Texas Man Pleads Guilty to $24 Million COVID-Relief Fraud Scheme
Defendant Used Fraudulent Proceeds to Buy Multiple Homes and Luxury Cars
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-pleads-guilty-24-million-covid-relief-fraud-scheme
Malaysia Seizes Drugs Worth $1.2 Billion
Malaysian customs officials said on Tuesday that they have seized captagon pills worth US$1.2 billion that were hidden in trolley tires, making it the biggest drug haul ever recorded in the country.
In cooperation with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior, officers intercepted the shipment coming from an unnamed country in the Middle East. It was believed to be headed to a third country in East Asia and contained approximately 94.8 million captagon pills, weighing 16 tons.
“This security cooperation is considered to be the biggest success in fighting international drug cartels,” the department said in its statement.
The value and size of the seizure is worth more than the combined value and size of drug seizures made by Malaysian customs over the past three years.
Nobody has been arrested yet in connection with the smuggling, but if found and convicted, the perpetrators risk the death penalty.
Captagon production and smuggling is rife in the MENA region, and given its ideal location as an intersection between Europe, Africa and Asia, it has become a nucleus of illicit production and distribution.
Captagon and other illegally produced drugs are usually recorded as being smuggled into the Gulf or Europe through Italy. But with production on the rise amid internal conflict and a diminishing rule of law, this monumental seizure suggests not only an emerging route into Southeast Asia, but also, given the quantity, an emerging demand.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/14116-malaysia-seizes-drugs-worth-1-2-billion
Taxpayer-Funded NPR Goes After Alex Jones and his Last Channel of Income – Want Him Ruined
Taxpayer-funded NPR went after Alex Jones and Infowars on Wednesday.
Correspondent Tom Dreisbach wrote a hit piece on Infowars in an attempt to ruin the company and silence Alex Jones once and for all.
Dreisbach has a long history of attacking conservatives and Trump supporters. In fact, that’s all he does if you look at this author page.
On Wednesday Dreisbach pointed out in his hit piece that Amazon still carries Infowars merchandise. He wants that stopped.
Tom Dreisbach wants Alex Jones and his popular channel Infowars ruined and silenced.
When have we ever seen this in American history?
Why are we still paying for NPR and this filth?
Here is what Tom Dreisbach wrote today to ruin Infowars.
Via NPR:
The far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been banned from Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Spotify and even PayPal for violating those sites’ policies against hate speech. But Jones continues to have a platform to sell expensive dietary supplements through one of the world’s biggest online retailers: Amazon.
Just as Amazon provides massive third-party sellers — such as Starbucks, Coca-Cola or Apple — with their own online storefronts, Jones’ Infowars Store has a home on the site, too. There, he sells products such as “Super Male Vitality” drops, “Lung Cleanse Plus Spray” and “Prostaguard” pills.
“Thank you for supporting the Infowar!” the storefront states above its listings, suggesting that Jones is not just selling supplements but providing a path for consumers to fund his extremist causes. Meanwhile, Amazon provides support to Jones and gets a percentage of all the sales — called a “referral fee” — as it does with all third-party sellers. For supplements priced over $10, the referral fee is 15%.
Neither Amazon nor Jones responded to NPR’s requests for comment.
Tonight The Gateway Pundit reached out to NPR for comment.
We will update this report if we hear back from them.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/wth-taxpayer-funded-npr-goes-alex-jones-last-channel-income-want-ruined/
Warren, Yellen Clash Over Whether BlackRock Deserves "Systemically Important" Label
While most of Wednesday's quarterly CARES Act testimony from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell focused on what the central bank is doing to combat economic inequality and climate change (buying green bonds?), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (who, let's remember, was passed over in favor of Yellen for the Treasury Secretary post) dug in on what has become a pet issue for the Massachusetts Senator, for whom regulation of Wall Street is a marquee issue.
When it came her turn to speak roughly an hour into the hearing, Warren - who championed creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help muzzle Wall Street via Dodd-Frank, only to look on helplessly as the Trump Administration gutted the bureau - decided to focus on one of her favorite Wall Street punching bags: Black Rock.
Following a preamble about the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, Senator Warren demanded to know whether Yellen, who, before joining the Fed, spent a career in academia, would direct the Financial Stability Oversight Council - or FSOC, as it's commonly called - to consider designating BlackRock, which, with $9 trillion in assets under management, is the biggest pile of investor capital in the world, as a systemically important financial firm.
To be systemically important, regulators must determine that its collapse could potentially set off a chain reaction that could take down the entire debt-based global financial system.
"Secretary Yellen, hypothetically, if a $9 trillion investment company failed, would that likely have a significant impact on our economy?" Warren said.
Yellen replied that FSOC had once examined stability risks posed by concentration of ownership among the big asset managers (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and the other top firms, presumably). While Yellen didn't say specifically if FSOC had considered the scenario of a total collapse, she suggested that a SIFI designation wouldn't be appropriate.
