The 1% Tax That Has India’s Crypto Industry Predicting Chaos

Sidhartha Shukla, Bloomberg News

A worker talks on his phone on the backdrop of the cryptocurrency symbol pasted on a glass partition at the 

entrance of a private office in Bangalore. 

Photographer: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP 

(Bloomberg) -- When India’s government unveiled a plan to tax crypto assets in February, it was the 30% rate on income from digital-asset investments that grabbed headlines. But it’s a different levy that has the industry warning of a potentially destabilizing liquidity crunch. 

Along with the capital gains charge, the finance ministry announced a 1% tax deductible at source, or TDS, on all digital-asset transfers above a certain size, starting July 1. No other country imposes such a tax on crypto, according to Anoush Bhasin, founder of crypto asset tax advisory firm Quagmire Consulting. 

Crypto-exchange executives, lawyers and tax analysts warn that the TDS will suck liquidity out of the market by forcing high-frequency traders to dramatically curtail their trading. Combined with the government’s decision not to permit offsetting of trading losses in digital assets, it threatens to accelerate an exodus of crypto companies and workers from India, they say.

India Bans Offsetting Loss on One Crypto With Gain From Another 

Nischal Shetty, chief executive officer of WazirX, India’s biggest crypto exchange, called the TDS “the worst-case scenario for the industry.”

“There will be no liquidity left in the markets,” said Manhar Garegrat, executive director of policy at crypto exchange CoinDCX. “Trades placed by buyers will not get executed as efficiently as they do today, and such inefficiency will eventually dwindle the whole ecosystem.” 

Bleeding Talent

The tax package and the ban on offsetting losses — which only applies to crypto — represents the latest salvo by a government that still hasn’t clearly stated that it will allow cryptocurrencies. India, with an estimated 15 million active crypto users, has been stuck in regulatory limbo since the Supreme Court in 2020 overturned a central bank directive banning regulated entities from working with digital-assets companies.

Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Indian blockchain startup Polygon, warned this month that thousands of developers, investors and entrepreneurs are decamping for more crypto-friendly destinations as a result of the uncertainty. 

Crypto Brain Drain Is ‘Crazy’ in India, Polygon Co-Founder Says

When the government first unveiled the crypto levies, the announcement was met with relief because it was interpreted as a sign that there wouldn’t be an outright ban on cryptocurrency trading. That changed as the industry digested the details of the TDS.  

Under the new regime, the buyer of a crypto asset must deduct the 1% TDS on behalf of the seller if a transaction exceeds 10,000 rupees (about $132). Smaller trades would also be taxed if they top a cumulative 50,000 rupees in a financial year, according to Bhasin.   

Investors will be entitled to a refund if the total amount set aside for TDS during a fiscal year exceeds their overall tax liability for the period.

Capital Gets Choked

When done over a centralized exchange, it’s the bourse’s responsibility to deduct the TDS for a trade, Bhasin said. On a decentralized trading platform where the buyer and seller interact without an intermediary, people typically trade anonymously, which makes collecting TDS complicated. 

While a capital gains tax reduces the appeal of crypto for investors, the TDS poses a threat to the very underpinnings of the market, critics say. India doesn’t impose such a levy on stock trading. 

The typical high-frequency trader could see 60% of their capital blocked for TDS payments after just 100 trades, estimates Garegrat, who is also a member of India’s Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council.

“The way the tax has been worked out will lead to people moving out of the country,” said Dinesh Kanabar, CEO of Dhruva Advisors, a tax and regulatory advisory firm.

Speaking in the Lower House of Parliament on March 25, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the TDS will allow the government to track transactions and doesn’t represent an additional levy. But executives and experts counter that if that’s the sole intention, it could have been accomplished just as well with a much smaller rate without disrupting trading. 

Like with decentralized exchanges, enforcing the TDS system will be almost impossible when it comes to offshore trading platforms, Garegrat said. So the tax will mainly serve to push trading off the locally-based exchanges over which the Indian government has the most visibility, he added. 

The system gets even more onerous for traders in crypto pairs, like Bitcoin/Ether, according to Quagmire’s Bhasin. That’s because each trade involves two separate transactions — for example, buying Bitcoin from one counterparty, then selling it and purchasing Ether from another. 

