In all the other various weapons being shipped to Ukraine to fight off Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression, I missed that the U.S. has shipped 18 M109A6 Paladins.
The United States has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, which includes the provision of 18 M109A6 Paladin 155mm tracked self-propelled howitzers.
The M109A6 Paladin is a modern version of an older unit that has been used in various conflicts worldwide, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Its 155mm gun has a maximum firing range of 14.9 miles (24 kilometers) with standard artillery ammunition and 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) with assisted rounds. This range makes it a valuable asset for the Ukrainian army, allowing them to strike enemy positions from a safe distance.
One notable feature of the M109A6 Paladin is its ability to fire M982 Excalibur extended-range precision guided projectiles. These projectiles have a range of up to 40 kilometers and are capable of hitting targets with a high degree of accuracy. This capability can be particularly useful when targeting enemy artillery positions or other high-value targets.
The M109A6 Paladin is also equipped with a secondary armament consisting of a roof-mounted 12.7 mm heavy machine gun. Some vehicles were fitted with a 40 mm automatic grenade launcher in place of the machine gun. This additional firepower can be used to defend the howitzer against enemy infantry or light armored vehicles.
To support the M109A6 Paladin, the US is also providing the Ukrainian army with the M992 ammunition supply vehicle. This vehicle can carry up to 93 rounds of ammunition and transfer them to the self-propelled howitzer via conveyor. This ensures that the howitzer has a steady supply of ammunition and can continue firing for extended periods without needing to reposition or resupply.
These are not the first M109s sent to Ukraine, as they’ve already received older variants from Italy, Norway, Latvia and the UK. Plus the Polish Krab, the French CAESAR, the UK AS-90, and the German PzH 2000, all of which are self-propelled 155mm howitzers. Plus Sweden has announced they’re sending their Archer system.
Russia doesn’t lack self-propelled artillery of its own, but last I checked they hadn’t fielded any smart artillery shells, and when (or if) they do, I would bet good money they won’t be nearly as capable as Excalibur.
Recently Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced a “strategic partnership.” Here’s Peter Zeihan explaining exactly what “strategic partnership” means.
“Vladimir Putin of Russia entertained president or chairman Xi Jinping of China, and they had one of the big hoity-toity summits where they pledged their unending support for each other. The reality, of course, is nothing of the sort.”
Putin used the magic phrase strategic partnership, which, for the uninitiated, sounds really important and like an alliance. But this is the phraseology that the Russians have been using for centuries, where they [want] a partnership with the country that they don’t trust, and they expect the other country to pay for everything, and they expect to stab that other country in the back at the earliest opportunity.
Unless, you know, the other country is just cold and brutal enough to stab them in the back first.
“That’s the magic phrase that you know that they really, really, really, truly despise each other. And that this is only an alliance of convenience. It has to do with getting out from under some of the sanctions that had to do with Ukraine war. So let’s put that in a box.”
“Within hours of leaving Russia, Xi Jinping of China invited the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to a summit with just him, not the Russians.”
“This is the Chinese making a naked power play for control of Russia’s backyard.”
Zeihan reiterates his theory that Russian rational for the war is plugging historical gaps through which they’ve been invaded. “There are other access points that the Russians are really paranoid about…one of them is the Altai Gap that leads straight to China.” AKA the Dzungarian Gate.
When the Russians see the Chinese making this sort of naked power play to get on the other side of that gap and position themselves politically, economically, maybe militarily with countries that are on the wrong side of that line while the Russians are occupied in Ukraine, the Russian mind immediately falls into kind of this revanchist position where they realize that they are now under assault from all possible angles. And this is like the worst case scenario for the Russians, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it, because they have completely committed their entire conventional forces to their Western periphery in the war with Ukraine.
“Now that the Chinese are actually nibbling on the eastern periphery, we know that this relationship is now in its dying years, because the Russians know the Chinese absolutely cannot be trusted. I can’t say, for the rest of it, that’s really realization.”
It’s no secret that one of the motives behind Xi Jinping’s various actions on Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc., is China reasserting control over “historical lands,” and China lost a lot of land in Outer Mongolia and the Far East/Siberia to Russia in the 19th century that it had previously controlled. (See the treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) for details.) And all that land is a lot closer to Beijing than Moscow.
Like Hitler and Stalin, Xi and Putin deserve each other.
The Biden Administration has shown a clear preference for rewarding far left political leanings than technical competence in its nominees for top posts (I’m looking at you, Pete Buttigieg). Texas Senator Ted Cruz took a strong stand against this trend by opposing the nomination of Phil Washington to head the FAA.
From an editorial by Cruz and North Carolina Senator (and pilot) Ted Budd:
Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) held an emergency safety summit after a series of disturbing near collisions of planes at airports across the country. These close-call incidents, which could have been disastrous, followed the January malfunction of the FAA’s NOTAM safety system that led to the first nationwide grounding of aircraft since the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.
These serious safety challenges at the FAA are stark reminders of why it’s so important for the head of the agency to have extensive aviation experience, especially in aviation safety. The FAA, on an average day, is responsible for ensuring safe air travel for more than 45,000 flights and nearly 3 million airline passengers. With the stakes so high, it’s irresponsible to entrust the role of protecting millions of Americans who fly with a person who needs on-the-job training. Yet, that’s exactly what we have with President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as FAA administrator, Phil Washington.
Little of Washington’s career has touched aviation. After serving in the military, Washington worked as a transit executive in Denver and Los Angeles , dealing with train and bus systems. Less than two years ago, he became CEO of Denver International Airport, a job that primarily involves overseeing the airport’s shopping, dining, parking, and buildings — not aviation matters. Notably, in this role, he has neither significant involvement with the airport’s flight operations nor does he oversee air traffic controllers, pilots, and aircraft.
