Aug 10

Today’s News 10th August 2023

  • "Significantly Worse Outcomes" – Scottish COVID Inquiry Savages Lockdowns And Vaccines
    “Significantly Worse Outcomes” – Scottish COVID Inquiry Savages Lockdowns And Vaccines

    Authored by Will Jones via DailySceptic.org,

    Throughout the Covid pandemic, the Scottish Government made a show of imposing stricter and longer restrictions than Boris Johnson’s ‘reckless’ Tory Government south of the border. Yet despite these additional measures, in the two years from the start of the pandemic to spring 2022, Scotland averaged 23.9 excess deaths per million weekly, writes Dr. David Livermore in Spiked. “That was by far the highest in the U.K., with Wales suffering 22.9 excess deaths per million, Northern Ireland 18.8 and England 18.6.”

    This obvious failure of Scotland’s response was, remarkably, summarised in an opening report commissioned by Scotland’s official Covid inquiry and written by Dr. Ashley Croft, a public health infection epidemiologist who spent most of his career working for the military and now practises from Harley Street as a medico-legal expert witness.

    He told the inquiry that:

    In 2020, there was scientific evidence to support the use of some of the physical measures (e.g., frequent handwashing, the use of PPE in hospital settings) adopted against COVID-19. For other measures (e.g., face-mask mandates outside of healthcare settings, lockdowns, social distancing, test, trace and isolate measures), there was either insufficient evidence in 2020 to support their use – or alternatively, no evidence; the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years. It has been argued that the restrictive measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in individual, societal and economic harm that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.

    Dr. Livermore says he agrees entirely.

    As Sweden’s already-concluded Covid inquiry found, “Several countries which did impose lockdowns… had ‘significantly worse outcomes’ than Sweden”.

    It also found that the restriction of individual freedom was “hardly defensible other than in the face of very extreme threats”.

    Dr. Croft is similarly downbeat about the vaccines, saying “it remains unclear as to whether or not COVID-19 vaccination has resulted in fewer deaths from COVID-19”. Dr. Livermore disputes this conclusion, saying “it seems fairly clear that vaccines did break the link between cases and deaths in the spring and summer of 2021”. However, recent analysis by experts like Dr. Eyal Shahar suggests that much of the apparent effectiveness of the vaccines may be an illusion created by the healthy vaccinee effect, whereby those who took the vaccines tend, other things being equal, to have fewer underlying risk factors.

    In any case, Dr. Livermore agrees with Dr. Croft that “the protection they offered was brief and incomplete”.

    Long before vaccine passports were imposed on Scots in autumn 2021, there was abundant evidence that vaccines did not stop infection and transmission. This should have blown the bottom out of the case for vaccine passports. That it failed to stop them is a disgrace.

    Dr. Croft adds that the “2,362 spontaneous [Yellow Card] reports suggesting a fatal outcome following COVID-19 vaccination” are “of concern”, noting such events are likely under-reported.

    But the most important point about Dr. Croft’s report, says Dr. Livermore, is that it so flagrantly defies the Official Narrative of harsh but necessary lockdowns saving the population from the ravages of a deadly plague.

    Irrespective of whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, Croft is to be congratulated for addressing the core question: did the Government’s restrictions, deployed at great cost and societal disruption, work?

    The fact that he has even asked this question stands in contrast to the groupthink on display at the U.K. inquiry, presided over by Lady Hallett. Its first theme, examining ‘Preparedness and Resilience’, concluded last month. During the hearings, witnesses were indulged in long meanders through Brexit and Tory/Lib Dem austerity. This was despite the obvious fact that adjacent EU countries not previously governed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg experienced similar travails with the virus.

    Witnesses also said that Britain had prepared for the wrong type of pandemic, with all of our plans anticipating an influenza pandemic rather than a coronavirus pandemic. But if coronavirus and influenza pandemics were so obviously different, scientists wouldn’t still be arguing about whether the 1889-94 ‘Russian Flu’ – which was comparable to Covid in terms of mortality – was a form of influenza or a coronavirus.

    Unsurprisingly, Croft’s report hasn’t gone down well with the lockdown-supporting press in Scotland. He has been attacked as being ‘not an expert’ in viral pandemics. I don’t know Croft and hold no personal brief for him, but his CV indicates a much longer experience of microbiology-related public health than, say, public-health academic Devi Sridhar, who exerted much influence on Scotland’s Covid response. Military medicine – where he spent his career – takes a great interest in epidemics. They have stopped many armies, from Charles VIII at Naples (syphilis) to Admiral Vernon at Cartagena (yellow fever).

    Dr. Livermore concludes that “it is telling that Scottish commentators no longer even try to say that Scotland’s lockdowns were a success… there is too much evidence to the contrary”.

    “I sincerely hope that Scotland’s inquiry reflects upon this. And that Lady Hallett reads Croft’s report. It might just refocus the U.K. inquiry on the questions that really matter.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/10/2023 – 02:00

  • Indoctrination, Intimidation & Intolerance: What Passes For Education Today
    Indoctrination, Intimidation & Intolerance: What Passes For Education Today

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”

    – Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

    This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.

    Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.

    Indeed, while young people today are learning first-hand what it means to be at the epicenter of politically charged culture wars, test scores indicate that students are not learning how to succeed in social studies, math and reading.

    Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.

    Under the direction of government officials focused on making the schools more authoritarian (sold to parents as a bid to make the schools safer), young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

    From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:

    • draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,

    • overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,

    • school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,

    • standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,

    • politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,

    • and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

    This is how you groom young people to march in lockstep with a police state.

    As Deborah Cadbury writes for The Washington Post, “Authoritarian rulers have long tried to assert control over the classroom as part of their totalitarian governments.”

    In Nazi Germany, the schools became indoctrination centers, breeding grounds for intolerance and compliance.

    In the American police state, the schools have become increasingly hostile to those who dare to question or challenge the status quo.

    America’s young people have become casualties of a post-9/11 mindset that has transformed the country into a locked-down, militarized, crisis-fueled mockery of a representative government.

    Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, America’s schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

    Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

    Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

    Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.

    Not even good deeds go unpunished.

    One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

    Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.

    Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.

    Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

    Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

    In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

    Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.

    On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

    In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids—some as young as 4 and 5 years old—for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

    Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

    Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

    This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.

    Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.

    For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

    Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

    These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

    The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

    So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?

    How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

    Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?

    As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 23:40

  • Iran Touts Hypersonic Missile Testing In Response To US Sending Troops To Region
    Iran Touts Hypersonic Missile Testing In Response To US Sending Troops To Region

    In fresh statements aired by state media and picked up by Al Jazeera and other international sources, Iran says it has not only achieved hypersonic cruise missile technology, but is actually testing hypersonics, in what would mark a historic breakthrough for the Islamic Republic if true.

    The missiles are reportedly currently undergoing tests and flight trials, which “will mark the beginning of a new chapter in the defense power of our country,” state media Tasnim announced Wednesday.

    Tasnim further touted that the new hypersonic weapons could “significantly accelerate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s response time in case of any combat, and take away attacking forces’ opportunity for reaction.”

    It was in early June that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi attended a ceremony unveiling the new Iranian-made “Fattah” (literally, “Conqueror”) hypersonic missile in Tehran. This was met with some degree of skepticism internationally, given the immense difficulty behind mastering the technology.

    Raisi touted at the time: “Today we feel that the deterrent power has been formed.” He added, “This power is an anchor of lasting security and peace for the regional countries.”

    The Iranians say their new hypersonic missile can reach nearly 900 miles and it cannot by countered by conventional anti-air defense systems. Iranian officials say it can also reach speeds of up to Mach 15. But expressing skepticism, here’s what Popular Mechanics has written [emphasis ZH]:

    Unfortunately, the “hypersonic” term is often used deceptively to imply more advanced technology than what is actually present. By definition, hypersonic describes a missile/aircraft traveling at or over five times the speed of sound, or a mile per second. That’s certainly fast, but ballistic missiles have been rocket-boosting themselves up to hypersonic speeds since the 1950s and 60s.

    However, the modern usage of “hypersonic weapons” refers to weapons that can sustain and maneuver at hypersonic speeds. One method of achieving this is to have a ballistic missile launch what’s called a hypersonic glide vehicle into the exosphere—a vehicle that’s then able to skip-glide just over the atmosphere, repeatedly bouncing off the dense air molecules below. The other method is to develop a cruise missile with an air-breathing ramjet motor that can sustain hypersonic speeds while within the atmosphere.

    And what makes a hypersonic a hypersonic? According to more: 

    The big deal with these weapons is not their maximum speed. Rather, the appeal comes from their sustainable speed, flatter—and thus stealthier—trajectory, and ability to maneuver and avoid entering the optimal engagement radius of air defenses. Those all significantly complicate hitting them with interceptor missiles.

    Given the Iranians already unveiled in early summer that they have achieved hypersonic missile technology, this new announcement seems a reaction to specific geopolitical events in the gulf region, namely the US decision to send 3,000 additional troops aboard two warships. 

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    The timing of the hypersonics announcement further comes just as the Pentagon is seeking to put US Marines on international tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, in order to safeguard them from Iranian hijacking. Iranian Brigadier-General Abolfazl Shekarchi earlier issued the following response, asking, “What do the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean have to do with America?” He further posed rhetorically, “What is your business being here?”

    Iran has repeatedly rejected the US military involvement in regional waters, saying it only serves Washington’s interests, and is really intended to thwart Iran’s own crude exports, which are also under US-led sanctions.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 23:20

  • Bots Have Taken Over Nearly Half The Internet, But One-Third Of Users Can't Tell Difference
    Bots Have Taken Over Nearly Half The Internet, But One-Third Of Users Can’t Tell Difference

    Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Crossing paths with a robot or “bot” online is as common as finding a pair of shoes in your closet.

    Chatbots are most often used for low-level customer service and sales task automation, but researchers have been trying to make them perform more sophisticated tasks such as therapy. (Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock)

    It’s a fundamental part of the internet, but users have hit a critical tipping point: An increasing number of people are losing the ability to distinguish between bots and humans.

    It’s a scenario developers have warned about for years, and it’s easy to see why.

