Republicans have taken a 9-point national lead among Hispanic voters and more than doubled support in the black community to 27 percent, a Wall Street Journal survey shows.
Justice Clarence Thomas has been hospitalized with an infection, the Supreme Court announced in a statement.
Thomas was admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., on Friday evening after experiencing flu-like symptoms, Supreme Court spokesperson Patricia McCabe said in a statement.
He was diagnosed with an infection after undergoing tests and is being treated with intravenous antibiotics, McCabe said. She did not provide more details on the nature of the infection.
“His symptoms are abating, he is resting comfortably, and he expects to be released from the hospital in a day or two,” McCabe said. “Justice Thomas will participate in the consideration and discussion of any cases for which he is not present on the basis of the briefs, transcripts and audio of the oral arguments.”
Your news outlets are not in the business of making money. They’re mostly subsidized by the mega corp that owns them.
Megacorpos, whatever you want to call them, produce content marketing packaged as news.
These same megacorpos have more lately also been using entertainment production more for content marketing than seeking to make profitable products.
These megacorps have been subsidized, in essense, by foreign markets, with China being bigger than maybe all the others combined. China has become the de facto subsizer of content marketing in America for the past 5-8 years.
The number one content marketing producer, by far and away, with over 80 percent shares in almost every market, is the DNC and the coalition of hate and opportunism that supports this death machine.
The DNC has been using megacorps, and being used by them as well (these folks are all always only frenemies), to push narratives and create ‘realities’ that create support for destroying a Constitutional Republican America, by any means necessary, as this slows down the mega-powered minute few from being able to move as quickly at manipulating society to their advantage as the rest of the world can, especially their number one frenemy, China.
None of these nation-states have a people with such a sense of individual liberty entitlement, and the DNC and megacorp coalition want nothing more than to join the rest of the world at the expense of American individual rights.
None of the major social and cultural means of production owners (and there’s maybe 15 or 20 total companies that own 80 plus percent of most of our major markets) have any interest in restoring or preserving rights for individuals. Not a one.
They want to compete with Chinese billionaires, but they imagine they can keep their DNC dangerous dragon ally on a leash.
This is not about being pro or anti-monopolistic, this is about the values of the leaders of those monopolies becoming fundamentally revolutionary in nature, antithetical to an American Constitutional Republic with a Bill of Rights that emphasizes the rights of individuals to choose their own beliefs, not have them forced on them by the powerful minute few.
Americans have a right to bad beliefs. End stop. No one can be forced to like anyone or anything or any belief or any action they choose not to like. This is America, not Soviet DNC, not yet.
The DNC looks at the megacorp Citadelians in the same way as these elites view them, as a necessary dangerous dragon ally, but one they will ultimately control.
These alliance are all frenemy alliances. Everyone in this ‘cult of self over the masses’ cabal sees themselves as the final highlander, ready to kill their best friend when the time comes. In minecraft, of course….
Perhaps it is time for the rest of us to simply start ignoring them
Those of us not fooled by the hateful agit prop, those of us not choosing to be opportunists and take advantage of the passive aggressive unaccountable type of power the DNC narratives create, and those of us who are not simple cowards afraid to speak up, might want to simply start ignoring these people altogether.
Stop complaining about their wackadoodle bad art woketarian garbage content. Laugh at it, sure, but stop acting angry. Let these fools play out their melodramatic out-of-tune song, and laugh while they drunk post their own l’s on twitter. Or not.
Maybe not even laugh at them. Just. Ignore them. They’re boring. They have like five lines and 15 words they use, and that’s about it. They’re not even entertaining lolcows at this point. They’re not even cringe. They’re just…….boring.
All this to say, if you can, just turn them off, tune them out, and make your own content if you have to.
We who have not gone insane will find each other and be there for our former friends and family when they stumble out of the mist and ask themseles “What the heck was I thinking?”
Unlike the left, we have mercy, we have grace, so no one who wants back will be rejected. No one gets permabanned for their crappy beliefs alone.
So yeah, just tune out and create. That’s my take.
William Collier- Regardless of HOW and WHY we, the US, got to this place of Russian revanchism, which was certainly goaded on by the would-be globalist hegemonic ruling class of the West, the situation now is that Russsia has become a hazard to our country and its allies. We can leave for future articles how we the freedom-loving masses ought to deal with our own corrupt ruling class who are to blame for this and focus for now on how we, as the US, might contend with the Putinistas, basically Putin and the oligarchs who support him.
We can start with the premise that Putin’s strength comes from a 60% to 70% approval among the Russian people because, basically, although it’s never quite as simple as this, he is viewed as a strong man and Russians, in the main, but not all Russians, adore the strong and despise the weak. There may be many reasons for this, but in general, when a leader is seen as strong they enjoy support, even if in character and in how they treat the Russian people, they are corrupt and evil.
This may SOMEWHAT be shifting as more and more Russians do not cotton to such thinking, but among most, among at least 60% if polling is accurate, it still holds that “strong is good and weak is bad.”
Keep this in mind.
Next, let’s consider three other factors: Russia has a basically under-developed and corrupt economic system, Russia is essentially a gas station, and the only real power Russia has is their nuclear arms.
So now we have four key things: Russians support the strong and hate the weak, Russia has an underdeveloped economy due to massive corruption, Russia’s only economic asset is gas and oil, and the only real military strength they have is nuclear arms.
The Putinistas are authoritarian and corrupt. While they cater to the Russian nationalist sentiment and some rightly see them as a counter to the West’s vision of a globalist corporate-government hegemony that is directly against nationalist sovereignty, the Putinistas are mostly for themselves first. Perhaps in Putin’s mind he and his cronies ARE the living embodiment of Russia, but the net effect is all wealth and power centers on Moscow and to hell with everyone else.
Add to all this that we, as in the US, have other fish to fry, as it were. We face threats in many quartets.
