In a world of economic precarity, crypto’s pitch sounds like freedom

January 31, 2022

Diana Ejaita

By Tressie McMillan Cottom

While I was preparing this week’s newsletter about the cultural economics of cryptocurrency and blockchain, crypto trading tanked. Suddenly, my concerns about how different groups of people have different levels of exposure to risky financial instruments became even more urgent.

Emily Flitter wrote for The New York Times last week that it is difficult to know if the crypto bubble is bursting or what that would even mean: “Bitcoin dropped nearly 13 percent before rebounding along with stocks. Ethereum’s own coin, Ether, was briefly down 15 percent. Their price declines have dragged down other digital asset prices, too.” Despite the sell-off, the world of cryptocurrency is so haphazard and, well, wild that no single measure can definitively say if assets are overheated or melting down. What is clear in Flitter’s analysis and Karl Russell’s graphics is that a lot of people lost money last week.

For Anil Dash, the C.E.O. of the software development company Glitch, the deep questions about financial technologies have always been urgent. Dash was also one of the inventors of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) way back in 2014 and has grappled with the way that the technology is being used now.

This week’s newsletter is the first of a two-part discussion with Dash. We covered a lot of ground. We both admit to naïve hope in digital technology’s power to give marginalized people a fighting chance in a globalized world. Both of us have experienced the ire of internet pile-ons and algorithmic vulnerability that should have beaten that hope out of us. And both of us worry that the platforms and players who are turning blockchain-enabled products into risky shell games will continue to evade regulation.

I start with the question that I ended with last week: What social problems do these blockchain-enabled technologies solve? That question is the hardest and most important to answer.

To understand blockchain-enabled technologies, you have to realize that they are parking lots for venture capitalists. Venture capital companies (VCs) are pulling their enormous piles of cash into these technological blank spaces because, not unlike having dump truck, you have to park that beast somewhere. And the blockchain is alluring to the kinds of people who run venture capital companies.

Ten years ago Dash realized that it was just a matter of time before blockchain became an enormous deal. That was when he attended one of those technology idea-generating conclaves that the industry is fond of. I have attended a couple in my time. The idea is that you get a lot of smart iconoclasts with the right attitude about the potential tech in a room and hack away at a social problem for a few hours. It can be a thrilling experience, if absolutely pretentious and ahistoric. The idea that complex social problems like poverty and failing schools and climate change just need a little technology is seductive, if silly. It was in one of those events where Dash says he knew “blockchain is going to happen. It is just a matter of time.”

But there was no indication that people would be persuaded to use blockchain. That’s because the decentralized ledger that replaces trust with algorithmic documentation in exchanges between two parties is slow and unwieldy. “The one thing about that is to add a line to this database, to this spreadsheet, is two orders of magnitude slower and 10 orders of magnitude more expensive. And who’s going to sign on for that? Why would you do that?” Dash says he asked himself.

The only way a technology that solves a problem that no one knows they have — a “disruptive” technology — becomes culturally powerful is that someone has to subsidize it until it becomes profitable. In the case of blockchain, Dash told me, “it takes pumping in billions of dollars in subsidy to do it. It’s the same as Uber,” and some VCs have invested a lot in making blockchain inevitable. And the amount that VCs have available to throw at investments has ballooned over the past 10 years in a way the average person can’t appreciate. “One check from the real VCs is $20 million, $40 million,” Dash says. “It’s nothing to them. It’s just wealth concentration.”

While I may still be learning some of the intricacies of venture capital and blockchain, I understand wealth inequality just fine. We talk a lot about wealth inequality within the United States but the phenomenon is global. It was bad enough by 2020 but the pandemic has accelerated inequalities, between communities, states and nations. These patterns provide one macro answer to the question of what social problem blockchain solves. Blockchain transforms rising wealth inequality from a problem into an opportunity, for those willing to take the risk of investing.

The pull of any speculative bubble is based in a fact of the world: Somebody somewhere is making a lot of money, and you’re not one of them. A lot of people, like my cousin — a lifelong blue-collar worker with a good pension — believe this. And they are not wrong. That’s one thing my conversation with Dash brought home: There are a lot of people making a lot of money on crypto and NFTs. For those of us who aren’t among the extremely wealthy, the idea that we could join them is a seductive one that has become a cultural phenomenon. And in an atmosphere of economic precarity and wealth inequality, that pull is supercharged. But it is especially powerful among young people. “You talk to anybody under 25, and they’ve been told that crypto is their freedom,” Dash says. It isn’t hard to imagine why.

If you are younger than 45, the internet has been the most powerful institution in your life, hands down. It is more powerful than the government, more intimately experienced than voting, more tangible than a house or a car or a job. You cannot touch the internet but you can feel it. That’s where everything happens, from finding a job to building a social life. When blockchain comes along as schools are closing and then reopening and then kind of closing again, and governments are telling you to Google your closest coronavirus testing site, and your university tells you online orientation is the same as dorm life, and a large number of white-collar people are working from home, and your longest relationships have started on apps and in channels and chat rooms and DMs, blockchain is a reasonable solution to the most basic problems of “What am I supposed to do to survive?”

Dash calls it a big game of FOMO inflected with the chaos of economic anxiety. “Everybody again has a story,” he says. “This guy got in early on Bitcoin, and he made 50 grand. I mean, even I’ve had FOMO about that. I know a guy — he’s smart, but he’s not that smart — who went all in, and he’s way into nine figures, way in.” To be fair, when you put it that way, buying Bitcoin sounds easier and safer than taking one of my college classes. That is, until the bubble bursts.

Next week, we talk about who is in charge of this whole apparatus. Is anyone watching out for rank-and-file crypto enthusiasts as very wealthy venture capitalists use its promise to park their money?

