- Victor Davis Hanson: Bombshells, Landmines, & Nemesis
Victor Davis Hanson: Bombshells, Landmines, & Nemesis
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,
For much of 2017 through 2021, Americans suffered the “bombshell” and “walls are closing” mythologies first of Russian collusion, then of supposedly vast Russian social media investments to sabotage the election. From there we moved on to the Alfa Bank ping-pong fable, the supposed Putin bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan that Trump was said to have ignored and, of course, the idea that Hunter’s laptop was just “Russian disinformation.”
These were journalistic sins of commission, warping the news cycle to advance ideological agendas and win elections. There emerged, however, other real landmines of omission—things the media deliberately ignores, but have the potential to go off and blow up a presidency.
Taxes Paid by Mr. 10 Percent?
Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) mocks the Hunter Biden laptop scandal of a “half-fake” laptop. Yet such puerile flippancy only confirmed her own trademark arrogance and ignorance. Is she claiming the laptop was, was not, or is just sorta not genuine? Hunter’s lawyers are suing to stop the dissemination of his “half-property”?
Hunter, who never in the past has denied ownership of the laptop, has now confirmed it really was his. A revisionist Hunter should have first conferred with his dad, since, on the presidential debate stage in 2020, Joe Biden swore to the American people the laptop was a product of Russian disinformation. He cited as support “50 former intelligence officials” who signed a statement claiming as much—all organized to deceive the pre-election electorate by former CIA Directors James Clapper and John Brennan. Both previously were best known for admitting to lying under oath to Congress.
Any fair examination of the laptop’s contents would conclude that Joe Biden received percentage payments from the various quid pro quo enterprises for the merchandising of his name and status as a senator and then vice president. So it should be a simple task for the IRS to compare his reported income over those years with his net worth and yearly likely expenditures, to determine whether he paid taxes on his alleged 10 percent cut, or whether any of the Biden family paid gift taxes on their various cash interchanges with one another.
It is one thing to fight the IRS over deductions, but quite another over income. The former can become sticky matters of legal interpretation, the latter is mostly black or white: Money either came in and was reported—or not. If Biden did not pay income tax on percentage payouts to him by his family and business associates, then he committed tax fraud, and likely would be impeached.
The laptop and classified documents revelations are landmines well beyond their incriminatory evidence that Joe Biden received payments from Hunter Biden’s influence-selling team or improperly took away top secret papers. If Hunter’s trove of business assessments are found to have drawn on his father’s classified files—and there are already allegations that they did—then such use of his father’s illegally transferred federal documents for familial profit would end the Biden presidency.
No president could sustain his office if it were proven true that previously he transferred classified documents out of the White House or Senate and allowed such top secret analyses to be monetized by his son to enrich his family—and himself.
A Real Bombshell?
Octogenarian journalist Seymour Hersh’s recent allegations that the United States blew up sections of the Russo-German Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were scarcely covered by the media that otherwise runs with the usual Hersh-fed embarrassments to the U.S. government. Oddly, in this case, it stayed mum. The story was adamantly denied by the Biden Administration and most of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
The news media’s neglect cannot be due to any journalistic standards, because a sloppy and corrupt media long ago swore falsely that Trump let Putin put kill-bounties on our soldiers in Afghanistan, and insisted the Biden laptop was authentic evidence of Russian disinformation designed to help Trump.
So we have no idea whether the media suppression of the story was due to its usual warped ideology or a rare, disinterested standard of ignoring a conspiracy theory.
Hersh’s reporting was largely based on one anonymous source, but oddly marked by an unusual level of detail about the planning, carrying out, and purpose of the operation.
The Left had long deified Hersh for the consistently anti-American government themes in his sensationalized dispatches. His accuracy, however, is not always contested, given he was largely accurate in the disclosures about the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses. But in this instance, he has been met with ridicule rather than the usual adulation from the liberal media.
Still, there were a variety of circumstances that kept the smothered story breathing—and for a multitude of reasons. The only concerned countries with the operative ability to carry out such an intricate attack were likely Russia, the United States, and European Union countries. The Washington Post in December concluded that, despite initial circumstantial evidence, there was no reason to believe Russia blew up its own multibillion-dollar investment that was deemed critical for future Russian foreign exchange revenues.
While Hersh mentioned Denmark and Norway as cooperating with the United States, it is equally difficult to believe that any European Union or NATO nation would on its own attack the assets of another member, especially the shared investments of Germany that for some time has dominated the governance of EU and the policies of European members of NATO.
More disturbingly, on the eve of the Ukraine war in January 2022, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland quite indiscreetly boasted, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” She did not say what she meant by “another” way.
That was not an isolated threat. Joe Biden reiterated the same warning a month later. “If Russia invades,” he said, “then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2 . . . We will bring an end to it . . . I promise you; we will be able to do it.” His choice of “end” implied more than voluntary German disconnection from an otherwise intact Russian pipeline.
More recently, Nuland post facto expressed glee in an exchange with Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that her earlier threat had been reified, “Senator Cruz, like you, I am—and I think the administration is very pleased that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you say, a pile of metal at the bottom of the ocean.”
Apparently, the position of the Biden Administration was not just belated official disapproval of the pipeline—as President Trump had made abundantly clear during his own tenure with sanctions. Rather, this government was pledged (“I promise you”) to “bring an end to it,” and had the ability to do just what it promised (“We will be able to do that”).
When the pipeline was actually bombed, the U.S. government expressed satisfaction with that violent act: “Very pleased that . . . Nord Stream 2 is now . . . a pile of metal at the bottom of the ocean.” It would be hard to think Nuland was praising Putin for purportedly destroying his own multibillion-dollar investment, given that Germany did stop much of its deliveries of natural gas without the ruin of the pipeline.
Even if we put aside the question of who destroyed the pipelines (and they could be rendered useless if seawater continues to erode the interior linings), it was highly unusual for the president of the United States and an under secretary of State publicly to hint at a preemptive attack against a key asset of its ally Germany and a formidable power with over 6,500 nuclear weapons.
Nor do NATO nations destroy, preemptively and stealthily, the property of other NATO nations—especially given that Germany was facing the onset of autumn and winter, and did not have the wherewithal to keep its 80 million citizens warm without the full gas deliveries through the pipeline. There are no suggestions that the German government might have winked and nodded at the explosion—given Berlin might have been otherwise afraid voluntarily to close down the pipeline given public support for the deliveries.
If the United States took extra measures—alleged in detail by Hersh—to evade legal responsibilities to apprise a select group of senators and representatives of a planned major covert operation, then that too might well be an impeachable offense.
As of now the story remains unproven, if not wild. But unfortunately it dovetails with the prior statements of the highest American officials, and the apparent strategic agenda of the United States, better than do current competing narratives—as the Washington Post reminded us in the case of Russia.
But even a slight chance that the story rings true is terrifying in its implications—preemptively attacking a nuclear power, destroying the multibillion-dollar investment of an ally and its ability to bring fuel to its strapped citizenry, and deliberately breaking federal laws to avoid congressional compliance.
Silencing Americans
Another landmine was a recent, also underreported, almost nonchalant accusation that the CIA used the FBI as a sort of entre to Twitter so the kindred federal agencies could suppress the expression of particular Americans.
Journalist Matt Taibbi published a recent disturbing trove of internal communications, apparently revealing that the CIA, with help from the FBI, consistently sought to modulate and censure content on Twitter.
Taibbi noted that the CIA was sensitive that it was prohibited by statute from the domestic surveillance of American citizens. And so it preferred the nebulous phraseology, “Other Government Agency” (OGA). At the same time, he pointed out how top Twitter executives such as top censor Yoel Roth simply could not keep up with the avalanche of requests from the FBI, and by extension the CIA, Department of Defense, and State Department. In other words, a left-wing Twitter hierarchy, infamous for selectively banning the communications and expressions of more conservative users, was outdone by the thought police of the U.S. government.
If the FBI had sought to subvert the Bill of Rights through its hire of a third-party, private contractor, the CIA knowingly broke the law, apparently convinced that the overwhelmingly left-wing control of Twitter provided the government with a golden moment to pursue agendas antithetical to the Constitution, if not patently illegal.
Finally, we are witnessing the strangest provocations to U.S. sovereign airspace in history. China apparently has been sending with impunity surveillance balloons throughout American skies. Our woke military either did not know of all of them, or could not or would not stop them, or did not disclose these apparent serial violations to their own civilian overseers.
Biden mysteriously allowed an enormous Chinese spy balloon to traverse nearly the entirety of the continental United States. When pressed, his administration issued a series of untrue statements or at least mutually contradictory excuses for its own paralysis: the device may have been just a weather balloon; it was a harmless, anemic primitive spy device; it may have been more sophisticated than we thought but we took measures to ensure our sensitive locales were protected; we could not shoot it down because it had caused no harm; we could not shoot it down because the debris might have hurt people on the ground; we could not shoot it down over Alaskan waters because they are too deep and too cold; Trump was to blame for not stopping them earlier; and on and on.
When pressed about his reaction to this Chinese sustained and successful aggression, designed either to surveille and probe U.S. strategic sites or to humiliate and embarrass America to the world as clueless or timid, or both, Biden simply said the intrusions had not damaged U.S.-Chinese relations.
The first duty of a president is to keep his country safe and secure. Joe Biden has failed that oath when he did to our airspace what he had done previously to the southern border—allowed anyone or anything to violate our sovereignty at will.
Whether any of these landmines goes off, depends on the release of information from the government. But nemesis is already playing a role.
Consider: a Democratic House majority once criminalized noncompliance with a congressional subpoena. A Democratic Ways and Means Committee institutionalized demanding and successfully obtaining the tax records of a president. A Democratic president declared the unlawful storage of classified information to be worthy of a special counsel’s criminal investigation.
A left-wing media destroyed the high-bar rules of journalistic evidence and investigation protocols through its concoction of Russian collusion and disinformation hoaxes. A discredited media claimed that any perceived presidential laxity with an aggressive foreign adversary—like China’s serial intrusions into U.S. airspace—was supposedly prima facie evidence of a compromised president “colluding” as an “asset” of an enemy.
Ironically Biden, the media, and the old Democratic House majority have provided Republicans the same tools to discover the truth which the Left had once used to destroy it.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 23:25 - This Is What Hedge Funds Bought And Sold In Q4: 13F Summary
This Is What Hedge Funds Bought And Sold In Q4: 13F Summary
A funny thing happened right before hibh-beta tech stocks set off on a torrid, record-breaking January meltup: not only did hedge funds dump most of these beleaguered names, they also shorted them in record quantities (something which we correctly predicted would lead to the frenzied short squeeze that carried over into February), and nobody took the wrong side of that trade more than family offices for the ultra-wealthy, who as we learned in today’s 13F barrage sold tech stocks during the fourth quarter right before the market rallied in 2023.
Some examples: according to Bloomberg, both Iconiq Capital and the investment firm for the Walton family’s fortune sold shares of cloud-computing company Snowflake, which has surged 20% this year after a steep slide in 2022. Stan Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office also exited Microsoft in the fourth quarter, right before the tech giant gained 13% since the start of January, after falling 29% last year. Druckenmiller also exited Amazon.com after initiating the position in the third quarter; Glenview and Whale Rock also dumped the stock. AMZN fell 50% in 2022 but is up 19% so far this year.
Not everyone was selling, of course: some hedge funds, those who had been forced to liquidate their tech holdings earlier, were smart enough to dial up their bets on the sector in the fourth quarter. Lone Pine Capital boosted its Microsoft stake by 23%. The stock was also the biggest holding of Tiger Global Management (although whatever you do at home kids, don’t try to replicate anything Tiger Global does). Meanwhile, like a true value investor, Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group more than tripled its Amazon stake; while Tiger Cub Lone Pine boosted its position by 44%.
That said, the iconic Druckenmiller didn’t liquidate his entire tech book and made at least one smart tech bet: Nvidia, which according to Bloomberg now makes up about 4% of Duquesne’s $2 billion US equity portfolio. Nvidia, seen as a benefactor of the rise of AI, has rallied 57% this year. It remains to be seen if Nvidia – which two years ago soared when it was viewed as the benefactor of crypto mining – will also crater once the AI craze is gone and when people tire of trying to jailbrake the woke ChatGPT.
