Authored by Rebekah Barnett via The Brownstone Institute,

The Australian Government’s proposed new laws to crack down on misinformation and disinformation have drawn intense criticism for their potential to restrict free expression and political dissent, paving the way for a digital censorship regime reminiscent of Soviet Lysenkoism…

Under the draft legislation, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will gain considerable expanded regulatory powers to “combat misinformation and disinformation,” which ACMA says poses a “threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy.”

Digital platforms will be required to share information with ACMA on demand, and to implement stronger systems and processes for handling of misinformation and disinformation.

ACMA will be empowered to devise and enforce digital codes with a “graduated set of tools” including infringement notices, remedial directions, injunctions and civil penalties, with fines of up to $550,000 (individuals) and $2.75 million (corporations). Criminal penalties, including imprisonment, may apply in extreme cases.

Controversially, the government will be exempt from the proposed laws, as will professional news outlets, meaning that ACMA will not compel platforms to police misinformation and disinformation disseminated by official government or news sources. 

As the government and professional news outlets have been, and continue to be, a primary source of online misinformation and disinformation, it is unclear that the proposed laws will meaningfully reduce online misinformation and disinformation. Rather, the legislation will enable the proliferation of official narratives, whether true, false or misleading, while quashing the opportunity for dissenting narratives to compete. 

Faced with the threat of penalty, digital platforms will play it safe. This means that for the purposes of content moderation, platforms will treat the official position as the ‘true’ position, and contradictory information as ‘misinformation.’

Some platforms already do this. For example, YouTube recently removed a video of MP John Ruddick’s maiden speech to the New South Wales Parliament on the grounds that it contained ‘medical misinformation,’ which YouTube defines as any information that, “contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19.”

YouTube has since expanded this policy to encompass a wider range of “specific health conditions and substances,” though no complete list is given as to what these specific conditions and substances are. Under ACMA’s proposed laws, digital platforms will be compelled to take a similar line.

This flawed logic underpins much of the current academic misinformation research, including the University of Canberra study which informed the development of ACMA’s draft legislation. Researchers asked respondents to agree or disagree with a range of statements ranging from the utility of masks in preventing Covid infection and transmission, to whether Covid vaccines are safe. Where respondents disagreed with the official advice, they were categorised as ‘believing misinformation,’ regardless of the contestability of the statements.

The potential for such circular definitions of misinformation and disinformation to escalate the censorship of true information and valid expression on digital platforms is obvious. 

Free expression has traditionally been considered essential to the functioning of liberal democratic societies, in which claims to truth are argued out in the public square. Under ACMA’s bill, the adjudication of what is (and is not) misinformation and disinformation will fall to ‘fact-checkers,’ AI, and other moderation tools employed by digital platforms, all working to the better-safe-than-sorry-default of bolstering the official position against contradictory ‘misinformation.’ 

But the assumption that such tools are capable of correctly adjudicating claims to truth is misguided. ‘Fact-checkers’ routinely make false claims and fall back on logical fallacies in lieu of parsing evidence. In US court proceedings, ‘fact-checker’ claims are protected under the First Amendment, confirming that the edicts of ‘fact-checkers’ are just opinion.

Recent reporting on the gaming of social media moderation tools, most notably from the Twitter Files and the Facebook Files, shows that they comprise a powerful apparatus for promoting false narratives and suppressing true information, with significant real-world impacts. Take the Russia collusion hoax, which was seeded by think tanks and propagated by social media platforms and news media. The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is thought to have swung the 2020 US election outcome. 

ACMA seeks to curtail expression under the proposition that misinformation and disinformation can cause ‘harm,’ but the scope is extraordinarily broad. A shopping list of potential harms includes: identity-based hatred; disruption of public order or society; harm to democratic processes; harm to government institutions; harm to the health of Australians; harm to the environment; economic or financial harm to Australians or to the economy.

The overly broad and vague definitions offered in the bill for ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘serious harm’ makes enforcement of the proposed laws inherently subjective and likely to result in a litany of court cases – to the benefit of lawyers and the institutionally powerful, but to the detriment of everyone else. 

Moreover, the definition of ‘disrupting public order’ as a serious and chronic harm could be used to prevent legitimate protest, a necessary steam valve in a functioning democracy. 

