- The Genetic Panopticon: We're All Suspects In A DNA Lineup, Waiting To Be Matched With A Crime
The Genetic Panopticon: We’re All Suspects In A DNA Lineup, Waiting To Be Matched With A Crime
Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches… Make no mistake about it…your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason… Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”
– Justice Antonin Scalia dissenting in Maryland v. King
Be warned: the DNA detectives are on the prowl.
Whatever skeletons may be lurking on your family tree or in your closet, whatever crimes you may have committed, whatever associations you may have with those on the government’s most wanted lists: the police state is determined to ferret them out.
In an age of overcriminalization, round-the-clock surveillance, and a police state eager to flex its muscles in a show of power, we are all guilty of some transgression or other.
No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.
Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup waiting to be matched up with a crime.
Suspect State, meet the Genetic Panopticon.
DNA technology in the hands of government officials will complete our transition to a Surveillance State in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.
By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.
It’s getting harder to hide, even if you think you’ve got nothing to hide.
Armed with unprecedented access to DNA databases amassed by the FBI and ancestry website, as well as hospital newborn screening programs, police are using forensic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database, to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades.
By submitting your DNA to a genealogical database such as Ancestry and 23andMe, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.
It no longer even matters if you’re among the tens of millions of people who have added their DNA to ancestry databases. As Brian Resnick reports, public DNA databases have grown so massive that they can be used to find you even if you’ve never shared your own DNA.
That simple transaction—a spit sample or a cheek swab in exchange for getting to learn everything about one’s ancestral makeup, where one came from, and who is part of one’s extended family—is the price of entry into the Suspect State for all of us.
After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.” It can also be used to predict the physical appearance of potential suspects.
It’s what police like to refer to a “modern fingerprint.”
Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving, especially when it helps them crack cold cases of serial murders and rapists.
After all, who wouldn’t want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right?
At least, that’s the argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases, and they’ve got the success stories to prove it.
For instance, a 68-year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested and charged with the brutal rape and murder of a young woman almost 50 years earlier. Relying on genealogical research suggesting that the killer had ancestors who hailed from a small town in Italy, investigators narrowed their findings down to one man whose DNA, obtained from a discarded coffee cup, matched the killer’s.
In another cold case investigation, a 76-year-old man was arrested for two decades-old murders after his DNA was collected from a breathalyzer during an unrelated traffic stop.
Yet it’s not just psychopaths and serial rapists who are getting caught up in the investigative dragnet. In the police state’s pursuit of criminals, anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match—including distant family members—suddenly becomes part of a circle of suspects that must be tracked, investigated and ruled out.
Victims of past crimes are also getting added to the government’s growing DNA database of potential suspects. For instance, San Francisco police used a rape victim’s DNA, which was on file from a 2016 sexual assault, to arrest the woman for allegedly being involved in a property crime that took place in 2021.
In this way, “guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in a technological age in which one is just a DNA sample away from being considered a person of interest in a police investigation. As Jessica Cussins warns in Psychology Today, “The fundamental fight—that data from potentially innocent people should not be used to connect them to unrelated crimes—has been lost.”
Until recently, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s DNA. That was turned on its head by various U.S. Supreme Court rulings that heralded the loss of privacy on a cellular level.
For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Maryland v. King that taking DNA samples from a suspect doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. The Court’s subsequent decision to let stand the Maryland Court of Appeals’ ruling in Raynor v. Maryland, which essentially determined that individuals do not have a right to privacy when it comes to their DNA, made Americans even more vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission.
It’s all been downhill since then.
Indeed, the government has been relentless in its efforts to get hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial DNA shared with genealogical services such as Ancestry and 23andMe, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.
Get ready, folks, because the government has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.
This has been helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget).
For example, Rapid DNA machines—portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours—allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.
Journalist Heather Murphy explains: “As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases.”
All 50 states now maintain their own DNA government databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS, the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.
Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely. There’s already a move underway to carry out whole genome sequencing on newborns, ostensibly to help diagnose rare diseases earlier and improve health later in life, which constitutes an ethical minefield all by itself.
What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.
Just recently, in fact, police in New Jersey accessed the DNA from a nine-year-old blood sample of a newborn baby in order to identify the child’s father as a suspect in a decades-old sexual assault.
The ramifications of this kind of DNA profiling are far-reaching.
At a minimum, these DNA databases do away with any semblance of privacy or anonymity.
The lucrative possibilities for hackers and commercial entities looking to profit off one’s biological record are endless. It’s estimated that the global human identification market is projected to reach $6.5 billion by 2032.
These genetic databases and genomic technology also make us that much more vulnerable to creeps and cyberstalkers, genetic profiling, and those who would weaponize the technology against us.
Unfortunately, the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—continues to lag far behind the government and Corporate America’s encroachments on our rights.
Moreover, while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.
As scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:
We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go… In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases… shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.
What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. As Heather Murphy warns in the New York Times: “The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived… Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”
As the dissenting opinion to the Maryland Court of Appeals’ shed DNA ruling in Raynor rightly warned, “A person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver’s license, without opening up his genetic material for state collection and codification.” Indeed, by refusing to hear the Raynor case, the U.S. Supreme Court gave its tacit approval for government agents to collect shed DNA, likening it to a person’s fingerprints or the color of their hair, eyes or skin.
It’s just a matter of time before government agents will know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place by following our shed DNA. After all, scientists can already track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers using DNA.
Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.
Of course, none of these technologies are infallible.
DNA evidence can be wrong, either through human error, tampering, or even outright fabrication, and it happens more often than we are told.
What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s only a matter of time before the police state’s pursuit of criminals from the past expands into genetic profiling and a preemptive hunt for criminals of the future.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 23:40 - F-35 Stealth Fleet Grounded By USAF Over Faulty Ejection-Seat Worries
F-35 Stealth Fleet Grounded By USAF Over Faulty Ejection-Seat Worries
The US Air Force grounded its fleet of fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets due to new concerns over ejection seat safety just days after the Navy grounded planes for the same reason.
Air Combat Command (ACC) spokeswoman Alexi Worley confirmed to Breaking Defense that ACC-controlled F-35s are in temporary stand-down while explosive cartridges used inside ejection seats to help propel the pilot from the plane in emergencies are inspected.
“ACC’s F-35s do have Martin-Baker ejection seats, and on July 19, began a Time Compliance Technical Directive to inspect all of the cartridges on the ejection seat within 90 days.
“Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process. Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations,” Worley said.
ACC controls the majority of the USAF F-35s. These stealth jets are deployed in other major commands, including United States Air Forces in Europe, Pacific Air Forces, and Air Education and Training Command. The number of affected F-35s was not immediately known.
“Since CADs [cartridge accentuated devices] are used in the ejection process, a faulty CAD may not allow all the functions necessary to take place that would allow a complete and safe ejection.
“While the aircraft are flyable, I don’t think too many pilots would be willing to fly knowing they may not be able [to] eject,” Michael Cisek, a senior associate at the aviation consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told Breaking Defense.
On Thursday, the Air Force revealed that 300 training aircraft were temporarily grounded because of ejection seat safety fears. Other services, including the Navy and Marines Corps, have also halted flights of some fixed-wing aircraft.
The defect discovered comes a week after the United Kingdom’s Eurofighter Typhoons halted ‘non-essential’ flights over malfunctioning ejection seats.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 23:20 - To Take Back Our Culture We Need To Build Our Own Media Army
To Take Back Our Culture We Need To Build Our Own Media Army
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us
I have been writing about the concept of decentralization since around 2006, well before the threat of the woke takeover and the culture war became obvious. The idea is a rather simple one (most ideas that work are simple):
If the corrupt system does not or will not provide what the public needs or wants then the public should provide those necessities for themselves. If they are successful then the system has two choices – It can fade away quietly as the decentralized economy takes over, or, it can try and STOP the public from building their own production using force. If the system uses force, then it exposes its true nature as authoritarian and it encourages rebellion. One way or another, the corrupt system will be eliminated.
We have already seen this with the alternative media over the past decade. When I started my first website (Neithercorp) 16 years ago, there were very few of us out there presenting the truth to the public and the mainstream media was still very much in control of the narrative. Today there is an endless array of alternative news websites and YouTube channels and the MSM is utterly dying (except maybe Fox News). Their audience numbers are crumbling while our audience numbers are rising. We are winning the news war because we offer something they don’t – The facts.
The alternative media has proven that decentralization can and does work, but there are many other areas of our culture which have not been decentralized in the slightest. Most popular media is still well under the control of people that espouse extreme cultural Marxism and globalism. Woke ideology is a communist-like movement and such movements spend a lot of time and energy seeking to disrupt the foundational culture of a nation. They do this because once the old culture is in ruins they can then introduce their own aberrant and tyrannical culture in its place. They are culture killers, and they do this deliberately because it is a methodology for gaining power.
Proponents of woke ideology will claim that they have nothing to do with Marxism or communism (while openly admitting they are trained Marxists). They will claim that Marxism and communism are purely economic movements. This is a lie. All communism is predicated on cultural destruction; this is a historic FACT. We can see parallel similarities between the social justice movements of today and movements like the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China from 1966 to 1976. Any heritage, media or religion that competes with the communist model is targeted for erasure and this is what is happening right now in America.