Here are some of the other findings from the latest volley of 13F reports, as compiled by Bloomberg:
- Bonds are back: Elliott and Soros Fund Management both disclosed positions in corporate-bond exchange-traded funds during the fourth quarter. Elliott disclosed a position in HYG, a high-yield corporate bond ETF. And Soros Fund Management purchased about $255 million worth of LQD.
- Glen Kacher’s Light Street exited Tesla – right before the stock doubled – and healthcare platform GoodRx Holdings Inc. The fund bought shares of AMD valued at $22.3 million and Netflix Inc. valued at $19.3 million.
- Harvard University’s endowment is backtracking on educational services company Laureate Education. After starting a position in the company last quarter, it exited its entire stake, selling all 101,800 shares. The school continued to increase its stake in Grab Holdings by about 40%, snapping up $3.7 million more shares of the company, making it the endowment’s fourth-largest US holding.
- Yale University’s endowment continued to increase its existing position in Procept BioRobots after starting a position in the company last quarter. The school also hit the reverse button on oil and gas company Riley Exploration Permian after starting a new position last quarter. Yale kept its two other holdings, in Vanguard and iShares ETFs, unchanged.
- In was a boring quarter for Berkshire which trimmed some of its financial holdings, reducing its shares in U.S. Bancorp, Bank of New York Mellon and Ally Financial; it also slashed its recent brand new stake in Taiwan Semi (more here).
- Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital added Tenet Healthcare to its disclosed investments and exited Intel in the fourth quarter; it added to its holdings in Kyndryl Holdings and decreased its stake in Resideo Technologies. Green Brick Partners was the biggest holding, representing 28% of disclosed assets
- Soroban exited Yum! Brands Inc. from its disclosed investments and boosted CSX Corp. in the fourth quarter, it also decreased its stake in Lowe’s. CSX Corp. was the biggest holding, representing 22% of disclosed assets.
- Glenview added Universal Health Services Class B to its disclosed investments and exited Amazon.com Inc. It also decreased its stake in Aptiv Plc; Cigna Corp. was the biggest holding, representing 15% of disclosed assets
- Maverick Capital’s 13F revealed a fund in turmoil: Tiger Cub Lee Ainslie added 122 new buys, though most of the new positions were small, and exited 90 previously established positions. His biggest addition was 1.4 million shares in Catalent Inc., a company that provides delivery technologies and development solutions for drugs, biologics and consumer health products. The firm also started a new position Credo Technology, snapping up 1.06 million shares. On the other hand, it liquidated its entire stake in Carvana, selling 735,710 shares. Maverick lost around 30% last year.
- Elliott Investment Management LP added IShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF to its disclosed investments and boosted Pinterest Inc. Class A in the fourth quarter, according to a 13F analysis by Bloomberg.
- Troubled crypto bank Silvergate, which is also the most shorted Russell name with two thirds of the float short, saw several brand name hedge funds open new positions in the 4th quarter, at the same time as Soros Fund Management took a modest levered bet in the form of SI puts (more here).
- Icahn Enterprises LP boosted Icahn Enterprises LP to its disclosed investments and reduced Cheniere Energy in the fourth quarter; Icahn Enterprises LP was the biggest holding, representing 70% of disclosed assets
- David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management sold 300,000 shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter; the stock represented about 5% of Appaloosa’s $1.3 billion US equity portfolio as of the fourth quarter. Appaloosa added new positions in Walt Disney. Caesars Entertainment and Aptiv during Q4. Judging by recent events, Tepper is most likely out of Disney already. Tepper also added to holdings in HCA Healthcare; Constellation Energy was Appaloosa’s biggest holding, representing 15% of disclosed assets
- Viking Global increased its stakes in BioMarin Pharma and UnitedHealth Group. Viking outperformed rivals last year thanks to bets on health-care stocks, which comprised about one-third of its portfolio at the end of the year. Its hedge fund ended the year down 2.4%.
- WIT, the investment firm that manages the Walton family’s fortune continued to be a fan of exchange-traded funds. WIT LLC, which stands for the Walton Investment Team, has a $3.6 billion US equity portfolio that’s mostly comprised of low-cost ETFs (because, of course). WIT also continues to bet on emerging markets. Its biggest holding is the $73.5 billion Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF. WIT threw in the towel on Snowflake, the cloud computing company, and Verve Therapeutics, a genetic medicines company, during the fourth quarter
More to come.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 23:05 - "Hyper-Sexualization Of Students": Parents Rein In 'Rogue' Sex Education In Michigan Schools
“Hyper-Sexualization Of Students”: Parents Rein In ‘Rogue’ Sex Education In Michigan Schools
Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Long-standing Michigan laws have become a new weapon for a group of aspiring education reformers seeking to guard school children in the state against what they call “illegal hyper-sexualization” and other “woke” teachings.
Kindsey Nelson (L) and Monica Yatooma at a parental rights meeting in St. Clari Shores, Mich. on Oct. 14, 2022. (Courtesy of Monica Yatooma) Activists concerned about what they were seeing in the state’s public schools recently formed a non-profit, non-partisan organization they call the Great Schools Initiative (GSI). They aim to help parents keep children from being exposed to teachings about gender change, sexual practices, and other concepts that they believe are harmful.
Co-founder Monica Yatooma, who has no children in a public school, became alarmed when she heard friends speak of things happening at their children’s public schools. Shocking news updates also caught her attention. It sounded like an effort to indoctrinate children in her community’s public schools about sexuality.
Yatooma began researching the websites of school districts in her state, where she saw evidence of programs espousing the teachings of critical race theory (CRT) and “the hyper-sexualization of students through exposure to gender ideology,” she said. “That’s where GSI came from.”
Michigan parental rights activist Monica Yatooma. (Courtesy of Monica Yatooma) Now, she and others are using the group’s efforts to help parents statewide.
“Our goal is to bring back orthodox education and to improve our schools,” the group’s co-founder Nathan Pawl told The Epoch Times. “Our immediate mission is to protect the safety and privacy of every student and to restore parental control over what their child is being taught in school.”
Human sexuality is “a highly sensitive” subject, Pawl said. “It often implicates family structure, religion, and the maturity levels, both physically and spiritually, of school children.
“Uninvolved parents have let their schools run unchecked for years in the realm of sex education,” he said.
Digging for Solutions
As GSI activists began investigating, they uncovered significant problems in numerous districts.
Group members began attending school board meetings more regularly, hearing stories from other parents, and researching state laws looking for solutions, Pawl said.
“We discovered that Michigan has very strong and wise statutes on the books dealing with sex education and parental rights dating back to the mid-1970s.”
GSI researchers found that Michigan law does not mandate that schools teach sex education, with the exception of lessons on HIV and AIDS. If sex-ed is taught, it cannot be a requirement for graduation.
“These laws do not prohibit the existence of LGBTQ students, nor do they prohibit a school from teaching about a wide range of sex education topics,” Pawl said.
“Rather, these laws wisely restrict sex education to specific courses and class sections, with an approved curriculum, to be taught by an instructor qualified to teach sex education,” GSI wrote in a blog posted on its website.
An illustration encouraging children to think of gender as a spectrum was distributed by Gorham High School in Maine. (Courtesy of a student who asked to be identified as HB) GSI members realized that under existing Michigan law, parents must be notified before a sex-ed course is presented to their children. They have a right to preview lesson content and materials and to observe the instruction at reasonable, agreed-upon times.
The laws also say that parents have the right to opt out of the class without penalty or negative ramifications to the student, such as loss of credit. An opt-out can be accomplished by filing a written notice with the school.
But most parents are unaware of these provisions in the law, GSI members said.
Michigan law “solidifies the role of the family, especially parents, and allows them to decide what pace to set for their children with regard to learning about human sexuality,” Yatooma said. The statutes “assert the necessary parental control that parents have. A parent always knows the child best.”
It’s important, she said, to “protect the innocence of all of our children for as long as possible” and “set common-sense standards and boundaries to protect their safety and privacy.”
In their digging, GSI members also realized that the Michigan statutes mandate that any school district desiring to create or change a sex-education program must form a sex education advisory board tasked with reviewing proposed plans, setting goals and objectives, and providing community input to the school board. And at least once every two years, the board must report to parents on the status of the program’s goals and objectives.
Boards are to be comprised of pupils, parents, educators, local clergy, and community health professionals. At least half of the members must have children enrolled in a school in the district. Without such a board, a school district may not teach sex education, Michigan law says.
GSI now is encouraging parents and others to see if their local school districts have a sex education advisory board in place, verify its makeup, and check to be sure it’s doing what the law requires.
Parents Unaware of Their Rights
Many Michigan parents are not aware of the power they already have under existing state law to withdraw their children from lessons, activities, discussions, books, videos, and other materials they find inappropriate, Pawl said.
GSI aims to inform and educate parents, but also take “impactful actions,” he said.
The group has teamed up with the Thomas More Society to draft the Michigan Parental Education Opt-Out Form. The Thomas More Society is a non-profit, national, public-interest law firm providing pro bono legal services to individuals or groups fighting to restore “respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty” and to preserve democracy through election integrity efforts.
The four-page opt-out form they’ve created, which is free online, leaves school administrators with little wiggle room to dismiss parental opt-out requests on technicalities—something some school districts have already attempted to do, Pawl said.
“We have provided a comprehensive list of dozens of examples of situations, topics, and items that parents may reasonably find objectionable,” Pawl said.
The list includes distribution of birth control and providing references to abortion clinics; gender ideology and gender modification surgery information; sexual attraction; teachings or discussions on sensual topics; non-grammatical use of pronouns inconsistent with biology; display and distribution of LGBT materials, books, and flags; and the furnishing of clothing for cross-dressing.
‘Rogue Sex Education’
The GSI form addresses both the approved sex-education class and the informal instruction involving sexuality that goes on throughout the school day during the time allotted for other subjects, Pawl said.
GSI considers such informal instruction “rogue,” because it hasn’t been reviewed and recommended by a sex education advisory board and approved by the local school board.
Also considered “rogue sex ed” are class chats about sexuality with teachers not certified to teach sex education and the injection of gender identity and sexual orientation into lessons and activities outside the confines and structure of an approved sex education class.
“Schools have allowed and encouraged sex education to be permeated into much more than the few classes listed on the school’s opt-out form,” reads a statement on GSI’s website.
That’s why the new form created by GSI activists with the help of Thomas More Society lawyers is so needed, members told The Epoch Times.
In just a few days more than 200 parents used the GSI opt-out form, and about 10 school districts have accepted it, Yatooma said.
State Education Officials Respond
The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) issued a memo on Feb. 2 to provide guidance to local school superintendents on how to handle the flurry of parents opting their children out of sex education.
The MDE position is that the statutory parental opt-out option applies only to board-approved sex education classes.
“These requirements are specific to sex education classes within a health course or unit … and should not be construed to apply to classes or course content outside that scope.
“Policies and procedures for excusing a student from participating in courses and content areas other than the sex education classes within a health education program, such as an English or Social Studies course, are not provided for in … state law,” the memo reads, in part.
Such policies are to be determined at the local district level, subject to any relevant state and federal conditions, the MDE memo says.
In rebuttal, Pawl cited former Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley’s Opinion 5881 issued on April 21, 1981, which he believes supports GSI’s position.
Kelley opined that Michigan law “prohibits a board of education of a school district from including any sex education instruction in any class or course that students are required to take.”
Also, in support of GSI’s position, Pawl referred to the portion of the MDE memo, which states, “By law, sex education classes must be taught by a person qualified to teach health education.”
“It is clear,” Pawl said, “that a teacher that is not certified in sex education has no business infusing a math or social studies class with information pertaining to gender or sexual orientation. It is illegal.”
A statement on GSI’s website characterizes these situations as violations “of privacy and a safety issue when teachers, counselors, or administrators have conversations or solicit private information through polls, quizzes, and other communications about human sexuality … This would include promotion of any and all sexual ideologies.”
Pawl contends that state law requires that this type of activity be confined to sex education advisory board-reviewed and school board-approved sex education classes only.
In contrast, the MDE memo advises school administrators that activities and materials outside of the approved sex-education instructional program, such as “communications, library holdings, surveys, after-school programs, and student-led non-curricular clubs … would not be subject to the sex education excusal provisions specified in statute.”
Laws Being Ignored or Circumvented
GSI alleges that, for a number of reasons—including ignorance—state laws on sex education are being ignored by some schools, and intentionally skirted by others.
As evidence, Pawl cites an MDE informational video about a suburban Detroit 5th- and 6th-grade language arts and social studies teacher.