“At one stage you will liable to lose 1% because you are selling BTC and at the next step you will be liable to deduct 1% TDS because you are buying ETH from another seller,” he said. “The accounting will be super crazy for this.” 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Iowa worker fired over Biden-USSR comparison is denied jobless benefits
Clark Kauffman,

 Iowa Captial Dispatch
April 01, 2022


An Iowa man who says he lost his job for comparing life under the Biden administration to living in the Soviet Union is not entitled to jobless benefits, a judge has ruled.

State records indicate Lee Hainey worked as a machinist for the Carver Pump Company from 2007 through September of last year when he was fired.

A few days before he was terminated, Hainey and his colleagues at Carver received a companywide email from the chief operating officer that included an update on the COVID-19 pandemic and the company’s response to it.

Hainey then sent out a companywide response to the message, writing, “Welcome to the USSR, comrades!”

A supervisor confronted Hainey, asking him what he was thinking by sending the email and stating that it came across as a “big middle finger” to the chief operating officer. “Yep,” Hainey allegedly replied, according to state records. “Glad my message was received.”

At a subsequent meeting with his superiors, Hainey expressed regret that company officials felt the email was disrespectful, but he did not express regret for having sent the email. Hainey was fired and the company then challenged his claim for unemployment benefits.

Recently, the matter went before Administrative Law Judge Darrin T. Hamilton, who ruled against Hainey and denied him benefits.

Hainey, Hamilton ruled, “was pleased with the middle-finger message to the COO,” and only later acknowledged that sending it was a mistake. The judge found that Hainey’s assertion that he did not intend to disrespect the company officials and was instead expressing his displeasure with the Biden administration was not credible – but that even if that was Hainey’s intent, he still would have been violating company rules by causing a disruption in the workplace.

More coronavirus-related unemployment decisions

Other recent unemployment decisions related to the pandemic include:

Randy Boose, who resigned last September from Tyson Fresh Meats, where he worked as a social-distancing monitor. At the time, Tyson employees were required to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but Boose objected due to concerns he had with the vaccine’s safety. Without discussing the matter with company officials, and without requesting a waiver from the vaccine policy, Boose quit and then applied for unemployment benefits. At the time he quit, he was not necessarily facing termination, a judge ruled in denying Boose benefits.

Kelly Still, who was fired last August from Knapp Properties where he had worked for the past 21 years, most recently as a maintenance technician. Still worked exclusively for one homeowner’s association that was a customer of Knapp Properties.

At some point, the association’s board president asked Still if he had been vaccinated against COVID-19. Still said he hadn’t, and the board president told him he may be required to do so. Still objected, arguing a vaccine requirement might be illegal. Later, after the board decided everyone working in the building should be vaccinated, Still allegedly told the board president he was vaccinated, but told residents of the building he was not, according to state records. He then refused to provide the board with proof of his vaccination.

Knapp Properties fired Still for failing to comply with the association’s rules. Administrative Law Judge Daniel Zeno awarded Still unemployment benefits, noting that the association’s board president didn’t testify at the hearing as to the policies that were violated. Zeno noted in his decision that it wasn’t a condemnation of Knapp’s right to “take reasonable steps to protect its staff and customers from the ongoing, global COVID-19 pandemic,” and should not be seen as “an endorsement of Mr. Still not being vaccinated.”

Amber O’Donnell, who resigned last October from Medical Oncology Hematology where she worked as a full-time chemotherapy pharmacy technician. O’Donnell quit in lieu of being fired for her refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Citing the state law that took effect last October, which says Iowans discharged from employment for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine cannot be disqualified from collecting unemployment, an administrative law judge recently awarded O’Donnell benefits.

Tamara Gibney, who resigned last June from Marengo Memorial Hospital where she worked as a registered nurse. Gibney resigned in lieu of being terminated for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

In December 2020, the hospital’s CEO had sent an email to all employees alerting everyone that the vaccine “will be required of all team members” as a condition of their employment.

Gibney was initially granted a medical exemption because she was breastfeeding a newborn infant, but in June of last year she transitioned her child to a bottle and asked her employer whether she vaccination was still required. When she was told that it was, Gibney resigned in lieu of being fired.

Citing the new state law on benefits for workers forced out of jobs by COVID-19 vaccine requirements, an administrative law judge recently awarded Gibney benefits.

Donna Whaley, whose hours were reduced last fall at Wesley Life, where she works as Meals on Wheels driver and a home health care aide. Whaley refused to comply with her employer’s vaccine mandate and did not provide documentation to justify her refusal under medical or religious grounds.