A lot of you wrote in last week to say that you have been a bit embarrassed about not understanding what cryptocurrency, NFTs and blockchain are exactly. That shame is not for regular people to carry. Speculative financial technologies like these derive a lot of their cultural power from being hard to define. Clear definition is usually a sign that an instrument is well regulated. As we will discuss next week, the ambiguity around what crypto is or how blockchain works or how to buy an NFT is part of what makes them seem “too big to fail.”

If you are feeling better about what these terms mean, you may enjoy this roundup of recent coverage.

Coral Murphy Marcos details how Black and other minority influencers are looking at retirement funds and finance planning. Tech has changed the way we work, so it’s only fitting that it also changes the way we earn and save. Minority creators often lack wealth management resources, and several share advice. Mike Isaac and Kellen Browning explain the culture of crypto in an overview of NFTs and video games. Surprisingly, many aren’t buying it. A great primer on politicians’ use of Bitcoin/crypto and how it’s being used in local politics for various policy initiatives. Crypto start-ups as “get rich quick schemes,” a.k.a. scams. And a good follow-up on the GameStock saga. NFTs Are, Quite Simply, Bullshit BYLUKE SAVAGE JACOBIN 01.26.2022 NFTs are emblematic of capitalism’s growing retreat from productive activity — and the wealthy’s desire to extend their dominion into the digital ether. They’re worse than useless. Sometimes a single image or episode capturing triumph, tragedy, or disaster sums up the spirit of a moment better than prose ever could. In pondering the most iconic frames in American history, several obvious candidates come to mind: the flag raising on Iwo Jima; the beaming face of a relaxed John F. Kennedy seconds before he met an assassin’s bullet; Neil Armstrong moved to tears in the cockpit of Apollo 11 following communion with the infinite on the surface of the Moon. Though it may never be elevated to the same illustrious perch, it’s difficult to think of anything quite so evocative or emblematic of our own stupendously stupid time than this week’s sublimely bizarre segment of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon featuring Paris Hilton. True to the genre, most of the conversation between Hilton and Fallon is classic late-night schtick, the kind of mindlessly innocuous banter you idly catch out of one eye while falling asleep or stumble upon after giving up on Netflix for the third time in two hours. Things then quickly take a turn for the weird when Fallon asks about Hilton’s NFT hobby (Hilton, incidentally an early pioneer in the postmodern commodification of the self, is currently ranked at #7 in Forbes’ NFT Top 50), and the two carry out what can only be described as a sort of a scripted infomercial somewhere between low-effort celebrity ad read and probable hostage video. As vaguely dystopian mad libs go, “Paris Hilton Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT” is already about as emblematically 2022 as it gets. Channeled through Hilton and Fallon’s hilariously strained delivery, however — watch the clip for yourself and you’ll see it’s easy enough to imagine that the host is taking his cues from masked gunmen holding placards just off screen — the whole thing soon passes into an entirely new realm of the bizarre. Here’s a short sample: FALLON: [Since you were last on the show] Forbes has named you one of the top 50 most influential people in the NFT space, so congrats on that. HILTON: Thank you, I’m so proud. I love being a part of this community and being a voice and sharing my platform and just getting the word out there. Cause I think it’s just such an incredible thing to be a part of. FALLON: Yeah, I jumped in. HILTON: I know, I heard. I’m so happy I taught you what they were. FALLON: You did, you taught me what’s up and then I bought an ape. HILTON: I got an ape too, because I saw you on the show with Beeple and he said you got on MoonPay so I went and I copied you and did the same thing. There’s plenty more in this vein, the two showing off their respective ape JPEGs before Hilton announces an Oprah-style giveaway for the blockchain era and gifts everyone in the audience with her latest NFT, declaring the moment “iconic” as the show cuts to break. Non-Fungible Bullshit Beginning at some point in 2021, the Non-Fungible Token — the latest cryptocurrency-adjacent fad to sweep the nation — was suddenly everywhere. As if by way of some unknowable alchemic process, it seemed, people were somehow turning a profit by trading thoroughly unremarkable clip art images while others were inexplicably shelling out big to claim their title deeds.NFTS are the latest symptom of a decadent and increasingly post-democratic consensus resting on little more than predatory rent-seeking and boundless commodification. Celebrities and social media influencers also couldn’t seem to shut up about them. From Serena Williams and Logan Paul to Matt Damon and William Shatner, the NFT craze quickly transcended generations and swept up an eclectic cavalcade of the rich and famous in its wake. (Jimmy Fallon, incidentally, spent more than $200,000 on the Bored Ape NFT that now graces his Twitter profile.) Beeple, name-dropped by Paris Hilton in her Fallon segment, fetched more than $3.5 million in an NFT auction. Ape NFTs have been “stolen” in digital heists. One B-list reality star has even gotten in the action by monetizing her own farts (these NFTs, incidentally, come with the tagline: “Be part of history with the first ever generative Fart Jar NFT collection — Imagine the smell!”) If you’re not already immersed in this glorified Pokémon card ponzi scheme, it’s all a little perplexing, and you may be wondering what any of it actually means. In essence, an NFT gives you exclusive ownership over a digital object of some kind (images, songs, tweets, and virtually anything else can be turned into an NFT). On its face, buying one can be a bit like buying an original artwork, though with digital usage rights and stored on a blockchain. You can’t, in other words, actually hold it in your hands like a poster or painting. The NFT market being a kind of property rights Wild West, some have been converted into tokens without their author’s knowledge or consent. Still more incredibly, the original media object almost always remains totally accessible to anyone online — essentially rendering the whole premise of exclusivity moot (except in the abstract sense of “bragging rights”). In a word, NFTs are bullshit. And, like most forms of bullshit in America — think WeWork, the Fyre Festival, or any number of other venture capital-hatched disruption rackets — they’ve come packaged in a phony populist language of community and an even phonier rhetoric of innovation. Like cryptocurrency, it’s hard to make a case for their actual use value and, like the very dumbest Silicon Valley startups and multilevel marketing scams, they’re best understood as speculative investments in which a privileged few can wring money from something of no redeeming social benefit. The majority, in fact, are about as useful as trash. As Vulture’s Rebecca Alter put it, most NFTs “are about as valuable as a QR code on a Coke bottle cap that sends you to a dead link to an mp3 download.” Value in any recognizable sense, suffice it to say, is not really the point. Decadence and Boundless Commodification The NFT boom, fittingly enough, has coincided quite directly with a period of particularly grotesque collective hardship and surging inequality. As both a threat to public health and an historic economic disruption, the COVID era has been an extraordinarily difficult time for many working and middle-class Americans, but a veritable land of milk and honey for its corporate overlords and lumpen bourgeoisie.Like most forms of bullshit in America, NFTs have come packaged in a phony populist language of community and an even phonier rhetoric of innovation. Events of recent years have arguably represented the best occasion in decades to reimagine the fundamentals of American society and transform the economy into something other than a handful of hedge funds and tech monopolies sitting on top of each other inside a trench coat. Instead, the country’s bipartisan ruling class opted to greet mass death with a dollop of inadequate and temporary social protections while its criminally undertaxed ultrarich were left to seek out novel ways of profiting from their own money and new totems of their elite status. Nothing has been more symbolic of this trajectory than NFTs, the latest symptom of a decadent and increasingly post-democratic consensus resting on little more than predatory rent-seeking and boundless commodification. As the New Republic’s Jacob Silverman put it last year: NFTs reflect a view of the world in which anything can be monetized, even if its value is entirely specious. Having exhausted traditional investments like property and stocks — as well as boutique services like concierge doctors or privileged access to the COVID-19 vaccine — the country’s idle elites are now seeking to expand their financial footprint to cover, well, anything to which they wish to lay claim. . . . It’s the financialization of everything, with practically anything eligible to be tokenized, chopped up into tranches, converted into securities that intrepid day traders could buy and sell. In effect, a political economy that has eschewed even the thinnest notions of social contract or public good in its elevation of the market — along with a manufacturing base that once actually built things — is laying the groundwork for a new and more expansive kind of post-materialist commodification. In this latest incarnation of our second gilded age, speculative bubbles based in the digital ether will help affix an ersatz version of innovation and progress to a top-heavy economy structurally incapable of delivering the real kinds. As digital commodities, NFTs thus signal the ongoing descent of capitalism into pure simulacrum and the growing remove of its greatest beneficiaries from anything even resembling productive activity. As a civilizational metaphor on the other hand, they’re perhaps the perfect symbol of a political order so dismally unjust and a regressive culture so thoroughly exhausted that even the rich people brandishing them on late-night TV struggle to do so with any conviction. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin. People walk by a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT billboard in Times Square in New York City. (Noam Galai / Getty Images)

