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Tag: blackmail
Elon Musk

Will Musk Walk Away From The Smoking Crater That Was Formerly Twitter?

In a fantastic appearance on Wednesday afternoon, Elon Musk told advertisers who had left his X (formerly Twitter) social media site, “Go fuck yourself.” It was not the only F-bomb Musk dropped in a heated rant that included blaming advertisers for the failure of what once was Twitter and accusing them of trying to “blackmail” him by refusing to advertise.

According to the BBC, advertising made up 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue before Musk took over. Immediately following his purchase of the company, Twitter was flooded with an explosion of racism. Within three months, ad revenue dropped by 50%. In his speech, which was given before attendees at The New York Times' DealBook Summit and who sometimes seemed shocked into silence, Musk both admitted that the departure of advertisers would kill the company, and vowed that he would not bail it out with his own money.

It’s been only 13 months since Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter. At the end of October, the employee equity plan set the company’s value at $19 billion. That was before Musk endorsed an antisemitic post based on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and sent the remaining advertisers fleeing in droves.

If the company should fail in the coming weeks, it will be one of the largest, most astounding, and most self-inflicted business failures in history.

Musk’s conversation with Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin extended for more than an hour, during which time Musk apologized for supporting the antisemitic post, saying it was the "dumbest" thing he has shared online.

However, that’s highly debatable.

Was it dumber than Musk threatening to sue researchers who documented a rise in hate speech on Twitter? Was it dumber than when he sued Media Matters for America for demonstrating how ads can fall next to racist or antisemitic posts? Was it dumber than when he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after they found his site overrun with accounts pushing “virulent antisemitism”?

Was it dumber than when Musk welcomed back infamous neo-Nazis, including the man who created the Nazi site “The Daily Stormer” and was an organizer of 2017’s torch-wielding Nazi march in Charlottesville? Dumber than when he welcomed a neo-Nazi group that was suspended for repeatedly pushing the same “great replacement” conspiracy that Musk endorsed in his post? Was it dumber than when he falsely accused a Jewish man of being a neo-Nazi involved in a street brawl?

Was it dumber than when he drove away NPR by labeling them as government-controlled media and then threatened to give away their account so someone else could masquerade as NPR? Dumber than the whole blue checkmark scheme?

Was it dumber than when he accused Black people in South Africa of openly plotting “white genocide”? Dumber than when he reposted a “white lives matter” tweet from a notorious white supremacist? Dumber than when he said the Biden administration was destroying democracy? Or when he defended slavery? Or when he spent Pride Month handing out “likes” to transphobic tweets? Or when he said the media was racist against white and Asian people, and defended a man who called for segregation? Dumber than when he went to the southern border in a cowboy hat and video game T-shirt to spend a day endorsing false claims about an immigrant invasion?

Elon Musk apologized for one post. But advertisers didn’t leave the site formerly known as Twitter because of one post. They left because Musk gutted the site’s moderation teams, welcomed those who spread hate and lies, repeatedly demonstrated that he was always ready to believe a racist conspiracy theory, and showed he would make a threat at the drop of a hat.

Following Musk’s swear-laden appearance, Linda Yaccarino—the world’s most sidelined CEO—reposted a recording of Musk’s full DealBook interview (including the “go fuck yourself” line) and added: “And here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and is here to welcome you. To our partners who believe in our meaningful work -- Thank You.”

Sure. That’ll work.

There’s no doubt that X is the place to be if you believe the 53 million people who died in World War II didn’t adequately explore the debate between fascism and democracy. Several people who share that belief have already volunteered to hand over their cash to the world’s richest man. But it’s not going to be enough.

Musk already admitted that his site is doomed without advertisers. Then he drove a final stake through the idea of any of those advertisers returning. Then he vowed not to keep X alive with more of his own cash.

All that’s left is the construction of a post-mortem mythology in which Musk complains that he tried to save free speech with $44 billion and his valuable time but that the horrible wokeism (or cancel culture, or whatever boogeyman the right wing invents next) just wouldn’t let him.

Anyway, get ready for the funeral.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Biden -- And Every Democrat -- Must Stand Strong Against Debt Blackmail

Biden -- And Every Democrat -- Must Stand Strong Against Debt Blackmail

While Speaker Kevin McCarthy demands transparency from the Biden White House, he has concealed crucial facts from the American public ever since he forged the "corrupt bargain" that greased his ascension to the constitutional post he now holds. The details of the agreement that allowed McCarthy to scrape together the barest majority are said to be set down in a three-page memorandum, which remains hidden.

What we already know, however, is that McCarthy arranged for ordinary Americans to subsidize his sleazy deal with the far Right when he promised to withhold approval of a higher debt ceiling until Democrats agree to enormous budget reductions — including harsh cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Unless Senate Democrats and the White House surrender to those absurd demands, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, too, House Republicans insist they will force the United States to repudiate its debts and wreck its credit.

