Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The new currency should be able to become an “external money” storage of capital and reserves down the road, not just a settlement unit…

Ah, the joys of the Big Circle Line (BKL, in Cyrillic): circumnavigating the whole of Moscow for 71 km and 31 stations: from Tekstilshchiki – in the old textile quarter – to Sokolniki – a suprematist/constructivist gallery (Malevich lives!); from Rizhskaya – with its gorgeous steel arches – to Maryina Roscha – with its 130 meter-long escalator.

The BKL is like a living, breathin’, runnin’ metaphor of the capital of the multipolar world: a crash course in art, architecture, history, urban design, tech transportation, and of course “people to people’s exchanges”, to quote our Chinese New Silk Road friends.

President Xi Jinping, by the way, will be ridin’ the BKL with President Putin when he comes to Moscow on March 21.

So it’s no wonder that when a savvy investor at the top of global financial markets, with decades of experience, agreed to share some of his key insights on the global financial system, I proposed a ride on the BKL – and he immediately accepted it. Let’s call him Mr. S. Tzu. This is the minimally edited transcript of our moveable conversation.

Thank you for finding the time to meet – in such a gorgeous setting. With the current market volatility, it must be hard for you to step away from the screens.

S. Tzu: Yes, markets are currently very challenging. The last few months remind me of 2007-8, except instead of money-market funds and subprime mortgages, these days it is pipelines and government bond markets that blow up. We live in interesting times.

The reason I reached out to you is to hear your insights on the “Bretton Woods 3” concept introduced by Zoltan Poszar. You’re definitely on top of it.

S. Tzu: Thank you for getting straight to the point. There are very few opportunities to witness the emergence of a new global financial order, and we are living through one of those episodes. Since the 1970s, perhaps only the arrival of bitcoin just over fourteen years ago came close in terms of impact to what we are about to see in the next few years. And just as the timing of bitcoin was not a coincidence, the conditions for the current tectonic shifts in the world financial system have been brewing for decades. Zoltan’s insight that “after this war is over, ‘money’ will never be the same again…” was perfectly timed.

Understanding “external money”

You mentioned bitcoin. What was so revolutionary about it at the time?

S. Tzu: If we leave aside the crypto side of things, the promise and the reason for bitcoin’s initial success was that bitcoin was an attempt to create “external” money (using Mr. Zoltan’s excellent terminology) that was not a liability of a Central Bank. One of the key features of this new unit was the limit of 21 million coins that could be mined, which resonated well with those who could see the problems of the current system. It sounds trivial today, but the idea that a modern monetary unit can exist without backing of any centralized authority, effectively becoming “external” money in digital form, was revolutionary in 2008. Needless to say, Euro government bond crisis, quantitative easing, and the recent global inflationary spiral only amplified the dissonance that many felt for decades. The credibility of the current “internal money” system (again, using Mr. Poszar’s elegant terminology) has been destroyed long before we got to the Central Bank reserve freezes and disruptive economic sanctions that are playing out currently. Unfortunately, there is no better way to destroy credibility of the system based on trust than to freeze and confiscate foreign currency reserves held in Central Bank custody accounts. The cognitive dissonance behind the creation of bitcoin was validated — the “internal money” system was fully weaponized in 2022. The implications are profound.

Now we are getting to the nitty-gritty. As you know, Zoltan argues that a new “Bretton Woods 3” system will emerge at the next stage. What exactly does he mean by that?

S. Tzu: I am also not clear on whether Mr. Poszar refers to the transformation of the current Western “internal money” system into something else, or whether he hints at the emergence of the “Bretton Woods 3” as an alternative, outside of the current financial system. I am convinced that a new iteration of the “external money” is unlikely to be successful in the West at this stage, due to the lack of political will and to the excessive government debt that has been building up for some time and grew exponentially in recent years.

