Jack Ma, Alibaba Group Holding’s founder, returned to China after spending a year abroad and visited a school he established in 2017. The billionaire experienced a multi-year rift with Beijing following his criticism of regulators in 2020. This news prompted a jump in Alibaba’s shares trading in Hong Kong.

According to South China Morning Post, Ma met with teachers and students at Hangzhou Yungu School. He discussed the future of education in the era of artificial intelligence. 

“We must use AI to solve problems, not to be controlled by AI,” Ma said. 

He also said: “ChatGPT and similar technologies are just the beginning of the AI era. We should use artificial intelligence to solve problems instead of being controlled by it.” 

Since late 2020, Ma has maintained a discreet presence after criticizing Chinese regulators for halting the planned IPO of Alibaba’s affiliate, Ant Group.

The billionaire has spent most of the last year in Japan. He recently celebrated Lunar New Year in Hong Kong and traveled to Singapore and Australia.

Shortly after the SCMP’s report, Alibaba’s shares that trade in Hong Kong jumped 4% but gave up most gains late in the session. Shares in New York are flat in premarket trading. 

And while Beijing is attempting to restore a business-friendly image after a multi-year crackdown on technology companies, Bloomberg noted Chinese authorities made attempts to persuade Ma to stay and help repair the image of the business community. However, the media outlet said Ma has decided to focus on agriculture technology research. 

The good news: 

“Jack Ma showing up in Hangzhou after more than a year away from China should be positive for market sentiment,” said Vey- Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee. 

What this appearance also means is that Ma does not perceive a risk of arrest or, even worse, vanishing. It could also suggest further regulatory normalization for tech companies.

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“I have not considered or discussed anything having to do with blanket insurance or guarantees of all deposits,” answered Janet Yellen, when asked on Wednesday whether Treasury would circumvent Congress to insure all deposits.

Naturally, this accelerated the bank run, as rational economic actors moved their money.

“Certainly, we would be prepared to take additional actions if warranted,” said Yellen on Thursday, attempting to reverse Wednesday’s damage.

And this made it more likely that additional action will become warranted. Because in times like these, markets sniff out weakness, and push prices to the point of maximum pain. Policymaker panic.  

“In such an environment, our ultimate goal is clear: we must – and we will – bring down inflation to our medium-term target in a timely manner,” declared Christine Lagarde, determined, schooled in the importance of conveying confidence during times of crisis.

“In current conditions, a robust strategy calls for a data-dependent approach to making policy and a clear reaction function so that the public understands the sources of information that will be important to us,” continued the ECB President.

“To that end, our future policy path will be determined by three factors; (1) our assessment of the inflation outlook in light of the incoming economic and financial data, (2) the dynamics of underlying inflation, and (3) the strength of monetary policy transmission,” explained Lagarde.

It all sounded great to just about everyone, except investors, and especially traders.

Because (1) a central bank’s inflation outlook in times of great economic uncertainty is profoundly unreliable, (2) the dynamics of underlying inflation are wildly unstable when inflation is this high, and (3) monetary policy transmission in a highly indebted hyper-financialized global economy can appear too weak one day and precipitate a bank run the next.

“At the same time, I have made clear that there is no trade-off between price stability and financial stability. We have plenty of tools to provide liquidity support to the financial system if needed and to preserve the smooth transmission of monetary policy,” said Lagarde, presumably hoping that if she said it with great certainty, we would all forget the lessons of decades of trading and a century of financial history.

You see, central banks do not have the power to determine how monetary policy is transmitted. Markets decide. And there is always a trade-off that central banks must make between price stability and financial stability. To deny this is to invite markets to press our policy makers to the point where they must choose one or the other.

Ukraine is calling on its allies in the United Nations to convene an emergency UN Security Council meeting in order to condemn what it calls the Kremlin’s “nuclear blackmail.”

The Ukrainian foreign ministry issued a statement Sunday, saying “Ukraine expects effective measures to counter the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail by the United Kingdom, China, the USA and France, in particular, as permanent members of the UN Security Council.”

“We demand to immediately convene an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council for this purpose,” it added.

This after on Saturday Tass news agency quoted President Vladimir Putin as saying Russia had struck a deal with neighboring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory in a major escalation aimed at both Kiev and the West.

Putin sought to justify the ultra-provocative move as something necessary to counter NATO: “We are doing what they have been doing for decades,” Putin said. Likely he has Turkey in mind, which lies just across the Black Sea from Russia’s south. The US, and thus NATO, has kept tactical nukes in Turkey for decades, part of a “nuclear sharing” policy with allies.