The instructor announces in the video that every year on the first day of school he reads aloud to his class the book “I Am Jazz: The Real-Life Experience of a Transgender Child” by LGBT activist Jazz Jennings.
A book bin in the classroom overflows with other LGBT titles.
The teacher—also chairperson of his school’s Diversity Committee and a former Michigan Teacher of the Year—says he uses the reading to show his students that they can be comfortable talking about LGBT issues with him “whenever and wherever” they need to.
The video shows his classroom door covered with LGBT pride signs, stickers, and emblems. The teacher points out the rainbow-hued gay pride flag and transgender flag on display as tools that he says he uses to stimulate discussion and help create a “safe and inclusive space” for all students.
GSI members object to that.
“Nobody can display a Playboy flag in the classroom and claim it is a benign symbol and conversation starter,” Pawl said. “Flags are a tool that represents something and that begs questions.”
Another Michigan Department of Education video shows a consultant advising teachers not to risk “outing” students by organizing LGBT club meetings for after school, when parents will be picking up their children.
Instead, the consultant suggests, teachers should hold such club meetings at lunch hour.
Teachers are told to avoid club names that suggest an obvious LGBT theme, in favor of more innocuous names, such as “Diversity Club” or “Spectrum” or “Social Support Club,” according to the video.
In another MDE instructional video, psychologist Amorie Robinson, known locally as Dr. Kofi Adoma, instructs teachers on how to handle things like gender identity, name changes, and personal pronouns.
“Gender fluidity” is a normal process, Robinson says, and should be addressed with children aged 3–5 through something she calls “psycho-ed.” She advises teachers to employ a “psycho-ed” approach at school-wide events, such as Coming Out Day and Gay History Month.
Forcing ‘Their Agenda on Students’
“A reasonable person cannot help but conclude that the LGBT agenda in our schools is being driven on purpose by the Michigan Department of Education with help from well-funded national non-profit organizations,” Pawl said.
“It is evident that teachers and administrators are being taught how to cloak their activities, and, in some cases, actively circumvent the law in order to force their agenda on students. This comes at a time when so many parents tell us of the atrocious academic proficiency of their schools.”
Erick G. Kaardal, special counsel for the Thomas More Society. (Courtesy of Erick G. Kaardal) GSI wants to cooperate with school boards, administrators, and teachers to “improve policies to provide the safety, privacy, and parental control which Michigan families deserve,” Erick G. Kaardal, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, told The Epoch Times.
“GSI hopes that most of the issues can be resolved through the parental complaint administrative process without litigation,” he said, but added that “litigation remains an option for GSI, if that doesn’t work.”
The Michigan Parent Alliance for Safe Schools, an LGBT rights advocacy group, did not respond to a request for comment.
GSI also will help families file complaints, the group’s members told The Epoch Times.
“Those children are not the state’s property,” Yatooma said.
“The system is trying to form the thoughts and mindset of the next generation. They are forcing a subset of ideologies about sex and race on these vulnerable young minds that most of their parents do not agree with.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 22:45 - Work-From-Home Trend Costs Manhattan $12 Billion Per Year In Lost Revenue
Work-From-Home Trend Costs Manhattan $12 Billion Per Year In Lost Revenue
A new report has put a price on exactly what the “work from home” trend has cost the office-laden city of Manhattan: a stunning $12 billion per year.
Working at home means that office workers who would normally be out and about are spending $12 billion less than what they spent before the pandemic, according to a new Bloomberg News study.
The average worker is spending about 30% less time in the office, meaning that spending on food and entertainment has fallen by about $4,700 per person, data from Stanford University shows.
On a per-person basis, the figure is higher than anywhere else – by more than 50%, the report shows. “People simply have not returned to full-time in-office work,” NBC News wrote in a follow up.
Bloomberg wrote:
That means the average worker is spending $4,661 less per year on meals, shopping and entertainment near their offices in New York. That compares to $3,040 in San Francisco and $2,387 in Chicago. These behaviors are most entrenched in cities with longer commutes, a higher proportion of white-collar workforces and longer-lasting pandemic restrictions.
They also noted that worker attendance at most offices rose in Q4 2022, but just to the level of 43% of pre-pandemic. The number falls to just 23% on Fridays and peaks at 51% on Tuesdays.
Even food truck owners are witnessing the fall off. Sam’s Falafel owner Emad Ahmed said that he only makes about 30% of his pre-Covid revenue on Mondays and Fridays. He is stationed in Zuccotti Park.
“Monday, Friday, forget about it,” he said. “You lose money when nobody is here.”
The ultimate result for the city could be a 40% drop in office market value going forward. It could cost the city $5 billion in tax revenue, Bloomberg estimates.
Columbia University professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh called the trend an “urban doom loop” and said that the tax shortfall is a “big hole that will need to be plugged with new taxes, lower spending.”
Michelle Meyer, North America chief economist at Mastercard Economics Institute, told Bloomberg: “People have changed their lifestyle and their behavior. If you are working from home that day, you’re not commuting into your office, and going to the bodega next to your office.”
“New York City can’t run from home,” Mayor Eric Adams commented, after directing government employees back to the office. “It’s time.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 22:25 - The US Will Be Dependent On Oil For Far More Than A Decade
The US Will Be Dependent On Oil For Far More Than A Decade
-
President Biden’s recent admission in the State of the Union that the United States will need oil for at least another decade was a significant understatement.
-
While there may be a relatively large reduction in demand in a decade due to the growth of alternatives, the U.S. will remain heavily dependent on oil.
-
By way of example, in 2014 Norway was where the U.S. is today in terms of EVs on the road, seven years later it had only reduced oil demand by 8%.
During President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union Address, he relayed an anecdote that I believe explains his stance toward the oil and gas industry.
At first, he stayed on script with his prepared remarks, claiming:
“You may have noticed that Big Oil just reported record profits. Last year, they made $200 billion in the midst of a global energy crisis. It’s outrageous. They invested too little of that profit to increase domestic production and keep gas prices down. Instead, they used those record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders.”
As I have noted previously, oil companies made substantial increases in capital budgets last year as oil prices rose. The number of rigs drilling for oil has risen sharply, and U.S. oil production last year hit the second-highest level on record. But, President Biden — who strongly believes we need to bring down our carbon emissions — doesn’t think we are investing enough in producing more oil, even though 2023 may set a new record for U.S. oil production.
But then President Biden went off script.
He said that he had pressed oil executives on the issue of increasing investments, and he said they told him:
“We’re afraid you’re going to shut down all of the oil wells and all the oil refineries anyway so why should we invest in them?”
President Biden said he responded:
“We’re going to need oil for at least another decade.”
The chamber burst into laughter, and then Biden quickly added, “and beyond that.”
I think this attitude explains the seeming disconnect in the President’s stance toward oil and gas companies. He and some of his advisors really believe we are going to rapidly phase out oil. He views that as absolutely necessary to address climate change. Thus, in his mind, the oil industry’s relevance is going to soon fade, so there’s no harm in using them as his foil by blaming their high profits for high gasoline prices.
The reality is that we are going to need oil for a lot longer than another decade. Never mind that there is nothing in the pipeline that is going to displace jet fuel used in air traffic a decade from now. There may be some minor dent in petroleum used in marine traffic by then, but most ships will still run on oil in a decade.
But the widespread perception seems to be that electric vehicles (EVs) are going to substantially displace combustion vehicles a decade from now. That view is also not supported by facts.
U.S. EV share reached 6% of all new vehicle sales last year. The goal is to reach 50% by 2030 — just seven years from now. But that’s new car sales. The number of EVs on the road in 2022 was only about 1%.
Let’s look at Norway as an instructive example. Norway is one of the most aggressive EV markets in the world. In 2014, the country’s EV share on the roads reached 1%. By 2020, new EV sales represented 54% of new car sales in the country. This would be approximately consistent with the goals for the U.S. timeline. In 2021, over 20% of the cars on Norway’s roads were EVs, and in 2022 that number reached 25%.
How did this impact the country’s overall oil demand? According to the 2022 BP Statistical Review, in 2014 — the year Norway reached a 1% share of EVs on the roads — the country’s oil demand was 216,000 barrels per day (BPD). In 2021, with a 20% EV share, that number had fallen to 199,000 BPD. (Final full year 2022 numbers are not yet available, but preliminary numbers show a 0.4% decline from 2021).
That’s a decline of less than 8% in seven years. There’s no question that this is good, and is likely primarily due to the country’s adoption of EVs. But it also doesn’t translate to a major reduction in oil demand. When the President says “We are going to need oil for at least another decade”, I think he envisions much larger declines than this over the next decade.
Today the U.S. consumes around 20 million BPD of petroleum products. A 10% decline in this number would reduce consumption back to what we were consuming in about 2012. A large reduction, to be sure, but our transportation infrastructure would still run primarily on oil.
So, make no mistake. We aren’t going to just need oil a decade from now. We are still going to be overwhelmingly dependent on oil a decade from now. Our energy policies should reflect this reality.
Go ahead and aggressively try to speed up this transition, but also recognize that oil will still be our most important commodity in a decade; probably even two decades from now.
The Biden Administration should recognize this and cease the hostility toward this critically important U.S. industry.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 22:05 -
- DC Police Alert Residents About Thieves Targeting Canada Goose Jackets
DC Police Alert Residents About Thieves Targeting Canada Goose Jackets
Police are warning Washington, DC, residents to be alert for armed thieves targeting people wearing Canada Goose winter coats.
“People are being robbed of these expensive coats on DC streets,” Metropolitan Police Department told local news WJLA.
The prices of the winter coats stolen range from $550 to $1,500 — and these jackets are in high demand, not because of cold weather, which by the way, the Mid-Atlantic has had an unseasonably warm winter, but rather their popularity. Maybe it’s a status symbol. But anyway, thieves can easily resell these jackets on the internet or on the black market.
Canada Goose thefts have been such a concern that George Washington University alerted students about this disturbing crime trend.
“While none of the incidents have occurred on campus, two took place near the Foggy Bottom campus on February 1, 2023. Jackets have been taken off of victims, and in some cases, weapons have been brandished,” read an email sent to students, according to Fox 5.
Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Patrick Loftus told residents:
“Property is not worth your life. Give away that property, try to get a good description of that person, and we want people to call 911.”
Meanwhile, brandishing a Rolex will also attract unwanted attention from criminals.
Don’t be caught with a Canada Goose coat or a Rolex next month while visiting the metro area for the annual cherry blossoms bloom.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 21:45 - Chinese Balloon 'Did A Lot Of Damage,' Says House Foreign Affairs Chair McCaul
Chinese Balloon ‘Did A Lot Of Damage,’ Says House Foreign Affairs Chair McCaul
Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Chinese high-altitude balloon that passed over the United States at the start of February “did a lot of damage,” according to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) speaks as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on The Biden Administration’s Priorities for U.S. Foreign Policy on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 10, 2021. (Ken Cedeno-Pool/Getty Images) In an interview on CBS’s “Face The Nation” program, McCaul said the Chinese balloon was a “sophisticated spy balloon” that “went across three nuclear sites” as it floated over the United States from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4. McCaul specifically noted the balloon passed over nuclear bases in Montana, the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and a base that hosts nuclear bombers in Missouri.
Specifically, the balloon passed over Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana and Offutt Air Force Base. Malmstrom is home to U.S. nuclear missile forces. Offutt is home to STRATCOM, which is tasked with detecting and deterring attacks against the United States and its allies, including nuclear strikes. The balloon also flew near Whiteman Air Force Base, which hosts the nuclear-capable B-2 Spirit stealth bombers.
While the Defense Department says it mitigated the damage caused by the Chinese spy balloon that passed over several sensitive U.S. military sites, House Foreign Affairs Cmte. Chair Rep. Michael McCaul says, “Going over those sites, in my judgment, would cause great damage.” pic.twitter.com/pnPjjeOj2W
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 12, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“It did a lot of damage,” McCaul said of the high-altitude balloon’s flight path. The balloon passed over the various U.S. military sites before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4
“The fact is, whether it be the hypersonic weapon they’ve made that circled the world and landed with precision, to the spy balloon, we have to stop selling them the very technology that they use in their most advanced weapon systems that they can turn against us,” McCaul added.
Recent reports have indicated the Chinese government has bought U.S.-produced software products for use in its hypersonic missile programs. In recent years, U.S. officials have accused Chinese spies of stealing key technologies, and lawmakers have been considering laws to curb China’s access to sensitive U.S. defense programs.