Washington’s recent hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee confirmed what’s abundantly clear from his resume: he lacks the extensive aviation experience needed to lead the FAA. At his hearing, he was unable to answer basic aviation questions we asked him, including safety questions about aircraft certification, pilot licensing, and airports.
It’s no mystery why.
Unlike other FAA administrators, he does not have decades of aviation experience. Washington has never flown a plane, never worked for an airline, and never worked for a company that manufactures or maintains aircraft. But what he does have are political connections. He donated to the Biden campaign, co-chaired its policy committee on infrastructure, and led the Biden administration’s transition team for the Department of Transportation. It’s unacceptable that Biden is playing politics with the flying public’s safety by treating the head of the FAA as a patronage job.
Washington’s lack of extensive aviation experience has caused widespread concern about his nomination. At his Senate hearing, multiple Democratic senators questioned his qualifications to lead the FAA. State and local aviation groups all over the country, including pilot groups, oppose his nomination. One of them, the Montana Pilots Association, has said that he is “singularly unqualified to serve as FAA Administrator.” Last week, a bicameral group of members of Congress who are pilots, including former military pilots, urged Biden to withdraw Washington’s nomination because he is “woefully unqualified to fill this role.”
Not only is Washington unqualified, but he’s also apparently under investigation. He is embroiled in an ongoing criminal public corruption probe that is being led by the Democratic attorney general of California. The probe concerns a politically-connected contracting scheme from Washington’s time leading the Los Angeles Metro. Washington has been named in not one but two search warrants in the probe, with the most recent having been issued just last September. It’s inexplicable that President Joe Biden has picked an FAA nominee who is materially involved in an ongoing criminal investigation.
The safety challenges and responsibilities of the FAA are far too important to have anyone other than a highly experienced aviation expert at the helm.
President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Federal Aviation Administration withdrew his nomination on Saturday evening, following nine months in limbo and amid concerns from senators in both parties over his background and relative lack of aviation experience.
DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted late Saturday that Phil Washington, the CEO of Denver International Airport, has decided to take himself out of the running.
“The FAA needs a confirmed Administrator, and Phil Washington’s transportation & military experience made him an excellent nominee,” Buttigieg tweeted. “The partisan attacks and procedural obstruction he has faced are undeserved, but I respect his decision to withdraw and am grateful for his service.”
If only Buttigieg would follow Phil Washington’s lead.
If you want to fight the Biden Administrations attempts to drag America to the far left, it helps if you have someone who know how to play the game.
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, “Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today.” Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: “The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong.” With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record.
Not exactly new, but worth mentioned that, yes, communists are still oppressive scumbags who murder people who essentially practice Tai Chi for their organs because they dared to object to being repressed.
So i went looking for a good, recent video on the subject, only to find him again.
Yes, it’s bald, bearded, bespeckled British bloke again. (Actually, his accent is a bit posh to be a proper “bloke,” but, you know, alliteration.) If you watch YouTube videos about technology, history, etc., pretty soon he’s going to show up. And it’s not like he has just one channel, he has multiple channels on different subjects.
Bald, bearded, bespeckled British bloke is Simon Whistler.
Media personality Simon Whistler was brought up in the south-east of England. After completing his university education (undergrad business BA, postgrad law diploma PGDL), he worked abroad for one year where he met his now wife and eventually ended up permanently moving to her home country, the Czech Republic.
After working as a freelance voice over artist and podcast host, at the age of 28 he started working on his first YouTube channel, a collaboration with the popular website TopTenz.net. From there he launched another channel in collaboration with another website TodayIFoundOut.com.
Soon enough both those channels had over a million subscribers, and Simon expanded his content to cover biographies on his Biographics channel and geography on his Geographics channel.
From there is was a move into comedic business content with Business Blaze and later to covering humanities greatest achievements with his channel Megaprojects.
Simon also runs a number of podcasts, merchandise lines, and has had his work featured on television and in print.
Oh, multiple channels with over a million subscribers. Nuthin to it.
That page lists seven channels Whistler has:
Business Blaze (which is now Brain Blaze) (posted three days ago)
So that’s, what, twelve videos in four days? And I’m not sure I’ve found all his channels. There are also some sister channels to Today I Found Out (Higher Learning, Origins, Fact Quickie, etc.) where Whistler doesn’t seem to be in front of the camera but may still be involved in.
This brings up a few questions:
When does this man sleep? Even assuming he has a staff of writers, editors, etc., that still seems like a grueling production schedule.
I’ve only clicked on a few of his videos before today, so why does he show up with such frequency in my feed? Why is he so beloved to the all-powerful algorithm?
How do we know that Simon Whistler isn’t, in fact, an AI host generated deep within the bowels of YouTube’s server farm?
Assuming he is but flesh and blood, I have to think he makes a somewhat handsome living from all this content. But in an era of rising interest rates, how long will the likes of Raid: Shadow Legends, Ridge wallets and Nord VPN continue to underwrite the YouTube economy?
None of this particularly sinister, but it is curious…
For several weeks, I’ve been running out of time to post every link I’ve gathered, so I’ve been bumping some links (generally ones that seemed less time-sensitive or required more commentary than others) to the next week’s LinkSwarm, whereupon I may use one or two, but otherwise the process repeats.
Well, I’m just going to post all those today to clear the decks.
California’s leftwing Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is using his position as governor subsidize his wife’s own leftwing business empire.
In the summer of 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom convinced the state legislature to provide $4.7 billion for K-12 mental health services, which, among other things, funded 10,000 new school counselors.
Gavin Newsom convinced the legislature because Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of the governor, convinced him. The biggest advocate for mental health funding within the K-12 California public schools in the Newsom administration was Mrs. Newsom, according to published accounts.