Before the current Western financial order can move to the next evolutionary stage, some of these outstanding liabilities need to be reduced in real terms. If history is any guide, it typically happens via default or inflation, or some combination of the two. What seems highly likely is that the Western governments will rely on financial repression in order to keep the boat afloat and to tackle the debt problem. I expect there will be many initiatives to increase control over the “internal money” system that will likely be increasingly unpopular. Introduction of CDBC’s, for example, could be one such initiative. There is no doubt in my mind that we are in for eventful times ahead in this respect. At the same time, it also seems inevitable at this stage that some sort of an alternative “external money” system will emerge that will compete with the current “internal money” global financial order.

And why is that?

S. Tzu: The global economy can no longer rely on the “internal money” system in its current weaponized state for all its trade, reserve, and investment needs. If sanctions and reserve freezes are the new instruments of regime change, every government out there must be thinking about alternatives to using someone else’s currency for trade and reserves. What is not obvious, however, is what the alternative to the current flawed global financial order should be. History does not have many examples of successful “external money” approaches that could not be reduced to some version of the gold standard. And there are many reasons why gold alone, or a currency fully convertible into gold, is too restrictive as a foundation of a modern monetary system.

At the same time, recent increases in trade in local currencies unfortunately have a limited potential as well, as local currencies are simply a different instance of “internal money.” There are obvious reasons why many countries would not want to accept other’s local currencies (or even their own, for that matter) in exchange for exports. On that I fully agree with Michael Hudson. Since “internal money” is a liability of a country’s Central Bank, the lower the credit standing of the country, the more it needs investable capital, and the less willing other parties become to hold its liabilities. That is one of the reasons why a typical set of “structural reforms” that IMF demands, for example, is aimed at improving credit quality of the borrower government. “External money” is badly needed precisely by the countries and the governments that feel they are hostages to the IMF and to the current “internal money” financial system.

Enter the “newcoin”

A lot of experts seem to be looking into it. Sergey Glazyev, for instance.

S. Tzu: Yes, there were some indications of that in recent publications. While I am not privy to these discussions, I certainly have been thinking how this alternative system could work as well. Mr. Pozsar’s concepts of “internal” and “external” money are a very important part of this discussion. However, the duality of these terms is misleading. Neither option is fully adequate for the problems that the new monetary unit – let’s call it “newcoin” for convenience – needs to solve.

Please allow me to explain. With the weaponization of the current US dollar “internal money” system and a simultaneous escalation of sanctions, the world has effectively split into the “Global South” and the “Global North,” slightly more precise terms than East and West. What is important here, and what Mr. Pozsar immediately noticed, is that the supply chains and commodities are also getting weaponized to some extent. Friend-shoring is here to stay. The implication is that the newcoin’s first priority would be facilitating intra-South trade, without relying on currencies of the Global North.

If this were the only objective, there would have been a choice of relatively simple solutions, ranging from using renminbi/yuan for trade, creating a new shared currency (fashioned after euro, ECU, or even Central African CFA franc), creating a new currency based on the basket of participating local currencies (similar to the SDR of IMF), potentially creating a new gold-pegged currency, or even pegging existing local currencies to gold. Unfortunately, history is full of examples of how each one of these approaches creates their own host of new problems.

Of course, there are other parallel objectives for the new currency unit that neither of these possibilities can fully address. For example, I expect that all participants would hope that the new currency strengthens their sovereignty, not dilutes it. Next, the challenges with the Euro and previously gold standard demonstrated the broader problem with “fixed” exchange rates, especially if the initial “fix” was not optimal for some members of the currency zone. The problems only accumulate over time, until the rate is “re-fixed,” often through a violent devaluation. There needs to remain flexibility in adjusting relative competitiveness inside the Global South over time for participants to remain sovereign in their monetary decisions. Another requirement would be that the new currency needs to be “stable,” if it were to become successful unit of pricing for volatile things like commodities.