In late October, a few days before Whaley was to be fired, Gov. Kim Reynolds eliminated the requirement for Iowans to provide medical documentation to their employer when refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. By that time, Wesley Life had already begun filling the positions of people it expected to fire due to vaccine refusals.

Although Whaley was not fired, her hours were reduced – which was an arrangement she agreed to. Noting that Whaley had wanted her hours reduced, a judge recently denied her request for unemployment benefits.

Kathy Langreck, who was fired last October from Palmer Lutheran Health Center, where she worked as a full-time environmental services technician. Palmer’s policy last fall was that all employees were required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Nov. 1, 2021, unless religious or medical exemptions applied. Langreck told her employer she did not intend to be vaccinated and also that she did not believe she qualified for an exemption.

Her refusal, she said, was based on data she had seen and the fact that she knew people who suffered side effects from the vaccine. She was fired on Nov. 9. Citing the new state law that says Iowans who are forced out of work for refusing the vaccine can’t be declared ineligible for unemployment, a judge recently awarded Langreck benefits.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene to push for federal anti-LGBT legislation

Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. Photo: Marco Bello

IF YOU'RE NOT WOKE YOU ARE ASLEEP

Josh Marcos
April 02 2022

Marjorie Taylor Greene is working on a federal version of Florida’s highly controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

The Georgia Republican told Infowars host Alex Jones on Wednesday she was launching an effort to copy the legislation, which bars teachers from providing information about sexual orientation and gender identity, because she wanted to “protect kids”.

“Are you going to introduce a bill because you’ve got the power to do it?” right-wing conspiracy theorist Jones asked the Congress member.

“We would all get behind a bill to pull federal funding out of any school that sexualises children.”

She responded: “Absolutely 100pc. I will meet with my team right after this interview and we will work on it, Alex, because I will do anything I can to protect kids.”

The Georgia Republican has a lengthy history of using her public platform to target LGBT+ people.

“The so called #EqualityAct is evil,” she tweeted in February. “Disguised as #LGBT rights, it expands governmental regulatory reach that destroys women’s rights, religious rights, and rights of the unborn. It is a direct attack on God’s creation.”

That same month, she taped a sign on the door of House of Representatives colleague Marie Newman of Illinois, whose daughter is trans. “There are two genders: male & female... Trust The Science!” the sign read.

Republicans nationwide are ushering in hundreds of proposed bills targeting LGBT+ youth and trans children in particular.

The legislation aims to “take away transgender youth support from their doctors, their parents, their teachers, their coaches, their teammates, their books,” according to the Human Rights Campaign’s senior counsel Cathryn Oakley. (© Independent News Service Ltd 2022)

Young Sami return to reindeer herding despite climate fears
Agence France-Presse
April 01, 2022

Joining the herd: Young Finnish Sami Antti Iisko Lansman (L) and his sister Anni-Sivia want to herd reindeer when they grow up

 Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

In the snowy Arctic darkness Suvi Kustula throws bundles of lichen to her excitable herd of reindeer, their antlers lit up by her van's headlights.

"I was just a few months old when I fed my first reindeer," the 24-year-old laughed, saying she "pretty much always knew" she would follow her father and grandfather into herding.

"I managed one and a half weeks living in a city before I switched to reindeer herding college," Kustula told AFP.

"It's a way of life. Reindeer before everything."

Twenty years ago the ancient tradition of herding reindeer for meat and fur appeared to be in decline in Lapland, the vast area of forest and tundra which spans northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia's Kola Peninsula.

Young people felt they had to move south "to make a good life", said Anne Ollila, head of Finland's Reindeer Herders' Association.

But nowadays nearly a quarter of Finland's 4,000 herders are under 25, as more young people choose to stay or return home to Lapland.

The number of women entering the traditionally male-dominated profession is also at its highest ever.

"People have learned to better appreciate freedom and nature and tradition," Ollila said. "Even if you can't make big money."

Instead herders get to live an outdoor life, dictated by the seasons and the weather in the often stunningly beautiful Arctic wilderness.

But the new generation faces an array of emerging challenges, including a warming climate and pressure from industries keen to exploit Lapland's resource-rich landscape.

Indigenous culture revival

A herder needs intimate knowledge of the landscape and how their animals behave to keep tabs on their reindeer, which roam freely across the plains and forests.

And asking how many animals a herder has is a big no-no.