In fact, Gavin Newsom created The Office of First Partner so his wife could promote her policy agenda using taxpayer money. Since 2019, Siebel Newsom’s been armed with nearly $5 million and nine staffers within her subdivision of the governor’s office.
Snip.
Siebel Newsom spent years laying the ideological groundwork and political infrastructure to support her policy ambitions.
In 2012, Siebel Newsom founded a nonprofit, The Representation Project, that licenses “gender justice” films and curricula to 5,000 schools in all 50 states. The year Gavin Newsom became governor, the California Board of Education adopted guidance that recommended her films and curriculum be licensed and used in classrooms.
Policy making in California isn’t magic. Turns out, it’s a carefully thought through process to maximize political power and personal return from public investments.
Last week, we investigated the sophisticated scheme through which Siebel Newsom’s film and curricula “gender justice” nonprofit, The Representation Project, leverages taxpayer dollars to promote radical ideologies, personally profit, and push the political ambitions of her husband. She brags that 2.6 million students have seen the films nationwide.
The Representation Project contracts with her for-profit film-production company, Girls Club Entertainment. Since 2012, Siebel Newsom received $1.5 million in salary from the nonprofit. Furthermore, since 2012, the Siebel’s nonprofit paid her for-profit Girls Club $1.6 million to produce films.
Last month, our investigation broke the story that The Representation Project was not in compliance with the California Charitable Solicitation Act. The organization was not permitted to operate or solicit donations in California most of 2022 – yet spent all last year in operation and fundraising.
Now, we dig deeper, investigating the $4.8 million “Office of the First Partner” Gavin Newsom established for his wife’s policy work, and how Jennifer Siebel Newsom used her position to impact social and political processes, cashing checks along the way.
n 2019, Gov. Newsom created an office for his wife as a division within the governor’s executive team. According to a press release “the First Partner and her team will focus on lifting up women and their families, breaking down barriers for our youth, and furthering the cause of gender equity in California.”
Since inception, Siebel Newsom’s office has received nearly $4.8 million in directed taxpayer funding. The Office of First Partner has grown from seven employees with a budget of $791,000, to nine employees with a budget of $1,166,000 proposed for 2023-2024.
Snip.
Parents have complained about the pornographic content in Newsom’s films shown to 11-year-olds (such as an animated, upside-down stripper with tape over breasts) and 15-year-olds (nearly naked women being slapped, handcuffed, and brutalized in images taken from porn sites) — to view images, viewer discretion is advised.
Editorials have criticized the activities in Newsom’s film The Great American Lie as “emotionally abusive.” The activities ask students to publicly reveal personal information and force commentary on their relative “privilege” and “oppression.”
So Jennifer Siebel Newsom is using California taxpayer money to propagandize children for radical social justice and transexism.
An Australian comedian, YouTuber and Journalist, made videos making fun of Australian politicians and covering their oppressive Flu Manchu lockdown policies. That’s when they started trying to use the state machinery to shut him up. Then they firebombed him.
Jordan Shanks is an Australian comedian, also know as freindlyjordies, who fell in to doing YouTube videos about Australian politicians and powerful companies over the past few years. Along the way he became a journalist, the only journalist covering some of the things being done by the government and the corporations. Then in November of 2022 his house was firebombed. It was only by chance that he wasn’t in the house at the time.
And hey, if that sounds too dry, well you kids like Knives Out or whatever. Stick around. It’s a pretty interesting whodunit.
Most of the Australian press is even more in the bag for the powers-that-be than the US national media is for the Democrats. There were numerous stories, all but ignored by the mainstream. One example, the Premiere of New South Wales was under investigation. That was all but ignored by the press until she resigned. Then there were the antics of her Deputy Premiere, John Barilaro.
That is the most entertaining — or damaging to powers that be — story friendlyjordies covered.
As a result of that coverage, the Australian anti-terrorism machinery was directed at Shanks and his employees. Of course that turned out to be a group of Keystone cops, which got their own exposure on freindlyjordies. Along the way he exposed the abuse of the anti-terrorism squad, the relationship between some of the politicians and large corporations and perhaps organized crime. Then in November of the last year, after the lawsuits failed, the anti-terrorism actions failed, and the intimidation failed, someone moved to direct action, and tried to kill him.
On all key technical measures, the Next Generation Squad Weapons program is imploding before Army’s very eyes. The program is on mechanical life support, with its progenitors at the Joint Chiefs obstinately now ramming the program through despite spectacularly failing multiple civilian-sector peer reviews almost immediately upon commercial release.
Indeed the rifle seems cursed from birth. Even the naming has failed. Army recently allowed a third-party company to scare it off the military designation M5. The re-naming will certainly also help scupper bad public relations growing around ‘XM-5′ search results.
Civilian testing problems have, or should have, sunk the program already. The XM-5/7 as it turns out fails a single round into a mud test. Given the platform is a piston-driven rifle it now lacks gas, as the M-16 was originally designed, to blow away debris from the eject port. Possibly aiming to avoid long-term health and safety issues associated with rifle gas, Army has selected an operating system less hardy in battlefield environments. A choice understandable in certain respects, however, in the larger scheme the decision presents potentially war-losing cost/benefit analysis.
Civilian testing, testing Army either never did or is hiding, also only recently demonstrated that the rifle seemingly fails, at point-blank ranges, to meet its base criteria of penetrating Level 4 body armor (unassisted). True, the Army never explicitly set this goal, but it has nonetheless insinuated at every level, from media to Congress, that the rifle will penetrate said armor unassisted. Indeed, that was the entire point of the program. Of course, the rounds can penetrate body armor with Armor Piercing rounds, but so can 7.62x51mm NATO, even 5.56x45mm NATO.