Internally we have this corporate-led assault on our history and way of life through the cancel-culture wokatariate and their rather intolerant behavior toward anyone who refuses to ditch their Judeo-Christian values for the new alt-gendered fantasy they call progress. On the other hand we have a reactionary core who, in response to this, are embracing things like identitarianism and either racial separatism or racial supremacism, and this could grow.
But externally we have threats coming from places like Iran and China, North Korea, Pakistan, Cuba, and Venezuela, among others.
Thankfully, at this time, our internal and external threats haven’t unified. The true powers, as in the actual shot-callers behind each of these threats, are as much against each other as they may be a threat to the people of the United States of America.
With all this in mind, how do we, as in the US, counter Putin and his cronies?
At the basic level we have to seek ways, in every possible arena, to make him and his cronies look weak and powerless. His chosen arena is Ukraine and while countering him there may be important, as we analyze all the arenas Russia must operate in we will find many opportunities to out Putin on his back foot.
First, there is the more obvious fact Russia depends on energy exportation. Second, there are Russian goals in Syria whose regime Putin props up. Third, there is the Russian defense industry which exports weapons all over the world. Fourth, there are Russian territories claimed by Japan and China. Fifth, there are Russian economic and investment schemes in Africa.
All these vulnerabilities present opportunities to bring pain to bear and make Putin look weak.
In Syria, for instance, and with Iran as her ally, Russia has severe disadvantages if we care to exploit them. The US can shut Iran off from all exports and imports via the sea. The US can arm anti-Assad forces in Syria while Russia cannot bring seaborn reinforcements as long as the war in Ukraine is happening. These moves would potentially force the Russians out of Syria and would demonstrate how Russia could do nothing to help their ally Iran.
As for Ukraine itself, efforts to continue to supply Ukraine with anti-air and anti-armor weapons and munitions should continue apace, albeit through many points and not via massive convoys the Russians can bomb. The erosion of Russian military might in Ukraine plays into a narrative that Putin is weak.
Now let’s consider all the places where Russia is vulnerable internally and use our covert means to foment trouble on every periphery. Russia has a substantial and growing, and disaffected, Muslim minority, some of whom may feel strongly that Russia is their foe. Russia has cordial relations with the Central Asian countries, this is something we ought to be undermining.
We can support the opposition in Belarus and Khazajstan, for instance, and foment unrest at a time when Russia cannot spare forces to put them down.
Instead of thinking holistically about a global response on Russia’s periphery, the present US administration, whose policies in line with past Presidents have goaded the Russians into attacking Ukraine, are thinking in a very limited and one-dimensional way. They are actually perpetuating the mythos of Putin as a strong man who they are powerless to stop because it might “escalate” things. Having goaded the Russians we are now saying we don’t want to escalate things further with them lest they unleash nuclear holocaust.
It would have been better to counsel the Ukrainians to pursue strong neutrality, to cool their ambitions to join the EU and NATO, and to actually invest in a credible air defense, which they neglected up until now. As for whether or not the US actually operates or funds biolabs and whether or not they are former Soviet labs or present-day bioweapons programs, the activities of the US, under Fauci’s management, in these things remains suspect.
But, be that as it may, the mythos of Russia as being 10 feet tall and Putin being beyond our reach stems from the fact we are playing in his sandbox and on his terms instead of taking a holistic approach. Goading the Russians into a war that is spiraling out of control was bad policy, but now that we have, the question is, “should we retreat and let Putin be the strong man or should we take the battle into arenas where he is helpless?”
Undermining Putin’s standing as a strong man is the easiest way to depict him as weak and undermine his support among his people but, most importantly, his fellow oligarchs.
The fact the US is not taking a holistic view of limiting Putin’s power and is not encouraging peace in Ukraine based on neutrality may prove that the people pulling the levers of power in Washington today aren’t really doing so in the interest of the American people.
How ONE man, a certain Andrew Hill, single-handedly torpedoed serious medical science in service of a political agenda. Why are medical scientists and medical professionals being pushed so hard to ditch the science and alter the evidence and facts? The answer is, we propose, a wonton and deliberate effort to EXPLOIT a man-made crisis in order to gain power and wealth. Suppressing the science is all about not treating a known disease, one probably man-made with the collusion of official persons, because the regimen sought by officials, namely lockdowns and mandates, is more useful than simply treating and curing people.
To be clear- the ruling class, through their organs of control, have pushed an agenda that is as anti-science as it is anti-freedom, and the result is not only needless deaths due to the disease, but needless deaths caused by the lockdowns and disruptions of health care and basic services they caused, Basically, human lives were sacrificed in a bid to further erode human freedom and transfer more productive wealth to unproductive legacy billionaires.
This is a crime against humanity in which dozens, or at most hundreds, of powerful people have betrayed billions of people.
Donald Trump, inadvertently, certainly, and unnoticed, virtually, has put his successor Joe Biden in the hot seat. How so?
As Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman famously declared and later distinguished economists confirmed it takes up to two years before the Fed’s overenthusiastic gunning of the money supply shows up in consumer prices.
Called: “inflation.” Let’s rewind.
But first… inflation is a misnomer. Rising prices are just a symptom of the real problem: a sinking dollar.
Donald Trump spent a lot of time pounding the table for a weaker dollar going on two years ago:
Trump, a very “in the moment” guy, surely had no idea that a weak dollar would cause inflation later. But … you get the drift.
Fed chairman Jay Powell discretely accommodated Trump’s incessant demands. Now Trump’s inflation chickens are coming home to roost … in the Biden henhouse.