In terms of western entertainment the methods are rather predictable – Leftist try to avoid producing their own original content if they can. Why? Because most of them are pathetic storytellers. Why? Because narcissists don’t have imaginations. Instead, they take existing stories and hijack them as vehicles for their propaganda.
They exploit an established franchise that people love and then reboot it. The reboot uses the name and nostalgia to lure in audiences. But the story and characters have no resemblance to the original mythos or lore, and audiences soon discover that their beloved characters are being murdered right in front of them. I suspect this is done with a particular element of joy, as leftists take pleasure in destruction far more than creation.
They will inject as many aspects of “critical theory” into every product that they get their hands on. This means diversity quotas in stories where it makes no sense. They claim that every movie, TV show, comic and video game must “reflect our modern world.” Translated that means: They think they get to determine what represents the “modern world.” Their movement uses minorities as a shield from criticism. If you don’t like their propaganda, then you must be “racist.” They think they own all minorities and rage against any black or brown person that leaves the leftist plantation.
They force concepts of “equity” into every production. We already have equality of opportunity in the west, so, they had to invent a new terminology that demands equality of outcome. Equity is about special treatment and protections for any group that serves leftist interests at the time. It’s about forcing people to give up what they have worked so hard for, what they have earned through merit, and making them hand it over to the system for redistribution to the loyal soldiers of the system. You are supposed to subsidize your own enslavement.
They flood all entertainment media with LGBT and gender fluidity agit-prop. The concept of the nuclear family is erased in favor of over-representation of a tiny minority of people, and some of these people never asked to be “represented” by the political left anyway. Leftists don’t care. They have anointed themselves as the shepherds of all “marginalized” groups. If you are gay then they own you and they own your successes. You didn’t build it, they did. The vast majority of new media is overwhelmingly gay to the point that many Americans in polling actually believe that around 25% of the population is homosexual when the real number is closer to 4% including bisexuals and those that identify as trans .
Finally, globalism is the overarching religion of the left, and this destructive concept is making its way into many media products. The notion is that all ideals and beliefs deserve to be respected equally – This is a lie. Not all ideals are equal, and some beliefs are psychotic. Beyond that, leftists don’t respect all ideals equally; they despise concepts like freedom, meritocracy and decentralization.
There are good reasons why we don’t live in a homogenized world and we are divided into separate nations and separate tribes: Because not all tribes are equal. Some are garbage, with garbage principles and garbage leadership. I don’t want to share a tribe with the communist Chinese who commit genocide and religious intolerance and who abuse the citizenry. I don’t want to share a tribe with a Muslim nation ruled by Sharia Law that murders gay people and treats women like property. I don’t want to share a tribe with leftists who seek to undermine society and rewrite history.
Globalism is the worst idea imaginable. Many tribes is a good thing, because discrimination helps humanity to separate and survive against immoral and destructive groups that seek to covertly or overtly homogenize. The last thing we need is grotesque globalist cultism invading our entertainment.
So, how do we fight back?
Conservatives, libertarians and liberty minded people have finally started to take the culture war more seriously, but now we need to take action to stop the saturation of leftist propaganda within our media. This means we need to produce our OWN media, including entertainment media.
For decades, conservatives ignored the danger of leftists infecting pop culture, movies, television, comic books and video games. Many believed that these things were downstream from politics and that as long as we held our ground in the political arena everything would be fine. This was a huge mistake. Pop culture is not downstream from politics, both flow in tandem with each other. If you think that movies, video games and comic books are just meaningless “nerd stuff,” then you have been duped. Younger generations are highly influenced by such content.
I covered this idea briefly in a recent article ‘Amazon’s Woke Lord Of The Rings Is The Death Rattle Of Social Justice Content.’ I noted that the massive negative fan reaction to Amazon’s woke plans indicated a sea change in the way Americans are viewing the entertainment they consume. They are no longer passive, and this is a good thing.
They are fighting back against the propaganda implanted into these shows and movies but they also need non-woke stories to fill the void. If you don’t offer them an alternative, then they might just watch whatever is put in front of them. The brainwashing will be perpetual.
Some courageous individuals and companies are taking steps to build an alternative entertainment media, but we need far more. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire is fighting back with their own film production company, and from what I have seen so far the movies they have made are top notch.
Libertarian and YouTuber Eric July has recently launched his own comic book company and comic world called the “Rippaverse.” The company’s first comic book release has already garnered around $3 million in purchases, which proves that yes, there is indeed a market for this type of content and people are hungry for any media which is not woke.
Eric July has since been attacked relentlessly by the mainstream media (yes, over a comic book). As I have noted when it comes to decentralization, once the system attacks you, you know you are a threat to their power. They attack because they are afraid.
Comedian Andrew Shulz decided to buy back his own comedy special from an unnamed streaming service because they sought to censor his anti-woke jokes. He is now offering the special (called “Infamous”) on his own website.
We definitely need more of this. More creators taking a stand and building real alternatives to Hollywood and the woke corporate cabal. If you can’t stand leftist media and would rather watch nothing, then maybe it’s time for you to make the kind of content you would like to see?
I am going to be putting my money where my mouth is very soon and releasing my own comic book campaign. I have been working on the project for around 3 months and have put together a great team. I hope to release the campaign in a couple of weeks. My feeling is that if I can tell an entertaining story, then I should. I want to continue with my economic and political analysis, but I also think it’s important to provide people with mental relief and a short escape from some of the harsher realities of our times.
Leftists and woke corporations do not want you to be able to escape. They want their ideology in your face 24/7 until you give up and submit.
The existing franchises that we used to take for granted when we were children are gone; they are all owned by people with dishonest intentions that hate American culture and want to see it debased into oblivion. We have to accept this fact, move on from the old stories and old content, and make our own. We have to become the new sages and storytellers of our age because no one is going to do it for us.
Some people might argue that all of this is meaningless. Why worry about media and culture when we are in the middle of an economic crisis? What these folks don’t seem to grasp is that part of the reason we are in this mess is because we allowed our own cultural decline. We became apathetic in our vigilance and let mentally and ideologically unstable people take over platforms of influence. No longer. Their time is coming to an end. We are going to take it back; every piece of it, and we will do that by building a decentralized media army from the ground up.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 23:00 - Iran Gains Access To Russian Mir Payment Cards
Iran Gains Access To Russian Mir Payment Cards
In the latest example of U.S. sanctions sparking new financial ties between out-of-favor countries, Iranians will soon be able to make payments with Russia’s Mir bank cards. The move will provide some relief to everyday Iranian people and businesses victimized by economic sanctions.
“I think this payment system will be activated in Iran soon,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Medhi Safari said Wednesday, according to Russia’s RIA news. Mir translates into both “the world” and “peace.”
The Mir card system was introduced by Russia’s central bank in 2015 after MasterCard and Visa were forced by the U.S. sanctions regime into terminating business with several Russian banks. Up to that point, MasterCard and Visa accounted for 90% of payments in Russia. After Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, remaining Russian banks lost their Visa and MasterCard relationships.
Mir’s reach has spread to many other countries and territories, including South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Work is underway to enable the cards’ use in Cuba and the United Arab Emirates. More than 100 million Mir cards have been issued to date.
Russia’s Mir arrangement with Iran is just the latest of many examples of tightened economic relations between the two targets of U.S. sanctions.
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“The two are also working to create a rival to the SWIFT payments messaging service that underpins cross-border payments across the global economy,” reports Reuters.
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On Tuesday, Iranian economic minister Ehsan Khandouzi announced that the U.S. dollar had been officially replaced by the ruble in Iran’s trade with Russia, and that work is underway to replace the dollar in business with China, Turkey and India.
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Also this week, Iran and Russia entered a deal by which Iran will supply aircraft parts and maintenance services to Russia.
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On July 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Tehran and met Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi, along with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
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On the eve of Putin’s visit, Russian gas producer Gazprom and Iran’s national oil company signed a $40 billion deal in which Gazprom will help develop oil and gas fields, and complete liquefied natural gas facilities and gas export pipelines.
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In June, Iranian state media announced a test of a new trade route linking Russia and India via Iran.
Despite the West’s economic warfare, the ruble is actually stronger against the dollar today than it was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To the extent sanctions encourage a growing list of countries to engage in non-dollar-denominated transactions, a weaponized dollar may ultimately explode in America’s face.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 22:40 -
- "Paving The Road To Hell": Digital ID Systems Could Lead To Severe, Irreversible Human Rights Violations
“Paving The Road To Hell”: Digital ID Systems Could Lead To Severe, Irreversible Human Rights Violations
The authors of a new report on digital identity systems warned “the actual and potential” human rights violations arising from the digital ID model can be “severe and potentially irreversible.”
The 100-page report — “Paving the Road to Hell? A Primer on the Role of the World Bank and Global Networks in Promoting Digital ID” — published by New York University’s (NYU) Center for Human Rights and Global Justice urged human rights organizations to heed the threats posed by a global push for digital IDs.
The NYU researchers said many proponents — including the World Bank — portray digital IDs as a means to achieving greater inclusivity and environmental sustainability when, in fact, the systems are likely to do just the opposite.
