Breaking News From Corporate Media: Billionaires Do Not Like Socialism

Just as the press are keen for you to know that Medicare for All is a very bad idea, they are equally anxious to make sure that the voices of beleaguered, unheard plutocrats are given as much of a boost as possible.

Published on

Tuesday, February 04, 2020

by

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Takes on Socialism, Says It Will Lead to an ‘Eroding Society.’ (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Big news, everyone! Billionaires don’t like socialism.

In response to a rising progressive tide in the United States, a new genre of stories has emerged in corporate media: rich guys warning against taxing them, or really changing anything about the system at all. Just as the press are keen for you to know that Medicare for All is a very bad idea (FAIR.org, 4/29/19), they are equally anxious to make sure that the voices of beleaguered, unheard plutocrats are given as much of a boost as possible.

Is the opinion of the CEO of the world’s fifth-largest oil company that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “have a completely unrealistic idea of the complexity of the global energy system” (CNBC, 1/22/20) really “breaking news”?

A case in point is CNBC’s recent article (1/22/20) headlined, “BP’s CEO Chides AOC and Bernie Sanders for Their ‘Completely Unrealistic’ Green New Deal Ideas.” Reporter Jessica Bursztynsky begins:

Outgoing BP chief Bob Dudley on Wednesday criticized sweeping climate proposals from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a top-tier 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a champion of the far left. “They have a completely unrealistic idea of the complexity of the global energy system,” Dudley told CNBC’s Squawk Box from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

To sum up the story, a CNBC journalist went to Davos (where the cheapest hotel room last year was $1,000 per night) to get ideas about socialism and the environment from the CEO of BP, one of the 100 corporations responsible for over 70% of the world’s emissions. At no point did Bursztynsky warn the audience or even allude to the enormous conflict of interest the oil multi-millionaire might have in discussing solutions to the climate crisis. Instead, his views are presented as a straight and important news story.

In contrast, the first sentence primes the reader against AOC and Sanders by presenting them as “far left” – in other words, as some sort of out-there crazies, even though their ideas are supported by the majority of the American people (FAIR.org, 1/23/19). It allows Dudley to claim that there is a distinct “lack of realism” from his critics (emphasis added):

“There’s just a lot of people, very well-meaning people, who want to believe that there is a simple solution,” Dudley said at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference.

Jeez, I wonder what oil CEOs at an energy forum in a Mideastern monarchy think about renewable energy? Good thing CNBC is on the case.

If you don’t understand what socialism is, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase will fill you in (CNBC, 1/22/20).

Not content with hearing only one CEO’s opinion, on the same day CNBC (1/22/20) published another Davos interview, called “JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Takes on Socialism, Says It Will Lead to an ‘Eroding Society,’” where Dimon told readers that “socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried” and claimed that millennials don’t understand what it really is. A billionaire investment banker doesn’t like socialism!? Stop the presses!

CNBC is a particularly frequent culprit of publishing non-news such as this. Last year it ran an article (6/20/19) titled “Bernie Sanders ‘Doesn’t Have a Clue,’” featuring supposed wisdom from multibillionaire Goldman Sachs alum Leon Cooperman, who stated bluntly: “We have the best economy in the world. Capitalism works,” and that Sanders’ “far-left” agenda is “counterproductive.” “I’m not in favor of raising taxes. Taxes are high enough,” Cooperman predictably said.

Neither article mentioned JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs’ role in the 2008 global financial crash, the up to $29 trillion bailout their industry received, and how these corporations need capitalism to continue regardless of whether it “works” or not. Instead, these tycoons’ bland statements are treated as important facts from experts. Media present their position as CEOs of oligarchic corporations as making their opinions inherently noteworthy. That might be true on some issues, but on questions like this, their invested positions actually make them less credible.

Yet CNBC (4/16/19) not only allowed United Healthcare CEO David Wichmann to claim that Medicare for All would “destabilize the nation’s health system,” leading to a crisis and a “severe impact on the economy,” without a word of scrutiny, it also bolstered his credibility, telling readers that he “rarely discusses politics,” implying that this was a highly reliable expert opinion, and certainly not scaremongering from a giant for-profit organization making billions annually off the sick.

It is already debatable if plutocrats’ entirely predictable pronouncements on economic issues are even news at all, given their obvious incentives. And there is also the question as to whether CNBC should be using its considerable resources to give a megaphone to some of the most powerful people in the world, letting them define and set the agenda of public debate. But to constantly feature these people without even mentioning the massive and glaring personal and economic conflict of interests they hold in pushing these ideas is tantamount to journalistic malpractice.

“Big companies are an easy target for candidates looking for convenient villains for the economic distress felt by many of our citizens,” declared Verizon‘s CEO in a blog post that was reported as news by many media outlets owned by big companies (CBS News, 4/13/16).

