Friday, January 06, 2023

FROM THE HORSES MOUTH

How the Catholic Church influenced the pro-life movement

END THEIR CHARITABLE STATUS IN US & CANADA

Experts see Dobbs decision as an opportunity to call on pro-life movement to embrace Church's teachings on human life

Abortion rights activists protest as guests arrive for the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life Americas annual gala and fundraising dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, on Sept. 13, 2022. (Photo: AFP)

By Kate Scanlon, OSV News
Published: January 04, 2023 04:58 AM GMT

While the nation's legal landscape regarding abortion has changed after the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in June 2022, the church's pro-life advocacy has entered a new phase. But this is nothing new for the church and members of the faithful who have long been key players in efforts to oppose expanded abortion laws.

In fact, early efforts to oppose broadening the practice of abortion in the United States were largely driven by Catholics.

Historian Daniel K. Williams, author of "Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement before Roe v. Wade," told OSV News in an interview that when abortion liberalization laws were proposed in the mid-1960s, "the overwhelming majority of the people speaking out against those bills were Catholic."

"Even in the early 1970s, the movement was probably more than 80% Catholic," Williams said.

Most of the pro-life organizations that formed in the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s were in northern states in traditionally Catholic areas, "which were also strongly Democratic constituencies," he said.

"Many of the pro-life activists approached the subject of abortion from the standpoint of a broader Catholic social ethic that viewed prohibitions on abortion as one piece of a larger concern for the poor and marginalized, one piece of a larger campaign for a society that would ensure human flourishing," he said.

Those activists were dismayed that, in their view, a right to life was being challenged by these proposals, he said. They campaigned against them with a message of a package of rights closely tied to the philosophies behind the New Deal and the Great Society. These same activists were also often staunch opponents of the Vietnam War.

As early as the late 1940s, Williams said, when the nation's U.S. Catholic bishops created a model list of human rights, "they started with the right to life, but then they also included the right to an education, the right to protection of labor unions, the right to a living wage."

When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, abortion opponents included Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts "and even some liberals who were not Catholic, like Jesse Jackson, and many African Americans were strongly opposed to abortion in the 1970s," Williams said.

At the same time, many prominent Republicans, such as first lady Betty Ford and the future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, were supportive of legalized abortion.

After Roe, however, the Democratic Party was largely split on the issue of abortion due to its pro-choice feminist and pro-life Catholic factions, and it avoided taking a firm position on the ruling. This paved the way for abortion opponents to form an alliance with Republicans instead.

In the 1980s, Williams said, the Republican Party and pro-life activists embraced a judicial strategy to change or reverse Roe "not through a constitutional amendment, but through the Supreme Court, by conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, that really did have an effect and brought the pro-life movement into closer alliance with the Republican Party building on that foundation that was already laid."

By the late 1980s and 1990s, Williams said, a "significant difference between the two parties in terms of their congressional delegations, regarding the abortion issue" began to emerge in ways they had not before.

Over the course of the 1980s, millions of socially conservative evangelicals came eventually to join Catholics in opposition to abortion.

"They embraced a lot of the traditional pro-life thinking but processed that through the lens of a different set of political commitments," Williams said, specifically "a desire to see secularization and the sexual revolution reversed in society" as opposed to Catholics' broader social justice ethic.

Mary FioRito, a Catholic commentator and Cardinal Francis George Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told OSV News that abortion is not a Catholic issue but a human rights issue. She said the Catholic Church and its members were poised to take the issue on as a part of the church's social justice work. Meanwhile, the position was guided by the church's intellectual tradition, which "equipped it with really good lawyers and other advocates, scientists, doctors who could help argue the pro-life case in the public square," she said.

FioRito pointed to the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, a Catholic Democrat, who signed a state law requiring parental consent and a 24-hour waiting period for an abortion in his first term. Planned Parenthood challenged that law, leading to the Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The Supreme Court upheld legal abortion as part of a constitutional right to privacy in a 1992 ruling. Along with Roe v. Wade, that ruling was also struck down with the court's Dobbs ruling.