ACMA says that the proposed laws aren’t intended to infringe on the right to protest, yet the erosion of protest rights during Covid lockdowns proves that politicians and bureaucrats are prone to take great latitude where the law allows it. The right to protest was effectively suspended in some states, with Victorian police using unprecedented violence and issuing charges of incitement to deter protestors. 

In the US, the involvement of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in censoring online speech and, in particular, its framing of public opinion as ‘cognitive infrastructure’ demonstrates how even policies designed to combat ‘threats to infrastructure’ can be subverted as a means clamp down on ‘wrong-think.’

In the past, extreme censorship has led to mass casualty events, such as the Soviet famine of the 1930s brought on by Lysenkoism. Biologist Trofim Lysenko’s unscientific agrarian policies were treated as gospel by Stalin’s censorious Communist regime. It was reported that thousands of dissenting scientists were dismissed, imprisoned, or executed for their efforts to challenge Lysenko’s policies. Up to 10 million lives were lost in the resultant famine – lives that could have been saved had the regime allowed the expression of viewpoints counter to the official position.

History tells us that censorship regimes never end well, though it may take a generation for the deadliest consequences to play out. The draft legislation is now under review following a period of public consultation. Hopefully, the Australian Government will take the historical lesson and steer Australia off this treacherous path. 

The U.S. is a major producer and exporter of food products, but did you know that it’s also one of the world’s largest food importers?

As Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details below, due to seasonality and climate, some foods can’t be grown on home soil, at least enough to fulfill consumption demands. Indeed, many familiar grocery items come from other countries.

This infographic from Julie Peasley uses data from the Chatham House Resource Trade Database (CHRTD) to show where the U.S. gets its food from, highlighting the top exporting countries of various imported food items.

The Types of Imported Foods

The U.S. imported around $148 billion worth of agricultural products in 2020, and according to the USDA, this has since risen to $194 billion in 2022.

Around 50% of all U.S. agricultural imports are horticultural products like fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and more. Other large import categories include sugar and tropical products, meat, grains, and oilseeds.

With that context in mind, we break down each category and highlight the five foods with the largest single-origin import value.

Farm Fresh: Fruit and Vegetable Imports

U.S. fruit and vegetable imports have been on a steady rise since 2000. In fact, between 2011 and 2021, fruits and nuts imports made up 44% of domestic consumption, while 35% of vegetables consumed in the U.S. came from outside the country.

Mexico is by far the largest exporter of fruits and vegetables to the United States.

The U.S. imported $2.5 billion worth of tomatoes from Mexico in 2020, representing 31% of international tomato trade. Avocados, native to central Mexico, were nearly as popular with $2.1 billion worth of imports.

Generally, the largest exporters of fruits and vegetables to the U.S. are North and South American countries, with products often coming from Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

Beefed Up: Meat Imports

The U.S. is the world’s largest overall consumer of beef (or bovine meat), and the third-largest per capita consumer at nearly 37.9 kg (84 lbs) per person per year.

Therefore, despite being one of the top producers of beef, the country still imports a lot of it.

Precisely, The U.S. imported $8.7 billion worth of meat in 2020. Canada was the largest source of imported beef, with the U.S. accounting for more than 70% of all Canadian beef exports.

The sources of meat imports are more geographically diverse than fruits and vegetables, with billions of dollars of imports coming from New Zealand and Australia.

Making Waves: Seafood Imports

Despite plenty of coastlines, the U.S. imports 70–85% of all its seafood and accounted for 15% of global seafood imports in 2020 at $21.8 billion.

Frozen shrimp and prawns were the top seafood import, with $1.9 billion worth from India.

The largest source of U.S. seafood imports overall with $3.1 billion total was Canada, which leads in lobster, crab, and whole fish imports. It was followed by Chile at $2.1 billion, primarily for parts of fish (fillet or meat, fresh or chilled).

Other Foods: Oils, Grains, Coffee, and More

There are plenty of other types of foods and agricultural products that the U.S. relies on other countries for. Here are the largest single-origin U.S. food imports for the remaining categories:

Some of the highest and potentially surprising exports? Imports of refined Canadian canola oil totaled $1.4 billion in 2020, while Vietnam exported a whopping $960 million worth of cashews to America.

A Global Plate: The Diversity of U.S. Food Imports

The amount and value of food imported to the U.S. highlights the diversity of consumer preferences and the importance of global food stocks, considering America is one of the world’s leading food producers.