Australia will spend record $35M to protect native koalas

By Adam Schrader

Orana, a 14-year-old koala, cuddles her 8-month-old female joey at the San Diego Zoo in January 2010. The Australian government said Saturday it would spend about $35 million to protect native koalas and boost recovery efforts. 

File Photo by Ken Bohn/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 29 (UPI) -- The Australian government said Saturday it plans to spend about $35 million to protect native koalas and boost recovery efforts.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement the money would be used to restore habitats, and support training in treatment and care for "one of the most special species in the world."

"Koalas are one of Australia's most loved and best-recognized icons, both here at home and across the world," Morrison said. "We are committed to protecting them for generations to come."

With the $35 million fund, the Morrison government will have spent a total of $52 million on protecting koalas since 2019

Koalas are listed as a vulnerable species, one step before endangered status on the Red List -- a catalog of species at risk of extinction maintained by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

The koala population, estimated to sit between 100,000 and 500,000 globally, is decreasing, according to the IUCN. However, research from the Australian Koala Foundation shows that the species should be listed as "critically endangered" with as few as 43,000 left in the wild.

"Koalas are in serious decline suffering from the effects of habitat destruction, domestic dog attacks, bushfires and road accidents," the AKF website reads.

The koala population has also suffered from the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia, which can cause infertility and blindness in the marsupial.

Sussan Ley, minister for the environment, said in the press release that genetic research is being done to understand how unique DNA variants can provide resistance to diseases such as chlamydia.

"More than 3,200 vets and veterinary nurses have received specialist bushfire trauma training, with new programs to be funded as we continue to work with major zoos to support research and treatment," Ley said. "Our $200 million bushfire response has provided a catalyst for science-based, long-term initiatives to help native species and highlights the particular importance of protecting our most iconic animals, and the Koala is clearly one of those."

ANOTHER OLD WHITE MAN

Italy’s president, 80, is recruited to stay on for 2nd term
By FRANCES D'EMILIO

January 29, 2022

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 Italian President Sergio Mattarella speaks during a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at Quirinale Palace in Rome, Monday, June 28, 2021. Mattarella has been elected to a second seven-year term as the country’s head of state, ending days of political impasse as party leaders struggled to pick his successor. Earlier on Saturday, lawmakers entreated Mattarella, 80, who had said he didn’t want a second mandate, to change his mind and agree to reelection by lawmakers in Parliament and regional delegates. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool, File)

ROME (AP) — Italian President Sergio Mattarella was pulled away from his impending retirement and reelected Saturday to a second seven-year term as the country’s head of state, ending days of political impasse by party leaders that risked eroding the nation’s credibility.

Earlier on Saturday, lawmakers entreated Mattarella, 80, who had said repeatedly he didn’t want a second mandate, to change his mind after lawmakers in Parliament and regional delegates voted fruitlessly for days, trying to reach a consensus on other possible candidates.

