Mehdi Hasan: Israelis Are Happy To Support Far-Right American Politicians In Exchange For U.S. Support

Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date December 8, 2022

MSNBC: Antisemitic tropes are on the rise, especially on the right. But it seems that whenever a Republican is accused of antisemitism, their response goes something like: “I can’t be antisemitic, I love Israel!” News flash, Mehdi says: Defending and praising Israel doesn’t mean you aren’t antisemitic. MSNBC political analyst Peter Beinart joins him 
"People who praise Israel as a buffer between Muslim and Arab invaders and it's been encouraged even by right-wing politicians.

SPACE RACE 2.0
China’s swift advances putting US space assets at risk, senior US officer says

Engineers work on the Shenzhou-14 capsule that returned from a six-month mission to China's space station. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

TAIPEI – China is building capabilities that put most US space assets at risk, and China sees the domain as crucial to their military strategy, the head of the US Space Command said on Friday.

Historically lagging in an area dominated by the United States and Russia, China has made significant advances in recent years that have alarmed Washington and other Western nations, including testing an anti-satellite missile in 2007.

US Army General James Dickinson, commander of the US Space Command, told reporters on a teleconference from Hawaii that such ASAT, or anti-satellite, tests congest space with debris.

“They continue to build and build capabilities that really, quite frankly, hold most of our assets at risk in the space domain. It really is an advancement, if you will, in their capabilities,” he said, referring to China.

“Their understanding (is) that space is a very important piece to not only their economic or the global economic environment but also the military environment. We continue to watch that very closely as they continue to increase capabilities,” he said.

China says its space programme is for peaceful purposes.

Three Chinese astronauts landed on Earth on Sunday onboard the re-entry capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, the state broadcaster CCTV reported, ending a six-month mission on China’s space station.

The station represents a significant milestone in China’s three-decade crewed space programme, first approved in 1992. It also flags the start of permanent Chinese habitation in space.

Gen Dickinson said his command, along with the US Indo-Pacific Command, is focused on the challenge from China.

“A unified stance by allies and partners is critical to countering the coercion and subversion that threatens the international rules-based order here in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” he said. 

REUTERS

PILOTS AT THE FOUR LARGEST U.S. AIRLINES ARE LEADING AN UPRISING

Airline pilots nationwide have hit a breaking point



December 9 2022

Denis Tajer: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. The first officer and I are on day five and we just came off of three days with a very short period of time off. We’re exhausted. We cannot continue safely.

PILOTS ARE AT A BREAKING POINT AT THE FOUR LARGEST AIRLINES IN AMERICA

Greg Everhard: This is the most important contract negotiation in a generation. United pilots are out here today to send a strong message to management that it’s past time to deliver a contract after four and a half years of negotiations

Evan Baach: Just about a month ago, Delta pilots voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. 96% of our pilots voted in this authorization and 99% of them were in favor of a strike.

Denis: Never seen this before. In my 30 years in the airline business, every major pilot contract is at about the same point. The number one demand, when you aggregate them together for our pilots, and it’s like that at other carriers: work life balance, scheduling practices. Post pandemic, Our work life balance has fallen off the shelf. Scheduling practices are make it up as you go along. And we’ve had more contract violations than we’ve ever had in our history.

Evan: By this fall, we had worked more overtime, as Delta pilots, than we have in 2018 and 2019 combined. In March of this year, we had a picket event in Atlanta to send a message to Delta management that they weren’t properly staffed for flying over the summer. And in fact, over Memorial Day weekend, Delta had a bit of an operational meltdown.

Denis: Pre-pandemic we had fatigue calls. Pilot fatigue calls. It’s just a part of the system. It’s the safety, the relief valve, but post-pandemic. We started to see them double, then go up to four times as much, five times as much, and on some days ten times as much.

Over the summer, we had some days where there was a tenfold increase in fatigue reports. That’s a formal report to the FAA. This fatigue carries over. It doesn’t just happen on one day and you’re done, you get your rest. Unless it’s handled properly, it carries into the next trip.

[Pilot at rally]: The worst thing to do is have to worry about timing out and walking off an airplane and having passengers sit there, and they’re somewhat stranded. And that’s tough.

Evan: The company is trying to schedule more flights than they have pilots available to fly.

Denis: I’d had a two day trip and while coming back they sent me a message saying they’re going to send me out for an extra day. But I had already made plans. I had a family event. It was very important to me. “Well, you’re going to have to talk to your boss because we’re putting you on report.”