Debt repudiation would have devastating consequences for the national economy, the global economy, and America's position in the world. The only beneficiaries would be the adversaries of the United States. That much is obvious. And if it is, then aren't those politicians who constantly proclaim their own patriotism but seek to drive the country into ruin shouldn't even contemplate such acts — unless they're not so patriotic after all?

The Republican crazies say these extreme measures reflect their deep concern about budget deficits and the national debt. Their worrying would be more plausible if they had bothered to speak up on any of several occasions during Donald Trump's presidency when Congress had to raise the debt ceiling as a matter of course. Not once did Democrats even whisper about blackmailing Trump over the debt increase. And not once did Republicans protest the Trump spending and tax policies that ballooned the debt by trillions.

Now, of course, Donald Trump is for welshing on the debt ceiling. This would not be the first time he has encouraged financial chicanery. Ask the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to felonious fraud in Trump's service and is now taking up residence on Riker's Island.

It is especially obnoxious for Trump to encourage a debt ceiling default when so much of the debt was incurred during his presidency. A higher debt ceiling isn't needed to enable future spending, but to cover spending that already occurred. Legal scholars would add that repudiating the debt would violate the Constitution, which protects "the full faith and credit of the United States," and the 14th Amendment, which stipulates that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law... shall not be questioned."

Trump may believe a default wouldn't matter. After all, his deadbeat approach to business always involved shafting his creditors, walking away from his debts and escaping accountability through bankruptcy. That may be how life works for a small-time swindler, but it isn't what great nations do — and the price would be unacceptably high.

The Republicans always say they want to operate government more like business — but they didn't say they want to run it like Trump's crooked company.

For now, the Treasury can manage the debt ceiling by shuffling various accounts and delaying certain payments, even though the nation officially passed "Debt Ceiling Day" on January 19. Sometime in the next several months a reckoning will loom.

Appropriately enough, the renewal of the debt ceiling debate is coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the inauguration of Bill Clinton, the only president in living memory who actually reduced deficits and debt. He did the opposite of Trump, raising taxes on the rich and setting the country on a path toward budget surplus (until the Republicans returned to power and blew it all).

The last time congressional Republicans (including McCarthy) made menacing noises about the debt ceiling was in 2011. Clinton wisely urged President Barack Obama to stand firm — just as he did when congressional Republicans led by Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to kill Medicare and shut down the government. Ultimately even the impetuous Gingrich refrained from threatening a debt default, although Clinton knew that his nemesis had considered deploying that terror tactic.

"I think (the Gingrich Republicans) figured I'd be smart enough to explain to the American people that they were refusing to pay for the expenses they had voted for when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were president," Clinton recalled in 2011. "And that would make them look bad."

"The Constitution is clear and this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy," he added. "You can't say, 'Well, we won the last election, and we didn't vote for some of that stuff, so we're going to throw the whole country's credit into arrears."

Clinton took the measure of the extremists on Capitol Hill during his second term, facing them down during two government shutdowns. He wasn't impressed by their sudden enthusiasm for balanced budgets, and he knew that standing up to their bullying and lying was the only way forward. Biden should study and heed the example.

The urgency now may be even greater, with the current gang of Republican extremists even more reckless than their irresponsible predecessors.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

'I Have INFO On Everyone': Trump Hints Blackmail In Rant On Classified Documents

'I Have INFO On Everyone': Trump Hints Blackmail In Rant On Classified Documents

Former President Donald Trump lashed out for the second day in a row about the classified documents that were found inside President Joe Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home.

The latest revelation arrived over the weekend that five additional pages were discovered by Biden's personal lawyer and immediately handed over to United States Justice Department officials, according to NBC News. Special Counsel Robert Hur was appointed last week by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the probe into how the materials, dating from Biden's tenure as vice president, ended up at his house and offices. So far, no formal allegations of wrongdoing have been directed toward Biden, who maintains that the boxes in which the papers were stored were packed by campaign aides.

Trump has claimed the same thing while admitting that he intentionally took super-sensitive texts from the White House and stored them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, insisting that they were his. Mar-a-Lago was subjected to a Federal Bureau of Investigation search warrant in August because Trump failed to return all of the items that the Archives had requested, despite ongoing negotiations. Trump is facing a federal criminal investigation led by Special Counsel Jack Smith into the matter.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Republicans in the House of Representatives requested access to Biden's visitor logs. On Monday, the White House Counsel's office informed Fox News that no such records were kept.

"Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal," the White House Counsel's Office said in a statement. "But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them."

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi also explained to reporters that "we don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence."

Shortly after this development, Trump took to his Truth Social app to accuse Biden of sloppily stashing classified documents in his home and issue a thinly-veiled, albeit vague, threat of blackmail.

