Update (1105ET): The price of FTX Token FTT just crashed over 20% after holding support at $22 since the CEO of Alameda Research (FTX hedge fund) offered to buy all Binance’s FTT holdings at that level.

Earlier this evening, Binance founder CZ responded with a tweet that he ‘will let the market decide’…

I didn’t say that. It was a question, not a commitment. I think we will stay in the free market.

We still hold LUNA (now LUNC) today. 😂

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 7, 2022

And that triggered aggressive selling in FTT…

This is triggering selling pressure across much of the crypto space as FTX liquidity/contagion fears spread as a bank-run of sorts occurs on assets sitting on the FTX platform.

Get your funds out of FTX. This is financial advice.

— Ran Neuner (@cryptomanran) November 6, 2022

Solana is being hammered lower since it is part of FTX’s reserves…

And as @DylanLeClair_ notes, FTX acts like an emerging market central bank and is selling its reserves to shore up its bad FTT currency.

In this case, it reserve is Solana. pic.twitter.com/1PhkdO16AC

— Jim Bianco biancoresearch.eth (@biancoresearch) November 8, 2022

As we detailed below, Bankman-Fried denied CZ’s allegations: “A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors,… FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”

“FTX has enough to cover all client holdings.

We don’t invest client assets (even in treasuries).

We have been processing all withdrawals, and will continue to be.”

Bitcoin puked below $20,000 on the back of the moves…

Whether strategic or not, FTX is one of Binance’s largest competitors and in just one day, those comments and Binance’s sale of FTT holdings have started a chain of second and third order effects.

*  *  *

As we detailed earlier, new battle of the billionaires is brewing (if not boiling over) among the current kings of crypto as tensions between Binance founder  Zhao “CZ” Changpeng and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have escalated a war of words on Twitter into actions over CZ’s claims that FTX’s hedge fund’s asset base may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

The drama began early Sunday morning when FTX’s FTT token suddenly plunged as rumors surfaced that a giant whale with 23 million FTT, probably Binance, might be dumping its tokens.

FTT trade volume surged to its highest level in more than a year amid the wave of selling pressure…

Shortly after that initial plunge, Zhao said his company would liquidate its entire FTT holdings in the coming months, on fears that the token might collapse in the same manner as Terra (LUNA) in May 2021.

Liquidating our FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We gave support before, but we won’t pretend to make love after divorce. We are not against anyone. But we won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs. Onwards.

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 6, 2022

Binance was an early investor in FTX.

Zhao referenced “recent revelations that have came to light,” but did not elaborate publicly.

As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. 1/4

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 6, 2022

However, his actions come shortly after a Nov 2nd article on CoinDesk that said much the balance sheet of Bankman-Fried’s trading house Alameda Research is comprised of the FTT token.

Cointelegraph reports that, according to the CoinDesk report, Alameda Research had $14.6 billion on its balance sheet as of June 30, with FTT being the largest holding at $5.8 billion, making up 88% of its net equity. In addition, the firm held $1.2 billion in Solana, $3.37 billion in unidentified cryptocurrency, $2 billion in “equity securities” and other assets.

On the other hand, Alameda Research reportedly had liabilities worth $8 billion, including $2.2 billion worth of loans collateralized by FTT.

That, coupled with the firm’s alleged exposure to illiquid altcoins, prompted some analysts to predict its insolvency in the future. 

“Alameda will never be able to cash in a significant portion of FTT to pay back its debts,” wrote Mike Burgersburg, an independent market analyst, for the Dirty Bubble Media Substack, noting:

“There are few buyers, and the largest buyer appears to be the very company which Alameda is most closely tied to […] the fair market value of their FTT in the event of large sales would rapidly approach $0.”

Bankman-Fried responded in a brief tweet thread, saying: “A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors,… FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”

1) A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors.

FTX is fine. Assets are fine.

Details:

— SBF (@SBF_FTX) November 7, 2022

He went on to note that:

“FTX has enough to cover all client holdings.

We don’t invest client assets (even in treasuries).

