Saturday, March 12, 2022

Goldman Sachs cuts U.S. GDP forecasts, increases recession odds

TIME FOR STRAIGHT SPORTS TALK ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC: English Football and American Baseball

Intro: Two stories for your interest - one is hyper-localized

Football ignored the truth about Roman Abramovich’s oligarch money for too long

The facts about the Chelsea owner’s assets have always been there to see for anyone who cared – but too few in the game did

‘The globally broadcast images of Roman Abramovich with his hands on football’s greatest prize was not a great look for football, for Britain or for Europe.’

Thu 10 Mar 2022 15.30 EST

Last modified on Fri 11 Mar 2022 05.10 EST

"It must have been a bracing morning call at Stamford Bridge, with the news that Roman Abramovich is now considered so toxic that the government has slapped him with sanctions after 19 years in which he has been garlanded as the Chelsea benefactor.

For the UK, the Premier League, for football – for all of us – it would feel a little better if we could say this has come as a terrible shock, that nobody has known enough about Abramovich all these years. But sadly that kind of reassurance would be just more self-delusion, and the times we are in surely demand a bit of straight talking

Of course it was stunning to see the government actually freeze Abramovich’s assets, overthrowing his and Chelsea’s complacency with one closely typed paragraph damning his closeness to Vladimir Putin. But really the shock was mostly of recognition, pointing past the emperor’s clothes – and trophies, in Abramovich’s case – to some naked truths in plain sight all along.

The court proceedings referred to by the Home Office, in that document Chris Bryant read out to such dramatic effect in the Commons two weeks ago, took place in 2012. By 2019, after the novichok poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the everyday English city of Salisbury, the government took the view: “Abramovich remains of interest to HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] due to his links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices … An example of this is Abramovich admitting in court proceedings that he paid for political influence.”

The court judgment by Mrs Justice Gloster stated that it was Abramovich’s own case that the political lobbying activities of his former oligarch partner, Boris Berezovsky, providing him with political krysha (protection) were: “Inherently corrupt, and that likewise, the deal between the two men, whereby Mr Abramovich agreed to pay Mr Berezovsky for his krysha services, was also corrupt.”

Roman Abramovich is front and centre of the Chelsea celebrations on the Champions League trophy parade when they first won the competition in 2012. Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA

The judgment also noted that Abramovich had “very good relations” with Putin, including “privileged access” to the Russian president.

How the money was made was known and well-reported by 2003 when Abramovich bought Chelsea, and the club’s successes have been funded with his oligarch money. Players were bought in waves as never before, and he bankrolled transfer fees and wages the club could otherwise not have paid. In that way he bought the Premier League, the Champions League and, just days before Putin invaded Ukraine, the Club World Cup.

It could also be comforting to lay blame for the reverent indulgence of Abramovich at the doors of just the Premier League, the Football Association or a succession of governments more than happy for Britain to soak up cash from anywhere. But that would be a cop-out too: the facts have been there for anybody who could be bothered to care."

Bernie Sanders Slams Billionaire 'Baseball Oligarchs' Following MLB Deal

“We are dealing with an organization controlled by a number of billionaires who collectively are worth over $100 billion,” the Vermont senator said.

By Lydia O'Connor Reporter, HuffPost

HuffPost

"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Major League Baseball team owners as “baseball oligarchs” on Thursday after they took nearly 100 days to reach an agreement with the players union.

“We are dealing with an organization controlled by a number of billionaires who collectively are worth over $100 billion,” he said in a statement after the lockout ended. “It should be clear to all that these baseball oligarchs have shown that they are far more concerned about increasing their wealth and profits than in strengthening our national pastime.”

In his lengthy remarks, the Vermont senator said the MLB “negotiated in bad faith” in “a blatant attempt to break the players’ union.”

These are baseball oligarchs who, over the last year, eliminated their affiliation with over 40 minor league teams, not only causing needless economic pain and suffering, but also breaking the hearts of fans in small and mid-sized towns all over America. These are baseball oligarchs who continue to pay minor league players totally inadequate wages and want to eliminate the jobs of another 900 minor league players. These are baseball oligarchs who receive billions of dollars in corporate welfare from taxpayers to build expensive stadiums. These are baseball oligarchs who, in many cases, charge outrageously high prices for tickets that many working class families cannot afford.