"It's important to look very carefully at the risk posed by the asset management industry including BlackRock and other firms. The FSOC began to do that I believe in 2016 and 2017 but the risks it focused on were ones having to do with open-end mutual funds that can experience massive withdrawals and be forced to sell off assets and create fire sales," Yellen said.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/warren-yellen-clash-over-whether-blackrock-deserves-systemically-important-label
China Outsourcing from the Timken Company Complicates Jane Timken’s Senate Bid in Ohio
Jane Timken, the former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, is running for the U.S. Senate claiming to be an acolyte of former President Donald Trump’s America First vision, but the actions of a company bearing her family name that outsourced American jobs to China over the past several decades raise questions about whether she truly believes in it.
Timken’s husband Ward “Tim” Timken Jr. was the chairman of the Timken Company from 2005 to 2014, and later was the CEO of the offshoot TimkenSteel which broke off from the main company in 2014. Before, during, and after his leadership of the Timken Company, the organization massively expanded operations in China and decreased jobs in America to the point where the size of its workforce in China as of 2012, according to press accounts, rivaled the size of its workforce in Ohio.
Timken and her campaign told Breitbart News she is an ardent supporter of Trump and his policies, including on China, and given manufacturing industry shifts she witnessed firsthand while her husband was overseeing thousands of American jobs drained to China, she understands the plight of American workers in Ohio and can use this experience to fight on their behalf. She did not answer several questions about her thoughts on the Timken Company’s actions, including whether she would have done anything differently; whether she used her voice as a shareholder at all to speak up against the company’s actions; whether she and her husband intend to keep their shares of the Timken Company; whether she approved of the company’s decisions when her husband was chairman to build plants in China while cutting jobs in America; and what she would do if elected to the U.S. Senate to stand up for Americans who lost jobs from the Timken Company while it expanded operations in China. Nonetheless, the complicated picture — and how Timken handles it from here — could be a make or break issue for a U.S. Senate candidate in a primary in the Trump and America First era, especially in the reddening state of Ohio.
More
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/24/exclusive-china-outsourcing-timken-company-complicates-jane-timkens-senate-bid-ohio/
Facebook Spends More on Lobbying DC Than Big Pharma and Defense Industry Giants.
A new report reveals Facebook as the largest corporate lobbying spender in the U.S. in 2020.
The Public Citizen report reveals the social media platform spent $19,680,000 to lobby in 2020, placing it nearly $1,000,000 above Amazon, the second-highest spender.
“Big Tech has eclipsed yesterday’s big lobbying spenders, Big Oil and Big Tobacco. In 2020, Amazon and Facebook spent nearly twice as much as Exxon and Philip Morris on lobbying,” the report adds.
During the 2020 election cycle, Big Tech also spent a record-breaking $124 million in lobbying and contributions to candidates. Much of this growth is linked to Amazon and Facebook, which increased lobbying and campaign spending from 2018 to 2020 by 30 percent and 56 percent, respectively.
https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/facebook-lobbying-dc-efforts-dwarf-pharam-defense/
Charlottesville mayor posts graphic poem saying city 'rapes you,' continues slamming her own town==
Mayor Nikuyah Walker says her city is 'void of a moral compass'
The mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, posted a shockingly graphic poem on social media Wednesday, where she said the city "rapes you" and continued to slam the place she represents as racist and "void of a moral compass."
Democratic Mayor Nikuyah Walker's poem read:
Charlottesville: The beautiful-ugly it is. It rapes you, comforts you in its c** stained sheet and tells you to keep its secrets."
Walker's post was deleted by Facebook, who purportedly explained the message violates its "standards on adult sexual exploitation," so she posted a screenshot of her work on Twitter, and then rewrote it in a lengthier version for all to see.
In her follow-up post, Walker wrote:
"Is this better? I'm asking the person who reported my short poem to FB.
Charlottesville: The beautiful-ugly it is. It lynched you, hung the noose at city hall and pressed the souvenir that was once your finger against its lips. It covers your death with its good intentions. It is a place where white women with Black kids collects signature (sic) for a white man who questions whether a black woman understands white supremacy. It is destructively world class. White people say that it is a place where gentrification started with the election of a Black women (sic) in 2017 and because of white power, a lie becomes #facts. Its daily practice is that of separating you from your soul. Charlottesville is void of a moral compass. It's as if good ole tj is still cleverly using his whip to whip the current inhabitants into submissiveness. Charlottesville rapes you of your breaths. It suffocates your hopes and dreams. It liberates you by conveniently redefining liberation. It progressively chants while it conservatively acts. Charlottesville is anchored in white supremacy and rooted in racism. Charlottesville rapes you and covers you in sullied sheets."
Walker's mention of "tj" appears to be a reference to late President Thomas Jefferson, whose famous Monticello home is outside the city.
In another post shared Wednesday, the mayor wrote, "Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemmings. He 'owned' and raped her. How repulsed do you think she use (sic) to be as she laundered his fluids and scent out of the linens that he raped her on?"
Walker did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment on her posts.
Anything else?