I’m a 59-year-old captain responsible for 170 people flying across the globe. And I have somebody who’s probably had a year or two at the company at best, with all due respect, say, “hey, Captain, we’re starting the discipline process on you.” That just hit me professionally. I guarantee you, the more— when I heard that, I was like, I’m not going.

We have doubled down with management saying there’s a systemic problem. You’re trying to sell tickets for flights that you can’t rationally provide to our passengers, and we are not going to carry the load by flying in unsafe condition.

CONGRESS GAVE AIRLINES $54 BILLION DURING THE PANDEMIC

TO PREVENT LAYOFFS AND ENSURE THE INDUSTRY WAS READY TO FLY AFTER SHUTDOWNS ENDED

Denis: Congress kept the airlines from collapsing. It’s pretty straightforward. Here’s the money. Keep everybody on board, and keep them current, so on the other side of this, we’re good to go. They said we got it, and then they got the money and they started playing games with it. Offered early retirements at a reduced rate, voluntary; offered paid leaves of absence at a reduced rate, voluntary. And then they parked a bunch of airplanes and they didn’t retrain the pilots.

Think about that. Billions of dollars and they’re not flying as much they did in 2019 and they still can’t get it done. That’s American taxpayer money. It’s extremely precious. And the fact that you took that money and you weren’t ready for the recovery when the American traveler said, I’m back and I’m ready to fly and you weren’t ready to roll, shame on you.

We were ready to roll. But our management team? I don’t know what they did. They just weren’t ready.

Greg: Post-pandemic, there’s been a realignment in a lot of priorities for our pilots. This generation of pilots is specifically interested in improving the work life balance for our career. We want more predictability, transparency. And just like our passengers, we want more reliability in our schedules.

Denis: People should care about this fight because it’s going to bring certainty to air travel. If you don’t fix this now and stop this downward trend, you’re going to be battling this labor shortage and this skill set shortage for decades to come.

Evan: We do not want to strike—our goal is an industry-leading contract. And the ball is in the company’s court. Delta pilots have earned a contract that values us as pilots, our sacrifices and our role in their pandemic recovery.

Denis: Any airline that thinks that it can go below the market rate, not only in compensation but in work life balance and scheduling practices, will not have enough pilots to fly the airplanes that they bought. It’s that simple.

Our men and women, our pilots are fully committed to doing this in a way that is not only rewarding, but actually lives up to the high standard of being a union pilot in this industry. And we’ll get there. It’s going to be a little bit of a fight. Management is going to join us. You know, we can’t force them to do what we want, but we can sure make them wish they had.

SpaceX gives rival’s internet satellites ride to orbit

By MARCIA DUNN yesterday

1 of 7

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a payload of 40 satellites for OneWeb broadband communications, lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX launched internet satellites for a competitor Thursday, stepping in to help after the London-based OneWeb company halted its flights with Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

The Falcon rocket blasted off at sunset with 40 mini satellites bound for polar orbit. They will expand OneWeb’s constellation to just over 500, nearly 80% of the planned total of about 630 satellites.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has more than 3,200 Starlink satellites in orbit, providing high-speed, broadband internet to remote corners of the world. Amazon plans to launch the first of its internet satellites early next year from Cape Canaveral.

With the market for global internet service “growing exponentially,” there’s room for everyone, said Massimiliano Ladovaz, OneWeb’s chief technology officer.

SpaceX agreed to launch satellites for OneWeb after the British company broke ties with Russia in March. Russian Soyuz rockets already had launched 13 batches of OneWeb satellites, beginning in 2019.

India picked up the slack in October, sending up a batch of OneWeb satellites.

Although there were other launch options, SpaceX and India offered the fastest and best combination, Ladovaz said shortly before liftoff.

Two more SpaceX launches and one more by India are planned for OneWeb in the next several months to complete the company’s orbiting constellation by spring. OneWeb already is providing internet service in Alaska, Canada and northern Europe; the newest satellites will increase the range to the entire U.S. and Europe, as well as large parts of Africa and South America, and elsewhere, according to Ladovaz.

OneWeb satellites — each about the size of a washing machine and weighing 330 pounds (150 kilograms) — are built at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center through a joint venture with France’s Airbus.

Thursday’s launch occurred just several miles away from the same pad where Apollo astronauts blasted off for the moon, the last time on Dec. 7, 1972.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. 