    A recent study concluded 47 percent of all internet traffic is now comprised of bot-generated content. That’s an increase of more than 5 percent between 2022 and 2021. Concurrently, human activity on the internet just hit its lowest point in eight years.

    Coupled with advances in human-like exchanges driven by artificial intelligence (AI), almost a third of internet users can’t tell if they’re interacting with a person any more.

    In April, a landmark study called “Human or Not?” was launched to determine whether people could identify if they were talking to another person or an AI chatbot.

    More than 2 million volunteers and 15 million conversations later, 32 percent of participants picked incorrectly.

    There was also little difference in the results based on age categories. Older and younger adults both struggled at a similar level to discern who—or what—was on the other end of the conversation.

    The bottom line: While super realistic bots have taken over nearly half the internet, a rising number of folks can’t even tell.

    Moreover, this historic intersection of swiftly evolving technology and decreasing perception within the general population is already causing problems in the real world.

    Fool Me Once

    “The bot-human blur is like a magic trick … As bots get smarter, we risk losing trust in online interactions,” Daniel Cooper told The Epoch Times.

    Mr. Cooper is a tech developer and a managing partner at Lolly. He noted company and website transparency is key for people’s confidence in their online interactions. But in the meantime, there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned human instinct.

    “Spotting bots is like finding Waldo in a crowd. Look for repetitive patterns, lack of personalization, or rapid responses. Also, trust your gut. If it feels off, it might just be,” he said.

    A man types on a computer keyboard on Feb. 28, 2013. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

    While much of the discussion of malicious or “bad bot” traffic centers on social media, the influence of maligned AI interactions has much farther-reaching consequences.

    Consumer confidence in reading online reviews for a product or service has been problematic for years, but it appears to have passed a new milestone.

    Reports of AI language models leaving reviews for products on sites like Amazon emerged in April this year. The bot reviews were easy to identify since the chatbot literally told readers that it was an AI language model in the first sentence.

    But not every bot masquerading as a human is so easy to catch.

    Consequently, major companies and search engines like Google have been plagued with a sharp rise in false reviews.

    Last year, Amazon filed a lawsuit against fake review brokers on Facebook, and Google had to remove 115 million counterfeit evaluations.

    This is troubling, given the number of people who rely on product reviews. One 2023 survey noted online reviews factored into purchasing decisions for 93 percent of internet users.

    “More bot traffic could indeed open the floodgates for online scams,” Mr. Cooper said.

    Though it appears those gates have already been opened.

    Fox in the Henhouse

    Bad bot traffic has increased 102 percent since last year and may outpace human-generated content entirely. Yet again.

    This happened in 2016 and was especially problematic during the U.S. presidential election. Since then, AI-generated content has grown more sophisticated, and tech insiders say people need to be prepared for another bot surge in 2024.

    And with more people struggling to tell the difference, online scammers have a significant advantage.

    “The difficulties in distinguishing between bots and actual humans will probably get worse as this technology develops, which will hurt internet users. The possibility of being used by bad actors is a major worry,” Vikas Kaushik, CEO of TechAhead, told The Epoch Times.

    Mr. Kaushik said without the ability to identify bots, people can easily get caught up in disinformation and phishing scams. Further, these digital cons aren’t always obvious.

    Tech security researcher Kai Greshake told Vice in March that hackers could trick Bing’s AI chatbot into asking for personal information from users through the use of hidden text prompts.

    Some phone scams claim to be from a financial services organization and ask you to update information—but don’t do it! This may be a phishing attack aimed at stealing your personal information.(BestForBest/Shutterstock)

    “As a member of the sector, I see this developing into a serious problem,”  Kaushik said, adding: “To create more complex detection techniques and build open standards for recognizing bots, developers and academics must collaborate.”

    He believes education and awareness campaigns are essential so the public can be more cautious and confident while “conversing online with strangers.”

    Mr. Cooper agreed.

    “The bot-human confusion could lead to misunderstandings, mistrust, and misuse of personal data. It’s like chatting with a parrot, thinking it’s a person: amusing until it repeats your secrets.”

    He compared the rise in bot traffic to inviting a fox into the henhouse. “We need to be vigilant and proactive in our defenses.”

    Taking Action

    For some, the solution is simple. Just “unplug” from the digital world.

    It’s a sentiment shared often alongside notions of moving off the grid and a longing for the days when the “dead internet theory” seemed much less plausible. But for many, this isn’t realistic.

    Alternatively, some are striving for a balance with their online usage, including limiting social media usage.

    Humanity’s love-hate relationship with social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, has created anxiety, anger, and depression for millions.

    Despite an uptick in social media usage this year, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe the platforms have a primarily negative effect on life.

    And the surge in bot traffic is throwing gas on this fire.

    Stepping back from social media and its bot swarms has its merits.

    Findings from a 2022 study noted participants who took a one-week break from the platforms experienced improvements in anxiety, depression, and their overall sense of well-being.

    As humanity’s day-to-day interactions continue shifting from physical to virtual, people have become increasingly dependent on the web. So it begs to question: Can humans take back the internet from the bots?

    Some tech experts believe it’s possible. And it starts with helping people identify what they’re engaging with.

    “There are a few strategies users can employ to identify bots,” Zachary Kann, the founder of Smart Geek Home, told The Epoch Times.

    In his experience as a network security professional, Mr. Kann said there are methods a user can employ to determine if they’re interacting with another person.

    Like Mr. Cooper, he suggested watching response patterns carefully.

    “Bots often respond instantly and may use repetitive language.”

    Mr. Kann also said people should check profiles since bots often have generic or incomplete online profiles.

    He added an inability to distinguish between bots and humans could lead to research accuracy challenges.

    “It can lead to skewed data analytics, as bot interactions can inflate website traffic and engagement metrics.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 23:00

  • Elite Universities Strategize To Maintain Diversity In Admissions Despite Supreme Court Ruling
    Elite Universities Strategize To Maintain Diversity In Admissions Despite Supreme Court Ruling

    Authored by Charlotte Allen via The Epoch Times,

    It’s no secret that the vast majority of the people who operate U.S. colleges and universities are unhappy about the Supreme Court’s June 29 decisions that the use of race in admissions decisions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantees and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids recipients of federal funds to discriminate “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.”

    The official reaction of the country’s top-tier institutions of higher learning – the ones that typically employ racial preferences (in contrast to their less-selective counterparts that admit almost all applicants of any race) – was dismay.

    Within hours of the release of the court’s 6–3 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, incoming Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a video message.

    Its tone wasn’t outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling, but it evidenced a distinct resolve to work around it.

    “For nearly nine years, Harvard vigorously defended our admissions process and our belief that we all benefit from learning, living, and working alongside people of different backgrounds and experiences,” Ms. Gay said.

    “We will comply with the court’s decision, but it does not change our values. We continue to believe—deeply—that a thriving, diverse intellectual community is essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders.”

    The word “diverse” is, of course, code for achieving levels of ethnic-minority representation (typically blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans) that progressives find acceptable, whether or not the applicants’ academic records and SAT scores match those of other groups such as Asians and whites.

    Other elite universities have followed Harvard’s lead.

    Columbia University spokesman Ben Chang said, “Diversity is a positive force across every dimension of Columbia, and we can and must find a durable and meaningful path to preserve it.”

    Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, issued a statement declaring:

    “In the coming days, we will closely examine the court’s decisions and assess its implications for our admissions programs. Over the last several months, we have been reviewing the approaches taken by universities in states where a referendum or statute has restricted the use of race as one of many factors in a holistic admissions process.”

    So the strategizing – aimed at maintaining pre-Students levels of black and Latino enrollments – has clearly begun.

    The most obvious of the possible “approaches” is the application essay, which allows prospective students to reveal their race, among other things about themselves. Chief Justice John Roberts, author of the majority opinion in Students, seemed to shine a green light (pdf): “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

    Although Justice Roberts warned universities to not use the essays to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling (“the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race”), several institutions have already established “overcome adversity” as a proxy for race.

    The University of California–Davis’s medical school, for example, gives preference to students asserting a “disadvantaged” background.

    The upshot: A full 84 percent of Davis’s medical school entering class for this fall claimed economic and social disadvantages growing up (pdf).

    The result is an entering class that is 14 percent black and 30 percent Latino (blacks and Latinos make up 6 percent and 39 percent of California’s general population, respectively). Some 20 other colleges and universities have inquired about Davis’s complex—and so far secret—“adversity score” methodology, according to a New York Times report.

    A more subtle tactic is likely to be dropping requirements that prospective students submit their SAT or ACT scores. Standardized test scores offer a clear metric for determining a student’s ability to perform college or graduate-level work, but they also provide evidence of racial bias when institutions reject higher-scoring applicants from one ethnic group in favor of lower-scoring applicants from another. Some 80 percent of colleges and universities—including all eight Ivy League campuses and other prestigious institutions such as Stanford and Rice—have already made SAT and ACT results optional in their admissions processes. That makes admissions procedures more opaque and thus more difficult for courts to scrutinize in lawsuits challenging admissions procedures on racial grounds.

    Finally, there’s the ingenious tactic for getting around racial preferences proffered in an amicus curiae brief filed in Students by more than 50 Catholic colleges led by the Jesuit-run Georgetown University. The colleges averred that their religious mission to train leaders devoted to the common good gave them a right, protected by the First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantees, to consider race and ethnicity in their admissions practices, asserting that “as a crucial component of their efforts, Catholic colleges and universities strive to admit and educate racially diverse student bodies.”

    That First Amendment argument made little impression on the Supreme Court, even on its three dissenters who would have upheld racial preferences. But it has gained new life, at least according to some law school professors.

    The Supreme Court, in another 6–3 decision, ruled on June 30 that the First Amendment protected Christian web designer Lorie Smith’s refusal to create wedding websites for same-sex couples on the grounds that she would be forced to express support for views contrary to her religious beliefs. The ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis carved out an exemption from a Colorado law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It continued a recent line of Supreme Court decisions upholding the right of individuals, businesses, and religious communities to not comply with laws that interfere with their beliefs about such issues as homosexual conduct, abortion, and birth control.