According to the report, the digital ID has been dressed up as an “unstoppable juggernaut and inevitable hallmark of modernity and development in the 21st century,” causing dissenting voices to be “written off as Luddites and barriers to progress.”
The authors argued for open debate “with full transparency and involving all relevant stakeholders,” including the most marginalized and most vulnerable.
The authors, who include Christiaan van Veen, L.L.M., special advisor on new technologies and human rights to the United Nations, urged the human rights community and related civic society organizations to ensure that global decisions about the adoption of digital ID systems are not hastily made but are based on “serious evidence and analysis.”
Where digital ID systems threaten human rights, the NYU researchers said, such endeavors should be “stopped altogether.”
Who’s really profiting?
“Governments around the world have been investing heavily in digital identification systems, often with biometric components,” the authors said in a statement.
Digital ID systems that frequently collect biometric data — such as fingerprints, iris or other facial feature recognition — are being adopted to replace or complement non-digital government identification systems.
According to an Access Now special report, in India in October 2021, digital ID systems — or “Big ID programs” as Access Now called them — are being pushed by a market of actors who sell and profit from digital ID systems and infrastructure, often while endangering the human rights of the people they’re supposed to benefit.
The NYU researchers reached the same conclusion:
“The rapid proliferation of such systems is driven by a new development consensus, packaged and promoted by key global actors like the World Bank, but also by governments, foundations, vendors and consulting firms.”
Digital ID proponents argue the systems can contribute to inclusivity and sustainable development, with some going so far as to consider the adoption of digital ID systems a prerequisite for the realization of human rights.
But the NYU researchers said they believe the “ultimate objective” of digital ID systems is to “facilitate economic transactions and private sector service delivery while also bringing new, poorer, individuals into formal economies and ‘unlocking’ their behavioral data.”
“The promises of inclusion and flourishing digital economies might appear attractive on paper,” the researchers said, “but digital ID systems have consistently failed to deliver on these promises in real world situations, especially for the most marginalized.”
The authors added:
“In fact, evidence is emerging from many countries, most notably the mega digital ID project Aadhaar in India, of the severe and large-scale human rights violations linked to this model. These systems may in fact exacerbate pre-existing forms of exclusion and discrimination in public and private services. The use of new technologies may furthermore lead to novel forms of harm, including biometric exclusion, discrimination, and the many harms associated with ‘surveillance capitalism.’”
The benefits of using digital ID are “ill-defined” and “poorly documented,” the NYU authors said.
“From what evidence does exist, it seems that those who stand to benefit most may not be those ‘left behind,’ but instead a small group of companies and governments,” they wrote.
They added:
“After all, where digital ID systems have tended to excel is in generating lucrative contracts for biometrics companies and enhancing the surveillance and migration-control capabilities of governments.”
More harm than good, especially for world’s most marginalized
The authors did four things in their report.
First, they examined the human rights impact of national digital ID systems and argued that a cost-benefit analysis of digital ID systems suggests they do more harm than good — especially for the world’s most marginalized individuals.
“Through the embrace of digital technologies, the World Bank and a broader global network of actors has been promoting a new paradigm for ID systems that prioritizes what we refer to as ‘economic identity,’” the authors wrote.
They added:
“These systems focus on fueling digital transactions and transforming individuals into traceable data. They often ignore the ability of identification systems to recognize not only that an individual is unique, but that they have a legal status with associated rights.
“Still, proponents have cloaked this new paradigm in the language of human rights and inclusion, arguing that such systems will help to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals.”
The authors added:
“Like physical roads, national digital identification systems with biometric components (digital ID systems) are presented as the public infrastructure of the digital future.
“Yet these particular infrastructures have proven to be dangerous, having been linked to severe and large-scale human rights violations in a range of countries around the world, affecting social, civil, and political rights.”
Prioritizing ‘economic identity’
Next, the researchers looked at how an “identification for development” agenda driven by multiple global actors came into being.
They discussed the digital ID system called Aadhaar that is currently being tried out by the government of India and the digital ID system promoted by the World Bank — Identification for Development, commonly called the ID4D Initiative.
The ID4D Initiative draws inspiration from the highly criticized Aadhaar digital ID system in India.
In the Aadhaar system, individuals are voluntarily assigned a 12-digit random number by the Unique Identification Authority of India — a statutory authority backed by the government of India — that establishes the “uniqueness” of individuals with the help of demographic and biometric technologies.
This digital ID model, NYU report authors said, is dangerous because it prioritizes an “economic identity” for an individual.
The model is not about an individual’s identity alone, confirmed Joseph Atick, Ph.D., executive chairman of the influential ID4Africa, a platform where African governments and major companies in the digital ID market meet.
It’s about their economic interactions, Atick said.
The ID4D model “enables and interacts with authentication platforms, payments systems, digital signatures, data sharing, KYC systems, consent management and sectoral delivery platforms,” Atick announced at the start of ID4Africa’s 2022 annual meeting in mid-June, at the Palais de Congrès in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The authors of the NYU report criticized this model:
“The goal then, is not so much identity as it is identification. The three interlinked processes of identification, registration, and authorization are an exercise of power.
“Through this process, one actor acknowledges or denies another actor’s identity attributes. Individuals may be empowered through the process of identification, but such systems have long been used for the opposite purpose: to deny rights to certain groups and exclude them.”
Third, the authors assessed the nitty-gritty details of how the World Bank and its network of proponents of digital ID systems worked to implement an “identification for development” agenda around the globe.
They explained how the funding and governance of the ID4D Initiative operate, and claimed the World Bank and its corporate and governmental partners are “manufacturing consensus” by presuming that the shift to a digital ID model is inevitable, desirable and required for human progress.
But this “manufactured consensus” lacks a basis, they said.
“Concrete and robust evidence of the purported benefits associated with digital ID systems is rarely provided, it is merely asserted that digital ID will lead to inclusion and development,” the authors wrote.
3 steps privacy advocates can take
Finally, the authors outlined what human rights organizations and other civil society actors can do by highlighting three modes of action:
- “Not so fast!” Organizations can demand that governmental adoption of digital ID systems not be rushed.
The authors wrote:
“Before any new or augmented digital ID systems are rolled out nationwide, it is vital to establish an evidence base and take all necessary steps to anticipate and mitigate possible harms in advance. Baseline studies, research into the specific context, cost-benefit analyses, value for money analyses, and impact assessments are necessary and should be demanded every step of the way.”
- “Make it public.” The design and possible implementation of a digital ID system need to be thoroughly discussed in democratic forums, including public media and Congress or parliaments.
“Civil society organizations should demand openness with regard to plans, tenders, and the involvement of foreign governments and international organizations,” they said.
- “We are all stakeholders.” While the World Bank presents itself as a respected advisor to governments who should be allowed to shape and create governments’ digital ID policies, it is only one actor.
“It is important to realize,” the authors wrote, “that, ultimately, everyone has a stake in systems of identification, digital or otherwise, which are essential to recognize individuals and effectuate their human rights.”
They added:
“More and more organizations and experts are beginning to grapple with the rapid spread of digital ID around the world, from digital rights organizations to groups representing people with disabilities, and from experts working on social and economic rights to development economists.
“As this range of organizations grows, it will be crucial to share experiences, learn from one another, and coordinate advocacy.”
Human rights alliances can ‘reimagine’ the ‘digital future’
According to the report, multidisciplinary and geographically diverse alliances can not only help to ensure digital ID systems are not deployed “in the harmful ways described in this primer,” but can “also help reimagine what the digital future without the particular model of ID systems promoted by the World Bank and others could look like.”
They said:
“As digital ID systems are determining the shape of governments and societies as we hurtle into the digital era, questions as to their form and design — and their very existence in the first place — are critical.
“What alternative visions can we offer that will better safeguard human rights and preserve the gains of countless years of struggle to improve the recognition and institutionalization of rights?
“When we bring together actors who want a society where the human rights of every individual and group are protected, what kinds of digital ID systems might we imagine? How might digital ID systems be designed to truly promote human well-being?
“How would this alternative, rights-fulfilling vision differ from the economic, transactional identity described here, as promoted by the World Bank and others? Indeed, would we have digitalized identification systems at all?”
The authors did not provide answers to these questions.
Rather, they aimed to “bring together the excellent work that our partners, colleagues, and others have tirelessly undertaken around the world” and facilitate collaboration “to ensure that the future of digital ID enhances, rather than jeopardizes, the enjoyment of human rights.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 22:20 - "Pure Lies": China Contradicts White House On Key Aspect Of Biden-Xi Call
“Pure Lies”: China Contradicts White House On Key Aspect Of Biden-Xi Call
China blasted the White House in a Friday foreign ministry press conference, charging the US administration with lying after a Biden spokesperson said the president raised the issue of Uyghur Muslim genocide and forced labor camps with Xi in their over two-hour Thursday phone call.
The controversy started when White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters soon after the call that Biden “raised genocide and forced labor practices by the [People’s Republic of China],” explaining that is something the president “always does” when he speaks with Xi.
According to White House Press Secretary, “genocide” & “forced labor” came up in last night’s call between Chinese & US Presidents. That is disinformation. pic.twitter.com/sKdZQfqVnJ
— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) July 29, 2022
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“This is, as we’ve said, that anytime the president has an opportunity, he raises that when he meets with another leader, and called on [the] PRC to cease its ongoing human rights abuses across China,” she followed with.