This practice is hardly limited to just CNBC. For example, a number of prominent outlets, including NBC News (4/13/16), the Wall Street Journal (4/13/16), Business Insider (4/13/16), USA Today (4/14/16), CBS News (4/13/16),  Politico (4/13/16) and Fortune (4/13/16), covered a Verizon CEO’s LinkedIn blog post (4/13/16) that claimed Sanders held “uninformed” and “contemptible” views on the economy. “But when rhetoric becomes disconnected from reality, we’ve crossed a dangerous line,” Verizon’s Lowell McAdam wrote, insinuating that the rich were “targets” in potential danger.

In many of the write-ups, Sanders came across as a dishonest rabble-rouser readying the pitchforks, rather than a popular political leader critiquing the greed and power of the extremely wealthy. Is a LinkedIn blog post really newsworthy enough to garner so many national headlines? Evidently, if it says the right thing, then the answer is “yes.”

The fight for a $15 minimum wage has also, predictably, been attacked by restaurant owners who are among the stingiest when it comes to wages. Fox Business (6/6/19) repeated former CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder’s claims that “Bernie Sanders’ proposals will kill economic growth” and lead to a reduction in wages for those he claims to represent. Surely it would have been more honest to at least mention that the ex-boss of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurant franchises might have a conflict of interest on the matter?

And surely when Ken Langone described Sanders as “the Antichrist”—a particularly ugly epithet to hurl at a Jewish politician—the Wall Street Journal (5/10/18) should have at least pointed out that the multibillionaire founder of Home Depot and major Republican donor might be a biased commentator. And it certainly was not obliged to present a man whose net worth has increased by nearly 60% in five years as some kind of ultra-philanthropist, a modern-day Francis of Assisi.

Bank of America’s CEO spells out what used to be an unspoken rule in US politics and media (Yahoo! Finance, 1/24/20).

Yahoo! Finance (1/24/20) offered its own entry in the musings-from-Davos genre, interviewing Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who told editor-in-chief Andy Serwer: “One of the things we’re trying to get everybody to understand, is you can be capitalist and make progress for society. But don’t challenge capitalism.” Yahoo!’s write-up did mention that Moynihan had been paid $26.5 million in 2018, and that he “has faced scrutiny over politicized issues like executive pay.”

By reporting what multimillionaire and billionaire CEOs say about efforts to change a system they so clearly have a huge stake in staying the same, without highlighting, or even mentioning, their conflict of interest, corporate media are doing their audiences a disservice—effectively propagandizing them into supporting a model their owners and advertisers benefit from. If media are to perform their role as the fourth estate properly, they should really be scrutinizing power, not uncritically amplifying it.

Alan MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. He is author of "Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting." His latest book, Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, was published by Routledge in May 2019. Follow him on Twitter: @AlanRMacLeod

America: Land of Make-Believe

America, founded on the evils of slavery, genocide and the violent exploitation of the working class, is a country defined by historical amnesia.

by

Chris Hedges

The embrace of collective self-delusion marks the death spasms of all civilizations. (Photo: Mr. Fish / Truthdig)

If what happens in courtrooms across the country to poor people of color is justice, what is happening in the Senate is a trial. If the blood-drenched debacles and endless quagmires in the Middle East are victories in the war on terror, our military is the greatest on earth. If the wholesale government surveillance of the public, the revoking of due process and having the world’s largest prison population are liberty, we are the land of the free. If the president, an inept, vulgar and corrupt con artist, is the leader of the free world, we are a beacon for democracy and our enemies hate us for our values. If Jesus came to make us rich, bless the annihilation of Muslims by our war machine and condemn homosexuality and abortion, we are a Christian nation. If formalizing an apartheid state in Israel is a peace plan, we are an honest international mediator. If a meritocracy means that three American men have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the U.S. population, we are the land of opportunity. If the torture of kidnapped victims in black sites and the ripping of children from their parents’ arms and their detention in fetid, overcrowded warehouses, along with the gunning down of unarmed citizens by militarized police in the streets of our urban communities, are the rule of law, we are an exemplar of human rights.

America, as it is discussed in public forums by politicians, academics and the media, is a fantasy, a Disneyfied world of make-believe.

The rhetoric we use to describe ourselves is so disconnected from reality that it has induced collective schizophrenia. America, as it is discussed in public forums by politicians, academics and the media, is a fantasy, a Disneyfied world of make-believe. The worse it gets, the more we retreat into illusions. The longer we fail to name and confront our physical and moral decay, the more demagogues who peddle illusions and fantasies become empowered. Those who acknowledge the truth—beginning with the stark fact that we are no longer a democracy—wander like ghosts around the edges of society, reviled as enemies of hope. The mania for hope works as an anesthetic. The hope that Donald Trump would moderate his extremism once he was in office, the hope that the “adults in the room” would manage the White House, the hope that the Mueller report would see Trump disgraced, impeached and removed from office, the hope that Trump’s December 2019 impeachment would lead to his Senate conviction and ouster, the hope that he will be defeated at the polls in November are psychological exits from the crisis—the collapse of democratic institutions, including the press, and the corporate corruption of laws, electoral politics and norms that once made our imperfect democracy possible.