We have been processing all withdrawals, and will continue to be.

It’s heavily regulated, even when that slows us down.  We have GAAP audits, with > $1b excess cash.  We have a long history of safeguarding client assets, and that remains true today.

Concluding with an ‘oilve branch’ perhaps:

“I’d love it, @cz_binance, if we could work together for the ecosystem.”

Notably, as Decrypt reports, Zhao’s actions (and the Alameda leaks) follow weeks of criticism directed at FTX’s founder and Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried for regulatory proposals he put forth in a blog post which recommended restrictions regarding DeFi. He has since committed to revising his regulatory position.

While it’s fun to watch billionaire whiz-kids slinging mud at each other, the collateral damage (quite literallY) could be significant for the rest of the crypto universe.

“Overall, FTT is a relatively illiquid token on open markets, so Binance’s plans to liquidate all FTT tokens they hold is quite a significant market event,”  Clara Medalie, head of research at analytics firm Kaiko, said.

“Alameda will likely dedicate considerable resources to ensure the price of FTT doesn’t crash.”

In fact, Alameda’s CEO tweeted that her trading firm’s financial condition is stronger than what was reflected by the balance sheet CoinDesk wrote about. She also offered, in a reply to the Binance CEO’s post, to buy his firm’s FTT token holdings for $22 each.

@cz_binance if you’re looking to minimize the market impact on your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!

— Caroline (@carolinecapital) November 6, 2022

Nothing to worry about at all…

In light of all the Binance vs FTX/Alameda rumors, a quick look at the latter’s “management team”https://t.co/8m1O5aBgyH

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 7, 2022

Nevertheless, the FTX outflows continue…

Quite the capital flight from FTX amidst Alameda worries. pic.twitter.com/kd8U6HDG0s

— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) November 7, 2022

Overall, as Kaiko concludes, it is clear that FTT market makers are working overtime to maintain the price of FTT, which is down 3% over the past day along with most other cryptocurrencies. Despite a massive surge in selling pressure, there is barely a dent in market depth and only a slight increase in price slippage. Ultimately it may be in all parties’ best interest to engage in an OTC transaction as suggested by Caroline Ellison to limit price impacts, especially considering Binance, FTX, and Alameda all risk large losses should FTTs price fall significantly.

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

Former President Donald Trump teased confirmation of his anticipated 2024 president bid to supporters on Monday, revealing he will make a “big announcement” on Nov. 15.

Trump was in Dayton, Ohio, on Nov. 7, holding a campaign rally for local Republican candidates, particularly J.D. Vance who is seeking the state’s Senate seat. He told supporters that the midterms are a “country-saving election.”

“Two years ago, we were a great nation and we will be a great nation again,” Trump said.

“The first step to saving America is winning an epic victory for Republicans tomorrow.”

Near the end of the rally, Trump hinted that he will seek another bid for the White House in 2024.

“I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump said, without elaborating.

He added, “We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow.

BREAKING: President Donald J. Trump “I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15th at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, FL.” pic.twitter.com/EvOn45Hq41

— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) November 8, 2022

Trump has been hinting that he will make another run for president for months.

At an Iowa rally on Nov. 3, Trump dropped a strong hint that he would seek reelection.

“And now, in order to make to make our country successful, and safe, and glorious, I will very, very, very, probably do it again, okay?” Trump said. “Very, very, very probably.”

The crowd at the rally cheered in response, erupting in chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

“That’s nice, well, get ready, that’s all I’m telling you, very soon,” Trump said. “Get ready.”

Authored by Eric Utter via American Thinker,

History professor Robert S. McElvaine recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times in which he stated that journalists are “failing Americans” by insisting on treating both political parties equally.  Yes, as we know, there is nothing more dangerous to a representative republic than a free and objective press.

McElvaine claimed that the United States is in “the final stages of the most critical election for the survival of the American experiment since 1864” and added that journalists bear responsibility for protecting America’s future from “right-wing” extremists.