"It's a bit like if I asked you how much you have in your bank account," Kustula laughed.

Most young herders are either born in or have married into a reindeer herding family, Ollila said.

Many belong to the indigenous Sami community, who have herded reindeer across northern Lapland for centuries.

Oppressed for years by Nordic governments, many Sami have in recent decades begun reclaiming their traditional culture and language.

"Some earlier generations were ashamed of being Sami," Ollila says. "But I think the young people choosing reindeer herding are very proud of it."

Long periods away

Herding has been passed down through generations of the Lansman family, who live on Finland's northern border with Norway.

In late November, with the sun setting at 1 pm -- not to rise again for seven weeks -- Anna Nakkalajarvi-Lansman and her two children climbed onto their snowmobile and drove to the enclosure where their children's two reindeer live.

"The lighter one's mine, called Golden Horn," said six-year-old Antti Iisko, as he and his sister scatter lichen for the animals to eat.

He wants to be a herder when he grows up, while Anni-Sivia, eight, would like to be a vet.

"I'll be able to give the reindeer their vaccinations," Anni-Sivia told AFP.

"Our daily routine depends on the season and whether we're helping out with the herding," explained their mother Anna Nakkalajarvi-Lansman, a Sami musician.

Two hours' drive away, father Asko Lansman had just spent a fortnight at a meat-packaging plant.

Demand is soaring, Lansman told AFP, standing in front of piles of boxes of vacuum-packed reindeer meat ready to be delivered across Finland.

"It's my greatest hope that the kids continue the work, just like it was my father's hope when I was young," he said.

New challenges

The job has changed a lot, Lansman said, with quad bikes, helicopters and now drones making gathering the reindeer much easier.

But with temperatures in the Arctic warming three times faster than the rest of the planet, climate change is bringing new challenges.

The shorter winters can turn snow into ice "and cause the reindeers' drinking holes to freeze over", Lansman said, as well as making their food inaccessible.

Numerous proposed mining and energy projects across Lapland also threaten the animals' pasture lands, herders warn.

"The more the land use changes, the less space we'll have for reindeer," Kustula said.

"I am hopeful about the future, she insisted, "but the government should listen to us more."

© 2022 AFP

Abigail Disney takes aim at the 'radical ideologues' attacking her family's company over LGBTQ rights

Travis Gettys
April 01, 2022

Abigail Disney (Screen Capture)

Abigail Disney said she was "delighted" by the right-wing attacks on the iconic entertainment company founded by her grandfather and his brother because the campaign might finally force businesses to confront their support for bigotry.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signaled support for ending the Walt Disney Company's special status as an independent government around its Orlando-area theme park, and the granddaughter of co-founder Roy Disney took aim at the "radical ideologues" attacking the company for its opposition to anti-LGBTQ legislation in the state.

"Like all radical ideologues, the right wing has finally run amok and is coming to devour the hand that feeds it: Business," tweeted Disney, a documentary filmmaker who has no connection to the family business. "For my part I am delighted. It is the business world that has been, either by act or omission, feeding the opportunist right wing to distract us with culture war nonsense while they rifle through the till and empty everyone's pockets. This 'anti-woke' right wing nonsense is unsupported by a large majority of Americans. In fact most Americans are offended by it and wish it would just go away."

Disney explained that minority rule required an always-riled base and lots of money, and to generate a new outrage, she said the right was now turning on the businesses who had been supporting their cause.

"Until now, business has been content to do just that," she tweeted. "Or they compartmentalized like sociopaths when they funded folks like Dennis Baxley who wrote the hateful Don't Say Gay bill because as the CEO claimed, he had no way of knowing he might vote for legislation like that. Or else they have chosen silence."

"Their silence brought us Donald Trump," Disney added. "Apparently the racism and the xenophobia and the misogyny weren't deal breakers. Their silence, or at least willingness to compartmentalize when it came to politicians who were willing to fight for their outrageous and multi-decade campaign to stack the deck against the American People brought us this whole raft of Trump wanna-be's now casting about for new and more insidious ways to tear the country apart."

Disney said she was hopeful the attacks on the company her family started might break that mutually beneficial relationship.

"Perhaps the right wing has finally bitten the hand that has been feeding it superfoods these last few decades," she tweeted. "This is a monster of corporate America's creation. Until now they've managed to dodge the worst of it by feigning 'neutrality' --even when decent human beings were being actively harmed by right wing activism. The only thing that will work for business now if they want to emerge in one piece, is to stand tall for authenticity, generosity, joy and decency."