The embrace of collective self-delusion marks the death spasms of all civilizations. We are in the terminal stage. We no longer know who we are, what we have become or how those on the outside see us. It is easier, in the short term, to retreat inward, to celebrate nonexistent virtues and strengths and wallow in sentimentality and a false optimism. But in the end, this retreat, peddled by the hope industry, guarantees not only despotism but, given the climate emergency, extinction.

“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed,” Hannah Arendt wrote of totalitarianism.

This destruction, which cuts across the political divide, leads us to place our faith in systems, including the electoral process, that are burlesque. It diverts our energy toward useless debates and sterile political activity. It calls on us to place our faith for the survival of the human species in ruling elites who will do nothing to halt the ecocide. It sees us accept facile explanations for our predicament, whether they involve blaming the Russians for the election of Trump or blaming undocumented workers for our economic decline. We live in a culture awash in lies, the most dangerous being those we tell ourselves.

Lies are emotionally comforting in times of distress, even when we know they are lies. The worse things get, the more we long to hear the lies. But cultures that can no longer face reality, that cannot distinguish between falsehood and truth, retreat into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” the merger of fact and fiction. This merger destroys the mechanisms for puncturing self-delusion. Intellectuals, artists and dissidents who attempt to address reality and warn about the self-delusion are ridiculed, silenced and demonized. There are, as Freud noted in “Civilizations and Its Discontents,” distressed societies whose difficulties “will not yield at any attempt at reform.” But this is too harsh a truth for most people, especially Americans, to accept.

America, founded on the evils of slavery, genocide and the violent exploitation of the working class, is a country defined by historical amnesia. The popular historical narrative is a celebration of the fictional virtues of white supremacy. The relentless optimism and reveling in supposed national virtues obscure truth. Nuance, complexity and moral ambiguity, along with accepting responsibility for the holocausts and genocides carried out by slaveholders, white settlers and capitalists, have never fit with America’s triumphalism. “The illusions of eternal strength and health, and of the essential goodness of people—they were the illusions of a nation, the lies of generations of frontier mothers,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote.

In decay, however, these illusions are fatal. Powerful nations have the luxury of imbibing myth, even if decisions and policies based on the myth inflict damage and widespread suffering. But nations whose foundations are rotting have little latitude. The miscalculations they make, based on fantasy, accelerate their mortality.

Joseph Roth was one of the few writers in the 1930s in Germany who understood the consequences of the rise of fascism. In his essay “The Auto-da-Fé of the Mind,” which addressed the first mass burning of books by the Nazis, he counseled his fellow Jewish writers to accept that they had been vanquished: “Let us, who were fighting on the front line, under the banner of the European mind, let us fulfill the noblest duty of the defeated warrior: Let us concede our defeat.”

Roth knew that the peddling of false hopes in a time of radical evil was immoral. He had no illusions about his own growing irrelevance. He was blacklisted in the German press, unable to publish his books in Germany and his native Austria and thrust into dire poverty and often despair. He was acutely aware of how most people, even his fellow Jews, found it easier to blind themselves to radical evil, if only to survive, rather than name and defy malignant authority and risk annihilation.

“What use are my words,” Roth asked, “against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?”

“It will become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe,” Roth, after going into self-exile in France in 1933, wrote to the author Stefan Zweig about the ascendancy of the Nazis. “The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns.”

But Roth also knew that resistance was a moral if not a practical obligation in times of radical evil. Defeat might be certain, but dignity and a determination to live in truth demanded a response. We are required to bear witness, even if a self-deluded population does not want to hear, even if that truth makes certain our own marginalization and perhaps obliteration.

“One must write, even when one realizes the printed word can no longer improve anything,” Roth explained.

This battle against collective self-delusion is a battle I fear we will not win. American society is fatally wounded. Its moral and physical corruption is beyond repair.

Hope, real hope, names the bitter reality before us. But it refuses to succumb, despite the bleakness, to despair. It cries out to an indifferent universe with every act carried out to name, cripple and destroy corporate power. It mocks certain defeat. Whether we can succeed or not is immaterial. We cannot always choose how we will live. But we can choose how we will die. Victory is about holding on to our moral autonomy. Victory is about demanding, no matter the cost, justice. Victory is speaking the truths the ruling elites seek to silence. A life like this is worth living. And in times of radical evil these lives—ironic points of light, as W.H. Auden wrote—impart not only hope but the power of the sacred.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.  His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

As coronavirus panic spreads, Uber and Lyft riders of Asian descent are reporting discrimination from drivers
PUBLISHED MON, FEB 3 2020

"So far, there have been 11 confirmed cases in the U.S., out of more than 17,000 total.
Public health officials say the flu is a higher threat in the U.S., and has led to 10,000 deaths during the influenza season."

KEY POINTS

Lilian Wang was told by a Lyft driver who picked her up from San Francisco’s airport that he had refused rides from people with Asian sounding names.

Other riders shared similar experiences as fears about the coronavirus spread.

Lyft and Uber say they have policies that are designed to curb discrimination.

