Crypto could cause next financial crisis: India central bank chief

By AFP
Published December 21, 2022


Failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX used celebrities to promote its 'Ponzi scheme,' according a lawsuit file in US court - Copyright AFP Oliver Contreras

India’s central bank governor warned Wednesday that cryptocurrency markets risked causing the next global financial crisis, saying the recent collapse of FTX was proof of the sector’s “inherent risks”.

The comments close out a challenging year for India’s millions of crypto owners, who are already reeling from a global market collapse and steep domestic taxes.

“Unlike any other product, our main concern about crypto is that it doesn’t have any underlying (value) whatsoever,” Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das said at an industry event.

“Our view is that it should be prohibited because … if you try to regulate it and allow it to grow, please mark my words: the next financial crisis will come from private cryptocurrencies.”

Cryptocurrencies have been under the scrutiny of Indian regulators since first entering the local market nearly a decade ago, with a rise in fraudulent transactions leading to a central bank ban in 2018.

India’s Supreme Court lifted the restrictions two years later and the market surged, backed by burgeoning local trading platforms and glitzy celebrity endorsements.

But the introduction of a 30 percent tax on profits from trading “private currencies” this year has resulted in trading volumes shrinking to a tenth of their previous size.

A sharp fall in the prices of leading tokens like bitcoin — dubbed a “crypto winter” — has wiped out more than $2 trillion from their global market value since its peak of $3 trillion in November 2021, further spooking traders.

The sudden collapse of FTX — a cryptocurrency exchange worth $32 billion before it filed for bankruptcy last month — and US fraud charges against its one-time billionaire founder Sam Bankman-Fried has intensified scrutiny of the sector.

Das said the fall in crypto prices and recent developments around FTX validated his long-held view that cryptocurrencies have “huge inherent risks for our macroeconomic and financial stability”.

The Reserve Bank of India this year introduced its own digital rupee based on blockchain technology, intended to bring down the costs of commercial transactions as the Indian economy becomes less reliant on paper currency.

Last month, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for increased regulation of private currencies to stamp out terror funding.

Modi also said last year that bitcoin presented a risk to younger generations and could “spoil our youth” if it ended up “in the wrong hands”.

Mexico Aims for Agreement with US on Genetically Modified Corn

December 16, 2022
Reuters

Corn rests on the ground on Hodgen Farm in Roachdale, Ind., Oct. 29, 2019.

MEXICO CITY —

Mexico and the United States aim to reach an agreement in January over a pending Mexican ban on imports of genetically modified (GM) corn, the Mexican Foreign Ministry said Friday after officials from the two countries held talks in Washington.

In a statement, the ministry said talks would continue in the meantime as the two sides worked to reach a "mutual understanding" that gives "legal certainty to all parties."

Mexico has a controversial presidential decree that is set to ban GM corn and the herbicide glyphosate in 2024.

U.S. officials have threatened to take action under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, arguing that the decree will harm U.S. farmers.

"The Mexican delegation presented some potential amendments to the decree in an effort to address our concerns," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a joint statement released Friday afternoon.

"We agreed to review their proposal closely and follow up with questions or concerns in short order," they said.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters the two sides were aiming to reach an agreement by the end of January.

Mexico, which imports about 17 million metric tons of U.S. corn a year, has said that the decree focuses on corn for human consumption and that GM yellow corn for animal feed would be permitted.

Mexican officials, however, have yet to announce formal modifications to the decree.

Mexico's health regulator Cofepris has not authorized new strains of glyphosate-resistant GM corn seeds for import since 2018.

Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry group representing biotech companies including Bayer, said Friday it would urge the U.S. government to begin taking enforcement action over Mexico’s treatment of agricultural biotechnology should the country fall short of meeting "the commitments under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement."

Emboldened Right-Wing Activists Spread Lies About Rep. Katie Porter on Twitter

Video of Rep. Katie Porter calling out right-wing activists for falsely accusing LGBTQ+ Americans of being pedophiles was misleadingly edited to accuse her of condoning pedophilia.

Rep. Katie Porter, a California Democrat, participates remotely in a congressional hearing in 2020. Photo: Pool via Getty Images

Robert Mackey

December 16 2022, 6:01 p.m.

LIES ABOUT REP. KATIE PORTER reached millions of Twitter users this week, as the California Democrat’s remarks about how the platform has been used to falsely label LGBTQ+ people as pedophiles were misleadingly edited and captioned in tweets by influential right-wing activists.

The deceptive clips of Porter’s remarks, accompanied by false claims that she had condoned pedophilia, were viewed more than 2.2 million times on Twitter after being shared by right-wing activist accounts, including Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok and Jaimee Michell’s Gays Against Groomers.