    “The admissions decisions of religious universities to create diverse student bodies are expressive of those schools’ values  in ways that would seem to merit the same kind of protection from state interference the court has granted in cases like 303 Creative,” Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law professor at Boston College, and Eduardo Peñalver, president of Seattle University (both Catholic institutions), wrote in a July 19 article for The Hill headlined “How the First Amendment Can Save Affirmative Action.”

    Should First Amendment arguments such as these prevail in court, we might see secular universities such as Harvard suddenly rediscovering their 17th-century roots as training grounds for religious ministers.

    At the very least, they demonstrate the extent to which institutions are willing to go – and the complex, even contorted strategies they plan to use – to preserve consideration of race in admissions policies even after the Supreme Court has pretty much ruled out that practice.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 22:20

  • Obama 'Repeatedly Fantasizes About Making Love To Men': Biographer
    Obama ‘Repeatedly Fantasizes About Making Love To Men’: Biographer

    Was Barack Obama the first gay US president?

    According to an interview with Tablet magazine, Obama biographer David Garrow discussed a letter Obama wrote to a former college girlfriend in which he “repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

    “So when Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, ‘It’s about homosexuality,” Garrow told the outlet, discussing the 1,472-page biography of the former president titled “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.”

    The letters made their way to Emory University, where Garrow associate Harvey Klehr manually transcribed the salacious details.

    “So I emailed Harvey, said, ‘Go to the Emory archives.’ He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures,” said Garrow. “So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

    Meanwhile, rumors abound that Michelle may satisfy Barry’s alleged proclivities.

    RIP Joan Rivers.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAs for the rest of the interview, American Greatness’s Lloyd Billingsley has the following;

    “Whatever you do. Don’t ask him about his father.”

    That was Bob Bauer, lawyer for President Obama, to biographer David Garrow as he prepared to interview the president for the Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, released in 2017.

    “Barack Obama devoted dozens of hours to reading the first ten chapters of this manuscript,” Garrow says on page 1084, and had “remaining disagreements – some strong indeed – with multiple characterizations and interpretations” in the book. Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has some rather strong disagreements with Obama.

    “I’ve always thought that the whole Obamacare thing was, in large part, a fraud.” And as for Obama, “he’s not normal—as in not a normal politician or a normal human being.”

    That was Garrow to David Samuels in a rambling August 2 Tablet interview headlined “The Obama Factor.”  Barack Obama is the author of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, published in 1995. Here is what Garrow said about it in Rising Star:

    “Dreams from My Father was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction. It featured many true-to-life figures and a bevy of accurately described events that indeed had occurred, but it employed the techniques and literary license of a novel, and its most important composite character was the narrator himself.”

    “He wants people to believe his story,” Garrow told Samuels. “For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction—oh God, did that infuriate him.” Samuels, who also writes for Harpers, the Atlantic and New York Times Magazine,  countered that “the pose of being a writer is actually one that he prefers in many ways to being a politician.”

    “Oh God, yes. Yes, yes, yes,” said Garrow, “He doesn’t want the writerliness challenged. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book [Dreams] is so fictionalized.”

    In the Dreams novel, the father is the Kenyan Barack Obama, a student at the University of Hawaii. The Kenyan “bequeaths his name” to the American, and by the end of the novel, he becomes a nameless “old man.”

    In all his written communications from 1958-1964, housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, the Kenyan Barack Obama makes not a single mention of an American wife and son. Perhaps that is why President Obama never accessed the archive.

    The Dreams author, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, devotes more than 2,000 words to a happy-drunk black poet known only as “Frank.” In Rising Star, Garrow identifies “Frank” as Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist pornographer.

    Paul Kengor’s The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis – The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor, revealed “remarkable similarities” between the politics of the Dreams author and Davis, a Stalinist who dedicated most of his life to the all-white dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Davis also bears strong physical resemblance to the Dreams author, who at Occidental College penned a poem to a black poet he calls “Pop.”

    The rising star would “forcefully reject the Davis hypothesis,” Garrow wrote, and “Davis’ Communist background plus his kinky exploits made him politically radioactive.” That is why Barry needed the “historical fiction” of Dreams from My Father, the story about the Kenyan foreign student. Garrow called out the book as fictional, but came up a bit short on the author’s plagiarism.

    In Dreams, the author visits Kenya and the account bears remarkable similarities to I Dreamed of Africa, published in 1991, and the 1994  African Nights. Both books are the work of Italian writer Kuki Gallmann, a longtime resident of Kenya.

    In African Nights, Gallmann and company “camped in the area of Narok, one of the main centers of the proud Maasai tribe.” In Dreams from My Father, the American travels to Narok, “a small trading town where we stopped for gas and lunch.”

    In I Dreamed of Africa and African Nights, the reader finds “the ink-black of Arap Langat” and “the ink-black darkness” where fish are approaching. Under a slate sky lies the “ink-black turmoil of the ocean.” Dreams of My Father speaks of “ink-black stairwells” and “tall ink-black Luos and short brown Kikuyus.” In Kenya, men “dive into inky-black waters.” And so on, with many other passages too similar to be accidental.

    Back in 2008, David Samuels re-read Dreams from My Father and came upon the passage where Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro, takes Barry into the back yard and teaches him to fight.

    “Wait a minute, I know this scene,” Samuels told Garrow. “And then I went back and found the battle royal scene in The Invisible Man.

    “Each of us was issued a pair of boxing gloves and ushered out into the big mirrored hall,” Ralph Ellison wrote. “A glove smacked against my head. . . Blows pounded me from all sides while I struck out as best I could.”

    In Dreams, Barry has a tussle with a boy down the road. The next day, Lolo “had two pairs of boxing gloves,” and they lace them up. “Keep your hands up,” Lolo tells Barry. “You want to keep moving but always stay low. Don’t give them a target.” And so forth.

    “Right, right, right,” says Garrow, who also noted that Dreams “completely omits women. I’ve always thought that there’d eventually be a feminist critique of Obama because his mother and all the girlfriends—they’re not there. They don’t exist.”

    As Garrow reveals, the Dreams author wrote to Alex McNear, his girlfriend at Occidental College, “about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.” Samuels is more curious about the composite character’s actions in office, for example, the Iran deal.

    “I do find the Iran deal offensive and puzzling,” Garrow said. “I mean, it’s an explicitly antisemitic state.” As Samuels notes, Obama is “fixated on Iran after the Iran deal failed.” The easy explanation is that “Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House.”

    True to form, as Fred Fleitz explains, Biden is planning to evade Congress with a “secret nuclear deal with Iran.”  The composite character president was also fixated on normalizing relations with Cuba, a Communist state.

    “I also found the Cuba thing deeply puzzling and offensive,” Garrow said. “It’s a fucking dictatorship that imprisons all sorts of truly progressive, creative people.” Many of the regime’s political prisoners are black but in the style of Frank, Obama is basically uncritical of the regime’s all-white Stalinist dictatorship.  But then, as David Garrow says, the composite character is not a normal politician or human being.

    In one of his first actions, Obama  canceled missile defense for U.S. allies Poland and the Czech Republic, and Garrow laments his “failure to object to Russia taking Crimea and the Donbas.”

    “For Barack, everything has to be a success,” Garrow explained. “Everything has to be a victory.” And on his own terms, Obama may be the most successful president ever. He transformed the nation into a place where the outgoing president picks his successor and deploys the FBI and DOJ to help Hillary Clinton and harm candidate and President Donald Trump.

    “From the first time I saw it,” Garrow said, “I realized that Christopher Steele’s shit was just complete crap. It was bad corporate intelligence, even. It was nonsensical.” Samuels is also concerned.

    “A new milieu had been created consisting of party operatives, the people in the FBI and the CIA who are carrying out White House policy, and the press,” Samuels explains. “That’s something people still seem loathe to admit, even to themselves, in part because it puts them in a state of dissonance with this new kind of controlled consensus that the press maintains, which is obviously garbage. But if you question it, you’re some kind of nut.” 

    The interview keeps returning to Dreams from My Father, which biographer David Garrow exposed as a novel, infuriating the president. 

    “There was something about this fictional character that he created actually becoming president,” contends Samuels, “that helped precipitate the disaster that we are living through now.” The nation has been transformed into a “Gilded Age oligarchy” by Obama, the “Magic Negro of the billionaire industrial complex.”

    See the full interview for more insight on the man David Garrow says is not a normal politician or normal human being.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 22:00

  • Should We Fear Worldcoin?
    Should We Fear Worldcoin?

    Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

    We live in an era in which bots regularly masquerade as humans online. Ours is an age in which identity theft and fraud plague online interactions, and where one’s right to privacy and sanctuary are regularly violated with impunity by both government and corporate actors.

    In today’s world of artificial intelligence (AI), bots can solve CAPTCHA puzzles and defeat other attempts to verify humanness. AI programs can create complex deepfake images and writings indistinguishable from work created by individuals. So how can people interacting in cyberspace prove that they are not only human but a unique and particular person? And, ideally, do so while retaining anonymity, i.e., without revealing exactly which real person is acting and without giving away personal details? This challenge is known as the proof-of-personhood (PoP) or unique human problem.

    The Worldcoin Foundation is trying to solve the problem of PoP, but some critics aren’t buying it.

    Worldcoin was founded in 2019 by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, whose stated mission is to “create safe AGI [artificial general intelligence] that benefits all humanity.” Worldcoin’s objectives include “establish[ing] universal access to the global economy,” “becom[ing] the world’s largest human identity and financial network,” and “establishing a place for all of us to benefit in the age of AI.”

    Worldcoin anticipates a world in which AI-enabled robots have displaced humans in the workplace and that governments around the world will need to provide humans with some minimum level of financial support, known as universal basic income (UBI). To avoid fraud, the hypothetically billions of UBI recipients would need to prove not only that they are human but also that they are unique (so that one person doesn’t receive multiple allotments). Still, today, a substantial minority of people on this planet have neither bank accounts nor the government-issued ID and other documentation necessary to get one.

    To accomplish these goals, Worldcoin takes a biometric scan of the human eye in order to create a “WorldID,” a cryptographic hash (a unique and non-replicable mathematical algorithm).

    Other than this hash, Worldcoin asserts that no biometric data are transmitted from or retained by the “Orbs,” specially designed cameras intended to be deployed at locations all over the world which capture the images needed to make the WorldID unique to each person.