Eric Han, who works in a Microsoft retail store in Seattle, told CNBC he called an Uber on Monday, stepped into the car and coughed. It was a cold day. His driver immediately asked if Han was from China, and he responded that he was not.

The driver commented that his cough meant he might have the coronavirus, and opened a window.

I don’t have it,” said Han. “I’m from the U.S.”

Han recalled that the driver responded: “Whatever you say.”

“I’m not one to take offense very easily so I wasn’t angry, just kind of chuckling under my breath like ‘wow, this is really happening’.” Han said he did not report the driver to Uber. Weeks earlier, Han said he was told by a group of strangers in downtown Seattle to “go back to my homeland.”

As the coronavirus spreads, so too are racist attacks directed at Asian Americans.

For ride-sharing platforms Lyft and Uber, these incidents appear to be happening despite their efforts to curb discriminatory behavior. One member of a Facebook group with more than 12,000 Lyft and Uber drivers noted that at least five posts per day mention the virus. The member, who shared screenshots with CNBC, said that many drivers were saying they did not want to pick up riders of Asian descent and that it was not safe to do so.

A CNBC search found dozens of tweets involving riders and drivers reluctant to share a car with a person of Asian appearance. Many of these tweets were posted in the past week, as fears have been stoked by reports that there are now confirmed cases of the virus in more than half a dozen countries.

‘OK, so not China’

Han is far from alone. When Lilian Wang attempted to get into her Lyft ride share at San Francisco airport on Sunday, a driver refused to open the car door.

According to Wang, who is Asian American and works in the technology sector, the driver let them in only after a Caucasian friend showed up — CNBC video producer Katie Schoolov, who says she put in the request for the ride.

Once in the backseat, the driver asked if the pair were returning from China and Schoolov responded that they’d just returned from Mexico. “OK, so not China,” he responded.

Their driver then noted that he’s been told to be careful and has refused ride requests from people with Chinese-sounding names. He also asked Wang if she was in fact, a rider called “He,” and noted that he had already turned down that request.

After registering a complaint, Schoolov received a call from a representative from Lyft’s support team informing her that the driver had been removed from the platform.

On Saturday in Chicago, Indra Andreshak said she took a shared ride in a Lyft and the driver was alerted to two other riders who needed a pickup nearby. The app pulled up a profile picture of the first passenger, who Andreshak noted was “visibly Asian and named Hero.” She then said she heard her driver say “Hero, Heee-ro, Hero in Chinatown.”

“I hope he doesn’t give me the coronavirus,” the driver muttered. Andreshak said she reported the incident.

Myeonghoon Han said five days ago in London he called an Uber with some Korean friends. They piled in and the driver looked annoyed and waved his hands, indicating he did not want them in the car. Han said his friend said “we’re not Chinese,” and the driver’s demeanor changed drastically and he was happy to drive them to their destination. The group did not report the incident.

Lyft spokesperson Dana Davis said in a statement that the company takes “any allegation of discrimination very seriously.” Davis added that Lyft is “monitoring official updates on the global outbreak closely, and taking our cues from international and domestic public health experts.”

“Our priority is to keep our riders, drivers and employees safe, with as little disruption as possible. We will continue to evaluate the situation as it unfolds, and base our policies and recommendations on official guidance,” she said.

Lyft did not respond to CNBC about whether the company would be rolling out any broader policies to combat discrimination, including public health resources and education. Instead, they are asking riders to share their experiences with their safety team.

Uber referred CNBC to its community guidelines that drivers are required to acknowledge. Those guidelines specify that drivers should “foster positive interactions” with people who “might not look like you or share your beliefs.” It also said it has a portal for public health authorities, and that it is in regular contact with these groups.

In Mexico City, Uber confirmed on Saturday that it suspended the accounts of 240 users who may have recently come into contact with the coronavirus.

China’s National Health Commission confirmed on Monday that there have been 361 deaths from the virus. So far, there have been 11 confirmed cases in the U.S., out of more than 17,000 total. Public health officials say the flu is a higher threat in the U.S., and has led to 10,000 deaths during the influenza season.

---30---

Johns Hopkins doctor says new coronavirus is here to stay, expects ‘seasonal’ outbreaks

IT IS A FORM OF INFLUENZA, AKA THE FLU

AND THE FLU KILLS MORE PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHER DISEASE

CNBC.COM TUE, FEB 4 2020 Jessica Bursztynsky@JBURSZ

KEY POINTS

Johns Hopkins senior scholar Dr. Amesh Adalja said the new coronavirus will likely cause yearly outbreaks, with most of the cases being mild.

“Many people are going to get mild illness and it’s going to be more like a flu-like illness for many people but for some it may be very severe,” he said.

Adalja compared the new coronavirus to the H1N1 swine flu outbreak that hit in 2009.

Senior scholar Dr. Amesh Adalja told CNBC on Tuesday that the new coronavirus will likely cause yearly outbreaks, with most of the cases being mild.

“It’s going to become a part of our seasonal respiratory virus family that causes disease,” Adalja said on “Squawk Box.”