Most importantly, the new currency should be able to become an “external money” storage of capital and reserves down the road, not just a settlement unit. In fact, my conviction that the new monetary unit will emerge comes primarily from the current lack of viable alternatives for reserves and investment outside of the compromised “internal money” financial system.

So considering all these problems, what do you propose as a solution?

S.  Tzu: First allow me to state the obvious: the technical solution to this problem is a lot easier to find than to arrive at the political consensus among the countries which might want to join the newcoin zone. However, the current need is so acute, in my opinion, that the required political compromises will be found in due course.

That said, please allow me to introduce one such technical blueprint for the newcoin. Let me start by saying that it should be partially (I suggest a share of at least 40% of value) backed by gold, for reasons that will soon become clear. The remaining 60% of the newcoin would be composed of the basket of currencies of the participating countries. Gold would provide the “external money” anchor to the structure and the basket of currencies element would allow the participants to retain their sovereignty and monetary flexibility. There would clearly be a need to create a Central Bank for the newcoin, which would emit new currency. This Central Bank could become a counterparty to cross-swaps, as well as provide clearing functions for the system and enforce the regulations. Any country would be free to join the newcoin on several conditions.

First, the candidate country needs to demonstrate that it has physical unencumbered gold in its domestic storage and pledge a certain amount in exchange for receiving corresponding amount of newcoin (using the 40% ratio mentioned above). Economic equivalent of this initial transaction would be a sale of the gold to the “gold pool” backing the newcoin in exchange for proportional amount of the newcoin backed by the pool. The actual legal form of this transaction is less important, as it is necessary simply to guarantee that the newcoin that is being emitted is always backed by at least 40% in gold. There is no need to even publicly disclose the gold reserves of each country, as long as all participants can be satisfied that sufficient reserves are always present. An annual joint audit and monitoring mechanism may be sufficient.

Second, a candidate country would need to establish a gold price discovery mechanism in its domestic currency. Most likely, one of the participating precious metals exchanges would start physical gold trading in each of the local currencies. This would establish a fair cross-rate for the local currencies using “external money” mechanism to set and adjust them over time. The gold price of the local currencies would drive their value in the basket for the newly-emitted newcoins. Each country would remain sovereign and be free to emit as much of local currency as they choose to, but this would eventually adjust the share of their currency in the newcoin’s value. At the same time, a country would only be able to obtain additional newcoin from the central bank in exchange for a pledge of additional gold. The net result is that the value of each component of newcoin in gold terms would be transparent and fair, which would translate into the transparency of newcoin’s value as well.

Finally, emissions or sales of newcoin by the central bank would be allowed only in exchange for gold for anyone outside the newcoin zone. In other words, the only two ways external parties can obtain large amounts of newcoin is either receiving it in exchange for physical gold or as a payment for goods and services provided. At the same time, the central bank would not be obliged to purchase newcoin in exchange for gold, removing the risk of the “run on the bank.”

Correct me if I’m wrong: this proposal seems to anchor all trade inside the newcoin zone and all external trade to gold. In this case, what about the stability of newcoin? After all, gold has been volatile in the past.

S. Tzu: I think what you are asking is what could be the impact if, for example, the dollar price of gold were to decline dramatically. In this case, as there would be no direct cross-rate between newcoin and the dollar, and as the central bank of the Global South would be only buying, not selling gold in exchange for newcoin, you can immediately see that arbitrage would be extremely difficult. As a result, the volatility of the currency basket expressed in newcoin (or gold) would be quite low. And this is exactly the intended positive impact of the “external money” anchoring of this new currency unit on trade and investment. Clearly, some key export commodities would be priced by the Global South in gold and newcoin only, making the “run on the bank” or speculative attacks on newcoin even less likely.

Over time, if gold is undervalued in the Global North, it would gradually, or perhaps rapidly, gravitate to the Global South in exchange for exports or newcoin, which would not be a bad outcome for the “external money” system and accelerate the broad acceptance of newcoin as reserve currency. Importantly, as physical gold reserves are finite outside of the newcoin zone, the imbalances would inevitably correct themselves, as the Global South will remain a net exporter of key commodities.