    Critics, however, warn that Worldcoin’s technology poses risks.

    Vitalek Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, for example, identifies four categories of potential risks:

    1) privacy, i.e., that, despite assurances to the contrary, Orbs could be maliciously hacked and made to release data;

    2) accessibility, i.e., the need for very large numbers of Orbs distributed around the world to scan billions of people;

    3) centralization, which in theory could allow Worldcoin to create a backdoor and misuse or sell data, and even arbitrarily create fake human identities; and

    4) security, e.g., the possibility of using 3D printing or other technology to create fake people and sell WorldIDs. Mr. Buterin concedes that Worldcoin is aware of and is addressing these issues in a better way than previous attempts at creating PoP applications.

    There is also the yuck factor.

    The prospect of having one’s irises scanned by one of Worldcoin’s shiny yet sinister-looking metallic Orbs in order to be provided an indecipherable number to exist as a human being and engage in economic, social, and political processes feels dreadful. It sounds like dystopian science fiction.

    I write in my new book, “Why America Matters”:

    “If a technology exists, then governments will exploit it. Moral implications are considered only rarely. If government can better track its citizens and use technology to keep them under control, they will, unless otherwise prevented…

    If China and other illiberal countries can surveil not just their own citizens at home and abroad, but eventually everyone in the world, why should the United States fail to do the same? Doesn’t this put the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage? This is the dilemma of our age.”

    Biometric data-capture is already widely used.

    From Touch ID on our mobile phones, to Clear at airport security, to Global Entry and Mobile Passport at border control stations, biometric data are regularly used to prove someone is who they say they are. Surveillance cameras on our streets and roadways regularly identify and track us. Whether by fingerprint, iris scan, facial or other markers, each person’s unique identity can be found and validated. And these systems can also be hacked. Some knowledgeable critics of government surveillance and the so-called deep state remain staunchly opposed. Exiled NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, for example, posted on social media in response to Worldcoin, “Don’t use biometrics for anti-fraud. In fact, don’t use biometrics for anything.”

    In a world of AI and existing government surveillance programs, a decentralized private sector proof-of-personhood solution seems not only inevitable but necessary. A world without PoP would be either anarchic or authoritarian, as it would be impossible to transact without government-imposed centralized identity solutions. Surely a nongovernmental PoP solution is desirable to counteract the encroaching power of totalitarian governments. True decentralization is key to achieving that level of privacy and security. Whether Worldcoin will safely provide such a solution is impossible to tell at this stage. In the meantime, it will continue to creep people out.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 21:40

  • Uvalde School Shooter's Cousin Arrested For 'Terroristic Threats'
    Uvalde School Shooter’s Cousin Arrested For ‘Terroristic Threats’

    Several left-leaning corporate media outlets have stated, “Stop blaming mental illness for mass shootings” and “Mental illness is not to blame for shooting massacres.” Even the progressive non-profit, Common Dreams, wrote, “Targeting Mental Illness Will Not Prevent Mass Shootings.”

    Could the solution to preventing some of these tragic shootings lie in enhancing mental health resources for those in need? Even suggesting that mental health plays some role in a mass shooting appears controversial. 

    This viewpoint should be reconsidered after the San Antonio Express-News reported that the 17-year-old cousin of the gunman responsible for the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 was arrested on Monday in what appears to be a ‘mental health crisis’ after threatening to shoot up a school and family member. 

    An arrest affidavit states that Nathan Cruz’s mom “reported the suspect planned to ‘do the same thing’ as his cousin.” He also threatened to shoot another sister in the head, Cruz’s mother told police. His sister believed it was a credible threat “due to the recent history of their family and the suspect’s knowledge of his cousin’s actions.”

    Nathan Cruz

    But Salazar said her mom called the police because she was concerned about the threats to his sister, not because he threatened to shoot up a school.

    “The only thing my mom was trying to do by calling the cops was to get him help. He needs mental help. He doesn’t need to be locked up,” Salazar said. — San Antonio Express-News

    Progressive media often highlights the call for increased gun control while ignoring the conversation on mental health. Take a look at Statista data showing mass shootings in the US between 1982 and July 2023, by the presence of prior signs of the shooter’s mental health issues. 

    On the gun policy side, Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, stated: 

    The headline should read, “Texas stops mass shooter without ‘red flag’ law or new gun control.”

    The decision to arrest and charge this dangerous individual, rather than leaving him at large in society to commit a mass act of public violence, is the best way to handle the situation and doesn’t involve any new or unconstitutional gun laws. Anyone calling for more gun control after this incident must clearly believe that our existing gun laws—barring those under 18 from purchasing firearms and the new under-21 background check system—don’t work and aren’t effective public safety tools.

    The crux of the matter is that mental health should be a topic of discussion, not ignored. Moreover, existing gun laws prohibited the 17-year-old from legally possessing a firearm. Also, enforcing stricter gun control will only penalize law-abiding citizens. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 21:20

  • Security Video Challenges The Narrative On First Man To Die At Capitol On Jan. 6
    Security Video Challenges The Narrative On First Man To Die At Capitol On Jan. 6

    Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A group of protesters carries Benjamin J. Philips on a makeshift gurney after paramedics refused to come to where he collapsed near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    The first of four supporters of President Donald Trump to die on Jan. 6, 2021, received emergency medical care away from the fast-growing crowd on the U.S. Capitol’s west plaza—before any explosive munitions were used by police—new security video reveals.

    Capitol Police closed-circuit-television (CCTV) footage obtained by The Epoch Times calls into question the popular narrative that Benjamin James Philips was struck by a police munition before he collapsed from a fatal cardiac event.

    Mr. Philips, 50, of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, had organized a busload of area residents to travel to Washington for Mr. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. He followed the bus in a van.

    He got separated from the group when he drove away to search for parking. He got as far as the U.S. Capitol that day but never made it back home.

    It has long been contended that Mr. Philips’s death was related to police riot munitions. A popular version of the story is that he was in the thick of the quickly expanding crowd on the west plaza beneath the inauguration stage when he was struck by an explosive munition tossed or shot by police.

    A large sign with an artist’s sketch of Mr. Philips is often seen at Jan. 6 events contending that he was “murdered by Capitol Police.”

    However, the previously unreleased CCTV video, which was obtained by The Epoch Times from a Capitol Police database, shows that an unconscious Mr. Philips was tended to by protesters behind the large scaffolding complex on the west side, away from the main crowd.

    A west dome security camera shows the small area where Mr. Philips later collapsed was breached by the crowd at 12:58:52, shortly after a much larger crowd breached the iron fence protecting the west plaza. Several bike-rack barricades were pushed over as the crowd surged forward.

    The camera isn’t zoomed in, so distinguishing details is difficult, but the video appears to show someone stumbling and falling at 12:59:17 in the spot where Mr. Philips was later seen. Bystanders began to gather around the downed individual.

    The zoomed-in video of Mr. Philips’s rescue attempt begins at 1:02:51 p.m. That’s the time that the U.S. Capitol Police Command Center trained one of its security cameras on the area where he fell. While the closeup video doesn’t show the moment Mr. Philips collapsed, it picks up shortly after bystanders rendered medical aid and started CPR.

    The first Capitol Police radio call for help was broadcast at 1:04 p.m., according to Jan. 6, 2021, audio recordings obtained by The Epoch Times.

    “Can you please have someone respond to my location with an AED [automated external defibrillator]? The bottom of the west front with an individual that’s down here, unconscious and not breathing,” a female officer broadcast on the main U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) radio channel.

    Pictures of Rosanne Boyland, Ashli Babbitt, and Benjamin Philips, three of the four Donald Trump supporters who died on Jan. 6, 2021, are seen during a “January 6th Solidarity Truth Rally” near the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 24, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    According to CCTV footage reviewed by The Epoch Times, the first police munitions on Jan. 6, 2021, weren’t used on the west front crowd until 1:10 p.m., about 10 minutes after the first breach of police lines near the Peace Monument. This was moments before Mr. Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse, which is two miles from the Capitol.

    Capitol Police Deputy Chief Eric Waldow ordered “less-than-lethal” force to be used on the crowd just prior to 1:06 p.m., according to police radio transmissions obtained by The Epoch Times. It wasn’t until nearly five minutes later that force was actually used.

    “I got a crowd fighting with officers, pushing, throwing projectiles,” Deputy Chief Waldow broadcast. “I have given warnings about chemical munitions. I need the less-than-lethal team positioned above me to identify the agitators and start deploying. Launch, launch, launch!“

    Security video shows that the iron railing and fence blocking access to the west plaza was breached by protesters at 12:58:41 p.m. Thousands of people quickly filled the plaza.

    The first use of explosive force occurred on the south end of the plaza—the opposite side of the west front, where Mr. Philips went down.

    Overhead CCTV video footage reviewed by The Epoch Times shows that there were no police munitions used on the north side of the plaza until 20 minutes after Mr. Philips collapsed. By this time, Mr. Philips was in a D.C. Fire and EMS Department ambulance.

    The first munitions on that side of the plaza went off far back in the crowd at 1:21 p.m. At 1:25 p.m., two flashes were seen just north of the center of the plaza. Seconds later, two more powerful explosions cleared a circle around where the munitions dropped. This set off visible rage among the protesters.

    Over the next hour, more than 40 munitions exploded in the crowd, most of them in the northern half of the west plaza, bodycam and security video footage shows.

    A grenade tossed by D.C. police officer Daniel Thau explodes over the heads of protesters at the U.S. Capitol at 1:36 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021. (Metropolitan Police Department/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    A woman who appeared to have a medical kit took charge of performing CPR on Mr. Philips. She took turns doing chest compressions with a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

    “Be advised that the person on the northwest side of the upper west terrace is now receiving CPR,” a male USCP officer told the police Command Center. “Have the ambulance come down the northwest sidewalk.”

    A man in full camouflage tactical gear standing nearby extended his left hand in prayer and was joined by several others in the crowd.

    A group of bystanders appeared to offer opinions on how best to provide advanced life support for Mr. Philips, the video footage shows.

    A Capitol Police officer was concerned that the crowd was getting too agitated.