Those video clips were created by Porter’s political enemies, who made it seem as if Porter, at a Congressional oversight hearing on Wednesday, had argued that pedophilia was not a crime but an identity.

Transcripts and video of Porter’s complete remarks make it clear that she was saying something entirely different — namely, that right-wing activists have inspired hatred of LGBTQ+ Americans in tweets falsely accusing them of being pedophiles, or so-called groomers.

A spokesperson for Porter also told the fact-checking service VERIFY, which works with local news stations in 29 states, that the representative “did not say that pedophilia is not a crime.”

In an irony that perfectly encapsulates the impossibility of reasoned discourse with far-right activists willing to lie, the video used to smear Porter was taken from her discussion of a report documenting how activist accounts like Libs of TikTok and Gays Against Groomers use Twitter to falsely accuse LGBTQ+ liberals of pedophilia. The report was produced by the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Human Rights Campaign.

At the hearing, Porter prefaced a question for Kelley Robinson, the HRC president, by saying: “Your organization recently released a report analyzing the 500 most viewed, most influential tweets that identified LGBTQ+ people as so-called groomers. The ‘groomer’ narrative is an age-old lie to position LGBTQ+ people as a threat to kids. And what it does is deny them access to public spaces, it stokes fear, and can even stoke violence.”

Porter then asked Robinson if Twitter’s hateful conduct policy allows users to call LGBTQ+ people “groomers” on the platform.

After Robinson explained that those slurs are used in violation of Twitter’s poorly enforced community guidelines, she added that when people baselessly use words like “groomers” and “pedophiles” to describe LGBTQ+ people, “it is dangerous, and it’s got one purpose: It is to dehumanize us, and make us feel like we are not a part of this American society, and it has real-life consequences.”

Porter responded by saying that she agreed with Robinson that the use of such terms to smear members of LGBTQ+ communities whose politics differ from the far-right activists was intended to marginalize them.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” Porter said. “And it’s not, you know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and of ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow, and engaged in criminal acts, merely because of their identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity. So this is clearly prohibited, under Twitter’s content, yet you found hundreds of these posts on the platform.”

In addition to Raichik and Michell, whose anti-LGBTQ+ activism has previously been amplified by America’s most-watched cable news host, Tucker Carlson, misleading clips of Porter were also shared by Greg Price, a former Republican operative and Daily Caller social media editor; Sebastian Gorka, who was fired by the Trump White House; and Ian Miles Cheong, a far-right Malaysian blogger Elon Musk frequently replies to and agrees with on Twitter.

While the tweets from Cheong and Raichik — who falsely asserted that “Rep Katie Porter (D) says pedophilia isn’t a crime- it’s an identity” — were eventually flagged as misleading by Twitter users, the 1.5 million people who follow Michell, Price, or Gorka encountered no such warning.

Although he did not share the video, Rep. Ronny Jackson, a Texas Republican, also lied about what Porter said on Twitter. “Katie Porter just said that pedophilia isn’t a crime, she said it’s an ‘identity,'” Jackson claimed, falsely. “The sad thing is that this woman isn’t the only VILE person pushing for pedophilia normalization. This is what progressives believe!”

While the HRC report Porter highlighted showed that right-wing activists had violated Twitter’s hateful conduct policy repeatedly before Musk bought the platform, the previous ownership team did make some attempt to rein in Raichik, who was temporarily suspended several times.

Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk


Since Musk took control, however, “retweets of right-wing figures’ tweets that included the anti-LGBTQ ‘groomer’ slur increased substantially, as did mentions of right-wing figures in tweets containing the slur,” according to new data from LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD and Media Matters, a watchdog group that monitors right-wing misinformation.

Michell’s Gays AgainstGroomers account, the study found, “saw an increase of nearly 300% for retweets of tweets with the slur,” comparing the two months before and after Musk took control of the platform. Raichik’s Libs of TikTok “saw more than a 600% increase in its mentions,” over the same period for tweets using “groomer” slurs.

ICC Criticized for Neglecting Probe of Israeli War Crimes

Rights groups are criticizing inaction by the ICC prosecutor in a year when more than 200 Palestinians, including many children, were killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, writes Marjorie Cohn.


International Criminal Court, The Hague. (Greger Ravik, CC BY 2.0)

By Marjorie Cohn
Truthout

December 16, 2022

Nearly two years have passed since the International Criminal Court (ICC) began investigating war crimes committed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. But the ICC has yet to take concrete steps to move the investigation forward.

Frustrated with the glacial pace of the ICC’s investigation and the lack of clarity about how and when the investigation will proceed, three Palestinian human rights organizations issued a joint statement to the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute (the management body of the ICC) on Dec. 6, saying,

“We have not seen any concrete step in this investigation, no action by the Prosecutor to break the vicious cycle of impunity. The situation on the ground is deteriorating year after year, month after month, day after day. We feel that we have been left alone in our struggle. And Palestinian victims are losing hope.”