The MLB and the players association reached an agreement over the players’ contracts that will allow the season to start April 7, about a week after the originally scheduled opening day. The negotiations lasted 99 days, with players pushing for more control over their contracts and higher minimum salaries after payroll declined 4% last year to 2015 levels.

The agreement will raise players’ minimum salaries from $570,500 to about $700,000, among other financial changes, while the MLB secured an expanded post-season with more teams participating in the playoffs.

Sanders says he plans to introduce legislation in Congress that would end the MLB’s 100-year-old antitrust exemption, which went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the league could suppress wages and make other business decisions that would typically violate anti-monopoly rules."

JONATHAN PIE OPINION VIDEO SERVE IT FORTH: Welcome to Londongrad, Where Kleptocrats Wash Their Money Clean

First of all please note: Jonathan Pie videos were previously licensed to RT — formerly known as Russia Today — in the U.K.

Jonathan Pie is a fictional newscaster created by the British comedian Tom Walker. Mr. Westbrook is a producer and editor with Opinion Video.

Mr. Walker has never worked for the network and has had no relationship with it since 2016.

Welcome to Londongrad, Where Kleptocrats Wash Their Money Clean

Video by Jonathan Pie and Adam Westbrook

nytimes.com

"These are, to say the least, uncomfortable times to be a Russian oligarch.

In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, governments are taking aim at the superwealthy with close ties to Vladimir Putin, hitting them with sanctions, cutting off their access to offshore wealth, seizing their luxury yachts and villas and generally making it difficult to be a filthy rich person.

But in the Opinion Video above, Jonathan Pie, the fictional broadcast journalist played by the comedian Tom Walker, argues that even while the United States and the European Union have come down hard on Russian oligarchs, Britain has taken a gentler approach. This response, he argues, is the result of a dark symbiotic relationship that the country has developed with ill-gotten Russian money.

For years, Russian wealth has poured into Britain with few questions asked, helping to finance political campaigns and buoying the luxury property market. Russian oligarchs have been so happy to avail themselves of Britain’s laissez-faire regulatory climate to park their wealth and launder dirty money that the nation’s capital has earned the moniker Londongrad.

And that, Pie argues, is why the British government has been reluctant to step up the pressure on the Russian elite. Stronger sanctions, he argues, would risk hurting Britain even more than they would Putin and his cronies.

“And this was Putin’s plan all along,” Pie asserts. “For 20 years, he’s been slowly neutralizing us as a threat — by using our own greed against us.”

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/opinion/london-oligarchs-sanctions-putin.html

Jonathan Pie videos were previously licensed to RT — formerly known as Russia Today — in the U.K. Mr. Walker has never worked for the network and has had no relationship with it since 2016."

Greenwald: The White House's game-playing denials of bio labs in Ukraine

AMERICA'S PAVLOVIAN TRIGGER POLITICS: "Freedom Dumplings" for Your Food Delights

Some people might remember the controversial campaign against France when we got trained to say "Freedom Fries" - almost overnight everything wildly considered 'French' was either avoided or boycotted or renamed to reclaim the notion of Freedom.

NOW ALMOST OVERNIGHT EVERYTHING BAD IS RUSSIAN...the fast un-leashed fury is un-informed lashing out even to one brand of Russian vodka (Stolichnaya Vodka that's actually distilled in Latvia!)

That's a conditional reflex creating by training our brains and easily triggered in our Orwellian world of social media everywhere and every minute of the day-and-night.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning.

Known for: Founder of modern Behavior Therapy; Classical conditioning
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1904)

Pavlov's Theory of Classical Conditioning

Based on his observations, Pavlov suggested that the salivation was a learned response. Pavlov's dog subjects were responding to the sight of the research assistants' white lab coats, which the animals had come to associate with the presentation of food.