"These things are [kryptonite] for the right wing agenda," Disney added. "So the cure for this isn't hard. And it also just so happens to be the heart and soul of the Disney brand."

First audio recorded on Mars reveals two speeds of sound 

FAST SLOW
Agence France-Presse
April 01, 2022

The planet Mars (AFP)

The first audio recordings on Mars reveal a quiet planet with occasional gusts of wind where two different speeds of sound would have a strange delayed effect on hearing, scientists said Friday.

After NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February last year, its two microphones started recording, allowing scientists to hear what it is like on the Red Planet for the first time.

In a study published in the Nature journal on Friday, the scientists gave their first analysis of the five hours of sound picked up by Perseverance's microphones.

The audio revealed previously unknown turbulence on Mars, said Sylvestre Maurice, the study's main author and scientific co-director of the shoebox-sized SuperCam mounted on the rover's mast which has the main microphone.

The international team listened to flights by the tiny Ingenuity helicopter, a sister craft to Perseverance, and heard the rover's laser zap rocks to study their chemical composition -- which made a "clack clack" sound, Maurice told AFP.

"We had a very localized sound source, between two and five meters (six to 16 meters) from its target, and we knew exactly when it was going to fire," he said.

The study confirmed for the first time that the speed of sound is slower on Mars, traveling at 240 meters per second, compared to Earth's 340 meters per second.

This had been expected because Mars' atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide -- compared to Earth's 0.04 percent -- and is about 100 times thinner, making sound 20 decibels weaker, the study said.

'I panicked'

But the scientists were surprised when the sound made by the laser took 250 meters a second -- 10 meters faster than expected.

"I panicked a little," Maurice said. "I told myself that one of the two measurements was wrong because on Earth you only have one speed of sound."

They had discovered there are two speeds of sound on the surface of Mars -- one for high-pitched sounds like the zap of the laser, and another for lower frequencies like the whir of the helicopter rotor.

This means that human ears would hear high-pitched sounds slightly earlier.

"On Earth, the sounds from an orchestra reach you at the same speed, whether they are low or high. But imagine on Mars, if you are a little far from the stage, there will be a big delay," Maurice said.

"All of these factors would make it difficult for two people to have a conversation only five meters (16 feet) apart", the French CNRS research institute said in a statement.
'Scientific gamble' pays off

It was otherwise so quiet on Mars that the scientists repeatedly feared something was wrong, the CNRS said, possibly provoking memories of two failed previous attempts in 1999 and 2008 to record sound there.

"There are few natural sound sources with the exception of the wind," the scientists said in a statement linked to the study.

The microphones did pick up numerous "screech" and "clank" sounds as the rover's metal wheels interacted with rocks, the study said.

The recording could also warn about problems with the rover -- like how drivers sense something's wrong when their car starts making strange noises.

Maurice said he felt the "scientific gamble" of taking microphones to Mars was a success.

Thierry Fouchet of the Paris Observatory, who was also involved in the research, said that listening to turbulence, such as vertical winds known as convection plumes, will "allow us to refine our numerical models for predicting climate and weather".

Future missions to Venus or Saturn's moon Titan could also now come equipped with microphones.

And Perseverance is far from done eavesdropping. While its core mission lasts just over two years, it could remain operational well beyond that -- the Curiosity rover is still kicking nine years into a planned two-year stint.

© 2022 AFP

Greta Thunberg to publish comprehensive book on climate change

2022/3/31 
© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a press conference in Berlin. Thunberg has announced plans to publish a comprehensive book on climate change. Kay Nietfeld/dpa

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has announced plans to publish a comprehensive book on climate change.

"I've invited over 100 leading voices from around the world - scientists, experts, activists and authors to create a book that covers the climate - and ecological crisis from a holistic perspective," the 19-year-old tweeted on Thursday.

Climate change was just one of several symptoms of a larger sustainability crisis, Thunberg said, according to a report in The Guardian.

She said she hoped the volume would become a kind of reference work on the different, closely related crises.

According to the report, the authors include climate researchers Johan Rockström and Katharine Hayhoe, as well as economist Thomas Piketty and writer Margaret Atwood.

The book is due to be published in Britain in October.