US Military Says it ‘Mitigated’ Balloon’s Surveillance
U.S. defense officials have said they “mitigated” the balloon’s intelligence-gathering capabilities during its transit over the U.S., though they did not specify what means were used to block or reduce the balloon’s ability to transmit sensitive data back to China.
Officials in President Joe Biden’s administration have also said they took measures to mitigate the balloon’s ability to gather data. On Feb. 9, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the military was able “to protect any national security, sensitive information, that was on the ground as [the balloon] was moving on its path.”
McCaul shared his doubts about those mitigation efforts during the CBS interview.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 21:25 - Mapping All The World's Major Earthquakes From 1956‒2022
Mapping All The World’s Major Earthquakes From 1956‒2022
Major earthquakes have occurred since time immemorial, but their observation and impact have not been evenly distributed around the globe.
On February 6, two earthquakes struck in Türkiye near the Syrian border. Both registered above a 7 on the Richter scale and have a combined death toll rapidly rising past 20,000 people.
And, as Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao details below, looking at the history of recent and ancient earthquakes, the location of these is no surprise. Using data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), creator PythonMaps mapped earthquake epicenters between 1956 and 2022 that registered a 4.5 or higher on the Richter scale.
Tectonic Plate Movement and Earthquakes
Looking at the map, it’s easy to spot the concentration of earthquakes along the boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates.
These massive moving slabs of rock fit together almost like puzzle pieces, making up the lithosphere or the upper crust. But as the edges of tectonic plates collide, slide against, and move away from each other, the crust cracks and folds and causes earthquakes.
Most of the earthquakes visualized on this map follow the boundaries of the seven major tectonic plates, along with the Philippine Plate (south of Japan) and the Nazca Plate (west of South America).
Here’s a list of the most earthquake-prone areas on the planet, according to the USGS.
Earthquake Zones Tectonic Plates Locations Ring of Fire Pacific, North American, Philippine, Juan de Fuca, Cocos, Nazca Rim of the Pacific Ocean. Alpide Belt Eurasian, African, Arabian, Indian Java to Sumatra, through the Himalayas, west to the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. Mid-Atlantic Ridge North American, Eurasian, South American, African Deep underwater in the Atlantic, and directly underneath Iceland. According to academics, the recent earthquakes in Türkiye (part of the Alpide Belt) happened on multiple faults. The Arabian Plate likely moved northwards into the Eurasian Plate, pushing the Anatolian Plate (which Türkiye sits on) westward.
The Worst Earthquakes in History
Though earthquakes are spread around the world, major earthquakes seem even more tightly confined to specific regions.
These major earthquakes register highly on magnitude scales, such as the Richter scale (ML) and the newer and more commonly-used moment magnitude scale (Mw). These scales are logarithmic and ramp up quickly, so for the Richter scale, each whole number increase roughly corresponds to a 31.6-fold increase in energy released.
The map above sees a concentration of these bigger magnitude earthquakes congregating heavily around both sides of the Pacific Ocean. This border is also known colloquially as the “Ring of Fire” for its persistent volcanic activity, also caused by tectonic plate movement.
But the red points representing major earthquakes registering 9+ on the Richter scale are far and few between. Here’s a list of the 20 worst earthquakes in history, based on magnitude.
Rank Name Magnitude Location Date (Y-M-D) 1 Valdivia Earthquake 9.5 Bio-Bio, Chile 1960-05-22 2 Good Friday Earthquake 9.2 Alaska, U.S. 1964-03-28 3 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake 9.1 Sumatra, Indonesia 2004-12-26 4 Tohoku Earthquake 9.1 Honshu, Japan 2011-03-11 5 1952 Severo-Kurilsk Earthquake 9.0 Kamchatka, Russia 1952-11-04 6 Maule Earthquake 8.8 Bio-Bio, Chile 2010-02-27 7 1906 Ecuador–Colombia Earthquake 8.8 Ecuador 1906-01-31 8 Rat Islands Earthquake 8.7 Alaska, U.S. 1965-02-04 9 Assam-Tibet Earthquake 8.6 Assam, Tibet 1950-08-15 10 2012 Indian Ocean Earthquake 8.6 Sumatra, Indonesia 2012-04-11 11 Nias Earthquake 8.6 Sumatra, Indonesia 2005-03-28 12 1957 Andreanof Islands Earthquake 8.6 Alaska, U.S. 1957-03-09 13 Unimak Island Earthquake, Alaska 8.6 Alaska, U.S. 1946-04-01 14 1938 Banda Sea Earthquake 8.5 Banda Sea 1938-02-01 15 1922 Vallenar Earthquake 8.5 Chile-Argentina Border 1922-11-11 16 1963 Kuril Islands Earthquake 8.5 Kuril Islands, Russia 1963-10-13 17 1923 Kamchatka Earthquake 8.4 Kamchatka, Russia 1923-02-03 18 September 2007 Sumatra Earthquakes 8.4 Sumatra, Indonesia 2007-09-12 19 Peru Earthquake 8.4 Southern Peru 2001-06-23 20 1933 Sanriku Earthquake 8.4 Honshu, Japan 1933-03-02 Areas near Indonesia, Russia, and Chile – all on tectonic plate boundaries – have seen half of the largest earthquakes recorded in history.
That said, there could have been earlier and larger earthquakes not recorded. Earlier civilizations lacked precise instruments to measure and document them and preserved written observations only, with some of the earliest records dating back nearly three millennia.
Can We Predict Major Earthquakes?
Despite the ability to measure both location and intensity of earthquakes (using a seismograph), scientists still cannot precisely predict exactly where, when, or at what magnitude an earthquake will occur.
However, they can measure the probability of an earthquake occurring, especially around fault zones. A famous example is “the big one” around the Cascadia subduction zone in North America which occurs every 200 to 800 years.
In areas that sit on fault lines between plates, earthquake preparedness can play a big role in mitigating risk.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 21:05 - The Sudden Dominance Of The Diversity Industrial Complex
The Sudden Dominance Of The Diversity Industrial Complex
Authored by Thomas Hackett via RealClear Wire,
Little more than a decade ago, DEI was just another arcane acronym, a clustering of three ideas, each to be weighed and evaluated against other societal values. The terms diversity, equity, and inclusion weren’t yet being used in the singular, as one all-inclusive, non-negotiable moral imperative. Nor had they coalesced into a bureaucratic juggernaut running roughshod over every aspect of national life.
They are now.
Seemingly in unison, and with almost no debate, nearly every major American institution – including federal, state, and local governments, universities and public schools, hospitals, insurance, media and technology companies and major retail brands – has agreed that the DEI infrastructure is essential to the nation’s proper functioning. From Amazon to Walmart, most major corporations have created and staffed DEI offices within their human resources bureaucracy. So have sanitation departments, police departments, physics departments, and the departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education and energy. Organizations that once argued against DEI now feel compelled to institute DEI training and hire DEI officers. So have organizations that are already richly diverse, such as the National Basketball Association and the National Football League.
Many of these offices in turn work with a sprawling network of DEI consulting firms, training outfits, trade organizations and accrediting associations that support their efforts.
“Five years ago, if you said ‘DEI,’ people would’ve thought you were talking about the Digital Education Initiative,” Robert Sellers, University of Michigan’s first chief diversity officer, said in 2020. “Five years ago, if you said DEI was a core value of this institution, you would have an argument.”
Diversity, equity and inclusion is an intentionally vague term used to describe sanctioned favoritism in the name of social justice. Its Wikipedia entry indicates a lack of agreement on the definition, while Merriam-Webster.com and the Associated Press online style guide have no entry (the AP offers guidance on related terms).
Yet however defined, it’s clear DEI is now much more than an academic craze or corporate affectation.
“It’s an industry in every sense of the word,” says Peter Schuck, professor emeritus of law at Yale. “My suspicion is that many of the offices don’t do what they say. But they’re hiring people, giving them titles and pretty good money. I don’t think they do nothing.”
It’s difficult to know how large the DEI Industrial Complex has become. The Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn’t assessed its size. Two decades ago, MIT professor Thomas Kochan estimated that diversity was already an $8 billion-a-year industry. Yet along with the addition of equity, inclusion, and like terms, the industry has surely grown an order of magnitude larger. Six years ago, McKinsey and Company estimated that American companies were spending $8 billion a year on diversity training alone. DEI hiring and training have only accelerated in the years since.
“In the scope and rapidity of institutional embrace,” writes Marti Gurri, a former CIA analyst who studies media and politics, “nothing like it has transpired since the conversion of Constantine.”
Yet in our time, no Roman Emperor has demanded a complete cultural transformation. No law was passed mandating DEI enactment. No federal court ruling has required its implementation. There was no clarion call on the order of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex” warning. No genuine public crisis matched the scale of the response.
The sources of this transformation are both deep and fairly recent. On one level, they can be traced back to the egalitarian movements that have long shaped American history – from the nation’s founding, through the Civil War and Reconstruction to the battles for women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, and same-sex marriage. In other ways, the rapid transformation can seem no more explicable than an eccentric fashion trend, like men of the late 18th century wearing periwigs. However, a few pivot points of recent history bent its arc in DEI’s direction.
The push for affirmative action is the most obvious influence, a program first conceived during the Reconstruction era but then abandoned for nearly a century. Although triumphs for social justice, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights acts of the late 1950s and 1960s didn’t stop discrimination; the country would need to take more affirmative steps toward assisting minority groups and achieving more equitable outcomes, proponents argued. A controversial policy from the start (with the Supreme Court expected to curb its use in college admissions this term), affirmative action was further complicated by immigration reforms that allowed for more non-European immigrants, setting off a seismic demographic shift that continues to reverberate.
The diversity movement of the early 1990s was in part an attempt to capitalize on the new multicultural reality. Stressing individual and institutional benefits rather than moral failings, early corporate diversity training programs hewed to traditional values of equality and meritocracy. Creating a diverse workplace, R. Roosevelt Thomas wrote in the Harvard Business Review, in 1990, “should always be a question of pure competence and character unmuddled by birth.”
And in many ways it appears to have worked. Just look at the tech industry, where immigrants from East and South Asia have flourished. Nigerian immigrants are perhaps the most successful group in America, with nearly two-thirds holding college degrees. Doors have opened wide to the once-closeted LGBT community.
But in other ways, the recent explosion of DEI initiatives reflects shortcomings of earlier efforts, as suggested by the headline of 2016 article in the Harvard Business Review, “Why Diversity Fails.” Even as high-achieving first- and second-generation immigrants have thrived in certain industries, particularly STEM fields, people of color remain scarce in senior institutional positions. There is also the deeper issue of what many in the post-George Floyd era have taken to calling systemic or structural racism, citing major disparities for black Americans in education, healthcare, homeownership, arrests, incarceration, and household wealth.
More recently, a spate of widely publicized police killings of unarmed African Americans has galvanized a growing belief, especially among progressives and especially since Donald Trump’s election, that America is an irredeemably racist nation. In 2020, in the wake of the Floyd murder and in advance of a fraught election, a moral panic set in. Having increased their ranks, social justice entrepreneurs and bureaucrats were poised to implement an ideological agenda and compound their institutional power.
Although no hard numbers exist on the exact size of the industry, the “DEIfication” of America” is clear. From Rochester, New York, to San Diego, Calif., cash-strapped municipalities have found the funds to staff DEI offices. Startups and small companies that once relied on their own employees to promote an inclusive culture now feel compelled to hire diversity consultants and sensitivity trainers to set them straight. The field is so vast it has born a sub-field: recruiting agencies for DEI consultants. So-called “authenticity readers” tell publishing companies what are acceptable depictions of marginalized groups and who is entitled to tell their stories. Master’s degree and certificate programs in DEI leadership at schools like Cornell, Georgetown, and Yale offer new and lucrative bureaucratic careers.
At Ohio State University, for example, the average DEI staff salary is $78,000, according to public information gathered by economist Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute – about $103,000 with fringe benefits. Not to be outdone by its Big Ten conference rival, the University of Michigan pays its diversity officers $94,000 on average – about $124,000 with benefits. Until he retired from the position last summer, Michigan’s chief diversity officer, Robert Sellers, was paid over $431,000 a year. His wife, Tabbye Chavous, now has the job, at the vice provost rank and a salary of $380,000.
