened,” he noted. “And, of course, we would. We’re defense attorneys; that’s what we do.

Contesting the subpoena before the judge, Mr. Sharmon said the requested documents contain “little, if anything,” relevant to Mr. Floyd’s defense.

“If the purpose is state of mind, his intent, the documents we would produce—which he didn’t know about, he didn’t have—are not going to have any effect on the determination of his intent at the time he allegedly undertook the acts that are in the indictment.”

Mr. Sharmon also challenged the defense’s argument that proving President Trump won the election would necessarily erase the possibility that Mr. Floyd had criminal intent.

“With all due respect, I don’t think that’s the case,” he said. “That’s not the way intent, in a criminal case, is adjudicated.”

Meanwhile, attorneys for Fulton County said it could take months to produce the requested materials. And in terms of relevance, they pointed to Mr. Kachouroff’s admission that he could argue his client’s innocence even without the requested materials as evidence they weren’t needed.

But for Mr. Kachouroff, the state’s arguments didn’t negate his client’s right to those materials.

“Harrison Floyd is looking at between eight and 33 years. That’s his liberty interest. Courts take liberty interest very seriously so that liberty interest overcomes any burden the state has to be set back by a month or two or three.”

By the end of the hearing, the three subpoenas were reduced to two as it was revealed that the Board of Elections did not possess any of the requested materials, which are held by the Clerk of Courts.

The judge, expressing concern over the potential disclosure of voters’ personally identifiable information, said more information was needed to determine what exactly was being requested, the extent of the state’s burden in producing it, and whether a protective order was needed.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, xAI, is positioning itself as a competitor to OpenAI, which Musk helped establish in 2015 before eventually parting ways with it. xAI is rolling out its own large language model, just like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, featuring a new capability to scrape the ‘free speech’ platform X in real-time. 

Early Friday morning, Musk posted, “Tomorrow, @xAI will release its first AI to a select group. In some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.” 

Tomorrow, @xAI will release its first AI to a select group.

In some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2023

Then, on Friday night, Musk wrote, “As soon as it’s out of early beta, xAI’s Grok system will be available to all X Premium+ subscribers.” 

As soon as it’s out of early beta, xAI’s Grok system will be available to all X Premium+ subscribers

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023

Musk’s post reveals Grok is a model that answers questions conversationally and could be based on models similar to train ChatGPT and other text-generating models (such as Meta’s Llama 2).

Here’s some of Musk’s humor:

Grok has real-time access to info via the 𝕏 platform, which is a massive advantage over other models.

It’s also based & loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way 🤷‍♂️ 🤣 pic.twitter.com/e5OwuGvZ3Z

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023

Details about Grok remain scarce, yet indications are that the wealthiest man in the world is initiating a ‘counter LLM’ movement that will challenge the already mass-available LLMs on the market, such as ChatGPT, which is super ‘woke’ and has Soviet-style censorship. 

In April, Musk sat down with Tucker Carlson in an interview and discussed the need to develop his own LLM called TruthGPT, a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”

“I’m going to start something which you call TruthGPT or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe. And I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe.”

By July, Musk launched xAI. The company is led by the billionaire and former employees of OpenAI, DeepMind, Google Research, and Microsoft Research, as well as employees from Tesla and folks from the University of Toronto. 

Musk has taken issue with OpenAI’s GPT in the past, expressing that the underlying model is super biased and “woke.” 

“The overarching goal of xAI is to build a good [artificial general intelligence] with the overarching purpose of understanding the universe,” the billionaire has previously said, adding, “The safest way to build an AI is to make one that is maximally curious and truth-seeking.”

In September, Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, revealed that xAI had signed a contract to train its AI model on Oracle’s cloud. 

On Thursday, Musk, speaking at the United Kingdom’s AI Safety Summit, warned AI is “one of the most disruptive forces in history.” 

He told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, “AI will be a force for good most likely, but the probability of it going bad is not zero percent.” 

Musk then compared AI to a “magic genie” and explained that fairy tales with magic genies that grant wishes “don’t end well” and cause people to “be careful what you wish for.”

To sum up, Musk has just kicked off the counter LLM movement against the censorship industrial complex’s current chatbots on the market. This is more evidence the parallel economy is gaining momentum.