The initial news of the ICC investigation came on March 3, 2021, when Fatou Bensouda, then-chief ICC prosecutor, announced the opening of a formal investigation into war crimes committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, during and since Israel’s 2014 “Operation Protective Edge,” which killed 2,251 Palestinians.

Following a five-year preliminary examination, Bensouda found a reasonable basis to believe that Israeli forces had committed the war crimes of willful killing, willfully causing serious injury, disproportionate use of force and transfer of Israelis into Palestinian territory.

Bensouda also found there was a reasonable basis to investigate possible war crimes by Palestinians, including intentional attacks against civilians, using civilians as human shields and torture and willful killing.

Fatou Bensouda, former ICC prosecutor, in October 2021. (Wayamo Foundation, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The three Palestinian human rights organizations that issued the joint statement this month to raise concerns about the lack of progress in the ICC investigation are the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (a group that protects human rights and promotes the rule of law in accordance with international standards), Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights (a group that protects human rights, especially economic, social and cultural rights, in the occupied Palestinian territory) and Al-Haq (which documents human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory).

“In 2021, the opening of an investigation by the Prosecutor was perceived as a huge leap forward,” the groups wrote in their joint statement. “After years of frustration, we hoped that it was the start of a new era of accountability for the grave crimes committed in occupied Palestine.”

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This year alone, the three groups added, more than 200 Palestinians, including many children, were “killed by Israel’s settler-colonial regime in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” They also noted that beloved Palestinian Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh “was assassinated in cold blood by an Israeli sniper in broad daylight” and that six prominent Palestinian civil society organizations, including Al-Haq, were shut down after being falsely designated as “terrorist organizations.”

Protesters in Lod with photos of Shireen Abu Akleh, May 22. (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

In spite of these events, the three organizations wrote, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor hasn’t issued a single statement concerning Palestine. They contrasted the ICC prosecutor’s inaction on Palestine with the situation of Ukraine, about which the Office of the Prosecutor has been very proactive.

“It is also crucial that the same level of attention, activity, and resources is applied to other situations including, Palestine, to avoid perceptions of selectivity and politicization,” the groups wrote. “Victims should not be competing for justice and double standards should not have a place in justice.”

On Nov. 21, Bezalel Smotrich, head of Israel’s far right Religious Zionism Party, called Palestinian human rights organizations an existential threat to Israel. He said that the incoming Israeli government must take legal and security measures against them including “seizing their funds.”

Open Letter to Karim Khan

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan. (UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Two days later, 198 Palestinian, regional and international civil society organizations — including the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Association of Democratic Lawyers — wrote an open letter to Chief ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, decrying “missed opportunities for preventive statements in the past year.”

The organizations cited Israel’s killing of Palestinians “without clear provocation” as well as raids and assaults against worshipers at the Al Aqsa Mosque and Al-Haram Al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem.

Three of the six designated “terrorist organizations,” the civil society organizations noted, have been providing the ICC prosecutor’s office with information about “alleged serious crimes committed by Israeli nationals within the jurisdiction of the Court.”

The groups cited the Apartheid Convention, which lists as an “inhuman act” of apartheid, the “persecution of organizations and persons by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.”

The civil society organizations wrote to the ICC prosecutor: “Although Israel’s targeting of these organisations could hinder the work of the ICC, there has been no public reaction by your office.” The CSOs urged the Office of the Prosecutor to:Publicly condemn and call on Israel to rescind the terrorist designations;
Publicly affirm that the Office of the Prosecutor will scrutinize Israel’s crimes during its unprovoked military offensive in August 2022;
Urgently expedite the ICC investigation into the Situation of Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution; and
Issue preventive statements to deter Israel’s crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu is assembling “Israel’s most extreme right-wing government to date,” attorney Diana Buttu, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, wrote Tuesday in an op-ed in The New York Times.

Netanyahu’s government will likely be receptive to Smotrich’s suggestion to persecute Palestinian human rights organizations even more severely than the prior government that designated them “terrorist” and shut down their offices.

Washington Pressure

U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Jerusalem in July. (White House, Adam Schultz)

Moreover, the chief enabler of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, the U.S. government — which annually provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid — is implicitly exerting pressure on Khan to drag his feet on the ICC investigation of Israeli crimes.

When U.S. President Joe Biden visited Jerusalem in July, he and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid concluded an agreement affirming they would “continue to work together to combat all efforts . . . to unfairly single [Israel] out in any forum including at the United Nations or the International Criminal Court.”

Although the United States refuses to join the ICC, it has consistently tried to undermine it, expressing “serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.”

