LinkedIn’s race diversity data collection is discriminatory: legal watchdogs

 A conservative legal watchdog group is demanding that LinkedIn take down its “Diversity in Recruiting” feature, claiming it’s in violation of last week’s Supreme Court ruling against race-based affirmative action in higher education.

The Microsoft-owned tech company professes to have 930 million members in more than 200 countries worldwide and acknowledge it collects demographic data that “may diversify the group of candidates displayed to recruiters.”

The Equal Protection Project attorneys, William Jacobson and Ameer Benno, sent their concerns to the LinkedIn headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. on July 5 after the nation’s highest court struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina as unconstitutional.

The implications for data used in recruiting is now resonating as a legal danger as employers are reassessing their diversity programs and preparing for possible legal challenges.

“Such discrimination simply cannot be justified as job-related or consistent with business necessity. That was the law prior to Students For Fair Admissions, and if there were the slightest doubt, the Supreme Court once and for all settled the issue. LinkedIn should take notice and adhere,” Jacobson and Benno said in a letter to LinkedIn.

The Supreme Court’s decision rested on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause but the dissenting justices in a scathing opinion said the ruling would deepen racial inequality on campuses creating fewer professionals of color.

Legal Insurrection Foundation lawyers William Jacobson and Ameer Benn sent a letter to LinkedIn asking for the feature to be taken down from the website.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn told The Post that it makes sure that it’s website doesn’t “enable recruiters to filter out or exclude applicants” based on race or gender.

LinkedIn

In a statement to the Post, LinkedIn defended its diversity efforts for members and job hunters as proper.

“One way to make sure people have equal access is to understand the gender, race, ethnicity, and other important demographic information of our members and then to measure whether or not all are being afforded opportunities equitably on our platform.”

“Many hirers use LinkedIn to connect with diverse groups of qualified candidates for their roles. We often evaluate new ways to ensure that our tools recommend qualified candidates, but we don’t enable recruiters to filter out or exclude applicants based on their race, gender or other protected demographics,” the company said.

“People who use [our site] choose whether to share their demographic information and can control how their data is used through their settings.”

But the lawyers disputed the company’s explanation, saying LinkedIn is the one sorting and filtering members based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation for the recruiters.

Conservative advocacy groups celebrated the ruling, calling it a necessary step to ending racial bias and discrimination in education and the workforce.

Jacobson, while not saying whether he would file a discrimination suit against LinkedIn, told The Post “we put them on notice of the legal ramifications of what they are doing.”

https://nypost.com/2023/07/06/linkedins-race-diversity-data-collection-is-discriminatory-legal-watchdogs/

NY’s $64M COVID app disgracefully padded consultant pockets with tax dollars

 Millions of New Yorkers recently woke up to a message on their phone — from an app they most likely forgot they ever even downloaded.

“Because demand for instant access to vaccine records has subsided, the NYS Wallet App will be discontinued on July 28, 2023,” the push notification read.

Just barely two years after its launch, the vaccine passport app — a relic of New York’s covid police state — was dead. 

It could have been a cause for celebration for liberty-loving New Yorkers, had we not spent an eye-watering $64 million on the app. Instead, the grotesque government spending should make the blood of every taxpayer boil.

Back in May 2021, then Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled the so-called Excelsior Pass — a Covid passport app — pitching it as a more convenient and effective alternative to carrying around a physical vaccine card to gain entry to venues, restaurants and gyms under New York City’s severe Covid restrictions.

The app, the governor said, represented “one step closer to reaching a new normal.” It was downloaded by 11.5 million New Yorkers — but its use case was never all that clear.

Why did we need a special app when we could just carry around the little white CDC vaccine card or just keep a photo of it on our phones?

There was a dystopian creepiness to scanning a QR code connected to a state database just to have a workout at the gym or grab a bite to eat at a restaurant. That is, if the notoriously glitchy app even worked in the first place. 

Many New Yorkers recently woke to a notification letting them know the state’s covid passport app was done.

But the Excelsior Pass’s biggest problem was its price tag.

How did New York end up forking over $64 million for an ill-conceived app? The answer is simple: taxpayers with no meaningful recourse were the ones footing the bill.

When the app was first announced, it was slated to cost a mere $2.5 million. Within a couple months, it swelled to a reported $17 million thanks to mission creep, as the state toyed with the idea of expanding its applications to stand in for driver’s licenses, proof of age and other medical records.

