Die Zeit deleted the social media post linking to the article after a number of users expressed their outrage at the rhetoric, although many others praised the publication…
The German broadsheet Die Zeit has caused a storm on social media after publishing an article in which it claims Germany will soon be “a country in which migrants will no longer be a minority.”
Die Zeit, the Hamburg-based newspaper widely considered to be a more highbrow read than the tabloids, posted the article highlighting Germany’s irreparable demographic change to its socials on Tuesday with the caption:
Integration was yesterday: Germany is the second-largest immigration country in the world, and the original Germans are likely to become a numerical minority among many in the foreseeable future. And now?
The accompanying photo showed a group of four young immigrants in a top-down flash convertible smiling at the camera with the headline: “They will be the powerful.”
The article recounted a time when there used to be a “familiar homeland” before “the others” came, explaining that Germany used to have just 500,000 foreign nationals residing in the Federal Republic and the country “belonged to the Germans.”
You knew the neighbors. One understood what they said, what they believed, what they served up in the evening. There was peace. The economy grew miraculously.
Despite the article portraying a more peaceful era before mass immigration, the article itself is not anti-immigrant. It later attempts to persuade the reader to consider that Germany has almost always been a country of immigration, citing the Prussians who imported foreign workers — despite nearly all of these workers being European and Christian.
However, the article’s posting on social media caused a stir across the German political landscape as campaigners on both sides of the immigration debate commented on the story.
“Please what?” Green MEP Erik Marquardt wrote on Twitter in response to the Die Zeit post.
The social media post was later deleted and replaced with a new photo, depicting two white females and the caption, “In recent years, Germany has become the world’s second-largest immigration country without really wanting to admit it.”
Integration war gestern: Deutschland ist das zweitgrößte Einwanderungsland der Welt und die Deutschen dürften auf absehbare Zeit zu einer numerischen Minderheit unter vielen werden. Und nun? Ein Essay von @_vanessavuhttps://t.co/wL2MxBeab9pic.twitter.com/zz4XM3gHjY
“This teaser is almost even worse than the old one,” commented Marius Mestermann, a journalist with Der Spiegel, a sentiment shared by a number of other self-proclaimed liberals.
Others, however, praised the publication for drawing attention to the demographic changes in the country, an indisputable fact materialized through record levels of mass immigration under years of liberal governance.
Senate Rubber Stamps Debt Ceiling Band-Aid; Biden To Sign Into Law ‘As Soon As Possible’
As expected, Chuck Schumer’s Senate was a lock for approving the deal to raise the debt ceiling, which will be suspended until January 1, 2025 while spending will remain ‘roughly flat’ for the same period of time “when factoring in agreed upon appropriations adjustments” (oh?), and virtually none of what actual conservatives wanted came to pass.
The 63-36 bipartisan vote means that the legislation will now go to President Joe Biden’s desk – who ‘looks forward to signing the bill into law as soon as possible,’ according to a White House statement.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act suspends the debt ceiling until just after the 2024 elections, in exchange for a 3% cap on increases in military spending, and cuts to undetermined domestic programs. It will leave Medicare and Social Security intact.
The deal largely protects Biden’s legislative achievements of last year, with Republicans having little success in using the debt ceiling to dismantle his climate, tax and health law, the Inflation Reduction Act. But it also allows Republicans to point to spending cuts, given that spending caps are enforceable for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and the party succeeded in clawing back some funding for the Internal Revenue Service and unspent Covid-19 money. WSJ
Passage of the bill averts a technical default, which was slated to happen as soon as June 5, when the Treasury department warned that the government would run out of money to pay its bills.
“America can breathe a sigh of relief, because in this process, we are avoiding default,” said Schumer (D-NY) in announcing the planned vote. “The consequences of default would be catastrophic. It would almost certainly cause another recession. It would be a nightmare for our economy and millions of American families.”
The bill’s passage closed out a relatively smooth final chapter in Congress’s efforts to tackle the debt ceiling after months of finger-pointing. Democrats accused Republicans of irresponsibly using the prospect of default to extort concessions, while Republicans countered that the nation’s growing debt called for decisive action, while also ruling out new taxes proposed by Biden.
The Treasury Department said in January that the nation had bumped up against the debt limit and started using extraordinary measures to keep the government solvent. Biden initially vowed that he wouldn’t negotiate on the debt ceiling, insisting that it be raised with no conditions attached. But talks between McCarthy, a California Republican, and the Democratic president kicked off in earnest last month, after House Republicans surprised many Democrats by staying largely united to pass a bill proposing deep spending cuts and rolling back parts of Biden’s climate and tax agenda. -WSJ
Passage by the Senate came less than 24 hours after the House finally approved the measure after weeks of negotiations which left conservatives livid over the fact that they got completely schooled out of meaningful spending cuts and other demands.
Under an agreement which allowed the Senate to fast-track the vote, the Senate agreed to entertain 11 amendments – all of which were rejected, as any of them would have required the legislation to be sent back to the House – which has already left town, for a re-vote.
More via Reuters;
Getting it through the Senate Thursday night took hours of negotiations between the two parties, with independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema shuttling in designer sneakers between Republicans lunching on the second floor of the Capitol and Democrats on and off the Senate floor.
Ultimately, they settled on allowing uncharacteristically speedy votes on 11 amendments — all of which failed — and a pair of statements from Schumer aimed at soothing concerns about defense spending levels and other potential cuts.
Schumer made it clear that the Senate could bypass the spending caps in the bill for Ukraine, defense and domestic priorities using emergency funding, though the Rpublican-controlled House would have to concur.