For smaller organizations that cannot afford a full-time equity officer, there are other options for shoring up social justice bona fides – namely, working with any of the hundreds of DEI consulting agencies that have risen like mushrooms after a night’s rain, most of them led by “BIPOC” millennials. With some firms, the social justice goals are unmistakable. The Racial Equity Institute is “committed to the work of anti-racist transformation” and challenging “patterns of power” on behalf of big-name clients like the Harvard Business School, Ben & Jerry’s, and the American Civil Liberties Union. With others, the appeal has less to do with social change than exploring marketing opportunities and creating a “”with-it” company culture, where progressive politics complement the office foosball tables and kombucha on tap.
“Diversity wins!” declares the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. Certainly diversity officers have been winning, although opposition is building in Florida and elsewhere, where the wider woke agenda that includes DEI has advanced. Even minimally trained practitioners are in high demand, and signs of their influence abound.
Wells Fargo offers cheaper loans to companies that meet racial and gender quotas. Private equity and venture capital firms like BlackRock and KKR declare their commitment to racial “equity.” Bank of America tells its employees they are implicated in a white supremacist system. Lockheed Martin asks its executives to “deconstruct their white male privilege.” Major tech companies like Google publicly chart the “Black+ and Latinx+” people they’ve hired, and assure the public that Artificial Intelligence will prioritize the DEI political agenda. ChapGPT, an AI model that can generate remarkably cogent writing, is been designed with a liberal bias, summarily rejecting requests that don’t conform to the algorithm’s notions of “positivity, equality and inclusivity.” Disney instructs employees to question colorblind beliefs espoused by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others. Fire departments are told to lower their physical fitness requirements for women. Similarly, universities are dropping standardized tests to yield more admissions of certain minorities (typically not Asians). And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, hoping to award more “films of color,” inspects Oscar-nominated films for cast and crew diversity. (Netflix has been a notable exception, last May laying off dozens of employees working on such issues. Under Elon Musk, Twitter is also flouting woke orthodoxies.)
In education, college students are required to take DEI-prescribed courses. Community college employees in California are evaluated on their DEI competencies. Loyalty oaths to the DEI dogma are demanded of professors. Applicants to tenure-track positions, including those in math and physics, are rejected out of hand if their mandatory DEI statements are found wanting. Increasingly, DEI administrators are involved in hiring, promotion, and course content decisions.
“Academic departments are always thinking, ‘We need to run this by Diversity,’” says Glenn Ricketts, public affairs officer for the National Association of Scholars.
The industry’s reach can also be seen in the many Orwellian examples of exclusion in the name of inclusion, of reprisals in the name of tolerance. Invariably, they feature an agitated clutch of activists browbeating administrators and executives into apologizing for an alleged trespass against an ostensibly vulnerable constituency. When that has been deemed insufficient or when senior executives have sensed a threat to their own legitimacy, they’ve offered up scapegoats on false or flimsy pretexts. That might be a decades-long New York Times reporter, a head curator at a major art museum, an adjunct art history professor, a second-year law student, or a janitor at a pricey New England college. (The list is long.)
Often enough, the inquisitions have turned into public relations debacles for major institutions. But despite the intense criticism and public chagrin, the movement marches on.
The expansion “happened gradually at first, and people didn’t recognize the tremendous growth,” Perry says. “But after George Floyd, it really accelerated. It became supercharged. And nobody wanted to criticize it because they would been seen as racists.”
Not playing along with the DEI protocols can end an academic career. For example, when Gordon Klein, a UCLA accounting lecturer, dismissed a request to grade black students more leniently in 2020, the school’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion office intervened to have him put on leave and banned from campus. A counter-protest soon reversed that. However, when Klein also declined to write a DEI statement explaining how his work helped “underrepresented and underserved populations,” he was denied a standard merit raise, despite excellent teaching evaluations. (He is suing for defamation and other alleged harms.)
Scores of professors and students have also been subject to capricious, secretive, and career-destroying investigations by Title IX officers, who work hand-in-glove with DEI administrators, focusing on gender discrimination and sexual harassment. As writer and former Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis recounts in “Unwanted Advances,” individuals can be brought up on charges without any semblance of due process, as she was, simply for “wrongthink” – that is, for having expressed thoughts that someone found objectionable. With activist-administrators assuming the role of grand inquisitors, “the traditional ideal of the university – as a refuge for complexity, a setting for free exchange of ideas – is getting buried under an avalanche of platitudes and fear,” she writes. And it would appear that students and professors would have it no other way. By and large, they want more bureaucratic intervention and regulations, not less.
As more institutions create DEI offices and hire ever more managers to run them, the enterprise inevitably becomes self-justifying. According to Parkinson’s Law, bureaucracy needs to create more work, however unnecessary or unproductive, to keep growing. Growth itself becomes the overriding imperative. The DEI movement needs the pretext of inequities, real or contrived, to maintain and expand its bureaucratic presence. As Malcolm Kyeyume, a Swedish commentator and self-described Marxist, writes: “Managerialism requires intermediation and intermediation requires a justifying ideology.”
Ten years ago, Johns Hopkins University political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg found that the ratio of administrators to students had doubled since 1975. With the expansion of DEI, there are more administrators than ever, most of whom have no academic background. On average, according to a Heritage Foundation study, major universities across the country currently employ 45 “diversicrats,” as Perry calls them. With few exceptions, they outnumber the faculty in history departments, often two or three to one.
At Michigan, Perry wasn’t able to find anyone with the words “diversity,” “equity,” or “inclusion” in his job title until 2004; and for the next decade, such positions generally remained centralized at the provost level, working for the university as a whole. But in 2016, Michigan president Mark Schlissel announced that the university would invest $85 million in DEI programs. Soon after, equity offices began to “metastasize like a cancer,” Perry says, across every college, department, and division, from the college of pharmacy to the school’s botanical garden and arboretum, where a full-time DEI manager is now “institutionalizing co-liberatory futures.” All the while, black enrollment at Michigan has dropped by nearly 50% since 1996.
Despite the titles and the handsome salaries, most DEI administrative positions are support staff jobs, not teaching or research positions. In contrast with the provisions of Title IX, DEI is not mandated by law; it is entirely optional. DEI officers nevertheless exert enormous influence, in part because so few people oppose them. The thinking seems to be that if you’re against the expanding and intrusive diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda, you must be for the opposite – discrimination, inequality, and exclusion.
“By telling themselves that they’re making the world a better place, they get to throw their weight around,” says Ricketts. “They have a lot of money, a lot of leverage, and a lot of people who just don’t want to butt heads with them – people who just want to go along to get along. People who are thinking, ‘If we embrace DEI, nobody can accuse us of being racist or whatever.’ They’re trying to cover their backsides.”
Some organizations, it seems, are merely trying to keep up with cultural trends.
Consider Tucson, Ariz., where diversity is not a buzzy talking point but an everyday reality. With a population that is 44% Hispanic, 43% white and only 4.6% black, the city has had no major racial incidents in decades. Yet like hundreds of others communities, Tucson suddenly decided in direct response to the George Floyd murder 1,600 miles away that it needed an office of equity. To many observers, it seemed that the city was just “getting jiggy with it,” pretending to solve a problem that didn’t exist. After a two-year search, it hired Laurice Walker, the youngest chief equity officer in the country, at age 28, with a salary of $145,000 – nearly three and a half times what Tucson’s mayor, Regina Romero, earns.
Not that the mayor is complaining. “I think this position is about putting an equity lens into all that we do,” Romero said in May, by which she means – well, nobody is quite sure what “equity” means, particularly with respect to federal legislation clearly prohibiting positive and negative discrimination alike.
But trying to get out in front of the DEI train can also result in getting run over by it.
When the city council of Asheville, N.C., hired Kimberlee Archie as its first equity and inclusion manager, its members probably didn’t anticipate being accused of having a “white supremacy culture.” After all, city manager Debra Campbell is black, as are three of the seven women making up the city council. The council had cut police funding and unanimously approved a reparations resolution. Archie nevertheless complained that her colleagues still weren’t doing enough to advance racial equity. “What I describe it as is kind of like the bobblehead effect,” she said in 2020. “We’d be in meetings … and people’s heads are nodding as if they are in agreement. However, their actions didn’t back that up.”
The drama in western North Carolina illustrates a dilemma that organizations face going forward. They can pursue an aggressive political agenda in which white supremacy is considered the country’s defining ethos (per The New York Times’ “1619 Project“) and present discrimination as the only remedy to past discrimination (see Ibram X. Kendi). Or they take the path of least resistance, paying rhetorical tribute to DEI enforcers as the “bobbleheads” that Archie disparages but doing little more than that. After all, they still have universities, businesses, and sanitation departments to run, alumni and investors to satisfy, students to teach, research to pursue, roads to be paved, sewage to be treated, costs to be minimized, and profits to be maximized.
Perhaps, too, senior administrators and executives are beginning to realize that, despite the moral panic of 2020, the most culturally diverse country in the world might not be irredeemably racist, even if it’s no longer acceptable to say so. The United States twice elected an African American man named Barack Hussein Obama as president. His first attorney general was a black man, who would be replaced by a black woman. His vice president would pick a woman of mixed race as his running mate. The mayors of 12 of the 20 largest U.S. cities are black, including the four largest cities. Likewise, many of the people whom Americans most admire – artists, athletes, musicians, scientists, writers – are black. Lately most winners of MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants are people of color. Gay marriage is legal, and enjoys wide public support, even among conservatives. The disabled, neurodivergent, and gender-divergent are applauded for their courage and resilience. And nonwhite groups, particularly Asians, Latinos, and African immigrants, have been remarkably upwardly mobile (often without official favoritism).
Clearly, troubling disparities persist for African Americans. What’s much less clear is that racism, systemic or not, remains the principal cause of these disparities or that a caste of equity commissars will reverse them. And now, it would seem that narrowing these disparities runs counter to their self-interest.
“I don’t want to deny that there’s genuine goodwill on the part of some of these programs,” says Prof. Schuck, stressing that he hasn’t examined their inner workings. “But some of these conflicts are not capable of being solved by these gestures. They have to justify their own jobs, their own budgets, however. And that creates the potential for a lot of mischief. They end up trafficking in controversy and righteousness, which produces the deformities we’ve been seeing in policies and conduct.”
Still, to hear DEI officers, it’s they who are beleaguered and overwhelmed. Yes, they have important-sounding jobs and rather vague responsibilities. They are accountable to nobody, really. Rather than fighting “the man,” they now are the man, or at least the gender-neutral term for man in this context. But this also means that they are starting to catch flak, particularly as the evidence mounts that the institutions they advise and admonish aren’t actually becoming more fair, open, and welcoming. They’re not even becoming more ethnically diverse.
Like other DEI advocates, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education has declined to answer questions for this article. Its officers are too busy traveling to conferences to do so, a spokeswoman said.
But at a recent association meeting, Anneliese Singh of Tulane University invoked Rosa Parks’ refusal to take a back seat to discrimination. Although Parks was a housekeeper and diversicrats have comfortable university sinecures, their struggles are analogously distressing, Singh suggested. The latter, too, are on the “front lines” in a harrowing war. However, she said, her colleagues needed to remember what mattered most: Looking out for themselves.
“It is not self-indulgence,” she said, now quoting the feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lord. “It is self-preservation. And that is an act of political warfare.”
For the moment, it’s a war Singh and her DEI colleagues are clearly winning.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 20:45 - 43% Of Indians Believe Aliens Will Visit Earth In 2023
43% Of Indians Believe Aliens Will Visit Earth In 2023
When news of the U.S. military downing three unidentified flying objects in as many days broke on the weekend, the internet was of course having a field day. Social media, a place rife with conspiracy theories on the best of days, was full of speculation about what was really going on in the United States.
As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, the fact that General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), refused to “rule out anything” when asked if extraterrestrials could be involved in the latest incidents didn’t exactly help stifle the budding alien hysteria. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did her best to calm everybody down in a White House press briefing on Monday, saying “there is no — again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. And it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”
Looking at the results of an Ipsos poll conducted across 36 countries in late 2022, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the latest incidents involving unidentified flying objects sparked some lively speculation online.
You will find more infographics at Statista
When asked whether or not they think it’s likely that aliens would visit Earth in 2023, an average of 18 percent of respondents said that they considered extraterrestrial visitors a likely scenario for 2023.