But on March 15, 100 U.S. senators (who find it difficult to agree on anything) unanimously passed SR 546, which “encourages member states to petition the ICC or other appropriate international tribunal to take any appropriate steps to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Russian Armed Forces.”

To Palestinians and their allies, U.S. hypocrisy is palpable. The United States selectively criticizes some countries (such as Russia and China) for their human rights violations but pointedly ignores Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and its commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people.

Opponents of Israel’s crimes should register their strong opposition to the United States’ enabling of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians — both to their congress members and to the White House.

As long as the U.S. government receives no significant pushback, it will continue to facilitate Israel’s illegal occupation and violate the human rights of the Palestinian people. People can also join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” radio.

This article is from Truthoutand reprinted with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Vermont's First Trans Lawmaker Gets Engaged at Rainbow-Lit White House

Vermont state Rep. Taylor Small said she wants her engagement to her partner, Carsen Russell, to show queer people that they can find the same joy

Published December 16, 2022

Courtesy Rep. Taylor Small
Vermont Rep. Taylor Small got engaged to her partner, Carsen Russell (left), after the Respect for Marriage Act signing at the White House on Tuesday.

Vermont Rep. Taylor Small, the state’s first transgender lawmaker, got engaged to her partner, Carsen Russell, while the White House was lit with rainbow lights on Tuesday.

The two traveled to the nation’s capital to attend the signing ceremony for the Respect for Marriage Act, a federal bill that will provide additional protection for same-sex marriages.

As the event was wrapping up, Russell said he asked Small if she wanted to take a photo. Then he got down on one knee. “I was just like, ‘I want to spend my life with you, and will you marry me?’” Russell told NBC News on Friday in a joint interview with Small.

Small recalled saying yes “immediately.”

Small, who was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 2020 and re-elected in November, said it was a “full-circle” moment for the couple, who met in Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, in December 2017 at a drag show.

WUHAN THE NEW BENGAZI
Top House intel Republican says committee will subpoena intel community over COVID origins

BY KATHRYN WATSON, GRACE KAZARIAN
UPDATED ON: DECEMBER 16, 2022 /

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee says Republicans will issue subpoenas to the intelligence community to gather information about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

GOP Rep. Mike Turner told CBS News senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge that Republicans plan to examine the intelligence behind the virus' origins, which they are not currently able to access. Republicans this week released a report on the intelligence community's look at the pandemic's origins this week. Democratic investigators on the committee also released their own report alleging that intelligence agencies may have lost a key opportunity to determine the virus' origins by not securing resources earlier.

"We will be issuing subpoenas on these materials and on this information," Turner told Herridge during the interview, which aired Friday on CBS News. He said Republicans on the committee are interested in the information that formed the basis of the intelligence community's report on COVID-19, which was divided on the virus' origins.

"When the Biden administration's report was issued from the intelligence community, in group, we asked, 'Show us the information that you looked at that substantiates your conclusions and your assessment,'" Turner said.

All of the agencies agreed that there were two possible hypotheses – natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident.

Republicans will have subpoena power after they take the House in January, and Turner will likely be the committee's chairman. Republicans are planning to hold hearings on the pandemic's origins, some of which Turner said won't be public.

On the topic of Russia's war on Ukraine, Turner said Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be "doubled down" rather than reaching a breaking point, with no intention of changing course. Turner believes Russia will recover some of its strength and resources over the winter.

Putin is "not going to just look at the failure that's happening in Ukraine and change at all," Turner said. After the winter, Turner predicted, Putin "will have regrouped — he will have ... replenished his military, and the conflict will probably continue."

Herridge asked whether the risk of nuclear war is increasing, given the Russian military's recent release of a video depicting a possible intercontinental ballistic missile being primed.

"I think it's been high and constant," Turner responded. "And this is this is a thing that I believe needs to to change our policy and European policy as we go into the next year." He said that the U.S. and allies had wanted "to be hesitant to deploy missile defense technology" in order to maintain a stance of deterrence.

Turner said the U.S. and Europe need to step up to deploy missile defense technology to protect the West and the U.S.

The interview took place on "Weekender," which airs Friday on the CBS News Streaming network.

Maine Lawmakers Move To Block Stricter Rules Protecting Endangered Whales

In a draft provision obtained by HuffPost, Sen. Susan Collins (R) and others seek to void a judge’s order for stronger safeguards for North Atlantic right whales.

Chris D'Angelo
 Dec 19, 2022


Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), shown here at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 8, has drafted a provision that would curtail efforts to bolster protections for the North Atlantic right whale.
ANNA MONEYMAKER VIA GETTY IMAGES

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and other members of the state’s congressional delegation are pushing for a provision in the massive government funding bill that could further endanger the already precarious North Atlantic right whale.