With countries having to rely on others to satisfy demand for limited production supply or exotic foods, the interconnectedness of the global food system is both vital and delicate.

What’s clear is that the U.S. food plate is indeed a global one, with many foods taking remarkable journeys from farm to fork.

The Bud Light backlash shows no signs of stopping: AB InBev’s US volumes tanked 15.2% this past month, according to Citi, citing new data from Nielsen. The brewer has not apologized to its base drinkers for its tone-deaf transgender TikTok campaign in April. 

Here are the main points of Citi analyst Simon Hales’ note to clients about “the ongoing backlash to Bud Light’s social media campaign”: 

• ABInBev beer volumes dropped by 15.2% in 4 weeks.

• Market average decrease: 2.8%.

• Beer price/mix increased by 4.1%.

• Total dollar sales for beer fell by 11.7%.

• ABInBev’s total value share decreased by 484bps.

• Beer value share dropped by 555bps.

• Bud Light backlash persists.

• Bud Light contributes to ~30% of the group’s US revenues (about 8% of the group).

• Bud Light volumes: -29.7%; previously -29.9%.

• Budweiser volumes: -25.3%; previously -26.2%.

In the US beer, flavored malt beverage, cider, and seltzer markets, AB InBev is the only major brewer experiencing widespread declines in total value share and volumes in the last four weeks. 

AB InBev’s brand portfolio is suffering at a time when US beer, flavored malt beverage, cider, and seltzer markets are marginally growing. 

Citi’s Hales shows AB InBev’s sales are at a critical low — where either the brewer can revive demand through proper marketing — maybe an apology might work — or face a second exodus wave as drinkers switch to other beers. 

An in-depth view of AB InBev’s declines by brand. 

Hales shows Molson Coors has been one of the biggest winners following Bud Light Marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid’s move to ‘nuke’ the brand with ‘woke’ transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. She was eventually fired. 

In a separate report, Deutsche Bank analyst Mitch Collett warned Bud Light faced a 25% permanent loss of its business. 

Billy Busch, the heir to the Anheuser-Busch dynasty, made a few recent television appearances, telling AB InBev that he would like to buy back the ailing brand to “make the brand great again” (free from woke). 

Bud Light’s PR nightmare, combined with its summertime marketing flop, has failed to revive the brand (for now). Could consumers have finally seen through the façade and realized Bud Light has been handing them ‘piss water masquerading as beer’ for years? 

Meanwhile, the new top-selling beer in the US is Modelo Especial. Epoch Times explained more:

Modelo Especial is now the top-selling beer in the United States, surpassing Bud Light, whose popularity has plummeted in the midst of a lengthy boycott.

Data from Nielsen IQ shows Modelo Especial’s sales at beer and grocery stores surpassed Bud Light’s for the entire year, according to CNN. Modelo got 8.34 percent share of dollars spent on beer, as compared to 8.28 percent for Bud Light from the start of 2023 to Aug. 12.

“The fact that we became the number-one beer in America due to a competitor’s moves is not accurate,” Jim Sabia, executive vice president and managing director of Constellation Brands, said in a recent statement.

Several brewers in the Mid-Atlantic region told us they’ve increased light beer production and expanded portfolios to take market share away from AB InBev. For those seeking a real American-owned beer, ditch the Belgian brewer in favor of local brewers. 

More in the full note available to pro subs.

Authored by Roger Kimball via RealClearPolitics.com,

The real problem with racism in America today is that demand far outstrips supply. Where does the demand come from? Chiefly from our woke elites. It is they who understand that the charge of “racism” is a potent meal ticket and guarantor of institutionalized political power. Accordingly, they have a large stake in perpetuating the reign of racism. In this realm, too, incentives matter.

It is also worth noting that many of these elite race cadets are white. Blacks are invited to participate in this theatrical production, but only so long as they play their assigned roles. They must mouth the pieties about “systemic,” i.e., perpetual, incurable racism. 

The main narrative of this drama is racial conflict, enforced and perpetuated partly by a woke media machine, partly by governmental fiat. The real goal is the destruction of America as a meritocratic republic that cherishes individual liberty and the rule of law.