Except Beijing now says this was cut out of whole cloth, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian vehemently rejecting this account in a Friday statement, saying:
“I can tell you that allegations of ‘genocide’ and ‘forced labor’ in Xinjiang are pure lies.”
“You said the White House press secretary claimed that ‘genocide’ and ‘forced labor’ came up in last night’s call. That is false information.”
Curiously, neither the Chinese government’s nor the White House’s call readouts mention anything regarding the Uyghurs in particular, but only an ultra-broad “discussed a range of issues” phrase was used by the Biden administration in its press release.
In follow-up, The New York Post questioned the Biden administration about the matter, with a National Security Council spokesman saying, “I’m not going to get into a back and forth with a PRC government spokesperson.”
The NSC official added, “The president raised concerns about human rights with President Xi, as he always does. He was crystal clear about his concerns. He also raised the need to resolve the cases of American citizens who are wrongfully detained or subject to exit bans in China.”
…so somebody is indeed lying, given the clear discrepancy.
Meanwhile, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is en route to the region on her Asia tour, which might include an ultra-provocative stopover in Taiwan…
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” Analysts warned at a top-level think tank forum that open options in military and comprehensive countermeasures ranging from economy and diplomacy from China will wait if Pelosi gambles to visit Taiwan island. https://t.co/zDDsidxb3m
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 29, 2022
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 22:00 - Capitol Police Use Of Force Reports Expose Unprovoked Brutality Against Jan. 6 Protesters
Capitol Police Use Of Force Reports Expose Unprovoked Brutality Against Jan. 6 Protesters
Authored by Patricia Tolson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A 104-page report issued three months after the events at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, said the Capitol Police’s Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) was ordered by supervisors not to use “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” like flash bangs. However, video evidence—along with Capitol Police Use of Force Reports obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—exposes conflicts in timelines, the brutality of the unprovoked attacks against Jan. 6 protesters, and how leadership ordered the deployment of munitions on a peaceful crowd.
A photographer and police officer give first aid to Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021. The man at left was once wanted by the FBI. (Video Still/Sam Montoya for The Epoch Times) The Video Evidence
Victoria White
According to Police1, the “#1 resource for law enforcement online,” which promotes “the highest standards of business ethics,” police are trained to target large muscle groups like legs, chest, abdomen, and arms with batons. Intentionally striking areas like the head, sternum, and spine are considered to be the same act of deadly force as firing a gun.
However, a video shows Jan. 6 defendant Victoria White being beaten over the head 35 times with a metal baton and punched in the face by an officer of the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia. White, seen wearing a Trump hat, is unarmed and posed no threat to the officer. She raises her hands in defense during the brutal attack, collapsing more than once, only to be stood up by other officers to be maced and beaten again.
According to a Use of Force report filed 1/7/21 by Officer Dante Price, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times, “approved strike areas” for use of a baton “include arms, legs and large muscle groups.” Injuries suffered by Dante’s victim required hospital transport. Another report of an injury caused by use of a baton, filed 1/8/21 by Officer Ryan Kendall, states “approved target areas” include the “upper abdomen.”
“To add insult to injury,” her legal team said at a Jan. 6, 2022 press conference, “she was indicted for being pushed into the tunnel entrance and for daring to put her hands up in a defensive posture while getting beaten by the police.”
White has filed a $1 million lawsuit against D.C. Police Chief Robert Contree and seven unnamed officers, including one known as “Officer Whiteshirt,” given the moniker as it is believed his clothing identified him as an officer in a position of authority.
Roseanne Boyland
Another video obtained by The Epoch Times shows D.C. Metro Police Officer Lila Morris beating an unconscious 34-year-old Roseanne Boyland of Kennesaw, Georgia with a steel baton and then with a large wooden walking stick. According to witnesses, Boyland lost consciousness and stopped breathing after being crushed beneath the weight of other fallen protesters. Being unconscious, Boyland was no threat to the officer.
Video still from bodycam footage showing Officer Lila Morris picking up a wooden stick that she uses to beat Rosanne Boyland. (Metropolitan Police Department/Graphic by The Epoch Times) A DC medical examiner claims Boyland died of an accidental overdose of Adderall, a suspicious ruling that sparked outrage from Boyland’s friends and family. Her father, Bret Boyland, said his daughter had been taking Adderall for about 10 years to treat an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The Epoch Times reported on Feb. 10, an investigation by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau cleared Morris of any wrongdoing and deemed her beating of the unconscious Boyland as “objectively reasonable.”
A separate report describes how Morris first used the wooden stick while beating Boyland to strike 41-year-old filmmaker Luke Coffee on the left elbow. A second swing missed before she sprayed him in the face with pepper gel. “Morris then inexplicably turned her fury on the motionless Boyland, striking her in the ribs once and twice in the head,” the report said.
Ashli Babbitt
Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old unarmed Air Force veteran and ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump was shot and killed by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. While news media has labeled Babbitt as a violent “insurrectionist” who was trying to breach the Speaker’s Lobby, a frame-by-frame analysis of the video from The Epoch Times shows Babbitt tried to stop the violence against the Speaker’s Lobby at least four times before she was fatally shot.
Moments before being shot to death, Ashli Babbitt confronts three police offers for not stopping the vandalism outside the U.S. House. (Video Still/Tayler Hansen) Two reports, filed by two officers who were with Byrd at the moment he shot Babbitt, were also obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times.
According to a report by Paul McKenna of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) Uniformed Service Bureau, as protesters “began pounding” on the “East door of the lobby” and breaking the glass, he drew his weapon along with Byrd and Officer Reggie Tyson. He “yelled ‘stay back’ ‘get back’ several times during the incident.”
“A woman climbed through the far left window pane, which had been broken out by the group,” McKenna attested. “Lt. Byrd fired one shot hitting the woman. She fell back out of the window and I continued yelling at the group to get back and away from the doors.”
McKenna claims the incident happened between 1430 and 1500 hours (2:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.). The report was signed by McKenna on June 9, 2021. It was signed by his supervisor five months earlier, on Jan. 7, 2021.
Use of Force report regarding the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Lieutenant Byrd at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, signed7/9/21 by Paul McKenna and 01/09/21 by his supervisor. (United States Capitol Police Use of Force Report/The Epoch Times) In the second report, filed Jan. 7, 2021, Tyson said he heard “shots fired” over his radio some time after 1440 (2:40 p.m.). In an attempt to protect himself, Tyson said he withdrew his weapon and made his way to the lobby east side of the capitol along with Byrd and McKenna. “A protester tried to climb through the broken window where she was shot one time as she fell back.” Tyson claims the time of the incident was around 1500 hours (3:00 p.m.).
In another report, USCP Officer Tyler Stoyle claims he responded to “a shots fired” call over their his radio at “1400 hours” (2:00 p.m.), 40 minutes earlier than Tyson claimed to have heard the call of “shots fired.”
A separate report filed by USCP Officer Jason McGinnis, said he “responded to the North side of Crypt” at “approximately 1400 hours” and drew his baton to “hold the line of unscreened individuals that were trespassing.”
However, it wasn’t until “after the initial surge had ended” and McGinnis “was moving trespassers out of the South Door” that he claimed “there were reports of shots fired in the Speaker’s Lobby Stairs to the second floor.”
During an interview with NBC, Byrd also claimed to hear “shots fired.”
However, Byrd was the only one to fire a weapon on Jan. 6, 2021. This, and the conflicts in times reported by police regarding when they heard “shots fired,” raises questions.
Use of Force Report filed by Reggie Tyson of the United States Capitol Police regarding the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Lieutenant Byrd in the United States Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. (United States Capitol Police Use of Force Report) According to a July 25 report by The Epoch Times, Stan Kephart—a 42-year law enforcement veteran and former director of security for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics who has testified in court more than 350 times as an expert witness on policing issues—said Babbitt was “murdered … under the color of authority.”
However, a review of the reports filed by Tyson and McKenna, the Bureau Commander found “the circumstances support the Use of Force” and did not recommend any further investigation.
Ashli Babbitt (upper right) begins to fall back after being shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on Jan. 6, 2021. (Sam Montoya/Screenshot via The Epoch Times) Byrd also told NBC he yelled verbal warnings so hard that his throat hurt for days after. Neither of the reports filed by Tyson or McKenna corroborate his claim. Byrd cannot be heard shouting anything on the video either.
Byrd insisted he opened fire on an unarmed Babbitt only as a “last resort.”
“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said.
In August 2021, the U.S. Capitol Police investigation cleared Byrd of any wrongdoing.
Use of Force Reports
According to a report released March 7 by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), “the January 6th attack on the Capitol raised concerns” about the preparedness of USCP “to respond to violent demonstrations.”
Key findings from the report:
- Eighty officers “identified concerns related to use of force, including that they felt discouraged or hesitant to use force because of a fear of disciplinary actions.”
- Approximately 150 Capitol Police officers reported 293 use of force incidents on Jan. 6. All were deemed justified by the department.
- These incidents involved pushing (91), batons (83), withdrawing a firearm from its holster (37), chemical spray (34), other physical tactics (22), pointing a firearm at a person (17), less-lethal munitions (7), a diversionary device (1) and firing a firearm (1).