But, as the chart above shows, respondents from India and China were particularly open-minded when it comes to alien visitors, while people in Great Britain and Japan were among the largest sceptics.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 20:25 - COVID Emergency, Climate Emergency: Same Thing
COVID Emergency, Climate Emergency: Same Thing
Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance
I am always happy to welcome new content from The Brownstone Institute, one of the last few beacons of common sense left in the world.
This week they published a new piece on how, as the Covid emergency fades away, the climate emergency is becoming prominent. After lamenting the rights that were taken from citizens during the Covid emergency, the article looks at exactly what superpowers the government would get in declaring a climate emergency. You guessed it: more power to ram through ways for government to micromanage your life, interfere with the economy and – best of all – further the Keynesian nightmare by printing and spend as many U.S. dollars as they want without consequences.
I contacted them last year and requested permission to share their content when I enjoy it, in full, with my readers, which they kindly granted. If you’re interested in the topic – or simply just having a grasp on the objective truth – I believe it is a “must read”.
The article is written by W. Aaron Vandiver, a writer, former litigator, and wildlife conservationist. He is the author of the novel, Under a Poacher’s Moon. Photographic annotations have been added by QTR.
In February 2022, 1,140 organizations sent President Biden a letter urging him to declare a “climate emergency.” A group of US Senators did the same, in October 2022, and a House bill, introduced in 2021, also called on the president to “declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act.”
Biden has considered declaring such an emergency, but so far he has declined, to the disappointment of many progressives.
The United Nations (UN) has urged all countries to declare a climate emergency. The state of Hawaii and 170 local US jurisdictions have declared some version of one. So have 38 countries, including European Union members and the UK, and local jurisdictions around the world, together encompassing about 13 percent of the world’s population.
Hillary Clinton was reportedly prepared to declare a “climate emergency” if she had won the 2016 election.
A “climate emergency” is in the zeitgeist. Those words were surely uttered by the billionaires, technocrats and corporate CEOs attending the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos.
But what does it actually mean for the president of the US to officially declare a “climate emergency?”
Most people don’t realize that under US law, a national emergency declaration triggers a set of emergency powers that allows a president to act without the need for further legislation.
The Brennan Center for Justice compiled a list of the 123 statutory powers that may become available to the president upon declaration of a national emergency (plus 13 that become available when Congress declares a national emergency).
The scope of these powers is difficult to summarize, except to say that if exercised to their maximum extent, they potentially encompass vast areas of American life.
For civil libertarians across the political spectrum, from left to right, a “climate emergency” should be a focus of concern.
Even environmentalists who may instinctively and understandably support the idea should be worried about the potential for the authoritarian model of “emergency” governance that arose during COVID-19 to overtake climate policy.
One can believe in protecting and preserving the planet, as I do, while insisting on environmental policies that are consistent with democracy, civil liberties, and human rights.
Elements of the left and right should be coming together to reject demands that we sacrifice democratic norms, rights, and freedoms for flimsy promises of safety from political and economic elites who seek to exploit a crisis — a cynical ploy that COVID-19 thoroughly exposed.
Recall that it was President Trump who issued a COVID-19 “national emergency” declaration on March 13, 2020. This was accompanied by “public health emergency” orders at the federal and state levels, and by the World Health Organization (WHO), which unleashed an intense phase of lockdowns and a tsunami of health-and-safety rules and restrictions — many imposed on the public in circumvention of the normal democratic process.
Before that, I might have supported a “climate emergency” without a second thought. Now, after three years of lockdowns, mandates, censorship and other heavy-handed policies, the trust is gone.
The leaders pushing for a new emergency who have failed to repudiate the abuses of the last one — even those with the purest of intentions regarding the environment — have lost credibility.
Many others feel the same way. We need to know exactly what a “climate emergency” really means.
So what would an official “climate emergency” look like?
Just like the “COVID-19 emergency,” it would be far-reaching, with potentially dramatic effects on the economy and society. Emergency measures may even cause serious harm to the environment — while failing to meaningfully address climate change.
Even if you tend to pay attention to climate-related issues, the implications of a “climate emergency” may surprise you.
How would a ‘climate emergency’ even work?
Environmental advocacy groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity have called on the Biden administration to invoke specific emergency statutes that would give him the power to:
-
Ban crude oil exports.
-
Stop oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf.
-
Curtail international trade and investment in fossil fuels.
The Center for Biological Diversity says that these emergency powers would allow Biden to put the U.S. on the path to “jettison the fossil-fuel economy and burgeon a just, anti-racist, and regenerative America in its place.”
However, there are many reasons to doubt such grandiose claims. Numerous energy and materials experts, including the well-known analyst Vaclav Smil, have concluded that a rapid transition to “green” energy may not even be possible.
Further, the Biden administration would probably not take steps to quickly phase out fossil fuels at the risk of crashing the economy. As BlackRock noted its 2023 Global Outlook: “The faster the transition [the] more volatile inflation and economic activity.”
If Biden exercised his emergency powers, he would most likely use them to fast-track “green” energy projects while stopping far short of serious efforts to phase out fossil fuels.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 already set the precedent: It included hundreds of billions of dollars for “green” energy subsidies and opened millions of acres of public lands and offshore waters to fossil-fuel development.
This play-both-sides approach would obviously do little to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, which rose globally to 52 billion tons in 2022 (including about 36 billion tons of carbon) from 51 billion tons in 2021.
Even if Biden fully exercised the emergency powers identified by the Center for Biological Diversity, this would have little effect on emissions.
Climate experts who must speak on the condition of anonymity to “avoid upsetting colleagues” admit that “while a climate [emergency] declaration is important in terms of media attention and galvanizing the climate movement, it does not have significant impacts on carbon pollution.”
When you look at the wish lists of the Senate and House members who want Biden to declare a “climate emergency,” and the demands of the many activists who say we must reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050, the emergency powers listed by the Center for Biological Diversity barely scratch the surface of what most say is needed.
The big question is, what else will the government be tempted to do to reach net-zero by 2050 — a goal Biden already directed the US government itself to reach via executive order — once a “climate emergency” has been initiated?
Elizabeth Kolbert, a leading climate journalist, recently wrote an article “Climate Change from A to Z,” published in the New Yorker. Here’s what she says must happen to reach net-zero by 2050:
-
The fossil fuel industry will essentially have to be dismantled, and millions of leaky and abandoned wells sealed.
-
Concrete production will have to be reengineered. The same goes for the plastics and chemicals industries.
-
The fertilizer industry will also have to be refashioned.
-
Practically all the boilers and water heaters that now run on oil or gas, commercial and residential, will have to be replaced. So will all the gas stoves and dryers and industrial kilns.
-
The airline industry will have to be revamped, as will the shipping industry.
-
Farming “emissions, too, will have to be eliminated.”
-
Electrical transmission capacity must be “expand[ed] so that hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, and buses can be run on electricity.”
-
“Tens of millions” of public charging stations [must be installed] on city streets and even more charging stations in private garages.
-
Nickell and lithium must be extracted for electric batteries, “which will mean siting new mines, either in the U.S. or abroad.”
-
New methods for producing steel or building a new infrastructure for capturing and sequestering carbon” must be invented.
“All of this should be done — indeed, must be done,” Kolbert wrote. “Zeroing out emissions means rebuilding the U.S. economy from the bottom up.”
All of that must be done? We must “rebuild the US economy from the bottom up?”
What does it even mean to “revamp” the airline industry, or “refashion” the fertilizer industry or “eliminate” emissions from the farming industry?
In reality, most of those things cannot be done. They certainly cannot be accomplished within any reasonable exercise of presidential emergency powers.
If a president attempts to directly intervene in industry after industry to accomplish these unrealistic goals — or pretends for political reasons to be trying to accomplish them — a “climate emergency” could gradually expand in scope to unimaginable proportions, unless reined in by the Supreme Court or the political process.
These are not idle concerns. The pressure on the government to do something now is immense and growing, with the slow-moving democratic lawmaking process increasingly seen as an obstacle.
A 2021 report by Deutsche Bank said that we may have to accept “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship” to reach net-zero by 2050. The UN has suggested countries are moving too slowly, leaving us with no option but the “rapid transformation of societies.”
And Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said, “only root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster.”
“Getting to zero will be the hardest thing humans have ever done,” Bill Gates, who is heavily invested in numerous climate-related businesses, wrote in his final blog post of 2022.
Gates added:
“We need to revolutionize the entire physical economy — how we make things, move around, produce electricity, grow food, and stay warm and cool — in less than three decades.”
Many want the president to use his emergency powers to get started right now, without waiting for Congress to act.
But this would be a dangerous misuse of federal emergency powers, which were not intended to give the president an end-run around Congress, as senior director of Liberty & National Security at the Brennan Center for Justice Elizabeth Goitein warned. Nor were emergency powers designed to address a complex long-term challenge like climate change.
Once emergency powers are invoked, the temptation will be to expand them. The only way President Biden or a future president could reach for any kind of significant, broad-based climate goals using his existing emergency powers, Goitein said, would be to “stretch them beyond all recognition, using them in legally dubious ways Congress never intended … the idea that emergency powers are infinitely malleable is both false and dangerous.”
If you are not yet a subscriber to Fringe Finance, wish to support the blog and have the means, I can offer you 50% off an annual subscription for reading today’s piece. The discount never expires. You can use this coupon: Get 50% off forever
How a ‘climate emergency’ could infringe on civil liberties and human rights
How worried should we be that a “climate emergency” intended to “rapidly transform” our entire society by 2050 — which would be the 80th national emergency in US history — might gradually expand in scope to infringe on basic civil liberties and human rights?
A 2018 article in the Atlantic, “The Alarming Scope of the President’s Emergency Powers,” warned of nightmarish scenarios that could ensue if President Trump abused his emergency powers.
“The moment the president declares a ‘national emergency’ — a decision that is entirely within his discretion — he is able to set aside many of the legal limits on his authority,” the article warned. “The president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts,” and much more.
We can certainly hope that a “climate emergency” would not morph into such a dangerous scenario. Historically, most national emergency declarations have been benign.
Yet the “COVID-19 emergency” initiated on Trump’s watch and carried on by Biden has unfortunately set a new and troubling authoritarian precedent that cannot be ignored.
Nowhere is that precedent more apparent than in the lingering notion of “locking down” the population.
In October 2020, University College of London economics professor Mariana Mazzucato, who chairs an economics council for the WHO, published an article expressly raising the possibility of “climate lockdowns” to address a “climate emergency.”
Mazzucato wrote:
“In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again — this time to tackle a climate emergency. … Under a ‘climate lockdown,’ governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling.”
What these “climate lockdowns” would amount to is various forms of “green austerity” — strict limits on consumption and personal behavior — imposed on the population.
This is a real possibility — not a conspiracy theory (despite the protestations of biased fact-checkers).
Far from being fringe, Mazzucato’s article about “climate lockdowns” as a response to a “climate emergency” was published by a website, Project Syndicate, that receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other influential organizations that vigorously supported COVID-19 lockdowns.
The article also was endorsed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a “CEO-led organization” that represents 200 of the world’s largest corporations.
Mazzucato is only one of many climate policymakers who want to harness the extraordinary technocratic/authoritarian powers that were used during COVID-19 “lockdowns” to fight climate change.
For example, a paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability cited the “window of opportunity provided by the Covid-19 crisis,” arguing that “Covid vaccine passports could be succeeded by personal carbon passports.”
“Carbon passports,” along with digital IDs, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), social-credit scores and other means of tracking and restricting consumption, travel, diet and personal behavior are routinely bandied about at the WEF and other elite technocratic organizations.
Worries about “carbon passports” take on added urgency in light of the recent G20 conference, which resulted in an agreement in principle to establish a system of digital vaccine passports for international travel, to be administered by the WHO.
How might such restrictions be incorporated into American law and life? There are various ways: legislation, agency rulemaking, international treaty, city ordinance.
A “climate emergency” is a powerful legal tool that could conceivably be used to impose “green” restrictions on the public in circumvention of the normal democratic lawmaking process, particularly if a presidential administration comes under pressure to stretch its emergency powers beyond their intended purpose.
Recall that it is not just presidents who can trigger a state of emergency. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), state governors and the WHO all have the power to declare a “public health emergency” within their respective areas of authority.
This is exactly what happened in early 2020, illustrating how a future “climate public health emergency” might take shape.
What happens if global, federal and state officials declare a ‘climate public health emergency’?
It was not only President Trump’s national emergency declaration that led to lockdowns and so many other abuses of power and violations of basic rights during COVID-19. His order helped establish the framework for emergency governance, but other “public health emergency” orders were crucial.