These are points that Thomas D. Klingenstein makes in “Racism in America Today: A Real or Manufactured Problem?”, a powerful speech he delivered at the Women’s National Republican Club earlier this summer and just posted on his website at tomklingenstein.com.

“To a very significant degree,” he argues, racism is a weapon “crafted by woke Leftists in order to overthrow the American way of life.”

Klingenstein, chairman of the Claremont Institute, is refreshingly forthright. “To the woke Left I say, ‘if you want to destroy America, then we will fight you and defeat you. America is not yours to destroy.’” Hear, hear.

This speech is full of hard truths.

“Blacks commit more than 50% of the violent crime in America,” Klingenstein notes, “yet are only about 13% of population. The woke tell us this is due to racism, but Americans know better. We know that racism does not cause more crime, or out-of-wedlock births, or lower academic achievement.” 

And here’s the kicker:

“It is not racism but culture that causes outcome differences. But the woke make it very difficult for the rest of us to say it, because if it’s culture that explains outcome differences then the blame rests not on whites but on blacks.”

That grinding sound you hear is The Narrative coming unglued. 

Klingenstein is also clearsighted about the ultimate aim of the woke weaponization of race: “group outcome equality.” Most Americans, he points out, believe in color-blind advancement according to merit. Hence “these two goals are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t offer admission to college, medical school, law school, flight training, or anything else according to race and other quotas and, at the same time, offer admission according to merit. It’s one or the other: merit or group quotas.”

Klingenstein is right: “These irreconcilable goals make this struggle a war,” a war in which “the woke Left seeks total victory.” We do not often acknowledge the uncompromising nature of this ideology. What it wants is not compromise, and certainly not conciliation. What it wants is the utter destruction of its enemy, which is us. 

This generally unacknowledged home truth helps to explain why the word “racism” silences conversation and sends an anticipatory shudder of delight down the spines of politically correct vigilantes of virtue. Like the word “heretic” in an earlier age, “racism” is more weapon than word. Its primary effect is not to describe but to intimidate, ostracize, and silence. 

What semantic significance it may command is overshadowed by its use as an epithet. Once  it is successfully applied to a person or practice, a sort of secular damnation, or at least excommunication, ensues. Seldom is there any appeal, let alone absolution. Those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, said St. Mark, cannot be forgiven. Racism is the eternal, the unforgivable, sin of our age. Those successfully accused of racism are beyond the pale, cast out into utter darkness. 

It would be a tall order to explain why this should be so, but it seems clear, as Klingenstein notes, that charges of racism and the pursuit of power go hand in hand. 

The deployment of power always attracts acolytes and entrepreneurs. So it is no surprise that a thriving cottage industry has grown up around accusations of racism. Elsewhere I have called the resulting enterprise “Racism, Inc.” There is no shortage of workers on that assembly line. On college campuses (but not only on college campuses, as such names as Al Sharpton and Ibram X. Kendi remind us), the bludgeon of “racism” is a popular and effective instrument of moral one-upmanship and social control, not to mention intellectual conformity and economic blackmail.

Given the prominence of “racism” in today’s lexicon of moral opprobrium, it is curious that the word itself is of very recent vintage. Indeed, it is a neologism so recent that it does not appear in the 1971 Oxford English Dictionary. The Supplement to my edition of the OED (printed in 1961) introduces “racialism” – the “tendency to racial feeling; antagonism between different races of men” – but fails to provide an equivalent of our multipurpose imprecation “racism.” 

Perhaps that fact is itself evidence of a particularly insidious form of racism – all the more insidious because it is unacknowledged. Or perhaps that fact, along with the recentness of the word in any currency, suggests that there is something artificial, manufactured, or even cynically manipulative about the tort it describes.

Klingenstein’s speech reminded me of a profound observation made some years ago by the philosopher Sidney Hook.

“As morally offensive as is the expression of racism wherever it is found,” Hook wrote, “a false charge of racism is equally offensive, perhaps even more so, because the consequences of a false charge of racism enable an authentic racist to conceal his racism by exploiting the loose way the term is used to cover up his actions.”

Hook wrote that several decades ago. Tom Klingenstein reminds us that we have yet to catch up with it.

In July, the UN’s nuclear watchdog gave Japan the “greenlight” to dump ‘treated’ radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean. And now, the world braces for the first release of radioactive water on Thursday. What could possibly go wrong?