Of the 293 Use of Force (UOF) reports filed, The Epoch Times has obtained 161 of them, including the ones filed by Tyson and McKenna regarding the shooting of Babbitt by Byrd.
‘Less Than Lethal Munitions’ UOF Reports
According to one UOF report, dated 1/7/21, Officer Adam Descamp said he was ordered by Deputy Chief Eric Waldow “to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol.
“I deployed multiple FN303 projectiles from the FN303 launcher, administered strikes with the PR-24 baton and utilized the Sabre red pepper spray to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” Descamp wrote of his actions at “approximately 1215 hours” (12:15 p.m.).
Waldow was incident commander of the Civil Disturbance Unit on Jan. 6, which was reported to be highly disorganized and woefully unprepared.
At “approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Melissa Lee also reported on 1/7/21 that she “was ordered to the scene by Deputy Chief Waldow to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol Building,” using nearly the same, identical verbiage as Descamp.
“I deployed multiple FN303 projectiles from the FN303 launcher to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” she wrote.
A report filed by Officer Matthew Flood, also “at approximately 1215 hours,” also states he was ordered by Deputy Chief Waldow “to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol.”
“I deployed multiple projectiles from the FN303 launcher, and chemical agent spray,” he wrote, using language remarkably similar to that of Descamp and Lee, “to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” he wrote on his report, also date 1/7/21.
“At approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Tina Cobert also reported on 1/7/21 that she “was ordered to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol by Deputy Chief Waldow.
“I deployed multiple projectiles from the FN 303 Launcher to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” she also wrote.
Also “at approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Christopher Sprifke reported he “was ordered to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol by Deputy Chief Waldow.
“I deployed multiple PepperBall projectiles to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol building,” he wrote in his 1/7/21 report.
“At approximately 1215 hours,” Officer Shauni Kerkhoff said she was also “ordered by Deputy Chief Waldow, Eric to deploy less than lethal munitions on an overwhelming number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol.
“I deployed multiple projectiles from the PepperBall launcher to gain compliance from the rioters that were aggressively attacking officers on the police line and throughout the Capitol complex,” she wrote in his report, also dated 1/7/21.
In February 2021, the U.S. Capitol police union issued an overwhelming no-confidence vote for a half-dozen of the force’s top leaders, including Waldow.
Instead of leading his team of officers, Waldow chose to physically engage rioters, a move many of his fellow officers saw as wrong. In October 2021, Waldow submitted paperwork for his resignation.
At “approximately 1400hrs,” Officer Patrick Kahl reported that he “discharged multiple 40mm baton rounds after individuals began and continued fighting with USP Officers while trying to gain unlawful access to the United States Capitol Building through the Rotunda Door.”
At 1500 hours, Officer Justin Green reported launching a flash bang “to disperse the crowd” in an effort to “rescue” one of the department’s sergeants who was “pinned in the center of the crowd.” He fired a second flash bang as demonstrators were “breaching the Rotunda door.”
Conflicting Reports
These UOF reports contradict the report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton, who said the CDU was ordered by supervisors not to use less than lethal munitions and that “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including flash bangs, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 21:40 - LA's New $588 Million Bridge Keeps Closing As People Treat It Like A GTA Amusement Park
LA’s New $588 Million Bridge Keeps Closing As People Treat It Like A GTA Amusement Park
A brand new, half-billion-dollar bridge in Los Angeles that opened July 9 has already been plagued by frequent police closures, as people treat it like some kind of Grand Theft Auto amusement park.
As Associated Press reports:
The 6th Street Viaduct — which soars over the concrete-lined Los Angeles River to connect downtown to the historic Eastside — quickly became a hotspot for street racing, graffiti and illegal takeovers that draw hundreds of spectators to watch drivers perform dangerous stunts in their vehicles.
Taking over six years to build at a cost of $588 million, it was the largest bridge project in the city’s history. However, many drivers trying to use the bridge at night are finding they’re out of luck thanks to Angelenos going wild on the festively-lit structure with outstanding downtown views.
Multiple crashes have already happened, including an accident on July 18 in which the driver of Dodge Challenger lost control as he was doing a burnout and smashed into two other vehicles. He grabbed his things and fled the scene, but later turned himself in and was charged with misdemeanor hit-and-run.
Street takeover on newly opened half billion dollar 6th street bridge ends in crash involving several vehicles.
This lawlessness is literally destroying our community. pic.twitter.com/6Ydg902Kza
— Kevin Dalton (@KevinForBOS) July 19, 2022
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Then there’s this wannabe Hollywood stunt man…
No wonder why police closed down 6th street bridge at nights lol . Night time L.A. People are a menace 😂 pic.twitter.com/2ggWVlFHej
— el Vale 🇬🇹 (@elvale_1) July 24, 2022
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Meanwhile, many pedestrians can’t resist the urge to climb the bridge’s many arches. Skateboarders are also trying their luck on them. Nobody’s fallen to their deaths…yet.
While shooting a story on the problems with the new #6thstreetBridge we saw this problem on the new 6th Street Bridge. pic.twitter.com/Pw7kskoyDV
— Alex Rozier (@AlexNBCLA) July 26, 2022
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Man caught doing parkour stunt on 6th street bridge in Boyle Heights. pic.twitter.com/JChIXs5PzM
— Boyle Heights (@boyle_hts) July 23, 2022
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Spontaneous concerts are breaking out too, but perhaps the craziest stunt was this haircut given smack in the middle of the median-less bridge as heavy traffic passed in both directions:
Man gets haircut in the middle of the 6th Street Bridge in Boyle Heights pic.twitter.com/20d8jzZAeC
— Boyle Heights (@boyle_hts) July 21, 2022
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The wild action has prompted police to shut down the 3,500-foot-long bridge several times already — including four shutdowns in just the past five days.
Now, in a desperate effort to throw a wet blanket on the Angeleno hijinks, the city’s preparing to throw more money at the structure. Speed bumps are being installed and fencing will be added to help prevent people from climbing up the arches.
John Yi, who leads Los Angeles Walks, a pedestrian advocacy group, tells The Associated Press the design was a recipe for trouble: “If you provide a concrete jungle gym, then that’s how people will use it.”
Naturally, the Los Angeles Times is calling for the city to simply surrender to the mobs. In an editorial posted Wednesday, it called for the city to start closing the bridge “several nights or days each week” — but then to close it to vehicles forever.
With a straight face, the paper of record in a city notorious for its traffic wos urged the government to turn the half-billion-dollar bridge into “a place for community concerts, a farmers market or whatever residents want.”
Seems like there’s already too many people in Los Angeles doing whatever they want.
At least this guy’s got the right idea…
Man does the first proposal on the #6thstreetbridge in Boyle Heights.
📸: @flowers.562 pic.twitter.com/ozQNLHSc1Y— Boyle Heights (@boyle_hts) July 26, 2022
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 21:20 - Senator Asks CDC To Clear Up Conflicting Statements On Vaccine Safety Research
Senator Asks CDC To Clear Up Conflicting Statements On Vaccine Safety Research
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A U.S. senator is asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to clear up conflicting statements on whether a specific method of COVID-19 vaccine safety research is being conducted.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) speaks during a hearing in Washington on Jan. 24, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked CDC Director Rochelle Walensky for details after The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, a CDC doctor, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System since February 2021.
That conflicted with the CDC telling the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method “is outside of th[e] agency’s purview.”
“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson told Walensky in a new letter, released on July 26 and dated July 25.
“The American people deserve the truth and you have not been providing it. That is why I, together with millions of Americans, have completely lost faith in the CDC and other federal health agencies. It is time to start regaining their confidence and your agency’s integrity by coming clean, being transparent, and telling the truth,” Johnson wrote.
He asked for Walensky to immediately respond to a letter he sent before requesting information on the CDC’s vaccine safety research. He also requested she confirm whether Dr. Su’s statement is true and if it is, why the CDC claimed it had not conducted the analyses.
And if Dr. Su’s statement is accurate, Johnson wants all of the Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses that the CDC has performed since February 2021.
Finally, Johnson asked for Dr. Su to be made available for an interview with his office concerning the data examinations.
The CDC and Walensky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Background
The CDC said in an operating procedures document dated Jan. 29, 2021, that it “will perform” Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR), a type of data mining analysis that compares the counts of adverse event reports following vaccination with one vaccine to those that have been reported after receipt of another vaccine or vaccines.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 21:00 - "We Have The Technology": LA Plans To Recycle Wastewater Into Taps
“We Have The Technology”: LA Plans To Recycle Wastewater Into Taps
Instead of addressing California’s crippling drought with network of desalination plants (a plan which actually had the support of Gov. Gavin Newsom until the state’s HOA – aka the Coastal Commission – shot it down earlier this year), the city of Los Angeles and other agencies across Southern California are considering a plan to recycle wastewater into tap water.
An influent pumping station at the Water Replenishment District’s advanced water treatment facility in Pico Rivera. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) Just don’t call it “toilet to tap” say proponents (or do, because that’s what it is), who claim it’s different from similar proposals in the late 1990s to use recycled water thanks to new technologies in water recycling.