    “We need this ambulance,” he said over the USCP radio at 1:13 p.m. “We’re about to lose control of this crowd down here.”

    ‘Refusing to Come Down’

    At about 1:15 p.m., an out-of-breath officer announced that the D.C. Fire and EMS Department rescue squad wouldn’t come down to the scaffolding where Mr. Philips lay on the sidewalk.

    “They are bringing the patient up to the ambulance right now,” he shouted on the radio. “They are refusing to come down.”

    Another officer said, “The group is carrying the individual up to the ambulance up the northwest drive.”

    A dozen or so bystanders and police officers laid a section of bicycle rack flat on the sidewalk. After placing Mr. Philips on it, the group lifted the rack and carried it like a battlefield stretcher.

    A woman straddled Mr. Philips and continued CPR as the group carried them about 100 yards up the sidewalk to rescue Squad 18. They turned Mr. Philips over to paramedics at 1:19 p.m.

    According to the District of Columbia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Mr. Philips died from a stroke. His manner of death was listed by the pathologist, Dr. Fernando Diaz, as “natural,” and the cause was hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

    Mr. Philips was a self-employed computer programmer and toy inventor. He founded Trumparoo LLC, which marketed a line of Trump-inspired toys that went on sale in 2020.

    The “Trumparoo” was a kangaroo bedecked with a swirling Trumpian coiffure. He developed a Trumparoo social-media-style website where owners of the toys could communicate.

    Mr. Philips got the idea after seeing actress Alyssa Milano post on social media about Trumpy Bear, a stuffed toy with Trump’s signature hairstyle and red tie.

    “I thought a kangaroo would be even better than a bear,” Mr. Philips told the local Press Enterprise newspaper in September 2020. “Kangaroos are fighters.”

    He developed other characters in the Trumparoo line, including “Fightin’ Trumparoo the Heavyweight,” “Fightin’ Trumparoo the Hippo,” and “Count Trumpula.”

    Mr. Philips organized a rally in Bloomsburg on Nov. 14, 2020, to protest election fraud. At about the same time, he established the website ScummyDemocrats.com, which carried his views about the 2020 presidential election. He called the site the Scummy Democrat Accountability Project. The home page headline read: “Remember What They Did.”

    On Jan. 6, 2021, he drove a van to Washington while other Trump supporters went on a motor coach. He told a Philadelphia newspaper that he was eager to hear what Mr. Trump had to say at the Ellipse.

    “It seems like he called us there for a reason,” Mr. Philips said. “I think something big’s about to go down that no one’s talking about yet. I think he has an ace up his sleeve.”

    He spoke openly about election fraud and the meaning of the forthcoming rally with Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Julia Terruso. In an interview with her during the ride to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, he spoke what turned out to be prophetic words.

    “It seems like the first day of the rest of our lives, to be honest,” Mr. Philips said. “They should name this Year Zero because something will happen.“

    The Epoch Times was unable to reach members of Mr. Philips’ family for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 21:00

  • 66% Of Finance Workers Would Quit If Work-From-Home Was Taken Away
    66% Of Finance Workers Would Quit If Work-From-Home Was Taken Away

    For further proof that the “work from home” trend that started during Covid has spoiled employees rotten, about 66% of respondents in a new survey of 700 financial executives working remotely said they would quit their jobs if forced to return to the office 5 days a week.

    The revelation came as part of a survey published this week by Deloitte, reported on by Banking Dive. 

    Among the key revelations in the Deloitte survey were:

    • Overall survey results indicate that financial services institutions (FSIs) with overly strict in-office mandates could face dual challenges: possibly losing their pipeline of leaders and having difficulty recruiting talent.

    • Among respondents who still work remotely at least part-time, 66% say they will likely leave their current role if mandated to return to the office five days a week.

    • Among surveyed caregivers, those who work remotely or have hybrid arrangements are 1.3 times more likely than responding noncaregivers to say they’ll leave their current role if their ability to work remotely was eliminated.

    • Some FSIs now require their workforce to return to the office three to four days a week. But only 18% of respondents say this would be their ideal arrangement.

    • While remote working has improved respondents’ engagement and well-being, most of those surveyed believe remote work models will put them at a disadvantage. This could erode engagement and commitment levels over time.

    • Financial services firms face a palpable risk of losing talented women leaders. Almost half of women respondents in senior leadership roles report being likely to leave their current employer over the next year.

    More than half of those who responded (52%) admitted that they thought in-office workers were paid more — it was a tradeoff they were willing to accept. 63% of those responding also thought that in-office workers were promoted more. 60% of those who responded said that they thought employees with caregiver responsibilities, working under the hybrid model, were less likely to be promoted. 

    But about 75% of men and 67% of women said that hybrid work life allowed them better relationships with their children. 18% of survey respondents said they preferred to work in the office 3 or 4 days a week, and 62% said they thought it would hurt their careers if they came in less. 

    Neda Shemluck, Deloitte’s U.S. financial services DEI leader, commented: “There’s a perception that employers want people in the office 100% of the time and employees don’t want to be in the office at all, and that’s not true.”

    Shemluck continued: “The struggle is, how do you still require some in-person connectivity, and yet provide autonomy to team leaders to determine what is best for their teams?”

    “If an organization is mandating hybrid for one or two days, there needs to be transparency around the implications to you as an employee or as a team leader if you are tracking differently from that. Right now the challenge is the speculation as to the career impact that will have, without the transparency of long-term implications,” she added. “You have to take small steps and constantly do pulse checks and get real reactions as to what is working, and recognize that you’re going to constantly pivot. We had hundreds of years of working one way; it’s going to take us a long time to get comfortable with this new way of working, and it’s going to be an iterative process.”

    Recall, we have been writing about how Wall Street banks have been mandating that their employees come back to the office now that the Covid hysteria has subsided. In March 2023, we wrote about how the era of working from home was drawing to a close. Returning to the office hasn’t gone over well everywhere. In Seattle, Amazon employees are protesting returning the office due to “climate change”, among other idiotic reasons, we wrote about in June. 

    We also noted in June that NYC office occupancy had hit 50% for the first time since the Covid crunch. 

    Kastle Systems, the gold-standard measure of office-occupancy trends via card-swipe data, shows NYC hit 50.5% in the week ending June 7, the highest level in three years but still far from the near 100% occupancy level before the pandemic. 

    “The milestone came just as the city was engulfed in smoke from Canadian wildfires, briefly becoming the most polluted major city in the world,” Bloomberg pointed out. 

    Reverting to pre-Covid times is impossible. Companies are axing employees while reducing office space. Real estate firm Colliers said office space available for lease in Manhattan climbed to a record high during the first quarter of 2023. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 20:40

  • 'Native American Guardians Association' Petition To Restore Washington Redskins Name Goes Viral
    ‘Native American Guardians Association’ Petition To Restore Washington Redskins Name Goes Viral

    Via The Post Millennial,

    A Change.org petition in support of changing the Washington football team’s name BACK to the Redskins has gone viral and is racking up tens of thousands of signatures in real time.

    At the time of publication, the petition was nearing its goal of 75,000 people.

    The petition was launched by an organization called the Native American Guardians Association whose stated goal is to end the “cancel culture” of Native Americans. 

    NAGA spox Healy Baumgardner joined Newsmax’s Carl Higbie to discuss the groups efforts, quipping that the Washington Commanders must be getting advised by Megan Rapinoe.

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    Prominent X users like ALX and Ashley St. Clair have shared the petition.

    St. Clair said: “This is the best thing I’ve ever seen – The Native American Guardians Association @Guardiansnative is petitioning to get the Washington Redskins name back.”

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    In a letter to Commanders owners and key leadership, the group congratulated the new owners for their purchase of the team, and urged the return to the historic name of the team.

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    “This is not a partisan issue; it reaches across the political spectrum dating back to our Founding Fathers. The Native American Guardian’s Association (NAGA) stands up for and is not only fighting back to preserve key elements of American History and the 1st and 14th Amendment, NAGA is fighting for the civil liberties of every American,” the letter, dated August 7, stated.

    “Americans see they are losing their rights because of a vicious cancel culture that shows little care for their concerns or civil liberties; It is time to support leaders, brands, and organizations who will stand with every American, rather than fighting against them.”

    NAGA wrote that the Redskins had a “long and mutually beneficial relationship with the American Indian community,” dating back to the team’s founding as the Boston Braves in 1932, which had a Native American coach.

    The team was renamed the Redskins in 1933, the letter stated, and carried that name for 87 years, during which the team won five NFL championships and three Super Bowls.

    “At this moment in history, we are formally requesting that the team revitalize its relationship with the American Indian community by (i) changing the name back to ‘The Redskins’ which recognizes America’s original inhabitants and (ii) using the team’s historic name and legacy to encourage Americans to learn about, not cancel, the history of America’s tribes and our role in the founding og this great nation.”

    NAGA said that as a team representing the nation’s capital, “you have a distinct opportunity to recognize the history and value of the American Indian,” adding that other teams carrying Native American-based names have kept such names “with the recognition that it carries an obligation of honor and respoect.”

    NAGA requested a working group to meet with the team’s owner and key leadership “to begin further dialogue on next steps,” adding that the group has launched a national advocacy campaign as well as an online petition.

    “Should we need to encourage a national boycott similar to what happened to Anheuser Busch (Bud Light) which is now down $27 billion (note, not one brick thrown, not one highway blocked, not one building burned) we will do just that,” the group stated.

    The petition reads in part:

    “We, are passionate supporters of the Washington Redskins and its rich history. We write to you today as a collective voice, urging you to reconsider the recent name change from the Redskins to the Commanders. We believe that restoring the original name, the Redskins, is the right decision for the team, its loyal fanbase, and the legacy it represents.

    “The name ‘Redskins’ carries deep cultural, historical, and emotional significance, honoring the bravery, resilience, and warrior spirit associated with Native American culture. It was never intended as a derogatory or offensive term but as a symbol of respect and admiration. Changing the name abruptly disregards the positive legacy that the Redskins name has built over the years and disorients the passionate fans who have invested their emotions, time, and unwavering support in the team.