Mattarella won in the eighth round of voting when he clinched the minimum of 505 votes needed from the eligible 1,009 Grand Electors. Applause broke out in Parliament, prompting the Chamber of Deputies president to interrupt his reading of the ballots. The count then resumed, with Mattarella going on to win 759 votes.

In a brief, televised statement from the Quirinal presidential palace, Mattarella told the nation he couldn’t let his personal desires prevail over a “sense of responsibility” during the ”grave health, economic and social emergency” Italy was enduring in the COVID-19 pandemic. He added his commitment “to interpret the expectations and hopes of our fellow citizens.”

Mattarella’s first term ends on Thursday. Ahead of the presidential election this week, Mattarella had even rented an apartment in Rome to prepare for his move from the presidential palace.

But after a seventh round of balloting in six days in Parliament failed to yield any consensus on a presidential candidate, party whips and regional governors visited Mattarella at the presidential palace Saturday to reenlist him.

Rai state TV said Premier Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief who is leading a pandemic unity government, telephoned party leaders to encourage the lobbying. Draghi had previously indicted he would be willing to move into the president’s role, but some party leaders featured that would prompt an early election and more political instability for Italy.

Draghi hailed Mattarella’s re-election as “splendid news for Italians.”

“I am grateful to the president for his choice in accommodating the very strong will of Parliament to re-elect him to a second mandate,” the premier said.

“You don’t change a winning team,″ former Premier Matteo Renzi told reporters ahead of the final vote..

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who heads the center-right Forza Italia party he founded and who a week earlier dropped his own bid to be president, said that unity “today can only be found around” the figure of Mattarella.

The head of the populist 5-Star Movement, Parliament’s largest force, former Premier Giuseppe Conte, also praised Mattarella as “the guarantor of everybody, impartial, authoritative.″

Conte’s praise for Mattarella was all the more remarkable considering how, when Conte was trying to form Italy’s first populist-led government in 2018, Mattarella vetoed his pick of a euro-skeptic economist for the post of finance minister, an appointment likely to have shaken financial markets’ faith in Italy.

Also lobbying for Mattarella was right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini, whose candidates failed to take off in the early rounds. In 2019, Salvini suffered the humiliation of seeing Mattarella turn to Conte to form a government, this time without the League, after Salvini yanked his support in a failed bid to grab the premiership for himself.

But analysts noted the possible fallout from the spectacle of the nation’s top political leaders squabbling for days.

“There is a tangible risk that within the ruling majority infighting will become more pronounced in the months ahead as the fruitless and chaotic efforts to replace Mattarella have left deep scars on the parties and their leaders,” said Wolfango Piccoli of Teneo, a consulting and advisory firm.

Going into the election, Conte and some other leaders said a woman should finally become Italy’s head of state. But those efforts quickly fizzled. Among the disappointed woman’s advocates in Italy was Linda Laura Sabbadini, a statistician for the government’s statistics bureau who pioneered using data on gender to understand women’s progress in Italy.

“Politics cut a terrible figure in these days,″ Sabbadini said on state TV.

Italy’s presidency is a largely ceremonial role but the president can send legislation back to Parliament for changes and tap party leaders to try to form a government if a coalition fails.

During the pandemic, Mattarella staunchly backed the nation’s vaccination campaign — one of the more successful ones in Europe — as critical to Italy’s economic recovery.

Pope Francis in a congratulatory telegram said Saturday that Mattarella was showing a “spirit of generosity” in pandemic times marked by “widespread discomfort and uncertainty.”

A Palermo native, Sergio Mattarella began his career in Parliament in 1983. He was active in the Catholic social movement faction of the Christian Democrats, then the dominant post-war party in Italy. Mattarella had served as a judge on the nation’s constitutional court from 2011 until his first election as head of state on Jan. 31, 2015.

Mattarella’s brother, Piersanti Mattarella, was assassinated by the Sicilian Mafia in 1980 while serving as that island’s governor.

‘Football country’ Canada closing in on World Cup berth
AFP January 31, 2022

Los Angeles (AFP) – Canada coach John Herdman has warned his team against complacency after they moved to the brink of a first World Cup appearance since 1986 with an emotional victory over the United States.

The Canadians have surged into a four-point lead at the top of the CONCACAF qualifying competition, leaving them near-certainties to grab one of the three automatic World Cup berths available to teams from Central America, North America and the Caribbean.

Three more points on the road against El Salvador on Wednesday could well leave them needing only a point from their final three fixtures in March to clinch a place at this year’s finals in Qatar.

Amid the euphoria of Sunday’s 2-0 win over the United States, which has left the Americans’ own World Cup hopes delicately balanced, Herdman was quick to emphasise that nothing would be taken for granted until qualification was mathematically certain.

“We’re not qualified yet,” the 46-year-old Englishman said.

“The first thing we said when we brought the boys off the field was ‘It’s not done yet, it starts again tomorrow’. We’re not there yet. We need some more points.

“I won’t let these boys off the hook. So let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

It would take a monumental collapse, and a freakish combination of results, to deny the Canadians now though.

On Sunday, goals from Cyle Larin and Sam Adekugbe earned Canada a clinical 2-0 win that embodied the strengths of Herdman’s tight-knit, tactically well-drilled team, who were happy to cede possession for long periods and wait for openings on the counter-attack.

Herdman was also delighted by the raucous reception that greeted both team buses outside Tim Hortons Field before kick-off where thousands of Canadian fans had gathered.

Clouds of red smoke from flares drifted through the air while a profanity-laced chant of “We burned the White House to the ground” to the tune of “She’ll be coming round the mountain” could also be heard.

– ‘Wild mosh pit’ –

That was music to the ears of Herdman, a Geordie and staunch Newcastle United supporter.

“I’ve seen nothing like it,” Herdman said afterwards. “It’s everything I’ve dreamed of. I’m a hardcore Newcastle fan, a football fan at heart.