As The New York Times reports, Putin said nukes could be stationed in Belarus as early as the summer:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he would be able to position nuclear weapons in Belarus by the summer, a claim that analysts said was likely bluster but which underscored the Kremlin’s determination to use its vast nuclear arsenal to pressure the West to back down from its support of Ukraine.

Western officials condemned Mr. Putin’s remarks as irresponsible, even as they said that they saw no indication that Russia was making changes to how it deploys nuclear weapons.

“He said that 10 Belarusian warplanes have already been retrofitted to carry Russian nuclear weapons, and that a storage facility for the warheads would be ready by July 1,” the report adds.

Putin Placing Nuclear Weapons in Belarus

1. Moscow will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

2. Putin claims this will not violate nuclear nonproliferation agreements.

3. Russia has moved 10 aircraft to Belarus that are capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons

4.… pic.twitter.com/Nb8BZ3vcE3

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 25, 2023

But there’s some debate over how significant such a move would be, given that “Analysts also pointed out that even if Russia were to transfer some of its warheads, the action wouldn’t substantially change the nuclear threat posed by Russia since it can already target a vast range of territory from inside its own borders,” according to the Times. And again, it’s long been the case that US tactical nukes are hosted in European countries, which Moscow has long condemned.

Authored by Adeline Von Drehle via RealClearPolitics.com,

In the city’s 14th municipal district, known here as an “arrondissement,” people walk in the street as mounds of trash stake their claim on the sidewalk.

And walk they must. Sanitation workers aren’t the only ones on strike. Transportation workers are also among the many refusing to work in retaliation against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform plan. The plan aims to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Thursday marked the ninth day of inter-union national strikes since the bill was introduced in January, days of protest in which virtually every French union member participates. Transportation, sanitation, and energy unions, however, have been on daily renewable strikes since March 7. Trains and planes arriving to, departing from, and crossing over France are experiencing major delays and cancelations. Teachers are walking off the job. The stench of weeks-old trash mingles with pain au chocolat.

Last Thursday, Macron ordered Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne to buck Parliament and ignore overwhelming public opinion and impose the pension reform plan via Article 49.3 of the French Constitution. The article permits passage of the bill while bypassing a vote at the National Assembly, though it is still subject to revision from the Constitutional Council before it becomes law. Macron lost his parliamentary majority last year, and the plan had support neither from the left nor the far right, but from Macron’s centrist alliance alone.

Immediately following the employment of Article 49.3, some 7,000 demonstrators flooded Place de la Concorde, a grand square in central Paris famous for housing the guillotine during the French Revolution. More than 230 years later, it remains a site of unrest. Protestors charged riot police armed with stones and were met with tear gas. Over 300 activists were arrested.

The public outrage is two-fold. On one hand, the French despise the plan. Activists would rather see taxes increase on the wealthy. Yet Macron insists that because France’s retired population is expected to increase from 16 to 21 million people by 2050, that won’t be nearly enough, and his proposal is the surest way to make the French economy competitive.

“It’s in the greater interest of the country,” Macron said. “Between opinion polls and the national interest, I chose the national interest.”

Pushing it by way of Article 49.3, though, has been seen by many as a slap in the face to the democratic process. Far-left lawmaker Mathilde Panot put it simply: “The government is already dead in the eyes of the French; it doesn’t have any legitimacy anymore.”

Lawmakers on the left and right each filed a no-confidence motion against Macron’s government, though both were rejected by the National Assembly on Monday. One motion lost by just nine votes, increasing the pressure on Macron to either withdraw his reform or replace Borne to refresh his government’s image. Mass union strikes and protests in France are not uncommon. But the battle lines in this fight may foreshadow a future fight in the United States.

In last month’s State of the Union address, President Biden seemingly achieved rare unanimity on one key issue: Social Security and Medicare. For now, it appears both parties have agreed to leave the programs untouched – irrespective of what the actuary tables portend.

“Let’s stand up for seniors. Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare,” Biden exhorted members of Congress, most of whom began clamoring to their feet.

The conversation about Social Security was sparked by Republicans’ mere mention of the same issue that is roiling France: delaying the retirement age.

One of these plans, proposed by the Republican Study Budget Committee, suggests raising the retirement ages for both Social Security and Medicare from 66 or 67 (depending on date of birth) to 70. The increase in retirement age would be gradual. Based on the proposal, people born after 1977 would have a full retirement age of 70.