HOWARD SCHULTZ’S OWN FOUNDATION DECRIES STARBUCKS’ TREATMENT OF ITS WORKERS



December 9 2022
By Ginny Keenan

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s foundation has released a report that rates Starbucks as one of the worst large employers in the country for worker advancement.

The Schultz Family Foundation published what it describes as an “unprecedented” study of economic outcomes for workers at America’s 250 largest companies, in partnership with Harvard Business School and The Burning Glass Institute. The study ranked major employers by how well they foster “economic mobility for workers,” including through opportunities for promotions and “the pay they offer in low- and middle-skill roles.”

Starbucks earned one of the lowest ratings in the study, placing it in the bottom 50 of the surveyed companies, beneath brands with notably poor reputations for worker treatment including Walmart and Dollar General. Within its industry category, Food and Health Retail, Starbucks ranked second to last, scoring 2.60, ahead of only McDonald’s, which scored 2.03. Costco, the leader in the category, received a 3.59.

The study gave each company an overall score based on nine measures related to topics like pay and internal job mobility. Starbucks received the lowest-possible ratings on three of the nine measures, including its wages and frequency of internal promotions. It also received low grades for employee retention and for creating “barriers to work” for applicants without a college degree.

The Schultz Family Foundation’s assessment of Starbucks is at odds with how Howard Schultz has described the company. Speaking to investors in May, Schultz said the company had a 50-year history of “leadership in wages and benefits” that reflected his “deep responsibility to our partners.” When Starbucks workers first began to unionize over a year ago, Schultz publicly stressed that he prioritized his employees’ satisfaction over shareholder profits. This echoed his 1999 memoir, where Schultz wrote that he believed if employees “had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn’t need a union.”

But the report’s findings align more closely with what Starbucks workers have said since their organizing drive launched last year. Through their union, Starbucks Workers United, employees have pushed to address many of the issues reflected in Starbucks’ low rating, including advocating for wage increases and better employee retention measures. “We want Starbucks to be a place where workers can have sustainable careers and be rewarded for their years of hard work for the company,” the union’s website states.

In response, Schultz has overseen an aggressive nationwide union-busting campaign that stalled the improvement of working conditions for employees. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) described Starbucks’ anti-union activity as “virulent, widespread and well-orchestrated.” Federal courts and regulators have repeatedly found that Starbucks has illegally surveilled, punished or fired employees for supporting the union, shuttered stores where workers had unionized, and refused to bargain in good faith as required by law.

“Starbucks has left behind the very values that drew many of us to the company in the first place,” said Starbucks barista and union organizer Michelle Eisen.

Nearly 270 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize in the past year, one of the fastest such drives in modern history, including five more locations in the last month in Arkansas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The NLRB issued two complaints in recent weeks seeking a nationwide injunction on Starbucks’ anti-union activity. If federal judges side with the board, Starbucks will for the first time be barred by court order from anti-union activity nationwide, substantially increasing the potential penalties it could face for further union-busting.

Most Albertans Already 'Disapprove' Of Danielle Smith's Performance & Here's Wh

Story by Charlie Hart • Yesterday 

A new survey looked into approval ratings for Canada's premiers. While still being fairly new to the role, it seems like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith hasn't quite won over the province.


Most Albertans Already 'Disapprove' Of Danielle Smith's Performance & Here's Why© Provided by Narcity Québec

The survey, which was conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, found that Smith had one of the lowest approval ratings out of the nine premiers included in the poll and the controversial Sovereignty Act might be why.

According to data gathered between November 28 and December 3, around two-in-five (42%) Albertans approve of her, but a slight majority (around 53%) aren't impressed with what they’ve seen from Smith so far.

The report noted that Smith has gained a lot of attention across Canada since becoming the leader of the UCP in October, making headlines with comments about vaccinations and the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

However, the report suggested that much of the reason behind Albertans' disapproval of their new premier was the pushing of the controversial Alberta Sovereignty Act, one of Smith's key policies in her campaign to become UCP leader.

"Smith tabled the controversial Alberta Sovereignty Act to aplomb from her former leadership race rivals and confusion and criticism from others," it said.

According to the report, a previous poll had found a majority opposition in Alberta to the Act. Smith had previously said it is aimed at "pushing Ottawa back into its own lane."

The Act will allow the provincial government to ignore federal laws on areas like natural resources, agriculture, firearms and health.