“I am pleased that, under President Biden’s leadership, Congress has passed bipartisan legislation to suspend the debt limit and prevent a first-ever default by the United States,” reads a Thursday night statement from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “This legislation protects the full faith and credit of the United States and preserves our financial leadership, which is critical to our economic growth and stability.”
“A default would have caused severe hardship for American families, potentially leading to the loss of millions of jobs and trillions in household wealth, and higher financing costs for American taxpayers for years to come. The bipartisan agreement also protects against efforts to roll back the President’s core economic agenda – one that has contributed to a historically strong and resilient economic recovery. Congress has a duty to ensure that the United States can pay its bills on time, and I continue to strongly believe that the full faith and credit of the United States must never be used as a bargaining chip.”
It’s not that Erdogan has a scheme to head east at the west’s expense. It’s just that the world’s grandest infrastructure, development, and geopolitical projects are all in the east today…
The collective west was dying to bury him – yet another strategic mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in deep Anatolia.
In the end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it – again. Against all his shortcomings, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it “my way,” comfortably retaining Turkiye’s presidency after naysayers had all but buried him.
The first order of geopolitical priority is who will be named Minister of Foreign Affairs. The prime candidate is Ibrahim Kalin – the current all-powerful Erdogan press secretary cum top adviser.
Compared to incumbent Cavusoglu, Kalin, in theory, may be qualified as more pro-west. Yet it’s the Sultan who calls the shots. It will be fascinating to watch how Turkiye under Erdogan 2.0 will navigate the strengthening of ties with West Asia and the accelerating process of Eurasia integration.
The first immediate priority, from Erdogan’s point of view, is to get rid of the “terrorist corridor” in Syria. This means, in practice, reigning in the US-backed Kurdish YPG/PYD, who are effectively Syrian affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – which is also the issue at the heart of a possible normalization of relations with Damascus.
Now that Syria has been enthusiastically welcomed back to the Arab League after a 12-year freeze, a Moscow-brokered entente between the Turkish and Syrian presidents, already in progress, may represent the ultimate win-win for Erdogan: allowing control of Kurds in north Syria while facilitating the repatriation of roughly 4 million refugees (tens of thousands will stay, as a source of cheap labor).
The Sultan is at his prime when it comes to hedging his bets between east and west. He knows well how to profit from Turkiye’s status as a key NATO member – complete with one of its largest armies, veto power, and control of the entry to the uber-strategic Black Sea.
And all that while exercising real foreign policy independence, from West Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean.
So expect Erdogan 2.0 to remain an inextinguishable source of irritation for the neocons and neoliberals in charge of US foreign policy, along with their EU vassals, who will never refrain from trying to subdue Ankara to fight the Russia-China-Iran Eurasia integration entente. The Sultan, though, knows how to play this game beautifully.
How to manage Russia and China
Whatever happens next, Erdogan will not hop on board the sanctions-against-Russia sinking ship. The Kremlin bought Turkish bonds tied to the development of the Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkiye’s first nuclear reactor. Moscow allowed Ankara to postpone nearly $4 billion in energy payments until 2024. Best of all, Ankara pays for Russian gas in rubles.
So an array of deals related to the supply of Russian energy trump possible secondary sanctions that might target the steady rise in Turkiye’s exports. Still, it’s a given the US will revert to its one and only “diplomatic” policy – sanctions. The 2018 sanctions did push Turkiye into recession after all.
But Erdogan can easily count on popular support across the Turkish realm. Early this year, a Gezici poll revealed that 72.8 percent of Turkish citizens privilege good relations with Russia while nearly 90 percent rate the US as a “hostile” nation. That’s what allows Interior Minister Soylu to remark, bluntly, “we will wipe out whoever is causing trouble, including American troops.”
China-Turkiye strategic cooperation falls under what Erdogan defines as “turning to the East” – and is mostly about China’s multi-continent infrastructure behemoth, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Turk Silk Road branch of the BRI focuses on what Beijing defines as the “Middle Corridor,” a prime cost-effective/secure trade route that connects Asia to Europe.
The driver is the China Railway Express, which turned the Middle Corridor arguably into BRI’s backbone. For instance, electronics parts and an array of household items routinely arriving via cargo planes from Osaka, Japan are loaded onto freight trains going to Duisburg and Hamburg in Germany, via the China Railway Express departing from Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha – and crossing from Xinjiang to Kazakhstan and beyond via the Alataw Pass. Shipments from Chongqing to Germany take a maximum of 13 days.
It’s no wonder that nearly 10 years ago, when he first unveiled his ambitious, multi-trillion dollar BRI in Astana, Kazakhstan, Chinese President Xi Jinping placed the China Railway Express as a core BRI component.
Direct freight trains from Xian to Istanbul are plying the route since December 2020, using the Baku-Tblisi-Kars (BTK) railway with less than two weeks travel time – and plans afoot to increase their frequency. Beijing is well aware of Turkiye’s asset as a transportation hub and crossroads for markets in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, West Asia, and North Africa, not to mention a customs union with the EU that allows direct access to European markets.
Moreover, Baku’s victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war came with a ceasefire deal bonus: the Zangezur corridor, which will eventually facilitate Turkiye’s direct access to neighbors from the Caucasus to Central Asia.
A pan-Turkic offensive?
And here we enter a fascinating territory: the possible incoming interpolations between the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS+ – and all that also linked to a boost in Saudi and Emirati investments in the Turkish economy.
Sultan 2.0 wants to become a full member of both the Chinese-led SCO and multipolar BRICS+.
This means a much closer entente with the Russia-China strategic partnership as well as with the Arab powerhouses, which are also hopping on the BRICS+ high-speed train.