Democrats, for their part, would like to see money from additional payroll taxes on the wealthy shore up senior benefit programs. Currently, payroll taxes are capped at $160,200. Proposals on the left look to extend the solvency of Social Security and Medicare while reapplying payroll taxes on incomes as high as $400,000.

The retired population in the United States is expected to increase from 17% to 22% by 2050, a jump equal in proportion to that of France.

America’s aging demographic suggests a potential clash that is generational as well as ideological.

“Gen Z and Millennials will rely on their Social Security benefits even more than current seniors do,” says Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Citing “massive student debt, disappearing pensions, and the ever-widening wealth gap,” he argues that Americans 40 and under will find it more difficult to accumulate wealth over the course of a career.

The vast majority of strikers and protestors in France are two-to-four decades from retirement age. And while the United States is perhaps too sprawling, diverse, and individualistic to experience crippling national strikes, Congress need only to look across the Atlantic Ocean to understand just how serious people are about their government benefits.

Russia’s diplomatic links to Europe continue to collapse at a moment nuclear rhetoric is increasing and growing more dangerous. Simple communication among governments also continues to grow worse, making conflict de-escalation among major powers all the more difficult.

Germany announced Saturday that it is planning to expel more than 30 Russian diplomats from Berlin. German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock indicated to local media plans for the new wave of expulsions Saturday.

A German media source cited officials as saying “More decisive action must be taken against Moscow’s spies.”

Allegations of spying have driven large-scale expulsions at various times over the past two years, put have picked up in frequency and scale particularly after the Feb.24, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Germany has claimed that the presence of Russian intelligence agents and officials in Berlin has greatly increased of late, with German officials asserting the embassy is now staffed even better than during the Cold War.

Other countries which are backers of Ukraine have also continued to take punitive measures against Russian diplomats. 

Number of Russian diplomats expelled worldwide from 2000 to 2022, by country”:

You will find more infographics at Statista

“Last month, Estonia expelled 21 Russian embassy staffers, saying it would host only eight diplomatic officials on its territory — matching the size of Tallinn’s team in Moscow,” Politico reports over the weekend. “The Kremlin responded by kicking Estonian Ambassador Margus Laidre out of Russia — the first ambassadorial expulsion from the country in the year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” the publication added. “Tallinn then ended Russian Ambassador Vladimir Lipayev’s tenure on Pikk Street.”

This and other Russian embassies and consulates in Europe have faced accusations of acting as ‘spy hubs’ – far beyond what’s considered the ‘normal’ presence of intel agents and officials. 

Authored by Andrew Korybko via TheAutomaticEarth.com,

The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) began reporting more accurately on the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine since the start of the year, but the true test of their comparatively improved integrity will be whether they raise awareness about Zelensky’s latest damning admission. In an interview with Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, he candidly told his interlocutors that “We do not have ammunition. For us the situation in the East is not good.”

This is a major revelation for several reasons.

• First, it proves that Russia is winning NATO’s self-declared “race of logistics” in the sense that its armed forces still have ammo to continue fighting while the West’s Ukrainian proxies already ran out of that which their patrons provided over the past year.

• Second, the aforesaid aid that was already extended to this crumbling former Soviet Republic exceeds $100 billion, which makes Russia’s leading position in this “race of logistics” all the more impressive.

• Third, Zelensky’s admission adds credence to what the Washington Post recently reported regarding how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring in this conflict, especially its “severe ammunition shortages” that one of its sources spoke about. Fourth, the preceding points drastically decrease the chances that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will achieve much of anything and actually make it increasingly likely that such a move would be an epic mistake that could ultimately lead to a decisive Russian breakthrough.

• And finally, it can therefore be expected that Zelensky and his agents of influence across the West will beg for even more aid, arguing that the failure to pay up would risking making their prior investments in this proxy war all for naught if Kiev ends up losing to Russia. The problem, however, is that no amount of money can make ammunition appear out of thin air since it requires a lot of time to scale production accordingly to meet these newfound exorbitant needs.

The very fact that Ukraine is out of ammunition proves that the West’s defeat in its self-declared “race of logistics” with Russia might already be a fait accompli by this point since it’s clear that Kiev can’t keep pace with its opponent despite being backed by all of NATO’s military-industrial capacity. Zelensky almost certainly didn’t realize that his candid admission essentially amounted to this, but it’s presently unclear whether the MSM will inform their audience about this or not.