What you just said is packed with precious info. Perhaps we should revisit the whole thing in the near future and discuss the feedback to your ideas. Now we’ve arrived at Maryina Roscha, it’s time to get off!

S. Tzu: It would be my pleasure to continue our dialogue. Looking forward to another loop!

A new report by data firm Altrata revealed the top ten cities worldwide with the most homeowners worth at least $30 million, and six of them were located in the United States. At the very top of the list was New York City. 

The report found 21,714 individuals classified as ultra-high-net-worth (worth at least $30 million) owned a primary or secondary residence in the Northeast metro area. 

London and Hong Kong ranked second and third on the list. As for the rest of the US cities that made the list, they include:

#4 Los Angeles

#5 Miami 

#6 San Francisco

#9 Chicago 

#10 Washington, DC

Here’s the full list:

The list is primarily dominated by US cities, with Aspen having the highest concentration of superrich residents. In fact, the ratio in Aspen is one in 67, making the density of superrich individuals in this Colorado mountain resort town 15 times greater than that of New York City.

“These qualities offer considerable scope for wealthy individuals in search of a secondary home to stay in the country rather than look abroad,” the report said.

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

The Republican supermajority in Florida is against legalizing open carry.

Even after repeated statements in favor of the law change by Governor Ron DeSantis this week, the Republicans in Florida’s legislative branch don’t seem too keen on adding the legalization of open carry to their constitutional carry bill.

To make matters worse, Republican leadership is openly dismissive of the idea of legalizing open carry, something that is legal in 47 other states. Only Florida, Illinois, and New York have total bans on open carry.

GOA’s Florida State Director, Luis Valdes, brought the debate on open carry to the forefront this week when he asked Governor DeSantis if he would support adding open carry to the current constitutional carry bill, to which the Governor confirmed he would. 

In the same statement, DeSantis expressed his doubt about the Republican Legislature legalizing open carry in the new bill, saying, “I don’t think they’re gonna do it.”

DeSantis may be correct.

When asked about open carry being added to the current bill, sponsor Chuck Brannan apathetically stated that the bill “is what it is as filed,” indicating that he has no intention of legalizing open carry. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo shared similar sentiments with Rep. Brannan.

Thirty-six years after Janet Reno, as Miami-Dade County State Attorney, worked to pass a ban on open carry, Republicans are still working to defend this unconstitutional law.

Now is the chance for Governor DeSantis to demand that the Republican Supermajority in Florida add open carry to the bill and finally remove Florida from the company of New York and Illinois on the issue of open carry.

Gun Owners of America has been working diligently in Florida to not only pass Constitutional Carry, but get open carry added to the current bill. It’s time to pressure Republican leadership, and we need your help!

Please call the Florida Legislature at (850) 717-5019 & (850) 487-5028 and let them know you want open carry added to the bill.

*   *   *

Gun Owners for America is the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington. Join us! 

In a rare interview Jon Stewart skewered the military-industrial complex and Washington policymakers behind the last two decades of failed wars in the Middle East.

The well-known comedian pressed former US Army General and CIA Director David Petraeus in particular on the fact that repeat failures, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, have only led to the Pentagon receiving a “raise”. 

“It looks to me like we lost 20 years in Afghanistan, 20 years in Iraq, and the Pentagon got a raise,” Stewart said on “The Problem with Jon Stewart.”

Petraeus while on the defensive admitted that the decades of ‘nation-building’ in the Middle East “tempered enthusiasm” among the population for interventionist action abroad.

But Stewart pressed him further on the constant record-breaking defense budgets of the past years and this year’s.

“They got 50 billion more dollars than they even asked for,” he said in reference to the Defense Department getting approved for an additional $58 billion beyond what it even requested.