The evil reason the GOP will exploit every crisis the world is facing

Thom Hartmann
April 01, 2022

Ronald Reagan painting (Edalisse Hirst/Flickr)

Putin’s attack on Ukraine is producing a series of crises which are going to, in all probability, bring a period of great pain and instability to the world and to America in the near future.

Republicans are already working to exploit it.

By the election this fall much of the unity that exists because of today’s Ukraine passion will be exhausted, but the crisis it’s produced will just be beginning. And, just as Putin probably now hopes, it’ll stretch some democracies to the breaking point.

Americans think we’ve stood down Putin, but the forces he represents — strongman authoritarian neofascism combined with hard-right “Christian” nationalism — will grow a lot stronger over the next few years as fallout from his war in Ukraine.

If we’re not ready for it, those forces of bigotry and nationalism could overwhelm the US and other democracies around the world, particularly across Europe. Even if we are ready, oligarchs and wannabee strongmen are going to do their best to exploit the situation.

Those multiple forces now converging to threaten democracy, although many are the result of Putin’s murderous war against Ukraine, have also been brewing since the 1980s and Reagan’s neoliberal revolution.

They include:
Refugee crises
Shortages and spikes in the cost of both fuel and food
A worldwide recession

None of these are world-ending, but each has an exploitable political impact. Combined, they can destabilize governments, change which parties are in power, and even flip democracies into autocracies.

To quickly summarize each of them:

Refugee Crises

Think back to how Fox “News” and the GOP hyped the “refugee caravans” we saw coming here to the US in 2016.

As climate change and democratic crises hit Central America over the past decade — particularly Guatemala — the Trump campaign pounded on the Obama administration, falsely claiming the president had “opened” the southern US border to “anybody who wanted” to arrive.

It was pure demagoguery to gin up the racist vote in the US, but social media doesn’t stay in the US: the Fox and GOP talking points spread widely across Central America, where people believed the message coming from seemingly credible sources like America’s largest cable TV network and Republican politicians in the US Congress.

Thinking US immigration policy had changed and our borders were “open,” desperate people hit the road for our southern border, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that filled the media for weeks and helped Trump and Republicans win that election.

Republicans continue to exploit that to this day, and a couple of Trump‘s good friends like Steve Bannon even scammed Trump supporters out of millions with a phony effort to build a wall. When Bannon got busted, Trump pardoned him (like he did so many of his other associates accused or convicted of crimes).

The political damage to Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, though, helped flip the White House to Trump and Congress to the GOP.

So we can see the impact that immigration surges, even tiny ones, can cause on society and politics, and how they can be exploited by cynical, power-hungry politicians.

Imagine if, instead of a few thousand refugees massing on our southern border, over 30 million Central Americans had actually made their way into the US and were today trying to fined housing and work across the country.

Just think of how Republicans would use that as a club to beat the Biden administration over the head.

Few speak the language. Some will be criminals and their crimes that will be splashed all over the papers, even if it’s desperate people engaging in petty theft or prostitution. Some will “take jobs” from “good Americans.” Others will “burden” our social welfare system. Their need to eat and find housing will cause food shortages and drive up prices.

There are 360,000 refugees currently in Moldova, a fledgling democracy on Ukraine’s border with only 4 million citizens and an active, pro-Putin rightwing political movement.

That number of immigrants in Moldova is the equivalent of 30 million “Mexicans” (to use Trump’s phrase) “invading” America. It’s already straining Moldova’s politics.

Similarly, the 2.2 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland (pop. 37 million) is the equivalent of 21 million Central Americans flooding into the USA in less than three weeks. Already the backlash in Poland has begun, as Mateusz Mazzine wrote yesterday for Foreign Policy magazine:
Current deputy prime minister and leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, stated that refugees “will not abide by the Polish law.” Former interior minister Joachim Brudzinski depicted them as “young, horny bulls called ‘refugees,’” and Polish President Andrzej Duda feared they carry a risk of “possible epidemics.”

It’s the same all over Europe: over 10 million Ukrainian refugees, while today creating a humanitarian crisis, will be the foundation for a democracy crisis within months, one that will continue long after any sort of resolution to the Russian invasion is reached.
Worldwide shortages and spikes in the cost of both fuel and food

Oil prices worldwide were rising as the pandemic eased in large part because the 15% production cuts Trump negotiated in 2020 with Russia and Saudi Arabia remain in place. The Saudis are “refusing to take Biden’s phone call” about raising oil production back to 2019 levels.