A president, after a lag, always gets the dollar – weak or strong – he wants. This is an open secret. As I wrote at Forbes back in 2014:
“Although they strained to portray themselves as nonthreatening, nonpartisan technician-managers of the status quo, central bankers, like proverbial Supreme Court justices reading election returns, used their acute political antennae to intuit how far they could lean against the popular democratic winds. ‘Chairmen of the Federal Reserve,’ observes ex-Citibank Chairman Walter Wriston, ‘have traditionally been the best politicians in Washington. The Fed serves a wonderful function. They get beat up on by the Congress and the administration. Everyone knows the game and everyone plays it. But no one wants their responsibility.’”
True news.
Yet old news.
What’s weird and unsettling is that virtually nobody in Washington is pinning the blame where it obviously belongs, on Donald Trump’s weak dollar demands. The Pachyderms, who know better, or should, blame inflation on the big Democratic Party-led spending.
Balderdash! Yet it’s understandable that Pachyderms would wish to avoid placing blame on their former titular leader, the punitive Trump. Truth be told, the GOP spent at least as drunkenly as the Dems. But it’s plain dopey to pin a monetary disorder, inflation, on fiscal policy.
So, what’s up with the Donks? Instead of sticking their archnemesis Trump with the blame that belongs to him they are making absurd claims that Greedy Big Business is at fault for rising prices. Preposterous.
We have known at least as far back as Adam Smith that businessmen will always conspire to raise prices. Smith, who practically invented capitalism, called out the greed of businessmen explicitly in capitalism’s bible, Wealth of Nations.
It’s not munificence or counsels of civic virtue that constrains businesspeople from raising prices. It’s competition.
Big Businesswomen (and men!) are no greedier now than they were before inflation kicked up. Profit maximization is a constant among the merchant class.
So, by blaming Big Business, Biden and the Bidenistas are making a transparently absurd argument. Nobody to the right of Bernie Sanders – meaning, most Americans – buys this lame story.
This is doubly weird because the midterm elections are coming up. These will be a referendum on the government’s pandemic response … and inflation.
This farce would be funny if the joke weren’t on us. With both the Republicans and Democrats getting the cause of inflation badly wrong we are likely to get continuing inflation… followed by a cure as bad as, or worse: recession.
As the Wall Street Journal recently observed, “Historically, the Fed hasn’t been able to push down inflation without a recession.” This, sadly, is true enough. Yet a recession really isn’t required to cure inflation.
H.L. Mencken once wrote that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” So long as the Republicans and the Democrats are engaging exclusively in blame-shifting, rather than restoring the proven-effective supply-side policies of stabilizing the dollar and keeping tax rates reasonably low, we common people are going to get it good and hard.
That said, nobody I know of in power in America is looking at the real, historically proven, Constitutional solution. That would be making the dollar legally convertible into gold at a fixed price, say $2,000/oz.
After a short adjustment period gold convertibility would end inflation while creating a wonderful climate of equitable prosperity and job creation. The gold standard worked extraordinarily well for almost 200 years!
Gold is out of fashion with the smart set, such as PhD economists who haven’t delivered anything nearly as good. Nothing else has worked nearly as well as gold.
And so here we are, facing the worst inflation in 40 years. Our politicians giving us a Hobson’s Choice between seeing our savings and salaries shrink in buying power, by inflation, or seeing our neighbors, or even ourselves, thrown out of work by a completely unnecessary recession.
It falls to us—including you, dear reader—to contact our Representatives by their websites, emails, phone calls and even good old-fashioned letters. Guide their footsteps back onto the Paths of Righteousness. Tell them:
“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of federal reserve notes!”
A high-level member of the political advisory board of the Chinese Communist Party has been telegraphing the next move by Chairman Xi’s party to assure that any dissent that might grow is nipped in the bud before it ever blooms. To that end, the high-ranking member of the prestigious political advisory board, Jia Qungguo, has been complaining about the proliferation of ‘misinformation’ on the Chinese Communist Party controlled internet.
Jia said, “….there are often people online who, for some purpose, package a foreigner’s vicious remarks against China as the view of everyone in that country towards China in order to incite the Chinese people’s dissatisfaction and hostility towards said country and its people,”
You see, friends, if we can’t all reflect the world policies of the state, how can we be trusted, how can we be safe as a people? In the name of protecting citizens from dangerous thoughts that could lead others to make bad decisions, the DNC pushes for hate speech laws and more social media censorship, following, it would seem, this model that has been used for centuries in China, the Chinese Communist Party method of controlling and eliminating potential competition, dissent.
An adviser to the Chinese government has called for new laws to ban “fabricating and disseminating fake information online”, blaming the rampant disinformation on the internet for polarising Chinese public opinion.
Jia Qingguo, a member of China’s highest political advisory body, said he also believed the proliferation of misinformation online had fuelled tensions between China and foreign countries.
“For example, there are often people online who, for some purpose, package a foreigner’s vicious remarks against China as the view of everyone in that country towards China in order to incite the Chinese people’s dissatisfaction and hostility towards said country and its people,” Jia said in an interview on Saturday with online news portal The Cover, which is affiliated with the state-owned Sichuan Daily.
The former dean of the prestigious Peking University’s School of International Studies added that the spread of fake news could harm national interests, and lead to public confusion and social division. He called on Beijing to introduce specific measures to “severely punish” those who create false information to “cause serious harm to society”.
President Joe Biden officially announced the White House’s intentions to ban Russian oil and gas from being imported into the United States. This latest economic war action against Russia follows a list of sanctions and cancellations from American corporations, European states, and European corporations.
The move raises the stakes on Russia needing to secure a victory to secure a safe home for Putin, whose individual personality is the driving force in the decision-making process of the entire Russian state.
Rather than ending the war in the Ukraine, it might well be that the draconian moves to cut Russia off from the ‘Western’ world are pushing the world towards a type of war that will fundamentally end all that we have today, nuclear war.
The United States and Europe seem prudently willing to avoid having nuclear-powered nations’ troops clash in armed conflict, but have they considered that an economic war aimed at crippling, even destroying the Russian state could produce the same type of potential existential response?