However, the Alberta government has said the act "will not compel any private citizen or business to violate federal law."

U$A

Revealed: 2022 Swing state voters split their tickets — citing protecting elections and preventing another Jan. 6 insurrection

Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror
December 09, 2022

Ex-US President Donald Trump embraces Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake at a campaign rally at Legacy Sports USA on October 9, 2022 in Mesa, Arizona, US. 

© Mario Tama, Getty Images, AFP

Protecting elections and a backlash to the failed January 6 insurrection drove Republican and independent voters to split their tickets, giving Democrats in top races the support they needed to pull off unexpected victories, according to new polling data.

The data, compiled by Citizen Data and Protect Democracy, polled voters in five swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Across those states, 60% of respondents said that protecting democracy was “very important” in determining their voting decision.

Voters were also asked to rank their top three most important issues when voting in the midterm, and “protecting elections” ranked third and fourth across the states. In Arizona, it was listed as the fourth-most important issue, with 36% of respondents saying it was their primary focus. Inflation, abortion and immigration took the top three spots in Arizona.

Approximately 20% of voters in the five battleground states said preventing another January 6-style incident was one of their main priorities. The January 6 Committee hearings also played a role in voter decisions, the data showed.

Over 90% of people who had heard about the committee’s work said that the hearings were either somewhat or very important to their midterm vote, with only 7% saying it wasn’t important at all. Among those who had heard about the hearings, 45.5% said it factored into their voting decisions.

In Arizona, registered Republicans and independents who split their votes among GOP and Democratic candidates ranked January 6 as a higher issue than voters who voted only for a single political party. Arizona also had the highest percentage of ticket-splitters who ranked January 6 as an issue, with 20.9% calling it a top issue. That was more than three points greater than the 17.5% of voters who said the same in Wisconsin, the next-highest state.

Those who chose to split their ticket often listed support of January 6 as a major reason for doing so, though spreading of conspiracy theories, support of former President Donald Trump and extremist views ranked higher.

“It is easy to imagine if there was no January 6 committee, that the events of that day would have faded,” Kristy Parker, an attorney at Protect Democracy and a former federal civil rights prosecutor said during a presentation of the data. Parker added that the committee helped people understand what happened that day and start to create layers of accountability.

Mindy Finn, CEO of Citizen Data, which conducted the polling, said that this is the fourth poll the firm has conducted related to January 6 to see how it has impacted voter opinions over time.

“The more voters hear and learn from the committee, the more likely they are to penalize politicians connected to January 6,” Finn said. “The data is pretty clear that not only January 6 was very important, but so was the committee itself for voters.”

Finn added that the data also dispels a belief that democracy itself isn’t a “kitchen table issue” and it is one that voters are really paying attention to now.

“This data really sends a different message,” Finn said. “Just knowing that these issues do matter and they do resonate.”

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

Supreme Court seems ready to legalize the 2021 Trump coup tactics

December 8, 2022 10:42 AM CST BY MARK GRUENBERG AND JOHN WOJCIK


Nadine Seiler of Waldorf, Md., holds a sign that reads 'SCOTUS is Illegitimate' in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Dec. 7, 2022, as the Court hears arguments on a new elections case that could dramatically alter voting in 2024 and beyond. | Andrew Harnik / AP

WASHINGTON—The right-wing Republican-named U.S. Supreme Court majority appears to be on the verge of approving a Republican-pushed radical theory to give state legislatures, and only them, complete control of voting and elections—to the dismay of both the court’s three Democratic-named justices and of demonstrators outside the court yesterday. If they end up ruling the way they seemed to be leaning yesterday the entire U.S. election system will be upended, killing the ability of voters, not lawmakers, to choose the president.

There would also be no way to counter any gerrymandering of district lines by the courts or anyone else on the state and federal levels. The broadest interpretation of the extremist right-wing theory the Court is considering would also remove the veto power from state governors when it comes to any matters relating to elections. Early voting, voting by mail, same day voter registration, and many other things could be consigned to the ash heap of history by right-wing legislators determined to kill democracy. Reasonable legal scholars have joined countless other civil and human rights activists in declaring that the Republican attempt to kill democratic elections in the country should never have been taken up by the Court.

“This could upset our entire system of checks and balances at a time we need it most,” Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three progressive justices, told lawyers arguing the Moore v Harper case on Dec. 7.