The Washington Examiner reported that "Walker was elected mayor of Charlottesville in 2017, the first black woman to hold the office, and she often spoke out on the campaign trail against the 2017 Unite the Right rally that turned violent when a suspected white supremacist drove his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer."
https://www.theblaze.com/news/charlottesville-mayor-posts-graphic-poem-saying-city-rapes-you-continues-slamming-her-own-town
9 Countries Summon Chinese Envoys Over Xinjiang Row
Nine U.S. allies in Europe have summoned China’s ambassadors in protest after Beijing slapped sanctions on a dozen European officials, researchers, and institutions that have been vocal about the regime’s human rights abuses.
The “sanctioning of members of Parliament and scientists is absolutely incomprehensible,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a March 23 statement after meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Berlin. “While we sanction abuses of human rights, Beijing sanctions democracy. We cannot accept this.”
At least eight other countries, including France, Denmark, Belgium, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy, have also called in the Chinese envoys to register their complaints during the past two days.
The Chinese measure came on the heels of coordinated Western sanctions on March 22 from the United States, the UK, Canada, and the European Union to punish Beijing’s repressive policy in Xinjiang. It marked the first of its kind that the EU imposed on China in three decades.
In apparent retaliation, the Chinese foreign ministry singled out 10 individuals and four entities for sanctions, accusing them of “maliciously spread[ing] lies and disinformation” and harming Chinese sovereignty. The ban would block the individuals and their families—among them eight European politicians and two scholars, two subcommittees under the European Parliament and the EU—from entering China and restrict associated entities from doing business with the country.
The aggressive response from Beijing has prompted an outpouring of support toward the targeted individuals and entities, with Daniel Twining of the U.S. nonprofit International Republican Institute—who got on Beijing’s blacklist last year for supporting Hong Kong—calling it “a badge of honor.”
Ann Linde, the foreign minister for Sweden, called the Chinese sanctions “unacceptable.” Sweden’s “support for human rights remains unchanged, which was communicated by State Secretary Rydberg to China’s ambassador today,” she said in a March 23 tweet.
In France, Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye also drew fire for the embassy’s inflammatory comments defending the regime’s policies. He called the Paris-based researcher Antoine Bondaz “mad hyena” and “little thug” after China imposed sanctions on him and others.
Lu, upon being summoned, initially cited “scheduling issues” for a delay in talks.
https://www.ntd.com/9-countries-summon-chinese-envoys-over-xinjiang-row_586760.html
Migrant Got-Away Total Tops 130K in 2021
A senior leader within Customs and Border Protection provided Breitbart Texas with developments in the number of migrants escaping apprehension. The source, speaking on a condition of anonymity, expressed frustration at the misplacement of Border Patrol resources in the southwest. According to the source, nearly 900 migrants per day eluded apprehension nationwide over the last two weeks.
in March, got-away totals for fiscal year 2021 surpassed 118,000 thousand for Fiscal Year 2021. A source now reports the total exceeds 130,000.
The metric is usually not released by DHS. It is achieved by counting illegal immigrants who ultimately escape Border Patrol apprehension after being observed by aircraft platforms and camera systems. In addition, Border Patrol agents use traditional sign-cutting techniques to identify footprints where cameras do not capture the crossing. “That’s where it gets tricky,” says one agent who did not wish to be identified. “On a small trail, dozens can walk all over each other’s footprints, so you just do your best. Often, they’ll glue carpet to the soles of their shoes.”
Sources say the got-away count usually fails to truly reflect reality and comes up short. This comes as CBP reports its highest apprehension totals since 2006.
The humanitarian needs of thousands of unaccompanied children has impacted the Border Patrol’s ability to operate in many remote areas. This situation is likely to worsen as the crisis develops.
As Border Patrol agents are redirected to humanitarian aid to unaccompanied minors and staff newly opened facilities, the border itself is undermanned, according to the source. Homeland Security is focused strictly on the optics of the border and not the underlying vulnerabilities, the source complains.
Despite the current administration’s refusal to call the immigration situation on the border a crisis, the recent surges are objectively concerning. Many believe the impetus for the surges are fueled by the promise of amnesty legislation. The administration’s new policies regarding lax interior enforcement and a reduction in removals are also believed to be contributing factors.
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/03/24/exclusive-migrant-got-away-total-tops-130k-in-2021/
>>13292043 Angelina commissioner resigns citing shifting priorities
>>13292052 Texas Man Pleads Guilty to $24 Million COVID-Relief Fraud Scheme
>>13292079 Malaysia Seizes Drugs Worth $1.2 Billion captagon pills, weighing 16 tons.
>>13291412 BIDEN: “There’s Not a Single Thing a Man Can Do That a Woman Can’t Do as Well or Better – Not a Single Thing”
>>13292155 China Outsourcing from the Timken Company Complicates Jane Timken’s Senate Bid in Ohio
>>13292161 US Citizen Killed in Quintana Roo Had Ties to European Drug Groups
>>13292167 Facebook Spends More on Lobbying DC Than Big Pharma and Defense Industry Giants.
>>13292189 Charlottesville mayor posts graphic poem saying city 'rapes you,' continues slamming her own town
>>13292195 9 Countries Summon Chinese Envoys Over Xinjiang Row
>>13292212 Migrant Got-Away Total Tops 130K in 2021
>>13292240 What about all this?