Olivia Gans Turner, a Catholic and president of the Virginia Society for Human Life, a state affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, told OSV News that her group is non-sectarian, and is "focused on the scientific reality that everybody can be pro-life because everybody's life starts the same way at the moment of fertilization."

But Catholic pro-life efforts, she said, are "companionable" to such a focus, because both recognize abortion is an act of violence against a child that can also lead to psychological damage to mothers and fathers.

One of the foremost examples of this, she explained, was Project Rachel founder Vicki Thorn, who passed away in April 2022. Thorn was an influential part of the Catholic Church's pro-life advocacy by ministering to women who had undergone abortions.

FioRito agreed and said Thorn demonstrated "tremendous compassion," and her efforts with Project Rachel helped "sensitize people not to be judgmental about women who've had abortions." Thorn's witness helped the pro-life movement recognize that many women experience various types of coercion prior to an abortion, whether from a partner or even from their parents or employers.

Experts see the Dobbs decision as an opportunity for Catholic scholars and leaders to call on the pro-life movement to embrace the totality of the Church's teachings on human life -- not solely opposition to abortion -- in its efforts to build a culture of life.

O. Carter Snead, director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and Professor of Law and concurrent professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, told OSV News partisanship surrounding abortion as a political issue has led to criticism of the church or the U.S. bishops as singularly focused on abortion.

"It has always been the case that the Catholic Church has been a strong witness in favor of life," Snead said, noting that many bishops and Catholics do see abortion as a "unique problem that does require a sustained response," but the church never abandoned its other social welfare efforts. He said the U.S. bishops are "doing work on immigration, poverty, health care, war, racism, and all these other very deep and important questions."

In fact, the Catholic message coming out of the U.S. bishops' fall assembly contained a warning that without "radical solidarity" for both mothers and babies in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, the church and pro-life movement could face a situation where they won the fight to overturn Roe, only to lose the overall struggle for a culture of life.

In his Nov. 15 address to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, conference vice president Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore said the Church “cannot remain silent about abortion” but it cannot afford to ignore “the deep social problems that push women toward having an abortion.”

“Our commitment to help mothers bring their babies to term," he said, "is wholly compatible with our commitment to work for a society in which both mother and child can flourish."

Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique and Switzerland join UN Security Council

Brooke Forbes | Newcastle Law School, AU

JANUARY 4, 2023 07:28:12 PM

The UN Security Council Tuesday welcomed new members Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique and Switzerland. This is the first time Mozambique and Switzerland have held seats in the security council.

The council consists of 15 countries. Five of them–China, France, Russia, the UK and the US–are permanent members with veto powers. The other ten members are elected by the 193-nation General Assembly for two-year terms, allocated by whatever global region the countries are located in.

Japan UN Ambassador Kimihiro Ishikane, President of the Security Council for January, commented at the flag ceremony on the need to “uphold the rule of law and consider what we can do for the many people whose security and livelihoods are under threat today.” Ishikane said there were three key elements to success in the role:

Firstly, an active contribution to global peace and security. Secondly addressing the common challenges of international community based on the idea of human security. Thirdly, strengthening the rule of law.

The council, which takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression, is the only UN body authorized to use force to maintain or restore international peace and security. The council can also authorize sanctions, but according to the UN’s website, the council “calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement.”

UN News reported that 192 UN Member States participated in the election. The five newly-elected countries are taking the place of India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway. Their terms ended December 31, 2021. The newly-elected countries will join Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and the United Arab Emirates around the UN Security Council’s signature horseshoe table.

Legality of Israel’s occupation referred to UN court

Maureen Clare Murphy

Rights and Accountability

5 January 2023

Israeli settlers attempt to establish a new settlement in the northern West Bank in October 2015. Yotam RonenActiveStills

Last week, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank – including East Jerusalem – and Gaza.

The resolution asks the court to set out the legal consequences of Israel’s violation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian land since 1967.