But the record-breaking shock came when the price of oil jumped an additional $30 a barrel the week Russia invaded Ukraine, spiking petrol prices in the US and across Europe above anything seen before.

Republicans are already exploiting that now, as you can see from an email I received yesterday from former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry over the letterhead of the “America First Policy Institute”:
“As you have no doubt noticed, gas prices are way up. President Biden is trying to use Russia’s actions in Ukraine as an excuse for the increase in costs. The truth is that these prices were inevitable because of the actions President Biden has taken since his first day in office.
“Under President Trump, we invested in American energy, which boosted our economy and let Americans pay as little as $2 for a gallon of gas. The Biden Administration reversed the policies that gave us energy independence, embraced the radical Green New Deal, and forced us to again rely on foreign oil.”

Perry is being dishonest and manages to forget the pandemic, but this is just the beginning of their exploiting the challenges caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And that’s true of both the Republicans here and similar oligarch-associated rightwing political parties across Europe, who are also using pandemic- and war-caused inflation as a political weapon against popular political groups currently in power.

As Gideon Rachman notes for the Financial Times, there’s plenty of raw material:
“In the UK, households could see a 50 per cent increase in energy bills in April, followed by another 50 per cent rise in October.”

And the UK imports little Russian oil or gas. As Germany and the rest of continental Europe try to cut off Russian imports, the price of energy could not only spike prices well over 150% but also lead to rationing of fuel and gas for heating across Europe and in other countries that now depend on Russian fuel imports.

Food is even more problematic, although those shortages will probably bite much later this year and throughout next year, as Russia and Ukraine account for as much as a quarter of the world’s wheat exports.

Both countries are also major exporters of fertilizer, and a shortage in that food-producing raw material has already led Brazil’s President Bolsonaro (who’s supporting Russia in their invasion of Ukraine) to push to ignore treaties with indigenous tribes and begin mining phosphate and other fertilizer ingredients in sensitive parts of the Amazon.

We’ve seen crisis like these — only far less drastic and sudden — literally reshape the politics of the world in the past few years.

When climate change drove the deserts about 100 miles south in North Africa over the past two decades, it produce a 2010-2012 spike in the price of wheat and other staples along with a flood of hundreds of thousands of land-displaced farmers into the cities of Syria, Libya and Tunisia.

The result was a revolt against the Syrian government, starting a civil war in that country and a refugee crisis that spilled over into Europe. A street vendor in Tunisia setting himself on fire as a protest against the higher wheat prices, and that act of self-immolation tripped off what we call the “Arab Spring” that eventually flipped Egypt into a military dictatorship, brought massive Russian bombing of Aleppo, and destabilized the entire region.

Imagine the same thing — only far worse — happening all across the world as food prices spike and democracies (particularly young, emerging ones) struggle to deal with the protests and political instability resulting from inflation caused by food and fuel shortages.

A Fed, fuel, food, and Covid-caused market crash?

The US Federal Reserve has already increased interest rates once and intends to do it more often in the near future, an action that has produced a recession nearly every time it’s been tried in the past 75 years.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich also calls it the “wrong diagnosis” and the “wrong remedy.”

If he’s right, the ensuing recession be a crisis for Democrats, as well as a windfall this year and in 2024 for Republicans. And when the US catches a cold, the world often gets pneumonia.

As Paul Krugman notes in The New York Times:
“Policy and events are seriously putting the brakes on the rapid expansion the U.S. economy has experienced since the pandemic recession.”

Imagine the combination of soaring inflation, fuel and food shortages, and a worldwide market crash: demagogues in every democracy in the world will crawl over each other to get in front of a TV camera and proclaim that they, alone, have the solution to their nation’s problems.

And that doesn’t begin to count in the possible shortage of consumer goods in the US and across Europe because of China’s Covid policies.

That nation had opted for a “zero-Covid” program that depended heavily on lockdowns and quarantines, causing many in China to ignore or forego vaccinations. And even those vaccinated have used a Chinese vaccine that doesn’t provide the protection of the mRNA vaccines available in the Western world.

As a result, when Omicron hit China this week they had to shut down Shanghai — China’s biggest city and a huge export port — along with a few other cities, raising the specter of another “supply chain crisis” of consumer goods like we saw during China’s big lockdown last November.

From the point of view of rightwing parties around the world, goods shortages will be another hammer to take to democratic governments, including the Biden administration.

In summary…

Hang onto your hat: things are going to get wild.