Erdogan 2.0 is already focusing on two key players in Central Asia and South Asia: Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Both happen to be SCO members.
Ankara and Islamabad are very much in sync. They express the same judgment on the extremely delicate Kashmir question, and both backed Azerbaijan against Armenia.
But the key developments may lie in Central Asia. Ankara and Tashkent have a strategic defense agreement – including intel sharing and logistics cooperation.
The Organization of Turkic States (OTS), with a HQ in Istanbul, is the prime energizer of pan-Turkism or pan-Turanism. Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are full members, with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Hungary, and Ukraine cultivated as observers. The Turk-Azeri relationship is billed as “one nation, two states” in pan-Turkic terms.
The basic idea is a still hazy “cooperation platform” between Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. Yet some serious proposals have already been floated. The OTS summit in Samarkand late last year advanced the idea of a TURANCEZ free trade bloc, comprising Turkiye, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and as observers, Hungary (representing the EU) and Northern Cyprus.
Meanwhile, hard business prevails. To fully profit from the status of the energy transit hub, Turkiye needs not only Russian gas but also gas from Turkmenistan feeding the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) as well as Kazakh oil coming via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) is heavy on economic cooperation, active in a series of projects in transportation, construction, mining, and oil and gas. Ankara has already invested a whopping $85 billion across Central Asia, with nearly 4,000 companies scattered across all the “stans.”
Of course, when compared to Russia and China, Turkiye is not a major player in Central Asia. Moreover, the bridge to Central Asia goes via Iran. So far, rivalry between Ankara and Tehran seems to be the norm, but everything may change, lightning fast, with the simultaneous development of the Russia-Iran-India-led International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which will profit both – and the fact that the Iranians and Turks may soon become full BRICS+ members.
Sultan 2.0 is bound to boost investment in Central Asia as a new geoeconomic frontier. That in itself encapsulates the possibility of Turkiye soon joining the SCO.
We will then have a “turning to the East” in full effect, in parallel to closer ties with the Russia-China strategic partnership. Take note that Turkiye’s ties with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are also strategic partnerships.
Not bad for a neo-Ottoman who, until a few days ago, was dismissed as a has-been.
Twelve years ago, FBI agents in Baltimore sought to wiretap former Brookings Institution analyst Igor Danchenko on suspicions he was spying for Russia. But the counterintelligence analyst they were assigned to work with Brian Auten told them he could not find their target and assumed the Russian national had fled back to Moscow.
But Danchenko had not left the U.S., court documents show. He was living in the Washington area. In fact, he had been arrested in Maryland in 2013 by federal Park Police for being drunk and disorderly, something the FBI analyst could have easily discovered by searching federal law enforcement databases. Clueless, the FBI closed its espionage case on Danchenko.
Auten would quickly rise to become the FBI’s top Russian analyst. In 2016 and 2017, he failed to properly vet the Steele dossier, a collection of salacious allegations created for Hillary Clinton’s campaign which sought to tie Donald Trump to the Kremlin, before clearing it as the central piece of evidence used by the FBI to obtain warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Working out of headquarters as a supervisor, Auten knew Danchenko helped Christopher Steele compile the dossier while living in the area. But instead of contacting the Baltimore agents, Auten secretly groomed him as an informant, arranging payments of $220,000 to target Donald Trump and his former aide Page.
One result: Danchenko, the suspected Russian spy, falsely accused Page, a former U.S. Navy office who had previously helped the FBI, of being a Russian spy in the dossier.
Auten also never informed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the FBI’s longstanding concerns about Danchenko.
Like the Baltimore agents, investigators at FBI headquarters relied on Auten to build their counterintelligence cases on Page and three other Trump advisers. Auten provided the reports and memos they used to establish probable cause in each case. Auten also supported investigators working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
Auten’s conduct was first singled out for rebuke by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who in 2019 issued a report detailing how Auten cut corners in the dossier verification process. Horowitz referred Auten to the FBI for discipline, which does not appear to have been administered.
His earlier and deeper connections to Danchenko have only been more recently revealed in the report issued by Special Counsel John Durham. His findings suggest that if Auten had done his job over a decade ago, chances are the now-discredited dossier never would have been created and used by the FBI to eavesdrop on Page and help launch the Russiagate probe. It’s likely that Danchenko, the main source of the dossier’s allegations, would have been deported years earlier and flagged in the system, according to the recently released Durham Report.
The embattled analyst was recommended for suspension from the bureau last year, and his case has been under disciplinary review for several months. Contacted by RealClearInvestigations, an FBI spokeswoman declined to say if Auten has been suspended. “In keeping with our usual practice,” she said, “we have no comment on personnel matters.”
According to the Durham Report, Danchenko came onto the radar of agents working out of the Baltimore field office in 2010 after two former Brookings colleagues entering the government told the FBI that he had solicited classified information.
The agents subsequently opened an espionage case after discovering Danchenko had previous contacts with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.
“In particular, the FBI learned that in September 2006, Danchenko informed one Russian intelligence officer that he had an interest in entering the Russian diplomatic service,” the report stated. “Four days later, the intelligence officer contacted Danchenko and informed him that they could meet that day to work ‘on the documents and then think about future plans.’”
The next month, Danchenko contacted the intelligence officer “so the documents can be placed in [the following day’s] diplomatic mail pouch,” according to the report.
In addition, Danchenko had been identified as an associate of two other espionage suspects, Durham learned from a review of his case file.
In July 2010, the FBI initiated a request to obtain a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Danchenko. Auten helped research Danchenko and provided information for wiretap applications. However, the investigation was soon closed after the FBI incorrectly concluded Danchenko had left the country in September 2010. Danchenko and his wife continued to reside openly in the Washington area.