He wrote: “America’s future hangs on the defeat of the right-wing extremist authoritarians who have seized the name of Lincoln’s party.  If we lose, news corporations and journalists with a misplaced sense of ‘balance,’ ‘neutrality’ and ‘nonpartisanship’ will bear a considerable share of the blame.”  Down with balance, neutrality, and nonpartisanship!  Screw objectivity!  To hell with equal treatment, justice, fairness, equality, and equity when it comes to “journalists'” duty to the people!  The people don’t know how to think, so the media must tell them what to think…or democracy is doomed!  Mass indoctrination is the last, best hope for democracy!

McElvaine further ostracized reporters for not adequately attacking conservatives for pushing ideas that are “increasingly reminiscent” of Hitler’s rise to power.  Um, “professor,” if anyone is implicitly threatening to round political opponents up and send them to prison or concentration/labor/re-education camps, it’s far left Democrats.  In fact, they’ve already done that.

Yet the Nutty Professor soldiered on, saying: “In the final days of this election season, Americans must recognize that the existential struggle we are engaged in now is not just a game.  If the enemies of democracy prevail and take control of either house of Congress in the midterms, there will be no ‘wait till next year.’  They would probably refuse to accept the election of a Democratic president in 2024.  The game would be over, if not permanently, at least for many years.”  Projection!  Democrats refused to accept the election of a Republican president in 2000 and in 2016.

Bizarrely, McElvaine’s op-ed appeared shortly after a study by the Media Research Center found that Republicans overwhelmingly received more negative coverage from the press than Democrat candidates did in the months leading up to the midterm elections.

Democrats have spent much of the past few weeks telling us all that democracy will die unless we vote as they tell us to.  

Oddly, they suddenly now believe there are objective truths.  Two of them, in fact.  One, that MAGA Republicans are evil.  And two, that the rest of us are too stupid to realize this if the news media’s reports are unbiased.

We get to pick “our truth” when it comes to, say, what sex or gender we claim to be.  But not if we believe it’s problematic to allow an experimental mRNA vaccine/gene therapy into our body — or if we believe that voting for Republicans is in the best interest of ourselves and our nation.  I mean, the “my truth” thing can go only so far, right? 

Anybody else see a problem with this?  McElvaine’s op-ed is advocating for outright discrimination against one of the two major political parties — including its adherents, who constitute nearly half of the electorate — in the interest of democracy!

The vast majority of so-called journalists, like the vast majority of so-called professors, are “failing Americans” by trying to convince them that they give a rat’s rear end about democracy…when all they really care about is their own primacy.

North Korea last week fired a missile that crossed over the south’s disputed maritime border for the first time since the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948. On Monday the south’s navy announced it has  “recovered what is presumed to be the debris of the North’s short-range ballistic missile.”

Also unprecedented is that the missile landed a mere 50 miles from the South Korean coastal city of Ulsa, Yonhap said, coming amid a record number of missile launches within a 24-hour timeframe last Wednesday.

Pyongyang was reacting to a week of the largest-ever joint US-South Korean military drills, which had a large aerial component of over 200 combined aircraft. The exercises ended on Saturday, and also came as Seoul as well as Washington intelligence officials have been warning allies to expect Kim Jong-Un to conduct a nuclear test at any time.

On Monday North Korea itself explained the ramped up launches for the first time, directing its rhetoric in the form of new threat aimed at the United States. Pyongyang says the military was “simulating the attack” on US and South Korean targets as a result of the provocative six days of drills. 

“As part of the countermeasures to smash the continued frenzy of war provocations of the enemy, our army launched to the east sea the super-large multiple launch rocket system, five tactical ballistic missiles of different kinds and 46 long-range missiles of multiple launch rocket system,” state-run KCNA news agency reported of the North Korean military statement.

Pyongyang further claimed it launched a “special functional warhead paralyzing the operation command system of the enemy” along with the “mobilization of 500 fighters” – in reference to fighter jets. Pentagon officials remain skeptical of this claim of the north deploying 500 jet fighters. 