Gov. Hochul was right to put the Excelsior Pass money pit out of its misery. But the state was wrong to unleash it in the first place.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Until its cancellation — and even though virtually nobody has been using the app now that vax mandates are largely a thing of the past — the state had been paying $200,000 a month just to maintain the database of vaccine records.

The budget explosion represents an amazing 25-fold increase from the original plan. So, where did all that money go? 

To “consulting,” of course. After IBM secured a three-year contract with the state to roll out the app, Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte reportedly also got in on the action. 

New York required many businesses, like restaurants and gyms, to bar entry for unvaccinated customers. But that’s well over and done.

Getty Images

How exactly these mega-corporations managed to hoover up so much taxpayer money is now the subject of an investigation by the state Office of the Inspector General. 

It’s a tale as old as time here in New York. In fact, earlier this year it was revealed that the city spent twice as much on consultants working on a Second Avenue subway tunnel than they did actually digging the tunnel itself.

But it’s also an issue in liberal cities across the country. In Los Angeles, building apartments for the homeless swelled from a $350,000 per unit cost all the way up to $837,000 a pop — far outstripping the average home value in the United States — thanks, in large part, to consulting bills.

Scanning the app felt dystopian.

AP

An audit in that case found “unusually high” consultant fees, while the cost of actual construction accounted for less than half of the budget. As a result of spending gone awry, LA’s plan to tackle homelessness has been considerably slowed, and many who were promised housing are still waiting.

Consultants’ parasitic grip on government spending can have disastrous consequences. A covid app and a subway tunnel are one thing. A roof over one’s head is entirely another.

Gov. Hochul was right to put the Excelsior Pass money pit out of its misery. But the state was wrong to unleash this dystopian app in the first place — and wronger still for allowing it to balloon unchecked.

If New York wants to stop hemorrhaging residents in droves, it better demonstrate a greater deal of respect for the hard-earned tax dollars it extracts from its citizens.

https://nypost.com/2023/07/06/nys-covid-app-padded-consultants-pockets-with-tax-dollars/

CNN Host: We Should Yield To Government Censorship Demands

  by Jonathan Turley,

As a long-standing free speech advocate, the last few years have been alarming and, frankly, depressing. The censorship efforts of the government are, unfortunately, not new.  However, what is new is the support of the media and the Democratic Party in such censorship. That was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.”

Yet, no one expressed more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.

Mattingly admitted that social media platforms “more often than not” gave in to the censorship demands by the Biden administration. However, he insisted that it “makes sense,” and is “probably what we should do on public health grounds.”

“[T]he Biden administration would regularly reach out to Twitter and Facebook and other companies in kind of the early stages of their COVID response and say, this person is spreading lies about vaccines, this account is spreading misinformation that is inhibiting — not just our efforts, the administration’s efforts to address COVID — but also public health, do something about it. And often, I think more often than not, the companies would respond and say, okay. And there are emails that came out during the course of this case that that was something that I think — when it was explained to me at the time, I thought, alright, that makes sense, that’s probably what we should do on public health grounds.”

What is striking is not just the blind acceptance that the government should be protecting us from harmful thoughts. It is also the failure to recognize that the government was wrong on many of these points while experts were being banned and blacklisted.

Many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.

The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old.  The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.

The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.

Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media.

Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”

However, there are now ample studies stating that “a new scientific review suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID.” It added that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people).”

It also found little evidence of a difference from wearing better masks and that “wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (five studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (five studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (three studies; 7799 people).”

Again, I expect that these studies will be debated for years. That is a good thing. There are questions raised over the types of studies used and whether randomized studies are sufficient. The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat.

The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”

Scientists previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination.  Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli,  even denounced the theory as “racist.”

Yet, Mattingly and others are defending censorship by repeating a tautology: the government must seek the censorship of ideas because some ideas must be censored.  Governments have always claimed that censorship of critics and dissenters is for the public’s best interest. They have always defined certain views as harmful or false.

Now, however, major media figures are shrugging off free speech concerns and supporting censorship as what former CNN media host CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter called a “harm reduction model.” While once fiercely opposed to censorship and government-supported blacklists, many in the media are echoing Mattingly’s view that the natural default should be to obey the government and its directions on permitted speech. After all, this is all for our own protection. Censorship just “makes sense.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cnn-host-we-should-yield-government-censorship-demands

Large Iranian Drone Plant Is Already Up & Running Inside Russia

 Russia already has an Iranian drone manufacturing facility up and running on its soil, in close cooperation with Tehran, which appears consistent with the US intelligence warnings of prior months.