The city of Los Angeles and agencies across Southern California are looking into what’s known as “direct potable reuse,” which means putting purified recycled water directly back into our drinking water systems. This differs from indirect potable reuse, where water spends time in a substantial environmental barrier such as an underground aquifer or in a reservoir. –LA Times
“There’s been a public health legacy where sanitary engineering practices and regulators considered sewage a waste, it was something to be avoided, something to be feared,” said Brad Coffey of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “Now that we have the technology … the public, the regulators, the scientific community has much greater confidence in our ability to safely reuse that water supply.”
The plan hinges on the State Water Resources Control Bord, which legislators have tasked with developing a set of uniform regulations by Dec. 31 which would govern potable reuse.
Los Angeles, according to the report, “is wasting no time in readying projects that can launch once the regulations are passed.”
A direct potable reuse demonstration facility near the Headworks reservoir just north of Griffith Park probably will be the state’s first approved direct potable reuse project, said Jesus Gonzalez, manager of water recycling policy at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It will take advantage of recycled water produced by a facility in Glendale, but the water will not be added to the drinking water system just yet. However, it will serve as proof of concept, he said. -LA Times
“This is going to be the future of L.A.’s water, the future of the state’s water supply,” said Gonzalez, who added that the Headworks project could come online within the next five years.
LA’s plans are much bigger than that, however – as the city has set out to recycle 100% of its wastewater by 2035 per a pledge made by Mayor Eric Garcetti several years ago.
In order to achieve this, LA’s Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant – which currently only treats wastewater so it’s clean enough to release into Santa Monica Bay – must be completely converted into an advanced water purification facility which produces water that’s clean enough to consume.
The Hyperion sewage treatment plant in Playa del Rey, on left, across from Dockweiler State Beach. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) The water – enough for 2 million people – would then be piped to vast aquifers under the southern part of LA County and the San Fernando Valley. Dubbed ‘Operation Next,’ the massive undertaking will cost upward of $16 billion and would be completed in 2058 – more than two decades after Garcetti’s goal.
The Hyperion plant suffered a catastrophic flood just one year ago, which led to 17 million gallons of untreated sewage to be dumped into the ocean, causing millions of gallons of drinking water to be diverted for uses typically served by treated wastewater. The plan is now back to normal operation.
“That spill did reinforce everybody, including us, that we do need to have monitors and alarms upstream of the wastewater plant to be able to identify any problems, whether they’re spills, whether they’re infrastructure issues,” said Gonzalez.
Baby steps…
For now, a proof-of-concept for the Hyperion operation, a small-scale advanced purification facility is nearly complete. Constructed in partnership with LA International Airport, the plant will be able to crank out 1.5 million gallons per day of water for nonpotable uses, such as toilet flushing and cooling, according to LA Sanitation and Environment CEO Traci Minamide. It will come online in spring 2023.
“The technology is that good,” said Shane Trussell, president and chief executive of Trussell Tech, which is involved in advanced water purification projects across Los Angeles, San Diego and other cities. “I expect by 2040 … most of the effluent in Southern California will be recycled or well on its way to being recycled.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 20:40 - Video Used To Charge Jan. 6 Defendant Exonerates Him On Charge Of Assaulting Police: Attorney
Video Used To Charge Jan. 6 Defendant Exonerates Him On Charge Of Assaulting Police: Attorney
Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Maybe it was the death threat delivered by a fellow law-enforcement officer while he stood shackled in belly chains.
January 6 detainee Ronald McAbee with his wife Sarah. McAbee is seeking release from jail in a new court motion. (Courtesy of Sarah McAbee) Perhaps it was being described as a “terrorist” by a federal judge who will preside over his trial.
It could have been being released on bail by a U.S. magistrate judge in Tennessee, only to be ordered held until trial by a U.S. district judge in Washington D.C.
Former sheriff’s deputy Ronald Colton McAbee, 28, of Tennessee, has faced a difficult road since being indicted for alleged criminal actions at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Arguably the most trying situation for McAbee was being denied bail for nearly a year based on video evidence that his attorney now says exonerates him.
“What makes the government’s case weak is the fact that the videos actually exonerate Mr. McAbee of the very allegations made against him, and Mr. McAbee is motivated to appear for trial, take the stand and narrate those videos for [the] jury,” wrote attorney William Shipley in a May 2022 motion to have his client released from jail.
McAbee, a former sheriff’s deputy in Tennessee and Georgia with more than seven years of law-enforcement experience as a deputy and correctional officer, was charged by federal prosecutors with seven alleged crimes.
Charges included assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer, two counts of civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.
McAbee was outside the Lower West Terrace tunnel during some of the worst violence on January 6. Several times he tried to render lifesaving aid to a dying Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia. His interactions with Metropolitan Police Department officers resulted in most of the charges and served as justification for a D.C. judge to jail him until trial.
Ronald McAbee renders aid to a pulseless Rosanne Boyland outside the Lower West Terrace tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. “He just was in life-saving mode,” Sarah McAbee said of her husband. (Graphic by The Epoch Times) McAbee was arrested on Aug. 17, 2021, in Tennessee. At a detention hearing on Aug. 26, prosecutors argued that McAbee assaulted Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wyatt. They said after Wyatt fell at the tunnel entrance, McAbee—who had a broken shoulder from a car accident nine days earlier—pulled him down the concrete stairs into a hostile crowd.
The prosecutor played a video for the court, but there was no sound, according to Sarah McAbee, Ronald McAbee’s wife. The lack of audio would later prove to be a crucial element of the story.
After the detention hearing was continued on Sept. 8, 2021, Magistrate Judge Jeffery Frensley ruled against the U.S. Department of Justice and ordered McAbee released pending trial.
No Danger to Community
“I do not believe that Mr. McAbee poses a future danger to the community if he were to be released between now and the time that he resolves this case,” Judge Frensley said. “And the government, despite my request that they provide me any evidence that he’s presented any sort of a danger to the community, have been able to point to absolutely nothing beyond the events around and during January the 6th.”
Judge Frensley said what he saw on the video was open to interpretation. McAbee’s guilt or innocence could not be part of the consideration for bond, he said.
“We have a system that presumes innocence, and for me to make a decision where I become judge, jury, and executioner all in the same role without affording him the rights he’s entitled to under the constitution is inappropriate,” Frensley said. “And that’s the important distinction between the bond decision and the decision on guilt that will follow at a trial.”
That victory for McAbee was short-lived. Prosecutors filed an emergency appeal the same day in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. Senior District Judge Emmet Sullivan stayed Frensley’s order and scheduled hearings on the government’s motion to keep McAbee behind bars until trial.
During a hearing on Sept. 22, 2021, Sullivan seemed to telegraph his eventual decision to hold McAbee without bond.
When being shown a video with McAbee wearing body armor with a patch that read “Sheriff,” Judge Sullivan said, “That’s pretty outrageous,” according to the official hearing transcript. A short time later, Sullivan said, “These videos are very disturbing.” He made several statements agreeing with the prosecutor’s assessment of the evidence.
Sullivan then suggested McAbee is a terrorist.
“So it appears clearly to this court that the defendant is pulling the officer back into the crowd of other terrorists,” Sullivan said, according to the transcript.
After another hearing on Oct. 13, 2021, Sullivan reversed Frensely’s order and ruled that McAbee should not be released pending trial. Sullivan said he would issue a written ruling, which was released more than two months later on Dec. 21, 2021.
While Frensley told prosecutors they did not show evidence that McAbee had done anything to prove he was a danger during the eight months between January 6 and his August arrest, Sullivan ruled that the only way to protect the community is to keep McAbee in jail.
“The court concludes that clear and convincing evidence supports a finding that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community,” Judge Sullivan wrote (pdf) in his 41-page ruling.
Sarah McAbee was stunned.
Ronald McAbee falls on top of Metropolitan Police Department Officer Andrew Wyatt after being pulled from behind on January 6, 2021. (Christopher Chern via Storyful/Graphic by The Epoch Times) “It’s just the craziest situation, them saying he’s a danger to the community when he’s been a law enforcement officer and never has had stripes on his record, let alone a speeding ticket,” Sarah McAbee told The Epoch Times.
A break in McAbee’s case came when video investigator Gary McBride of Decatur, Texas, studied the bodycam footage shown in court, except with the audio track turned on. It painted a vastly different picture of what took place, McBride told The Epoch Times.
“The prosecutors did not play the audio of AW [Andrew Wyatt] and McAbee talking during this point,” McBride said in a video he made about the evidence. “McAbee is trying to save AW. Prosecutors didn’t play that in court.”
McBride said his analysis showed McAbee did not pull the officer down the stairs, but was swept backward and lost his balance, due to two protesters pulling on the officer’s legs. McAbee was standing over Wyatt at the time. As a result, McAbee fell on top of Wyatt and was over him for about 25 seconds.
While McAbee was on top of Wyatt, bystanders called him a traitor, ostensibly for helping the officer. When someone in the crowd tried to grab at Wyatt, McAbee shouted, “No!” and “Quit!”
“At that point, my husband just saw an officer down and an officer needing help, because the first thing he says, when he pops in around the tunnel before he gets around the rail is, ‘Hey, you guys have a man down,’” Sarah McAbee said. “They literally did nothing to help that guy. So he’s the one who jumped into action.”