“This is a theory with big consequences,” Justice Kagan added. “It would say that if a legislature engages in the most extreme forms of gerrymandering, there is no remedy for that—even if the courts think that’s a violation of the Constitution.”

Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, who is facing disbarment for lying in court, pushed the theory of independent state legislatures now before the Supreme Court as the justification for their attempted coup in January of 2021.

An out-of-control state legislature would be able to substitute its own slate of presidential electors for the ones voters had chosen on Election Day – the very strategy former President Donald Trump employed in trying to overturn his election loss in 2020. For almost the entirety of U.S. history state constitutions and the courts have prevented this from happening – the right wing’s success in the Supreme Court would end the centuries-old protections.

North Carolina Republicans who brought the case to the Court so they could maintain severely gerrymandered district lines are hanging their hats on the very narrow phrase in the Constitution that says the “times, places and manner” of elections are set by state legislatures. Nowhere does it say that there are no checks, like there are with everything else in the Constitution, to control an out-of-control state legislature.

Outside the court, demonstrators protested its looming denial of everyone’s voting rights by leaving such basic rights to the whims of politically skewed legislatures. One woman captured their sentiments, raising a large bedsheet banner above her head while standing on the plaza in front of the court.

“SCOTUS is illegitimate,” it read in capital letters. “Illegitimate” was in red.

At issue is the “independent state legislatures” theory, pushed by North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature in the Moore case. The ACLU and its allies warned of the harm that could ensue if the state lawmakers had no checks or balances on their power. Biden administration, siding with them, said complete chaos could result.

ACLU allies, in friend of the court briefs, included the nation’s biggest union, the National Education Association, and the venerable Jewish labor group, the Worker’s Circle.

In the friend-of-the-court brief the two joined, lawyers told the court that voters of color and women, in particular, would lose voting rights of all types—from the right to vote to the right to have their votes counted to the right to true reporting of election results.

Inside the court, the right-wingers—Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch—seemed sympathetic to North Carolina’s argument, which rests on the one small U.S. Constitution clause.

How the radical right took the Court

Right-wing Republican Oval Office occupant Donald Trump, aided by the right-wing Federalist Society, which evaluated his court nominees, and Senate Republicans who approved them, seated Justices Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, and Gorsuch on the High Court bench.

Getting right to the point, attorney David Thompson, speaking for North Carolina’s legislature, declared the U.S. Constitution “requires state legislatures specifically to perform the federal function of prescribing regulations for federal elections. States lack the authority to restrict the legislatures’ substantive discretion when performing this federal function.”

In prior cases, the right-wingers have signaled they would be open to handing all power over election laws to legislatures but didn’t really show their hand in the Dec. 7 court session.

One exception came when Biden’s Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, argued against the theory and that states must follow their own constitutions, their courts, and the U.S. Constitution. That prompted Justice Thomas to call the administration’s stand “highly ironic.”

If the five right-wing justices agree with North Carolina’s Republican-run legislature, their ruling would cement right-wing domination of government for decades. Chief Justice John Roberts, an institutionalist unlike the five, threw a monkey wrench into Carolina’s case by getting Thompson to admit a governor could veto any election law the legislature enacts.

“Vesting the power to veto the actions of the legislature” in the governor “significantly undermines the argument that it can do whatever it wants…That’s a pretty significant exception” to the whole theory and case, the Chief Justice said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson got Thompson to admit that he believed even a state’s own constitution couldn’t override the legislature’s election laws. She replied “Mm-hmm,” when he said that.

“I guess what I’m a little worried about is the suggestion that when the legislature is acting—is exercising—legislative authority in this context (of elections), it does not have to adhere to any state constitutional constraints on its power,” Justice Jackson later told former Democratic Solicitor General Neal Katyal, arguing for the ACLU and against the theory.

North Carolina’s Thompson “is saying we do have to comply with the federal Constitution. What we can violate is the state constitution. And what I don’t—I can’t—wrap my mind around that argument,” Justice Jackson told Katyal. “I can’t either,” he replied.

Biden Administration Solicitor General Prelogar warned chaos would occur, for states and voters, if the court adopts the independent state legislatures theory and applies it to all elections, from the presidency on down.


“Their theory would invalidate constitutional provisions in every single state, many tracing back to the founding. That would sow chaos on the ground as state and federal elections would have to be administered under divergent rules,” she said. Courts “would be flooded with new claims, often at the 11th hour, in the midst of hotly contested elections.

