…maybe it’s just that I’ve been sick as the proverbial dog for a couple of days…during which a completely unreasonable amount of shit appears to have kicked off…but…I might have to admit defeat today…I may or may not manage to come back & add to this but I don’t think I can really pretend that I can see a throughline beyond “is it that I feel wretched or that it’s all a bit fucked?”

…although…apparently…loads of people probably haven’t noticed

The president-elect made it clear during the campaign that he had the media in his sights. He told a rally on the eve of the election that he “wouldn’t mind” if an assassin shot the journalists standing in front of him.

Before the election, he also signalled his desire to jail journalists, hunt down their confidential sources, cancel the broadcast licences of major networks and criminalise work to counter disinformation.

Journalists in the US – a country long at the forefront of global press freedom advocacy – now find themselves facing threats more familiar to their colleagues in the Philippines, Hungary or Venezuela. And it is from journalists in such countries that the US press must now learn how to defend press freedom and fight for facts.
[…]
Journalists could face increased threats of both politically motivated criticism and potential legal harassment. For example, Trump has repeatedly used the legal system against journalists whose coverage doesn’t benefit him.

He has sued many major outlets for defamation since 2016. He recently launched legal action against CBS over its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

There’s also likely to be greater impunity for online threats towards US journalists and news organisations. For instance, X has recently announced updates to its block function (allowing accounts to view people who have blocked them), which critics say could increase harassment.

And, as a report from the International Center for Journalists and Unesco shows, online attacks can spill over into offline harm. Women and those of colour are likely to be most at risk.

Meanwhile, the fight within the US to legislate against hate speech and dangerous disinformation on social media platforms appears to have been lost.

Many pro-Trump Republicans have also long argued that work to defend human rights, public health and election integrity on social media platforms through curation and regulation are a violation of “free speech”. They claim such work is biased against conservative perspectives, despite several studies debunking this claim.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump referred to efforts to mitigate political mis- and disinformation as “the censorship cartel“. Meanwhile, he pushed numerous falsehoods from the campaign podium.
[…]
Even before this election cycle began, Republicans ramped up their efforts to derail fact-checking work in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection – which itself was fuelled by disinformation, such as the suggestion that the election was “stolen”.

But in a 2022 statement, Trump announced that upon re-election he would ban federal agencies, employees and money from being involved in any efforts that he claims impede lawful speech, and investigate those involved in these activities. This includes tackling, labelling or flagging dis- and misinformation, which he misrepresents as censorship.

This promise was reinforced by Elon Musk immediately after the election in a post on X. Musk has proved to be one of the loudest opponents of efforts to tackle disinformation, as demonstrated by his attempts to sue non-profit research centres focused on countering online hate speech.

During his first term, Trump tried to dramatically slash the budget for public service media. These are publicly funded broadcasters, which are expected to provide independent news reporting. Under the Trump administration funding was cut from $465m (£365m) to just $30m (£23.6m), a move that would have threatened local and investigative reporting around the country.

These cuts were ultimately blocked by Congress, but it is unclear if Republican legislators will stand up to Trump in his second term.

During Trump’s first term, there was also intense politicisation and attacks on journalism at the Voice of America (VoA), the US’s oldest and largest international public service broadcaster.

In 2020, he appointed a new CEO, Michael Pack, to run the US Agency for Global Media, its parent company, and overhaul the operation. In his short, seven-month term, Pack fired senior officials, froze reporting budgets, and launched investigations into supposedly biased journalists.

The public broadcaster PBS, which produces some of the most important accountability reporting in the US, is also extremely vulnerable due to funding cuts.

Meanwhile, Musk, who is set to play a major role in cutting government spending and activities in the new Trump administration, has a track record of campaigning to defund public service media.

…& yet

Yet, a pre-election survey commissioned by the International Center for Journalists suggested that these concerns are not landing with the US public. The nationwide poll of 1,020 adults found that nearly one-quarter (23%) of Americans surveyed did not regard political leaders threatening, harassing, or abusing journalists or news organisations as a threat to press freedom.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/04/donald-trump-elon-musk-and-the-threat-to-press-freedom

…I mean…it’s nothing compared to the “far-left” in france being so pissed they didn’t get to have one of theirs be prime minister they’re happy to blow up parliament just before anyone passes any sort of a budget & basically stick the far-right in the driver’s seat while bitching that everyone ought to blame the centrists…but…I dunno…maybe it’s me…maybe all these assholes talking all this shit aren’t dangerously misconstruing the ability to make things not happen for the power to achieve something…but…at some point it all starts to feel like somebody’s taking the piss…everywhere you look there’s some son of a bitch who’d be in jail…or at least in court…if they weren’t in office…where they’re doing shit that ought to mean they’d wind up in jail…a nation the existence of which was supposed to carve into the globe an indelible reminder of the importance of not allowing genocidal projects to gain purchase is being documented by amnesty international as being engaged in a genocidal project…a fact which is news to pretty much nobody who hasn’t defined israel as definitionally incapable of being guilty of that sin…& even with everything going on there…or in syria…or ukraine

In comments reported by Sky News, Carns, a former Royal Marines colonel, said Russia was suffering losses of about 1,500 soldiers killed or injured a day.