The efforts by corporations to aggressively sanction a state far above and beyond what their own states asked of them could be the moment the cancel culture method of governance becomes cemented in the hearts and minds of the casuals, or it could be the peak of a power that is soon to be destroyed. The prospect of the former leaves me hesitant to cheer on the massive cancellation of an entire state.
Russia will not sit still, and the entire world is not cut off from Russia. The moves we are making right now are driving India into the Russia orbit, which means, given Russia and China’s increasing growing needs for one another, that India and China might soon have to mostly make nice, at least for the cameras. As usual, alliances are filled with contradictions and conflict, and this alliance will be no less contradictory or conflict-filled.
The American media, the DNC media de facto, is vilifying Russia every day in every way they can. Anti-Russianism is becoming a social pressure, and it looks more and more openly racist and bigoted every day. There is little time that anyone pauses to say, “By Russia, I mean the government, not the people.” In these hate diatribes, the Russian people are explicitly the targets of hate.
They are being sjw’d before our very eyes, and the right is cheering it on, for some reason.
Russia is run by a totalitarian killer who, to serve his own interest, invaded a nation of 40 million and proceeded to bomb their cities, their homes, even their schools. Russia, though, is doing what many of these same self-righteous nations have been doing themselves, with America being one of the clearest examples.
The actors on this stage are all ruthlessly serving their own interests, and yours aren’t theirs. Right now, they need to move to hurt Russians, to hurt Americans, to hurt Ukrainians, etc., to settle which of the concentrations of power in the world have the advantage going into the next few decades, nothing more.
Ukraine could have been a neutral buffer, but the West, with America in the lead, pushed it to be a threat to Russia. Russia could have been content with what she had, but seeing the West gain power in Ukraine prompted them to want to take it for themselves.
What follows is how the media is covering this economic war, with headers added to help you better understand the patterns that are emerging in this war. It starts with the first announcement of the US’s intention to block Russian oil and gas and ends with an analysis of what the new normal post-cancel-Russia looks like in trade.
Russia Gets Cancel Cultured for Invading the Wrong State
It’s thirteen days since Putin invaded Ukraine, meeting a level of resistance that’s shocked the world while isolating Russia and its people from much of the global economy.
The consequences — and battles — are continuing to play out. President Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday that the U.S. will ban imports of Russian oil and liquefied natural gas; the EU is expected to announce a plan to reduce its reliance on Russian gas.
It’s a strike at the hydrocarbon core of Russia’s economy, but one that is limited by its nature. The Europeans remain reliant on Russian oil and gas for energy, and Russia on them for foreign currency….
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders will agree at a summit this week to phase out the EU’s dependency on imports of Russian gas, oil and coal, a draft statement showed, marking a turning point in its policy towards Moscow prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
EU leaders will meet in Versailles on Thursday and Friday to discuss boosting their joint defence capability and Ukraine’s bid to become a member of the 27-nation bloc. [L8N2V445U]
Burned by the experience of supply shortages in microchips and pharmaceuticals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the leaders will also discuss how to make the EU more strategically independent of global suppliers in these sectors and food.
While there are alternatives to Russian oil, they would be insufficient or difficult logistically if the U.S. and its allies were to ban Russian energy imports, analysts said Tuesday.
“There’s just no way even OPEC+ and even combined Iran and Venezuela could make up for it,” Vandana Hari, founder of energy intelligence firm Vanda Insights, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
To be sure, some Russian capacity could be replaced, Hari said.
Russia exports about 5 million barrels of crude oil per day, according to the International Energy Agency. Of that, Hari said about 2 million could be replaced if OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates “were able to simultaneously…
SALT LAKE CITY (March 7, 2022) — Gov. Spencer Cox sent a letter to President Joe Biden today encouraging him to eliminate any barriers to increasing U.S. domestic oil and gas production. Read the letter in its entirety below.
Dear Mr. President,
I appreciate many of the actions you’ve taken over the past two weeks to isolate Russia and provide support to Ukraine, and I encourage you to consider additional measures, including eliminating any barriers to increasing U.S. domestic oil and gas production. This request won’t surprise you. I have consistently urged your administration, including long before this current crisis, to end your battle against developing American energy on public lands. It is more important now than ever that the United States and our allies produce the resources that will allow the world to move away from…
Biden administration officials traveled to Venezuela over the weekend for talks on potentially allowing the country to sell its oil on the international market, helping to replace Russian fuel. Biden may travel to Saudi Arabia as the US works to convince the kingdom to increase its production. And a looming nuclear deal could bring significant volumes of Iranian oil back to the market.
Caracas, Riyadh and Tehran would have been unlikely sources of relief for a Biden-led Western alliance before the start of the war in Ukraine. But Russia’s invasion has upended international relations, forcing the US and other nations to seek out solutions in places they’d previously shunned.
In deciding the next steps, Biden administration officials are weighing a host of factors. Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, which has left scores of civilians dead, has generated immense pressure on Western nations to cut their energy ties to Moscow, including from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. In a videoconference call with American lawmakers Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded for a ban on Russian energy.
US imports from Russia make up a small slice of the energy universe — roughly 8% in 2021, of which only about 3% was crude oil. White House economic officials have been engaged for more than a week in how to manage any decision to cut off those imports, officials say.
The semiconductor industry is among sectors that said it will ban all sales to Moscow. The decision may impact the industry’s recovery. Ninety percent (90%) of US semiconductor grade neon supplies come from Ukraine and chipmakers are sourcing at least 35% of palladium, which is used in semiconductors, from Russia, MarketBeat reported.
There has been a shortage of semiconductors since 2020 that has had a knock-on effect on the automobile and technology industries. Both use semiconductors to manufacture their products.