This includes “measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status” of Jerusalem and the “adoption of discriminatory legislation and measures.”

The resolution also asks the court to determine “the legal consequences that arise for all states and the United Nations” as a result of its findings.

The International Court of Justice is the UN’s tribunal for settling legal disputes submitted by states and requests for advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it through the UN system.

Though both are based in The Hague, the International Court of Justice is a separate body from the International Criminal Court, which opened an investigation into the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last year.

Advisory opinions issued by the ICJ are non-binding.

Ignored

This will not be the first time that the ICJ has weighed in on Israel’s activities in occupied Palestinian territory.

In 2004, the court ruled that Israel’s construction of a massive wall in the occupied West Bank was illegal and must be stopped immediately and that reparations should be made for damage caused.

The 2004 advisory opinion had little effect on the ground in Palestine and is one of many recommendations made by UN organs concerning Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights that has gone ignored – both by Israel and third states.

Ahead of last week’s vote, the Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council stated that despite the limited material effect of the 2004 advisory opinion, “the case supported the undeniable right of the Palestinian people to their self-determination under international law and emphasizes the illegality of all annexations and settlements.”

Additionally, the court’s 2004 ruling found that Israel’s wall in the West Bank amounted to de facto annexation of occupied territory.

Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights group, said that the new advisory opinion “may incur, for the first time, important obligations on third states and the international community to bring the occupation to an end.”

Palestinian human rights groups championed the resolution, which was drafted by the UN’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee and then submitted to the General Assembly.

Al Mezan, a Palestinian rights group based in Gaza, said that the adoption of the resolution “is a significant milestone in the struggle against Israel’s apartheid settler-colonial regime.”
The rights group noted that many European states either abstained or voted against the measure despite it coming “at a critical time when a new far-right Israeli government has been installed.”

That government, Al Mezan noted, has “vowed to legalize dozens of illegal settlements and annex the West Bank as a top priority.”

Indeed, Israel is seeing through with those pledges by destroying Palestinian structures in Jerusalem and the South Hebron Hills and issuing forcible transfer notices affecting 1,000 people in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern West Bank this week.

European double standards

The failure of many European states to support the resolution seeking an advisory opinion on Israel’s prolonged occupation throws the double standards by which international law is applied into sharp contrast.

While imposing unprecedented sanctions on Russia over its invasion and occupation of Ukraine, European states have paid only lip service to opposing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

European Union officials even welcomed the new Israeli government led by extremists who have pledged to formally annex West Bank land and complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began in 1948. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has stated that he plans to work with the new government on “further improving” relations with Israel.

While Borrell continues to talk about promoting a two-state solution, Zvika Fogel, a member of the new Israeli parliament, said that “the occupation is permanent.”

Fogel belongs to the Jewish Power party headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s new national security minister who now oversees Israel’s police and paramilitary Border Police that operate in the West Bank.

Fogel is former chief of staff of the Israeli military’s “southern command,” which includes the Gaza Strip.

In 2018, soon after the launch of Great March of Return protests along Gaza’s boundary with Israel, Fogel championed the use of lethal force against Palestinians who approach the boundary fence, including children.

He said that shooting and killing children was a reasonable “price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the state of Israel.”

More than 215 Palestinian civilians, including more than 40 children, were killed during those demonstrations, and thousands more wounded by live fire during those protests between March 2018 and December 2019.

A UN commission of inquiry found that Israel’s use of lethal force against protesters warrants criminal investigation and prosecution and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The UN investigators called for sanctions on those responsible and for the arrest of Israeli personnel “alleged to have committed, or who ordered to have committed” international crimes in relation to the Great March of Return protests.

Those recommendations went ignored by the same states who have thrown their support and money behind war crimes trials and other punitive measures after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

UK
Why Labour think they’ve rumbled Rishi

Nick Cohen

5 January 2023,

Rishi Sunak gives his first major speech of the year at Plexal, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, 4 January 2023 (Getty Images)

Labour’s leaders do not rate Rishi Sunak. I don’t mean by this that they think his policies range from the wrongheaded to the disastrous – we can take these opposition criticisms as a given. I mean that as professional politicians they look at the Prime Minister and see a rank amateur.