The fundamental problem with the program is there remains not enough tungsten available from China, as Army knows, to make the goal of making every round armor piercing even remotely feasible. The plan also assumes that the world’s by far largest supplier will have zero problems selling tungsten to America only for it to be shot back at its troops during World War III. Even making steel core penetrators would be exceedingly difficult when the time came, adding layers of complexity and time to the most time-contingent of human endeavors. In any case, most large bullet manufacturers and even Army pre-program have moved to tungsten penetrators for a reason, despite the fact it increases the cost by an order of magnitude and supply seems troubled. Perhaps Army has a solution, perhaps.
The slight increase in ballistic coefficiency between the 6.8x51mm and 7.62x51mm cartridges neither justified the money pumped into the program nor does the slight increase in kinetic energy dumped on target. Itself a simple function of case pressurization within the bastardized 7.62mm case. Thus the net mechanical results of the program design-wise is a rifle still chambered in a 7.62×51 mm NATO base case (as the M-14), enjoying now two ways to charge the weapon and a folding stock. This is the limit of the touted generational design ‘leap’ under the program. And while the increased case pressure technology is very welcome the problem is, in terms of ballistics, the round is in no way a leap ahead compared to existing off-the-shelf options as those Army nearly went with under the now disavowed Interim Combat Service Rifle program, or it in fact did purchase schizophrenically just before the NGSW program began with the HK M110A1.
I can’t tell you whether the criticisms are true or not unless Sig Saur sends me a example to shoot. While that would be cool, I suspect it’s pretty unlikely, and I fear many test ranges have picayune policies against using military grade automatic weapons…
For questioning Covid restrictions, Georgetown Law suspended me from campus, forced me to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, required me to waive my right to medical confidentiality, and threatened to report me to state bar associations.
The Dean of Students claimed that I posed a “risk to the public health” of the University, but I quickly learned that my crime had been heretical, not medical.
Just before I entered Georgetown Law in August 2019, I watched The Paper Chase, a 1973 film about a first-year Harvard Law student and his experiences with a demanding professor, Charles Kingsfield.
The movie has the standard themes of law school: teaching students how to think, challenging the premises of an argument, differentiating fact patterns to support precedent. Kingsfield’s demands represent the difficulty of law school, and the most important skill is articulate, logic-based communication. “Nobody inhibits you from expressing yourself,” he scolds one student.
“Nobody inhibits you from expressing yourself.”
Two years later, I realized that Georgetown Law had inverted that script. The school fired a professor for commenting on differences in achievement between racial groups, slandered faculty members for deviating from university group-think, and threatened to destroy dissidents. Students banished cabinet officials from campus and demanded censorship of a tenured professor for her work defending women’s rights in Muslim-majority countries.
Unaware of the paradigm shift, I thought it was proper to ask questions about Georgetown’s Covid policies.
In August 2021, Georgetown Law returned to in-person learning after 17 months of virtual learning. The school announced a series of new policies for the school year: there was a vaccine requirement (later to be supplemented with booster mandates), students were required to wear masks on campus, and drinking water was banned in the classroom.
Dean Bill Treanor announced a new anonymous hotline called “Law Compliance” for community members to report dissidents who dared to quench their thirst or free their vaccinated nostrils.
Meanwhile, faculty members were exempt from the requirement, though the school never explained what factors caused their heightened powers of immunity.
Shortly thereafter, I received a notification from “Law Compliance” that I had been “identified as non-compliant” for “letting the mask fall beneath [my] nose.” I had a meeting with Dean of Students Mitch Bailin to discuss my insubordination, and I tried to voice my concerns about the irrationality of the school’s policies.
He had no answers to my simple questions but assured me that he “understood my frustration.” Then, he encouraged me to “get involved in the conversation,” telling me there was a Student Bar Association meeting set to take place the following Wednesday.
I arrived at the meeting with curiosity. I had no interest in banging my fists and causing a commotion; I just wanted to know the reasoning – the “rational basis” that law schools so often discuss – behind our school’s policies. There were four simple questions:
What was the goal of the school’s Covid policy? (Zero Covid? Flatten the curve?)
What was the limiting principle to that goal? (What were the tradeoffs?)
What metrics would the community need to reach for the school to remove its mask mandate?
How can you explain the contradictions in your policies? For example, how could the virus be so dangerous that we could not take a sip of water but safe enough that we were required to be present? Why are faculty exempt from masking requirements?
I feared there were simple answers to my questions that I had overlooked: these administrators made hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, surely they must have had some reasoning behind their draconian measures. Right? The contradictions appeared obvious to me. The data seemed to be clear, but maybe there was an explanation.
I delivered the brief speech without a mask, standing fifteen feet away from the nearest person. I awaited a response to my questions, but I realized this wasn’t about facts or data, premises or conclusions. This was about power and image.
Arbitrary. Irrational. Capricious. Students learn in their first days of their legal education to invoke these words to challenge unfavored laws and policies. I figured that I was doing the same, and I thought the school would welcome a calm, albeit defiant, student asking the questions rather than loud and angry crowds.
But this assumption turned out to be an incorrect premise. Nobody cared about my points regarding rationality – they cared that I had been reading from the wrong script. Even worse, not wearing a mask had been a more objectionable wardrobe malfunction than Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance.
Moscow’s ability to develop its own resource-based economy, expand the Northern Sea Route, cement ties with China and support Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to project power into the Arctic depends on the development of land-based infrastructure in the northern regions of the Russian Federation…
Yet, that ability has now been called into question, as the Russian government has canceled, despite Putin’s repeated orders to the contrary, a program to complete the broad-gauge Northern Broad-Gauge Railway. The route was intended to link settlements that support the Northern Sea Route, military bases and the locations of key sources of raw materials across the Russian North with the rest of the country…
Snip.