So how will the conflict impact the semiconductor industry? Experts believe that the industry’s recovery may be somewhat stunted due to the conflict in Ukraine.
“The main issue here is that Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of palladium and neon respectively which are vital commodities for the chip industry….
The United States, in coordination with global allies, continues to introduce sanctions and trade restrictions targeting the Russian government and its allies for their aggression in Ukraine. With these new measures and related guidance, the U.S. government is expanding its efforts to isolate Russia from the global financial system, cut off its defense and technology capabilities, and penalize President Putin and his inner circle.
The latest moves by the U.S. government include the following:
Cutting Off the Central Bank of Russia, the National Wealth Fund of Russia, and the Ministry of Finance. Directive 4 Under EO 14024 (Russia-related Sovereign Transactions Directive), effective February 28, 2022, prohibits U.S. persons from all direct or indirect transactions involving the Central Bank of…
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration is threatening to add companies to a trade blacklist if they skirt new export curbs against Russia, as it ramps up efforts to keep a vast array of technology out of the country after it invaded Ukraine last month.
The U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees export controls, is mobilizing staff around the globe to halt illicit shipments of computers, aircraft parts, marine equipment and other technology to Russia, partnering with allied countries and U.S. law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to crack down on the newly illegal trade, according to U.S. officials.
The goal is to enforce sweeping new restrictions on shipments to Russia of both U.S. and foreign commodities, technology and software, if produced with U.S. equipment, technology or software. The restrictions also apply to Belarus.
Matthew Axelrod, the Commerce Department’s Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement, told Reuters in a statement on Monday the United States will “bring the full force of the law to hold accountable those that knowingly violate the new rules, including by placing additional parties on the Entity List,” a U.S. trade blacklist.
Already some of the biggest names in tech, like Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp, have announced they will halt shipments to Russia.
U.S. exports to Russia were under $5 billion in 2020, according to the Commerce Department but, a senior official has said, multilateral cooperation means more than $50 billion in key inputs to Russia may be curbed.
Axelrod said the Commerce Department has begun “robust engagement with U.S. exporters and other partners to ensure they understand the new rules,” which aim to keep chips and other items made at home and abroad from Russia.
He also noted that 91 parties in 10 countries were added to the Commerce Department’s Entity List last week for supporting Russian military,…
From www.nytimes.com
2022-03-07 19:48:17
Adam Satariano and Valerie Hopkins Excerpt:
“For the moment I do plan to work in Russia,” he said. “How this may change in the future, especially if YouTube will be blocked, I don’t know.”
Unlike China, where domestic internet companies have grown into behemoths over more than a decade, Russia does not have a similarly vibrant domestic internet or tech industry.
Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.
So as it is cordoned off into its own digital ecosystem, the fallout may be severe. In addition to access to independent information, the future reliability of internet and telecommunications networks, as well as the availability of basic software and services used by businesses and government, is at risk.
Twitch informed affected Russian streamers of its plans via email. (Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
“Payouts to the financial institution associated with your Twitch account have been blocked as a result of sanctions,” read the email. “Twitch complies with economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other governments, and is complying with those imposed in response to the situation in Ukraine. These sanctions may limit or impact your access to payouts, ability to monetize your stream, and/or financially support other creators.”
The email from Twitch went on to add that “we appreciate how frustrating and difficult this is and would like to reassure you that if you can’t provide an alternative financial institution, we will do our best to pay
Sonnenfeld, who founded the nonprofit Chief Executive Leadership Institute, said he has fielded calls from CEOs asking “why we didn’t have them on the right list, and what they needed to do to either clarify or actually take a more strong stance.”
On top of skyrocketing inflation and a plummeting ruble, Russians have been left with a dwindling marketplace: Prada stores have shuttered, TikTok has suspended operations in their country, and car companies including Rolls-Royce, Toyota and Volkswagen have stopped shipping vehicles to Russia. Even WWE, the wrestling entertainment company, said it would halt operations there.
The gutting of the Russian economy has shattered the image that President Vladimir Putin had created, portraying himself as an all-powerful leader with things under control, Sonnenfeld said in a phone interview Monday with The Washington Post.
And with Russian state media echoing Putin’s framing of the war as a “special…
Amazon has been selling clothing and other merchandise marked with a “Z” that supports Russia’s war in Ukraine, The Times has found.
The symbol, used by the Russian army in Ukraine to avoid friendly-fire incidents, has gone viral in Russia and among the country’s supporters around the world.
T-shirts, sweaters and phone accessories with the symbol “Z” and explicitly advertised as “RUSSIAN Z SYMBOL MILITARY ARMED FORCES TANKS” were for sale on the tech giant’s site today. The description of items said they were sold and dispatched by Amazon.
Amazon was selling T-shirts with a Russian military Z today
Russians around the world have been daubing the white letter on black backgrounds to denote support for their army fighting in Ukraine. The adoption of the “Z” as a symbolic expression of support is viewed
Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) has decided to suspend its streaming services in Russia over the country’s war with Ukraine. The move comes almost a week after the entertainment giant refused to air state TV channels and comply with a propaganda mandate on large streamers.
As reported by The Verge, Netflix cited the war as a reason behind the decision, with spokesperson Emily Feingold saying in a statement: “Given the circumstances on the ground, we have decided to suspend our service in Russia.”
Netflix has stopped its streaming services after refusing a Russian mandate to air state TV channels such as Channel One and NTV last week. The government had ordered the airing of 20 state-backed channels displaying war propaganda.
The company has around 1 million subscribers in Russia, and also announced it would…
APPLE fans in Russia will have a hard time watching the firm’s latest iPhone launch when it kicks off later today.
According to MacRumors‘ Sami Fathi, the tech titan has blocked its live stream of the event on the Russian versions of YouTube and Apple.com.