‘He’s rubbish,’ a member of the shadow cabinet told me. ‘I mean’ he continued bursting into derisory laughter during his speech yesterday, ‘what the hell was that maths thing about?’

In case you missed it, from the morning papers through to lunchtime on Wednesday, the PM’s New Year message was that he wanted children to study maths until they were 18. Leave aside that we do not have enough maths teachers as it is, and that, even if we did, they would soon be on strike, and focus on the frivolity of making a vague announcement about an unfunded programme for teaching teenagers in the middle of a national emergency.

‘There are people dying on trolleys,’ the Labour politician continued. ‘Doctors in tears on the television, and he wants to lead the news agenda with maths.’

Labour thinks that even now Sunak is behaving like a chancellor rather than a Prime Minister

To be fair, by yesterday afternoon, Sunak was holding a press conference to address the health and economic crises. But Labour politicians compared his bloodless statement with how Tony Blair handled the winter health emergency of 2000. Blair went on a Sunday morning television show and made a sweeping commitment to inject at least £12 billion of extra money into the NHS, and raise health spending to European levels. Gordon Brown was furious. (He invariably was.) ‘You’ve stolen my f***ing budget,’ he shouted at Blair. But Labour honoured Blair’s promise nevertheless.

Matching French or German health spending per head in 2022 would require an additional £40bn or £73bn respectively. But no commitment to bring the UK up to European health levels came from Sunak. When he finally tore himself away from the urgent question of maths lessons, he promised to cut waiting lists

How was he going to do that? He did not say.

He then promised that inflation would fall in 2023. Well, it will surely fall as last year’s massive rises drop out of the retail price index. The issue is not whether inflation will fall but whether living standards will rise, and on that Sunak offered nothing beyond the airy platitude that he wanted to create ‘better-paid jobs and opportunity across the country’.

A nice thought, that raised the question how he intended to create high-paying jobs. Answer came there none.

As the years of Tory rule end, there is something almost spectral about Sunak. Jeremy Hunt and the rest of the Tory leadership. Like Jeremy Corbyn at a wreath-laying ceremony near the graves of Black September terrorists, they are ‘present but not involved’. As the economic crisis deepens, they appear to be vanishing before our eyes, like figures fading from a picture left in the sun: the ghostly leaders of a zombie government.

The corruption of the Johnson administration and the ideological frenzy of the Truss interregnum have been replaced by a weird stillness. There’s no passion, vision, or coherent programme – just disjointed statements that might have been written by a ChatGPT bot and uttered by a hologram.

In private, Labour’s Treasury team who took on Sunak when he was chancellor, say that Rachel Reeves noticed how uncomfortable he was with spontaneity.

‘He can only manage manicured moments,’ one said. ‘He’s not reactive. He can’t think on his feet. He hated coming to the House and doing Treasury questions because he was in an environment he could not control.’

Labour thinks that even now Sunak is behaving like a chancellor rather than a Prime Minister: micromanaging rather than providing leadership.

If you doubt this analysis, look at the scene over Christmas when Sunak met a homeless man who said he wanted to work in the City. Any competent PM would have pointed to the schemes his government had to help people out of homelessness, and the pathways to training and jobs it offered. They’d have promised that their aides would point him towards agencies that could help.

All the lame Sunak could say was ‘I used to work in finance, actually’. Before adding that there weren’t just jobs in London but all over the country.

Natural politicians are sharper than that. They are present and involved.

Everyone I spoke to in Labour thinks Sunak is beatable. They do not believe he will stand up well to the hubbub and scrutiny of a general election campaign, when the ability to think on your feet is paramount and not every moment can be manicured.

‘He will wilt under the spotlight, like Theresa May,’ one shadow minister predicted.