"Russia’s covert drone partnership with Iran has included close co-operation on a new factory in the Russian republic of Tatarstan, where Moscow has converted an agricultural unmanned aerial vehicle maker to supply its war effort in Ukraine," Financial Times writes in a new investigative report.

The facility location is very close to Kazan, Russia's fifth largest city and among the country's high-tech manufacturing hubs. Albatross, the Russian company overseeing the facility, advertises itself as an agricultural unmanned aerial vehicle maker primarily focused on farm tech, but is believed to have recently been more deeply involved in military applications for its drones.

While Iran's kamikaze 'Shahed' loitering drones have already been deployed in the hundreds on the Ukrainian battlefield and over cities, FT's reporting did not suggest Shahed's were being produced at the new Tatarstan plant. Instead, at least 50 new Albatros M5 long-range reconnaissance drones have been supplied thus far to Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine. 

These Russian-Iranian drone initiatives are expected to expand, given that as the report underscores there's been a noticeable recruitment effort underway for Albatros company to gain more UAV engineers, scientists, and even technicians that can speak Farsi.

FT writes, in reference to the name of the specific business park where the manufacturing facility has been established:

In addition, they found the business park has also posted advertisements for Farsi interpreters who will be required to travel, perform simultaneous translation and translate technical documents.

In June, the White House issued satellite photographs that identified two buildings in the Alabuga zone area as a key part of Iran’s attempts to help Moscow increase its drone capacity. “We are also concerned that Russia is working with Iran to produce Iranian UAVs from inside Russia,” said John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson.

Kirby had further warned at the time, "This is a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Iran’s neighbors, and to the international community." He explained, "We are continuing to use all the tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt these activities including by sharing this with the public — and we are prepared to do more."

Alleged Iranian drone facility in southern Russia, Maxar Technologies via AP

The United States and its Western allies have further been concerned that Iran's growing and increasingly sophisticated military drone arsenal is proliferating elsewhere. For example, as FT cites, "Iranian UAVs — including earlier versions of the Shahed drones — have been used by the Houthi rebels in Yemen and by the Ethiopian government against Tigrayan rebels in 2021."

And now, Iranian drones manufactured in Russia, and with the significant resources that Moscow can bring, signals and even greater proliferation of Iranian UAVs and capabilities. 

Throughout the invasion of Ukraine which started February 24, 2022, Russia has proven itself able to circumvent Washington sanctions and attempts to isolate Moscow globally with ease by deepening partnerships with other 'official enemies' and rivals of the US like China and Iran.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/expansive-iranian-drone-plant-already-running-inside-russia

Xi Jinping's Blueprint For A China-Centric World Order

 by The Jamestown Foundation via OilPrice.com,

• The PRC Law on Foreign Relations, enacted by President Xi Jinping, aims to strengthen China's global position and challenge the Western-led world order.

• This law also enshrines Xi's control over diplomatic and national security policies and introduces legal measures for retaliation against perceived threats to China's interests.

• Critics argue that the law could harm China's international image, particularly with global businesses, and raises questions about Beijing's commitment to international laws and norms.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has promulgated a new law on foreign affairs to legitimize tough measures that Beijing is taking against the “bullying” of the “hegemonic West.” The statute, “The Law on Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” which took effect on July 1, will also anchor the supreme leader’s long-standing aspiration to build a China-centric global order that will challenge the framework established by the US-led Western Alliance since the end of World War II. The law also codifies the total control that Xi, who is Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary and Chairman of its Central Military Commission (CMC), exercises on all policies regarding diplomacy and national security (People’s Daily, June 30; Xinhua, June 28). The law states that the PRC “stays true to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable global security, and endeavors to strengthen international security cooperation and its participation in mechanisms of global security governance.” It stresses Beijing’s right to “take corresponding countermeasures and restrictive measures” against acts that violate international law and norms and that “endanger China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.” The official Global Times said the statute was a response to “new challenges in foreign relations, especially when China has been facing frequent external interference in its internal affairs under the western hegemony with unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction” (The Global Times, June 28). The legislation legalizes measures such as counter-sanctions and blacklisting of foreign nationals and institutions in retaliation against similar measures that the US and other Western countries have taken against PRC firms (New York Times Chinese Edition, December 16, 2022).