2
The online broadcast is blocked on the Russian version of YouTube
It comes days after Apple announced that it was halting sales of iPhones and other products in the country in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
The firm is expected to unveil new models of the iPhone SE and iPad Air at its March 8 event, which it has titled “Peek Performance”.
As with previous product launches, Apple is live streaming the showcase to fans across the globe.
Broadcasts are already live on the firm’s website and YouTube channel, showing a dark screen before things kick off in earnest at 6 p.m. UK time (1 p.m. EST).
However, it appears Russians won’t have the option to watch through official means as new gadgets and software are announced.
Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK) announced today that the company is suspending operations and sales in Russia and Belarus, effective immediately.
“Rockwell joins the U.S. government and the global community in condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its citizens,” said Blake Moret, Chairman & CEO of Rockwell Automation, emphasizing that the company supports all U.S. sanctions.
Rockwell has made a financial contribution to Project HOPE to provide humanitarian relief to refugees in Ukraine and neighboring countries and is encouraging employees to help in a variety of ways. Rockwell will match employee donations made to Project HOPE and is offering paid time off to support local volunteer efforts.
Sales to Russia and Belarus represent less than 0.5% of Rockwell’s total revenue. The company will continue to pay salaries and…
PARIS, March 8 (Reuters) – L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics group, said on Tuesday it would temporarily close its own stores, its directly operated counters in department stores and its e-commerce sites in Russia, in reaction to Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour Ukraine.
The French company, which strongly condemns Russia’s military action, also said it would also suspend all industrial and national media investments in Russia.
EY, one of the world’s largest accounting firms, announced on Monday that it would pull out of Russia. It is the third of the so-called Big Four firms to exit Russia after the invasion of Ukraine: KPMG International and PricewaterhouseCoopers said on Sunday that they would quit the country. The other firm is Deloitte, which could come under pressure to do the same.
These groups are structured as partnerships of local firms, so the businesses in Russia can continue to operate, the three accounting firms said, but will no longer be a part of their umbrella networks.
“The EY global organization will no longer serve Russian government clients, state-owned enterprises or sanctioned entities or individuals anywhere in the world,” EY said in a statement. It has more than 4,700 workers in its network in Russia, it said. KPMG said it had more than 4,500 people working in Russia and Belarus, while PwC said it had 3,700 workers in Russia.
The moves by the accounting firms are the latest of…
Effective Tuesday, Russia’s flag-carrier Aeroflot is cancelling all international flights — except to Minsk — given the restrictions by Europe and the United States on the country, which includes constraints on use of airspace and economic sanctions. However, the decision to ground international flights is layered — both in terms of the causes and effects.
Since the beginning of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, western countries including EU member states, the UK, the US and Canada have imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia. This includes preventing companies from doing business in Russia and restricting use of airspace for Russian aircraft. While the airspace restrictions, which were also reciprocated by Russia, translated into more arduous flight durations, the economic sanctions led to…
“If that includes third-party sales, even that door is closed,” Rasser said.
— Draining (human) capital: Konaev said the broader exodus of tech firms from Russiawill leave any company pursuing advanced AI research high and dry when it comes to financing. “It’s impossible to overstate how much they’re going to lose in terms of access to the investment you need to advance technological innovation,” she said.
That will likely lead to an outflow of human capital from Russia, too. Crushing sanctions and tightening authoritarianism are likely to lead Russian mathematicians and programmers to emigrate in the coming weeks and months (provided the Kremlin lets them leave).
“The opportunities are going to be outside of Russia,” said Lewis. “And that’s going to limit them on technology across the board —except in cybercrime.”
Several Russian banks are planning to use China’s bank card service UnionPay as US services Visa and Mastercard suspend services in Russia, according to Reuters. Russia-issued credit cards using the Visa and Mastercard systems will stop functioning after March 9, part of a broader global economic backlash over the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Why it matters: China could face more geopolitical pressure from the US. The country has toed a diplomatic line since the conflict began in late February, advocating for peaceful resolutions (in Chinese).
US card operators Visa and Mastercard handle 90% of all debit and credit card payments outside China. Another US operator American Express said on March 6 that it will stop services for internationally-issued cards in Russia.
Founded in 2002, UnionPay now has more than 1 billion users serving 180 countries and regions, providing cross-border payment services to cardholders and merchants.
The auto assembly lines going quiet in Germany, Britain and Austria are more than just another example of how fragile supply chains have become. The shutdowns may foreshadow a fundamental reordering of the global economy that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will accelerate.
The conflict has underlined the risks of doing business in authoritarian countries — not just Russia but also China — raising questions about the growing dependence of the automobile industry on the Chinese market.
China’s support for Russia has further strained relations between Beijing and the United States and Europe, which were already at loggerheads over trade. In Berlin, the conflict has strengthened members of the new coalition government who argue that Europe — especially Germany and its car industry — has become overly dependent on trade with China.
Automakers, with their global reach, complex supply chains and millions of employees, are a prime example of how the war in Ukraine could reshape…
Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nomination, Ketanji Brown Jackson, has credentials enough to justify her nomination to the highest court in the land. She is a graduate of Harvard, she was previously a district, and most recently appellate federal judge. White serving as district judge, appointed by then-President Obama, she was involved in several major cases involved with the Trump administration.
In these key rulings, she demonstrates a willingness to bend the law and the constitution to fit into any frame that supports the clearly leftist ideology she seems to uphold. Her rulings to attempt to prevent the Health and Human Services Department from removing funding of abortions being conducted by Planned Parenthood clearly demonstrate her willingness to go outside the bounds of law and constitution to use the court to support her factional political worldview rather than be a true steward of Constitutional American Law.
Here are some highlights of some of her key rulings:
In November 2019, Jackson issued a decision in the case of Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives v. Donald F. McGahn II, ruling against then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to prevent an administration figure from testifying before Congress.