Petraeus then claimed it is all necessary due to “a return of great power rivalries and the need to transform the force” – an particularly China. “Look, if we don’t do it, someone else will,” Petraeus said.

Watch the tense exchange below:

Has our military industry given us a complex? We ask Gen. David Petraeus. to talk about what, if anything, we have learned from our often cavalier approach to foreign policy. Watch the full interview in our latest episode, “The Military Industrial Excess,” on @appletvplus. pic.twitter.com/VONLIGyFyL

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) March 10, 2023

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A defendant in the Proud Boys trial over Jan. 6, 2021, charges moved March 9 to dismiss the case, after some footage from the day of the breach was shown for the first time.

Dominic Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges. The newly disclosed footage, shown on Fox News this week, “is plainly exculpatory,” Pezzola’s lawyers said in the new motion.

“It establishes that the Senate chamber was never violently breached, and—in fact—was treated respectfully by January 6 protestors,” they said.

Among the clips Fox’s Tucker Carlson broadcast were moments where Jacob Chansley, another defendant who is serving a jail sentence after pleading guilty, was walking around accompanied by police officers. The officers did not stop Chansley and even tried opening doors for him. Chansley eventually made it into the Senate chamber, where he and others later knelt and prayed. Chansley, during the prayer, gave thanks to the officers for “letting us into the building.”

Pezzola also entered the Capitol, and prosecutors have argued that he and others being inside forced Congress, which was certifying electoral votes from the 2020 election, to go into recess.

The new footage, though, shows that members “could have continued proceedings,” Pezzola’s attorneys said. “It was not Pezzola or codefendants who caused the Congress to recess. Congress interrupted its own proceedings.”

The lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, to dismiss it. If Kelly rejects that request, he is asked in the motion to declare a mistrial.

Brady Violations

Prosecutors must provide defendants with evidence that can be exculpatory, or help defendants prove their innocence. The rule was crystallized in Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court decision. “Suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused who has requested it violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution,” the decision states.

Zachary Rehl, another Proud Boys defendant, requested all information regarding Congress going into recess on Jan. 6 as early as late 2021.

“While Brady obligations do not extend to the entirety of the government, they do include investigative agencies or agencies closely related who knew or should have known that information would be material to a prosecution arising from their direct involvement. Here the U.S. Capitol Police are directly related and fully aware of the events of January 6, 2021,” lawyers for the defendants said.

They cited previous court decisions, including one that found a prosecutor “has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government’s behalf in the case, including the police.”

“We will respond through the court,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia told The Epoch Times via email.

The U.S. Capitol Police did not return a request for comment.

Albert Watkins, who represented Chansley, said on Fox on Wednesday night that the footage the outlet aired this week had not been provided to him.

“The government knew that Jake had walked around with all of these police officers. They had that video footage. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t disclosed to me. It wasn’t provided to me,” Watkins said. “They had a duty, an absolute duty, with zero discretion to provide it to me so I could share it with my client.”

Justice Requires Dismissal: Motion

Another development supports a dismissal, according to the new motion.

FBI special agent Nicole Miller is being accused of hiding a tab in a spreadsheet that showed some of her emails.

Miller was testifying on March 8 when Nick Smith, a lawyer representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean, revealed the secret tab, leaving over one thousand hidden Excel rows of messages, Nordean’s attorneys said in a separate filing.

Miller said in one email that “my boss assigned me 338 items of evidence i have to destroy” and in another that colleagues should go into a confidential human source report and “edit out that I was present,” according to the filing.

The hidden emails featured Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers said, adding, “If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Erik Kenerson, an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said in court Wednesday that even if there were missing messages, the defense could have asked the government to produce them. He said that prosecutors decide which messages to provide to the defense, so it was not appropriate to imply the agent hid them.

A fascinating new report in Nikkei Asia has unearthed and detailed the findings of an elite Chinese state-linked think tank which reports directly to the People’s Liberation Army. Nikkei in the context of examining the timing and motives behind China’s 12-point peace plan said that Chinese military experts are predicting the Russia-Ukraine war will end this summer.