Observers have noted, however, that the latest demonstration of Beijing’s alleged “wolf warrior diplomacy” could hurt China’s international image, particularly among multinationals still interested in the PRC market (China Briefing, June 29). Earlier this year, the promulgation of a counter-espionage law already places businesspeople from different countries in a potentially compromising situation (South China Morning Post, June 17). This is due to the fact that Beijing has its own and unique interpretations of what constitutes “spying” or “leaking of state secrets.” Public security authorities have since the spring cracked down on a number of multinational due diligence companies as well as firms that handle accounting and other sensitive financial data of Chinese concerns. The CCP administration has also restricted the activities of American IT firm Micron in an apparent tit-for-tat response to Washington’s efforts to punish Chinese IT firms with links to national security and military units (Indopremier.com, July 1; fdiintelligence.com, May 10).

Yet another problem raised by foreign governments and China-based chambers of commerce is that while the new law claims that Beijing abides by the charters of the United Nations as well as all international law, well-known global practices such as freedom of information, disclosure of the holdings of shareholders and open bidding for contracts are not often observed by PRC cadres. Moreover, the Xi leadership’s emphasis on respecting the territorial integrity of nations big and small seems to be at variance with its refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) no-holds-barred flexing of its muscle in the Taiwan Strait, the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea also detracts from Beijing’s commitment to upholding international laws and global norms. The PRC’s claims to owning 90 percent of the South China Sea has been repeatedly challenged by UN and authoritative international law bodies such as Court of Final Appeal in the Hague (SCMP, June 17; Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 11).

It is understood that the Xi administration wants to demonstrate China’s diplomatic clout at a time when it is meeting setbacks on various foreign-policy fronts. The so-called “coup attempt” by the Wagner mercenary group against the Kremlin in late June has undermined the strength of Russia in general and President Vladimir Putin in particular (abc.net.au, June 27). While Beijing has continued to offer rhetorical support to Moscow, the declining power of the Russian Federation – seen as a key ally in Xi’s apparent bid to set up an “axis of autocratic states” that includes countries grouped under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS mechanism – has hurt Beijing’s ability to counter the challenge of the US and its allies in Europe and Asia (Radio Free Asia, June 29; Radio French International, June 27). The enhanced defense cooperation between the US and India which was reached during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington last month (June) has also hurt Beijing’s apparent efforts to prevent India from becoming part of what it sees as a “Asia NATO” (Zaobao.com.sg, June 26; Radio French International, June 26; VOAChinese, January 23). India is a long-standing member of the Quad Group of nations (US, India, Japan and Australia) whose aim includes curbing Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific Region. Instances of defense cooperation between India on the one hand, and Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines on the other, have also increased exponentially.

The Xi administration’s tough response to the “anti-China containment policy” supposedly spearheaded by Washington seems to contradict efforts by Beijing to reassure multinationals that the PRC will continue to push forward the open-door policy begun by Great Architect of Reform Deng Xiaoping in 1978. At the opening of the “Summer Davos” global forum in Tianjin in late June, Premier Li Qiang, deemed a protégé of Xi’s, appealed to particularly Western investors to come to the PRC. “The world economy is in a critical phase of upheaval,” Li said. “We should not return to isolation” (Deutsche Welle Chinese, June 28; Xinhua, June 27). However, Li, whose portfolio is the Chinese economy, did not spell out new measures to attract foreign capital. Promises made earlier by Beijing regarding the liberalization of control of foreign-exchange movements and other measures deemed to restrict the business opportunities of multinationals have yet to be honored.

International observers have raised the question of whether the Foreign Relations Law is mainly geared toward consolidating Xi’s Mao-like status as “core of the party for life.” According to Sinologist Minxin Pei, while the statute “provides Beijing a legal instrument to impose sanctions on its adversaries in the future…  Beijing does not need this legal instrument to punish its adversaries” (Note 1). Recent clampdowns exercised by the Xi leadership against American companies and other multinationals show the CCP administration already possesses a formidable toolbox to retaliate against sanctions that Western countries have imposed on the PRC. Coming hot upon the heels of the “insurrection” by the Wagner Group in Moscow, the added authority that the new law has given Xi seems an indication that the supreme leader wants additional guarantees against real and potential threats to his “core for life” status (Foreign Affairs Chinese, September 6, 2022). Indeed, since the days of late chairman Mao Zedong and master reformer Deng Xiaoping, the tradition has been well-established that the No. 1 leader in the party has sole responsibilities in formulating foreign and national-security policies, particularly regarding major countries and regions such as the US, Russia, Japan and the EU.