But the probe wasn’t completely dead. In 2012, Auten exchanged emails with one of the Baltimore agents in which they speculated whether Danchenko had actually left the country. Then in 2013, the U.S. Park Police arrested Danchenko in Greenbelt, Md., on drunk-and-disorderly charges, court records first obtained by RCI show.
Danchenko’s case was visible in the federal law enforcement database and prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who years later, as acting attorney general, would sign one of the 2017 applications to renew a wiretap targeting Page and authorize an expansion of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and “participate in a program of substance abuse therapy and counseling,” as well as “mental health counseling,” the records show. His lawyer asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow “as a condition of his employment.” The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.
Despite the flurry of legal records generated on Danchenko in the federal system, it is not clear why the FBI failed to take note of his presence in the country. What the record does show is that the bureau did not reopen the espionage case against him.
Danchenko reappeared on Auten’s radar in late 2016 as he and the FBI were using the Steele dossier he helped create on Trump to seek warrants to spy on Page.
Auten identified his old espionage target in December 2016 as the “primary subsource” of the document. Instead of wiretapping Danchenko, the FBI recruited him as an informant and paid him $220,000 to help the bureau continue wiretapping the former Trump aide. FBI headquarters proposed paying Danchenko an additional $300,000 even as Durham was actively investigating him as the “linchpin to the uncorroborated allegations contained in the Steele Reports.” After asking officials at FBI headquarters about the bureau’s relationship with Danchenko, Durham determined that they were unable to justify keeping him open as a confidential source, “much less making hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to him.”
After examining FBI documents, Durham discovered that Auten interviewed Danchenko over three days in January 2017 as part of a plan to recruit him as a paid informant, despite the unresolved counterespionage investigation. Working with then-DOJ official David Laufman, the FBI offered immunity from prosecution to the longtime spy suspect and invited his lawyer to sit with him during the interviews.
“If this recruitment was successful, the FBI planned to mine Danchenko for information that was corroborative of the damaging allegations about President-elect Trump in the Steele Reports,” Durham said in his report.
Auten confessed to Durham that Danchenko “was not able to provide any corroborative evidence related to any substantive allegation contained in the Steele Reports and critically was unable to corroborate any of the FBI’s assertions contained in the Carter Page FISA applications,” according to the Durham report (emphasis in the original).
Danchenko was kept on the FBI payroll for more than three years.
In internal FBI documents, Danchenko’s handling agent Kevin Helson incorrectly stated that there was no “derogatory” information associated with Danchenko and that he had not been a prior subject of an FBI investigation.
“This was clearly not true as there had previously been the unresolved Baltimore FBI counterespionage investigation of Danchenko that was only closed because it was believed he had left the country and returned to Russia,” Durham pointed out.
Agent Helson later learned that the informant he was assigned to handle had been investigated as a suspected spy. However, Auten advised Helson that the espionage case against Danchenko was “interesting, but was not a significant” matter, according to the Durham report.
“Notably,” the report added, “Auten did not inform Helson that he had previously assisted in the Baltimore investigation.”
A Suspected Kremlin Agent ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’
The Baltimore agents were shocked to learn from Durham’s office that Danchenko had been signed up as a confidential FBI source. One of them interviewed by Durham’s investigators believed Danchenko was a Kremlin agent “hiding in plain sight” in the U.S., while frequently traveling overseas to be debriefed by Russian intelligence. The other Baltimore agent said the counterintelligence case on Danchenko remained unresolved and, in her opinion, “certainly a lot more investigation” should have been conducted on Danchenko.
“It is extremely concerning that the FBI failed to deal with the prior unresolved counterespionage case on Danchenko,” Durham concluded in his report.
“Given Danchenko’s known contacts with Russian intelligence officers and his documented prior pitch [to colleagues at Democratic think tank Brookings] for classified information, the Crossfire Hurricane team’s failure to properly consider and address the espionage case prior to opening Danchenko as a CHS [confidential human source] is difficult to explain, particularly given their awareness that Danchenko was the linchpin to the uncorroborated allegations contained in the Steele Reports,” the special prosecutor added. Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the FBI’s Russia investigation.
In an RCI interview, Danchenko’s lawyer denied his client ever spied for the Russian government. He said Danchenko feared Russian President Vladimir Putin and was concerned for his personal safety. However, Durham examined immigration records which revealed that Danchenko lived in the U.S. but traveled frequently to Russia, casting doubts about his security concerns.
Yet in sworn affidavits to obtain the FISA warrants targeting Page, FBI agents led judges on the secret surveillance court to believe Danchenko was “Russian-based” – and therefore presumably more credible as a source of the allegations that Page was a Russian agent. By 2017, Auten knew the “Russian-based” claim was untrue. Even so, he let case agents slip it into two FISA renewal requests targeting Page. And so the “Russian-based” fraud lived on through 2017.
Auten assured the court that Danchenko was “truthful and cooperative,” never telling the judges about unresolved questions that made him a suspected Russian agent.
And Auten’s imprimatur carried great weight. In Durham’s telling, Auten was known internally as one of the “Triumvirate of Control” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, along with senior counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and intelligence section chief Jonathan Moffa. Some case agents working under them believed the surveillance of Page was a “dry hole,” but the “triumvirate” insisted they continue secretly intercepting his emails, text messages, and other communications, according to Durham.
On Sept. 19, 2016, the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team formally received a dossier report alleging that Page had held secret meetings with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow earlier that summer in which they allegedly discussed lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. That same day, an anxious Auten urged department lawyers to consider including the dossier report as part of the initial FISA application targeting Page.