“In 2018, Jackson made headlines when she invalidated three executive orders issued by then-President Trump, which were designed, in her words, ‘to restrict the scope and effectiveness of federal employees’ right to collective bargaining,’” they noted.
…. At issue in the case was if the Department of Homeland Security could, in keeping with an announcement from July 23, 2019, designate people who have been in the U.S. illegally for up to two years for “expedited removal.”
….. In 2017, Jackson ruled against an environmentalist organization’s efforts to get a federal body to expedite possible additional regulations on offshore oil drilling.
Known as Center for Biological Diversity v. Ryan Zinke, et al., the case involved an environmental group trying to get the Department of the Interior to complete a review on policies regarding oil drilling.
Jackson ruled against the group, concluding that the activists could not compel a federal agency to complete its ongoing review, “much less demand that an agency publicly announce its decision to decline to revise its existing rules.”
….This included the 2018 decision in Policy and Research, LLC v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in which Jackson concluded that the effort violated federal law.
“Jackson held the Department of Health and Human Services unlawfully terminated plaintiffs’ grant funding without explanation, thus violating the Administrative Procedure Act,” explained the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“A month after this decision, Judge Jackson issued an opinion in Healthy Futures of Texas v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, again ruling in favor of grantees who brought a class action lawsuit that similarly challenged the early termination of funding.”
The general thrust of the MSM support of the Biden nominee seems to be in portraying her as a woman of the people who will bring the spirit of the people back to the court, a shining light of immigration producing great Americans, and being a black woman face that can finally make black women in America feel validated. Finally.
The GOP will most likely focus on her being the face of leftist quotas over substance, an argument that is based on a presupposition that being a Judge on this High Court requires skills that few humans possess, but, really, these judges have demonstrated throughout human history that they themselves don’t meet the standards of this mythological skilled and unbiased jurist.
Perhaps finding jurists that reassure the people that we all have representation in this great American experiment is something that might ‘allow’ for something like a general quota on our high court. The problem is more in finding people, whether they have ethnic diversity or not, that will limit their rulings to the literal and original intent of the Constitution, or will they demonstrate willingness to apply sophistry to ‘justify’ ruling to advantage their faction rather than rule as a neutral judge based on our Rule of Law.
On that front, it goes without saying that a party who stands in open opposition to the very idea of America itself, an America they simply call white supremacism, would not nominate one of what are probably plenty of black women willing to rule as an American and not a DNC party member.
The RNC as token opposition will vote against the confirmation as much as they need to for the tokening, but, be assured DNC, there will be 2-3 GOPers willing to confirm another leftist whose very political identity is anathema to an American Rule of Law Constitutionally Limited Representational Republic.
Here’s another way that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will bring diversity to the Supreme Court – the fact that she’s a former public defender. Those are lawyers who represent people who are accused of crimes but cannot afford their own representation. In fact, she is the first nominee to the high court with this background and one of only a handful to sit on the federal bench. In fact, only 7% of all active federal judges are former public defenders. That’s according to the Federal Judicial Center, a research agency that keeps track of things like this. We wondered why so few public defenders go on to become federal judges, so we called Martin Sabelli. He is a former federal public defender and now trains public defenders in San Francisco. He’s also the president of the board of directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Ketanji Brown Jackson’s younger daughter was 11, she drafted a letter to the president suggesting her federal judge-mom for a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
“Dear Mr. President,” Leila Jackson wrote. “She’s determined, honest and never breaks a promise to anyone even if there are other things she’d rather do. She can demonstrate commitment and is loyal and never brags. I think she would make a great Supreme Court justice.”
Jackson wasn’t nominated for the vacancy her daughter was writing about, one created by the 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. And Republican lawmakers blocked then-President Barack Obama’s ultimate nominee, Merrick Garland, who is now President Joe Biden’s attorney general.
BIDEN HIGHLIGHTS KBJ’S PUBLIC EDUCATION TIES: Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick for the Supreme Court, will head to the Senate this week as she begins the traditional charm offensive to kick off her nomination process.
— On Friday, Biden introduced Jackson, the first-ever Black woman selected for the high court, as “the daughter of former public school teachers,” calling her “a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer and a distinguished jurist on one of the nation’s most prestigious courts.” He also noted her parents graduated from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
— Jackson serves on the board of several educational institutions. She is a member of Harvard University’s Board of Overseers and serves on the board of trustees at Georgetown Day School. She previously served on the advisory school board of Montrose Christian School in Maryland.
CNN — Republicans are bracing for the next Supreme Court confirmation battle, signaling that they’re eying a measured but “painstaking” approach to an historic nominee who would not change the lean of the court and who could be confirmed without any GOP support.
For Republicans, the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who currently serves on the prestigious DC US Circuit Court of Appeals, may be inevitable. But the way they handle the confirmation hearing — particularly in the context of her being the first Black woman nominated for the high court — could have far reaching implications in the midterm elections.
“It’s going to be a very good election for Republicans and one of the ways we can screw this up is to go scorched earth on Judge Jackson’s nomination,” said Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations at the Senate Judiciary Committee who is now informally…
Scott said he is looking to meet Jackson and discuss how she sees the role of the judiciary branch.
“Do you understand you’re not the legislative branch, your job is to interpret the law, enforce the law, but not make new law? And so, that’s what I’ll be asking her. And on all judges, that’s the only thing I really care about. Are you going to do that? And are you…
President Joe Biden promised to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer with a black female jurist.
“The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. And that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court,” Biden said Jan. 29 in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “It’s long overdue in my view. I made that commitment during the campaign for president, and I will keep that commitment.”
Biden reportedly has spent recent days interviewing prospective nominees—specifically, U.S. District Court Judge Julia Mitchell Childs, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Reid Kruger.