“In a war of scale – not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine – our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended – as part of a broader multinational coalition – in six months to a year,” he said in a speech at a conference on reserves at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank in London.

He added: “That doesn’t mean we need a bigger army, but it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/04/british-army-could-be-wiped-out-within-six-months-of-ukraine-scale-war-minister-warns

…it’s possible none of those places are the worst off we’ve got going?

The war in Sudan is a tragic afterthought in global politics, forgotten amid the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. But 19 months of fighting between rival warlords and affiliated militias have ravaged one of Africa’s largest countries and provoked a rolling humanitarian disaster. Some 26 million people — about half of Sudan’s population — need food assistance in a country that’s home to the world’s largest displacement crisis. Close to 10 million people have been classified by the United Nations as “critically food insecure,” that is, on the cusp of famine or already in the grips of it.

“Both in terms of spread and the acuteness of hunger, this is the worst humanitarian hunger catastrophe that we have on the planet today,” Alex Marianelli, acting country director for Sudan at the U.N.’s World Food Program, told me.

The world’s ‘worst crisis’ is in Sudan [WaPo]

…weird how russia has propped up both sides of that worst crisis at different times…like it’s weird how…on the one hand

“This year there were 500 suspicious incidents in Europe. Up to 100 of them can be attributed to Russian hybrid attacks, espionage, influence operations,” Lipavský told reporters.

The issue of Russian hybrid threats was one of the main topics discussed during the two-day meeting of the NATO alliance in Brussels, which concluded on Wednesday.

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said that “both Russia and China have tried to destabilise our countries and divide our societies with acts of sabotage, cyber-attacks, and energy blackmail”

Rutte added that the block agreed on a set of measures to counter “Russia’s hostile and cyber activities, including enhanced intelligence exchange, more exercises, better protection of critical infrastructure and improved cyber defence.

Speaking separately in Berlin on Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that his country faces a significant threat of sabotage from both Russia and China. He emphasized the need for the country to better prepare for attacks and become more resilient.

Over recent years, European nations have witnessed a spate of incidents – cyber-attacks, arson, incendiary devices, sabotage and even murder plots. The aim of such episodes, security officials believe, is to sow chaos, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies to Kyiv.

Concerns in Europe over potential Russian hybrid attacks have intensified following western approval for Ukraine to use US and British long-range missiles in strikes within Russia.

Rutte warned last month that Russia’s “intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks” highlighted the way in which Moscow was quickly shifting the frontline from Ukraine “to the Baltic region, to western Europe and even to the high north”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/04/up-to-100-suspicious-incidents-in-europe-can-be-attributed-to-russia-czech-minister-says

…& on the other

Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations, said: “Operation Destabilise has exposed billion-dollar money laundering networks operating in a way previously unknown to international law enforcement or regulators.

“For the first time, we have been able to map out a link between Russian elites, crypto-rich cyber criminals, and drugs gangs on the streets of the UK. The thread that tied them together – the combined force of [alleged money laundering groups] Smart and TGR – was invisible until now.”

The NCA said that Ekaterina Zhdanova, who was sanctioned last year by OFAC for allegedly helping ransomware groups receive and launder illicit funds, headed Smart. She is said to have worked alongside the TGR boss, George Rossi, whose location is unknown to the international law enforcement coalition. Rossi’s second-in-command is Elena Chirkinyan.

The NCA outlined how Smart and TGR laundered cash for transnational crime groups such as the Kinahans, the family-run crime syndicate said to be responsible for trafficking drugs and firearms into the UK and internationally, who were sanctioned by the US in 2022.

From late 2022 to summer 2023, the Smart network was used to fund unspecified Russian espionage operations, the NCA said, while the money launderers also helped Russian clients avoid UK sanctions.

Connections to funds being moved into the UK that originated from the Russia Today (RT) television network were also unearthed by the investigators. RT’s owner is sanctioned in the UK.

The money-laundering scheme is said to have worked by passing funds through a sequence of layers. Russian criminals would exchange millions in cryptocurrencies – made from running a series of ransomware attacks – for cash derived from a range of illicit transactions in western economies, including UK drug deals.