However, he expects the current outbreak to turn into a mild pandemic and spread further in the United States. Currently, there’s only 11 confirmed U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

China’s National Health Commission on Tuesday raised its confirmed coronavirus cases in the country to 20,900. The death toll rose to 425 there — with one fatality in the Philippines and one in Hong Kong. The World Health Organization said there’s been more than 150 coronavirus cases in about two dozen countries outside of China.

Many health professionals and analysts believe the number of cases to be much higher, which could bring the mortality rate below it’s current 2%.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC in recent days that they also believe the coronavirus outbreak will turn into a pandemic.

Health officials could declare a “pandemic” if the virus were to start to affect a larger number of people across the globe. The term epidemic is reserved for a more localized spread.

“It’s important that we get a handle on what the severity is and who has the risk factors, so that we can protect those individuals,” Adalja said. “Many people are going to get mild illness and it’s going to be more like a flu-like illness for many people but for some it may be very severe.”

Adalja compared the coronavirus to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak, which is now seen as a regular flu virus. The swine flu pandemic killed about 285,000 people at the time, but it had a low mortality rate. The 2002-2003 SARS outbreak saw 8,098 cases and 774 deaths. That was a mortality rate of 9.56%.

“There are probably a lot more people who were infected in China who have not been really counted ... because they were either asymptomatic or their symptoms were so light that they didn’t come to the attention of health authorities,” Fauci told CNBC on Monday.

Countries around the globe have responded to the coronavirus outbreak by putting preventative measures, such as travel restrictions, in place. Companies, including Starbucks and Apple, have temporarily closed some China operations.

The U.S. instituted on Sunday a mandatory 14-day quarantine of Americans who in the last two weeks have visited Hubei province in China, where the city of Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, is located. The Trump administration is also instructing Americans returning to the U.S. to undergo a two-week self quarantine if they have been in other parts of mainland China in the past two weeks.

However, Adalja said he’s not sure containment efforts will work, since it’s a respiratory virus that’s already in more than 20 countries. “That really argues against containment.”

Dr. Corey Hebert, assistant professor at both Louisiana State and Tulane universities, told CNBC earlier Tuesday that in order to help prevent the virus, people should wash their hands with hot water and soap, get a flu shot, avoid touching their face and wipe areas around them when travelling.

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CRIMINAL CAPITALISM

Federal Reserve bars former Goldman Sachs executive for role in 1MDB scandal

PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Tuesday that it permanently barred a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) executive from the banking industry over his role in Malaysia’s multi-billion-dollar 1MDB corruption scandal.

Andrea Vella, who was co-head of Goldman’s Asia investment bank in 2012 and 2013, failed to escalate information he had about Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho’s involvement in three bond offerings that Goldman underwrote for Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, the regulator said.

Malaysian and U.S. authorities have charged Low in connection with the theft of billions of dollars from 1MDB, which was originally set up by former Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak to fund infrastructure projects.

The Federal Reserve said that Vella did not flag Low’s involvement despite knowing that Low was a “person of known concern” to Goldman Sachs.

“Vella was responsible for providing full and accurate information to (Goldman’s) committees reviewing the complex financing transactions and appropriately supervising financing personnel working on the transactions,” according to a statement released by the Federal Reserve.

Vella could not immediately be reached for comment. According to the statement from the Federal Reserve, Vella consented to the bar without admitting or denying any of the allegations made by the regulator.

A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs confirmed that Vella had left the firm in recent days after being on leave since October 2018.

The U.S. Justice Department says that $4.5 billion was misappropriated by high-level 1MDB fund officials and their associates between 2009 and 2014.
Vella managed two former Goldman Sachs bankers, Timothy Leissner and Roger Ng, who were both indicted by U.S. prosecutors in November 2018 on charges related to their roles in securing Goldman as the underwriter for the three 1MDB bond offerings.

Leissner pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and agreed to forfeit $43.7 million. Ng pleaded not guilty to charges in May, and his case is currently pending in federal court in Brooklyn.


According to the U.S. Justice Department, Goldman earned $600 million in fees for its work with 1MDB. Leissner, Ng and others received large bonuses in connection with that revenue.

Goldman is in ongoing discussions with U.S. and Malaysian authorities over their investigations into what the bank knew about the transactions at the time.

Russian priests should stop blessing nukes: church proposal

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian priests should refrain from the practice of blessing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that can inflict indiscriminate loss of life, according to new guidelines being discussed by the Russian Orthodox Church.

During two decades in power, President Vladimir Putin has aligned himself with the Orthodox Church, which has also developed closer ties with the ministry of defense.

Russian priests have long appeared in images sprinkling holy water on submarines, ballistic missiles, Soyuz space rockets and other pieces of hardware as part of rituals to bless them.



But some of that is set to stop if the church approves a document drawn up by an Orthodox Church commission.

“The blessing of military weapons is not reflected in the tradition of the Orthodox Church and does not correspond to the content of the Rite,” the document, on the Moscow patriarchate’s website, says.

