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Late last week, campaign finance charges against Sam Bankman-Fried were dropped.

WILLIAM BLACK, snldebacle@gmail.com

Author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, Black was the deputy staff director of the national commission that investigated the cause of the savings and loan debacle.

He said today: “The New York Times journalist team consistently fails its readers. It created a precis (“What to Know About the Collapse of FTX”) that the online version routinely tacks on to any story about the SBF prosecution. It includes these gems (and excludes all candor). I provide a candid correction (in italics).

What is FTX? The now bankrupt company was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It enabled customers to trade digital currencies for other digital currencies or traditional money; it also had a native cryptocurrency known as FTT. The company, based in the Bahamas, built its business on risky trading options that are not legal in the United States.

FTX was a large financial fraud using fake accounting to inflate asset values so the elite insiders could loot it. The “exchange” was a front that hid the real operation (Alameda) that lost vast amounts and enriched the elite insiders.

Who is Sam Bankman-Fried? He is the 30-year-old founder of FTX and the former chief executive of FTX. Once a golden boy of the crypto industry, he was a major donor to the Democratic Party and known for his commitment to effective altruism, a charitable movement that urges adherents to give away their wealth in efficient and logical ways.

SBF is a fraudster. While he donated to Democrats, his top confederates donated heavily to Republicans to ensure bipartisan political support for the looting scheme. The elite insider looting funded the political and charitable contributions that made SBF and FTX appear to be honest and saintly.

How did FTX’s troubles begin? Last year, Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, sold the stake he held in FTX back to Bankman-Fried, receiving a number of FTT tokens in exchange. In November, Zhao said he would sell the tokens and expressed concerns about FTX’s financial stability.

They began when SBF and his top confederates used fraudulent accounting and looting to make FTX appear to be highly profitable, and to enrich the elite looters.

What led to FTX’s collapse? Zhao’s announcement drove down the price of FTT and spooked investors. Traders rushed to withdraw from FTX, causing the company to have a $8 billion shortfall. Binance offered a loan to save the company but later pulled out, forcing FTX to file for bankruptcy on Nov. 11.

SBF and his co-conspirators’ looting and fraudulent accounting combined with their public financial illiteracy led SBF to rely on Binance for liquidity – which put an unscrupulous competitive rival with the ability to expose FTX’s massive insolvency by selling FTT’s token which Binance received for bailing out FTX. Binance used its leverage. 

Also see: “Why Did FTX Spend So Much on Politicians?”

Rights Groups and Newspapers Call on Biden to Finally Drop Assange Prosecution

Twelve years after relying on WikiLeaks to publish “Cablegate” documents, the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL and El Pais just published “An Open Letter from Editors and Publishers: Publishing is Not a Crime,” calling for the Biden administration to stop its prosecution of Julian Assange.

Consortium News reports: “Daniel Ellsberg has called on the U.S. to indict him for having the same unauthorized possession of classified material as Julian Assange.” Consortium News also highlights protests on Saturday for Human Rights Day.

CHIP GIBBONS, chip@RightsAndDissent.org, @ChipGibbons89
Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent. They, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists and over a dozen other groups, just sent a letter to President Biden: “It is more than a year since our coalition sent a joint letter calling for the charges against Assange to be dropped. In June, then U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition to the United States, a decision that Assange’s legal team is in the process of appealing. Today, we repeat those concerns, and urge you to heed our request. We believe that the prosecution of Assange in the U.S. would set a harmful legal precedent and deliver a damaging blow to press freedom by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. …
“It is time for the Biden administration to break from the Trump administration’s decision to indict Assange — a move that was hostile to the media and democracy itself. Correcting the course is essential to protect journalists’ ability to report freely on the United States without fear of retribution.”
Gibbons just wrote the piece “Former CIA Director’s Institute Hosts Event On The Assange Case (And Madness Ensues)”

See from the British National Union of Journalists: “CIA reportedly plotted to kidnap and assassinate Julian Assange.”

Following being on a pair of accuracy.org news releases, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and journalist Aaron Maté appeared on several programs just after Robert Mueller’s long-anticipated testimony on Capitol Hill. See Rowley on The Real News, where, among other things, she gives critical background on Mueller. And see Maté on the Jimmy Dore Show and CGTN’s “The Heat“scrutinizing much of the conventional wisdom on Russiagate.