    “We acknowledge the concerns surrounding cultural sensitivity and the need to foster inclusivity. However, we firmly believe that there are alternative ways to honor and respect Native American heritage without erasing it. By reclaiming the Redskins name, we have the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue, educational initiatives, and collaborations with Native American communities. Together, we can promote cultural appreciation, address misconceptions, and work towards a more inclusive society.

    “The name ‘Commanders’ fails to capture the essence, tradition, and historical weight associated with the Redskins. It lacks the uniqueness, emotional connection, and pride that our team’s original name embodies. The change to “Commanders” dilutes our team’s identity and weakens the connection with its devoted fanbase. By restoring the Redskins name, we reinstate a symbol of unity, strength, and shared identity that has inspired generations of fans.”

    Back in July, the Washington Commanders reportedly sent a direct message to a Twitter account dedicated to their former team name, requesting them to add the words “fan” or “unofficial” to the name in order for fans not to be confused whether it’s an official team account.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 20:20

  • A Soda-A-Day Could Result In Liver Cancer; New Study Finds
    A Soda-A-Day Could Result In Liver Cancer; New Study Finds

    It’s no secret that sugar-sweetened beverages cause obesity, but new research shows just one soda a day won’t keep the doctor away. In fact, soda pop might increase the risks of cancer and liver disease-related mortality. 

    Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, published a study titled “Sugar-Sweetened and Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Risk of Liver Cancer and Chronic Liver Disease Mortality” in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, explaining a possible link between the regular consumption of sweetened drinks and death due to liver cancer. The study involved nearly 100,000 postmenopausal women followed for a median of twenty years. 

    The study’s lead authors, Dr. Longgang Zhao, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Xuehong Zhang, ScD, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, revealed participants who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages daily had a chronic liver disease mortality rate of 17.7 per 100,000 person-years. In contrast, this rate decreased to 7.1 for individuals who consumed such drinks three times or less monthly. No significant cancer risk was observed for artificially sweetened beverages.

    “In postmenopausal women, compared with consuming 3 or fewer servings of sugar-sweetened beverages per month, those who consumed 1 or more sugar-sweetened beverages per day had a higher incidence of liver cancer and death from chronic liver disease,” the researchers said. 

    They added, “Future studies should confirm these findings and identify the biological pathways of these associations.” 

    The research comes as ‘fat acceptance’ seeks to eliminate the social stigma of morbidity obese people while some snack on processed foods and soda pop from mega-junk-food corporations. We wonder who exactly is funding that movement… 

    While it’s being revealed that many of the ultra-processed foods and soda pop have been linked to obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases — there’s a movement among institutional investors with stakes in the world’s largest food company, Nestlé, who have called on the company to improve its portfolio of unhealthy food and drinks. 

    Maybe all the climate alarmist ESG folks need to refocus their attention on the health of the masses who are fed ultra-processed foods like cattle, which has triggered an epidemic of obesity. 

    But how dare we even bring that up as Wall Street and the pension funds profit off fat America with Novo Nordisk hitting a record high on its new obesity drug Wegovy.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 20:00

  • RFK Jr. Exposes 'The Wuhan Cover Up'
    RFK Jr. Exposes ‘The Wuhan Cover Up’

    Authored by Robert Malone via The Brownstone Institute,

    The title of US Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, The Wuhan Cover Up, does not really represent the scope and nature of this seminal work. 

    This book is the most comprehensive historic summary and indictment of the history of the United States’ biowarfare/biodefense program ever written.

    Summarizing an amazing sweep of untold censored history, it begins with ancient Mediterranean and European examples of both chemical and biological warfare, proceeds to an open discussion of the shocking truths concerning Imperial Japan’s WWII biowarfare program (Unit 731), the importation of both Japanese and German biowarfare experts and technologies into Fort Detrick to create USAMRIID (operation Paperclip), strategic evasion of global biowarfare “treaties,” through to the present Wuhan Institute of Virology CIA/Intelligence Community/Chinese CCP collusion and cover up, and concludes by glancing into the future.

    What is often overlooked by academia, corporate media, and the Washington, DC political caste is that the history of modern biology (particularly microbiology, molecular biology, and virology) and the infectious disease pharmaceutical industry is intimately entwined with the American biowarfare enterprise. 

    It has been estimated that total Federal expenditures on biowarfare research and development from the end of WWII through to the implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (1975) exceeded the costs of the US Nuclear Warfare program during this period, and this biowarfare program (and funding stream) is intimately linked to academia.  

    Most of the leaders of the American Society of Microbiology were also leaders in the American DoD/CIA-funded biowarfare program.  This background and context is necessary to understand how the fundamental corruption of academic medicine, peer-reviewed journals, the CDC, FDA, biological and academic research have been so comprehensive, as has been revealed by the COVID crisis. 

    Just follow the money.

    Which leads us to the most recent and egregious sordid chapter in this sorry tale, The Wuhan Cover Up. 

    A case study demonstrating the consequences of the situational ethical slide which often occurs when a massive administrative bureaucracy fuses with an “intelligence community.” 

    The resulting Leviathan, steeped in the utilitarian “ends justify the means” logic typical of all those skilled liars who have practiced spycraft throughout the ages, eventually forgets both its purpose and its commitment to serving the citizenry, and becomes a predatory monster. 

    With his masterful summary, Mr. Kennedy has provided the receipts on how this modern embodiment of the slouching beast foretold in Yeats’ “Second Coming” has been born and nurtured via a cooperation of convenience between the Western and Eastern military/intelligence/industrial complexes. 

    Now, looking forward, the open question is whether this globalized Leviathan will continue to succeed in its efforts to deploy advanced psychological and information control methods on the entire human community to avoid the consequences of its actions?

    Or will this book and the work of so many others trigger an awareness, awakening, and effective reaction among citizens to the deep corruption of medical-biological research, medical ethics, and the entire Western “health” enterprise which has occurred over the last century? 

    With this book as a guide, we can see the enemy, the face of creeping globalized utilitarian evil, and it is us. 

    *  *  *

    Reprinted from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 19:40

  • Internet Adoption In America: Who Isn't Online Yet?
    Internet Adoption In America: Who Isn’t Online Yet?

    The internet is so widely used today that for many, it’s hard to imagine life without it. Yet, despite its prevalence, there’s still a small fraction of Americans who aren’t online.

    Who are these non-adopters? Using data from Pew Research Center, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang and Sam Parker created this this graphic providing a demographic breakdown of the U.S. adults who don’t use the internet.

    The Demographic Breakdown

    In the last two decades, internet adoption in the U.S. has skyrocketed, causing America’s offline population shrink to just 7%.

    That’s a significant drop from 2000, when almost half of the American population did not use the internet.

    According to the data, age seems closely linked to non-internet use—25% of respondents aged 65+ claimed they do not use the internet, compared to just 4% of those aged 50-64.

    However, it’s worth noting that 86% of U.S. seniors (65+) weren’t online in 2000, so this age group has seen a significant increase in internet adoption over the last two decades.

    Income also seems to be correlated with non-internet use. 14% of respondents with an annual household income below $30,000 claimed to not use the internet, compared to 1% who make $75,000 or more per year.

    Additionally, education may have positive correlation with internet adoption. Just 2–3% of survey respondents who went to college claimed to not use the internet, compared to 14% for those who didn’t study beyond high school. Interestingly, the data did not show a strong correlation between non-adoption and gender or race.

    Why is This Important?

    As the world becomes increasingly more digital, the internet is starting to become a necessity rather than a luxury. And those who don’t have good access to the web are starting to face significant obstacles in their day-to-day lives.

    For instance, when schools closed down during the early days of the global pandemic, many American children in lower-income homes did not have reliable internet at home or didn’t have a computer to complete their schoolwork on.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 19:20

  • Trump Attorney Says Pence's Testimony Could Prove Trump's Innocence In Jan. 6 Case
    Trump Attorney Says Pence’s Testimony Could Prove Trump’s Innocence In Jan. 6 Case

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump’s attorney said Sunday that he welcomes former Vice President Mike Pence’s testimony and expects it could be key in proving Mr. Trump’s innocence in a case over whether the former president committed crimes in connection with efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

    Attorney John Lauro said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Mr. Trump’s defense team believes Mr. Pence’s court testimony could be crucial in exonerating the former president of any wrongdoing in the so-called Jan. 6 case.

    In the case, special counsel Jack Smith has charged Mr. Trump with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding—the certification of the electoral vote—and conspiracy against the rights of citizens.

    Mr. Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has pleaded not guilty and has alleged that the case is a form of election interference meant to thwart his White House bid.

    ‘Our Best Witness’

    In his appearance on CBS, Mr. Lauro said he believes Mr. Pence “will be our best witness” whose testimony could prove that Mr. Trump genuinely believed he was robbed of victory in 2020 and followed expert legal advice in seeking to challenge the results with no criminal intent to his actions.

    “The reason why Vice President Pence will be so important to the defense is … number one, he agrees that John Eastman, who gave legal advice to President Trump, was an esteemed legal scholar,” Mr. Lauro told the outlet.

    “Number two, he agrees that there were election irregularities, fraud, unlawful actions at the state level. All of that will eviscerate any allegation of criminal intent on the part of President Trump,” he added.

    Mr. Lauro added that Mr. Pence believed doubts around the 2020 election were legitimate enough to warrant debate during the proceedings on Jan. 6, 2021, when lawmakers assembled Capitol Hill to certify the Electoral College vote.

    Ahead of Jan. 6, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff said that the former vice president welcomed an effort by some lawmakers to raise objections on Jan. 6.

    “Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election,” Marc Short, who was then Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, said in a statement on Jan. 2, 2021. remove

    Mr. Lauro added that there was a “constitutional disagreement” between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence around whether the vice president at the time had the legal authority to reject questionable electoral votes and kick the issue back to the states for further debate or audit.

    The attorney said that, at the end of the day, what Mr. Trump wanted from Mr. Pence to do on Jan. 6 was not to overturn the results of the election but stop the counting of electoral votes to allow further debate at the state level.

    “The ultimate ask of Vice President Pence was to pause the counts and allow the states to weigh in,” Mr. Lauro said.

    He added that Mr. Trump was convinced there were irregularities in the election that needed to be investigated by state authorities before final certification.