In an email to attorneys, Auten forwarded an excerpt from the dossier report and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Page]?”
The attorneys thought it was a “close call” when they first discussed a FISA targeting Page in early August, but the dossier report in September “pushed it over” the line in terms of establishing probable cause.
Except that the dossier allegation about secret Kremlin meetings was bunk. Auten knew there were serious doubts about it yet withheld those concerns from FISA judges.
On Oct. 17, 2016, Auten received an email alerting him to a conversation an informant covertly recorded with Page that day in which Page “outright denied” meeting with the Russian officials or even knowing them.
“Nevertheless,” Durham noted, “Page’s exculpatory statements were not included in the initial FISA application signed just four days later.”
Before the application was submitted, Auten also was aware that the dossier was being funded and promoted by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
On Sept. 2, 2016, CIA personnel briefed Auten at FBI headquarters about credible foreign intelligence they received about the Clinton campaign’s machinations. Yet Auten took no steps to analyze the intelligence and how it might impact the Trump campaign investigation and surveillance requests. Nor did he inform the FISA court about it. Asked why he failed to disclose the “Clinton plan” intelligence, Auten told Durham’s office that it was “just one data point.”
As the FBI made requests to renew its spy warrants throughout 2017, Auten continued to gloss over major holes in the dossier. He even pressured agents and analysts to back off looking into a questionable source of key allegations, according to the Durham report. It turns out that source, Charles Dolan, was also tied to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.
Agent Helson told Durham that Auten told him to “hold off” on interviewing Dolan, who was never interviewed.
Auten also told a female FBI analyst working for Mueller “to cease all research and analysis related to Dolan,” according to the Durham report. She wrote a memo in September 2017 documenting Dolan’s ties to the dossier, but said that “Auten had made edits to her memorandum, some of which removed information regarding Dolan.” She said she was frustrated by the censorship and wondered if there was “a political motive” behind it. The analyst told Durham she prepared a contemporaneous timeline in case she was ever questioned about her role in the Mueller investigation.
Perhaps most concerning was Auten’s reluctance to corroborate even the existence of a ghost-like source Danchenko claimed had provided him a stream of bombshell allegations that were essential to the FBI’s case for probable cause against Page. The alleged source, Belarus-born businessman and Trump booster named Sergei Millian, actually had no connection of any kind to Danchenko. There is no evidence the two men ever met or spoke. Yet Danchenko attributed to Millian the dossier’s core allegation: that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation.” This claim, which Durham found to be completely conjured up by Danchenko, formed the backbone of all four of the FBI’s applications to the FISA court to spy on Trump.
Auten knew there were serious problems with the attribution. While debriefing Danchenko in January 2017, Danchenko was dodgy about his supposed conversations with Millian. Still, Auten made no effort to validate Millian as a source. He never examined either Danchenko’s or Millian’s phone records, for starters.
Durham did pull the call records, however, and easily determined that Danchenko never actually spoke with Millian. He also learned from Danchenko’s email records that he fabricated his conversations with Millian, which means he also made up the dossier allegation that Carter Page masterminded the Democratic National Committee email leak, a claim the FBI also vouchsafed to the FISA court to attain the Page wiretaps.
“Nevertheless, the information allegedly provided by Millian remained in the Page FISA applications,” Durham stated in his report.
Auten told Durham that he did, however, check with the FBI’s partners at the CIA to see if they had anything on file to corroborate Danchenko’s reporting in the dossier.
“They received no corroborating information back,” Durham said.
Durham interviewed a career counterintelligence analyst at Langley who said the dossier was transparent fiction. “Indeed, after the dossier was leaked and became public,” Durham relayed in his report, “that [CIA] expert’s reaction was to ask the FBI, ‘You didn’t use that, right?’”
For several years, Auten moonlighted teaching law enforcement, intelligence, and surveillance courses at Patrick Henry College in North Virginia. He was removed from the Patrick Henry website soon after RealClearInvestigations published a July 2020 story first identifying him as the anonymous “Supervisory Intelligence Analyst” singled out in 2019 by DOJ Inspector General Horowitz for cutting corners verifying the dossier.
Auten also is no longer listed as a member of the college’s Strategic Intelligence Board of Advisors. Patrick Henry’s communications director did not reply to requests for an explanation for Auten’s removal from the website. But a faculty spokesman confirmed over the phone that he is no longer teaching there.
He is, however, apparently, still employed by the FBI. Auten’s most recent activities that have come to light? Possibly using false information to undermine allegations of criminal activity on the part of Hunter Biden. According to a July 25, 2022, letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Auten’s “scheme” entailed using deceptive and derogatory information to derail the FBI’s investigation.
“First, it’s been alleged that the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity,” Grassley wrote. “It is further alleged that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by an FBI Headquarters (“FBI HQ”) team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.”
Jaguar Recalls Thousands Of I-Pace EVs Over Fire Risk, Tells Owners To Park Outside
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is recalling 6,400 I-Pace electric SUVs delivered to the US because the high-voltage electric battery may overheat and catch fire.
The documents posted Wednesday by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the recall covers I-Pace vehicles delivered between 2019 and 2024.
The problem is centered around the EV batteries produced by LG Energy Solutions. The NHTSA is investigating LG because its batteries have forced five other automakers to issue similar recalls due to fire risk. Most notable has been the fire risk around Ford F-150 Lightnings.
According to an NHTSA filing, JLR said eight I-Pace vehicles had caught fire, but no accidents or injuries were reported.
Fortune said JLR sent an email to US I-Pace owners to park vehicles away from building structures until repairs have been completed.
South Korea-based LG said Jaguar is updating the battery-managing software on the vehicles while NHTSA investigates the fires.