“The court should adhere to the consistent practice that has governed for more than two centuries and should reject petitioners’”—North Carolina’s—”atextual, ahistorical, and destabilizing interpretation of the (Constitution’s) Elections Clause,” Prelogar said.

The justices are expected to decide the case by the end of June.


CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg
Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but a holy terror when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners. El galardonado periodista Mark Gruenberg es el director de la oficina de People's World en Washington, D.C. También es editor del servicio de noticias sindicales Press Associates Inc. (PAI).

John Wojcik
John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.

Claiming hackers linked to Chinese govt stole US COVID relief benefits ‘ridiculous, old trick’
By Cao Siqi

Published: Dec 06, 2022

cyber attack Photo:VCG

Chinese cybersecurity experts on Tuesday slammed a report that claims hackers linked to the Chinese government stole millions in US COVID-19 relief benefits, saying that such an accusation is ridiculous and an apparent old trick to divert domestic attention from the recent “Twitter Files” controversy related to US President Joe Biden.

US broadcaster NBC news reported on Monday that hackers linked to the Chinese government stole at least $20 million in US COVID-19 relief benefits, including Small Business Administration loans and unemployment insurance funds in over a dozen states, citing the US Secret Service.

The report said that US law enforcement officials and cybersecurity experts believed the theft of taxpayer funds by the Chengdu-based hacking group known as APT41 was the first instance of pandemic fraud tied to foreign, state-sponsored cybercriminals that the US government has acknowledged such claims publicly, but this may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Shen Yi, director of the Research Institution for Global Cyberspace Governance at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that it is hilarious to hear some US officials find such a “new” excuse to smear China.

“As the world’s second-largest economy, is it necessary for the Chinese government to steal money from the US government?” Shen mocked.

The expert stressed that the Chinese government has never and will never instruct any hacker organization to attack other governments as the country firmly opposes and cracks down on hacker attacks of all forms in accordance with the law, still less will it encourage, support or connive in hacker attacks.

It is not the first time that the US accuses the Chinese government of supporting the so-called APT41 hacker group to launch cyberattacks against the country.

A report issued by US cybersecurity company Mandiant in March claimed that APT41, supported by the Chinese government, had infiltrated six – and likely more – state governments using back doors in popular softwares, and it was exfiltrating data on US citizens.

The report did not identify the state or motive behind the hack, but VOA reported that APT41 was motivated by traditional espionage as well as financial gain.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded at that time that the US has long used the issue of cybersecurity as a tool for stigmatization, political manipulation and spreading disinformation. China urges the US to take an objective and rational attitude toward cybersecurity and jointly address the challenge of hacking through dialogue and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect.

“The US has never offered any explanation about Chinese cybersecurity companies’ discloses of its attacks against China, while continuing to spread disinformation about China through various means in an attempt to divert the attention of the international community,” Zhao said. “Such a tactic of ‘the thief is crying to stop a thief’ will not succeed.”

The previous reports, the Global Times has revealed how US military and government cyber agencies have remotely stolen more than 97 billion pieces of global internet data and 124 billion phone records in the last 30 days and various spy tools deployed by the US’ NSA, which are capable of lurking in a victim's computer to access sensitive information, controlling global internet equipment and stealing large amounts of user information.

Shen pointed out that the report is an apparent attempt to divert domestic attention in the US from the recent Biden files scandal.

On Friday evening, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk promoted a leak of documents on his personal account, which the website Politico claimed was the latest sign that the tech billionaire continues to steer the platform in a direction more favorable to conservatives and libertarians. The internal company discussions offer insight on the dissent and confusion inside Twitter as it responded to the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s files in the closing weeks of the last presidential campaign.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Mystery of Terra Collapse Deepens With Possible FTX Role Raised

Emily Nicolle, Bloomberg News

The Terra Luna stablecoin logo on a smartphone arranged in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Monday, May 16, 2022. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem, and the tokens Luna and UST, will go down as one of the most painful and devastating chapters in crypto history. Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The latest twist in the downfall of crypto maven Sam Bankman-Fried is prompting a reexamination of the implosion of the Terra algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem that wiped out around $40 billion in market value earlier this year. 

US prosecutors are said to be investigating Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its sister trading platform Alameda Research, regarding his possible involvement in orchestrating the death spiral of TerraUSD (UST) and its affiliated token Luna, according to a report in the New York Times citing people with knowledge of the matter. Separately, Bloomberg News reported that FTX’s new CEO and bankruptcy lawyers met this week with Manhattan federal prosecutors investigating the failed exchange. 