US and South Korean officials say they haven’t seen evidence of this “special” warhead that the KCNA statement referenced. The north has vowed to keep up the pressure…

“The recent corresponding military operations by the Korean People’s Army are a clear answer of (North Korea) that the more persistently the enemies’ provocative military moves continue, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the KPA will counter them,” the General Staff of North Korea’s military said in a statement carried by state media.

The region has been put on edge over the rapidly increased numbers of tests, especially US-ally Japan: 

You will find more infographics at Statista

Meanwhile, a joint US-South Korea military statement last week warned as follows in response to Pyongyang’s posturing and rhetroic: “Any nuclear attack against the United States or its allies and partners, including the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons, is unacceptable and will result in the end of the Kim regime.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

After calling Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” on Saturday night, former President Donald Trump called on his Miami supporters to vote for the Florida GOP governor during the 2022 midterms.

“With thousands of proud, hard-working American patriots, incredible people–just two days from now, the people of Florida are going to reelect the wonderful, the great, a friend of mine, Marco Rubio to the United States Senate, and you’re going to reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor of the state,” he said at an event while stumping for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). 

“And you’re going to elect an incredible slate of true MAGA warriors to Congress.”

Trump drew headlines when he made the quip about DeSantis at a rally for Dr. Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano, Republicans who are campaigning for Pennsylvania’s Senate and gubernatorial seats, respectively. DeSantis and his campaign have not responded to Trump’s comment on Saturday.

DeSantis is facing off against former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Democrat, and Rubio, meanwhile, faces Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.).  Recent polls have shown DeSantis is ahead of Crist and have shown that Rubio leads Demings.

Trump and DeSantis are both widely considered to be the top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, although DeSantis has not made any indication on whether he intends to run during the 2024 contest. When asked about running for president, DeSantis has consistently said he’s campaigning to keep his position as Florida’s governor.

His comments Saturday came as he was talking about polling for possible 2024 GOP candidates, which have shown Trump with a significant lead.

“We’re winning big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody’s ever seen before. There it is, Trump at 71 percent, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent,” Trump said in Pennsylvania. “Mike Pence at seven, oh, Mike is doing better than I thought. Liz Cheney there’s no way she’s at 4 percent. There’s no way. There’s no way. But we’re at 71 to 10 to 7 to 4.”

Read more here…

Workers at a Philadelphia Home Depot store on Saturday night overwhelmingly shot down a drive to unionize the location. It would have become the first fully-unionized Home Depot store. 

No votes outnumbered yes votes by more than a three-to-one margin. The final tally came in at 165 to 51, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which supervised the vote. 

“We’re happy that the associates at this store voted to continue working directly with the company,” Home Depot spokeswoman Margaret Smith told WHYY. “That connection is important to our culture, and we will continue listening to our associates and making The Home Depot a great place to work and grow.”

The vote was initiated by a September petition that had 106 signatures out of 266 employees at the Roosevelt Boulevard Home Depot in Northeast Philly. Organizers have filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging that Home Depot managers interfered with their efforts. 

The Philly Home Depot union push is part of a broader union-organizing surge: Over the first half of 2022, 1,411 American workplaces filed union-organizing petitions with the National Labor Relations Board—the highest mark since 2015. 

However, the blowout loss is the latest splash of cold water on union activists who’ve been targeting big-chain retailers across the country with mixed success. Last month, employees at an upstate New York Amazon warehouse killed an Amazon Labor Union (ALU) drive by a 2-to-1 margin.

In April, the ALU scored a headline-making victory, when workers at a Staten Island Amazon processing facility voted to unionize, in a vote where yes votes prevailed 2,654 to 2,131. More than 8,300 were eligible to vote.

Amazon filed an objection to the vote, alleging that the NLRB’s Brooklyn office violated labor law by appearing to support the unionization push. In September, the NLRB declared that Amazon “had not met its burden” of establishing that the NLRB had engaged in “objectionable conduct.”  

The labor skirmishes are getting spicy: Earlier this month, Apple decided to withhold an increase in benefits from employees at its sole unionized store, which is in Towson, Maryland.