Tokyo Electric Power Company (better known as TEPCO) will begin discharging 1.34 million tons of radioactive water that has accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. It’s part of a $150 billion clean-up effort after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. 

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cleared TEPCO for the Thursday release at a meeting of Cabinet ministers. 

Kishida said at the meeting that the release of the water is essential for the progress of the plant decommissioning and Fukushima prefecture’s recovery from the March 11, 2011, disaster.

He said the government has done everything for now to ensure the safety, combat the reputational damage for the fisheries and to provide transparent and scientific explanation to gain understanding in and outside the country. He pledged that the government will continue the effort until the end of the release and decommissioning, which will take decades. –Bloomberg

The discharge of radioactive water will be released over three decades and has been filtered and diluted. But that hasn’t stopped China and Hong Kong, some of the largest buyers of Japan’s seafood exports, from issuing warnings about bans on seafood imports from 10 prefectures if the dump begins. 

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee stated this week that he had “immediately instructed” trade officials to impose import control measures to “protect Hong Kong’s food safety and public health.”

“The Japanese government insists on discharging nuclear wastewater into the sea.

“This unprecedented decision and practice of discharging a large amount of nuclear waste over 30 years — regardless of the inextricable risks to food safety and the irreversible pollution and damage to the marine environment — is an irresponsible imposition on others,” Lee wrote in a Facebook post. 

In July, Hong Kong banned seafood imports from the Japanese regions of Tokyo, Fukushima, Chiba, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Gunma, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano, and Saitama. Hong Kong is Japan’s second-largest market, after mainland China, for seafood exports. 

Reuters spoke with Halry Yu, 42, owner of the Japanese restaurant Hassun in Hong Kong, who said more than 90% of seafood sent to the city is from Tokyo. He warned:

“If they ban imports that come via Tokyo, I think all sushi restaurants in Hong Kong will be in trouble. There are some seafood supplies from Osaka, but variety is limited.”

Meanwhile, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese state-run Global Times, posted a model of the radioactive water being released that could “Pollute China and the US in 3 years” and “Pollute the whole world in 10 years.” He asked: “Anyone wants to eat radioactive salmon?” 

According to a model made by Tsinghua University, the nuclear-contaminated wastewater discharged by Japan will:

-Pollute China and US in 3 years
-Pollute the whole world in 10 years

Anyone wants to eat radioactive salmon? pic.twitter.com/m9JcAvuilc

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) August 22, 2023

Oddly enough, there has not been a peep about this clear and present ocean disaster from either the original Greta, or her new and improved version for mass-consumption replacement, Sophia Kianni. 

Both social media teams of Kianni and Greta are either bashing oil companies this week or promoting the world is burning — still nothing on Japan. 

Amidst the climate alarmists, Greta and her upgraded version, Kianni (touted as Greta 2.0), seem strangely silent on Japan’s attempt to destroy the oceans with radioactive water. The conspicuous absence of outrage and coverage makes some realize these kids are just puppets, something we’ve known all along, in which they promote nonsense climate ‘news’ to distract from the real disasters. 

We still remember Greta. 

Where’s the coverage on Japan Greta and Greta 2.0?

Authored by Jack Hellner via AmericanThinker.com,

The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a globalist enterprise with at least 14 partners right here in the U.S., and, they have set an “ambitious target” to convince the masses to give up meat, dairy, and private car ownership, as well as almost all flights, to supposedly save the planet and control temperatures forever around the current level.

From RedState yesterday:

Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate organization known as the ‘C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,’ which has an ‘ambitious target‘ by the year 2030 of ‘0 kg [of] meat consumption,’ ‘0 kg [of] dairy consumption,’ ‘3 new clothing items per person per year,’ ‘0 private vehicles’ owned, and ‘1 short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 3 years per person.’ …

The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.

So 14 leftist cities in the U.S. have signed on to this commitment to take away freedom of choice from their citizens, while people suffer under rampant crime and children perform poorly in schools, but their priority is to take away milk, meat, and gas-powered cars. 

Got it.

Major funders and partners of the organization include George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Clinton Foundation, and The World Bank.

Michael Bloomberg, the president of the group, is himself transported via gas-guzzling private jets and limousines, to his many mansions around the world.  From Fox News:

Flight records show that Bloomberg’s private jets took more than 1,700 trips and emitted at least 10,000 metric tons of CO2 from August 2016 to August 2020, a Business Insider analysis found. A typical car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in one year.