Blessing or sanctifying weapons that can kill an “indefinite number of people” must be excluded from pastoral practice, it says.



The proposals will be discussed until June 1 and the public should also take part in the debate, the church’s Moscow branch said.

In a striking symbol of close defense-church ties in Russia, the armed forces are building their own sprawling cathedral at a military themed park outside Moscow. It is set to be one of the tallest Orthodox churches in the world.


Reporting by Tom Balmforth; editing by Philippa Fletcher

Ancestry.com rejected a police warrant to access user DNA records on a technicality
Zack Whittaker@zackwhittaker /February 4, 2020 Comment

Image Credits: Eric Baradat (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images

DNA profiling company Ancestry.com has narrowly avoided complying with a search warrant in Pennsylvania after a search warrant was rejected on technical grounds, a move that is likely to help law enforcement refine their efforts to obtain user information despite the company’s efforts to keep the data private.

Little is known about the demands of the search warrant, only that a court in Pennsylvania approved law enforcement to “seek access” to Utah-based Ancestry.com’s database of more than 15 million DNA profiles.

TechCrunch was not able to identify the search warrant or its associated court case, which was first reported by BuzzFeed News on Monday. But it’s not uncommon for criminal cases still in the early stages of gathering evidence to remain under seal and hidden from public records until a suspect is apprehended.

DNA profiling companies like Ancestry.com are increasingly popular with customers hoping to build up family trees by discovering new family members and better understanding their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. But these companies are also ripe for picking by law enforcement, which want access to genetic databases to try to solve crimes from DNA left at crime scenes.

In an email to TechCrunch, the company confirmed that the warrant was “improperly served” on the company and was flatly rejected.

“We did not provide any access or customer data in response,” said spokesperson Gina Spatafore. “Ancestry has not received any follow-up from law enforcement on this matter.”

Ancestry.com, the largest of the DNA profiling companies, would not go into specifics, but the company’s transparency report said it rejected the warrant on “jurisdictional grounds.”

“I would guess it was just an out of state warrant that has no legal effect on Ancestry.com in its home state,” said Orin S. Kerr, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in an email to TechCrunch. “Warrants normally are only binding within the state in which they are issued, so a warrant for Ancestry.com issued in a different state has no legal effect,” he added.

But the rejection is likely to only stir tensions between police and the DNA profiling services over access to the data they store.

Ancestry.com’s Spatafore said it would “always advocate for our customers’ privacy and seek to narrow the scope of any compelled disclosure, or even eliminate it entirely.” It’s a sentiment shared by 23andMe, another DNA profiling company, which last year said that it had “successfully challenged” all of its seven legal demands, and as a result has “never turned over any customer data to law enforcement.”

The statements were in response to criticism that rival GEDmatch had controversially allowed law enforcement to search its database of more than a million records. The decision to allow in law enforcement was later revealed as crucial in helping to catch the notorious Golden Gate Killer, one of the most prolific murderers in U.S. history.

But the move was widely panned by privacy advocates for accepting a warrant to search its database without exhausting its legal options.

It’s not uncommon for companies to receive law enforcement demands for user data. Most tech giants, like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, publish transparency reports detailing the number of legal demands and orders they receive for user data each year or half-year.

Although both Ancestry.com and 23andMe provide transparency reports, detailing the amount of law enforcement demands for user data they receive, not all are as forthcoming. GEDmatch still does not publish its data demand figures, nor does MyHeritage, which said it “does not cooperate” with law enforcement. FamilyTreeDNA said it was “working” on publishing a transparency report.

But as police continue to demand data from DNA profiling and genealogy companies, they risk turning customers away — a lose-lose for both police and the companies.

Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said it would be “alarming” if law enforcement were able to get access to these databases containing millions of people’s information.

“Ancestry did the right thing in pushing back against the government request, and other companies should follow suit,” said Eidelman.

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Koch Industries acquires Infor in deal pegged at nearly $13B

HOW MUCH? JAW DROP

Ron Miller@ron_miller• February 4, 2020

Image Credits: Infor

Infor announced today that Koch Industries has bought the company in a deal sources peg at close to $13 billion.

Infor, which makes large-scale cloud ERP software, has been around since 2002 and counts Koch as both a customer and an investor, so the deal makes sense on that level. Koch was lead investor last year in a $1.5 billion investment where the company indicated that it was a step before going public.

It’s not clear if that is still the goal, as sources suggested that staying private might provide the company with more capital flexibility in the future.

Under the terms of the deal, Koch will be buying out the remaining equity stake in Golden Gate Capital, a secondary investor in last year’s investment. The company’s management team will remain in place and Infor will act as a stand-alone subsidiary of Koch.

Company CEO Kevin Samuleson, as you would expect, saw the deal as a positive move that allowed the company to operate with a well capitalized parent behind it. “As a subsidiary of a $110 billion+ revenue company that re-invests 90% of earnings back into its businesses, we will be in the unique position to drive digital transformation in the markets we serve,” he said in a statement.