This coming crisis of war, refugees, food, fuel, a dysfunctional Fed, and a worldwide pandemic could rival anything the world has seen since the 14th century.

Worldwide adoption of neoliberal “reforms” over the past 40 years have thrown in an additional factor: an explosion of consolidated monopolistic businesses and the billionaires they create, who bring along their very own brand of authoritarian and oligarchic political activism and media control (including the social media they own).

Republicans here (and their conservative oligarch-owned colleagues inside other democracies) will exploit every piece of it. They’ll scream about the deficit, yell about the price of fuel and food, howl about crime and immigrants: all to try to frighten people and support their claim that government is their private possession and we therefore never again need to have genuinely democratic elections.

I don’t see any easy answers here. Great wealth and hard-core authoritarians have embedded themselves deeply in the fabric of the Republican Party and in many similar European parties, particularly in Hungary and Poland.

That said, it’s important to remember that the last time we faced a worldwide depression and war — roughly 80 years ago — we and Europe came out of it far more progressive and democratic. Although the toll, in both wealth and blood, was horrific.

Forewarned is, to the extent it’s possible, forearmed. They’re preparing, and we must, too. Spread the word.

#CRYPTID #CRYPTOZOOLOGY

An 'alien-like' creature washed up on a beach in Australia

Kelly McClure Salon
April 01, 2022

Alex Tan was walking on a beach in Queensland, Australia last week when he chanced upon something that caused many people to become quite puzzled.

Tan, a pastor at History Maker Church, first thought the creature he was nearing was a flathead fish (or "three-meter flatty" as they're called in Australia) until he got closer and was able to take it all in.

According to CBS News Tan recorded video of his discovery, which he described as having "humanlike hands, long lizard tail, nose like a possum and patches of black fur."

"I've stumbled across something weird," he said in one of the videos. "This is like one of those things you see when people claim that they've found aliens."

Since posting footage of the creature, many people have weighed in on what they think it could possibly be. Guesses on the true genus ranged from a deerhead possum, mini-chupacabra, or extinct marsupial but the most likely answer, which was landed upon just a day ago, is far less fun.

"After consultation with my colleague Heather Janetzki from the Queensland Museum we are pretty sure that it is a swollen, waterlogged brushtail possum who has lost its fur," University of Queensland associate professor Stephen Johnston said to The Courier Mail. "The skull and hindlimb give the clues. The animal was probably washed down into the ocean during the floods," he added.

According to The Daily Mail, the brushtail possum is common in Australia, and has also been spotted in New Zealand, but are most widely found along the east coast.

Even with the logical explanation from Johnston and Janetzki, "pretty sure" isn't a definite, which very much leaves alien on the table.

Bill to legalize marijuana passes US House, but faces dim prospects in Senate
Reuters
April 01, 2022


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill to end the federal ban on marijuana, which has created legal headaches for users and businesses in the states that have legalized it, though the measure was seen as unlikely to pass the Senate.

It passed by 220-204, with few Republicans supporting the measure.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, sponsored by Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, which is in the process of legalizing the drug, removes marijuana from the list of controlled substances and eliminates criminal penalties for individuals who grow, distribute or possess it.

But the MORE act will need to gain 60 votes in the evenly divided Senate before moving to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature, an outcome widely seen as unlikely given the lack of Republican support for the measure.

The bill would "end decades of failed and unjust marijuana policy," Democratic Representative Ed Perlmutter said on the House floor on Thursday ahead of the vote. "It is clear prohibition is over. Today we have an opportunity to chart a new path forward on federal cannabis policy that actually makes sense."

He added that the bill does not force any state to legalize marijuana.

Marijuana users and businesses that sell it face a complicated legal patchwork in the U.S, where 37 states have legalized it in some form -- either for recreation or medical use -- while 13 still ban it entirely.

Because federal law classifies cannabis as an illegal drug with no medical uses, researchers are severely limited in how they can study the drug and its impacts, making policy difficult to write.

Cannabis businesses are also largely blocked from the U.S. banking system because of the federal ban.

Republican Representative Michelle Fischbach called the legislation "not only flawed but dangerous," arguing on the House floor that it did not protect minors and would encourage people to open marijuana businesses.

Legalization of marijuana is extremely popular among Americans: a 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that 91% agreed that either medical or recreational use should be allowed.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed his own bill that would legalize marijuana, and has committed to moving forward with it in April.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)