The WHO declared COVID-19 to be a “public health emergency of international concern” on Jan. 30, 2020. This move triggered a coordinated global response and had wide-ranging repercussions.
The next day, Trump’s HHS secretary declared a COVID-19 “public health emergency,” an order that has been repeatedly renewed and is still in effect.
Trump’s subsequent national emergency declaration on March 13, 2020, endorsed that order while authorizing HHS to exercise additional emergency powers.
Three days after that, on March 16, Trump issued the “coronavirus guidelines” that advised Americans to “avoid social gatherings in groups of more than 10,” which served as a basis for the lockdowns that swept the nation.
Governors of each state issued their own public health emergency orders, too. State public health agencies operating under those emergency orders were instrumental in enacting lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, vaccine mandates and other “emergency” policies in cooperation with federal agencies and the White House.
It is not far-fetched to think that the WHO, HHS and state public health agencies could eventually declare a “climate public health emergency,” following the COVID-19 script.
There have already been calls for the WHO to officially declare climate change a “public health emergency of international concern.”
At the direction of an executive order from President Biden, HHS recently established an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. “We will use the lessons learned from COVID-19” to address the effects of climate change on the nation’s health, said HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel L. Levine.
The WHO and major public health organizations — including the American Public Health Association (APHA), the American Medical Association (AMA) and top medical journals — already have declared climate change a “public health crisis.”
The Lancet called climate change “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”
We do not yet know if or when this “public health crisis” will turn into a full-fledged “public health emergency.” If it does, think of all the extraordinary powers that public health agencies claimed in response to the COVID-19 emergency, extending even to an eviction moratorium that grossly exceeded the agency’s lawful authority.
Now imagine those administrative powers applied to a new, even broader and much more long-lasting emergency that plausibly touches on so many different aspects of human health.
The public health leviathan is preparing to expand its powers in response to climate change, just as it did with COVID-19. We cannot predict how this effort will fare in the years ahead. The WHO may or may not declare climate change a “public health emergency.”
HHS may refrain from doing so, pursuant to recent Supreme Court precedent limiting the ability of federal agencies to address “major questions” like climate change without clear Congressional authorization. Politics, of course, will play a huge role. At this point, we simply do not know how a “climate public health emergency” will play out, but in the wake of COVID-19, it remains a serious concern.
How ‘green’ is green energy, really?
Despite the risks to democratic governance and civil liberties outlined here, those who support a “climate emergency” can at least claim that they are doing what is necessary to kick-start the “green” energy revolution that will save the planet, right?
Not so fast.
A small environmental group called Protect Thacker Pass, which opposes a major lithium mine in Nevada, pointed out that “green” energy projects that are “fast-tracked” under a “climate emergency” would not only have access to streamlined federal financing, they might also be permitted to skip environmental review and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
This would be a replay of the “emergency” mode of governance established during COVID-19 when products privately owned and developed by Big Pharma were fast-tracked through the federal approval process.
In both cases, large corporations would be using an “emergency” to bypass legislative safeguards put in place to protect human health and the environment.
Indeed, there is a very strong case to be made that fast-tracking a massive build-out of “green” energy would immediately make a range of environmental problems much worse.
The book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, by three environmentalists, methodically picks apart arguments that solar, wind and other “green” energy technologies are clean, renewable or good for the planet.
Even to find sufficient quantities of minerals for “green” energy to be developed at scale, mining companies may begin “deep-sea mining” — some have already applied for permits — which ocean ecologists fear could annihilate ocean ecosystems.
Mining for lithium and other metals at a large enough scale would also have to take over vast areas of wildlife habitat, worsening the global biodiversity crisis.
Due to exploding demand and limits on mineral availability, mining companies have a strong incentive to mine every available source, without regard to ecological damage.
Climate activists and progressive politicians seem to believe that this collateral damage to the environment is a small price to pay for a “green” economy, which will ultimately save more of the planet than it destroys — but there are reasons to be skeptical.
Geology Professor Simon Michaux, PhD, for instance, concluded there are not enough minerals and other resources on Earth to build economy-wide “green” energy technologies and infrastructure.
And of course, it remains doubtful that “green” energy is even capable of powering the growing global economy, which still gets over 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. Even under a “climate emergency,” for the foreseeable future, we will most likely be stuck with the environmental damage caused by both fossil fuels and “green” energy.
Missing from the conversation about a “climate emergency” is a broader understanding of how ecological damage to soil, water, forests, biodiversity and ecosystems drives climate change and interrelated environmental problems.
As activist Vandana Shiva, PhD, explained, the globalized industrial food system is a main driver of climate change due to land use change, agrochemical pollution, monocultures, and other unecological methods.
Yet there is little talk of using emergency powers to shift to local, agroecological or traditional food systems.
Just the opposite. All signs indicate that the US and other world governments want to expand the reach and control of the globalized industrial food system, further concentrating power in the largest Big Food corporations.
Governments around the world are using environmental goals to forcibly shut down small farms as they promote dependence on industrial technologies and factory foods that could make climate change and other environmental problems worse.
We see the same shortcomings in the blinkered concept of “net-zero,” an accounting scheme formulated with the heavy input of corporate interests, which Shiva calls “corporate greenwashing.”
“If we continue to reduce the climate narrative to simply an issue of reducing carbon emissions to ‘net zero’ without understanding and addressing the other aspects of greater ecological collapse,” Shiva said, “climate chaos will only continue.”
A “climate emergency” as currently conceived would, if anything, exacerbate these negative trends. It would further centralize power, enrich corporate interests, treat ordinary citizens with a heavy hand and perversely cause immediate harm to the natural world — without significantly slowing down climate change or leading to genuine sustainability.
Would government officials use a ‘climate emergency’ to let Bill Gates ‘dim the sky?’
As if all the above were not worrisome enough, there is one final thing that the US government operating under a “climate emergency” might try to do — something that has unparalleled potential to end in ecological disaster.
Another New Yorker article — this one by the country’s foremost climate activist, Bill McKibben, who has led the charge for a federally declared “climate emergency, warns, “Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It.”
McKibben’s article is about “solar engineering” — spraying reflective chemicals into the stratosphere — to cool down the planet. Scientists funded in part by Gates have been studying the issue.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy also recently announced a five-year study to assess “solar and other rapid climate interventions.”
“The scientists who study solar engineering don’t want anyone to try it,” writes McKibben. But according to him, “climate inaction is making it more likely.”
Notice McKibben says, “climate inaction” makes “dimming the sun” more likely. That sort of logic can go on interminably.
There will always be “climate inaction,” at least for the foreseeable future, because the global economy has no realistic path to significantly reduce its carbon emissions. “De-carbonizing” the growing global economy remains a pipe dream.
The potential side effects of “dimming the sun” are mind-boggling. They include turning the sky from blue to white and plunging entire regions of the Earth into ecological chaos.
‘Left’ and ‘right’ must collaborate to pursue alternatives to a ‘climate emergency’
As I have tried to demonstrate, an official “climate emergency” has enormous implications.
Activists who are pressing hard for an emergency declaration may not completely understand what they are asking for, and those in opposition may not fully realize what they are up against.
This issue should not be framed as a dispute between “deniers” and “believers” in climate change. The prospect of a wide-ranging and long-lasting emergency mode of governance should prompt serious questions from everyone across the political spectrum.
These questions include:
-
Will a “climate emergency” put us on the path to solving climate change, or will it merely centralize power and enrich special interests while potentially undermining democracy, civil liberties and human rights?
-
Will a “climate emergency” be used to promote dubious or even dangerous “green” technologies that actually harm the environment?
-
What happens if/when emergency measures most likely fail to affect climate change? Will the government keep doubling down on policies that do not actually work, creating a doom loop of failure followed by louder calls for more to be done?
Only a political coalition consisting of elements of the left and right can find viable alternatives to a “climate emergency” as currently conceived.
The political pressure to do something about climate change — even things that make no sense — will surely intensify in the coming years. A populace that sees no other option may very well embrace some version of authoritarianism for the “greater good,” as much of the public did during the pandemic.
Elements of the left and right should be trying to build political alliances based on the preservation of democracy, civil liberties, human rights, local control, community values and nature itself — forests, rivers, grasslands, oceans, air, soil, wilderness and wildlife — as an alternative to the centralized command-and-control of society.
One major cause that a left-right coalition could get behind is local, small-scale, organic agriculture — healthier and much friendlier to the environment than the globalized industrial food system, which is responsible for at least a third, and by some estimates, a majority of greenhouse gas emissions.
Small-scale organic agriculture also is good for family farmers and small business owners, and more conducive to local food security in a time of global instability and economic uncertainty.
Building resilience to the environmental challenges of the future, while defending the population from powerful economic and political forces that seek to exploit a crisis, is a project that more people from across the political spectrum might be able to agree on.
That lesson should have been learned during the COVID-19 fiasco.
In contrast, most “green ‘thought leaders,’” writer Paul Kingsnorth observed, have “a worldview which treats the mass of humanity like so many cattle to be herded into the sustainable, zero-carbon pen. If you’re wondering where you’ve heard this story before, just dig out your dirty old covid mask. It will all come flooding back.”
We can do better than that. An effective political coalition will hopefully strive for a consensus that realistically addresses the environmental challenges of the 21st century while serving as a counterweight to the drive for centralized control under the guise of emergency governance.
Otherwise, the “zero-carbon pen,” in Kingsnorth’s turn of phrase, awaits.
Article originally published from Children’s Health Defense.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 20:05 -
- Canada Tells NYC To 'Immediately' Stop Sending Illegal Aliens
Canada Tells NYC To ‘Immediately’ Stop Sending Illegal Aliens
Canadian officials have asked New York City Mayor Eric Adams to “immediately” stop sending illegal aliens across the northern US border into Canada, just one week after reports that the National Guard has been helping distribute taxpayer-funded one-way tickets from Manhattan.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) left, Quebec Premier Francois Legault “Any form of assistance to migrants crossing the border where it is strictly forbidden to do so should stop immediately,” reads a statement from the office of Quebec Premier Francois Legault. “We understand that the situation of migrants in New York poses major challenges, but the situation in Quebec and particularly in Montreal is even worse and constitutes an important humanitarian issue.”
The NY Post reported last week that “thousands of new migrants” have been helped cross the US-Canada border, including some who “reported their desire to relocate to other cities, and Catholic Charities provided some assistance for their travel expenses.”
The Post also reports that migrants are tearing up their American immigration documents between Plattsburgh and the Canadian border – leaving scraps of paper from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the floor of a shuttle van which has the word “Frontera” (border) on the side.
As many as 250 migrants use the Roxham Road crossing to illegally enter Canada each day, with nearly all of them settling in Montreal, Quebec’s biggest city, Legault spokesperson Ewan Sauves said.
The situation has overwhelmed Montreal’s ability to provide housing and other public services, with the flood of new students alone equivalent to the opening of 13 new schools, he said.
Last year, 39,161 people used Roxham Road to illegally enter Canada, comprising 99.1% of all such border crossings, Sauves said. –NY Post
On Monday, NY City Hall said that officials had processed over 45,600 migrants since the spring, with around 29,100 housed in emergency shelters as of Sunday – figures which the Post suggests are likely an undercount because they don’t include migrants who are staying with relatives, friends and other people in their networks after arriving in New York.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 19:45 - Biden Fires Capitol Architect After Inspection Revealed Abuses
Biden Fires Capitol Architect After Inspection Revealed Abuses
Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Joe Biden has removed Capitol architect Brett Blanton from his post in the aftermath of an inspection which revealed Blanton had abused his position.
Architect of the U.S. Capitol Brett Blanton testifies before the House Administration Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 9, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Blanton will cease to serve as the architect of the Capitol at 5:00 PM EST, the White House announced.
Biden removed the architect, who serves at the president’s pleasure, after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he had lost confidence in Blanton’s ability to perform his job.
“The Architect of the Capitol, Brett Blanton, no longer has my confidence to continue in his job,” McCarthy wrote in a Feb. 13 Twitter post. “He should resign or President Biden should remove him immediately.”
Blanton was “terminated at the President’s direction,” the White House said on Monday.
Concerns about Blanton center around an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report finished last year that found “administrative, ethical, and policy violations.” These included abuse of his government vehicle and misrepresentation of himself as a law enforcement officer (pdf).