Sarah said she was relieved when she learned the audio track from the evidence videos backs up what her husband told her that day.
Story is Consistent
“My husband’s story has not changed from January 6. There’s actually a picture of him that they have on the FBI website of him on the phone,” she said. “I know that’s a phone call with me about everything that just went down.
“His story has not changed from that day to today. He’s just not a liar. That’s just not who he is and even the little details have always remained the same.”
McBride and Sarah McAbee said the audio track should have been disclosed to the defense as exculpatory evidence.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 20:20 - One Abandoned NYC Block Is "Frozen" In Peak-Pandemic Time
One Abandoned NYC Block Is “Frozen” In Peak-Pandemic Time
Life in most places is making an attempt to move forward from the pandemic lockdowns. But for one city block in New York, that isn’t the case.
Outside of the 59th Street subway stop, across Lexington Avenue, Bloomberg writes you can still find an entire block “frozen” in peak-pandemic time.
The area, which used to be prime New York real estate, was formerly the home of Banana Republic, the Gap and Victoria’s Secret. Now, all people see are signs trying to find tenants for the empty buildings.
Steve Soutendijk, an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, told Bloomberg: “It’s probably the slowest market to return to pre-Covid levels out of any in New York City. It’s a little bit of a mystery.”
This block is a microcosm of how slow the city has been to recover, post-lockdowns, the report says. It was also suffering heading into Covid, with ridership exiting at 59th Street “declining for years” and businesses starting to select other parts of the city in favor of occupying the block.
Now, ridership at the “Bloomingdale’s Area”, as brokers call it, and the 59th Street stop is down 50% since 2014. The department store used to be the big draw in the neighborhood, which would then act as a feeder for smaller retail shops in the area.
But as online shopping has gained in prominence and since the pandemic severed off a large portion of the local businesses, the department store is “no longer the anchor it once was”, the report says.
Michael Hirschfeld, a vice chairman at real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, said: “It’s a model of shopping that’s not entirely in favor at the moment.”
Help from tourists has also waned, with international visitors only expected to reach 60% of pre-Covid levels this year, the report says.
But walking traffic is on the rise, the report says. More people are walking down that block than they did when the retail space was occupies in 2019, the report says, citing cell phone tracking data. Foot traffic in the area is outpacing other surrounding areas.
Maybe that’s why Soutendijk can’t help but shed a little optimism. He concluded: “I don’t think these spaces are staying vacant forever.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 20:00 - China Claims First Offshore Shale Oil And Gas Discovery
China Claims First Offshore Shale Oil And Gas Discovery
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
In a first for Chinese offshore shale, state-run oil giant CNOOC has announced what it claims to be a commercial discovery in the Beibu Gulf in the South China Sea with the tapping of oil and gas flows at a wildcat well.
The discovery, at the Weiye 1 wildcat well, the first shale well China has ever drilled offshore, could be a game-changer for the country’s dependence on oil and gas imports, according to Chinese media.
CNOOC estimates that the Beibu gulf holds some 8.76 billion barrels of shale oil in place, and Thursday’s announcement claimed that the wildcat well flowed 20 cubic meters/day of shale oil and 1,589 cubic meters/day of natural gas, which the Chinese oil giant is referring to as a commercial discovery.
Speaking to the Global Times about the discovery, Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, questioned the next steps, including what he referred to as the “technical difficulty of shale oil extraction” and the high costs of production.
While China is thought to have more than 30 trillion cubic meters of recoverable shale gas, it has struggled with development–all of which has been onshore to date.
According to Wood Mackenzie, unconventional oil production accounts for less than 1% of China’s total crude oil output due to “high breakevens and non-commercial economics”, but the country’s NOCs are spending top dollar to develop new technologies to ensure feasibility.
That technological development so far is being heralded by CNOOC as the impetus behind the country’s first-ever offshore shale discovery.
In a note originally published by Thepaper.cn and translated by the Global Times, the head of CNOOC’s exploration department said the success of the first offshore shale oil drilling marked the realization of the independent exploration and development of China’s offshore shale oil and gas resources with self-developed technology.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 19:40 - Judgment Day? Chess Robot Crushes Child Player's Finger During Tournament
Judgment Day? Chess Robot Crushes Child Player’s Finger During Tournament
The real question that needs to be asked is “who was winning?” An AI driven chess playing robot went berserk last Thursday and crushed a 7-year-old boy’s finger during a match at the Moscow Chess Open in Russia. The robot apparently grabbed hold of the boy’s finger in the middle of moving one of his own pieces and continued to squeeze until the finger broke. It took four adults to pry the machine away from the child.
Officials at the Moscow Open claim the boy “violated safety rules” when playing the machine, but they offered no further explanation as to why the robot interrupted the child moving his own piece, or why it was built with the strength to crush human fingers. Does it really need that kind of compression force to pick up chess pieces?
The robot was brought in for an exhibition and the Moscow Chess Open says they have nothing to do with its programming or operation.
The conundrum here should be obvious – Either the robot was programmed to disrupt human players and grab their pieces or their fingers for crushing, or, it was NOT programmed to do that but did it anyway. Both options are equally disconcerting.
While this story by itself is not all that frightening, it does raise further questions about the growing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence algorithms and our reliance on robotics in everyday life. AI is even being tested as a tool for predicting “pre-crime.” One core concern of course is that machines have no conscience and never will. Actions might be decided in terms of “logic,” but the most logical decision might also be the most immoral decision. Furthermore, when an AI machine does something that harms a person, who is held accountable? Do we blame the programmers, or a machine which is supposedly autonomous?
Did the chess playing machine in Moscow simply malfunction? Probably. The officials at the event blame the child (of course they do), but the young boy who was injured is among some of the top players in Russia. What if the machine was losing and came to the “logical” conclusion that winning required other measures outside of the game?
Some scary food for thought.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 19:20 - Trump Warns Something Worse Than Recession Is Coming
Trump Warns Something Worse Than Recession Is Coming
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Former President Donald Trump has warned that America’s economy is on track for a bigger disaster than a recession, with his remarks coming shortly before government statistics showed GDP printing negative for the second consecutive quarter, which is a rule-of-thumb definition for a recession.
“Where we’re going now could be a very bad place,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona last week.
“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem.”
Former President Donald Trump attends a rally in support of Arizona GOP candidates, in Prescott Valley, Ariz., on July 22, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) The former president singled out the collapse in Americans’ real wages, a historically depressed labor force participation rate, and the Democrat push for the Green New Deal that he said would crush economic growth.
“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression,” the former president said.
Trump’s remarks came several days before the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data showing that real U.S. GDP fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter after contracting 1.6 percent in the first quarter.
Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.
Vance Ginn, Chief Economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD in an interview that, while officially it’s NBER that calls recessions, the two-quarter rule is “usually how it’s done by a rule of thumb.”
“I think this is definitely recession that we’re in now from these bad policies,” Ginn added, blaming a series of “progressive policies” coming out of the White House and the Democrat-controlled House.
Former President Donald Trump gestures at a rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz., on July 22, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) Stagflationary Winds Blowing
In his remarks, Trump also took aim at President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, blaming him for soaring inflation.
“Biden created the worst inflation in 47 years. We’re at 9.1 percent, but the actual number is much, much higher than that,” Trump said.
While the former president didn’t provide his own estimate for the true rate of inflation, an alternative CPI inflation gauge developed by economist John Williams, calculated according to the same methodology used by the U.S. government in the 1980s, puts the figure at 17.3 percent, a 75-year high.
Trump also said that persistently high inflation combined with an economic slowdown has put the country “on the verge of a devastating” spell of stagflation, which is a combination of accelerating prices and slowing economic growth.
Inflation is “going higher and higher all the time,” Trump said, adding that it’s “costing families nearly $6,000 a year, bigger than any tax increase ever proposed other than the tax increase that they want to propose right now.”
In Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 2.8 percent in annual terms. While the CPI measure fluctuated during his tenure, the highest it ever reached was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.
Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 19:00 - Third Body Found At Lake Mead As Water Levels Drop
Third Body Found At Lake Mead As Water Levels Drop
As the water level of the nation’s largest artificial reservoir recedes due to a devastating drought, human bodies keep emerging.
Human remains have been discovered in Lake Mead for the third time in three months. The U.S. National Park Service reported the grim discovery. They said, “human remains were discovered at Swim Beach in Lake Mead National Recreation Area at approximately 4:30 p.m. PST on Monday.”
We are out at Lake Mead where more human remains were found just yesterday. This is the third discovery of remains since beginning of May. The barrel with a body in it was just about a half of a mile from yesterday’s location. @KTNV pic.twitter.com/CtYVLK4HZi
— Joe Moeller (@joemoeller44) July 26, 2022
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The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner retrieved the body that night. The cause of death remains a mystery.
“The investigation is ongoing. No further information is available at this time,” National Park Service said.
Coroner and medical personnel loading up the human remains found at Lake Mead today. The third set of human remains discovered since May 1. First was the body in a barrel, then remains half buried, and now these. All of them appear to have been discovered due to receding waters pic.twitter.com/RLFWcJLToH
— Brett Forrest (@brettforrest89) July 26, 2022
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The first body, discovered on May 1, was stuffed in a barrel, likely a murder victim who died “sometime in the mid-’70s to early ’80s, based on clothing and footwear the victim was found with,” according to a press release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. Paddleboards discovered the second body on May 7.