In light of Xi’s controversial decisions to back up his good friend Vladimir Putin and to engage in breakneck competition with the US-led “anti-China” coalition, it is possible that the top Chinese leader feels the need to take cover under a new legislation. In the past few months, Chinese social media has circulated many voices in opposition to Xi’s support of the Putin war effort against Ukraine. According to the Japanese pollster Genron-npo, “over half of Chinese people are either opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or feel it is wrong.” Additionally, Chinese social media has circulated a note said to be written by former vice-foreign minister Fu Ying opposing the CCP administration’s vehement anti-US stance. Ambassador Fu reportedly raised the question of “which countries will stand with China once it is mired in ferocious confrontation with the Americans.” (Aljazeera, March 31; VOAChinese, March 29; Genron-npo-net, November 30, 2022). While the most urgent problems facing young and old Chinese concern unemployment and the diminution of social-security benefits, Xi might want to divert attention from domestic economic woes to his alleged overseas achievements.

From more perspectives than one, then, the Law on Foreign Relations serves to legitimize – and reinforce – foreign policy goals set by Xi since he came to power in 2012. These have included the “Great renaissance of the Chinese nation” (which includes a much bigger say for China in setting rules of the road in areas stretching from finance to global geopolitics); the Belt and Road Initiative; and the construction of an alliance of non-Western states which find themselves constrained by the US-led world order. To the extent that Chinese ambitions to be at the front ranks of technology, including semiconductors and AI, have been frustrated by boycotts imposed by the US and its allies, Xi’s ambitious power projection has met with formidable pushback. The BRI has for the past three years performed poorly due to the failure of Chinese banks and conglomerates to adequately finance cross-continental projects whose economic viability is doubtful. The displays of assertiveness by both Moscow and Beijing has consolidated defense cooperation among NATO states – as well as efforts by NATO leaders to boost defense cooperation with American allies in Asia such as Japan and South Korea. Irrespective of the success of the Law on Foreign Relations, it has indirectly shown up the vulnerability of President Xi’s fire-spitting, highly ambitious foreign-policy goals.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/xi-jinpings-blueprint-china-centric-world-order

Former Senior US Officials Held Secret Talks With The Russians

 by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A group of former senior US officials has held talks with influential Russians, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an effort to lay the groundwork for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, NBC News reported on Thursday.

The meeting with Lavrov took place when he was in New York for a UN Security Council meeting back in April. The issues discussed included potential diplomatic off-ramps and the fate of Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory. Throughout the war, there has been no known engagement between the Biden administration and the Russian government on these issues.

The former US officials who met with Lavrov were Richard Haas, a former US diplomat and outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Charles Kupchan and Charles Graham, who are both fellows for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sources told NBC that the discussions have taken place with the knowledge of the Biden administration but not at its direction. The former US officials who met with Lavrov briefed the White House National Security Council about the discussion.

Other discussions have involved former US officials and people who work at prominent think tanks and research institutions in Russia who are said to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s not clear how often the talks are taking place. In at least one instance, a former US official traveled to Russia as part of the effort.

Around the time Haas and Kupchan met with Lavrov, they co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs titled "The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine". They suggested that Ukraine retaking all of the Donbas and Crimea does not need to be a goal of the US.

"Maintaining Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign and secure democracy is a priority, but achieving that goal does not require the country to recover full control of Crimea and the Donbas in the near term," they said.

Haas and Kupchan predicted the war in Ukraine would likely turn into a stalemate after Ukraine’s counteroffensive and called for neutral organizations to oversee a ceasefire.

"Under this approach, Ukraine’s Western supporters would propose a ceasefire as Ukraine’s coming offensive reaches its limits," they said. "A neutral organization—either the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—would send in observers to monitor and enforce the ceasefire and pullback."

At this point, there’s no indication the Biden administration will push for a ceasefire anytime soon. In early June, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has only spoken with Lavrov twice since Russia’s invasion, explicitly came out against a pause in fighting and disparaged other countries that are calling for peace.

For their part, the Ukrainians insist a ceasefire and peace talks can’t happen until Russia is expelled from all the territory it controls, including Crimea.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/former-senior-us-officials-held-secret-talks-russians