At the top of the document, the OIG report concludes: “J. Brett Blanton, Architect of the Capitol, Abused His Authority, Misused Government Property and Wasted Taxpayer Money, Among Other Substantiated Violations.”
“Prior to and throughout the OIG investigation, Blanton consistently contradicted his vehicle-use authority,” the report reads.
The report relays an ethics tip describing an encounter with Blanton’s vehicle.
The complainant spotted Blanton’s government-issue black Ford Explorer. At the time, the vehicle was reportedly “driving extremely reckless[ly]” through a parking garage. The driver, a female, was going an estimated 65 miles per hour or faster in an area with a speed limit of 30.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 19:25 - These Are America's Best Places To Work In 2023
These Are America’s Best Places To Work In 2023
What better way to know more about a company’s work culture than to hear from those who’ve already been on the inside?
As Visual Capitalist’s Selin Oğuz shows in the above graphic, we dissect how America’s top employers have changed over the last five years based on employee reviews on Glassdoor, a website that allows current and former employees to anonymously review their employers on things like company culture, pay, benefits, diversity, and more.
Tech Fares Best
Despite widescale layoffs in 2022, technology companies made up more than 40% of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list in 2023. Gainsight, a customer success software company founded in 2009, entered the top 15 ranking for the first time in five years and took the number one spot as the year’s best employer.
The dominance of technology companies in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list is nothing new, though. Companies like HubSpot and NVIDIA are staples on the list, with consistent praise from their employees when it comes to pay, benefits, leadership, and career growth.
While tech tends to be popular among employees, the industry isn’t the end-all-be-all when it comes to good employee reviews.
Take Bain & Company, a management consulting firm with over 10,000 employees, that’s been consistently ranking in the top three over the last five years. Or look at fast-food chain In-N-Out Burger, whose employees consistently rave about good pay and schedule flexibility in anonymous Glassdoor reviews, making the company one of America’s top 20 employers since 2015.
Analyzing Ranking by Company
Diving into the ranking by company can also give us a good understanding of how some of the giants compare to others in the field.
Looking at the above visual, you might notice that two regular winners, Apple and Meta, did not make the top 100 this year. Salesforce’s ranking also fell below the top 50 for the first time since 2015, coming in at #75. While tech fared relatively well in 2023, these companies tumbled down and off the list, making way for smaller tech companies like Gainsight, Box, and MathWorks.
As the global economy faces uncertainty in 2023, it’ll be interesting to observe how these companies fare in terms of employee satisfaction. Against the backdrop of layoffs and slower economic growth, how leadership navigates hard conversations and steps up for their employees may be very telling, potentially resulting in a completely different makeup of the list in 2024.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 19:05 - Republicans Renew Demands For Interviews With Ex-Intel Officials Who Discredited Hunter Biden Laptop As 'Disinformation'
Republicans Renew Demands For Interviews With Ex-Intel Officials Who Discredited Hunter Biden Laptop As ‘Disinformation’
Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Pressure is ratcheting up on signers of a controversial October 2020 statement alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation” to agree to on-the-record transcribed interviews with investigators for the House Judiciary Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The Committee on the Judiciary and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are conducting oversight of federal law-enforcement and intelligence matters within our respective jurisdictions.
“The judiciary committee made a prior request to you for documents and information about the public statement you signed in October 2020 that falsely implied the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden was the product of Russian disinformation,” Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said in Feb. 13 letters obtained by The Epoch Times.
“This request, to include a request for a transcribed interview before the committees, remains outstanding. These documents and your testimony are necessary to further our oversight.
“As we begin the 118th Congress, we write again to reiterate our outstanding request and ask that you immediately comply in full,” Jordan and Turner told the recipients.
“You have been on notice about our oversight request—and aware the request is outstanding—for months. For your convenience, we have attached the letter from the Judiciary Committee dated April 6, 2022. To date, you have not complied with this request. Accordingly, we reiterate our requests and ask that you comply promptly,” Jordan and Turner wrote.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 14, 2022. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images) The 10 recipients of the request from Jordan and Turner include former Secretary of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta, Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA Senior Operations Officer, former CIA Chief of Staff Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer Kristin Wood, former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Deputy Director Douglas Wise, former CIA Chief of Staff Rodney Snyder, former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer Patty Brandmaier, former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer James Bruce, former CIA Senior Operations Officer Paul Kolbe, former National Intelligence Officer Roger George.
The Epoch Times is seeking comment from each of the 10 recipients.
The 10 letters made public on Feb. 13 follow similar missives to another dozen of the 51 signers of the Oct. 19, 2020, statement that was widely publicized by the mainstream media and cited as justification by social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook for censoring news reports about the laptop that was left at a Delaware computer repair shop by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 18:45 - US Warns It Will Defend Philippines After China Deploys Laser At Sea
US Warns It Will Defend Philippines After China Deploys Laser At Sea
The Biden administration has denounced the actions of China’s military after a new significant incident involving the Philippine and Chinese Coast Guards. It happened on Feb.6, but has only this week been revealed.
State Department spokesman Ned Price in a Tuesday briefing blasted China’s “provocative and unsafe” interference aimed at disrupting Philippine vessels’ “lawful operations” in the South China Sea. “More broadly, the PRC’s dangerous operational behavior directly threatens regional peace and stability, infringes upon freedom of navigation in the South China Sea as guaranteed under international law, and undermines the rules-based international order,” Price said.
Specifically, the allegation is that a Chinese Coast Guard ship used a laser device to “temporarily blind” the crew of the rival Philippine ship, according to the US, citing its Philippine ally.
Philippine Coast Guard, Facebook The US said it happened in an area where Beijing has “no lawful maritime claims” as it occurred as the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) sailed around Second Thomas Shoal.
That’s when, according to an official PCG statement—
The Chinese ship illuminated the green laser light twice toward the BRP MALAPASCUA, causing temporary blindness to her crew at the bridge. The Chinese vessel also made dangerous maneuvers by approaching about 150 yards from the vessel’s starboard quarter.
The PCG further called it “a blatant disregard for, and a clear violation of, Philippine sovereign rights.”
The State Dept.’s Price agreed, saying “The United States stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order and reaffirms an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of the Coast Guard in the South China Sea, would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments,” while referencing a 1951 mutual defense treaty.
It’s certainly not the first time the US made such a pledge; however, clearly Beijing is challenging the US stance with such brazen provocations in the South China Sea, especially when disputed territory is at play.
Beijing has acknowledged the incident, but blamed the Philippine Coast Guard for entering claimed Chinese waters…
Chinese MOFA on laser pointing incident:
The Ren’ai Reef is part of China’s Nansha Islands. On February 6, a Philippine Coast Guard vessel intruded into the waters off the Ren’ai Reef without Chinese permission. https://t.co/wGAOrrNVeq
— Frances Mangosing 🇵🇭 (@FMangosingINQ) February 13, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Last summer Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged and spelled out: “We also reaffirm that an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke US mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 18:25 - Jeffrey Epstein Update And About Those "John Does"
Jeffrey Epstein Update And About Those “John Does”
Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,
We have word from the FBI.
They will provide us with their interview(s) of Jeffery Epstein in the next couple months.
Here’s the FBI’s representation:
“FBI has completed its search for documents responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request and anticipates beginning to produce any non-exempt documents responsive to Plaintiff’s request as early as April 2023. FBI anticipates only one production of documents instead of rolling productions due to the relatively limited number of responsive documents.”
There’s a ton of unanswered questions about Epstein’s involvement with the FBI, and we hope that these records provide some answers. The FBI has fought the disclosure of these records, necessitating the filing of our lawsuit (a lawsuit which was possible through your support – thank you for that).
We won’t overpromise or guarantee what these documents might reveal. Until we get our hands on the documents there are still a ton of questions, such as: will the FBI improperly redact the interview(s), or will the FBI refuse to release all their Epstein interviews?
We’ll see.
The Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell “John Does”
There’s more on the Epstein front. A federal judge in New York’s Southern District is currently considering whether to disclose the names of the “John Does” arising out of Virginia Giuffre v. Ghislaine Maxwell. Here’s the list she’s reviewing.
Sadly, reporting from the media has created a lot of false hope about whose names might be unsealed. I have to break the unfortunate news: this isn’t “Epstein’s list.”
Let me lay out the facts of what we do know about these individuals. Here’s the breakdown:
-
There are approximately 165 “John Does”. These are not all perpetrators. The vast majority are witnesses of varying degrees (meaning material or immaterial), employees of Epstein, or affiliates of Epstein or the victims. The term “affiliate” ranges from those in Epstein’s address book to the doctors or acquaintances of the victims.
Subscribers to The Reactionary can read the rest here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 18:05 -
- Air Force Jets Intercept 4 Russian Aircraft Off Alaska: NORAD
Air Force Jets Intercept 4 Russian Aircraft Off Alaska: NORAD
NORAD has announced Tuesday that it scrambled jets to intercept four inbound Russian military aircraft near American airspace off Alaska the day prior.
“The Alaskan Region of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) detected, tracked, positively identified and intercepted four Russian aircraft entering and operating within the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on Feb.13, 2023,” an official statement reads.
U.S. Air Force file image: An F-16 Fighting Falcon at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The response included a pair of US F-16 fighter jets, assisted by two more F-35A fighters, an E-3 Sentry, and two KC-135 Stratotankers, all of which were sent to intercept the Russian aircraft, which included among the the four aircraft a Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” long range bomber and SU-35 fighter jet.
But interestingly, NORAD called the incident “routine” – given it has happened an estimated six to seven times a year on average over the past decade or more. Additionally, no breach of actual US airspace was reported by the Russian planes, just the outlying ADIZ.
“Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace. This Russian activity in the North American ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat, nor is the activity seen as provocative,” the statement continued.
However, currently there are heightened tensions with Russia related to the Ukraine war, but also given the unusual spate of ‘unidentified object’ shootdowns by US fighters over the last week – two of which were in far northern regions, including northeastern Alaska and Canada’s Yukon territory.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 17:45 - In Sudden Narrative Shift, Pentagon Admits Mystery Objects 'Probably' Private Craft Not Tied To Spying
In Sudden Narrative Shift, Pentagon Admits Mystery Objects ‘Probably’ Private Craft Not Tied To Spying
Edward Snowden called it (and so did we)… just a day ago, as we reported: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says the hysteria over UFOs being shot down over America and Canada is a distraction from Seymour Hersh’s story about the U.S. being responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.
Less than 24 hours later, on Tuesday, Bloomberg reports that “The US government has assessed that three unidentified objects downed since last Friday were likely for commercial use and not foreign intelligence gathering.”
A 24/7 hyped news cycle, with breathless US defense official press briefings and reporters asking about aliens and UFOs, and just like that… the public is casually informed they were probably just “balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday: “Given what we’ve been able to ascertain thus far, the intelligence community’s considering, again, as a leading explanation, that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose.”
Additionally, coming off the alleged Chinese ‘spy’ balloon shootdown off South Carolina on Feb.4 – which started this sensational trend of Pentagon jets taking potshots at floating unknown small objects in skies over North America with Sidewinder missiles that cost the taxpaying public $400,000 a pop, Kirby admitted:
“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the People’s Republic of China’s spy balloon program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” Kirby said.
And what’s more, with the “China balloon threat” new read scare over American skies narrative now apparently being walked back, the Pentagon says it may never know with certainty, as Axios reports further of Kirby’s briefing:
- Asked whether there was a possibility that the debris would never be recovered, Kirby acknowledged that it was a “difficult question” but said, “we’re taking this day by day and doing the best we can to try to locate the debris and then develop a plan to recover it.”
- “We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the People’s Republic of China’s spy balloon program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” Kirby said.
- The objects did not appear to have been operated by the U.S. government, per Kirby.
He also underscored that no individual or entity has yet come forward to identify themselves as owners or operators of the objects.
it’s not aliens
i wish it were aliens
but it’s not aliens
it’s just the ol’ engineered panic, an attractive nuisance ensuring natsec reporters get assigned to investigate balloon bullshit rather than budgets or bombings (à la nordstream)
until next time
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 13, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But the Pentagon has stuck by its assertions that the objects remained a threat to civilian aviation and so had to be dealt with.
All of this raises an important question: maybe China was right all along?
REPORTER: “Has the White House had conversations with Beijing about this?”
KIRBY: “They claimed it was a weather balloon. We know it’s not.” pic.twitter.com/tk0Z8If31O
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 13, 2023
Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/14/2023 – 17:41
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...