Starbucks has fired similar benefit-withholding shots across the bow of unionization forces, triggering NLRB accusations of unlawful practices. The coffee seller has been perhaps the most visible target of successful retail-unionization attempts, with some 250 stores voting to unionize over the past year.  

Meanwhile, back in Philly, Politico reports the Home Depot story has a strange-bedfellow angle: 

One top Home Depot executive who works on employment practices at the company is Derek Bottoms, the husband of Keisha Lance Bottoms, director of the Office of Public Engagement in the White House and the former Atlanta mayor, Daniel Lippman reports. 

The Northeast Philly Home Depot workers clearly saw that unionization has downsides. That’s clear on a macro scale too: Since the start of the pandemic, right-to-work states have added 1.3 million jobs, while union-friendly, non-right-to-work states have lost 1.1 million. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

On the eve of the midterm elections with Pennsylvania’s Senate race viewed as a dead heat, Democratic candidate John Fetterman declared “I run on Roe v. Wade. I celebrate the demise of Roe v. Wade.” It was obviously a jarring moment for his pro-choice crowd particularly after calling for the codification of Roe. It was an all-too-familiar moment for the candidate who suffered a serious stroke that has impaired his communication and processing skills. However, as we previously discussed, many on the left have swatted back questions concerning Fetterman’s fitness as “ableism.” Now, the Washington Post has run a long column from University of Delaware Professor Jaipreet Virdi declaring that it is not just embracing ableism but eugenics to question Fetterman’s fitness.

Professor Virdi is an associate professor at the University of Delaware who describes herself as “Deaf & forever a radical.”  She is a prominent and influential voice against discrimination against the deaf.

There were parts of her column that I thought raised valuable and probative insights, including Virdi’s observation that “disabled people are the ‘original life hackers,’ people who adapt to their circumstances and find their way through the disabled world, by creating new objects and paths that allow them full participation.” She is also right that we need to reevaluate how our expectations might be barriers to those with disabilities. However, she engages in her own sweeping generalizations of those who raise these concerns and tells them that they must “jettison[] eugenics-influenced ideas about disability.”

Virdi frames her analysis by insisting that Fetterman is just given to “verbal stumbles and pauses.”  The problem is that we do not know if there is more serious cognitive damage. Fetterman has refused to release his medical records despite requests from the media, including newspapers that support him.

Moreover, Fetterman had this stroke before the primary vote but he and his staff kept the serious impact of the stroke a secret. After he received the nomination, they then largely prevented the media or voters from questioning him and sharply limited his public appearances. They would only agree to one debate and insisted that it occur relatively late in the election after hundreds of thousands voted.

In other words, we still do not know the extent to which Fetterman can process information and communicate. His sole debate was widely viewed as alarming.

However, it is the escalation of the rhetoric that is most notable about the Washington Post column. Professor Virdi explains that the doubts raised over Fetterman are reflective of our history with eugenics and view that certain groups are “socially deficient.”

“As far as eugenicists were concerned, science said that “moral” flaws were hereditary and threatened the health of the nation. This meant that the solution to social problems such as crime, promiscuity and poverty aimed at the institutionalization and sterilization of the “morally degenerate”. As [Sir Francis ] Galton envisioned, human improvement was only possible through consistent, scientific intervention brought about by eugenics: ‘What nature does blindly, slowly, and recklessly, man can do proactively, swiftly, and kindly.’”

Professor Virdi ties such doubts over the fitness of disabled people to past efforts of sterilization and the view that “controlling human reproduction through better breeding was a must.” She warns the such “at its core, eugenics simply applied a scientific gloss to existing racial, class, and gender prejudices. Immigrants, people with disabilities, and racial and ethnic minorities were among those identified as socially ‘disabled.’”

As I wrote in the earlier column, there is no reason why a senator cannot be fully effective despite a disability, including the use of such devices as readers.  The problem in Pennsylvania is that the Fetterman campaign has actively prevented efforts to determine if there are more serious cognitive difficulties for Fetterman in processing information.