What appears to be this project’s death knell, at least for the time being, is instructive in its own right. It occurred not with some dramatic single action by the Kremlin but in a rolling fashion as has often been the case with the backtracking of decisions under Putin. In April 2021, to much acclaim, the Russian president called for construction of the Northern Broad-Gauge Railway to begin, with the goal of completing the project in the next few years. Yet, despite Putin’s words, nothing happened, at least in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased spending for his war against Ukraine and the impact of Western sanctions. Then, in 2022, Putin issued a new order for the project to go ahead. Again, nothing happened. Instead, less than a month later, Marat Khusnullin, a Russian deputy prime minister, quietly stopped all work on the project without giving anyone reason to think it would be resumed. Indeed, many Russian experts and commentators concerned with infrastructure issues believe that this railway plan has come to the end of its line, and one has even suggested that the cancellation of this project puts “a cross on the future of Russia.
Russia was broke before it launched its illegal war of territorial aggression against the Ukraine. Now it’s even more broke.
More on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Syria gets spicy again, woke companies like Disney are having massive layoffs, and Sig Saur gets into the Killbot business. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Courtesy of Bloomberg’s reporting, it appears that not only were insiders dumping their shares faster than syphilitic hooker, there were loading up on loans from the bank at a scale that makes a mockery of any regulatory oversight…
”
Yes, that’s real.
Loans to officers, directors and principal shareholders, and their related interests, more than tripled from the third quarter last year to $219 million in the final three months of 2022 – a record dollar amount of loans going back over 20 years.
Many questions come to mind – what were the terms, who were the recipients, what was the collateral?
But, sadly, we will likely never know.
However, we do note that the banking execs may be facing a serious shortfall (like their bank): if the loans were collateralized by SVB shares for example, those shares are now worthless, leaving the loan-heavy C-suite left to come up with the cash to repay the loans (and no, these loans don’t disappear with the bank’s liquidation).
Between that and the insider share dumping, people need to go to jail.
After the implosion of the FTX crypto exchange run by Sam Bankman Fried, questions of due diligence and competency immediately arose, suggesting that perhaps the company mishandled assets “accidentally” and that Fried was naive and “in over his head.” Numerous central bank officials and globalist organizations jumped into the debate almost immediately, arguing that FTX was a perfect example of why centralized regulation of crypto and digital currencies was necessary. They claimed that without oversight by banking elites, disaster was inevitable.
Of course, what they did not mention was that FTX and Sam Fried already had extensive connections with globalist groups including the World Economic Forum. In fact, the very basis of Fried’s business model was the WEF’s “Stakeholder Capitalism” theory, which he often referred to as “Effective Altruism.”
Stakeholder Capitalism is essentially the opposite of free markets – It is a socialist/globalist framework which uses corporations as a kind of economic enforcement tool. Corporations are already highly socialistic in their operations, and their existence is completely dependent on their special relationship with government. Corporations are created through government charter, enjoy special protections under “corporate personhood” laws and avoid direct consequences for criminal activities through limited liability.
Many corporations are not even allowed to fail because governments backstop their operations. That’s socialism, not free markets. However, “stakeholder capitalism” expands on this dynamic a hundred-fold.
Where free markets assert that businesses must make profit their primary objective for the overall economy to function, the WEF asserts that companies including banking institutions have a social obligation that goes beyond making money. To the typical leftist this probably sounds like a Utopian vision filled with promise, but to anyone that actually understands economics it sounds like a recipe for the collapse of civilization.
The WEF paints stakeholder capitalism an effort to reign in the power of the corporate system in favor of social causes. In reality, it’s a way to give corporations ultimate power over everything, including ultimate influence over public behavior.
We have seen extensive evidence of this through widespread corporate ESG investment programs implemented in the past several years. It is no coincidence that the invasion of woke ideology into the mainstream happened at the exact same time that ESG-based lending accelerated.
The institutions lending to various companies were able to set social rules for access to credit, and these rules required businesses to adopt far-left politics in their marketing and policies as a result. Stakeholder capitalism is about homogenizing all business into a single ideological entity – Instead of competing with each other for market share through innovation, companies have been abandoning merit based competition and are colluding to saturate the mainstream with social justice cultism, climate change propaganda and globalist rhetoric.
By making corporate elites “responsible” for society, we give them the power to engineer society.
However, the WEF’s model of false altruism is turning out to be a disaster for corporate survival. I have to wonder now if this was the intent all along – To create a kind of ESG fueled woke financial bubble that was always intended to come crashing down, leaving the western world in ruins.
Snip.
Looking into SVB’s operational history, the company was a woke nightmare.
Take a gander at their 66 page ESG report compiled in 2021 to get a sense of how far to the extreme political left the bank was. SVB is the pinnacle example of why “Get Woke, Go Broke” is more than a mantra, it’s a rule.
Digging even deeper we then find that SVB’s leadership was highly involved in the WEF and their Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics (SCM), along with corporate governance. SVB was not only implementing every single policy the WEF outlines in its agenda, they were reporting back to the WEF on their progress.
SVB’s capital exposure was heavily tied up in securities, but also venture capital for woke tech startups, climate change related projects and leftist activist groups which qualified for ESG loans; everything from BLM to Buzzfeed. In other words, they were investing aggressively into money-pit projects that devoured cash and gave nothing back. The real question is, how many US banks are involved in ESG and WEF operations at the same level as SVB? Dozens? Hundreds?