This gave the Russian criminals hard currency that could be laundered and the value returned to them. It also handed western crime bosses millions in cryptocurrency, allowing them to buy large consignments of drugs from South America while bypassing the international banking system.

The NCA added: “TGR and Smart coordinated their activity, with members of the TGR group receiving large volumes of cash on behalf of Zhdanova and facilitating the conversion, making the equivalent value available in cryptocurrency.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/04/global-investigation-exposes-alleged-billion-dollar-russian-money-laundering-network

…but…sure, bro…tell me how bitcoin breaching $100,000 is going to eliminate the deficit…I was probably going to throw up anyway…so what difference does it really make?

…not actually kidding…so…apologies if that’s TMI…there’s a non-zero chance this is basically stream-of-delerium…although the difference between that sort of thing & the miracle tarrif pixie dust things is frankly not at all clear to me

There is now a conventional narrative in the markets about the short- and medium-term prospects of the dollar. 

In the short run the dollar will continue to strengthen, as an unprecedented confluence of domestic and foreign forces push it up. Foreign exchange traders are focused on Donald Trump imposing tariffs on his return to the White House. His latest blast on his social media channel Truth Social suggests plans for tariffs of 25 per cent on imports from Canada and Mexico, and an extra 10 per cent on China.

These new taxes will shift spending by American consumers away from now more expensive foreign goods. Given record low unemployment and the limited capacity of US manufacturing to expand production, something will have to give. Namely, the dollar will have to appreciate to shift some of that spending back towards imports, which are in more elastic supply.

Moreover, extending Trump’s tax cuts enacted in his first administration as Republicans in Congress aspire to do, and then adding yet more tax cuts on tips, social security payments and who knows what else will only goose US spending still further. Given that American households disproportionately consume domestically produced goods, this will worsen the incipient excess demand for US products.

It will require yet more dollar appreciation to shift a portion of that spending towards foreign supplies.

Treasury secretary designate Scott Bessent may be a balanced budget man, and his crack team of cost cutters — Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — have high ambitions. But if recent decades have taught us one thing, it is that cutting taxes is easier than cutting spending. The dollar’s behaviour is a clear signal that investors expect the budget deficit to widen.

Central banks of course will do nothing to moderate the dollar’s rise — on the contrary. Tariffs pushing up US import prices will be inflationary. Even if a one-time increase in tariff rates leads only to a one-time increase in prices, the Federal Reserve has learned that households dislike one-time increases in prices as much as ongoing inflation.

Having been taught this chastening lesson, the central bank will react more strongly to the next burst of inflation than it did in 2021-22. There will be tension with the new administration, no doubt, with Trump and Bessent both being Fed critics. But Jay Powell and colleagues are unlikely to be deterred.

The European Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China, meanwhile, will be quite happy to see their currencies fall. The European economy is in dire straits, and Europe lacks the political will to lend it fiscal support. The ECB, not for the first time, is the only game in town. A euro at parity against the dollar is now clearly on the cards.

Meanwhile, the good standing at home of the Chinese government of Xi Jinping rests on its ability to hit, or at least come within hailing distance of, its growth targets. With Trump clamping down on not just US-China trade but also on Chinese products assembled and routed through countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, the blow to Chinese growth will be considerable. 

To be sure, a sharply lower renminbi would dent Chinese consumer confidence and elicit aggressive action by an angry American president.  But a renminbi that falls by a limited amount, say by 10 per cent against the dollar, thereby boosting Chinese exports to other markets, might be just what Xi would want.

In the medium term, however, the dollar is likely to give back these short-term gains, and then some. Tariffs and tax policy aside, the strength of the dollar has rested on the strength of the US economy, which has consistently outperformed Europe and other parts of the world. Tariffs on imported inputs, which will impart a negative supply shock to US manufacturing, are incompatible with that strength. 

Moreover, the higher interest rates adopted by the Fed to damp down inflation will not be investment friendly. Neither will eliminating the investment subsidies and tax credits of the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden-era initiatives. None of this will be good for growth. 

Above all, we know that economic policy uncertainty has a strong negative effect on investment. And Trump is an uncertainty machine.  

The short- and long-term prospects of the [dollar] are at odds [FT]

…not about everything…some conclusions certainly seem foregone

Fury as US argues against climate obligations at top UN court [Guardian]

…but…this is how you MAGA

GM to write down value of China business by more than $5bn [Guardian]

…I expect that xi fella is absolutely gutted

…anyway…I give up…if I can summon the will I will endeavor to supply some tunes…but it’s completely possible that I’ll be…who was it who called it “talking to god on the big white telephone” & I may not remember I haven’t done that part…or generally lose track of time…plus it’s a bit harder to get them lined up when you feel like your head is pounding enough to maybe explode if exposed to a bassline…so…only time will tell, I guess?