Classical conditioning is learning through association and was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time that they were given food

‘Freedom dumplings’: the chefs cooking in solidarity with Ukraine

Bakers, bartenders and cooks are using food and drink to show support and to fundraise for relief efforts

Ms Chi Cafe, a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, is selling ‘freedom dumplings’ to support Ukrainian relief efforts. Photograph: Courtesy of Shirley Chung/Ms Chi Café

These are excerpts from a report by

Lois Beckett

Thu 10 Mar 2022 18.01 EST Last

modified on Thu 10 Mar 2022 18.07 EST

"In Culver City, a Chinese restaurant is selling bright blue and yellow “freedom dumplings”, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. In West Hollywood, a popular cocktail bar is offering a special “Pruzhnyy”, or resilience, cocktail, made with Ukrainian Khor vodka. Bakeries across California are making special batches of hamentaschen, a Jewish cookie associated with resistance to tyrannical government officials, and pampushka, a Ukrainian garlic bread.

It’s all part of a wave of solidarity among California chefs, who are using food to show support for Ukrainians after Russia’s invasion and to fundraise for humanitarian relief efforts.

All the proceeds from the special menu items are going to organizations such as World Central Kitchen, the non-profit offering hot meals to Ukrainian refugees at border crossings; Polish Humanitarian Action; Libereco PHR, a Swiss-German relief group; and Unicef. Although the individual dollar amounts raised are often modest, the chefs, bakers and bartenders involved said they want to send a message. . .

“I understand the price of freedom. I didn’t grow up in a democracy,” said Shirley Chung, the Los Angeles chef who created the blue and yellow dumplings. Watching Ukrainians fighting for their democracy, she said, “I feel like they’re fighting for the world.”

Two pans hold several dozen blue and yellow dumplings — Chef Shirley Chung was inspired to make her dumplings by the global campaign Cook for Ukraine. Photograph: Courtesy of Shirley Chung/Ms Chi Cafe

The California food industry relief efforts are part of a broader international movement. Chung said she was inspired by Cook for Ukraine, a global campaign started by London-based chefs Alissa Timoshkina, who is Russian, and Olia Hercules, who is Ukrainian, which raised more than £75,000 ($98,000) in donations in its first week. Those two friends were inspired by a previous culinary campaign, Cook for Syria, which encourages people to cook traditional meals and talk about the crisis, while also donating money for relief efforts. . .

Reference >> https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/mar/10/chefs-bakers-bartenders-solidarity-ukraine-los-angeles

WEAPONIZING SOCIAL MEDIA

How Ukraine has been so successful at turning the tables on the supposed Russian masters of information war is crucial to understanding the situation so far in Ukraine and what happens next.

It is also a lesson for any other nation, politician, corporation or activist at how to win what I and others call #LikeWar, the hacking of social networks not through malware but through the effective weaponization of social media for clicks, likes and shares.

Opinion | How Ukraine Won The #LikeWar

(A screenshot of a video selfie posted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. | @ZelenskyyUa/Twitter)

Opinion by P.W. Singer

03/12/2022 07:00 AM EST

P.W. Singer is a strategist at New America and a founder of Useful Fiction LLC.

He is the co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media

POLITICO

Magazine

"By effectively employing 10 essential messaging themes, Ukraine beat Russia in shaping the early narrative of the conflict, helping to keep themselves in the real-world fight.

In modern war and politics, the information space is one of the most crucial parts of the battlefield. This is not about mere propaganda. If your ideas get out and win out, that determines everything from whether soldiers, civilians and onlookers around the world will join your cause to what people believe about the very truth of what’s occurring on the ground. And, if your ideas don’t win out, you can lose the war before it even begins.

In the arena of information warfare, there was arguably no one more feared over the last decade than Vladimir Putin. Russia’s information warriors ran wild for years, hacking democracies by intervening in more than 30 national elections from Hungary and Poland to Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential race. They elevated conspiracy theories that ranged from Q-Anon to coronavirus vaccine lies and provided justification for Russian military action everywhere from Georgia to Syria.

Yet, when it came time for one of Putin’s most ambitious and important operations of all, the invasion of Ukraine, Russia failed at the information side of the fight as much as it failed at its plan for a quick seizure of Kyiv. And the stakes could not have been higher. While Putin’s forces may be able to turn around their military prospects by sending more missiles, tanks and troops to overwhelm Ukraine’s cities, they have no such opportunity on the information war side. Contrary to claims that it is somehow too early to call, Ukraine isn’t just winning the battle for hearts and minds online, it has already won. And now it’s too late for Russia to change the narrative.