9:34 a.m.:

The White House just announced that there are no LOGS or information of any kind on visitors to the Wilmington house and flimsy, unlocked, and unsecured, but now very famous, garage. Maybe they are smarter than we think! This is one of seemingly many places where HIGHLY CLASSIFIED documents are stored (in a big pile on the damp floor). Mar-a-Lago is a highly secured facility, with Security Cameras all over the place, and watched over by staff & our great Secret Service. I have INFO on everyone

Reporting by The New York Times in December revealed that it was actually Trump who casually left classified documents strewn throughout Mar-a-Lago.

"Most of the classified documents in August were found in a storage area, which is accessible through two sets of arched doors, people familiar with the property told theTimes. The doors are near the pool area, a popular event space," the Times wrote. "Highly sensitive materials like the documents found at Mar-a-Lago are usually viewed inside a secure, enclosed area with a safe built to meet strict guidelines. Periodic inspection is also required. But the Justice Department had noted that Mar-a-Lago did not have a 'secure location authorized for the storage of classified information.'"

The Times recalled that "Trump has said that before leaving office he had declared the documents declassified, but so far, no credible evidence was found to support this," later adding that "just outside the arched doors leading to the storage area, there were many large-scale gatherings near the pool area and outdoor patio, during the time the documents were on the property."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Putin Warns West Not To Blackmail Russia

Putin Warns West Not To Blackmail Russia

Belgrade (AFP) – President Vladimir Putin accused his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama of a hostile approach towards Russia, warning in a Cold War-style tirade that Moscow would not be blackmailed by the West over Ukraine.

Putin fired off his combative comments shortly before he arrived amid tight security to a red carpet welcome in Belgrade, seeking to cement Russia’s influence in its loyal European ally.

Belgrade is staging its first military parade in 30 years to mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation from Nazi occupation — an event brought forward by four days to coincide with the visit by the Kremlin strongman.

In some of his most pugnacious comments yet on Russia-U.S. ties, Putin took issue with Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly last month, when he listed “Russia’s aggression” in eastern Ukraine among top global threats, along with Islamic State jihadists and Ebola.

He told the Serbian daily Politika it was “hard to call such an approach anything but hostile”.

“We are hoping our partners will understand the recklessness of attempts to blackmail Russia, (and) remember what discord between large nuclear powers can do to strategic stability,” Putin said.

He branded attempts by the West to isolate Russia over the six-month conflict in Ukraine an “absurd, illusory goal” and accused Washington of meddling in Russian affairs.

Putin, who is to meet Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko in Milan on Friday, called on Kiev to start nationwide dialogue, saying there was a “real opportunity” to halt the war.

Putin reiterated that Moscow was ready to mend fences with Washington but only if its interests are genuinely taken into account.

Putin’s predecessor Dmitry Medvedev spearheaded a “re-set” in ties with Washington but relations have quickly unraveled since Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012.

Russia is now facing its deepest period of Western isolation since the Cold War, with U.S. and EU sanctions dealing a blow to its already stuttering economy.

Despite the distinct Western diplomatic chill, Putin was greeted warmly in Belgrade, which has refused to align with the EU sanctions against Moscow.

He and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic were to lay wreaths at a cemetery where Russian soldiers were killed in the October 1944 battle for Belgrade.

Putin is then expected to make an address at the military parade involving more than 3,000 soldiers and featuring a Russian aerobatics display — but pointedly not being attended by any U.S. officials.

“Our joint obligation is to oppose the glorification of Nazism and attempts to revise the outcome of the World War II,” Putin said in the Politika interview, warning of rising “neo-Nazism” in the Baltics and Ukraine.

The EU, which began accession talks with Serbia in January, has bluntly told Belgrade it should prove its credentials as a future member during the visit.

Since the Ukraine crisis erupted, Serbia has been trying to balance its obligations towards the EU and maintaining good ties with Moscow.

For Russia — which backs Serbian opposition to Kosovo’s independence — it is important that Belgrade’s membership of the European bloc does not go against Moscow’s interests.

“The main goal of the visit is to buttress existing links. Energy will be high” on the agenda, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, told AFP.

Serbia is one of the countries on the South Stream pipeline, a $22 billion project aimed at reducing Moscow’s reliance on Ukraine as a transit country for its natural gas following disputes with Kiev that led to interrupted supplies to Europe.

The European Commission has said the project is not in line with its rules and threatened to fine member states if they go ahead with construction.

Russia signed the South Stream accord with Serbia in 2008 and plans to begin construction this year, but Belgrade has said it will wait until there is agreement between Brussels and Moscow.

Russia and Serbia are tied militarily, and set up a rapid response base in the southern town of Nis where Russian aircraft were based.

Moscow has also helped Serbia’s devastated economy, providing $1.3 billion in loans for rail infrastructure and to help reduce the country’s record budget deficit.

The two also have a free-trade agreement and Russia is Serbia’s third largest foreign trade partner with two-way business in 2013 at almost $3 billion.

AFP Photo/Alexei Nikolsky

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