On the one hand, doing so could contribute to his forthcoming begging campaign, but it could also backfire if taxpayers start asking whether it’s worth ponying up even more money if Ukraine already ran out of ammo despite the over $100 billion in aid that it’s received thus far. After all, if that astronomical sum wasn’t enough to keep their guns firing, then there’s no telling how much will be needed for Kiev to reconquer more of its lost territory like it intends to do.

Not only that, but as was earlier explained, no amount of money can make ammunition appear out of thin air. Quite clearly, fundamental changes in the Ukrainian Armed Forces are needed in order to indefinitely perpetuate this conflict like the US is plotting to do, but its fighters can’t immediately transition to using exclusively Western equipment when they’re used to operating Soviet-era wares. This poses a dilemma since Russia keeps moving further ahead in this “race of logistics” as each day goes by.

Objectively speaking, the military-strategic dynamics are trending in the Kremlin’s favor, which would ordinarily compel Kiev to seriously consider China’s peace plan if it wasn’t for its American overlords preventing it from doing so. The longer that Zelensky remains resistant to the very thought of a ceasefire, the greater the chances are that Russia will transform its growing advantage in its “race of logistics” with NATO into a decisive victory that could result in Ukraine losing even more territory.

*  *  *

Support the Automatic Earth via Patreon.

Authored by Brendan O’Neill via The Spectator,

The shameful persecution of Posie Parker in New Zealand

This is what it must have been like when women were marched to the stake.

Yesterday in Auckland the British women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker found herself surrounded by a deranged, heaving mob.

She had tomato soup and placards thrown in her face. She was doused with water. Huge men screamed insults and expletives in her face. The shoving of the crowd became so intense that Parker feared for her life. ‘I genuinely thought that if I fell to the floor I would never get up again’, she said. ‘My children would lose their mother and my husband would lose his wife.’

It was a truly chilling spectacle. The mobs’ faces were twisted into masks of feral hatred. They ranted in frenzy as the diminutive Parker, her bottle-blonde hair stained orange from the soup that had been dumped on her, desperately tried to make her way to the safety of a police car. It was a ritualistic shaming of a witch, a violent purging of a heretic.

#WATCH RNZ’s Jordan Dunn captured the moment that Posie Parker was escorted away from the rally.

The counter-protest crowd gathered in Albert Park this morning before Parker’s speech, and made a cacophany of noise to drown her speech out.

🔗 https://t.co/a9ZWNhKuDn pic.twitter.com/yFQm9yrJ7A

— RNZ (@radionz) March 25, 2023

Next time you’re reading a history book and find yourself wondering how Salem came to be consumed by such swirling hysteria, watch the clips of Posie’s persecution in New Zealand. This is how it happens. This is how the fear of witches can overrule reason and unleash the darkest, most punitive passions of the mob.

And what is Parker’s crime?

What did this witch do?

She said, ‘A woman is an adult human female’.

That’s it.

Parker, whose real name is Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, is well known for her criticism of the ideology of transgenderism. She thinks a man never becomes a woman, no matter how many hormones he takes or surgeries he undergoes. She thinks if you were born male, you will die male, and in the time in between you have no right whatsoever to enter any women-only space.

This is heresy.

Dissenting from the gospel of gender ideology is to the 21st century what dissenting from the actual gospels was to the 15th. And so Parker must be punished. It was a modern-day stoning, so mercifully they only threw soup and water and planks of cardboard at the blasphemer.

Parker organises public events called ‘Let Women Speak’. She has done it across the UK, in parts of the US, and for the past couple of weeks she’s been doing it in Australia and New Zealand.

It’s a genius initiative. She knows these gatherings of women who merely want to give voice to their profane belief that sex can never be changed will draw out crowds of intolerant trans activists and their allies. She knows the ‘Be Kind’ mob will do everything in its power to stop women from speaking. And she knows it will all brilliantly illustrate her core belief: that trans activism is misogyny in disguise, misogyny in drag, if you like, and that it has devoted itself to silencing women who believe in biology.

Australia and New Zealand played their parts brilliantly in Parker’s clever scheme. From Melbourne to Canberra, Hobart to Auckland, huge crowds of the right-on turned up to drown out the voices of the pesky women who dare to call men ‘men’. ‘Let women speak’, Parker says. ‘No’, says the mob. She incites them to confess their misogyny and intolerance in full public view. And they do. 

Auckland was the worst. At Albert park in the centre of the city yesterday, the mob could not hide its vengeful loathing of the uppity women who disagree with its ideologies. Parker is a new kind of witch, one who willingly submits herself to a witch-trial, so that the rest of us might see just how dogmatic and unforgiving the new witch-hunters are. I am full of admiration for her. Her courage is shining a light on the visceral intolerance that advances under the banner of identity politics.