In July, a federal judge ruled that a 2021 regulation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which established new requirements for lobster traps in an effort to reduce the risk of those traps entangling and harming or killing whales, didn’t go far enough. Among other things, the rules limited the number of vertical fishing lines that could be deployed in Maine waters and set new seasonal zone restrictions, but the ruling said the regulations fell short of legal requirements under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The judge has since given federal regulators until 2024 to come up with what are expected to be even stricter rules to safeguard the imperiled whale.

The provision, which has not yet been introduced, seeks to block those regulations and cement the 2021 rule for a minimum of 10 years. HuffPost obtained a copy of the draft language late Friday.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) supports the omnibus provision, as do Gov. Janet Mills (D) and the rest of Maine’s congressional delegation, King’s office told HuffPost. In an email statement, Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) said Maine’s lobster industry has been “unfairly targeted by activist organizations” and that he and the rest of the delegation are working to “provide relief” in the omnibus bill.

The population of North Atlantic right whales has been steadily falling since 2010, and fewer than 350 are estimated to be still living. The species faces myriad threats, including entanglements in fishing gear, vessel strikes and climate change.


This photograph provided by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources shows an endangered North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing rope as it swims with a newborn calf on Dec. 2, 2021, off Cumberland Island, Georgia.
GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES/NOAA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Environmental groups, including the three that have waged a multiyear legal battle against the federal government to secure more stringent protections for right whales, were quick to condemn Collins’ effort.

In a letter Friday to Democratic leadership, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and other organizations argued the provision “would set a damaging precedent for the political override of science-based decisionmaking under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Act; undermine active federal litigation and reverse judicial orders; and further threaten the survival of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.”

“We urge you to do everything possible to keep this extraordinarily harmful provision, which would set an equally harmful precedent, out of the Omnibus,” says the letter, which was addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Appropriations chair Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and House Appropriations Committee chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).

Collins’ office called the proposed provision “a simple compromise” and slammed critics in the conservation community.

“It would allow for the continued sustainable management of the fishery while advancing innovative gear technology, which these groups have called for,” Collins’ spokesperson Christopher Knight said in an email.

Knight pointed out that there is no documented case of a right whale dying from becoming entangled in Maine lobster gear. In their Friday letter, however, environmentalists noted that “most entanglements are never detected or identified to a fishery because of the difficulties in spotting entangled whales and confirming the source of entangling gear.”

“Maine lobstermen have a 150-year history of sustainability, and Maine’s lobstering community has consistently demonstrated their commitment to protecting right whales,” Knight said. “If these groups are unwilling to agree to something so straightforward, it shows an utter disdain for the men and women who make their living from one of the best managed and sustainable fisheries on earth.”

A worker weighs a lobster to sort at The Lobster Co. in Arundel, Maine, on Jan. 24, 2022.
XINHUA NEWS AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES


Whether the lobster fishery is sustainable has become a topic of heated debate. In September, Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, which ranks seafood sustainability, added the American and Canadian lobster catches to its “red list” of species to avoid due to the risk harvesting the crustaceans poses to right whales. And last month the London-based Marine Stewardship Council suspended its sustainability certificate for the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery, citing the July federal court ruling. In response to the assessments, several retailers, including Whole Foods, pulled the crustaceans from their shelves and menus.

“Entanglement in fishing gear is the leading cause of serious injury and death to North Atlantic right whales,” Seafood Watch wrote in its decision, adding that “current management measures do not go far enough to mitigate entanglement risks and promote recovery of the species.”

It remains to be seen if the 11th-hour provision ends up in the final omnibus package to fund the federal government in 2023, which is expected to total over $1.5 trillion. Jay Tilton, a spokesman for Leahy, said it is Appropriations Committee policy not to comment on omnibus negotiations until the bill text is public.

Connor Fagan, federal policy manager at ocean advocacy group Oceana, told HuffPost that if Congress signs off on Collins’ provision, it will “undermine our own government’s legacy of safeguarding vulnerable species and endorse putting politics ahead of science.”

“Halting development of necessary additional safeguards by our government agency established to protect our oceans and wildlife is the wrong move and denies established science,” he said via email. “Progress doesn’t happen at a standstill. By freezing federal regulations in place for the next decade, this dangerous proposal is short-sighted and will have catastrophic impacts to science-based management of the iconic, critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.”

Golden accused environmental groups, including the Conservation Law Foundation, of abusing the court system to force “misguided regulations.”

“These organizations and their allies ought to be concerned that absent a strategic pause, as proposed by this amendment, their strategy of regulation through lawsuit may well come back to bite them, as Maine lobstermen are rightly prepared to fight this unfair campaign all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the outcome for these activist groups could be a dramatic but justified reversal to more reasonable efforts to protect the right whale,” he said.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

SBF’s Ex-Girlfriend and FTX Co-Founder Both Cooperating After Guilty Pleas

THEY ALL FALL DOWN

Both Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, are cooperating with prosecutors as they build a case against the fallen crypto kingpin.