“U.S. Carries Out Airstrikes in Syria after Iranian Drone Kills U.S. Contractor, Wounds Five Service Members.” As I’ve mentioned before the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria doesn’t mean all. And the same goes for Africa.
“56% of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.” Well, you already said “liberal”…
Louisiana state Rep. Francis Thompson switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party, given Republicans a super-majority in both houses and thus the ability to override any veto by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. ““The push the past several years by Democratic leadership on both the national and state level to support certain issues does not align with those values and principles that are a part of my Christian life,” said Thompson.
World Athletics, the governing body for international track and field competition, has banned men from international competition. “I’ll take ‘Headlines no one in the 20th century would understand’ for $600, Alex.”
“Dallas Bar Cancels All-ages Drag Event.” Funny how the threat of having your TABC license yanked concentrates the mind…
Get Woke, Go Broke Part 1: After a string of expensive bombs and streaming losses, Disney to lay off 7,000 employees.
Get Woke, Go Broke 1.5: “Woke Marvel Producer Victoria Alonso Gone From MCU.” She was one of the central figures pushing Disney to adopt a pro-groomer position in Florida. The ostensible reason for her firing was breach of contract for producing a non-Marvel movie, but a lot of industry insiders think her outspoken wokeness was a key reason for her getting the axe.
Get Woke, Go Broke Part 2: “Twitch Streaming Service To Sack 36% Of Employees.”
SIG Sauer announced late last week it has acquired General Robotics, one of the world’s premier manufacturers of lightweight remote weapon stations and tactical robotics for manned and unmanned platforms as well as anti-drone applications. The companies have been working in concert for some time, a fact made obvious at January’s SHOT Show when they debuted a Polaris ATV equipped with a General Robotics PitBull remote weapons station that aimed and fired the vehicle-mounted SIG MG 338 belt-fed machine gun remotely.
“This acquisition will greatly enhance SIG Sauer’s growing portfolio of advanced weapon systems,” said Ron Cohen, president and CEO of SIG Sauer. The team at General Robotics is leading the way in the development of intuitive, lightweight remote weapon stations with their battle-proven solution.”
Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping. The “magic” behind Block’s business has not been disruptive innovation, but rather the company’s willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics.
There’s also a negative side.
Even the summary is pretty breathtaking in the rang of allegations:
Most analysts are excited about the post-pandemic surge of Block’s Cash App platform, with expectations that its 51 million monthly transacting active users and low customer acquisition costs will drive high margin growth and serve as a future platform to offer new products.
Our research indicates, however, that Block has wildly overstated its genuine user counts and has understated its customer acquisition costs. Former employees estimated that 40%-75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual.
Core to the issue is that Block has embraced one traditionally very “underbanked” segment of the population: criminals. The company’s “Wild West” approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams, then extract stolen funds quickly.
Even when users were caught engaging in fraud or other prohibited activity, Block blacklisted the account without banning the user. A former customer service rep shared screenshots showing how blacklisted accounts were regularly associated with dozens or hundreds of other active accounts suspected of fraud. This phenomenon of allowing blacklisted users was so common that rappers bragged about it in hip hop songs.
Block obfuscates how many individuals are on the Cash App platform by reporting misleading “transacting active” metrics filled with fake and duplicate accounts. Block can and should clarify to investors an estimate on how many unique people actually use Cash App.
CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly touted how Cash App is mentioned in hundreds of hip hop songs as evidence of its mainstream appeal. A review of those songs show that the artists are not generally rapping about Cash App’s smooth user interface—many describe using it to scam, traffic drugs or even pay for murder…
“I paid them hitters through Cash App”— Block paid to promote a video for a song called “Cash App” which described paying contract killers through the app. The song’s artist was later arrested for attempted murder.
Cash App was also cited “by far” as the top app used in reported U.S. sex trafficking, according to a leading non-profit organization. Multiple Department of Justice complaints outline how Cash App has been used to facilitate sex trafficking, including sex trafficking of minors.
There is even a gang named after Cash App: In 2021, Baltimore authorities charged members of the “Cash App” gang with distribution of fentanyl in a West Baltimore neighborhood, according to news reports and criminal records.
Beyond facilitating payments for criminal activity, the platform has been overrun with scam accounts and fake users, according to numerous interviews with former employees.
Examples of obvious distortions abound: “Jack Dorsey” has multiple fake accounts, including some that appear aimed at scamming Cash App users. “Elon Musk” and “Donald Trump” have dozens.
To test this, we turned our accounts into “Donald Trump” and “Elon Musk” and were easily able to send and receive money. We ordered a Cash Card under our obviously fake Donald Trump account, checking to see if Cash App’s compliance would take issue—the card promptly arrived in the mail.
Former employees described how Cash App suppressed internal concerns and ignored user pleas for help as criminal activity and fraud ran rampant on its platform. This appeared to be an effort to grow Cash App’s user base by strategically disregarding Anti Money Laundering (AML) rules.
The COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdowns posed an existential threat to Block’s key driver of gross profit at the time, merchant services.
In this environment, amid Cash App’s anti-compliance free-for-all, the app facilitated a massive wave of government COVID-relief payments. CEO Jack Dorsey Tweeted that users could get government payments through Cash App “immediately” with “no bank account needed” due to its frictionless technology.
Within weeks of Cash App accounts receiving their first government payments, states were seeking to claw back suspected fraudulent payments—Washington State wanted more than $200 million back from payment processors while Arizona sought to recover $500 million, former employees told us.
Once again, the signs were hard to miss. Rapper “Nuke Bizzle”, made a popular music video about committing COVID fraud. Several weeks later, he was arrested and eventually convicted for committing COVID fraud. The only payment provider mentioned in the indictment was Cash App, which was used to facilitate the fraudulent payments.