After appearing in a recent IPA news release, Manuel Pérez-Rocha, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, was quoted in the article “Trump and Mexico’s New Leader, Both Headstrong, Begin With a ‘Good Conversation’.”

From the article: “Manuel Pérez-Rocha said Mr. López Obrador believed that failed economic policies championed by the United States but also Mexican elites were one of the main causes of Mexicans being pushed off farms and on the path to immigration to the United States.

“’He really doesn’t want to criticize Nafta too much, because that would put him at odds with the business community and investors,’ Mr. Pérez-Rocha said. ‘But what he’s all about is strengthening the internal economy to focus on Mexico’s jobs and the countryside.’”

Manuel studied International Relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), has a diploma on European Studies from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM) and holds a M.A. on Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Netherlands. Some of his last publications include op-eds in The Nation and The New York Times.

After appearing on an IPA press release, Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was interviewed by Democracy Now! today to discuss the significance surrounding Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s announcement of an unconditional ceasefire with the Taliban.

War, Journalism and Whistleblowers: Thomas Drake, Katharine Gun, and other key 21st century whistle blowers featured in a special panel discussion sponsored last week by the Institute for Public Accuracy, on the radio program “Flashpoints,” 15 years after Katherine Gun blew the whistle on U.S. dirty tricks to try influence the UN on the invasion of Iraq.  ExposeFacts is a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

After appearing on an IPA news release, Pat Elder, author of Military Recruiting in the United States and director of National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, @studentprivacy (studentprivacy.org) was interviewed this morning on Democracy Now! He spoke about the role of JROTC and the NRA in U.S. Schools, including the one that trained the Parkland Shooter, Nikolas Cruz.

Robert Parry, a tenacious investigative reporter and author who exposed details of the Reagan administration’s secret support for Nicaraguan rebels in the 1980s, died on Saturday in Arlington, Va. He was 68.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Diane Duston.

Mr. Parry won the George Polk Award for national reporting in 1984 for his disclosures that the Central Intelligence Agency had provided an assassination manual to the so-called contras, the right-wing insurgents who were seeking to topple the socialist government in Nicaragua. Mr. Parry was part of an Associated Press investigative team based in Washington when he broke the story.

For that reporting, he was also named a finalist for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

In 1985, Mr. Parry broke news of the involvement of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, a deputy director of the National Security Council, in a covert operation to support the contras with proceeds from clandestine arms sales to Iran. Congress had banned such support. The weapons had been sold to Iran to speed the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

See full piece at The New York Times

Following an appearance on a recent IPA press release, Christine Ahn, Founder of Women Cross DMZ, was interviewed by Aaron Maté on “The Real News.” In the interview, Ahn discussed raised hopes of de-escalating tensions between North and South Korea in face of the upcoming Winter Olympics.

“It’s extraordinarily heartening and probably the most important single action that would avert a war on the Korean Peninsula that is being potentially waged by the Trump administration. As you may know, in the New Year’s address, Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, basically in his New Year’s speech, extended an olive branch where he offered to send North Korean athletes to the South Korean Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. South Korean Moon Jae-in, he quickly seized that window of opportunity, and he quickly responded. And on January 9th they had the first high-level talks in over two years.” Later in the interview, Ahn described the importance of organizing women for the deescalation of conflicts when she said “… it was really a meeting of movements led by women because we know that when women are at the table, there is a greater chance of there being a peace agreement.”

Following an appearance on a recent IPA news release, Thomas Drake, whistleblower and former senior official of the National Security Agency (NSA), discussed in an interview for The Real News how the new FISA law expands warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

“For me, it’s the emperor, let’s just say the emperor here has no clothes. And it’s important that Americans and others wake up to the fact that this is simply a continuation of what has been in place now since shortly after 9/11 under “legal means.” And I’ve heard the argument, Aaron, I’ve heard the argument, “Well, hey. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve said nothing wrong, you’ve not committed any crimes, you have nothing to worry about.” Did you know that under this reauthorization act, there is an extraordinary irony that an actual criminal, let’s say targeted legitimately, doing actually, probable cause of criminal activity, actually has more rights than an American would under this reauthorization bill.”