Jim Hannan, executive vice president and CEO of enterprises for Koch Industries saw it similarly with Koch’s deep pockets helping to propel Infor in the future. “As a global organization spanning multiple industries across 60 countries, Koch has the resources, knowledge and relationships to help Infor continue to expand its transformative capabilities,” he said in a statement.

Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, says it’s a strange deal on its face, but if Koch leaves Infor alone, it might work out. “When you think you have seen it all, something new comes along: A regular enterprise buys a top five ERP vendor. Now [we’ll have to see] if Koch can ensure Infor keeps building market leading software, using Koch as showcase, or becomes the Koch software affiliate.

“The latter would be an unfortunate outcome. On the positive side, enterprise software built from real user validation, that can also serve as a reference, can be very powerful,” Mueller told TechCrunch. He said it could work out great, but also has the potential to go very wrong, depending on how Koch manages a software asset.

Infor is a huge company. As we reported last year at the time of its investment:

Infor may be the largest company you never heard of, with more than 17,000 employees and 68,000 customers in more than 100 countries worldwide. All of those customers generated $3 billion in revenue in 2018. That’s a significant presence.

Nomagic, a startup out of Poland, picks up $8.6M for its pick-and-place warehouse robots

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING AND THEY ARE COMING FOR YOUR JOB YOU GET TO SUPERVISE THEM 

Ingrid Lunden@ingridlunden /February 4, 2020

Factories and warehouses have been two of the biggest markets for robots in the last several years, with machines taking on mundane, if limited, processes to speed up work and free up humans to do other, more complex tasks. Now, a startup out of Poland that is widening the scope of what those robots can do is announcing funding, a sign not just of how robotic technology has been evolving, but of the growing demand for more automation, specifically in the world of logistics and fulfilment.

Nomagic, which has developed way for a robotic arm to identify an item from an unordered selection, pick it up and then pack it into a box, is today announcing that it has raised $8.6 million in funding, one of the largest-ever seed rounds for a Polish startup. Co-led by Khosla Ventures and Hoxton Ventures, the round also included participation from DN Capital, Capnamic Ventures and Manta Ray, all previous backers of Nomagic.

There are a number of robotic arms on the market today that can be programmed to pick up and deposit items from Point A to Point B. But we are only starting to see a new wave of companies focus on bringing these to fulfilment environments because of the limitations of those arms: they can only work when the items are already “ordered” in a predictable way, such as on an assembly line, which has mean that fulfilment of, for example, online orders is usually carried out by humans.

Nomagic has incorporated a new degree of computer vision, machine learning and other AI-based technologies to  elevate the capabilities of those robotic arm. Robots powered by its tech can successfully select items from an “unstructured” group of objects — that is, not an assembly line, but potentially another box — before picking it up and placing it elsewhere.

Kacper Nowicki, the ex-Googler CEO of Nomagic who co-founded the company with Marek Cygan (an academic) and Tristan d’Orgeval (formerly of Climate Corporation), noted that while there has been some work on the problem of unstructured objects and industrial robots — in the US, there are some live implementations taking shape, with one, Covariant, recently exiting stealth mode — it has been mostly a “missing piece” in terms of the innovation that has been done to make logistics and fulfilment more efficient.

That is to say, there has been little in the way of bigger commercial roll outs of the technology, creating an opportunity in what is a huge market: fulfilment services are projected to be a $56 billion market by 2021 (currently the US is the biggest single region, estimated at between $13.5 billion and $15.5 billion).

“If every product were a tablet or phone, you could automate a regular robotic arm to pick and pack,” Nowicki said. “But if you have something else, say something in plastic, or a really huge diversity of products, then that is where the problems come in.”

Nowicki was a longtime Googler who moved from Silicon Valley back to Poland to build the company’s first engineering team in the country. In his years at Google, Nowicki worked in areas including Google Cloud and search, but also saw the AI developments underway at Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, and decided he wanted to tackle a new problem for his next challenge.

His interest underscores what has been something of a fork in artificial intelligence in recent years. While some of the earliest implementations of the principles of AI were indeed on robots, these days a lot of robotic hardware seems clunky and even outmoded, while much more of the focus of AI has shifted to software and “non-physical” systems aimed at replicating and improving upon human thought. Even the word “robot” is now just as likely to be seen in the phrase “robotic process automation”, which in fact has nothing to do with physical robots, but software.

“A lot of AI applications are not that appealing,” Nowicki simply noted (indeed, while Nowicki didn’t spell it out, DeepMind in particular has faced a lot of controversy over its own work in areas like healthcare). “But improvements in existing robotics systems by applying machine learning and computer vision so that they can operate in unstructured environments caught my attention. There has been so little automation actually in physical systems, and I believe it’s a place where we still will see a lot of change.”

Interestingly, while the company is focusing on hardware, it’s not actually building hardware per se, but is working on software that can run on the most popular robotic arms in the market today to make them “smarter”.

“We believe that most of the intellectual property in in AI is in the software stack, not the hardware,” said Orgeval. “We look at it as a mechatronics problem, but even there, we believe that this is mainly a software problem.”