“LG Energy Solution continues to closely work with our client Jaguar Land Rover to ensure that the investigation is concluded,” it said in a statement Thursday.
One of the consequences the automotive industry is facing as it rushes toward EVs to meet decarbonization targets is defective tech. Ford and BMW also have recalled batteries in recent years over fires.
In New York, a pro-life display was declared by a professor to be an act of “violence.”
In Colorado, a university site warned that misgendering is violence.
It is part of a national pattern on universities where opposing views are declared “harmful” or “violent” as a justification for censorship or even violence.
Target is the latest example of a corporation that is being “Bud Lighted” over its linked with LGBTQ+ efforts. While experts on MSNBC and CNN assured viewers that these boycotts fade quickly, these companies have now lost billions. Target has reportedly lost over $10 billion. Miller Lite is also being hammered over its “Bad $#!T to Good $#!T,” ad slamming male-oriented beer campaigns.
With these boycotts picking up steam, the coverage has turned from dismissive to alarmist.
Wolfers told MSNBC:
“[If] Target caves into this, then it says that the moment you threaten the employees of even a very large corporation, you get to control its policies. This is economic terrorism, literally terrorism, creating fear among the workers and forcing the corporations to sell the things you want, not sell the things you don’t.”
Wolfers did not object to past boycotts of companies like Twitter after Elon Musk sought to dismantle its censorship bureaucracy. He did not object to boycotts of Republican states over their laws concerning abortion, election integrity, or gender transitioning.
Most notably, Wolfers was one of the figures leading the mob against UChicago economist Harald Uhlig, who was discussed earlier. I quoted Wolfers as one of those seeking the removal of Uhlig from a leading economics journals because he criticized Black Lives Matters and the movement to Defund The Police.
Yet, Wolfers now claims that boycotts are “literal terrorism” because they are “forcing the corporations to sell the things you want, not sell the things you don’t.”
Boycotts have long been an important form of political speech extending back to the colonial protests against the British stamp and tea taxes. Indeed, the left has used targeted advertisers and boycotted companies to pressure corporate officials to change their policies. Twitter was targeted when Elon Musk sought to dismantle the company’s massive censorship operation. Now, however, boycotts are acts of terrorism when used against some of those policies.
The problem is that the media and these commentators cannot force customers to buy beer or other products. Consumers have found a way to express their views through the invisible hand of the markets. These advertising and public campaigns were designed to closely associate the brands with particular causes. That association has triggered a market response, including consumers who object to campaigns that seem more political than commercial.
Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, pledged to drop Bud Light’s “fratty reputation and embrace inclusivity.” She certainly succeeded in changing the entire view of the brand in less than a year on the job. Heinerscheid knew that the brand image sells the beer. That image is now unpalatable for some consumers. The social value of these campaigns is lost if consumers reject beer with the branding message.
Even Adam Schiff creating his own public endorsement of Bud Lite appeared to backfire. It is not clear that Anheser Busch was eager to have one of its labels pegged as the beer of choice by Adam Schiff as more than Dylan Mulvaney. Indeed, the company now appears to be in a death spiral. After it tried to distance itself form the Mulvaney association, it then Dylan Mulvaney for not staying the course with its earlier campaign. Those boycotts, however, are not being denounced as terrorism by Wolfers.
OpenAI aims to reduce AI hallucinations in ChatGPT by enhancing math skills, as process supervision shows promise in improving accuracy…
On May 31, OpenAI announced its efforts to enhance ChatGPT’s mathematical problem-solving capabilities, aiming to reduce instances of artificial intelligence (AI) hallucinations. OpenAI emphasized mitigating hallucinations as a crucial step toward developing aligned AI.
In March, the introduction of the latest version of ChatGPT – ChatGPT-4 – further propelled AI into the mainstream. However, generative AI chatbots have long grappled with factual accuracy, occasionally generating false information, commonly referred to as “hallucinations.“ The efforts to reduce these AI hallucinations were announced through a post on OpenAI’s website.
AI hallucinations refer to instances where artificial intelligence systems generate factually incorrect outputs, misleading or unsupported by real-world data. These hallucinations can manifest in various forms, such as generating false information, making up nonexistent events or people, or providing inaccurate details about certain topics.
OpenAI conducted research to examine the effectiveness of two types of feedback: “outcome supervision” and “process supervision.“ Outcome supervision involves feedback based on the final result, while process supervision provides input for each step in a chain of thought. OpenAI evaluated these models using math problems, generating multiple solutions and selecting the highest-ranked solution according to each feedback model.
After thorough analysis, the research team found that process supervision yielded a superior performance as it encouraged the model to adhere to a human-approved process. In contrast, outcome supervision proved more challenging to scrutinize consistently.
OpenAI recognized that the implications of process supervision extend beyond mathematics, with further investigation necessary to understand its effects in different domains. It expressed the possibility that if the observed outcomes hold in broader contexts, process supervision could offer a favorable combination of performance and alignment compared with outcome supervision. To facilitate research, the company publicly released the complete data set of process supervision, inviting exploration and study in this area.
Although OpenAI did not provide explicit instances that prompted its investigation into hallucinations, two recent occurrences exemplified the problem in real-life scenarios.
In a recent incident, lawyer Steven Schwartz in the Mata vs. Avianca Airlines case acknowledged relying on the chatbot as a research resource. However, the information provided by ChatGPT turned out to be entirely fabricated, highlighting the issue at hand.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is not the only example of artificial intelligence systems encountering hallucinations. During a demonstration of its chatbot technology in March, Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot examined earnings reports and generated inaccurate figures for companies like Gap and Lululemon.