To review, the 12-point plan urged implementation of a ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations toward a permanent peaceful settlement, and was unveiled on the one-year Feb.24 anniversary of the war. But the Nikkei report asserts there’s specific rationale driving Beijing: “The reason for China’s sudden change can be traced back to a report issued two months earlier by a top think tank in Beijing.”

“The Academy of Military Sciences [AMS] reports directly to the People’s Liberation Army,” Nikkei continues. “Although it cannot be found on a map, the institution is located in Beijing’s Haidian district, which itself is home to the ruins of Yuanmingyuan, a palace destroyed by Western armies in the 19th century.”

The report goes on the detail how central and important the AMS is as a military think tank (a kind of ‘Chinese Rand Corporation’ in terms of influence), issuing recommendations directly to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, which is the PLA’s top decision-making body.

And here’s where the Nikkei report gets most interesting…

In December, the AMS completed a simulation on the Ukraine conflict, resulting in an astonishing finding, according to sources close to the Chinese government. The war will draw to a close around summer 2023, the simulation indicated, with Russia having the upper hand.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian economies would be too exhausted to sustain the war past the summer, the report said.

It is possible that the results were skewed in favor of Russia to please China’s Moscow-leaning leadership. But coincidentally, the $45 billion aid package passed last December in the U.S. is set to expire this summer too.

It should also be noted that Republican leadership in the GOP-dominated House has vowed to reign in the “blank check” approach to Ukraine, also amid even the Biden administration recently giving signals that the aid won’t last forever. But, the consensus among Pentagon leadership has been that the Ukraine war could drag on for years.

Nikkei says that the think tank simulation led to the peace proposal gaining momentum in the halls of power in Beijing. “After hearing the AMS’ prediction, Beijing crafted a peace proposal in time for the one-year anniversary of the war,” the report reads. “It aims to achieve three goals, including the restoration of relations with Europe.” These can be briefly summarized as follows:

• improved and closer Chinese political and economic relations with Europe
• preservation of friendly relations with Ukraine
• China emerging as the prime peacemaker between Moscow and Kiev

Should President Xi Jinping accept Putin’s recent invitation to travel to Moscow, all of these things will be in play in what will be a highly watched visit, with Western governments closely scrutinizing every word to come out of it.

Some pundits have seen a major power like China getting involved in dialogue as crucial to kicking off real momentum…

The gruesome war continues unabated with huge numbers of young Ukrainian and Russian men dead. Yet, no calls for peace negotiations from our leaders! Only China has put forward a proposal for starting negotiations, which the US and EU immediately shot downhttps://t.co/LtImXuOXoD

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) March 10, 2023

Even though Washington quickly rejected that Beijing is honest player when it comes to peace, the most surprising reaction came from Kiev itself, it should be recalled:

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has cautiously welcomed China’s peace plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but said it would be acceptable only if it led to Vladimir Putin pulling his troops out from all occupied Ukrainian territory.

Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv to mark the first anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale attack, the Ukrainian president said he “wanted to believe” Beijing was interested in a “fair peace”. That meant not “supplying weapons to Russia”, he said, adding: “I’m doing my best to prevent that from happening. This is priority number one.”

Moscow, as well as a few analysts in the West, have accused the United States and United Kingdom of seeking to sabotage peace. This is why the US and UK will likely remain cold regarding any Chinese efforts at a serious and lasting peace.

And Nikkei too comments, “If China fails at becoming a peacemaker, the ramifications would undermine Xi’s authority and prestige. It remains to be seen if the current leadership filled with Xi loyalists will be capable of a feat that requires complex negotiating skills and tenacious fortitude.” Again, this is all the more reason for Washington hawks to want to quash Beijing’s efforts before they even get off the ground. But another prime question will be is how much sway will Xi hold with Putin when it comes to Ukraine?