[. ]

At this task, Ukraine — both through official government channels and through a global coalition of supporters participating with them in the online front — has been masterful at driving forward 10 essential persuasion messaging themes. Each of these themes had scores of underlying narratives and examples, pushed out by wider networks that scaled from the hundreds to the millions.

1) Not waiting to debunk: Pre-bunking

2) Highlighting heroism

3) Stacking the cards in just the right way

4) Mythologizing martyrs

5) Showing a Man of the People

6) Amplifying civilian harm

7) Magnifying civilian resistance

8) Encouraging others to jump on your bandwagon

9) Humanizing your side (and let slip the cats of war)

10) Making use of mockery

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But Is It Working?

By all measures, the combination of these efforts have been a stunning success inside Ukraine. This is proven most by the very fact that the Ukrainian state and society didn’t collapse the way Russia hoped would happen in the first few days of fighting. Indeed, besides the rapid swing in Zelenskyy’s polling, surveys also show that now 70 percent of Ukrainians believe that their military is the side that will win the war, despite the real combat power disadvantage and territory losses.

This disparity makes the fronts of the information war essential for Ukraine. No matter the attitudes and bravery of its people, Ukraine only has a chance if it enlists the outside world in its fight. And here, the Ukrainian efforts are winning. Nations as far away as Australia and as surprising as Germany have promised military aid to Ukraine, and once unthinkable levels of financial sanctions have been put into place to squeeze the Russian economy. Indeed, when even Switzerland agrees to join sanctions against you (something it wouldn’t even do to Hitler), you have lost the narrative fight.

In the U.S., one could almost get whiplash by how rapidly things have changed from when former President Donald Trump complimented Putin as a “genius” and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly screamed at a journalist “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” Trump has started complimenting Zelenskyy as “brave,” and Pompeo took to tweeting about how supporting Ukraine was the key to stopping Putin. Even Fox News, whose most popular host Tucker Carlson was a prominent early backer of Putin’s side, has recently published stories like “Russian President Vladimir Putin has features of a psychopath” and aired segments such as “Ukrainian civilians volunteer to fight for democracy.” This shift is reflected among the public more broadly, too: Between the beginning and end of February, polling shows that the percentage of Americans who said the U.S. should take Ukraine’s side went from less than the percentage who said the U.S. should remain neutral to more than double it, driven in large part by a 42-point swing in Republican opinion.

Yet, the audience that might matter the most to whether the war ends is inside Russia. Here, the information situation is different than the battles we have seen Ukraine win so vividly. The Putin regime has spent years building up both direct and indirect control of the media, and it uses everything from arrests to “accidental” deaths of activists to reinforce censorship. Indeed, at the start of the war, Putin’s information-shaping was so effective that many Russians did not even know they were at war. The relative popularity of social media platforms also matters. For as much as #SupportUkraine has trended on Twitter and Instagram, the most popular social network for Russians is VK.

But the longer the war goes on, the harder this becomes to sustain. Casualties are difficult to keep quiet and undercut a message of an easy win. Indeed, the fact that Russia’s government has just implemented new laws that threaten 15 years in prison for spreading “fake information” about the military or the war in Ukraine is a sign that the Putin regime fears it is losing this fight.

An essential mission of Ukraine’s information war is to try to further pierce this information bubble, an effort that is already underway. Reportedly, Ukraine’s interior ministry has been reaching out on VK to parents of Russian prisoners of war to let them know that their son is alive but that they should “Go out and protest, overthrow your government before we bury all in Ukrainian soil.” Similarly, in the absence of any Russian government death notices, a “Look For Your Own” website was also created to allow parents of Russian soldiers to submit their DNA information to find out whether their son had been killed in combat in Ukraine. Even that site’s address, 200rf.com, is loaded with meaning. It is a reference to “Cargo 200,” the Russian military term for flying home the bodies of dead soldiers. It is a brutal but potent example of what Ukraine warns is to come on the battlefield and, more importantly, of how Ukraine wants Russia to know it."

MORE DETAILS >> https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/12/ukraine-russia-information-warfare-likewar-00016562

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