We filed public records requests to learn more about Block’s role in facilitating pandemic relief fraud and received answers from several states.
Massachusetts sought to claw back over 69,000 unemployment payments from Cash App accounts just four months into the pandemic. Suspect transactions at Cash App’s partner bank were disproportionate, exceeding major banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, despite the latter banks having 4x-5x as many deposit accounts.
In Ohio, Cash App’s partner bank had 8x the suspect pandemic-related unemployment payments as the bank that processed the most unemployment claims in the state, even though the latter bank processed 2x the claims as Cash App’s, according to data we obtained via a public records request.
The data shows that compared to its Ohio competitor, Cash App’s partner bank had nearly 10x the number of applicants who applied for benefits through a bank account used by another claimant – a clear red flag of fraud.
Block had obvious compliance lapses that made fraud easy, such as permitting single accounts to receive unemployment payments on behalf of multiple individuals from various states and ineffective address verification.
In an apparent effort to preserve its growth engine, Cash App ignored internal employee concerns, along with warnings from the Secret Service, the U.S. Department of Labor OIG, FinCEN, and State Regulators which all specifically flagged the issue of multiple COVID relief payments going to the same account as an obvious sign of fraud.
Block reported a pandemic surge in user counts and revenue, ignoring the contribution of widespread fraudulent accounts and payments. The new business provided a sharp one-time increase to Block’s stock, which rose 639% in 18 months during the pandemic.
As Block’s stock soared on the back of its facilitation of fraud, co-founders Jack Dorsey and James McKelvey collectively sold over $1 billion of stock during the pandemic. Other executives, including CFO Amrita Ahuja and the lead manager for Cash App Brian Grassadonia, also dumped millions of dollars in stock.
With its influx of pandemic Cash App users, our research shows Block has quietly fueled its profitability by avoiding a key banking regulation meant to protect merchants. “Interchange fees” are fees charged to merchants for accepting use of various payment cards.
Congress passed a law that legally caps “interchange fees” charged by large banks that have over $10 billion in assets. Despite having $31 billion in assets, Block avoids these regulations by routing payments through a small bank and gouging merchants with elevated fees.
Block includes only a single vague reference in its filings acknowledging it earns revenue from “interchange fees”. It has never revealed the full economics of this category, yet roughly one-third of Cash App’s revenue came from this opaque source, according to a 2022 Credit Suisse research report.
Competitor PayPal has disclosed it is under investigation by both the SEC and the CFPB over its similar use of a small bank to avoid “interchange fee” caps. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed with the SEC indicates that Block may be part of a similar investigation.
Block’s $29 billion deal to acquire ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) service Afterpay closed in January 2022. Afterpay has been celebrated by Block as a major financial innovation, allowing users to buy things like a pair of shoes or a t-shirt and pay over time, only incurring massive fees if subsequent payments are late.
Afterpay was designed in a way that avoided responsible lending rules in its native Australia, extending a form of credit to users without income verification or credit checks. The service doesn’t technically charge “interest”, but late fees can reach APR equivalents as high as 289%.
The acquisition is flopping. In 2022, the year Afterpay was acquired, it lost $357 million, accelerating from 2021 losses of $184 million.
Fitch Ratings reported that Afterpay delinquencies through March 2022 had more than doubled to 4.1%, from 1.7% in June 2021 (just prior to the announced acquisition). Total processing volume declined -4.8% from the previous year.
Block regularly hypes other mundane or predatory sources of revenue as technological breakthroughs. Roughly 31% of Cash App’s revenue comes from “instant deposit” which Block says it pioneered and works as if by “magic”. Every other major competitor we checked provides a similar service at comparable or better rates.
On a purely fundamental basis, even before factoring in the findings of our investigation, we see downside of between 65% to 75% in Block shares. Block reported a 1% year over year revenue decline and a GAAP loss of $540.7 million in 2022. Analysts have future expectations of GAAP unprofitability and the company has warned it may not be profitable.
Despite this, Block is valued like a profitable growth company at (i) an EV/EBITDA multiple of 60x; (ii) a forward 2023 “adjusted” earnings multiple of 41x; and (iii) a price to tangible book ratio of 13.1x, all wildly out of line with fintech peers.
Despite its current rich multiples, Block is also facing threats from key competitors like Zelle, Venmo/Paypal and fast-growing payment solutions from smartphone powerhouses like Apple and Google. Apple has grown Apple Pay activations from 20% in 2017 to over 70% in 2022 and now leads in digital wallet market share.
In sum, we think Block has misled investors on key metrics, and embraced predatory offerings and compliance worst-practices in order to fuel growth and profit from facilitation of fraud against consumers and the government.
We also believe Jack Dorsey has built an empire—and amassed a $5 billion personal fortune—professing to care deeply about the demographics he is taking advantage of. With Dorsey and top executives already having sold over $1 billion in equity on Block’s meteoric pandemic run higher, they have ensured they will be fine, regardless of the outcome for everyone else.
That’s just the high level summary. There’s a whole lot more detail in the report.
I have never once used Cash App. I have an ancient Square Reader floating around in a bag somewhere, but I never actually ran any transactions on it. I do have PayPal, because I pretty much have to in order to buy or sell on eBay (though I’ve gotten to the point I do almost no selling there). I don’t even use Apple Pay, despite having a MacBook Pro and iPhone.
Speaking of fees, here Louis Rossmann rants about how Square refuses to return fees for refunds:
Anyway, if you’re using Square or CashApp, maybe it’s a good time to look into alternatives…
Back when I reviewed The Beast, I said “While the Russians have been demothballing old Soviet tanks to send to Ukraine, they haven’t become desperate enough to send T-55s to the front lines, assuming they still have any that are able to run.”