Bloomberg has access to multiple private jets, but he wants to limit us to one short-haul flight every three years.

He probably pretends he cares about his carbon footprint by buying worthless pieces of paper called carbon credits.  His real estate portfolio consists of “at least 11 homes,” and he owns a fleet of luxury personal vehicles:

To suit his luxurious fortune, he owns a Mercedes-Benz Maybach sedan. His Audi R8 is the one that shows athletic personification. Like a mandated SUV in the home of every celeb, Cadillac Escalade is tuned in black color. After not getting satisfied with one, he owns another fullsize SUV from Chevrolet.

Bloomberg and other green pushers tell people their gas-powered cars are destroying the planet, yet he has a massive car collection of gas-guzzlers.

They want to outlaw milk; does that include breastfeeding?  Pretty sure that’s a dairy product, and women and babies breathe out that vicious CO2, a non-pollutant, clear gas that makes plants thrive.

These billionaires generate massive pollution and pollute people’s minds with talking points to indoctrinate the people to fall for pure propaganda.

What you will never see in these articles or in these policies is scientific data that show a direct correlation between milk and temperature, cars and temperature, meat and temperature, the population and temperature, crude oil consumption and temperature, or CO2 and temperature.  The temperature fluctuates no matter what the other variables do.

You will also not see any correlation between any of these variables and storm activity or sea levels.

When there is no correlation, you can’t assume causation.  It is all a scam.

The sole purpose of these big government policies by leftists is to control our lives.

These billionaires and other leftists pretend they care about the poor and middle classes and small business, but every day, they show that is a blatant lie.  They are extremely dangerous to our survival as a great and prosperous country, as are all the journalists who regurgitate the talking points without asking questions or doing any research.

FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was tossed in pre-trial detention until his Oct. 2 trial after he showed a journalist from the NY Times private writings from his ex-girlfriend and business partner, Caroline Ellison, and used a VPN in violation of a previous order not to, has been denied vegan meals and adderall, and has been subsisting on ‘bread and water,’ like many crypto bros who trusted their life savings to FTX before SBF and pals allegedly used those funds to try and stave off oblivion.

Appearing before a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday to plead for a narrower indictment on securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges, attorneys for the embattled 31-year-old, who was never going to do well in prison, says he’s “literally subsisting on bread and water” and a scant amount of peanut butter.

The hearing was the first since a judge revoked SBF’s $250 million bail, tossing him into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

SBF lawyer Mark Cohen says that the FTX founder hasn’t been given any Adderall since he was jailed, and has only a few doses left of antidepressant, Emsam. Cohen also argued that the legal team was struggling to cobble together SBF’s defense without access to their client.

At Tuesday’s hearing, his lawyers said the jail’s failure to provide him with the medication Adderall to treat attention deficit hyperactive disorder – despite a court order for the facility to do so – and serve him vegan food would hinder his ability to participate in preparing his defense case. -Reuters

SBF was led into court wearing leg restraints and a beige-colored uniform to appear in front of US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn, where he pleaded “Not guilty” to seven new criminal charges related to making some $100 million in political campaign contributions using stolen customer funds, federal prosecutors allege, after dropping similar charges related to violating US campaign finance laws because the Bahamas threw a fit and ‘did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count.’

According to Christian Everdell, another lawyer for the former billionaire, SBF hasn’t been allowed to review any of the millions of pages of evidence against him, a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

His lawyers also rejected a plan to allow SBF to use a laptop in the cell block of the courthouse to review the evidence with his lawyers two days a week from 9am to 3pm, which Everdell said was inadequate.

“It means he cannot help prepare his defense,” he said.

Bankman entered his ‘Not guilty’ plea in response to seven counts of fraud and money laundering contained in a revised US indictment. According to prosecutors, SBF’s alleged fraud scheme cost customers and investors billions of dollars.

The case is US v. Bankman-Fried, 22-cr-673, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

The BRICS Leaders’ Summit is scheduled to begin today, Aug. 22 in South Africa, which will run through the 24th.

As I’ve been warning, this meeting is the most significant development in international finance in the last 50 years.

It has the potential to displace the U.S. dollar as the leading payment currency and reserve currency from a standing start in just a few years.