The governors of Virginia and West Virginia are the latest Republican state leaders to announce deployments of National Guard troops to assist Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security efforts.
On Wednesday morning, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced he would deploy 100 of his state’s National Guard troops to Texas.
“The ongoing border crisis facing our nation has turned every state into a border state,” Youngkin said. “As leadership solutions at the federal level fall short, states are answering the call to secure our southern border, reduce the flow of fentanyl, combat human trafficking and address the humanitarian crisis. Following a briefing from Governor Abbott last week, Virginia is joining other states to deliver on his request for additional assistance.”
In a Wednesday morning press conference, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice also announced he would deploy 50 of his state’s National Guard troops to Texas.
“I know our National Guard will do incredible work, and we’ll wish them Godspeed to get home safe and sound,” Justice said. “I thank them all for their incredible bravery and for stepping up yet again to answer the call.”
Abbott has been using Texas state resources in recent months in a mission to stem the flow of illegal border crossings into the country. In recent weeks, Texas National Guard troops and Department of Public Safety officers have been seen setting up razor fences and turning back people attempting to cross from Mexico into Texas illegally.
Abbott has stepped up this border security effort after President Joe Biden’s administration ended the federal Title 42 immigration policy on May 11. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, U.S. officials had used Title 42 authorities to rapidly turn away and expel illegal immigrants under public health justifications.
On May 16, 24 Republican governors signed a letter pledging to support Abbott’s border security effort, including Youngkin and Justice. Since then, several Republican governors have deployed their state National Guard troops and state police resources to assist border control efforts.
Other States Sending Troops
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was among the first Republican governors to pledge specific resources to Abbott’s border security mission. On May 16, DeSantis announced his state would send 800 Florida National Guard soldiers, 200 Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers, 20 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers, and 20 Emergency Management personnel to Texas. DeSantis also pledged five fixed-wing aircraft, two mobile command vehicles, 17 unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), and 10 watercraft.
On May 17, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced an unspecified number of troops from the Mississippi National Guard’s 112th Military Police Battalion would deploy to assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and agents along the southwest border.
On May 24, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced he had authorized the deployment of 100 Tennessee National Guard troops to the border. Lee said these troops would patrol and provide an added security presence at the border, help staff outposts, and assist in road and route clearance, barrier placement, and debris removal.
“America continues to face an unprecedented border crisis that threatens our nation’s security and the safety of Tennesseans,” Lee said of the deployment.
“The federal government owes Americans a plan to secure our country, and in the meantime, states continue to answer this important call to service,” Lee added. “I am again authorizing the Tennessee National Guard to help secure the Southern border, and I commend these troops for providing critical support.”
On May 24, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen also announced he would send 10 Nebraska state troopers to Texas to assist Abbott’s border security mission.
All New US Jobs Since The Covid Crash Have Gone To Foreign-Born Workers
We live in a strange time, one where the formerly unthinkable – skepticism among the “very serious people” about government data veracity – has become mundane. And yet even though numerous bank analysts and strategists, and this site of course, have repeatedly raised questions and concerns about the credibility of the most important US economic data – the monthly jobs report – nothing ever changes and if it does, it comes in the form of periodic “seasonal adjustment” resets where we “learn” that all the data that guided markets and central banks, had been fake, manipulated wrong for years.
But even if one ignores the blatant manipulation of economic data by self-serving administrations, who hope to generate political brownie points by casting the economy in a far stronger light than is merited in reality, there are still various bizarre offshoots within the data which few notice yet which are instrumental to maintaining the fake narrative.
Such as this: readers are probably aware that according to the BLS, there are now roughly 3.3 million more jobs (155.7 million) than there were at the peak just before the covid crash (152.4 million).
On the surface, this is an impressive accomplishment, as a deficit of some 22 million jobs has been erased in under three years.
But then, if one starts digging, some peculiarities emerge, like for example that much of jobs created in recent years have gone to “multiple jobholders“, meaning that not every “payroll” has been assigned to a unique individual, but instead there are now people who hold two, three or more jobs to make ends meet.
Or that according to the household survey there was virtually no new jobs created for much of 2022 even as the establishment survey indicated that over 2 million new jobs had been added over the same period.
To be sure, it didn’t take long after we pointed out these glaring narrative “glitches” and discrepancies for the BLS to notice and to make the appropriate adjustments and historical revisions to the data to make it coherent. After all, bureaucrats are not very diligent and attention oriented, and manipulating bureaucrats are even worse.
Yet one place where the BLS has allowed a glaring data deficiency to persist, is in what will soon be a very politically charged and sensitive data series: where have all the new workers come from.
As noted above, if one believes the BLS, US payrolls are now a record high 155.7 million, or 161 million employed workers according to the Household survey. But if one digs a little deeper, one finds something rather peculiar: all of the jobs created since the covid crash have gone to foreign-born workers!
That’s right: as shown in the chart below, there are currently 131.1 million native-born US workers, which is down more than half a million from the pre-covid peak of 131.7 million reached in October 2019 (data source: Federal Reserve). Meanwhile, if only looks at the number of foreign-born workers, here the data paints a very different picture: having peaked at 27.8 million in Feb 2019, the number of foreign-born workers has not only recovered its covid crash losses, but has increased by an additional 2.2 million to a record 30.0 million as of April 2023!
This means that all the new job creation since the covid crash has gone to foreign workers, with native-born workers stagnating and still unable to break above pre-covid highs, even though if one merely extends the pre-covid trendline, native-born workers should have long ago surpassed their 2019 highs. Said otherwise, millions of native jobs have quietly gone to (lower paid) foreigners.