AJ McDougall
Breaking News Reporter
Updated Dec. 21, 2022

Mario Duncanson/AFP via Getty Images


Two former lieutenants in fallen kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire pleaded guilty to criminal charges and are cooperating with federal prosecutors probing the fiery collapse of FTX, officials said late Wednesday.

Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried’s sometime lover, and Gary Wang, a co-founder of the $32-billion crypto exchange, were charged “in connection with their roles in the frauds that contributed to FTX’s collapse,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a brief video address.

Ellison, 28, pleaded guilty to seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, according to a plea agreement obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The seven counts carry a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison

Wang, 29, pleaded guilty to four counts: wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He faces up to five decades behind bars.

An attorney for Ellison declined to comment on the matter to the newspaper. In a statement, Wang’s lawyer, Ilan Graff, said, “Gary has accepted responsibility for his actions and takes seriously his obligations as a cooperating witness.”

Williams emphasized in his video statement that the pair were unlikely to be the last people targeted in the ongoing investigation.

“Let me reiterate a call that I made last week: If you participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda, now is the time to get ahead of it,” he said. “We are moving quickly, and our patience is not eternal.”

Ellison and Wang were also charged in a civil suit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission “for their roles in a multiyear scheme” to defraud FTX’s investors, the agency said in a separate Wednesday statement.

Calling the pair “active participants” in the plot to deceive FTX’s investors, the SEC laid out the alleged plot: Wang would illegally divert FTX customer assets to Alameda, which Ellison would use to fuel the firm’s trading activity. “And Bankman-Fried used those customer funds to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations,” the agency said in its amended complaint.

Wang and Bankman-Fried, “with Ellison’s knowledge and consent,” also afforded Alameda “significant special treatment on the FTX platform,” essentially giving the firm “a virtually unlimited ‘line of credit’ funded by the platform’s customers,” the complaint explained.

Ellison was also responsible for artificially inflating the value of FTT, the self-issued tokens that FTX handed out for free to Alameda, by snatching them up on various platforms, according to the SEC. This, in turn, would make the FTT used as collateral against Alameda’s loans more valuable, allowing her to borrow billions more, investigators wrote in the complaint.

“When FTX and the rest of the house of cards collapsed, Mr. Bankman-Fried, Ms. Ellison, and Mr. Wang left investors holding the bag,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said.

Despite Bankman-Fried’s insistence that he was “shocked” by the collapse of what he’d seen as “a thriving business,” and that he’d been unaware of the extent of the illegal activity going on at Alameda, federal officials have alleged that he and his inner circle knew exactly what they were doing.

In a complaint made public earlier this month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Bankman-Fried and his top executives across both Alameda and FTX had had “widespread access to each other’s systems and accounts.” In addition to allegedly co-mingling funds, the nominally separate teams also shared “key personnel, technology and hardware, intellectual property, and other resources,” the CFTC said.

A major step forward in the case against Bankman-Fried, Ellison and Wang’s guilty pleas come amid news that the disgraced mogul had been transferred to U.S. custody after being extradited from the Bahamas, where he was arrested earlier this month.

After being flown to New York—in the company of federal agents—the 30-year-old is expected make an initial court appearance in Manhattan as soon as Thursday.

We Haven’t Seen Trump’s Taxes Yet, But It’s Clear the IRS Failed America

DO BETTER

The IRS is required to conduct audits of the President and Vice President while they are in office—but Trump apparently got a pass.


Shan Wu
Updated Dec. 22, 2022 
OPINION

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The quest for Donald Trump’s taxes is finally over and whatever secrets Trump fought for years to conceal will soon be revealed for all to see. But one fact is already clear: The IRS botched its job.

The IRS is required to conduct audits of the president and vice president while they are in office. This requirement arose in 1997, likely in response to concerns over President Nixon’s tax troubles. But the policy–enshrined in the IRS manual, section 4.8.4.2.4–was not followed during Trump’s term in office. During his four-year term, the agency opened only one audit–of this 2016 return–which only commenced in 2019 after Chairman Richard Neal of the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the IRS seeking Trump’s returns and tax information. That audit is still not finished.

As the Committee characterized it, the IRS presidential audit program was “dormant” during Trump’s term.

Perhaps this should not have been surprising given that Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was the first Treasury Secretary to refuse to turn over tax information in response to a congressional request and when Congress sued to obtain compliance a Trump-appointed judge–Trevor McFadden–delayed ruling on the case until after Trump had left office.