The Terra ecosystem was helmed by the symbiotic relationship between the two tokens that was managed by lines of automated code to govern circulation. If the price of UST went above $1, traders were incentivized to swap Luna for UST at a profit, and vice versa, thus in theory keeping UST’s circulation in check. 

But when investors lost confidence in one, the other went down too, and so they were locked in a so-called death spiral that saw their value plummet to near zero in a week’s time in May. 

Whose actions helped precipitate the decline has remained in question. There were two sides to this trade. The first is the side that traders can see on-chain, where wallet addresses were visibly swapping UST for other tokens, and that caused the market to start to panic. The other is on centralized exchanges’ order books, where the “who’s who” is harder to track because user information is not disclosed by platforms.

“People are often seeing half the picture,” Nikita Fadeev, partner at London-based crypto fund Fasanara Digital, said in a message Thursday. “Even blockchain data wouldn’t necessarily tell you the whole picture, and can muddy the water in terms of the ability to interpret the data.”

On-Chain Mismatch

In early May, signs of unease about UST’s stability had begun to emerge. Anchor, a decentralized lending protocol on the Terra blockchain, reduced the yields it offered to clients to 18%, implying that it had started to feel the brunt of offering unsustainable rates to traders willing to lock up their tokens. 

On May 7, UST’s issuer Terraform Labs withdrew $150 million in UST liquidity from Curve, a platform that offered a pool where investors could swap UST for other stablecoins such as USDC at equal value. Do Kwon, Terraform’s founder, said this was a preparatory move ahead of deploying more cash into the pool in a week’s time. 

But one minute later, an unknown wallet swapped $84 million in UST from the pool for USDC. And that wallet wasn’t the only one swapping out their UST, with 12 others also moving tokens between May 7 and May 8, to the tune of $321 million. Seven of those wallets had been withdrawing UST from Anchor as early as January, data analytics firm Nansen said, and as the stablecoin started to spiral in May, the main $84 million perpetrator withdrew around $193 million in UST from Anchor.

Kwon inferred Thursday on Twitter that Alameda had been involved in pushing down the value of UST. 

Suffice to say, all the moves in May imbalanced the Curve pool, which by that point had more UST than any of the other three tokens. Terraform’s Luna Foundation Guard — a fund established to raise money for the sole purpose of keeping UST worth $1 — leapt into action, removing $100 million in UST from the pool. In order to do that, it had to sell Bitcoin it kept in reserves for exactly this purpose, a process which coupled with declining market sentiment, pushed the price of Bitcoin down by 29% that week. 

This was taking place as LFG and Terraform Labs were already in fire-fighting mode, expending a lot of stored crypto cash in a bid to keep UST and Luna from dropping to zero. They weren’t successful either, with panic swapping and $10 billion in withdrawals from Anchor making it impossible for the LFG to balance the scales. 

While most UST activity was happening on decentralized protocols like Anchor and Curve in May, there was also still a bit of action on centralized exchanges like Binance, FTX and others. The only problem was that as UST and Luna’s prices began to come under pressure, virtually all liquidity for UST on major exchanges evaporated.

Data collated by blockchain analytics firm Kaiko at the time showed that on May 8, a huge round of “sell” orders appeared on Binance for a pair that would trade UST and another stablecoin, Tether’s USDT. On the same exchange, the “ask” side of UST’s order book increased, which would have made it really difficult for the token to re-peg to the dollar. 

“Ultimately, the poor liquidity on centralized exchanges likely played a huge role in UST’s depegging, along with a series of events exacerbated by a rush of UST out of Anchor,” Kaiko’s Riyad Carey wrote at the time. 

Kaiko also found that funding rates and volumes suggested that someone was aggressively shorting Luna. But because the LFG was so focused on spending Bitcoin to help shore up UST on Anchor and Curve, there was relatively little left to match the massive sell wall that its price was facing on exchanges.

The bulk of those “sell” orders against UST appeared to be coming from Alameda, the person cited by the New York Times said. US officials declined to comment when reached by Bloomberg News. FTX did not respond to email requests.

“While we can’t prove this was FTX, it could have been them,” said Clara Medalie, head of research at Kaiko, in an email.

--With assistance from Ava Benny-Morrison.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.