This latest monetary change will be delivered by the BRICS, and the world is unprepared for this geopolitical shock to the global financial system. Of course, BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Among the leaders attending the summit are President Xi Jinping of China, President Lula da Silva of Brazil and Prime Minister Modi of India. President Vladimir Putin of Russia cannot attend in person because there’s an outstanding warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges issued by the corrupt International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

South Africa is a member of the ICC and might have been required to arrest Putin on arrival. The in-person delegate for Russia will be Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister.

Shrouded in Mystery

Even at this late date, the official agenda is shrouded in mystery. That’s not unusual considering that the members themselves, especially Russia and China, are accustomed to decision-making behind closed doors.

It’s also not an unusual feature where top leaders are involved. Negotiations tend to go down to the wire; indeed, key decisions will not even be made until the leaders actually get together in one room.

That said, we do know the top two issues that have been discussed by the leaders behind the scenes (often through so-called Sherpas, who are seasoned diplomats working in private to advance the agendas of their respective leaders and to obtain feedback from the other leaders about where points of agreement might actually lie).

What We Know

The first big issue involves new membership. The BRICS may be a five-member group, but over 67 countries have been invited to attend. Among those 67 countries, more than 20 have expressed interest in joining the BRICS, and seven have formally applied for membership.

If any new members are admitted, first on this list will be Saudi Arabia. As of now, both Russia and China favor Saudi Arabia for membership. China is the largest purchaser of Saudi Arabian oil, so a formal alliance including both countries makes sense, especially as they and others move forward on a common currency other than the U.S. dollar. (More about that in a second).

Also, Russia and Saudi Arabia are two of the three largest oil producers in the world (the other being the U.S.), so including both countries in the same group creates a forum that may be more powerful than OPEC when it comes to setting oil prices.

Brazil has been the BRICS member most opposed to admitting new members. That might be understandable in terms of not diluting Brazil’s power within the group. But Russia and China may simply force Brazil’s hand on the issue of Saudi Arabian membership.

We’ll see what happens. As of now, Saudi Arabian admission is a likely result at the summit, but it’s not a sure thing.

Here’s the Important Part

The other major issue is the launch of a new multilateral BRICS currency that might be used to settle trade balances in the short run and then evolve into a reserve currency over a longer period of time.

We know a lot about the potential shape of this new currency based on statements made over the past six months by BRICS leaders themselves as well as their foreign ministers or finance ministers.

Your correspondent in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square in Moscow. Russia is one of the original BRICS and has the largest gold hoard of any BRICS member. The new BRICS currency to be announced is likely to be gold-linked. This will position Russia to be one of the leading backers of the new currency and the de facto BRICS banker to the world.

The BRICS currency will not involve the yuan, ruble, rupee or other national currency of the members. Those currencies will continue to exist for domestic consumption and contracts, but they will gradually be replaced by the new BRICS currency for international settlements.

How It’ll Work

The value of each unit of BRICS currency will not be tied to another currency or basket. Instead, it will be tied either to a basket of commodities (oil, gold, copper, wheat, iron ore, etc.) or simply to gold.

The commodity basket idea is unwieldy (as John Maynard Keynes discovered when he explored a similar approach in 1944), so a non-currency valuation metric is likely to end up with gold (as Keynes also discovered).

However, this may be a two-step process as Brazil and South Africa both place some weight on the role as top commodity producers.

The other key element in the launch of the currency is the expansion of the BRICS membership beyond the current five. This is important not only for the geopolitical reasons noted above but because the larger the membership in a currency union, the more valuable the currency becomes.

The success of the euro is a good example; that currency union has expanded to 19 active members with several more on the waiting list.

When you receive a multilateral currency such as the new BRICS unit in payment for your own goods and services, it’s valuable to be able to spend it in 10 or 20 countries instead of just three or four.

This new currency would be issued by a multilateral central bank controlled by the BRICS members, possibly the New Development Bank created by the BRICS in 2014.

What We Don’t Know

While the outline of the new currency is clear, it’s not clear how much actual progress will be made at this meeting. Russia and China are clearly on board. Brazil is strongly in favor also because of its dislike for the United States and desire to get away from the U.S. dollar.

The reluctant member on this issue is India. This may be due to the fact that Russia has been selling oil to India for rupees and it suits India to be able to print its own currency to buy oil. That’s a privilege that heretofore has been reserved exclusively to the United States.