But it surely must be stunning to most Americans that among the reasons cited by IRS officials for their failure to follow policy was that they were apparently intimidated by the complexities of Trump’s taxes. In an internal memo, the agency seemed to whine about the return having “about 400 flow-through returns… and since some of these are tiered… a total of 500 flow-through returns”—which meant that to “do a thorough review of these returns we would need a team much larger than the current team.”

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A “flow-through” entity is one in which the income that comes into the business passes onto the owner and is commonly used to reduce taxation.

In sum, the I.R.S. rewarded Trump’s complex business structures by throwing their hands up at the prospect of having to dig into all those hundreds of records. Excuse me, but I thought that was what IRS agents liked to do?

Note that the agency had no concerns about following its policies when it came to auditing for President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden.

The recent disclosure that, during the Trump administration, the president regularly asked for audits of those he considered his political enemies—and invasive audits of former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did occur—should raise deep concerns and trigger increased scrutiny. Such scrutiny could be undertaken by the agency’s Office of Inspector General or the the Justice Department’s Tax Division—not to mention Congress—although further work by the House of Representatives on the issue is highly unlikely given that the Republicans are about to take control of the House.

Chairman Neal and the present Ways and Means Committee have fought the good fight and put a lie to repeated claims that their investigation lacked legitimate purpose. All along, Neal stated that their purpose was to perform oversight on the effectiveness of the Presidential audit program and “on behalf of the American people… determine if that policy is being followed.”

We the people have our answer now, and it isn’t pretty.

REVEALED: The Donors to Tucker Carlson’s News Org—and Their Ethical Conflicts

CALL AND RESPONSE

Some of those bankrolling the Daily Caller got positive coverage or even wrote op-eds.


Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
Updated Dec. 20, 2022


Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

This reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. 

The non-profit that feeds the conservative Daily Caller website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals who have received favorable coverage, including some who authored opinion pieces, a new filing shows.

The document—the Daily Caller News Foundation’s fiscal year 2021 tax statement—includes for the first time a list of donors to the 501(c)(3) organization, a group that is not required by law to disclose donor information. The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours.

When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told The Wall Street Journal at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week.

Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently. Most notable is the Ariel Corporation, which manufactures natural gas compressors and gave $135,000 to support the news organization—which has for years been criticized for its pro-carbon energy reporting and financial ties to the Koch brothers, the right-wing industrialists.

Other donors have an even closer relationship with the site, including some who have published pieces in their own names, without a disclosure of their financial ties. That, according to top journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride raises ethics questions.

“With any news organization that solicits donations, you really have to have an editorial policy that articulates how you separate out your loyalty to your audience and to your journalistic mission from your ties to your donors,” McBride, who is senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told The Daily Beast.

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Such a policy, she said, would ideally include an advisement to donors that they can’t influence editorial work, and a promise of transparency whenever there’s a conflict of interest.

“You’re looking for, first of all, separation between fundraising and the editorial product, and you’re also looking for clarity around what donors can expect in exchange for their donation, as well as transparency so the audience understands,” McBride said, adding that “a tagline on an op-ed would be an obvious transparency mechanism.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the Daily Caller and Carlson for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.

The journalistic and ethical standards published on the Daily Caller website don’t mention the foundation or any policy regarding donor influence over editorial content. But some donors have contributed content themselves.

For instance, RightForge, an internet infrastructure provider that caters to conservatives, in 2021 gave the foundation $7,500. In May of that year, the Daily Caller ran an op-ed from RightForge CEO Martin Avila, criticizing what Avila called the social media “witch trial” of former President Donald Trump. Months later, RightForge announced it would host Trump’s new social media network, Truth Social.

Real estate investor Adam Milstein gave the foundation $25,000 in 2021 and published an opinion piece that same year. The piece—titled, “Strategic Active Philanthropy Can Strengthen Our American Values”—includes a brief bio for Milstein, which describes him only as “an active philanthropist, an investor, and community leader.”

While the Daily Caller has been blasted for its affinity for the fossil fuel industry, the tax filing shows the Daily Caller News Foundation received financial backing from conservative green-energy group ClearPath Action, which gave $10,000 in 2021.

ClearPath has received favorable coverage from the Daily Caller, which earlier this year cited CEO Rich Powell in an article about his group, without a disclaimer. When Powell landed a Daily Caller op-ed earlier this month, the outlet added a note to the piece and his contributor page that read, “The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.” But those notes did not mention the financial relationship.

Then there’s Daniel Oliver, a Daily Caller regular​​ contributor who also serves as trustee of the George E. Coleman Jr. Foundation, which gave the foundation $7,500 in 2021. The Daily Caller highlights some of Oliver’s rich experience in his bio—chair of the Education and Research Institute, director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, and former chairmanships of the Federal Trade Commission under President ​​Ronald Reagan and the National Review”—but doesn’t mention his role with the Coleman Foundation, or the donor relationship. (Buzzfeed News reported in 2019 that the foundation was a FDRLST Media investor, citing Oliver’s role.)