The events in Auckland should be a wake-up call for liberals everywhere. We glimpsed the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks in the velvet glove of ‘Be Kind’. The misogynistic streak in trans extremism is undeniable now. Watch enraged men kicking down metal barriers so that they might get closer to the witch Posie and tell me this isn’t sexism masquerading as radicalism. Witness the crowing of men who are delighted that the mob made the ‘coward TERF’ run away and tell me this isn’t chauvinism on steroids. Behold the use of megaphones and expletive-laden chants and physical menace to silence a woman and tell me this isn’t a sexist, censorious crusade against women’s freedom of speech.

That mob in Auckland did not emerge out of thin air. No, it was a brutish manifestation of a regressive idea that has been taking hold for some years. Namely, that it should be forbidden to dissent from gender ideology. That it is bigotry to state biological facts. That it ought to be a punishable offence – whether that punishment is being No Platformed or sacked or having objects thrown in your face – to say men are men and women are women.

To see where censorship ends up, just look at those grimacing agitators in Auckland, hatred spreading like a current through their number, as they fight with every fibre of their being to prevent the expression of a critical idea. Censorship begets bigotry. It begets violence itself. For the more we tell people that certain words will hurt them, the more we witlessly incite people to hurt those who dare to utter certain words.

That mob was drunk on sanctimony. This is what happens when we tell people their identity is the most important thing in the world and that anything that so much as grazes their self-esteem is an outrage that must be crushed.

We nurture a generation of navel-gazing Torquemadas.

Posie has exposed them, yet again, and for that she deserves our thanks. This time round, the witches might just win. 

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal prosecutor admitted in court papers that three D.C. Metropolitan Police Department undercover officers acted as provocateurs at the northwest steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The admission came in a March 24 filing before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras that seeks to keep video footage shot by the officers under court seal.

Prosecutors accused the case defendant—William Pope of Topeka, Kansas—of an “illegitimate” attempt to unmask the video as part of his alleged strategy to try the case in the news media. Pope filed a motion to remove the court seal on Feb. 21.

“The defendant is not entitled to ‘undesignate’ these videos to share them with unlimited third parties,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Moran. “His desire to try his case in the media rather than in a court of law is illegitimate, and the government has met its burden to show the necessity of the protective order.”

Videos long hidden under court seal have become a major topic, especially with prosecutors disclosing in a number of high-profile Jan. 6 cases the involvement of multiple FBI informants.

Pope is seeking to lift the court seal on the undercover video as part of his drive to obtain full access to video evidence held by the government. Pope is representing himself in the criminal case being prosecuted against him. At a hearing on March 3, Judge Contreras seemed sympathetic to Pope’s motion to unmask the videos.

“The officer clearly incited that area, and we still don’t have video from all other undercover MPD,” Pope told The Epoch Times. “And as the numerous informants in the Proud Boys trial demonstrates, we are only just beginning to scratch the surface on FBI involvement.”

The undercover video—a portion of which posted on Rumble on March 24—shows three members of the MPD’s Electronic Surveillance Unit approach the Capitol’s northwest steps. One of the men, while surveying the crowd, stated, “Someone’s going to get shot.”

Officer 2 replied, “They’re not going to shoot anybody.”

Along the edge of the Capitol property, Officer 2 encouraged one protester to go up to the building. “Go join ‘em then,” he said. The man replied, “No, I’ve got my bike to guard.”

The men engaged in banter on the walk across the west Capitol lawn.

‘Never Seen Anything Like This’

“This is amazing,” Officer 2 said. Officer 1, who was shooting the GoPro video, replied, “Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Nearly 30 members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit were assigned to duty on Jan. 6, some of whom were gathering evidence on crowd activity. Members wore special bands on their left wrists to identify themselves as part of the Electronic Surveillance Unit, according to the MPD’s 96-page Jan. 6 action plan.

Officer 1 repeatedly joined in chants of “Drain the swamp!” and “Our house! Our house! Our house!”

A little closer to the Capitol, the video captures a protester shouting, “Joe Biden! We wanna hear you speak, you [expletive] pedophile satanist [expletive]!”

A short time later, Officer 1 joined the crowd in a “USA!” chant, repeating the phrase five times.

At the foot of the northwest stairs, someone leaned part of a bicycle rack against the balustrade. As a protester climbed up the makeshift ladder, Officer 1 shouted, “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that sh*t.”

Read more here…