“And I used to turn up to St. James Park and used to love that walk-in, sometimes that was my favourite part of the game – the atmosphere.”

Herdman, who took over the Canadian men’s team in 2018 after a successful stint in charge of the women’s team, said Sunday’s crowd scenes marked the “first time I felt I was living in a football country”.

“The flares were going off, it was like Liverpool arriving for a Champions League game,” he said. “It was that wild in that mosh pit. The bus couldn’t even get through.”

Herdman says Canada’s success has ignited support across the country’s diverse population, which in turn has energised his squad.

“This is what we’ve dreamed of – to get people excited,” Herdman said.

“You know — the Canadian people who’ve always had to wear an Italian shirt or a Serbian shirt or a Greek shirt.

“They can put them down and pull on a Canadian jersey now and be proud of us as a football country. And when the boys feel it they’re absolutely buzzing.”

Herdman said qualification for the World Cup had been pinpointed as the goal of the squad at the “very first team meeting” when he took over four years ago.

But Herdman maintains qualification will have a seismic long-term impact for football in Canada, where ice hockey remains by far the most popular sport.

“We knew if we qualified we could change into a football country for ever,” Herdman said. “And that’s what’s driven us every day.

“It’s what the players hear from me every meeting. It’s bigger than us. It’s way bigger than us.

“We all want to get to Qatar, that’s one thing, and there are personal agendas to do that which is normal.

“But I genuinely believe these men know they’ve got an opportunity there to leave a proper football legacy for this country moving forward.”

Alleged Maduro co-conspirator says CIA knew about coup plans

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

January 28, 2022

FILE - This image provided by the U.S. Department of Justice shows a reward poster for Cliver Alcala-Cordones that was released on March 26, 2020. The retired Venezuelan army general says U.S. officials at the highest levels of the CIA were aware of his efforts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The accusation came in a court filing late Friday, Jan. 28, 2022, by Alcala's attorneys who are seeking to dismiss narcoterrorist charges filed nearly two years ago by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. (Department of Justice via AP file)

MIAMI (AP) — A retired Venezuelan army general says U.S. officials at the highest levels of the CIA and other federal agencies were aware of his efforts to oust Nicolás Maduro — a role he says should immediately debunk criminal charges that he worked alongside the socialist leader to flood the U.S. with cocaine.

The stunning accusation came in a court filing late Friday by attorneys for Cliver Alcalá seeking to have thrown out narcoterrorist charges filed nearly two years ago by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

“Efforts to overthrow the Maduro regime have been well known to the United States government,” Alcalá’s attorneys said in a November 2021 letter to prosecutors that accompanied their motion to have the charges dismissed.. “His opposition to the regime and his alleged efforts to overthrow it were reported to the highest levels of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Council, and the Department of the Treasury.”

The court records raise fresh questions about what the Trump administration knew about the failed plot to oust Maduro involving Jordan Goudreau, an idealistic if battle-scarred former U.S. Green Beret, and a ragtag army of Venezuelan military deserters he was helping Alcalá train at secret camps in Colombia around the time of his arrest.
Alcalá has been an outspoken critic of Maduro almost since he took office in 2013 following the death of Hugo Chávez.

But despite such open hostility toward Maduro, he and his sworn enemy were charged together in a second superseding indictment with being part of a cabal of senior Venezuelan officials and military officers that worked with Colombian rebels to allegedly send 250 metric tons of cocaine a year to the U.S. .

While the attorneys provided no details about what U.S. government may have known about Alcalá’s coup plotting, they said they believe his activities “were communicated at the highest levels of a number of U.S. government agencies” including the CIA, Treasury and Justice departments, the NSC and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

To that end they are seeking documents and information, much of it classified, regarding communications between U.S. officials and members of Venezuela’s opposition about Alcalá. Those U.S. officials include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Attorney General William Barr as well as senior officials at the White House and unnamed CIA operatives in Colombia.

The CIA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday night.

Also named as having knowledge of Alcalá’s activities are two allies of opposition leader Juan Guaidó — who the U.S. recognizes as Venezuela’s legitimate leader — as well as Miami-based political strategist J.J. Rendon, who signed on behalf of Guaidó a never-executed agreement for Goudreau to carry out a snatch and grab operation against Maduro.

“The evidence is clear that he has been openly and actively opposed to his alleged co-conspirators for at least the past eight years,” attorneys wrote in the letter to prosecutors included in Friday’s filing. “Indeed, his conduct, in support of the democratic ideals in which he believes, constituted treason against the very people whom the government alleges were his co-conspirators for which they seek his detention, imprisonment, and life.”

In the telling of Alcalá’s attorneys, on the eve of launching what would’ve been his second armed raid against Maduro, the former army major general received a knock on the door from a U.S. law enforcement official at his home in Barranquilla, Colombia informing him that he had been indicted.

“The agent informed (him) that he could either board a private jet bound for New York or be held in a Colombian jail where he would no doubt be targeted by the Venezuelan intelligence services for assassination,” Alcala’s attorneys claim. “Left with little choice, (he) agreed to accompany the agent back to the United States.”

Although Alcalá was out of the picture in a Manhattan jail, a small group of would-be freedom fighters pushed ahead and on May 3, 2020 — two days after an investigation by The Associated Press blew the lid on the clandestine camps — launched a crossborder raid that was easily mopped up.

Operation Gideon — or the Bay of Piglets, as the bloody fiasco came to be known — ended with six insurgents dead and two of Goudreau’s former Special Forces buddies behind bars in Caracas. It also delivered a major propaganda coup to Maduro, who has long accused the U.S. of seeking to assassinate him.