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An even more influential GOP figure also appears in the filing, in the form of a $10,000 gift from CRC Advisors, a group headed up by arch-conservative megadonor and judicial activist Leonard Leo. The Daily Caller published a piece on Friday based on the results of a CRC poll, without disclosing the relationship. The two groups also show overlap in their employees, including current CRC vice president Kevin Daley, whose LinkedIn page says he left the Daily Caller in 2020 after four years as a reporter.

​​Power the Future, a nonprofit that advocates for the fossil fuel industry, donated $10,000 in 2021 and appears frequently enough in the Daily Caller that articles about the group have their own tag on the site. Since the donation, Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner has been cited in multiple Daily Caller pieces as an expert voice, without no mention of his status as a foundation donor.

Justin Olson , an elected Arizona utility regulator and former Arizona GOP Senate candidate, gave the foundation $10,000 in 2021, listing his role at the time as an officer with right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA.

The Daily Caller has given TPUSA favorable coverage, including after the donation. It also published an exclusive report in November 2021, the month after Olson announced his bid, revealing that a Scottsdale school board official had access to a so-called Google Drive “dossier” of personal information of vocal conservatives. (Police cleared the official of wrongdoing.) Olson tweeted the article when it came out, and expressed repeated outrage at the story on the platform, while a Twitter search shows he had not tweeted about schools previously.

The filing reveals the names of 2021 donors, but does not indicate whether they had donated before. Some of the contributors who present apparent conflicts of interest have had contributor roles in the publication previously, such as Leo and Adam Milstein, who published op-eds in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, when Power the Future announced its debut, the Daily Caller had the exclusive story.

There are, of course, numerous examples of media companies drawing funding from non-profit backers. But the Daily Caller and the DCNF have a unique relationship.

The foundation was created in 2011, a few years after Carlson founded the Daily Caller with then-partner Neil Patel, who still helms the operation. Thanks to the organization’s non-profit status, the foundation can subsidize not only publication costs, but the production of the actual content—with a built-in tax break.

Part of the foundation’s stated mission is to train young reporters, but its staff also generates content, which the Daily Caller then gets to post to its site for free. And while this content is nominally available to any publication, The Washington Post reported that it’s rarely used by anyone beyond the Daily Caller. A 2017 Center for Media and Democracy report found that the Daily Caller published “virtually everything” the nonprofit churned out.

However, other groups have taken advantage of the arrangement. The fact-checking site Snopes reported in 2019 that conservative political activists appropriated foundation content to populate a number of small-time websites styling themselves as local news outlets to smuggle political content to unsuspecting audiences.

The Daily Caller has also been called out for its financial and political ties to Trump’s campaign, which shelled out about $150,000 for access to the Daily Caller email list in the 2016 election, the Center for Media and Democracy reported.

One of the most familiar examples of a donor-funded news organization would be National Public Radio. While NPR gets some government grants, most of its money comes from private contributors—including from industries it reports on. But McBride noted that NPR puts disclaimers on stories that may present an apparent conflict.

“When you listen to public media, you hear that certain people give money for certain lines of reporting, like for climate change, et cetera. So you can fund a line of reporting, but you get no influence over how that news is presented, and public media also lets the audience know when that funding may intersects with the reporting,” McBride said.

It’s unclear whether any Daily Caller News Foundation donors tabbed their contributions for specific issues or series. But some well-known issues-driven names populate the list, including top GOP megadonor and election-denial enthusiast Dick Uihlein ($25,000), anti-climate change groups the Bradley Foundation ($50,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundation ($350,000), and conservative free-market underwriters Searle Freedom Trust ($230,000).

The source of the biggest donation, however, is still unknown. That would be the $400,000 the group received through DonorsTrust, a nonprofit known as a conservative dark money “ATM,” which allows funders to channel money anonymously to various recipients. The foundation also got a $300,000 injection from someone identified as “anonymous.”

The Daily Caller operation—which has been exposed for ties to white nationalists—has been widely criticized on the left for its financial ties to energy interests, most specifically Charles Koch, who has provided millions in funding over the years, and at one point reportedly accounted for more than 83 percent of the foundation’s annual revenue.

That bankroll swelled between 2020 and 2021. The foundation’s fiscal year 2020 filing shows $1.57 million in contributions, a number that nearly doubled to $2.8 million the next year, according to the 2021 document. The foundation spent $1.4 million—$254,000 of it on fundraising—which, combined with previous assets, left it with a year-end balance of about $2.1 million.