All three of these contenders satisfy Biden’s two demographic requirements. White, Hispanic, and Asian-heritage women have been invisible during Biden’s judicial powwows. Men—including black men—need…
FIRST ON FOX: President Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was part of a Harvard University student group that hosted a speaker with a history of anti-Semitic remarks, Fox News Digital has learned.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was a member of the Black Students Association (BSA) her senior year at Harvard, according to her yearbook, when the Harvard BSA invited Leonard Jeffries, the controversial then-City University of New York professor of Black studies and Black studies department head, to speak.
Jeffries — the uncle of House Democratic Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York — has been heavily criticized for his past anti-Semitic remarks, and the 1992 Harvard speaking engagement drew robust campus protests.
Americans are starkly divided by race on the importance of President Joe Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, with white Americans far less likely to be highly enthusiastic about the idea than Black Americans — and especially Black women.
That’s according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that shows 48% of Americans say it’s not important to them personally that a Black woman becomes a Supreme Court Justice. Another 23% say that’s somewhat important, and 29% say it’s very or extremely important. Only two Black men have served on the nation’s highest court, and no Black women have ever been nominated.
Negative tropes being used to critique President Biden’s decision to nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, to the Supreme Court may be missing the point (“Biden demonstrating his racism again.”)
In these bitterly divisive times, when our self-serving legislative and executive branches are increasingly irrelevant, the court may be our Constitution’s best hope for survival.
The court has maintained its preeminence throughout our history because no jurist’s background or presidential patron is a reliable barometer of how they will rule. Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor proved far more moderate than Ronald Reagan.
In the same vein, a historic appointment does not guarantee political payback. Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Thurgood Marshall lost the Democratic South. O’Connor’s appointment did not close the GOP’s gender gap. More Latinos voted Republican in the last election, even though a Democratic president nominated Justice Sonia…
It is with profound joy that I write these words today: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been nominated to become our nation’s first Black woman Supreme Court Justice. From a pool of outstanding Black women attorneys, jurists and legal scholars, President Biden has chosen Judge Jackson for her stellar credentials and brilliant legal mind. We are overjoyed by this nomination; now the Senate needs to move quickly to confirm her.
In the coming weeks, we will all get the opportunity to learn more about Judge Jackson’s story and her record. Her legal credentials are outstanding: a double-Harvard alumna, earning both her undergraduate and law degrees with honors; a clerk for three federal judges – including the one she will succeed, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who called her “great” and “brilliant”; a star in private practice and as a public defender in Washington, D.C.
The country will also come to know that Judge Jackson wrote…
A senior opinion writer explains why Ketanji Brown Jackson brings a perspective to the court that makes the institution more representative of the American public.
A Black woman has never been appointed to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. That could be set to change, as the Biden Administration is nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace outgoing associate justice Stephen Breyer — who has served on the nation’s top court since 1994.
“I think that’s the importance of diversity — not just in terms of race and geography — but diversity in terms of background on this court. You have a lot of former federal judges [on the court], it’s really homogenous in that sense.” — Kimberly Atkins Stohr, senior opinion writer at The Boston Globe
I attended the University of Minnesota Law School — at the time and arguably still a top 20 law school — and graduated in 1981 with a decent grade point average. I spent my law school summers clerking for a small law firm.
Yet, I couldn’t find a job for after law school. So, one day I went to visit one of the male partners in the small firm where I had clerked. The firm was too small to take on a new associate, so I went there to ask the partner why I couldn’t find a job. His answer was stark and dismaying:
“Firms and others that have job openings have already hired their token woman, and they aren’t hiring any more women.”
When I went to law school, 41% of my class were women. So, my reply to my former boss was that, “Someday there will be so many women lawyers they will have to hire us. They will have to make us partners. They will have to appoint us to the bench.”
Around this time, I learned about a lunch with Democratic…
Last month, President Joe Biden nominated the first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Even before announcing his pick, Biden committed to nominating a Black woman, which sparked a conversation about the role diversity plays on a political level. Conservatives have criticized Biden’s choice; the Wall Street Journal editorial board argued that it “elevates skin color over qualifications.” Sen. Ted Cruz went so far as to say the nomination is “an insult to Black women.”
I was 10 years old during the 2016 presidential elections, and while my name wasn’t on a ballot, my future certainly was. While there were several parts of the Trump administration that upset me, it was the racism he fostered that affected me the most. When I look back on those four years, I think of his embrace of anti-immigrant rhetoric, his response to white supremacy (“very fine people”), his spreading of the “birther” conspiracy, and his use of social media to escalate…
There is a movement growing among scientists that was only accelerated by the poorly made DNC agit prop film “Don’t Look Up,” a film that equated people not willing to simply look up and see a meteor heading to earth with failing to believe the scientists that the end of the world is nigh given the actual fact that the scientists have a history of inaccurate prediction modeling.
The scientists are considering stopping doing the work of making the world a better place through science power and magic until we the people acknowledge their wisdom and certainty and JUST FOLLOW THE SCIENCE.
Anthony the Doctor Fauci might be rumored to be the spokesperson of this elitist movement but those rumors are completely unfounded, even if the poetry of such a reality would make the dystopia at least a bit tolerable.
Scientists Consider Walk-Out Over Climate Change Indifference
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Scientists say that climate change is destroying the world, and we need to do something about it.
If you’re sick of hearing about the destruction humans have caused on the Earth, imagine how tired researchers are of telling everyone about it. That’s why a group of climate scientists are considering alternative options for sounding the alarm — including a mass walkout.
“We’ve had 26 Conference of the Parties meetings, for heaven’s sake,” Bruce C. Glavovic, a researcher at the University of New Zealand, told The New York Times in reference to the United Nations’ global warming summits. “I mean, seriously, what difference is that going to make?”
That’s why Glavovic and two colleagues published a paper in the journal Climate and Development last year calling on climate scientists to halt their research until the world’s nations take serious action against climate change. They say a strike might help the world renegotiate “the broken science-society contract.”
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