    “The bottom line is never, never in our country’s history, have those kinds of disagreements been prosecuted criminally,” he added.

    Mr. Lauro rejected the notion that Mr. Trump would plead guilty under any circumstances and that his defense team will seek a motion to dismiss the case.

    Pence Insists He Had No Authority to Return Votes Back to States

    Mr. Pence, meanwhile, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he had no right to reject electoral votes on Jan. 6.

    “President Trump was wrong. He was wrong then. He’s wrong now. I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the outlet.

    Asked about the characterization by Mr. Lauro that all that he was asked to do on Jan. 6 was to delay the proceedings so that states could carry out an audit of the votes, Mr. Pence disputed that portrayal.

    “That’s not what happened,” Mr. Pence told the outlet. “From sometime in the middle of December, the president began to be told that I had some authority to reject or return votes back to the states. I had no such authority. No vice president in American history had ever asserted that authority and no one ever should.”

    While Mr. Pence acknowledged that the issue of whether the vice president has the authority to reject electoral votes “ebbed and flowed between different legal theories” but that, at the end of the day, Mr. Pence became convinced he did not have the legal authority to do so.

    In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Pence insisted that Mr. Trump’s team had asked him outright to overturn the results of the election.

    “They were asking me to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the outlet.

    Meanwhile, Mr. Pence said recently that he’s unsure whether or not Mr. Trump actually committed any crime in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

    “I don’t know, honestly I don’t know the full case … that the government has. I think I’ve said on your network many times that I don’t know if taking bad advice from lawyers is a crime,” Mr. Pence said an interview with Fox News.

    The former vice president later added that he believes it is best to “leave that legal process, and frankly the profound issues about the First Amendment, to the courts to sort that out.”

    Asked during the CBS interview whether he thought the criminal indictment against Mr. Trump is a political persecution of the former president, as Mr. Trump has alleged, the former vice president said he’s not sure.

    “I don’t know whether the government has the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to support this case,” Mr. Pence said, while adding that he’s been “very concerned about politicization at the Justice Department for years,” mentioning the so-called Russia hoax and the impeachment of Mr. Trump over a phone call.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 19:00

  • Japanese Automakers Are Losing Ground To Domestic Competition In China
    Japanese Automakers Are Losing Ground To Domestic Competition In China

    Japanese automakers are entering a fight for survival in China, a market they once easily held significant ground in. Instead, now, automakers based in Japan will have to take the next few years to reevaluate whether or not business is worth even continuing in China. 

    Japanese companies have “been losing long-held ground”, according to the Wall Street Journal, who notes that Nissan is “facing major challenges” in the geography. For its year ending in March, Nissan expected to sell 800,000 vehicles in China, which is 330,000 fewer than it originally intended. 

    Its new EV and hybrid lineup “will be the determinant of our survival,” Chief Executive Makoto Uchida said last month.

    Honda is also facing challenges, according to its finance head, Masaharu Hirose. Hirose said this week that competition was making it difficult for the automaker to hit its previously announced goal of 1.4 million vehicles sold in the country this year.

    Mazda has sold only about half the vehicles in China that it sold in the same period last year, WSJ writes. Its CFO said this week: “We are taking urgent action to recover” instead of withdrawing from the market. Mitsubishi has already suspended production at a joint venture it has in China, as a result of “sluggish sales”. 

    “For now, they’re really behind,” said Takaki Nakanishi, head of Tokyo-based automotive consulting firm Nakanishi Research Institute of Japanese automakers. “For the Japanese auto industry, which has until this point centered itself around sales in China and the U.S., it may be on a path to lose one of those cores.”

    Recall just weeks ago we wrote about how Chinese automakers were dethroning competition from the West. 

    Local auto brands produced in China made up 54% of the wholesale car market for the first half of 2023, The Wall Street Journal noted last month. This is up from 48% a year prior and marks the second 6 month period wherein local brands have surpassed foreign ones in a row. 

    It’s no secret that NEVs are leading the charge for China’s home grown vehicles. We noted last month that NEV sales in China were up 25.2% YOY, totaling 665,000 units. Passenger vehicle output fell 0.5% YOY but was up 10.3% sequentially, coming in at 2.2 million units. 

    It’s no secret that NEVs are leading the charge for China’s home grown vehicles. We noted just days ago that NEV sales in China were up 25.2% YOY, totaling 665,000 units. Passenger vehicle output fell 0.5% YOY but was up 10.3% sequentially, coming in at 2.2 million units. 

    9 of China’s 10 best selling electric vehicles makers were local companies, led by BYD, the Journal reported. Tesla was the only foreign automaker on the EV Top 10. The country’s focus on EVs since 2009 has turned it from a global “follower” to a global “leader” in the industry. 

    Stephen Dyer, a Shanghai-based auto consultant at AlixPartners, told WSJ other other automakers would have to learn from China’s developing trend if they want to find success in the market.

    Many Western companies started to step away from China after its auto market peaked in 2017. ICE vehicle sales had fallen by about 8 million vehicles by 2022, following this peak and as a result of demand compression from Covid amid a shift to NEVs.

    Ford has since reduced investments in China since its Mach-E wasn’t as successful as originally planned in the country.

    And Honda’s Chief Operating Officer Shinji Aoyama commented earlier this year: “Japanese, American and European automakers all have this sense that they were too late to make the initial moves. We’re now in a phase of trying our best to catch up.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 18:40

  • Army Officer Court-Martialed After Refusing To Soften Findings Of Probe Of Suicides At Base
    Army Officer Court-Martialed After Refusing To Soften Findings Of Probe Of Suicides At Base

    Authored by J.M.Phelps via The Epoch Times,

    An Army officer was court-martialed after she refused requests to change recommendations she made that were critical of command while probing suicides at a military facility, according to her lawyer.

    The Army brought 24 charges against Army Reservist Lt. Col. Joy Thomas, and her trial began on June 20 at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, now known as Fort Liberty. Two weeks later, she was found guilty of only one charge of disrespecting a senior officer and given a $1,000 fine.

    Lt. Col. Thomas’s attorney R. Davis Younts, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former Judge Advocate General officer, said the charges against his client were “retaliatory” and accused her command of acting “vitriolically” when Lt. Col. Thomas was only doing what she believed was right.

    Lt. Col. Thomas’s career began at the U.S. Army’s lowest enlisted rank. After 18 years of service, she achieved the rank of senior commissioned officer.

    Problems arose while she was completing an active-duty tour at Fort Bragg. In 2018, she was tasked with three suicide investigations. A “rash” of suicides has plagued the Army installation in the past several years, and her findings and recommendations were critical of command, Mr. Younts said, adding that, “they tried to get her to change them.” Five other investigating officers had reached the same conclusions.

    “Command just kept trying to find someone to say something more favorable, and when she didn’t, they had it out for my client,” Mr. Younts said, describing her career as “absolutely stellar” and calling her “a top-notch performer” in all previous military assignments.

    Lt. Col. Thomas faced court-martial for 24 charges involving allegations of desertion, absent without official leave (AWOL), and false official statements. Mr. Younts represented her at trial, which resulted in punishment for only one incident of “rolling her eyes and having a disrespectful tone,” he said. While Mr. Younts considered this a natural response to “the animosity of her chain of command,” he also acknowledged that “the judge needed to send a message that even on the worst day, soldiers still have to respect rank and the uniform.”

    Before the trial, Lt. Col.Thomas became the “black sheep” of her unit, and her command began to “do things that would have never been done to any other soldier,” Mr. Younts said. A career officer with aspirations to become a general “literally put his hand in her face during a very disrespectful, angry outburst,” he said. Despite having the incident witnessed by 24 soldiers, she was threatened not to file a complaint. “But she did file a complaint and that started an investigation into the colonel,” he said. The Epoch Times has viewed a copy of the document. As a result, he was “flagged,” according to Mr. Younts, preventing his promotion to general.

    In another example, Lt. Col. Thomas was marked absent without leave for four days. This was merely an attempt to “hurt” her career, Mr. Younts said, as the entire installation was closed for inclement weather.

    In a separate incident unrelated to her work assignment, she lost consciousness and suffered a concussion. “A friend contacted her command from her phone and let them know she was in the hospital,” he said.

    Lt. Col. Thomas ended up in the hospital for two weeks. While there, her command “counseled” her, and served her with separation papers at the hospital, as if she had abandoned her military duty, Mr. Younts said. After two weeks in the hospital, she was scheduled for further neurological evaluation with the primary care doctor on base.

    “She leaves the hospital, goes to that medical appointment, and the doctor tells her to come back the next day.”

    She was arrested upon returning to the base the following day, an incident Mr. Younts called “shocking.”

    “They charged her with being AWOL.”

    With ongoing, apparent retaliation from her command, Lt. Col. Thomas went to the provost marshal, the police authority, at the installation. She let him know she no longer felt safe reporting to her superior officer. Mr. Younts said she felt like command was “constantly harassing her, abusing AWOL, and doing things to set her up to get her into trouble.”

    After being threatened by the career officer in the above-mentioned confrontation, she asked for a no-contact order through the Provost Marshall’s office. Mr. Younts said, “her supervisor denied knowing that she ever requested a no-contact order.” But at trial, the now-retired provost marshal testified that a complaint was filed and that he personally notified her supervisor, directly contradicting the supervisor’s testimony.

    A Missed Opportunity

    Lt. Col. Thomas attempted to leave her current duty assignment to pursue another position in the military in the spring of 2021. Col. June Copeland, who has since retired, had hoped to hire her for “a very critical mission project,” according to Mr. Younts. Not only is Col. Copeland a West Point graduate, but her three daughters also graduated from the military academy. Lt. Col. Thomas considered the opportunity to work alongside Col. Copeland to be a much-needed boost to her increasingly stressful career.

    “Because Thomas’ chain of command was retaliating against her, they didn’t want her to leave,” Mr. Younts said.

    “Within 48 hours of speaking to Copeland, a flag appeared on Thomas’s record.”

    Lt. Col. Thomas would be unable to take the position as a result. Col. Copeland later testified at trial that there was no flag on Lt. Col. Thomas’ record at the time she was being considered for the position.