India’s mini exorbitant privilege may be ending as soon as it began. Russia has put India on notice that it will soon refuse to accept rupees for further oil shipments. This means India will either have to come up with dollars (or gold) or perhaps sign on to the new BRICS currency.

These are issues that will be hashed out behind closed doors over the next few days. It’s unclear what the outcome will be. My expectation is that some announcement will be made about progress toward the new BRICS currency, but it’s premature to announce the currency itself.

Such an announcement is no less momentous to investors than the actual issue of the currency.

The Fact That It’s Happening at All Is Important

Multilateral organizations with disparate views often take a piecemeal approach to agreements of this kind. What’s important is not that everything be done at once, but that something be done at all.

That sets the wheels in motion for the biggest change in the international monetary system since 1971.

We may get some leaks or comments over the next few days, but perhaps not. If there are any, I’ll alert my readers.

Other than any other leaks, the next big news development on the BRICS summit will be the Leaders’ Final Communiqué that will be issued late Thursday. These communiqués are typically 10 pages or so, listing all the matters agreed upon and the next steps.

This formidable grouping of not just the BRICS, but a united Global South is challenging the Western rules-based order and the U.S. dollar.

It will be a busy and critical week. Stay tuned.

With all eyes on NVDA’s earnings tomorrow, today saw retailers and banks suffer (earnings in the former raising questions about America’s “strong consumer”, and S&P downgrades banks amid “tough” climate), as Philly Fed Services and Existing Home Sales disappoint on the macro side.

Retailers tumbled the most since May today as Macy’s saw credit card losses rising faster than expected, Lowe’s saw DIY discretionary spend decline, Dick’s suffered serious shrink (organized theft), and while big box retailer’s BJ’s did not indicate any major credit card concerns, it did lower guidance by 1.5% as same-store sales came in light…

The S&P Retail sector fell to two-month lows…

Nike dropped for its 9th straight day to its lowest since Nov ’22 – its longest losing streak in history…

Banks – big and small – suffered on the day with Regional banks down almost 3% to 6 week lows after S&P’s downgrade…

Schwab tumbled for its 11th straight day, the longest losing streak since 2004…

Meanwhile, the AI boom may be showing cracks.

NVDA rallied in the pre-market up to record highs, ran those stops, and then tumbled for the rest of the day…

The timing is good…“you are here”

Source: Bloomberg

The basket of ‘Most Shorted’ stocks tumbled in to a bear market today, down 21% from its July 31st peak…

Source: Bloomberg

All of which sparked some chaotic price action in the majors with The Dow lagging and Nasdaq battling for green all day. The European session saw the big gains today as selling started early in the US session and continued through lunch…

0-DTE traders fought the downtrend in NVDA all day (heavy call-buying trying to spark a ‘gamma squeeze’)…

Source: SpotGamma

VIX was down on the day vol-of-vol (VVIX) tumbled…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasuries were mixed today with the short-end lagging (2Y +3.5bps, 30Y -4bps). On the week, yields are still higher with 30Y the least ugly horse in that glue factory…

Source: Bloomberg

Which dramatically flattened (inverted deeper) the yield curve (2s30s)…

Source: Bloomberg

Interestingly, amid the ‘weakness’ – retailers, consumer, housing, banks – the market’s expectations for Fed rates actually continued its hawkish shift higher…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar was practically unchanged on the day with Asian session weakness erased during the European session…

Source: Bloomberg

Crypto was chaotic today with some wild swing in Bitcoin around $26,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices limped lower again ahead of tonight’s API inventory data with WTI back below $80…

Spot Gold tried (and failed again) to top $1900

Source: Bloomberg

UBS warns that its CTA model is now short gold and remains long oil (noting that gold short position could accumulate quickly next week):

Gold saw its fourth consecutive down week and it was enough for our model to initiate a short position after remaining neutral since early July due to a prevailing positive trend strength.

The Gold short is set to grow under all projected price paths next week.

The Oil long continued to grow last week, but the growth is projected to slow, even on a bullish path, or get stopped out on a bearish path.

Our CTA model is projected to sell both Copper and all three Soybean underlying assets next week.

Finally, VIX seasonality is starting to hot up…

Pray to the gods of AI or else…

Probably nothing…