The U.S. has always denied any involvement in violent attempts to overthrow Maduro. However, Pompeo’s cryptic statement that the U.S. had no “direct involvement” in Operation Gedeon left some observers wondering what the U.S. may have known about the plot in a region where the CIA has a long history of coup-plotting during the Cold War.

Evidence that the U.S. was aware of Alcalá’s clandestine activities could bolster his defense at trial that even if he had been a member of a drug smuggling ring — which he denies — he took steps to withdraw from the criminal conspiracy years before being charged.

Alcalá’s attorneys also argue that despite having pored over thousands of documents, video and audio recordings turned over by prosecutors, they could find no evidence demonstrating Alcalá was involved in the alleged narcotics conspiracy.

The only act tying Alcalá to the conspiracy in the 28-page indictment is a 2008 meeting he allegedly attended with Chávez’s former spy boss Hugo Carvajal and socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello in which it was agreed Alcalá would take on unspecified “additional duties” to coordinate drug trafficking.

Alcalá has been living in Colombia since fleeing Venezuela in 2018 after the discovery of a conspiracy that he was secretly leading in hopes of ousting Maduro. The U.S. offered a $10 million reward for his arrest when Barr at a press conference announced he, Maduro and several other senior Venezuelan officials had been indicted.

Alcala’s attorneys also contend that around 2018, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard indicated in various discussions that his office had decided not to charge Alcala with narcotics-related crimes because the evidence against him was “equivocal.”

They also produced a copy of a 2014 email by one of Alcala’s attorneys, Adam Kaufmann, to the then-assigned prosecutor recounting a conversation he had with DEA agents who purportedly told him the government had located a witness with information that had led them to drop their investigation.

Alcala’s defense says it didn’t receive any materials substantiating the government’s apparent misgivings. Under what’s known as Brady rules, prosecutors are required to hand over to defendants evidence that may help them prove their innocence.

Before surrendering in 2020, Alcalá shocked many by claiming responsibility for a stockpile of U.S.-made assault weapons and military equipment seized on a highway in Colombia for what he said was a planned incursion into Venezuela to remove Maduro. Without offering much in the way of details, he said he had a contract with Guaidó and his “American advisers” to purchase the weapons but blamed the U.S. backed opposition for betraying the cause.

“We had everything ready,” Alcalá said in a video published on social media moments before turning himself in. “But circumstances that have plagued us throughout this fight against the regime generated leaks from the very heart of the opposition, the part that wants to coexist with Maduro.”

Follow Goodman: @APJoshGoodman

Virginia Republicans push for changes in marijuana law
By DENISE LAVOIE

January 29, 2022

FILE workers trim cannibis plants that are close to harvest in a grow room at the Greenleaf Medical Cannabis facility in Richmond, Va., Thursday, June 17, 2021. Republican lawmakers in Virginia who opposed legalizing simple possession of marijuana say they don't want to scrap the law, but they do want to make significant changes. (AP Photo/Steve Helber/FILE)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Newly empowered Republican lawmakers in Virginia who opposed legalizing simple possession of marijuana say they don’t want to scrap the law, but they do want to make significant changes.

Those changes could include moving up the start date for retail sales and getting rid of a provision that would give licensing preference to people who have been convicted of marijuana crimes.

Republicans have filed at least eight bills that call for amendments to the 2021 law that legalized adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and laid the ground work for retail sales to begin in 2024.

“The overriding top-tier concern is that we have to have a regulatory structure in place for retail sales that does not encourage the black market,” said Garren Shipley, a spokesperson for House Speaker Todd Gilbert.

The law was passed along strict party lines, with Democrats supporting legalization and Republicans voting against it. At the time, Democrats controlled both the House and Senate. Republicans took control of the House in the November election, winning a 52-48 majority over Democrats. Democrats still hold a slight 21-19 majority in the Senate.

A reenactment clause in the law requires the legislature to vote again this year on a complex regulatory structure for retail sales, leaving open the possibility Republicans could push through changes in how the licensing process will work, who will be given an advantage when applying for licenses and how tax revenue from marijuana sales will be spent by the state.

Democrats who supported legalization and advocates for people convicted of marijuana crimes are concerned the changes proposed by Republicans will strip the law of “social equity” provisions designed to help people who have been hurt by old marijuana laws.

“A lot of people have been overly penalized and overly policed and overly suffered because of our misguided policies of the past, and it’s time they stop suffering, and in fact have a chance to make up some lost ground in ways that their lives have been impacted,” said Democratic Sen. Adam Ebbin, a chief sponsor of the 2021 legalization legislation.

Republican Del. Michael Webert is sponsoring a multipronged bill that would make several significant changes, including redirecting the 30% of tax revenues from marijuana sales currently earmarked for a Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund to a fund that would be used to rebuild crumbling school buildings around the state.

“We are trying to ensure that the money goes to where it’s most needed,” Webert said. “To be in a good school environment, to provide a good, safe school building and an atmosphere in which a child can learn will be a great asset for that person’s future.”

A separate bill filed by Sen. Tommy Norment would funnel 30% of the revenue from marijuana sales into the state’s general fund instead of the reinvestment fund, which was included in the 2021 law as a way to reinvest in communities disproportionately affected by stringent drug laws, particularly communities of color. Both proposals are drawing criticism from social justice advocates.

“I’m really struck by this attempt to defund equity and reinvestment when we have committed to legalizing in a way to bring some kind of benefit to people impacted by the war on drugs,” said Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of Marijuana Justice.

Webert’s bill also would eliminate a provision that calls for giving special consideration to social equity license applicants, including people who have been convicted of marijuana crimes or members of their immediate families. It leaves in 2021 provisions that would give preference to people who live in economically distressed areas and for people who attended a historically black college or university in Virginia.

“I believe that if you commit a crime and serve your time, you should have a seat at the table, but it shouldn’t put you at the front of the line,” Webert said.