    “All these things were—and remain—deeply concerning, as each circumstance was being used as a weapon against her,” Mr. Younts said.

    “Even after being charged with disrespect toward a senior officer and being ordered to pay a thousand dollar fine,” Mr. Younts said, “the government still asked for a dismissal.”

    A dismissal is the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for an officer, he explained.

    “Had she gotten a dismissal, she would have lost the benefits she earned, [including] her retirement, her medical, and more.”

    Mr. Younts strongly believes the findings and the sentence were intended to send a message to command that there were significant leadership failures. According to him, Lt. Col. Thomas should have avoided court-martial altogether and received nothing more than an Article 15 from her command to discipline her for the minor offense, which would have allowed her to move to her next assignment.

    He said an Article 15 would have been “an easy fix” that would have allowed Lt. Col. Thomas to “use her expertise and continue to pursue opportunities that would have been valuable to the United States Army, but her command continued to punish her instead.”

    “It was very, very troubling to see how personal the attacks were against Thomas,” he said.

    “It just gives me pause about Army leadership and makes me question how these individuals can be so concerned about their own careers and reputations at the expense of someone else.”

    “After calling 40 witnesses for the military and costing the government taxpayers over a million dollars, this is a case that could have been easily handled with nothing more than an Article 15,” he said.

    “Her command failed her on a lot of levels, and what the Army needs are more people, like Lt. Col. Thomas, who refuse to compromise their ethics and morality.” Going forward, Lt. Col. Thomas hopes to retire without further incident.

    Fort Liberty Public Affairs did not return a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 18:20

  • Southern Border Cameras Capture Heavily Armed Cartel Illegally Entering US
    Southern Border Cameras Capture Heavily Armed Cartel Illegally Entering US

    A little over two months ago, the Mexican TV channel Milenio published shocking footage of a cartel member wielding a “military-grade grenade launcher” in Matamoros, a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas that borders Brownsville, Texas.

    Now Fox News border correspondent Bill Melugin has obtained frightening images of heavily armed cartel members with body armor crossing into Texas last weekend. 

    “Per law enforcement source, a group of suspected cartel gunmen armed with rifles & body armor were seen on cameras crossing illegally into the Fronton, TX area in the RGV Saturday night,” Melugin said on “X,” formerly known as Twitter. 

    Melugin said a tactical unit under Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) was immediately deployed to the area after cameras detected the armed cartel members entered the US illegally. 

    “Elite Border Patrol BORTAC agents were called out & searched area, but found nobody,” he said. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Here’s an example of a BORTAC agent that was dispatched. They look like Tier 1 Special Forces operators. 

    The Biden administration has gone out of its way to downplay the crisis at the southern border ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

    On Tuesday, Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan provided The National Desk’s Scott Thuman with a dose of reality about the true nature of the border crisis:

    “First of all, I think what it represents in this administration is not being honest with the American people. I learned a long time ago that the intentional omission of a material fact is the same thing as a lie. They’re using a sleight of hand like a good magician to get us to focus on only what’s happened in our Southern border.

    “Meanwhile, what they’re not telling you is what’s happening across the nation. This fiscal year, we’re on track for over 3 million nationwide encounters. That’s a 360% increase from when they took over in the past 29 months.”

    Morgan explained how the Biden administration is lying about the crisis:

    “Second to that is what’s very, very important is what they begin to do is divert those that we’re previously entering in between the ports of entry.

    “They’re simply diverting them to the ports of entry and then they’re claiming victory. In reality, it’s a big shell game.”

    In recent Congressional testimony, Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies warned: 

    “[T]his massive new population of needy foreigners will burden and transform [Americans’] communities without their say-so.” 

    Seeing cartel members brandishing RPGs and some crossing into the US heavily armed, one has to question if America’s southern border under Biden is on the verge of falling. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 18:00

  • 75 More Catholic Schools Nationwide Say They Are Shutting Down
    75 More Catholic Schools Nationwide Say They Are Shutting Down

    Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    At least 75 more Catholic schools across the nation have announced they are closing their doors for good, with many breaking the news to families in the past few weeks.

    The Matignon High School in Cambridge, Mass., in July 2018. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Most of the closures have been in major cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati.

    In New York City alone, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York closed 12 schools as of the end of the academic year, laying the blame on “shifting demographics and lower enrollment, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

    Some of the schools that are now permanently closed were well-known and had rich histories.

    The Cambridge Matignon School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a private co-ed Roman Catholic college-prep school, opened in 1945. It won 10 ice hockey state championships and was the alma mater of 19 NHL draft picks and three NFL players.

    Last week, Immaculate Conception High School, an all-girls private school in Lodi, New Jersey, closed after 108 years, citing enrollment and financial challenges.

    In Texas, the historic 175-year-old Incarnate Word Academy, located in the Rio Grande Valley, announced it will close at the end of the year.

    “Several years of tracking diminishing enrollment and income have led to the conclusion that maintaining our school is no longer possible,” Sister Annette Wagner, the school’s superior general, said in a written statement.

    Financial Reasons

    While the schools have all cited financial reasons for the closures, there has been a variety of speculation offered by Catholics.

    C.J. Doyle, Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, told The Epoch Times that Catholic schools are struggling with a shift in ideology, with traditional Catholic beliefs being challenged by modern Catholic families and even Catholic school leaders.

    He pointed to a recent controversy at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover, New Hampshire, where parents and students protested the school’s decision to not renew contracts for four teachers who were either openly gay or openly embraced LGBT ideology.

    The school, which has tuition of $18,000, strongly denied that the move was in any way LGBT-related.

    “While we are not able to share details regarding specific personnel decisions out of respect for privacy and confidentiality, these four non-renewals had absolutely nothing to do with LGBTQ+ identity or personal alignment or views,” then-acting Principal Paul Marquis told The Boston Globe.

    Around the time of the controversy, some students attended the New Hampshire Catholic school’s prom as same-sex couples and kissed on stage during graduation events, some parents told The Epoch Times.

    “When you have that kind of behavior at a Catholic school, it’s then basically a public school with tuition,” Mr. Doyle said.

    A similar controversy recently rocked St. John LaLande Catholic School in Blue Springs, Missouri, when the school expelled an 11-year-old student after his parents, volunteers at the school, denounced the parish priest for removing LGBT literature from the school library and ordering the school to discontinue using a research app run by a well-known liberal media outlet.

    “I don’t think being blatantly homophobic is a teaching of the Catholic Church,” Hollee Muller, parent of the expelled child, told The Kansas City Star.

    Weeks earlier, Mr. Doyle’s organization condemned one of the few surviving Catholic schools in Boston, the all-girls Fontbonne Academy, for hosting a lesbian who calls herself a “big ol’ dyke” as the graduation speaker.

    In a formal letter, The Catholic Action League asked the Boston Archdiocese and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley to also condemn the move, but Mr. Doyle said they never even acknowledged the group’s concerns.

    Mr. Doyle and others also suggested the church may be selling off schools to make money.

    It could, in part, be to cover the costs of caring for aging clergy, the lack of new replacements, and a lack of new money coming into the church, he said.

    Much Speculation

    The National Catholic Reporter recently pointed out that many of the schools being shut down are in areas with high real estate values.

    The Cambridge Matingnon building and grounds, located only two miles from Harvard University campus, are valued at $32 million.

    When Mount Alvernia High, an all-girls school affiliated with the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, made the unexpected announcement it was closing, the Sisters said in a statement that it was because they had decided they were “no longer able to continue living” at the campus in the Boston area.

    However, Kathleen Joyce, a former member of the school board, claimed they had not been consulted and posted on Facebook that the order of nuns had secretly voted to sell off the property to Boston College, a Catholic university located across the street from the 88-year-old school.

    “Instead of notifying the Mount Alvernia Board and the school community of their unilateral decision, they covertly set out to find a buyer,” Ms. Joyce, who also chairs the Boston Licensing Board, wrote. “Not surprisingly, this market research began and ended with one buyer—another Catholic organization with a significant presence in our community.”

    Ms. Joyce didn’t respond to requests from The Epoch Times for additional comment on the issue.

    The Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception declined to speak to The Epoch Times about the reasons for closing the school.

    The shutdown of Catholic schools is not new. Hundreds of schools have closed down nationwide over the years.

    Catholic groups have long blamed it in part on “vanishing nuns,” which translated into significantly higher teacher and administration fees and, thus, higher tuition and, consequently, a drop in enrollment.

    Lincoln Snyder, President and CEO of the National Catholic Education Association, which tracks population trends in Catholic schools,  pointed out to The Epoch Times that during the pandemic, Catholic schools saw a surge in enrollment, largely attributed to parents’ discontent with public schools being slow to move away from remote learning.

    According to the organization’s figures, U.S. Catholic schools’ student population grew by 65,000 between 2021 and 2022.

    Mr. Snyder said he believes that many Catholic families are not leaving behind Catholic schools but instead moving to other areas where the culture aligns with their values.

    He pointed out that Catholic schools in Florida have recently reported an increase in enrollment. One school that had been shut down for 14 years, St. Malachy in Tamarac, Florida, is set to re-open this fall because of the renewed demand for Catholic education in the Sunshine State, he said.

    “People are moving here from all over the world, from the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean,” Jim Rigg, secretary of education and superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Miami, said when announcing in June that the school was re-opening. “We’re in growth mode.” St. Malachy is located about 35 miles north of Miami and about 200 miles south of Disney World.

    Earlier this year, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles also reported a rise in student enrollment in the 255 Catholic schools it oversees after years of decline.

    Overall, however, the jump in Catholic school enrollment appears short-lived, with dozens of Catholic schools, including 14 in Connecticut alone, announcing at the end of the 2022 school year that they were permanently closing.

    Now there is yet another round of Catholic school closures. They include St. Christopher School on Staten Island, which made the announcement in mid-June.

    St. Mark Catholic School and the Good Shepherd Catholic School, both in St. Louis, also recently announced they were shutting down, as did the Wauwatosa Catholic School in Wisconsin.

    Earlier this month, St. Joseph Catholic School in Cincinnati told parents it was closing, and last week, the Holy Family School in Kentucky told families it would close because of a shortage of teachers.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/09/2023 – 17:40

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