But what if the data shown above is merely a product of uneven distribution of hiring while the labor force growth has been similar. Good question, and to answer that we have looked not at the change in absolute jobs/workers but the change in labor forces, native-born and foreign-born, indexed at 100 as of Oct 2019. The result, shown below, speaks for itself.
And there you have it: both the number of native-born workers and the actual native-born labor force have stagnated, while foreign-born workers have flourished and captured market share or rather employment and wage share from native Americans.
To be sure, there is much to analyze: unfortunately the BLS does not break down the “foreign-born” data set into legally and illegally-immigrated foreign-born workers, although considering that it was virtually impossible for legal foreigners to enter the US – let along work in it – for nearly two years after the covid pandemic broke out, it is rather safe to assume that much of the foreign-born work has gone to illegal immigrants.
Which then begs the question: how does this impact inflation? We already know that wage inflation is supposedly off the charts, but if the bulk of new hiring has gone to foreign-born workers who, for the most part, represent a cheaper labor option for employers, does that mean that wage inflation would be that much higher if most new workers had been native-born? What will happen to inflation if, say, Trump or DeSantis makes it a campaign pledge to focus on hiring native-born workers?
And another question: what does this track record mean for the coming presidential mudslinging campaigns – what impact will it have on the reputation of, say, Joe Biden, when he is asked why all new jobs under his administration have gone to foreign-born workers while native-born Americans have been left to stagnate?
We hope to have the answers soon enough; for now, however, we have another jobs report to focus on in just a few hours. And if the recent track record of the BLS “accuracy and integrity” is any indication of what to expect, tomorrow’s numbers should push what are already ridiculous job numbers well into the realm of peak absurdity.
Former president Donald Trump said Wednesday that he’s eying a “most spectacular” 250th birthday celebration of the United States if he is elected, coming days after he promised to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. But the former president, a leading GOP candidate, has made a range of other new policy proposals.
“Three years from now, the United States will celebrate the biggest and most important milestone in our country’s history—250 years of American independence,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “That’s why as a nation we should be preparing for the most spectacular birthday party. We want to make it the best of all time.”
And Trump’s campaign said in a news release that the former commander-in-chief will hold a White House task force known as the “Salute to America 250” to hold anniversary celebrations across the United States between Memorial Day 2025 and July 4, 2026.
“I will work with all 50 governors, Republican and Democrat alike, to create the Great American State Fair, a unique one-year exhibition featuring pavilions from all 50 states,” he said in a video, proposing a “legendary,” special “one-time festival” in Iowa.
“And finally, and most importantly, I will ask America’s great religious communities to pray for our nation and our people as we prepare for this momentous occasion,” Trump also remarked. “America has been a country sustained and strengthened by prayer and by our communities of faith as we chart a course toward the next 250 years. Let us come together and rededicate ourselves as one nation under God.”
Other initiatives include the Patriot Games, an Olympic-style event for high school athletes, and the re-issuance of an executive order to restore the Trump-era National Garden of American Heroes that was ultimately blocked by President Joe Biden. That park would have honored great Americans and historical figures, Trump has said.
The timing of Trump’s statement is no coincidence. The former president is traveling to Iowa for a tour of the state, which is important launching point during the 2024 Republican Party primary.
“Together we will build it, and they will come,” Trump said of the proposed Iowa Fairgrounds event, using a quote from the movie Field of Dreams, which was filmed in Iowa.
100 New US Attorneys
Wednesday’s proposal from Trump builds on the patriotic themes that he used during his 2016 campaign and administration. Trump in 2020 established the 1776 Commission dedicated to patriotic education and history lessons, countering the New York Times’s “1619 Project” that attempts to reframe the founding of America around slavery.
Months before that, Trump also vowed in a campaign video to fight against who he described as “Marxist” left-wing district attorneys and “overhaul” the Department of Justice in the wake of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump for allegedly falsifying business records. If elected, his administration would also appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who are the “polar opposite” of district attorneys who received campaign cash from controversial left-wing billionaire George Soros.
“As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys,” Trump said in a video posted to his YouTube page, which was restored earlier this year after a two-year suspension. “And that’s what we have—they are Marxist in many cases.”
This week, Trump also again vowed to issue an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrant parents. Several years ago, Trump signaled that he would issue the executive order, but some legal analysts have said that it would likely face significant legal challenges as birthright citizenship is essentially protected under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.
Trump’s website says that he “will again end catch-and-release, restore Remain in Mexico, and eliminate asylum fraud,” while “in cooperative states, President Trump will deputize the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing illegal alien gang members and criminals. He will also deliver a merit-based immigration system that protects American labor and promotes American values.”
Death Penalty for Drug Offenders
During his post-midterm announcement for president, Trump also proposed handing down the death penalty for some drug dealers and traffickers, arguing that such individuals are causing death and destruction
“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said at the time. “Because it’s the only way.”
Critical Race Theory
Trump in January also pledged to cut federal funding to schools that teach the controversial critical race theory along with curriculum around gender identity. While speaking in Davenport, Iowa, Trump promised to keep male transgender athletes out of girls’ sports and “bring back parental rights into our schools.”
A policy plan also calls for opening new “civil rights investigations into any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination.”
“As the saying goes, personnel is policy, and at the end of the day if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids we have a major problem,” Trump said earlier this year. “We’re at the end of the list on education, and yet we spend the most, but we’re going to be tops in education no matter where you go anywhere in the world.”
Jan. 6 Pardons
More than two years after the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump said last month that he would pardon a range of individuals who were convicted and sentenced in connection to the incident. Those pardons, he said, will “be very early on” in his presidency.