Guess what?
Russia is demothballing T-54s/55s and sending them to Ukraine. Maybe not for front-line duty (or at least I bet that’s what they’re telling the probably green tankers they’re stuffing into them). Maybe they’re putting in new thermal sights, and maybe not. Some have suggested they’re also adding explosive reactive armor as well, but since much of the stuff found on captured newer tanks turned out to be fake, I rather doubt it.
Does this mean Russia is running out of tanks? Not necessarily. Maybe they’re saving more modern tanks in reserve for a spring or summer offensive and sending all this old crap in as a stopgap. But a whole lot of slightly less ancient T-62s are up on Oryx, so I suspect we’ll start seeing Ukrainian forces take out T-55s in Ukraine sooner rather than later.
Given how antiquated T-54/55s are on the modern battlefield, I would suggest that the U.S. government demothball a goodly number of original M1 Abramss, maybe with some slight equipment upgrades, and ship them to Ukraine, assuming enough 105mm rounds can be scrounged up. They were effective enough to destroy Soviet armor in Desert Storm, and the stuff Russia is currently shipping to Ukraine is considerably older than that.
During World War II, the Wehrmacht developed the remote-controlled Goliath tracked mine to take out tanks, fortifications, and other targets. Despite some models packing a whopping 220 pounds of explosive, they sort of looked like a toy a child could ride on, and would almost be adorable if it weren’t for the fact that they were Nazi death bombs.
Who’s an adorable little Nazi death bomb? You are! You are!
As in so many things, Ukrainians have rediscovered and deployed (kinda) another lost weapon/tactic from World War II. Namely, they’re using remote control vehicles as suicide antitank bombs.
I’ve long thought you could use even smaller, slightly modified off-the-shelf RC cars in mass to take out softer targets like trucks. Or drive into a enemy barracks with just a couple of pounds of plastique studded with roofing nails.
The Russo-Ukrainian War continues to expand the possibilities of drone warfare, and I trust the Pentagon (and every other military in the world) is taking notes.
“How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?” – Charles de Gaulle (attributed)
Ah, France! [Insert lazy paragraph describing France in in terms of classic cliches including food, wine, cheese, sex, cigarettes and surrender.]
Yes, you’ll do nicely, Cliched French Guy Clip Art
In addition to those classic French attributes, another time-honored French tradition is “widespread rioting,” which they’ve been celebrating over the last few weeks. What they’re protesting is French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to force through an unpopular bill to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
French President Emmanuel Macron ordered his prime minister to wield a special constitutional power Thursday that skirts parliament to force through a highly unpopular bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a vote.
His calculated risk set off a clamor among lawmakers, who began singing the national anthem even before Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne arrived in the lower chamber. She spoke forcefully over their shouts, acknowledging that Macron’s unilateral move will trigger quick motions of no-confidence in his government.
The fury of opposition lawmakers echoed the anger of citizens and workers’ unions. Thousands gathered at the Place de la Concorde facing the National Assembly, lighting a bonfire. As night fell, police charged the demonstrators in waves to clear the elegant Place. Small groups of those chased away moved through nearby streets in the chic neighborhood setting street fires. At least 120 were detained, police said.
Similar scenes repeated themselves in numerous other cities, from Rennes and Nantes in the east to Lyon and the southern port city of Marseille, where shop windows and bank fronts were smashed, according to French media. Radical leftist groups were blamed for at least some of the destruction.
The unions that have organized strikes and marches since January, leaving Paris reeking in piles of garbage, announced new rallies and protest marches in the days ahead. “This retirement reform is brutal, unjust, unjustified for the world of workers,” they declared.
Macron has made the proposed pension changes the key priority of his second term, arguing that reform is needed to keep the pension system from diving into deficit as France, like many richer nations, faces lower birth rates and longer life expectancy.
Macron decided to invoke the special power during a Cabinet meeting at the Elysee presidential palace, just a few minutes before the scheduled vote in France’s lower house of parliament, because he had no guarantee of a majority.
French President Emmanuel Macron chose on Thursday to shun parliament and impose his unpopular pension reforms via a special constitutional power, the so-called “Article 49.3.”
The procedure has been regularly used in the past by different governments. But this time it’s drawing a lot of attention and prompting much criticism because of the massive public opposition to the increase in retirement ages.
Here’s a look at how and why the special power is used.
WHAT’S ARTICLE 49.3?
Article 49, paragraph 3 of the French Constitution provides that the government can pass a bill without a vote at the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, after a deliberation at a Cabinet meeting.
In response, lawmakers can file a no-confidence motion within 24 hours. If the motion gets approval from more than half the seats, the text is rejected and the government must resign.
If not, the bill is considered adopted and passes into law. Since the Constitution was established in 1958, only one no-confidence motion was successful, in 1962.
Charles de Gaulle (him again) rammed through the Constitution of the Fifth Republic because he wanted a stable central government and, compared to some other European states (I’m looking at you, Italy), it’s largely achieved those goals.
The thing is, Macron is probably right in that the French welfare state needs an older retirement age for the entire system to stay solvent (at least for a while longer). But the way his proposal was passed also emblematic of the deficit of democracy in the EU generally and France specifically. That old saw about democracies only lasting until people figuring out they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury is largely right, and in this, as in so many, many things, Eurocratic elites have decided the peasants simply can’t be allowed to derail the plans of their illustrious betters.
As of this writing, Macron just survived a no confidence vote over the issue. So France may well have bought itself a little more time before inevitable national bankruptcy. But every maneuver like increases French anger over the obvious democracy gap, and, as the Grand Tour lads have noted, the French can be exceptionally bloody minded over expressing their disapproval of laws they hate.
”