Well, loyal Conservatives among the Spectator readership might cry, Keir Starmer is hardly charisma central. It’s a fair point, and I concede it. But Starmer is visibly growing in confidence. Proof, if you need it, that it’s amazing what a 20-point poll lead can do for a chap’s self-esteem.

Until he became PM, Labour worried about the damage Sunak could inflict. During the Tory leadership election before last (at least I think it was the one before last, but perhaps I am losing count) they feared Sunak more than Liz Truss. They worried about losing the Indian diaspora vote. They thought that the popularity Sunak had earned during the Covid crisis would carry over.

They are still nervous about the next election. And rightly so. Losing general elections is what Labour does. This nervousness explains Starmer’s caution, when to my mind, the atrocious state of the UK, demands radical measures.

Perhaps we will see a little more flesh on a programme for government in the next few weeks as Labour emphasises how it will use state purchasing power to ‘buy, make and sell in the UK.’

We will certainly see today, as Starmer delivers his first speech of 2023, an attack on Sunak’s reputation for fiscal prudence, backed with an attempt to persuade the media to focus on the extraordinary level of fraud the Conservatives have allowed to flourish.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, is campaigning on the billions of pounds in false benefits claims and over-payments that have vanished in the past two years, often into the pockets of organised crime.

Rachel Reeves is emphasising how nothing Sunak does works. In no particular order, he has given us the jobs retention bonus, which was heavily criticised on value for money grounds and cancelled. Sunak promised a replacement but it never appeared. The kickstart scheme was another Rishi innovation. Yet Sunak himself effectively admitted in June 2021 that the scheme was off target and paltry when set against the needs of the neglected young. He said that 31,000 Kickstarters had started their jobs. But the target for placements was 250,000 by December 2022, Needless to say, he failed to meet it. The PM’s green homes grant, unveiled when he was chancellor, was another disaster: the £2 billion insulation scheme was cancelled before the money was spent, breaking the government’s promise to deliver 100,000 new jobs across England

I could go on, but as Labour, and indeed Johnson, Truss and Sunak’s opponents in the Tory party, have realised, fraud and profligacy are his weak points. Labour’s focus groups loved him when he was handing out furlough payments but were horrified by the covid swindles.

Although wary of betraying the slightest sign of overconfidence, the opposition is convinced it can beat him. It is going for Sunak hard because it thinks that, when the history of this strange period is written, he will be seen as an empty space: the prime minister who never was.

WRITTEN BY

Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is the author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.

A Comet Zooming Toward Us Could Soon Be Visible With the Naked Eye

Its name is a mouthful, but Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could be the brightest of 2023.

Eric Mack
Jan. 5, 2023

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) as observed from Mount Fuji, Japan.
SpaceWeatherGallery.com/Akihiro Yamazaki

The new year is less than a week old, but what's expected to be the brightest comet of 2023 could be within our sights soon.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was first discovered in March by the Zwicky Transient Facility, aka ZTF, in Southern California, and it's been speeding in the direction of the sun ever since. As the space snowball comes closer, it brightens and is now just weeks from making its closest passes by both the sun and Earth. This makes January and February prime time to try to see it for yourself, perhaps even without the need of a telescope, if it continues to shine ever brighter.

The comet has traveled hundreds of billions of miles from the Oort cloud in the outer reaches of the solar system, drawn by the gravity of the sun on its very long and elliptical orbit. It will finally reach perihelion, or its close pass by the sun, on Jan. 12. If it survives the intense heat and pressure from the encounter without breaking up, it will then begin to head back out to deep space, passing by Earth along the way in early February.

The comet is expected to be closest to Earth on Feb. 1, according to NASA, at which point it could become a magnitude six object, just bright enough to see with the unaided eye, though binoculars and very dark skies always help.

The behavior of comets is rather unpredictable, as they can brighten, dim or completely disintegrate with little warning. But if trends and the integrity of the cosmic cruiser hold, the moonless sky on Jan. 21 could mark a good night to start venturing out to try to spot it, according to the British Astronomical Association.