Webert’s bill would also slash the overall tax rate on marijuana sales from 21% to 10%, a step he said he believes is necessary to encourage people to buy from the legal market instead of the black market.

Several Republican-sponsored bills propose moving up the date for retail sales to begin in 2023 instead of 2024 by selling through existing medical marijuana operators. Other GOP bills call for giving preference for marijuana cultivation facility licenses to farmers who have legally grown hemp in Virginia and farmers from economically distressed areas of the state.

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who took office Jan. 15, has said that while he will not try to repeal personal possession, he does have serious concerns about pieces of the bill that establish the commercial market.

“It includes forced unionization, is concerning to law enforcement, and establishes an unstable market that includes anti-competitive business provisions that set Virginia up to fail,” said Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter. “He’s ready to work in good faith to address these and other issues in concert with the General Assembly.”

JM Pedini, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said many advocates believe the legislature must take action this year to move up the date for retail sales.

“Continuing to cede control of the cannabis market to untaxed illicit operators is not tenable,” Pedini said.

Socialists win reelection in Portugal, eye major investments

By BARRY HATTON

1 of 19

Portuguese Prime Minister and Socialist Party Secretary General Antonio Costa speaks to journalists after arriving at a hotel to wait for the election results in Lisbon, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022. Portuguese voters went to the polls Sunday, two years earlier than scheduled after a political crisis over a blocked spending bill brought down the country's minority Socialist government and triggered a snap election. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)


LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal’s center-left Socialist Party won a third straight general election Sunday, returning it to power as the country prepares to deploy billions of euros (dollars) of European Union aid for the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a ballot that took place amid a surge of coronavirus cases blamed on the omicron variant, and with around 1 million infected voters allowed to leave home to cast their ballots, the Socialists elected at least 112 lawmakers in the 230-seat parliament.

With 98.7% of votes counted, the Socialists had 41%, compared with 28% for their main rival, the center-right Social Democratic Party, which took at least 68 parliamentary seats. Eighteen seats remained to be allocated.

It was unclear whether the Socialists would reach 116 lawmakers, allowing it to enact legislation alone, or whether it would fall short of that number and need to cut deals for the support of smaller parties. Late results could come Monday.

Socialist leader António Costa, expected to return to his post as prime minister, immediately offered an olive branch to his adversaries. He said he would encourage alliances with other parties in parliament to overcome the country’s pandemic-inspired economic difficulties.

“The mission is to turn the page on the pandemic and bring affected sectors back to life,” Costa said in a victory speech.

The stakes are high for the next administration. Portugal, a country of 10.3 million people and the poorest in Western Europe, is poised to begin deploying 45 billion euros ($50 billion) of aid as a member of the EU to help spur the economy after the pandemic.

Two-thirds of that sum is intended for public projects, such as major infrastructure, giving the next government a financial bonanza. The other third is to be awarded to private companies.

A parliamentary majority would smooth the next government’s path in allocating those funds in a country whose economy has struggled to gain traction since the turn of the century.

The past two Socialist administrations were minority governments. Since coming to power in 2015, the Socialist Party relied on the support of their smaller allies in parliament — the Left Bloc and the Portuguese Communist Party — to ensure the annual state budget had enough votes to pass.

But two months ago their differences, especially over public health spending and workers’ rights, were insurmountable, leaving prime minister Costa short of votes in parliament to pass his party’s plan and triggering a snap election.

Costa may need to repeat his political shrewdness to forge another cross-party alliance in a fragmented parliament.

Some 10.8 million voters — 1.5 million of them living abroad — were eligible to choose lawmakers in the Republican Assembly, Portugal’s parliament, where political parties then decide who forms a government.

Chega! (Enough!), a populist and nationalist party founded less than three years ago, collected around 7% of the vote. That might give it a dozen lawmakers, up from only one in the last parliament.

The Left Bloc captured some 4% of the vote, with about the same going to the Portuguese Communist Party. Other smaller parties could get one or more parliamentary seats and offer Costa their support.

Portugal’s economy needs a shot in the arm, which the EU funds may provide.

The country has been falling behind the rest of the 27-nation EU since 2000, when its real annual gross domestic product per capita was 16,230 euros ($18,300) compared with an EU average of 22,460 ($25,330). By 2020, Portugal had edged higher to 17,070 euros ($19,250) while the bloc’s average surged to 26,380 euros ($29,750).

The Socialists promised to increase the minimum monthly wage, earned by more than 800,000 people, to 900 euros ($1,020) by 2026. It is currently 705 euros ($800). The Socialists also want to “start a national conversation” about working four days a week instead of five.

Bangladeshi scientists claim breakthrough in rice research

After 7 years of research, scientists develop rice variety resistant to floods and salinity

Md. Kamruzzaman |29.01.2022



DHAKA, Bangladesh

Bangladeshi scientists have claimed a breakthrough by developing a special rice variety, resistant to floods and salinity.

Starting in 2015 as a joint project between Bangladesh Atomic Agriculture Research Institute (BINA) and Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), the researchers achieved a milestone last month, that has the potential to improve food security in the region.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Mirza Mofazzal Islam, who led the team of scientists, said the new rice variety will not only come to the rescue of Bangladesh but across Asia as the rice is the staple diet of millions of people in the region.

“Through this genome sequence we have discovered three new types of rice varieties that are different from the mother type with new characteristics and survival capabilities,” said the chief scientist.

He said the new rice seeds produced from this genome sequencing will be several times tolerant to water submergence and salinity.

Bangladesh is one of the most climate-prone countries in the world hit by floods, cyclones, and other natural disasters every year.

About two million hectares (4.9 million acres) of arable land in the country face salinity, according to data available with Bangladesh’s Agriculture Ministry. Besides crops, mostly southern coastal areas get destroyed every year due to floods, bringing misery to millions of farmers.