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is pressing the Treasury Department to conduct a thorough review of new whistleblower allegations regarding the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok that were recently brought to his attention.

Writing to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on March 8, Hawley said that a TikTok whistleblower has come to him with direct knowledge of the app’s operating practices. His allegations, Hawley said, are “deeply concerning” and appear to contradict with public statements from senior executives of TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance over the handling of U.S. users’ data.

Revelations from leaked recordings that engineers in China had repeatedly accessed the platform’s U.S. data as of last January have raised bipartisan concerns in Congress.

While TikTok’s chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas in September 2022 testified to senators that they have “strict controls in terms of who and how our data is accessed,” and vowed that “under no circumstances would we give that data to China,” the whistleblower described the access controls as “superficial” at best, if they exist at all, according to Hawley.

TikTok and ByteDance employees can “switch between Chinese and U.S. data with nothing more than the click of a button using a proprietary tool called Dorado,” Hawley said, quoting the whistleblower who likened it to a “light switch.”

Another tool the whistleblower cited is called Aeolus, which he said will allow a China-based employee access to U.S. data with authorization from a manager and a dataset owner.

“I have seen first-hand China-based engineers flipping over to non-China datasets and creating scheduled tasks to backup, aggregate, and analyze data.”

The whistleblower also described close coordination between TikTok and ByteDance, both of which he said “rely on proprietary software they engineered in China, thereby reducing foreign scrutiny and enabling Chinese engineers to insert software backdoors,” Hawley wrote in the letter.

“TikTok and ByteDance are functionally the same company. They use the same data analysis tools and chat apps, and managers are in constant contact,” Hawley cited the whistleblower as saying.

‘Highly Disturbing Allegations’

Hawley sees the “highly disturbing allegations” as the latest reason for a complete purge of TikTok from the United States, which is most popular among American teens.

“Despite TikTok’s many reassurances that members of the Chinese Communist Party do not have access to U.S. data, it seems more and more likely that they do,” he wrote. He requested Yellen provide information on what TikTok has shared with the foreign transaction review panel—the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—that she chairs regarding its software tools, dataset facilities, internal products, the declared access ability for TikTok staff in China through these tools, and the internal approval process that CFIUS is aware of.

Read more here…

Giving someone the middle finger is a God-given right according to a Canadian judge.

In a 26-page decision reported by The Guardian, judge Dennis Galiatsatos dismissed a case against a man who allegedly harassed his neighbor in a Montreal suburb.

“To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger,” he said in the Feb. 24 ruling. “Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.”

In May 2021, Neall Epstein was arrested by police for uttering death threats and “criminal harassment” against his neighbor, Michael Naccache, in Beaconsfield, Quebec.

But judge Galiatsatos instead laid into Naccache, whose complaints were “nothing more than mundane, petty neighborhood trivialities.”

“It is deplorable that the complainants have weaponized the criminal justice system in an attempt to exert revenge on an innocent man for some perceived slights that are, at best, trivial peeves,” reads the ruling.

Naccache had previously accused Epstein of assaulting his parents in March 2021, a claim the judge dismissed outright.

The focus of the case happened later that year, however. In May, Epstein testified his neighbour held up a handheld drill and said: “You fucking crazy neighbour; you dipshit,” adding: “You’re fucking dead.”

In response, Epstein told him to “fuck off” and proceeded to give Naccache the finger as he walked away, court documents showed. Video evidence, taken from CCTV footage, “clearly shows that Epstein is looking in the complainant’s direction and giving him the finger, sometimes with both hands”. -The Guardian

According to Galiatsatos, “being told to ‘fuck off’ should not prompt a call to 911.“

“The complainants are free to clutch their pearls in the face of such an insult. However, the police department and the 911 dispatching service have more important priorities to address.”

And while the middle finger “may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly … Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability.”