Having Khosla as a backer is notable given that a very large part of the VC’s prolific investing has been in North America up to now. Nowicki said he had a connection to the firm by way of his time in the Bay Area, where before Google, Vinod Khosla backed a startup of his (which went bust in one of the dot-com downturns).

While there is an opportunity for Nomagic to take its idea global, for now Khosla’s interested because of the a closer opportunity at home, where Nomagic is already working with third-party logistics and fulfilment providers, as well as retailers like Cdiscount, a French Amazon-style, soup-to-nuts online marketplace.

“The Nomagic team has made significant strides since its founding in 2017,” says Sven Strohband, Managing Director of Khosla Ventures, in a statement. “There’s a massive opportunity within the European market for warehouse robotics and automation, and NoMagic is well-positioned to capture some of that market share.”

Google's location tracking finally under formal probe in Europe

Natasha Lomas@riptari • February 4, 2020

Google’s  lead data regulator in Europe has finally opened a formal investigation into the tech giant’s processing of location data, more than a year after receiving a series of complaints from consumer rights groups across Europe.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced the probe today, writing in a statement: “The issues raised within the concerns relate to the legality of Google’s processing of location data and the transparency surrounding that processing.”

“As such, the DPC has commenced an own-volition Statutory Inquiry, with respect to Google Ireland Limited,  pursuant to Section 110 of the Data Protection 2018 and in accordance with the co-operation mechanism outlined under Article 60 of the GDPR. The Inquiry will set out to establish whether Google has a valid legal basis for processing the location data of its users and whether it meets its obligations as a data controller with regard to transparency,” its notice added.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment. Update: The company has now sent this statement, attributed to a spokesperson: “People should be able to understand and control how companies like Google use location data to provide services to them. We will cooperate fully with the office of the Data Protection Commission in its inquiry, and continue to work closely with regulators and consumer associations across Europe. In the last year, we have made a number of product changes to improve the level of user transparency and control over location data.”

BEUC,  an umbrella group for European consumer rights groups, said the complaints about “deceptive” location tracking were filed back in November 2018—several months after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in May 2018.

It said the rights groups are concerned about how Google gathers information about the places people visit which it says could grant private companies (including Google) the “power to draw conclusions about our personality, religion or sexual orientation, which can be deeply personal traits.”

The complaints argue that consent to “share” users’ location data is not valid under EU law because it is not freely given — an express stipulation of consent as a legal basis for processing personal data under the GDPR — arguing that consumers are rather being tricked into accepting “privacy-intrusive settings”.

It’s not clear why it’s taken the DPC so long to process the complaints and determine it needs to formally investigate. (We’ve asked for comment and will update with any response.)

BEUC certainly sounds unimpressed, saying it’s glad the regulator “eventually” took the step to look into Google’s “massive location data collection”.

“European consumers have been victim of these practices for far too long,” its press release adds. “BEUC expects the DPC to investigate Google’s practices at the time of our complaints, and not just from today. It is also important that the procedural rights of consumers who complained many months ago, and that of our members representing them, are respected.”

Commenting further in a statement, Monique Goyens, BEUC’s director general, also said: “Consumers should not be under commercial surveillance. They need authorities to defend them and to sanction those who break the law. Considering the scale of the problem, which affects millions of European consumers, this investigation should be a priority for the Irish data protection authority. As more than 14 months have passed since consumer groups first filed complaints about Google’s malpractice, it would be unacceptable for consumers who trust authorities if there were further delays. The credibility of the enforcement of the GDPR is at stake here.”

The Irish DPC has also been facing growing criticism over the length of time it’s taking to reach decisions on extant GDPR investigations. A total of zero decisions on big tech cases have been issued by the regulator some 20 months after GDPR came into force in May 2018.

As the lead European regulator for multiple tech giants — as a consequence of a GDPR mechanism which funnels cross-border complaints via a lead regulator, combined with the fact so many tech firms choose to site their regional HQ in Ireland (with the added carrot of attractive business rates) — the DPC does have a major backlog of complex cross-border cases.

However, there is growing political and public pressure for enforcement action to demonstrate that the GDPR is functioning as intended.

Even as further questions have been raised about how Ireland’s legal system will be able to manage so many cases.

Simplest way to show that Ireland will be unable to enforce #GDPR: They don't even have enough judges for appeals of 4k* cases/year..🤨

 Ireland (4,9 M) has 176 judges (1 per 28k)

 Austria (8,5 Mio) has 1700 judges (1 per 5k)

 Germany (83 Mio) has 21339 judges (1 per 3,8k) pic.twitter.com/h9oj5VjOsu

— Max Schrems  (@maxschrems) February 2, 2020

Google has felt the sting of GDPR enforcement elsewhere in the region; just over a year ago the French data watchdog, the CNIL, fined the company $57 million for transparency and consent failures attached to the onboarding process for its Android mobile operating system.

But immediately following that decision Google switched the legal location of its international business to Ireland, meaning any GDPR complaints are now funneled through the DPC.