“As an outcome of the genome sequence, the new type of rice seeds will be hopefully able to reach our farmers on a massive scale by the next three years. They will bring revolutionary progress in rice production, as it will survive underwater for 15-20 days,” said Islam.

Resistant variety

The current seeds can survive just 4-5 days under the water. Rice can only resist saline water only for 2-3 days. According to scientists, the new seeds will be able to tolerate waters and salinity several times more than current varieties.

“In Bangladesh, we normally spend huge money for technological support from other nations in different sectors. But in the country’s very vital agricultural sector we have invented a full genome sequence that will inspire our scientists to be more devoted to research works,” said the chief scientist.

He said that the research will benefit people living in neighboring Myanmar, Thailand, and parts of India, where the staple diet of people is rice.

Shaikh Mohammad Bokhtiar, chairman of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), told Anadolu Agency that this research will boost rice production not only to meet domestic requirements but there will be a surplus for exporting to other countries as well.

Hailing the development, farmers in Bangladesh have urged the government to supply new seeds for cultivation on a massive scale within the possible shortest time.

Mohammad Alamin, a farmer, said that there are huge tracks of cultivable land between Bishkhali and Baleshwari rivers in the southern coastal district of Barguna. But due to the saline nature of the soil and frequent floods, it has remained out of bounds for farmers.

Flood prone country

According to government records, more than 400 rivers crisscross the territory of Bangladesh, making it flood prone country in South Asia.

“Some of our farmers always try to cultivate on the riversides every year. It is the lone income source for many. But due to salinity, there is little to harvest,” Alamin said.

He said that saline-resistant seeds will go a long way to help cultivate large tracts of land.

“So, I hope that the government will try to supply new paddy seeds based on the new genome sequence soon,” he said.

Another farmer, Haider Shajjal, said many canals get flooded during monsoon and inundate cultivable land. They overflow as the flow of water has been blocked by people due to illegal occupation of land along their banks.

“The new invention is very significant for us, but at the same time the government must take a megaproject to restore the destroyed canals as well as dig new ones,” he added.

Putin Says Russia Now has 2,000 Territorial Disputes and that Allowing Any Part to Leave Could Lead to a Yugoslavia and Reduce Russia to the Size of Muscovy

Window on Eurasia -- New Series

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Putin Says Russia Now has 2,000 Territorial Disputes and that Allowing Any Part to Leave Could Lead to a Yugoslavia and Reduce Russia to the Size of Muscovy

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – One of the most remarkable political exchanges in Russia since 1991 came today when filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov outlined at the Presidential Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights his view of the problems of Russia and Vladimir Putin responded in terms that reveal just how fragile he sees Russia as being.

            “All republics today bear a national character,” Sokurov begins. “There are capitals; there are even armies and padishahs have appeared. There is a President of the Federation. But where is Russia? Russia doesn’t even have a capital. Moscow is the capital of Moscow,” and ever more people outside it see that (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67331).

            What is taking place in the North Caucasus is “a big problem, politically, culturally, emotionally and economically,” he continues. Under the Soviets, the Russians came but did not allow development. “Now there are almost no Russians there, and the Caucasus is becoming mono-ethnic.”

            “All power is in the hands of indigenous people, but there is no development or almost none? Why? Because,” Sokurov says, “there is no free development of young people.” They cannot be themselves and act on their own. They are constrained by a system that prevents all that despite what the Constitution says.

            The Ingush people came into the streets to protest the fact that part of their territory was taken away from them. They had no choice, “but Moscow didn’t like this. In Moscow there are many lobbyists of the Chechen sector and the Muscovites decided to arrest the active Ingush” rather than listen to their grievances.

            That is leading to unfortunate developments. “It seems to me,” Sokurov says, “that all the people there are ever more beginning not to live the federation of the Russians.” Young people say that “you, Russians, do not deserve our respect,” and some even say, “you will fight with NATO [but] but we will not fight on your side.” (stress added)

            This is part of larger problems that must be thought about, discussed and resolved. There is “a horrific politicization of life in the country” while at the same time, “however strange, the ruling party is apolitical even as there has been a politicization of all law enforcement organs and the army.”

            The separation of church and state the Constitution mandates has not been maintained. And that matters because an Islamic revolution is approaching. “One can ward off a revolution but one can’t defeat it.” The country needs trade unions; it needs civic organizations; and it needs to respond to the variety of country rather than seek to make everything uniform.

            Tested by the covid pandemic, the state has been found wanting, Sokurov says. And as a result, “the population doesn’t completely trust the government.” And there is too much talk of war when Russia should be focusing on itself and its own population which needs so much. The place to begin is to follow the principles of the Constitution.

            “Let’s let all who no longer want to live with us in one state leave,” he says. “Let us wish them success.”

            Sokurov ends by apologizing for his bluntness, and Putin responds by saying that the director does have something to apologize for. There have always bee problems and these need to be considered but privately lest discussions provoke exactly what no one wants as they easily could.

            “We have two thousand territorial claims around the country,” the Kremlin leader says. Does anyone want “a repetition of Yugoslavia on our territory?” And he pointedly says that Sokurov shouldn’t talk about the Vaynakh peoples – the Chechens and the Ingush – without recognizing the complexities of their situation and the problems of the others.

            According to Putin, “we must support the Caucasus. The Caucasus is part of the Russian Federation.” And he challenges Sokurov to show that there are many there who want to separate from Russia. “Certainly,” he says, there are some; but overwhelmingly, people there want to be part of Russia and avoid a repetition of the tragedies of the 1990s.

            Loose talk about allowing people to leave is “a very dangerous little joke,” Putin says. “It can end very badly.” The Russian people don’t want the country to come apart, and talking as if they should let others go is wrong. “You want to transform us into Muscovy?” Putin asks. “Well, that is what NATO wants to do.”