Besides bodies, receding waters revealed sunken boats and trash scattered across the lake’s dried-out parts.
As of Wednesday, Lake Mead’s water level was at 1,040 feet, approximately 174 feet below its level in 2000 when the great drought began.
“Continuing a 22-year downward trend, water levels in Lake Mead stand at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time,” NASA wrote in a report last week. The U.S. space agency also released satellite images of the lake’s water level falling over time.
“We will likely find additional bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead” as the water level continues to drop, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said in May.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 18:40 - Twitter Censors All Content From The Epoch Times
Twitter Censors All Content From The Epoch Times
Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,
Twitter has imposed a blockade on all content from The Epoch Times without explanation, raising further concerns about freedom of speech on the platform.
The Twitter logo is seen on a sign at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, California on Nov. 4, 2016. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images) Beginning on the evening of July 28, the platform put up a warning on all links from The Epoch Times. A click on a link would direct users to a page titled “Warning: this link may be unsafe” which prompts users to return to the previous page.
“The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe,” read the warning, which cited the platform’s URL policy.
The notice said that the link could fall into any of four categories: “malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices”; “spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience”; “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm,” or content that “if posted directly on Twitter, are a violation of the Twitter Rules.”
The platform has not responded to multiple requests from The Epoch Times for clarification.
We are aware that Twitter has marked all links to https://t.co/copOc5TSA6 as “unsafe.” We believe this is a mistake and we have submitted a review to @TwitterSupport. pic.twitter.com/UyFqoiaUkq
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) July 29, 2022
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The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by Chinese Americans who fled communist China and sought to create an independent media outlet to bring uncensored and truthful information to the world.
At least 10 staff members for The Epoch Times were arrested that year in China, with one editor-in-chief spending a decade in prison.
While operating outside of China, the media outlet has remained a consistent target of attacks from the Chinese regime over the past two decades. The printing press of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times has suffered a series of violent break-ins, including arson, over the years, viewed as attempts by Beijing to intimidate the publication.
Major Chinese state media, by contrast, remain accessible on the platform as of the press time.
Among the first to be affected by Twitter’s blockade was Eliza Bleu, a trafficking survivor. Bleu shared about how abusers groomed her by preying on her vulnerabilities on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program in an interview that premiered at 7:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Bleu tried to repost the link after watching the interview, and to her surprise and dismay, found that she “couldn’t even click on the link.”
“I’m pretty disheartened that the interview link was labeled as unsafe, because it’s not unsafe,” she told The Epoch Times.
“By watching the interview, anyone can tell it’s pretty educational,” she said.
“I wasn’t talking about anything that wasn’t factual. I was just really just trying to educate, raise awareness, and bring attention to the issue.” She added that the link seemed to be accessible when the interview first aired but became blocked sometime afterward.
Twitter’s warning page allows users to proceed to the actual Epoch Times link if they click on the word “continue” at the very bottom of the page.
Republican lawmakers have decried the move as an act of censorship.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Thursday called out Twitter for blocking all links to The Epoch Times’ website.
“.@Twitter is blocking all links to @EpochTimes, including a story about a human trafficking survivor, and labeling them as ‘spammy’ and ‘unsafe,’ Twitter must explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship,” he wrote in a tweet.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) described Twitter’s action as “alarming.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 18:20 - Confiscation Next: China May Seize Undeveloped Land From Distressed Real Estate Companies
Confiscation Next: China May Seize Undeveloped Land From Distressed Real Estate Companies
With Chinese markets disappointed by the lack of a stimulus announcement during yesterday’s July Xi-chaired Politburo meeting, which sparked a broad selloff in tech and property shares and sent the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of stocks 2.8% lower on Friday, taking its July loss to over 10%…
… Beijing, finding itself increasingly trapped by the continued deterioration in the country’s massive housing sector especially in the aftermath of the recent mortgage revolt, is reportedly considering confiscation (i.e., nationalization) next: according to Bloomberg, China is considering a plan to seize undeveloped land from distressed real estate companies, using it to help finance the completion of stalled housing projects that have sparked mortgage boycotts across the country.
The proposal would take advantage of Chinese laws allowing local governments to wrest back control of land sold to real estate companies if it remains undeveloped after two years, without compensation. That would give authorities more leeway to direct funds toward uncompleted homes, potentially to the detriment of creditors who would lose claims on some of developers’ most valuable assets.
According to Bloomberg sources, in a typical scenario the government would seize land from a distressed developer and give it to a healthier rival, which would in turn provide funding to complete the distressed developer’s stalled projects. The government could also rezone the seized land in some cases to increase its value, the people added, asking not to be named discussing private information.
The proposal is one of several measures under consideration as Xi Jinping’s government tries to prevent turmoil in the housing market from fueling social unrest and derailing the broader economy. Last week, we learned of a dedicated bailout fund meant to stabilize the housing system. The focus on completing projects is the latest sign that policy makers are prioritizing homeowners over bondholders, who have been burned by a record number of defaults by real estate giants including China Evergrande Group.
It is still unclear if the confiscation proposal will get a green light from Chinese leaders; it is currently under discussion by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development with other regulators.
While in 2021 Beijing appeared to take the sharp deterioration across the property sector almost whimsically, perhaps Chinese leaders finally realized what’s at stake here: the numbers are truly staggering.
According to Bloomberg, outstanding individual mortgage loans hit 38.86 trillion yuan as of the end of June, growing at a rate of 5.1% annually. Meanwhile, total outstanding property development loans at June were 12.49 trillion yuan while the total outstanding loans to the property sector were 53.1 trilion yuan. In other words, not even China’s state-owned banking system would be immune to contagion that spreads to broader mortgage sector.
It’s not just traditional mortgages that are at risk: China’s top 100 developers owned land parcels valued at 42.5 trillion yuan ($6.3 trillion) at the end of last year, according to China Real Estate Information Corp. Many of them borrowed heavily to buy the land, in hopes that prices would continue rising. That bet is now souring after a multi-year government clampdown on real estate leverage that has weighed on home prices, land values and new residential property sales.
The result is that many distressed builders are sitting on land they’ve been unable or unwilling to develop. Just 37% of land parcels auctioned in the first batch of centralized land-bidding last year have started work as of March-end, according to a recent Caixin report. About 16% of the second batch were being developed, the newspaper said.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 18:00 - State Of Emergency In San Francisco Declared Over Monkeypox Spread
State Of Emergency In San Francisco Declared Over Monkeypox Spread
Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,
A state of emergency has been announced in San Francisco on July 28 over the spread of monkeypox, a viral disease that has spread to more than 70 countries since the start of 2022.
“San Francisco is declaring a Local Public Health Emergency for monkeypox,” London Breed, the mayor of the city, announced.
“This declaration will go into effect starting Aug. 1 and will allow us to prepare and dedicate resources to prevent the spread.”
The declaration is a legal document that allows authorities to mobilize city resources, streamline staffing, and coordinate agencies across the city, as well as speed up emergency planning and allow for future reimbursement by the state and federal governments, she said in a statement.
The move also raises awareness in San Francisco about how to stop the spread of monkeypox, Breed added.
The city has at least 281 cases out of about 800 in California and about 4,907 across the United States as of late July 28—including probable cases—according to data from San Francisco’s health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
San Francisco Mayor London Breed speaks during a news conference outside of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital in San Francisco, Calif., on March 17, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Cases of monkeypox have increased in California since late June—the end of Pride Month.
“San Francisco is an epicenter for the country. Thirty percent of all cases in California are in San Francisco,” said San Francisco Public Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip.
San Francisco shut down its primary monkeypox vaccination clinic earlier this week after it ran out of doses, saying it had only received 7,800 doses of a requested 35,000.
“That is not nearly enough, and the reality is we are going to need far more than 35,000 vaccines to protect our LGBTQ community and to slow the spread of this virus,” Breed said.
A study published in the Journal of New England Medicine on July 21—the first major peer-reviewed study of monkeypox infections—indicated that a vast majority of people with monkeypox were gay or bisexual men, and a vast majority of the infections were suspected to have occurred through sexual activity in 95 percent of those infected. Researchers had observed monkeypox infection across 16 countries between April and June, when cases began to be reported in countries outside of Africa.
“San Francisco was at the forefront of the public health responses to HIV and COVID-19, and we will be at the forefront when it comes to monkeypox,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco.
“We can’t and won’t leave the LGTBQ community out to dry.”
Mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions (L), and spherical immature virions (R), obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. (Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP)
The San Francisco mayor clarified that officials “are not implementing behavior restrictions or other measures like we did under COVID.”
“This is all about having the resources and ability to move quickly to deploy these resources,” Breed said.
She said the emergency declaration “must be adopted by the Board of Supervisors within a week,” adding on July 28 that the board “has agreed to convene an emergency meeting next week to consider this emergency.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on July 23 declared the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency, citing the global growth in cases—even though a special advisory committee did not reach a consensus on whether to declare the global health emergency.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/29/2022 – 17:40
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