In the judge’s conclusion, he wished he could throw the case’s files out of a window to express his outrage about Epstein’s charges. 

*   *   *

Read the decision here:

Authored by Beth Berlje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

With spring planting just around the corner, Ohio and Pennsylvania farmers near the Norfolk Southern train derailment are worried about the effect spilled chemicals will have on their crops and livestock.

In a joint letter on Wednesday, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) asked Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Thomas Vilsack and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael Regan to address the concerns of farmers and agricultural producers in the affected areas around East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania.

The letter asks the USDA and EPA to send resources to the region to help farmers test soils, plant tissue, and livestock to determine their safety and marketability.

It also asks for a review of what disaster assistance could be offered to farmers.

So far, the letter says, no agency has provided clear guidance to farmers about the safety of their crops and livestock and whether they will be able to safely sell them.

“Farmers in the region are already reporting receiving requests to cancel orders due to health concerns,” the letter said. “Farmers and food producers in East Palestine and Darlington Township need assistance in responding to this manmade disaster.”

Despite testing results, the letter said, some consumers will still be apprehensive and refuse to purchase agricultural products from the region because of the contamination. That is why farmers have specifically asked for disaster assistance.

“Senators Casey and Fetterman have worked tirelessly to support Pennsylvanians and Ohioans impacted by this disaster in the short term, namely advocating for resources and holding Norfolk Southern accountable for the harm the derailment has inflicted, in addition to working to prevent similar disasters from happening in the future,” a press release about the letter said.

Fetterman’s Health

Fetterman’s work has been interrupted by health issues. The train derailed on Feb. 3 and four days later, on Feb. 7, Fetterman went to George Washington University Hospital because he was lightheaded. This was a concern because he suffered a stroke on the campaign trail and has cardiac problems. He was released on Feb. 10.

Fetterman then checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment of clinical depression on Feb. 15, where he is expected to stay for weeks. At first, there were no signs of his working from the hospital, but on March 6, his staff posted photos on Twitter of him sitting with an aide in a lavender room at the hospital.

Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill and other Senate business. John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser focused on PA & will be back soon. pic.twitter.com/143uAhoQRx

— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 6, 2023

 “Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill, and other Senate business. John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser-focused on PA & will be back soon,” the Twitter post from Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson said. Fetterman remains unavailable to constituents.

But now, he has signed this and another joint letter.

Questions for Norfolk Southern

Another letter was sent to Alan Shaw, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation. It was signed by Fetterman, Casey, Brown, and U.S. Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), and J. D. Vance (R-Ohio).

In it, they asked the following questions:

• How does the company plan to assist individuals or municipalities with short-term water needs? What will be done in the long-term if water sources are contaminated by the hazardous materials that leaked out of tanker cars or that were created during the explosion and subsequent fires?
• What is the company’s plan to reimburse local farmers if their crops, soil, or livestock are found to be injured, killed, contaminated, or in any way rendered less valuable by the derailment or its effects?
• How will the company determine the amount of direct financial compensation it will provide to municipalities affected by this derailment, including East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania?
• What steps will the company take to make information regarding reimbursements and financial assistance available to local residents, organizations, businesses, and relevant public officials? Following the emergency phase of the clean-up, what subsurface remediation activities are anticipated being needed and what is the anticipated length of time required for those activities?
• What are the company’s plans for remediation and disposal of impacted soils? Will any of the materials need to be transported off-site for treatment and disposal? And how will the company ensure communities are protected along the transportation route?
• Since the adoption of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), how has Norfolk Southern’s staffing changed? Can you confirm that Norfolk Southern’s workforce has reduced by approximately 40 percent due to PSR? Further, please provide data on the size of the Norfolk Southern workforce that conducts inspections of trains since adoption of PSR.
• How much has Norfolk Southern expended on stock buybacks and dividends in the past 10 years? And during that period how much has Norfolk Southern expended on maintenance and repair of infrastructure and rolling stock?