In the end, the Fetterman strategy worked in sheltering the candidate from further questioning or debates. The best way to dispel such questions would have been greater interaction with the candidate to show that this was limited, as Professor Virdi suggests, to mere “verbal stumbles and pauses.”  As it stands, voters will largely vote without such information and any doubts are the result of the concerted effort to leave these questions answered.

We hear a lot these days from the political left about conservative and liberty minded ideals being a “threat to democracy,” and it’s important to understand that leftists use the word “democracy” very deliberately and with specific intent.  America has never been a pure democracy, and for good reason.  Democracy is rule by the mob; it is 51% of society lording over the other 49%.  It is tyranny of the majority.  

The founders of our nation described America as a Constitutional Republic.  Not once in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill Of Rights or the Constitution is the word “democracy” used.  Not once.  America is not a democracy because our system was intended to protect individual rights regardless of majority opinion. Majority rule was never the plan of the founders, and since they risked their lives centuries ago to create this country their viewpoints are far more important than those of woke activists in 2022 who have never done anything of value.    

Leftists continue to use the word to describe our nation in bad faith, and they do this because it’s what they want America to become.  They don’t care what America is or what it was meant to be, and this has been made clear in their reactions to various measures to bring balance and free speech back to the US after years of cancel culture controlled by far left extremists and their partnerships with Big Tech social media.

When it comes to Twitter, many conservatives will suggest that they really never cared about the platform and that it never affected their view of the world.  However, it cannot be denied that for at least the past six years Twitter has been a launch pad for malicious leftist organization and large scale attacks on individuals in order to silence those who dare disagree with their ideology.  They have used Twitter as a weapon to strike fear into people before the even think of speaking out.  

This organization has included collusion between journalists, activists, corporate CEOs and governments, and while these people represent a minority within our society they wield enough money and power to manufacture an artificial consensus.  They have had the power to silence opposition and make it appear as if the leftist narrative is the only narrative.  Twitter has been the bane of American life for far too long.  

The original management of Twitter, based out of San Francisco, has often held that there was no political bias inherent in the company and that everyone was treated fairly.  We have seen ample evidence that this was simply not the case, with the tech giant now exposed for working closely with the federal government (DHS) and the Biden Administration to actively erase the voices of people who opposed the unconstitutional covid mandates and vaccine passports (among other things). 

At the same time Twitter aggressively amplified the activities of leftist groups like BLM and Antifa, while consistently promoting the establishment narrative on almost every single domestic and geopolitical issue.  The value of the company to the political left cannot be overstated.  Twitter is their Mecca.  

Whether you like Elon Musk or distrust his intentions, the drama surrounding his takeover of the platform is quite revealing.  Musk has made very few announcements of intent as far as Twitter is concerned, with his primary goal being freedom of speech, or at least equal treatment of users regardless of their political background.  The response from leftists has been predictable but also somehow astonishing at the same time.  

We have seen the mainstream media froth in furious rage at the idea of Twitter becoming an open platform.  Many have argued that Musk’s takeover is a “threat to democracy” (there’s that word again).  Some have even insinuated that Musk is an authoritarian himself for trying to remove levels of censorship.  The accusations are bizarre and Orwellian – For leftists “freedom is slavery.”

Musk is noted for attempting to appease some demands from the left and has only met with further attacks as well as actions to frighten away the company’s advertisers.  If leftists can’t own the website they will seek to burn it down.  Musk recently complained:

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up!  They are trying to destroy free speech in America.”

The billionaire has said in the past that if his actions were making people angry on the far-left and the far-right at the same time then he “must be doing something right.”  The problem with this sentiment is that only one side has been trying to deconstruct or destroy our constitutional rights.  Musk can opine about the virtues of riding the fence or standing in the middle of the road and not committing to any viewpoint completely, but there are moments in history when one side is completely and utterly wrong, and the political left is that screaching albatross today.

The new owner of Twitter is now learning an important lesson that conservatives have known for some time:  You cannot negotiate with terrorists.  You cannot appease or bargain with people who only want power and destruction.  