You can practice trying to spot the comet now with a backyard telescope as it continues to brighten (hopefully) until Feb. 1. By far the easiest way to locate it is with a site like In The Sky or the excellent mobile app Stellarium.

If you happen to get any great photos, please share them with me on Twitter, @EricCMack.

Stellantis CEO Warns of More Auto Plant Closures

The logo of Stellantis is seen on a company's building in Velizy-Villacoublay near Paris, France, February 23, 2022.

REUTERS/Gonzalo FuentesREUTERS

By Joseph White and Aishwarya Nair

Reuters
Jan. 5, 2023,

(Reuters) -Chrysler parent Stellantis NV Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares said on Thursday that more auto plant closures will happen if high prices for electric vehicles (EV) cause vehicle markets to shrink from pre-pandemic levels.

Automakers will risk losing pricing power as chip supplies recover, Tavares said at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas.

The comments come as lack of affordability looms over the U.S. EV market at a time when top EV makers are raising prices amid high inflation.

More U.S. consumers want to buy an electric vehicle but are concerned about rising prices, a survey by consulting firm Deloitte showed on Wednesday.

"Nearly 7 in 10 prospective EV buyers in the United States expect to pay less than $50,000 for their next vehicle," according to the survey conducted between September and October 2022.

Stellantis said last month it would indefinitely idle an assembly plant in Belvidere, Illionois, citing high EV costs. Tavares told reporters said similar actions "will happen everywhere as long as we see high inflation of variable costs."

The auto industry must absorb 40% higher costs for EVs, he added.

The company had flagged that increasing costs related to the electrification of the automotive market as the most impactful challenge affecting the auto industry.

"If the market shrinks we don't need so many plants," Tavares said. "Some unpopular decisions will have to be made."

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru and Joe White in Detroit; Editing by Rashmi Aich) Deloitte showed on Wednesday.

Who Is Alex Mashinsky, the Man Behind the Alleged Celsius Crypto Fraud?

By Reuters

Jan. 5, 2023,

Who Is Alex Mashinsky, the Man Behind the Alleged Celsius Crypto Fraud?

More

FILE PHOTO: Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network, gestures as he talks about bitcoin speculation during an interview with Reuters in New York City, U.S. in this still image taken from video, January 5, 2021. Reuters TV via REUTERS/File PhotoREUTERS

By John McCrank and Hannah Lang

(Reuters) - Alex Mashinsky, a co-founder of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network who prosecutors allege bilked investors out of billions, is a serial entrepreneur who has portrayed himself as a modern-day Robin Hood.

Mashinsky, 57, fraudulently promoted Celsius as a safe alternative to banks, while concealing that it was losing hundreds of millions of dollars in risky investments, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The civil lawsuit seeks to ban Mashinsky from doing business in New York and have him pay damages, restitution and disgorgement.

James' lawsuit is the latest black eye for the crypto sector, which has been rocked by accusations against FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried. The former mogul, who has been accused of cheating investors and causing billions of dollars in losses, on Tuesday pleaded not guilty.

Mashinsky, a native of Ukraine whose family emigrated to Israel, decided to move to New York after he took a trip to the city in 1988, he told a Forbes podcast.

"I looked around and I'm like, I'm never going back," he said.

Since then, he has founded eight companies, including Arbinet, which went public in 2004, and Transit Wireless, which provides Wi-Fi to the New York City subway.

Mashinsky claims to have created Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a precursor to ride-sharing app Uber, as well as an idea for a cryptocurrency that preceded bitcoin.

Mashinsky became involved in crypto in 2017, when his venture fund Governing Dynamics brought on blockchain company MicroMoney as a strategic partner. He founded Celsius the same year.

In his teens, Mashinsky bought confiscated goods like hairdryers and VCRs from customs auctions at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and resold them for a profit, according to a 1999 article in the defunct tech publication Industry Standard.

Mashinsky had aspirations at the time to start a business for whole-body transplants: "Give an old person a new body - keep the head, keep the spine, and re-create the rest," he said.

The executive served in the Israeli army from 1984-1987, where he trained as a pilot and served in the Golani infantry units, according to his personal website.