Many would define free speech in terms of social media as legal speech with context and nuance taken into consideration.  There are always rules to everything and always will be.  But for leftists free speech only applies to “correct” ideas that are vetted by them and the establishment.  No one asked them to do this, they have declares themselves the arbiters of good speech and bad speech.  

Free speech is a privilege relegated to only one group, one political movement.  Everyone else must earn the opportunity to speak by showing fealty and compliance, and even then your ability to voice your ideas might elude you much like a vaporous blue checkmark.    

For leftists, ideas are manifest.  Ideas are dangerous.  Facts and evidence that contradict their narratives are dangerous.  Free speech is dangerous because it creates a level playing field in which leftists cannot compete.  The ability to punish “incorrect speech” is a way to stop fair debate.  It’s the ability to control the world, and they know it.   

Open discussion on Twitter by itself could be treated as irrelevant to most people; who cares about a single platform.  But leftist opposition to free speech affects everyone and has poisoned the cultural well for years now.  Look at how they have reacted to losing a single media company to free speech, and consider how they might react should they lose the entire country.  

Authored by Gary Richard via The Mises Institute,

Kish, since you are wondering, is an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf famed for its tourist and shopping attractions. It is becoming a serious rival to other nearby vacation hubs in Doha and Dubai.

Along with pristine beaches and extensive malls, Kish is—or rather ought to be—known more widely for another feature and institution which the Iranian mullahs established there way back in 2003; namely, the Kish Bourse (i.e., Kish Stock Exchange). بورس کیش if you prefer the Farsi.

Think of it as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange of Iran, a country stacked with natural resources, a relatively well-educated and sophisticated population (the literacy rate is 97 percent among young adults, which, if you consider the deplorable state of secondary education in the United States, means that Iranian youth are most assuredly smarter than your average young American adult), and an economy burdened by mismanagement of their own Islamic theocracy and crippling, long-duration sanctions from the American secular theocracy.

That American secular theocracy has considered it a dogmatic rite of passage into the state and corporate media (their temples) that one must, at the very least, excuse the economic, cultural, and political warfare against Iran as necessary for a variety of spurious reasons. Who really has enough free time to investigate and then suggest otherwise? After all, Iran is plagued by terroristic Islamic fundamentalists who have pledged—like their former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—“to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.”

That hero of American warfare and empire and regime change and nation building, George W. Bush, declared Iran to be one of the hinges of the “axis of evil”; so, since George W. Bush is so much better than Donald J. Trump, well, all Iranians must be malevolent thugs. Iran deserved to have the United States aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, to have the United States provide Hussein chemical weapons (mostly made in Germany and the United Kingdom), and then have those chemical weapons unleashed on them.

Never mind that Ahmadinejad never said that. Look away from the facts that one of the rare times in which Trump garnered any support from the deep state cathedral and corporate media cabal was when he tore up the Iran nuclear deal and when he assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. Orange man good when he’s killing brown peoples in distant lands—so conclude the powers that have been for way too long.

Why has Iran, then, incurred such wrath from the American military-industrial complex establishment?

The regime’s Sturm und Drang regarding Iran – and, for that matter, any state that even intimates that it will conduct trade in oil without the dollar, cf. Russia – is all about the petrodollar system.

Let’s define it with some historical context: When Richard Nixon removed the dollar from its peg to gold in 1971, chaos followed. It was not just the Yom Kippur War (1973) and resultant OPEC embargo that led oil prices to skyrocket in the United States. The dollar, as the new, floating, purely fiat global reserve currency had lost its allure when compared to other sovereign currencies and precious metals.

In order to stave off runaway, hyperinflation, Nixon empowered then secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, to go hat in hand to the Saudi monarchy, with a proposal. According to Andrea Wong in a Bloomberg article from 2016(!), Simon landed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to get King Faisal to agree “to finance America’s widening deficit with it’s newfound [oil] wealth.”

Said another way, the Americans promised to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, and in return, the Saudis would promise to denominate global purchases only in dollars. Washington would also go so far as to provide military aid and materiel to the Kingdom, which made Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, and Rand Corporation types happy. The tit for that tat came in the form of guarantees that the Saudis would “plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance [the inordinate, warfare-welfare] spending” of every US regime since.

It – incredibly – gets worse. King Faisal accepted the arrangement (one that was sure to make his desert-oil kleptocracy a major regional power and global player) on one condition: The rest of the world could not know the extent of the agreement. That is to say that Faisal knew that in the rest of the Islamic world, underwriting America’s drunken-sailor imperial spending, well, that would not play in Cairo, Damascus, and Kuala Lumpur.

Therefore, Simon allowed for the Saudis to “bypass the normal competitive bidding process for buying Treasuries by creating ‘add-ons.’ Those sales, which were excluded from the official auction totals, hid all traces of Saudi Arabia’s presence in the U.S. government debt market.”

Within just four years of the agreement, Saudi Arabia held about one-fifth of all Treasuries held abroad. It is further asserted that that number represents the bare minimum of the Saudi share of US debt. The Saudi regime launders and recycles its petrodollars though hedge funds and secretive arrangements with perhaps hundreds of quasi-private institutions, all done with the approval and oversight of the US regime.

Different parties. Different men. Different pronouncements. Different promises. But, the one thing they all have in common: They all bow low before the Saudis—one of them, literally!

The truth is that both American foreign policy and to a very large extent, American domestic policy, are both wrapped up in the petrodollar arrangement. For the past fifty years, the national government has attempted to do what a president not pictured above—Lyndon Baines Johnson—wanted to do in Vietnam; namely, apply the New Deal to Southeast Asia.

The subsequent regimes have doubled down on the insanity—they aspire to maintain American economic, imperial hegemony over the rest of the world while simultaneously engaging in domestic spending to infinity and beyond. Thus, the petrodollar system is the most grandiose of all monetary and money laundering schemes. The Fed and US Treasury create fiat out of thin air, the Saudis provide a semblance of supportive valuation for it, and then the Saudis conceal their ill-begotten gains by buying Treasuries and cleaning their dollars through ostensibly legitimate concerns.

As economist William Clark pointed out in 2005, nations that even appear to not be on board with this sinister arrangement are the ones that incur the most wrath from the State Department, Pentagon, NATO, presidential administrations, and all of the other aligned interests. In September 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that his Baathist government would no longer participate in the “Oil-for-Food” Program, and that, furthermore, oil deals would be denominated in euros.

From that point on, the writing (about Babylon this time) was on the walls of the state in DC. Just months after US forces invaded Iraq, in June 2003, Iraqi oil sales were converted back to petrodollars, which, owing to the euro’s strength against the dollar at the time, cost Iraqis a net 13 percent on their oil revenues and invalidated previously approved contracts with other nations.

Kish is a much greater offense to Washington than anything Saddam Hussein was able to accomplish. There, Iranian oil is bought and sold using euros, yuan, and (get ready for it) rubles. The Iranians have their own oil “marker” or means of certifying the purity and quality of the oil. Turns out, while the Biden administration and greater “liberal” Europe have expressed their collective outrage by spending other citizens’ money to support an oligarchy in Ukraine and have concurrently cut off those evil, boorish Russians with sanctions; business is brisk in Kish and Tehran. Volumes have increased on the export and import side.

Over just a four-month period, they went up 4 percent and a whopping 32 percent respectively. The Iranian consumer is holding up in spite of those onerous sanctions. Meanwhile, China has increased its purchase of Iranian oil. At present, 13 percent of China’s oil originates in Iran.

All of this is to say that, just like the Federal Reserve system, the petrodollar cabal has to reign at or near the top of operative institutions that the vast majority of Americans have “kinda, sorta heard about” and yet possess no idea of the extent to which said things suppress American prosperity and prospects for the future. Most have no idea why or how the Saudis can fund everything from genocidal proxy wars against Iran to upstart professional golf tours.

Must be all of that oil money. Factual, but not exactly true.

End the petrodollar.