Mashinsky has raised over $1.5 billion for various ventures that generated more than $3 billion when he and other investors cashed out of them, according to his website, which also says he holds more than 50 patents.

"The greatest risk is not taking one," the home page reads.

In hundreds of interviews, blog posts and livestreams as the public face of Celsius, Mashinsky promised its customers that they would receive high returns if they deposited digital assets on his platform, with minimal risk, according to the New York AG's lawsuit.

Neither Mashinsky nor his lawyer immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday.

Celsius pledged investors would obtain returns of up to 17%, among the highest in the industry. "We take it from the rich," the lawsuit quoted Mashinsky as saying.

By early 2022, it had amassed $20 billion in digital assets from investors. But the company struggled to generate enough revenue to pay the promised yields and moved into much riskier investments, according to the claim.

The company extended hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollateralized loans, and invested hundreds of millions more in unregulated decentralized finance platforms, the lawsuit said.

Mashinsky, who wore t-shirts with slogans such as "banks are not your friends," continued to falsely represent to investors that Celsius was generating high yield through low-risk investments, according to the legal filing.

In an "Ask Mashinsky Anything" YouTube video on June 10, the entrepreneur said "Celsius has billions in liquidity." Two days later, it paused investor withdrawals "in order to stabilize liquidity and operations."

Celsius filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors last July 13, listing a $1.19 billion deficit on its balance sheet.

(Reporting by John McCrank in New York and Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Lananh Nguyen and Matthew Lewis)

Bed Bath & Beyond Reportedly Plans Bankruptcy As Meme Stock Crashes Amid ‘Substantial Doubt’ Business Can Continue

Jonathan Ponciano
Forbes Staff

Jan 5, 2023,

TOPLINE

Bed Bath & Beyond is reportedly preparing to file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks as the struggling brick-and-mortar retailer faces persistent economic challenges plaguing efforts to turn around its business—further piling on to abysmal losses for a stock that more than tripled amid retail-trading mayhem during the pandemic.

Company Signs — The firm, once coveted by retail traders, is exploring options including restructuring and ... [+]
MOMENT EDITORIAL/GETTY IMAGES

KEY FACTS

Bed Bath & Beyond is in the early stages of readying a chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that could come within weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday afternoon, citing people with knowledge of the matter and noting the bankruptcy filing is not a certainty.

The report comes after Bed Bath & Beyond shares crashed nearly 30% Thursday to $1.69—pushing shares down to lows last seen almost 30 years ago—after the firm warned recurring losses in its latest quarters have contributed to “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue.”

The retailer said it expects sales to collapse 33% to less than $1.3 billion in the latest quarter as a result of lower customer traffic and reduced levels of inventory, and it also stated it is exploring actions including restructuring, debt refinancing, selling assets and filing for bankruptcy relief.

“These measures may not be successful,” cautioned the firm, which expects to post a loss of about $385.8 million in its upcoming earnings report.

In a statement, CEO Sue Gove blamed “inventory constraints” and “economic challenges,” including reduced credit limits that barred the firm from purchasing more merchandise, for the worse-than-expected performance.

KEY BACKGROUND

As customers turned to online shopping, Bed Bath & Beyond, which has struggled to build a strong digital presence, became one of the worst-hit brick-and-mortar retailers of the past decade. However, shares of the firm began to surge early last year, at one point more than tripling as retail traders plowed into heavily shorted stocks. The frenzy cooled off but once again intensified when billionaire Ryan Cohen, who has led an as of yet unsuccessful bid to turn around fellow retailer GameStop, disclosed a $120 million investment in the home goods store. That fervor, too, was short-lived, with Cohen cashing out his stake in August.

SURPRISING FACT

Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond have collapsed 95% from a closing high of about $35 in January 2021. However, that pales in comparison to losses since the firm’s heyday in 2014, when shares peaked at more than $80. Fellow meme stock GameStop has collapsed about 80% since its peak nearly two years ago.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment