- US Will Not Restrain Israel In Gaza: Lavrov
US Will Not Restrain Israel In Gaza: Lavrov
The US does not want to restrain Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview to RT on Wednesday. Russia has proposed several UN Security Council resolutions seeking a ceasefire to the all out conflict that erupted between the Israeli military and Hamas on October.
When asked to comment on why he believed the US vetoed the resolutions, Lavrov suggested that Washington “is highly ideologized.” He said: “Anything coming from Russia is taken as a hostile act… But on substance, and on practical terms Washington does not want to tie Israel’s hands.”
After Israel had killed 7,028 Palestinians were killed, including 2,913 children, after just three weeks of fighting, Washington still insisted it was not trying to dictate limits to Tel Avis in its execution of the war. At the same time, the US continued to accelerate badly needed military aid to Israel. “We’re not drawing red lines for Israel,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said at the time.
Last week, as the death toll had reached over 10,000 Palestinians, Axios reported that under pressure from Washington, Israel agreed to begin “tactical, localized humanitarian pauses” but the US made it clear that the request was not intended to force the Israelis into a ceasefire.
During his interview with RT, Lavrov explained as well that Moscow does not believe that Hamas allies Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon want the war in Gaza to escalate into a broader regional conflict.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has threatened to bomb Lebanese capital Beirut in a similar way to their campaign in Gaza, while some US hawks have called for an attack on Iran.
Moscow, however, believes there is “no appetite” for a major conflict in Lebanon or Iran, Lavrov stated, adding that neither country wants “any involvement in this crisis.” Lavrov claimed that recent televised remarks by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah show that it has “no appetite for a big war.”
Lavrov also argued that the Western allies “wanted and still want to ‘Ukrainize’ each and every agenda of each and every international forum.” But, he explained—
“This was never going to fly… The countries of the global majority, of the Global South, don’t want to allow the West to continue to decide each and every issue on the planet on its own, in its own interests.”
‘Expelling Palestinians from Gaza would ruin UN resolutions’ – Lavrov pic.twitter.com/YFFKIjdhCK
— RT (@RT_com) November 15, 2023
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Meanwhile, Hezbollah has exchange fire with Israel on the southern border since Oct. 8, losing some 60 fighters and inflicting damage on Israeli military bases and settlements. However, Hezbollah has not used its vast rocket and missile stocks, thought to number over 130,000, to launch a full scale war against Israel.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 23:40 - Where Are The Landmines?
Where Are The Landmines?
Since 1997, anti-personnel landmines have been prohibited by the United Nations via a treaty that was signed by more than 150 countries. Unfortunately there are a ton of them still active all over the world.
As Martin Armstrong of Statista reveals, Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor classifies large swathes of the world as being contaminated to some degree with land mines. The negative effects of their presence can not be understated: “Both landmines and explosive remnants of war pose a serious and ongoing threat to civilians. These weapons can be found on roads, footpaths, farmers’ fields, forests, deserts, along borders, in and surrounding houses and schools, and in other places where people are carrying out their daily activities. They deny access to food, water, and other basic needs, and inhibit freedom of movement. They endanger the initial flight and prevent the repatriation of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), and hamper the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 23:20 - CDC Announces Expansion Of Airport Surveillance: What It Means For You
CDC Announces Expansion Of Airport Surveillance: What It Means For You
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will increase its airport surveillance for respiratory infections, said statements from the federal agency and a private partner on Monday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images) What It Entails
The private firm, Ginkgo Bioworks, said that it is expanding its work with the CDC’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program “to test for more than 30 additional priority pathogens, in addition to SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes COVID-19.
It then described the program as a “flexible, multimodal platform that consists of three complementary approaches of sample collection from arriving international travelers at U.S. airports, including voluntary nasal swabbing, aircraft wastewater, and airport wastewater sampling to enhance early detection of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and other pathogens, and fills gaps in global surveillance.”
What It Will Test
The other pathogens the company said it will test for include multiple influenza strains as well as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Neither it nor the CDC listed listed the others.
“The expansion of the Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program to flu, RSV, and other pathogens is essential as we head into fall respiratory season. The TGS program, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, acted as an early warning system to detect new and rare variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and will do the same for other respiratory viruses going forward,” said Dr. Cindy Friedman, chief of the CDC’s Travelers’ Health Branch, in the statement.
The travelers program was introduced in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic to detect COVID-19 variants and other pathogens via a nasal swab and wastewater collection sampling.
It allowed for the “early detection of the SARS-CoV-2 variant BA.2.86 entering the United States within days of its global identification,” the CDC said, referring to a COVID-19 variant that was found over the summer of 2023. “As the infected traveler had originated travel in Japan, this finding also informed the public health community that the new variant had also spread to Asia.”
‘Voluntary’ Program
The CDC’s program has “enrolled” more than 360,000 air travelers since it was implemented in late 2021, the agency said, adding that it is both “voluntary and anonymous.” It covers flights from more than 135 countries around the world, officials said.
It doesn’t only just rely on travelers volunteering. The agency also collects wastewater samples to evaluate pathogens.
Other than Gingko Bioworks, XpresCheck—a company that runs spa operations at airports—will also partake in the program, according to the CDC.
“We have known that travelers are a very important population to consider for tracking new and emerging infections,” Dr. Friedman, with the CDC’s program, told CNN. “One sample from an aircraft coming from a geographic destination afar can give us information potentially about 200 to 300 people that were on that plane,” she added.
A CDC map shows the travelers program is being run at major airports in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington D.C., New York City, Boston, and Newark in New Jersey.
Passengers line up at John F. Kennedy International Airport after airlines announced numerous flights were canceled during the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant in Queens, New York, on Dec. 24, 2021, Christmas Eve. (Dieu-Nalio Chery/Reuters) Where?
Officials say the latest expansion will launch at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport, and Washington Dulles International Airport.
Hospitalizations Down
According to data provided by the CDC, the rate of hospitalizations have declined in recent weeks since late summer. For the week ending Oct. 28, the hospitalization, death, and COVID-19 positivity rate have essentially remained steady, although emergency room visits have declined, the data shows.
In September, the agency said that for the fall and winter season, hospitalizations would rise for COVID-19, RSV, and influenza.
Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC signed off on three new updated COVID-19 booster vaccines, although federal data suggests that uptake is relatively slow. So far, only 7 percent of Americans have received the shot, according to the data, while polls suggest that more and more Americans are increasingly wary of the shots.
A poll from the the Annenberg Public Policy Center with the University of Pennsylvania found that about 63 percent of Americans think that getting the COVID-19 vaccine is safer than getting the virus itself—signaling a drop of 12 percentage points from April 2021 when 75 percent held that view.
That survey also found that Americans who view the shot as unsafe increased from 18 percent in August 2022 to 24 percent during last month’s poll.
Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who back using ivermectin—a drug that was often demonized by media outlets and even some federal health officials—to treat COVID-19 has risen from 10 percent in September 2021 to 26 percent last month, the survey found.
Earlier this year, as the federal government lifted its three-year-long public health emergency over COVID-19, the CDC also lifted its rule that required non-U.S. citizens or permanent residents to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Before, any visitor to the United States had to receive the vaccine before getting on a flight to the United States and would have to be also tested for the virus beforehand.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 23:00 - SpaceX Prepares For Starlink IPO In 2024, Report Says
SpaceX Prepares For Starlink IPO In 2024, Report Says
Starlink, the satellite internet technology made possible by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, is preparing for an initial public offering as soon as the second half of 2024, according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the situation.
SpaceX has been shifting Starlink’s assets to a wholly-owned subsidiary that would make it ripe for a spin-off ahead of the IPO, one person said, adding there is yet to be a concrete decision about going public. They said the upcoming listing could be postponed to 2025.
News of a Starlink IPO follows Musk’s comment on social media platform X earlier this month: “Excited to announce that @SpaceX @Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow!”
He continued, “Excellent work by a great team. Starlink is also now a majority of all active satellites and will have launched a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by next year.”
Excited to announce that @SpaceX @Starlink has achieved breakeven cash flow! Excellent work by a great team.
Starlink is also now a majority of all active satellites and will have launched a a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by next year.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2023
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Musk has commented on the prospect of a Starlink IPO for several years, but the timing remains unclear. However, in 2021, the billionaire said that once the company can “reasonably” forecast cash flow, that would be a sign that a listing to the public markets would be nearing.
Last Friday, Billionaire investor Ron Baron told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that he expects SpaceX to IPO its Starlink in 2027.
Baron said, “We think that by the time they go public with SpaceX, with Starlink … in 2027 or so, four years, the company will be worth $250 billion to $300 billion.”
Tesla blogger Sawyer Merritt recently posted on X a graph that shows Starlink’s onboarding of new customers has been parabolic since June 2022. The service now has more than 2 million users worldwide.
BREAKING: @SpaceX has announced that there are now over 2 million active Starlink customers, up 500k from 4 month ago🛰️
It’s now available on 7 continents and in over 60 countries. pic.twitter.com/3DvUzwH1vp
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 23, 2023
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SpaceX currently has a $150 billion valuation. It has delivered 80% of all Earth’s payload mass to orbit this year.
As we continue to point out, Musk is becoming the ‘uncancellable‘ billionaire while radical Democrats in Washington weaponize government agencies against his companies.
In other news, SpaceX’s Starship launch could be as soon as this Friday.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 22:40 - Campus Antisemitism Is Fueled By Woke Takeover Of Higher Education
Campus Antisemitism Is Fueled By Woke Takeover Of Higher Education
Authored by Jonathan Pidluzny via American Greatness,
“[T]here are moments in this life… when… pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world.” That is how President Biden first described Hamas’s gruesome premeditated attack on Israeli civilians.
Compare the reaction on college campuses. In a “Day of Resistance” toolkit, National Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization with hundreds of campus chapters, called the slaughter of Israeli Jews “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” The toolkit went on to describe the “heightened stage of the Palestinian struggle” as a “resistance” that will “bring dignity and honor to the Palestinian people.”
In the weeks since, student groups on U.S. campuses have celebrated the atrocity — both in public statements and boisterous campus rallies. A statement endorsed by more than 30 student groups at Harvard University professing to hold “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” is only the highest profile among many examples. Two weeks ago, 57 people — many of them calling for Israel’s destruction — were arrested for trespassing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Faculty, too, are on record cheering Hamas. A Cornell professor called the slaughter “exhilarating,” while a professor of climate science at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago called Israelis “pigs” and “savages.” An American Studies professor at the University of California–Davis encouraged violence targeting “Zionist journalists” (and their families) in a public Tweet.
And yet, few university presidents have condemned expressions of hatred on their campuses with the moral clarity the moment demands. Many could not even muster the fortitude to condemn Hamas’s massacre without equivocating. Emboldened, pro-Hamas students are now crossing the line from protected (hateful) speech to harassment and violence. With menacing mobs chanting eliminationist slogans, how could a Jewish student feel truly safe on an elite campus?
All this against a backdrop that will sear October 7 into our historical memory for generations: more than 1,400 confirmed dead; thousands injured; more than 200 hostages taken by terrorists who fantasize about wiping Israel from the face of the Earth; ISIS-level displays of cruelty and barbarism; and dead children discovered in pieces.
What is going on? Why are privileged students on elite campuses, tomorrow’s public leaders, cheering evil and blaming the victims of a heinous terrorist attack? Why such cowardice from academic administrators?
Three aspects of the contemporary campus environment, trends that have been building for decades, help to explain a reaction that ordinary Americans rightly find appalling and incomprehensible.
First, today’s “social justice” movements crudely sort individuals into groups based on whether they can be viewed as oppressors or the oppressed. Jews are labeled oppressors by virtue of their political and economic success — even though their suffering, as a people, is unparalleled in modern history.
This lazy way of understanding the world — common to postcolonial studies, critical race theory, intersectionality, campus DEI, and a host of far-left intellectual frameworks — has rotted the academy. It teaches adherents to embrace primitive tribalism, one that sees the world exclusively in terms of virtuous victims and evil oppressors. And it teaches students to make simple, uncompromising judgments: Jews are oppressors in Israel. White interests systematically discriminate against minorities in this country.
As a result, students leave campus primed to judge others based on group identity or skin color, not individual character or merit. Thus, critical deliberation is sacrificed to a feverous, anti-intellectual imperative: cheer for the group the Left says is marginalized—and against Western Civilization, which is alleged to be inherently oppressive. This is how the new campus ideologies obliterate students’ capacity for moral judgment.
It also explains why campus activists can fly into an indignant rage over “microaggressions” — literally, an alleged harm that is microscopic — if the “victim” claims a favored group identity while at the same time, blaming Israel when barbaric Hamas terrorists burn Jewish babies to death. The mindset forged on campus migrates with graduates into our schools, the media, and the halls of Congress.
Second, it is possible to hold such a simplistic, fanatical worldview in part because students lack the historical understanding that would help them appreciate the magnitude and moral significance of October 7. It should be the role of universities to instill this.
Unfortunately, general education (the course of study common to all students at a university) has deteriorated beyond recognition. Instead of taking courses designed to acquaint students with their civilizational inheritance — courses in politics, history, foreign languages, philosophy, religion, etc. — students today choose from menus of disjointed electives, many of them designed to advance a social justice ideology.
As a result, few students learn much about the Middle East and its complicated history — or even their own country. It is easier to cling to a propagandistic distortion when you lack the perspective that would call it into question, for example, the reasons Israel’s borders changed after its 20th-century wars, the fact Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, awareness that eradicating Israel is written into Hamas’s very charter, etc., etc., etc.
Third, elite university campuses are the one place in American society where making the intellectual case for antisemitism is fashionable. Faculty in radical “Studies” disciplines, some of them funded by federal tax dollars under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (others, by foreign gifts from Gulf states), run biased and imbalanced programs. Some even advocate for the abolition of Israel and platform the professors who have been cheering Hamas’s massacre. No university would hire faculty whose “academic research” made similar claims about any other people.
Antisemitic professors and student groups, even in small numbers, warp the campus conversation. Their presence conveys to students that this one hatred is respectable. Indeed, researchers have established that the presence on campus of faculty who express anti-Zionist views “is associated with a significant increase in…. incidents that target Jewish students for harm, including assault, harassment, destruction of property and suppression of speech.”
The result is a campus environment broadly hostile to Jewish students and is quickly getting worse. We knew this before Hamas’s killing spree. A 2022 survey found that 55% of Jewish students said that they have personally experienced antisemitism on their campus. Only 28% said they think that school administrators take antisemitism seriously.
The specter of students cheering an evil massacre at elite universities while cowardly administrators convey indifference reveals a profound sickness in the places that are supposed to preserve (and perpetuate) our civilizational inheritance.
Campus pathologies spread. Academic ideologies reshape society as they ripple beyond the university’s walls. That is what they are designed to do. Combating campus antisemitism is, therefore, not just a moral imperative. It is an urgent priority in the battle to save higher education, which will profoundly shape the society in which our children and grandchildren grow up.
Jonathan Pidluzny, Ph.D., is the Director of the Higher Education Reform Initiative at the America First Policy Institute.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 22:20 - Owner Of Chinese Biolab Busted In California Linked To CCP Military Program: House Report
Owner Of Chinese Biolab Busted In California Linked To CCP Military Program: House Report
The Chinese owner of a makeshift biolab discovered in a remote California city has ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a Chinese military program, according to a report by the House Select Subcommittee on the CCP.
[Image created by the DCNF using pics from Fresno County and DOJ complaints] Jia Bei Zhu, 62, was arrested in October for distributing misbranded medical devices and lying to the FDA.
The lab, located near Fresno, California (less than 200 miles from where Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Joe Biden on Wednesday), was discovered serendipitously when a local code enforcement officer noticed a garden hose attached to the facility. This led to the discovery of thousands of vials, some labeled in Mandarin, others in an undeciphered code. However, the inaction by the FBI and CDC in this matter, as reported by the committee, is perplexing and concerning.
Zhu, a PRC citizen, was reportedly a key figure in China’s “military-civil fusion organizations“ – entities that blur the lines between civilian research and military applications. This strategy, according to the State Department, is part of the CCP’s grand vision to transform its People’s Liberation Army into a formidable global power by 2049.
While the committee’s investigations unearthed Zhu’s extensive involvement in several PRC government-controlled companies, his activities in the U.S. under the alias “David He” and the discovery of dangerous materials in the unlicensed lab in Reedley, California, are particularly alarming. Here, officials found over 20 potentially infectious agents, including HIV and Malaria, and genetically engineered mice carrying COVID-19.
Zhu’s confession of operating his companies to “further PRC policy” and meet demands of a PRC premier raises serious concerns about espionage and intellectual property theft. His history of operating companies in Canada, engaging in the massive theft of American cattle-related intellectual property, and fleeing to the U.S. after a $330 million judgment, only adds to the gravity of the situation.
The committee also highlighted Zhu’s inflammatory private messages on WeChat, where he talked about defeating “the American aggressor” and referred to his companies as tools against “American imperialism.”
CDC Ignores Evidence?
But perhaps even more disturbing is the alleged disregard by the CDC for potential evidence, including a freezer labeled “ebola.” This negligence or possible cover-up raises critical questions about the integrity and competence of these federal agencies in handling matters of national security.
A collage of the biolab in Reedley, Calif., on July 31, 2023. (Fresno County Public Health Department/Judicial Watch, Nathan Su/The Epoch Times, Courtesy of City of Reedley) The committee’s findings corroborate an investigation by the Daily Caller from August 2023, which linked Zhu’s biolab to Ai De Biopharmaceutical in Qingdao, China. This connection suggests a broader network of PRC-controlled companies engaging in dubious activities on American soil.
As the full scope of Zhu’s operations and his connections to the PRC government unfold, this case may well represent a glaring example of the CCP’s covert operations in the United States, blending industrial espionage with potential biological threats. The implications for national security are profound and demand an urgent and thorough response from U.S. authorities.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 22:00 - Can We Reverse America's Distemper?
Can We Reverse America’s Distemper?
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via Of Two Minds,
Consider this description of America’s discontent:
“…a Hamlet-like loss of self-confidence, with an apocalyptic sense of doom for the civilization. On the Right it embodies a conviction that the sensate culture is pushing the society down the Gaderene slope of drugs-and-fornication to destruction. On the Left there is the vague sense that America is imperialist, fascist-oriented, caught in inner contradictions of class and ethnic struggles which will end in self-destructive wars or civil chaos.
…the fragmenting and polarizing of institutions (family, neighborhood, university, church, nation)–in short, the overloading of the social nervous system by sudden accelerations of change.”
Is that a reasonably fair description of America in 2023? Interestingly, it was written in January 1974, describing the America of 50 years ago. (America Agonistes (Max Lerner, Foreign Affairs, January 1974). I have often referred to Peter Turchin’s evidence-based cyclical mapping of the structural sources of social disorder which he has updated in his latest work, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration.
Turchin identified 50-year cycles of integration–in which people find reasons to cooperate–and disintegration, in which people find reasons to devolve cooperation. From this perspective, that an article from 50 years ago sounds current is not only no surprise, it was easily predictable.
This Salon article summarizes many of the conclusions in Turchin’s new book: Hope in “End Times”: Peter Turchin’s analysis of our coming collapse could help us avoid it:
For all its breadth and depth, there’s a simple message at the core of “End Times”: At the heart of our problems, Turchin writes, is “a perverse ‘wealth pump’ … taking from the poor and giving to the rich,” and we have to find a way to turn it off.
This reflects “one of the most fundamental principles in sociology, the ‘iron law of oligarchy,'” he writes, “which states that when an interest group acquires a lot of power, it inevitably starts using that power in self-interested ways.” For example, while wages fell far behind the growth of economic productivity from 1979 onward, Turchin cites analysis from the Economic Policy Institute indicating that three-fourths of that gap was due to elite-driven policy shifts: weakened labor standards, the erosion of collective bargaining, corporate globalization and so-called fiscal austerity.
Diminished economic conditions for the less educated were accompanied by a decline in the social institutions that nurtured their social life and cooperation. These institutions include the family, the church, the labor union, the public schools and their parent-teacher associations, and various voluntary neighborhood associations.”
Back in America’s previous cyclical crisis, Lerner identified the sources of decline in this way: “Civilizations die not only of rigidity, failure to meet challenges, constitutional breakdown. They may also die of deep alienations and the erosion of crucial institutions.”
He concluded that America’s cult of change precluded a decline due to rigidity:
“My own stress is on studying the crucial factors in the death of past civilizations, and using them to put questions concerning American directions. To start with, the rigidity which marked a number of declines and falls is only minimally present in America, with her cult of change and her experience of social and cultural revolution.”
I will consider the issue of rigidity in upcoming posts, but for now, let’s consider the decay of America’s social and economic foundations, starting with Turchin’s perverse wealth pump that has stripmined the bottom 90% to enrich the top 1%, as shown in this chart:
Social trust, a baseline measure of social stability, has eroded. It’s worth noting that the tumultuous 1970s don’t come off so badly in this chart compared to the present. It is not coincidental that social trust rose in the 1990s, when prosperity included the entirety of households and not just the top 10% and has since declined sharply as prosperity was concentrated in the top 10%.
The hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization of the economy–the engines of wealth and income inequality– took off in 2000, more than tripling total debt. Soaring debt service is a consequential measure of financial decay:
Across every institution, the entrenched elites and incumbents now respond to decline by doing more of what’s failed, a sign not of flexibility but of self-serving rigidity:
I’ll consider an even more destructive manifestation of rigidity in my next post.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 21:40 - The Inaugural ZeroHedge Debate: Laura Loomer And Dave Smith Clash Over The Israel-Hamas War
The Inaugural ZeroHedge Debate: Laura Loomer And Dave Smith Clash Over The Israel-Hamas War
Welcome to the first ever ZeroHedge live debate in which Laura Loomer and Dave Smith will clash over the Israel Palestine conflict. We hope you find it informative. In the replies to this tweet, please submit your questions for the participants. https://t.co/xDKaEkOTjf
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 15, 2023
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Modern discourse has devolved into headlines and soundbites. Gone are the great debates of decades past, when luminaries such as Buckley and Vidal, Chomsky and Foucault, or Tucker and Carville spent the better part of an hour hashing out issues on the national stage. These unfiltered, pre-internet debates, untainted by self-serving echo chambers and the biased lens of corporate media, served to actually inform – not manipulate – the public, and shape official policy.
In the same vein, and in hopes of short-circuiting the endless media noise, ZeroHedge is going back to basics with a series of live, spontaneous, unscripted and interactive debates, with no commercial breaks, which we hope will inspire discussion on a wide variety of controversial topics, ranging from war to finance, to unsustainable debt, to crypto, to society and religion, and everything in between.
Why? Because we realize that only free, uncensored debate can crush bad ideas before they evolve and lead to social and economic misery, suffering and death… and because only dialogue can save the world.
Our first debate features Dave Smith and Laura Loomer, who will discuss the Israel-Hamas war. We will also dedicate a portion of the debate to responding directly to questions submitted by our readers on X/Twitter.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 21:21 - Where America's International Students Come From
Where America’s International Students Come From
While enrollment at US higher education institutes saw a massive dip during the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of international students has bounced back in the 2022/2023 academic year, thanks to a huge influx from India.
And while still below pre-pandemic levels, 1.06 million international students came to the US in the past school year according to the Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange – a jump of 11.5% over 2021/2022 and 15% over 2020/2021.
As Katharina Buchholz of Statista further notes, International students make up 5.6 percent of the total U.S. student population, up from 4.6 percent one year prior. They contributed around $40 billion to the American economy in 2022/23.
China remained the largest source country for international students with a grand total of 289,526 enrolled in undergraduate, graduate, non-degree and optional practicing training programs. Their number has been decreasing for years however. India, on the other hand, came second with 268,923 students – a count that has been increasing, most recently by a whopping 35 percent. South Korea is in rank 3 with 43,847 international students in the past academic year, followed by Canada, Vietnam and Taiwan. Other countries where international enrollment at U.S. institutions grew quickly were Nigeria (up 22 percent) and Japan (up 19 percent).
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 21:20 - California Landlords Struggle To Make Ends Meet After Eviction Moratorium Ends
California Landlords Struggle To Make Ends Meet After Eviction Moratorium Ends
Authored by Rudy Blalock via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
After years of missed rental payments, one Oakland property owner was left on her own to recover her losses, despite desperately seeking help from the city, state, and local law enforcement.
A fence blocks the front of a home in Oakland, Calif., on Jan. 28, 2020. (Philip Pacheco/AFP via Getty Images) Carolyn Silas-Sams, a retired paralegal and an Oakland resident, said she inherited a duplex in the city in 2006 from her late mother and has been maintaining it ever since, although she never imagined that she would face the disaster that she has over the past few years due to the eviction moratorium.
“I’m telling you … any level of education would not allow your brain to accept that something like this could happen, because it’s not rational,” she told The Epoch Times.
After remodeling her three-bedroom unit, she rented it out in December 2019 to a woman on Section 8 housing, a federal program that provides rental assistance for low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled. The woman claimed to have four children who would be moving in.
The mother had said that she’d struggled to find housing that was suitable for four kids.
Unfortunately, her empathy led to thousands of dollars in lost rent and damages that she has now had to cover on her own.
The owner of a rental unit prepares to clean up after a tenant was evicted. (Courtesy of Carolyn Silas-Sams) “Initially, she did have Section 8; then, what I didn’t know is that she was in line to have her kids taken. … Fact of the matter is, the kids never even came,” Ms. Silas-Sams said.
She said her tenant lied about the children moving in to get a larger rental allowance from Section 8.
Ms. Silas-Sams asked housing officials for help but was denied.
Because of the moratorium, nothing could be done, she said. Meanwhile, the tenant’s boyfriend moved in. Fighting ensued and it was discovered that the boyfriend was selling drugs from the apartment and hiding stolen goods in it, she said. The tenant was finally evicted in October.
“If you could just see all of the filth that I’ve had to move out,” she said.
Some rental relief was offered by Alameda County, where the apartment is located, for tenants earning less than 80 percent of the county’s median income, which means below $76,000, per 2022 calculations. But in Oakland, the city had its own rental relief program, prioritizing those who were earning less than 30 percent of the area median income, or below $30,000 for the same year.
According to the city’s website, Oakland received $28 million during the pandemic from the federal government for rental assistance, with another $10.4 million from the state. But demand outstripped the funding and landlords were left on the hook for unpaid rents.
While the rental assistance programs ended in March 2022 for Alameda County and Oakland, renters in the county’s unincorporated areas can still receive assistance if they earn less than 80 percent of this year’s median income, or $78,500 and below.
A rental vacancy sign is posted in front of an apartment in San Francisco on June 13, 2018. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Ms. Silas-Sams said that because there weren’t any repercussions for not paying rent, tenants such as hers didn’t even attempt to apply for the relief provided at the time.
“Even the program that they could have signed up for—that may have paid me something, they were too trifling to even do that. Because they didn’t have to, they didn’t have to do anything,” she said.
From mid-2020 until now, Ms. Silas-Sams hasn’t received any rental payments but has still had to cover her $4,400 mortgage payments in addition to water and garbage expenses, she said.
“I’ve drained everything from my 401(k),” she said. “I’ve even had to borrow from family members, which is stressful. And I had to borrow from my life insurance. … In fact, I was just about to call them again because I don’t have the mortgage for this month.”
According to estimations by Chris Moore, a landlord in Alameda County who led efforts to end the eviction moratoriums in the cities of Oakland and San Leandro and in Alameda County, there’s about $1 billion in unpaid back rent for Alameda County alone. He said evictions are always a last resort.
In the Bay Area, tenants can receive free advice and representation from attorneys, he said, who often fight evictions with various arguments, costing the landlord thousands in attorney fees.
“I can disprove all of them,” Mr. Moore said, “but I have to … pay a lawyer $500 to $600 an hour. It costs $30,000 to $40,000 now to do an eviction, so I can tell you, I’m not interested in evicting the tenant.”
Mr. Moore is also a board member of the East Bay Rental Housing Association—a nonprofit that represents 1600 rental property owners providing about 40,000 rental homes in Alameda and Contra Costa counties and, along with their affiliates, represent 700,000 rental homes in California.
“No trespassing” signs hang on the front of a home in Oakland, Calif., on Jan. 28, 2020. (Philip Pacheco/AFP via Getty Images) “Most tenants do try to make a payment plan and work with us … the ones [that don’t] are really hurting the mom-and-pop housing providers that only have maybe a couple of units, and they don’t have the capital to survive,” he said.
Ms. Silas-Sams, who said she didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer, was able to prevail in court after the moratorium was lifted in July, and her tenant was evicted in October with the help of the local sheriff’s department.
She said she had to spend more than $3,000 hauling away the junk left behind, including drug pipes, stolen credit cards, driver’s licenses, and lots of trash scattered throughout the apartment.
Initially, the tenant agreed to move out after threats of eviction, but after cleaning crews cleaned out the unit, she reappeared and was legally allowed to stay because of the moratorium.
“She turned around and she came back on the day that we were moving this stuff out, and I was not there. … She told [the junk removal man], ‘What are you doing? This is my place,’” she said.
Police were called and responded, but they sided with the tenant.
“They let her stay,” Ms. Silas-Sams said.
There were an average of 310 eviction filings per month in 2019, but during the moratorium, the monthly average dropped to about 55, according to the Alameda County Superior Court. Since it has been lifted, the average number of evictions has risen to about 580 per month, which some say is because landlords were barred from doing so for years.
“So why is it happening? Basically, the government said, ‘Hey, you don’t have to pay your rent for the last three and a half years,’ which, by the way, our industry is the only one they did that too,” Mr. Moore told The Epoch Times.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reported that there could be more than $1 billion in unpaid back rent in the greater Los Angeles area because of its eviction moratorium.
In the city of Los Angeles, landlords who owned 12 or fewer units were eligible to receive through taxpayer dollars up to $30,000 per rental unit for unpaid rents, but they had to apply for the program from Oct. 23 through the end of the month.
According to the county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs website, other assistance that’s “coming soon” includes up to $30,000 in total for landlords with four or fewer units whose mortgages went into default, or $30,0000 for landlord expenses outside of their mortgage payments that accrued due to missed rental payments.
According to Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, such relief for landlords won’t make up for the losses that they incurred during the pandemic.
“When you look at what the city’s providing the landlords and what they’re providing in rent subsidies to renters and compare it to the over $1 billion of COVID rental debt that’s still owed … all this pales in comparison,” Mr. Yukelson told The Epoch Times in a recent interview. “It’s really a drop in the bucket compared to the losses that property owners have suffered these past three-plus years.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 21:00 - Think Tank Warns Biden's Inner Circle 'Bidenomics' Media Blitz Failed
Think Tank Warns Biden’s Inner Circle ‘Bidenomics’ Media Blitz Failed
A progressive think tank recently met with President Biden’s top aides at the White House and delivered a stark warning: The economic policies often referred to as “Bidenomics” were not resonating with most Americans.
According to Politico, members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) visited the West Wing in September and October to brief White House officials about Bidenomics’ branding failure. They presented numerous polling data that showed Americans aren’t convinced about economic policy accomplishments under the president.
“Democrats can’t just hammer people over the head with an insistence that the economy is great,” Adam Green, co-founder of the PCCC, told Politico.
Green said, “We have to acknowledge pain and pivot, and there are ways that we can optimize that pivot to hit Trump for mismanaging the economy.”
Politico said PCCC supplied White House officials with several surveys that showed Americans weren’t buying into the Bidenomics story:
Just 35 percent of Americans trusted Democrats more on economic issues, according to weeks of private polling presented to the White House in mid-September and recently obtained by POLITICO. The data reinforced broad concerns over the public’s dismal outlook. Despite expressing widespread support for Biden’s policy agenda, few voters were aware he’d made much progress on any of a dozen-plus top priorities, like drug pricing or infrastructure.
Perhaps most alarming, 7 out of 10 people surveyed believed the economy wasn’t getting better — even after they were explicitly told that inflation had eased and unemployment sat near record lows. That preface, designed specifically to persuade voters to brighten their view of the economy, did not seem to move them.
Green continued, “When we intentionally put our finger on the scale, and 100 percent of people hear good economic indicators before saying if the economy’s going well for them, we still get walloped.”
Headline count data via Bloomberg shows the White House launched the “Bidenomics” media blitz in late June.
Despite the media blitz, Biden’s job approval polling data via Real Clear Politics went down.
Perhaps the Biden administration fails to admit that two years of negative real wage growth crushed many low/mid-tier households.
We’ve recently shown consumers have never been in this worse shape, draining personal savings while racking up insurmountable credit card debt in the highest rate environment in a generation. Many folks are struggling with out-of-control food prices, elevated pump prices, and high shelter costs.
Biden has lost the GenZer vote.
Millennials crying about life, rent, groceries.
“and all we do, we record a video and post it on social media. Then we close up the app and go about our day.”
Do you have sympathy for their situation? Or do you want to tell them, “try voting differently next time.” I sort of… pic.twitter.com/KEZ3rjxdxw
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) October 12, 2023
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In other words, the Biden administration has failed to control the narrative. Now it’s time for them to usher in more censorship of ‘free speech’ or label anyone with non-approved gov’t narratives ‘Russian bots’.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 20:40 - The Rise Of Pharma Fascism And The Ruination of the Commons
The Rise Of Pharma Fascism And The Ruination of the Commons
Authored by Toby Rogers via the Brownstone Institute,
I. When the commons was Eden
“The commons” is a foundational idea in left political philosophy. The commons refers to shared spaces — oceans, lakes, rivers, forests, the air — that are not owned by anyone. It can also refer to cultural spaces — the town square for example. I could make a case that the internet is a commons — even though there are millions of individual owners of particular spaces no one owns the whole thing.
The left loves the idea of the commons because it harkens back to the era of hunter gatherers who were free to hunt, fish, and live off of the abundance of the earth. The commons is also essential to the left imagination because they don’t believe in private property, so on some level they think that the entire world is or could be the commons. And because they see themselves as more empathetic, educated, and wise than everyone else, they believe that they are the best stewards to manage the commons.
On the left, entire careers are made by writing and teaching about the commons:
Henry George was an early theorist of the commons in the 19th century.
Garrett Hardin popularized the idea of the commons with his 1968 article in Science titled, “The Tragedy of the Commons” about managing the individual incentives to overexploit shared resources.
In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work documenting examples of successful management of the commons.
And heaps of additional left public intellectuals have done important work on the commons including feminist theorist Silvia Federici, Marxist geographer David Harvey, and newcomer Raj Patel (with his bestselling book, The Value of Nothing).
Anyone who wants to remain a member in good standing of the left must be able to speak at length about the commons. This discussion of the commons is almost entirely concerned with protecting the collective space from encroachment by greedy individuals and rapacious corporations. The worst thing that one can do (a sin usually reserved for feudal lords, kings, and corporations) is to “enclose the commons” — make private and exclusive what was formerly open and accessible to all. I’ve long admired the idea of the commons and think it represents the left at its best.
And then a very strange and terrifying thing happened. Over the last several years, the bougie left, without even a hint of self-awareness or irony, enclosed the global commons — seized it is a better term — in the name of public health, based on false assumptions about how viruses work.
As I will explain below, this is the mechanism by which the bougie left slid from liberalism into fascism.
II. The birth of modern Pharma fascism
The battle against SB276 in California in 2019 was one of the most sickening and heartbreaking things I’ve ever witnessed. In 2015, California banned all religious and philosophical exemptions to school vaccination requirements with SB277. But SB276 went further. Sponsored by Richard Pan, a man with no empathy who is controlled by Big Pharma, SB276 revokes the medical license of any doctor who writes more than 5 medical exemptions to school vaccination requirements. In a state with 9,100,000 children, 5 exemptions per doctor is not very many. Fearing the loss of their livelihood, doctors in California stopped writing medical exemptions altogether.
Disabled by DTaP? Too bad, you still have to take all of the other shots. Your sibling died from a vaccine? Too bad, it wasn’t you that died (yet) so roll up your sleeves. This approach to public health contradicts two centuries of best practices in medicine. Prior to SB276 the entire scientific and medical community acknowledged that some people should not be vaccinated because of underlying medical conditions, previous reactions, or family history. But Pharma was in a hurry to wipe out the unvaccinated control group that would reveal the extent of their crimes so they introduced SB276 in a state they already owned before rolling it out to the entire country.
As the bill moved through the legislature, Richard Pan stood at the front of the room grinning like the Cheshire Cat, while thousands of parents, mostly mothers, testified about vaccine injuries in their kids. It was like something out of a Holocaust documentary. As the bill sponsor he was allowed to respond to the public testimony prior to the vote by each committee (Health, Education, and Appropriations). At every hearing he made a strange little speech that conveyed the new ideology of the Pharma Fascist Left.
Pan explained that “your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.” But he argued (and this is the sleight of hand) the same principle applies to viruses. Because viruses exist, and because the unvaccinated may be carrying a deadly virus, the act of breathing, by an unvaccinated person, is the legal equivalent of punching him in the face. Thus the unvaccinated, by their very existence break the law because they violate his right to be free from disease. The only way to prevent this grave miscarriage of justice then is to either a.) force children to be vaccinated; or b.) remove the unvaccinated from schools (and the rest of society — Pan wants the unvaccinated banned from all public spaces).
Let’s just pause for a moment to note that he clearly does not believe that vaccines actually work because if they did, the unvaccinated would pose no threat to the vaccinated. When confronted with this fact he moves the goalposts to claim that his real concern is the “immunocompromised who cannot be vaccinated.” But like everything else he says this is a lie because in California and all blue states they vaccinate the hell out of the immunocompromised as well.
This is the “logic” of Pharma fascism.
Pan has never had an original thought in his life so this angle of attack was likely developed by a Pharma PR firm and focus-group tested before sending it out to spokespeople in the Democratic Party. And now it’s the dominant ideology in the Democratic Party and ruling parties throughout the developed world.
There is a multitude of problems with this flawed ideology. But what I want to point out in this article is that it leads to enclosure of the commons — even before Covid. Democrats would really like to enclose the air itself but that is too difficult. So instead they enclose schools by kicking out some kids (SB276 kicked 56,000 kids out of public school). Vaccine mandates enclose our bodies by allowing corporations to trespass with their toxic products. And Democrats try to enclose the public square (digital and otherwise) by setting up a vast surveillance system to censor, shadowban, demonetize, and deplatform anyone who disagrees with their increasingly zany ideology.
III. Pan’s “logic” is absolute horsesh*t
Democrats do not understand viruses, vaccines, or the law and it leads them to make catastrophic policy decisions that are destroying the health of the American people.
Viruses don’t work that way
There are a quadrillion x quadrillion viruses in the world (more viruses on earth than stars in the known universe).
Research on the global virosphere has concluded that, “Trillions Upon Trillions of Viruses Fall From the Sky Each Day.” From the New York Times:
Scientists have surmised there is a stream of viruses circling the planet, above the planet’s weather systems but below the level of airline travel…. Each day some 800 million viruses cascade onto every square meter of the planet.
“Human cells, GOOD! Bacteria and viruses, BAD!” is how public health officials usually frame the discussion. But that’s not how health actually works. Instead, our bodies are a complex ecosystem of different types of cells. Only 43 percent of the cells in our body are human — the rest are various bacteria and viruses that communicate and exchange with our human cells and DNA in ways that make life possible.
Human consciousness itself is said to have emerged as a result of the beneficial exchange between viral and human DNA. Between 40 and 80 percent (an admittedly large range) of the human genome came initially from viruses. Viruses (and bacteria) regulate all living systems on earth.
So we’re never going to get rid of all viruses and bacteria nor would we want to. But what about the small number of viruses (about 200) that can be harmful to humans?
Vaccines are ineffective and dangerous
The large gains in life expectancy and declines in infectious disease in the 20th century happened before the introduction of mass vaccination campaigns. Improved living standards, sewers, water treatment facilities, food safety, organized solid waste disposal, along with “improvements in housing and decreased crowding in US cities” are responsible for “nearly 90% of the decline in infectious disease mortality among U.S. children.” That’s not me talking, that’s a review of a century of public health data published in Pediatrics. In an earlier era, when public health focused on large public works projects, health improved. Now that public health focuses almost exclusively on promoting vaccines, health and well-being have plummeted.
An analysis, by Danish researchers, of the best vaccine data set in the world indicates that all of the vaccines on the US schedule cause more harms than benefits.
None of the vaccines on the US schedule (with the exception of a tiny subtrial of the Gardasil vaccine) were tested against a saline placebo in a true randomized controlled trial. ICAN’s December 31, 2018 letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services proves this fact and it is perhaps the single most important document ever written during the vaccine wars.
Pan’s approach ignores all the rest of medicine. In the current hysteria, it seems that people sometimes forget that there are medical products other than vaccines! We can treat various diseases with antivirals, antibiotics, and a thousand other medicines without forcing one-size-fits all toxic vaccines on the entire population.
Pan’s approach ignores all of the toxicants that can cause ill health. Zach Bush points out that waste ponds from industrial livestock production are breeding grounds for all sorts of viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Pharmaceuticals introduce toxicants into our bodies. Factories and freeways produce a wide range of toxicants that impair health. We could find common ground on regulating those sources but Pharma controls the political process and so the entire focus of public health is on vaccines.
Pan’s approach also ignores all the rest of health. Why do two people with similar environmental exposures have different outcomes? Nutrition, exercise, rest, and sunshine (factors now ignored by allopathic medicine) make a significant impact on whether someone will get sick. Furthermore, as Jennifer Giustra-Kozek, LPC, author of Healing Without Hurting points out, most diseases that are usually attributed to viruses and bacteria often have an underlying vitamin deficiency that can be addressed through food, supplements, or intravenously in acute cases.
For Covid-19, the corresponding deficiencies that need to be addressed are usually zinc and vitamin D.
Individualized medicine will always be superior to one-size-fits-all Pharma-captured medicine.
The most extreme enclosure of the commons in history
No Pharaoh, no king, no feudal lord, and certainly no political party has ever before claimed that they own the air and that the mere act of breathing by the citizenry was an assault that must be managed by a police state.
Yet that is the central claim of Pan, Fauci, and the public health bureaucracy and the idea that drives vaccine mandates, masks, lockdowns, social distancing, and the rest of the modern Fascist Pharma State. The cultural enclosure is also cruel and senseless — kicking students out of universities via vaccine mandates, delicensing doctors for helping their patients survive by prescribing ivermectin, and refusing medical care in hospitals to the unvaccinated are just some examples.
As I’ve written before, the only historical parallels with Pan’s ideology are Jim Crow laws in the US that declared Black Americans unclean (thus requiring separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, and schools) and the Nazis who claimed that Jews were disease carriers and thus must be moved into ghettos and concentration camps. But now this preposterous junk science has returned from the dead and it drives public health policy in the US and throughout the developed world in the Covid era.
IV. Ideology becomes policy and law
Unfortunately the obscene ideology described above is widespread. Naomi Klein in Doppelganger repeats this same vile notion. In Klein’s view there is no individual “I” — we all breathe the same air thus the Fascist Pharma State has the right and indeed obligation to police the bodies of the unvaccinated, lest they infect her superior over-vaccinated body. Again, it is beyond weird that the Cult of Vaccine does not actually believe in their own product while insisting on injecting it into others.
Indeed this nonsense has become the dominant ideology of ruling parties throughout the developed world. In North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea liberal democracy has been replaced with this Stakeholder Fascism based on junk science that makes Pharma rich.
You can see how it’s a short distance from this twisted supremacist ideology to concentration camps and extermination of the unvaccinated in the name of public health.
These junk science ideas about public health inevitably make their way into policy and the law. In 2020 the NY Department of Public Health created a regulation (10 NYCRR 2.13) titled “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures” that enabled the state to remove anyone from their home for any reason and detain them indefinitely without due process of law under the guise of public health. Quite literally the NY Department of Public Health decided that concentration camps were the best approach for managing Covid.
Attorney and Brownstone Institute Fellow Bobbie Anne Flower Cox spent the last two years battling the state of New York to get this regulation struck down. On July 8, 2022, a NY Supreme Court Judge, Ronald Ploetz, ruled that the “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures” regulation is unconstitutional and “violative of New York State law as promulgated and enacted, and therefore null, void and unenforceable as a matter of law.” Astonishingly, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James appealed the decision and the appeal was heard in court just a few weeks ago.
If the NY Supreme Court Appellate Division affirms that the law is unconstitutional, it will be a small step toward sanity. If the court somehow decides that indefinite detention for any reason without right to due process is lawful, we will be living in America’s version of National Socialism.
Of course the national media did not report on the NY “Quarantine Camp” policy — why would they, they believe the same nonsense as Richard Pan. And just like SB276 in California, it appears that Pharma introduced this idea in a captured blue state as a test run before rolling it out nationwide.
V. Conclusion
It is essential to reframe this entire debate. I should not have to explain any of this but we live in The Upside Down World so let me state the obvious:
Viruses and bacteria are ubiquitous. They live in us, on us, and all around us and usually contribute to our well-being. Bad health outcomes can be reduced through making healthy lifestyle choices. For acute cases there are a range of medicines and supplements that are effective. Large infrastructure projects (e.g. sewers, treatment plants and pipes to deliver clean water to homes and businesses) are the proven best path to improving public health.
Public health policy in the US is based on junk science that enriches the largest donors to the Democratic Party. Health has absolutely nothing to do with it. If you follow the advice of the CDC you are putting your life in grave danger.
Health and medicine must always be tailored to the individual needs of each person. One-size-fits-all medicine is barbarism.
No one owns the air. It is not a crime to breathe. Anyone who wants to protect the commons must recognize the universal right for people to exist without corporate trespass into our bodies.
There are no pandemic exceptions to the US Constitution. Totalitarianism is not a recommended treatment for any disease. Concentration camps are never appropriate.
The best approach to any problem is always the free and open exchange of ideas in a system of free and sovereign citizens.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 20:20 - In High-Stakes Gamble, Toyota Will Make 2025 Camry Hybrid-Only
In High-Stakes Gamble, Toyota Will Make 2025 Camry Hybrid-Only
In a major milestone in the government-coerced push away from gas-powered vehicles, the best-selling sedan in America will only be available with gas-electric hybrid powertrains starting with the 2025 model year, Toyota revealed in Malibu on Tuesday night.
The 2025 Toyota Camry will feature a 2.5-liter gas engine paired with an electric drive that will deliver more power than the 2024 hybrids. Toyota is already the leading seller of hybrid vehicles, which, depending on the driving scenario, use only electric power, only gasoline, or both. Hybrids recapture energy from the braking system that helps boost the range.
It could be a very risky move for Toyota, considering that combustion models comprise about 85% of Camry’s 2024 sales volume. The Camry is king of the sedan market. However, as Americans increasingly prefer crossovers and SUVs, total sedan sales have plummeted from 7.2 million a year in 2012 to just 2.9 million in 2022, notes the Wall Street Journal.
Toyota’s radical shift comes in part because of a government gun held to manufacturers’ heads. Whether consumers want it or not, the federal government is using regulation to force gas vehicles out of the marketplace by tightening average mileage requirements for manufacturers’ fleets. Most recently, the White House proposed a 58 mpg standard for the 2032 model year. The 2022 average was 27 mpg.
The 2025 Toyota Camry will come with any kind of powertrain you want, so long as it’s a hybrid While Toyota didn’t disclose its 2025 pricing yet, at a time when Americans are reeling from inflation, cutting out gas-only models is likely to make the cheapest Camry more expensive next year. For the 2024 model year, the cheapest gas-only Camry is costs about $2,400 less than the cheapest hybrid. “We think the value the hybrid powertrain brings is worth that kind of premium,” Toyota’s North America brand chief David Christ told Reuters.
According to federal fuel economy numbers, the current Camry hybrid saves $650 a year versus the gas version, reflecting the 52mpg vs 32 mpg difference. That implies a 3.7-year break-even on the price differential between the hybrid and gas-only version. Critically, that math does not include:
- Extra interest expense for those financing a more expensive vehicle
- Higher sales and other taxes linked to the sales price
- Higher insurance costs — on average, hybrids cost about 7% more to insure, according to carinsuranceplan.org
The new 2025 Toyota Camry will be hybrid-only but it’s keeping the classic hood strut pic.twitter.com/Gd34Qze9fR
— Edmunds (@edmunds) November 15, 2023
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 20:00 - Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland Speaks Out About His Removal By Pope Francis
Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland Speaks Out About His Removal By Pope Francis
Authored by Jana J. Pruet via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, was forcibly removed from his office by Pope Francis on Saturday morning.
“They had the authority to remove me from diocesan governance, but I encourage those upset or confused by the development to pray for the pope and not to leave the Church,” Bishop Strickland wrote on Facebook on Monday morning.
Bishop Joseph Strickland walks in front of a reliquary bearing the bones of Saint Maria Goretti, dubbed “The Little Saint of Great Mercy,” into the sanctuary at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Tyler, Texas, on Nov. 2, 2015. (Andrew D. Brosig/Tyler Morning Telegraph via AP) The news from the Vatican shocked and angered many who supported the 65-year-old bishop’s respect of traditional Catholic teachings.
Bishop Strickland, who has served as the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Tyler since 2012, has been outspoken in his criticisms of Pope Francis’ progressive views on the LGBTQ community within the church.
In June, Pope Francis ordered an investigation into the pastoral governance of the Tyler Diocese by Bishop Dennis Sullivan of Camden, New Jersey, and Bishop Emeritus Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona.
“After months of careful consideration by the Dicastery for Bishops and the Holy Father, the decision was reached that the resignation of Bishop Strickland should be requested,” according to a statement by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
On Nov. 9, the bishop’s resignation was requested, but Bishop Strickland declined to resign his office.
Two days later, the Vatican announced that Bishop Strickland had been “relieved of pastoral governance of the Diocese of Tyler.” No reason was given for the bishop’s dismissal.
The pope appointed Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin to serve as Apolostic Administrator of the Diocese of Tyler.
“During this time of transition, we pray that God may continue to abundantly bless and strengthen the Church and God’s holy, faithful people here and around the world,” the Tyler Diocese wrote in a statement.
In an interview with John-Henry Westen, editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews, Bishop Strickland said he believes his removal was due to his support of the “truth of the gospel.” LifeSiteNews is a pro-life Catholic news website based in Canada.
Bishop Strickland said he has turned to prayer during this “storm” in his life.
“The rosary has taken on a life for me that is truly amazing,” he said.
The bishop said he does not fully blame the pope for his removal, pointing to the “many forces working at him and influencing him to make these kinds of decisions.”
“The only answer I have to that is because the forces in the church right now don’t want the truth of the gospel,” Bishop Strickland told Mr. Westen.
“There are people in the Church, rather than glorifying in the truth of Christ, they want to delete significant portions of Sacred Scripture and say, ‘Oh, we got that wrong,’ or ‘We’re just going to ignore it.'”
“[The Truth], it’s perennial, it’s everlasting, it’s glorious,” the bishop continued. “And if you want it to change, then I’m the problem.”
“He [Jesus] doesn’t morph into a different being than He was when He died on the cross and rose for us. He is the same Lord; He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and those who want to change that, for a day, in terms of human history, we have to live through this day, but it’s a moment that will pass, and the truth will prevail,” he said.
Throughout the interview, Bishop Strickland remained steadfast in his faith that God would see him through and that he would continue serving his faith community.
Michel J. Matt, editor of The Remnant, a national Catholic newspaper, reacted to Bishop Strickland’s removal on X, saying, “This is total war. Francis is a clear and present danger not only to Catholics the world over but also to the whole world itself. It appears now that he is actively trying to bury fidelity to the Church of Jesus Christ. Let him be anathema.”
Open to Gay Marriage
Pope Francis has made surprising public statements such as, “Who am I to judge them?” in response to a question about gay priests dating back to his first papal news conference in July 2013.
Last month, the pope suggested being open to priests performing gay marriages in the Catholic Church, in response to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm the church’s teaching on homosexuality ahead of the 2023 Synod of Bishops at the Vatican. Earlier this year, the pope had stated that while homosexuality is not a crime, it is a sin.
The faith has long opposed the Church recognizing gay marriages.
“The Church has a very clear understanding of marriage: an exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to procreation,” Pope Francis wrote in a response to the cardinals. “Only this union can be called marriage.”
“However, in our relationships with people, we must not lose the pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes,” he continued. “The defense of objective truth is not the only expression of this charity; it also includes kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement. Therefore, we cannot be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.”
Pope Francis added that there is no need to turn such pastoral charity into the norm. Rather, the issue could be dealt with on an individual basis, adding that the “life of the Church flows through many channels other than the normative ones.”
The letter was a reversal from the Vatican’s position in 2021, when Pope Francis said that the church could not bless same-sex unions because God “does not and cannot bless sin.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Bishop Strickland for comment. “At the moment, I’m still consulting with my God,” he said. “Will let you know when I will grant another interview. Remain Blessed!”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 19:40 - Maryland Teachers Union 'Milking' Taxpayers While Test Scores Plummet
Maryland Teachers Union ‘Milking’ Taxpayers While Test Scores Plummet
Investigative reporter Chris Papst from Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore finds while Maryland’s education system is in a downward spiral, the state’s largest and most powerful education union continues to record new highs in revenues and assets.
Papst pointed out that the Maryland State Education Association’s website says the union is supposed to “make a positive difference in their professional lives in order to elevate the quality of public education for all students.” The tax-exempt non-profit organization derives most of its money by collecting tax dollars given to schools and paid to teachers, who, in turn, pay union dues.
Data obtained by Project Baltimore show MSEA’s financial statements going back a decade. In 2013, the union reported revenues of $19.8 million. By 2022, revenues jumped 34% to $26.5 million, the highest amount on record.
Papst said the divergence in the union’s revenues and test scores is a major concern.
$$$$$$: The wealth of Maryland’s largest teachers union surges to record levels – as student test scores plummet. Union assets have nearly tripled since 2013 to $45.3 million! The union’s tax-exempt mission: “to elevate public education for all students.”https://t.co/t1fuVuVjCy
— Chris Papst (@chrispapst) November 14, 2023
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He cited federal test scores that state Maryland students in 2013 outperformed the national average in fourth-grade reading and math. In 2013, MSEA reported revenues of $19.8 million. By 2022, revenues jumped to $26.5 million.
Anirban Basu, an economist and former member of the Baltimore City School Board, told Papst, “Teachers make, certainly, more than they used to … But then the question becomes, okay that’s fine, what is the taxpayer getting for all of this money that’s flowing into the educational system, the teachers on to unions? And the answer is, not much.”
Basu said, “Unions do not exist to profit maximize,” adding, “And if the union in particular, the teachers unions, for instance, are elevating adults over children, then they’re not the force for good that they are supposed to be, given their federal mandate, their organizational mission.”
He continued, “It seems like this money is just piling up. It’s going to go someplace, I suppose, at some point. But at the end of the day, the test scores speak for themselves.”
“What we have seen in recent years is our kids are falling behind,” said Basu. He noted, “In many cases, they score below the national average. And so, what does that tell you? We’re taking a lot of potential educational achievement and not fulfilling or operationalizing that achievement. Something is wrong here.”
Project Baltimore found the bulk of the MSEA revenue collected last year paid for 93 union employees.
Money laundering 101
— Ramman06 (@baltoravorls) November 14, 2023
One X user commented on Papst’s and said this is a case of “Money laundering 101.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 19:20 - Gaza After The War: Biden Needs A Reality Check
Gaza After The War: Biden Needs A Reality Check
Authored by Josh Hammer via American Greatness,
As Israel continues its systematic assault on Hamas deep inside Gaza, closing in on high-ranking targets and putting the jihadist outfit’s sprawling subterranean tunnel network squarely in its crosshairs, the conversation has already begun to shift away from the warfare on the ground. True, much painful fighting likely remains; true as well, no one can predict the extent to which Hezbollah or the Iranian regime itself might escalate, thereby risking a full-fledged regional conflagration.
But the war will, at some point, end. And a gap has already emerged between the positions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden when it comes to what happens in Gaza the day after Israel deems that the cancerous Hamas tumor has been sufficiently eradicated.
On the one hand, Netanyahu avowed that Israel “will for an indefinite period have security responsibility” in Gaza after the war. On the other hand, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on behalf of a deeply unpopular president who faces a difficult reelection next year and has endured declining Muslim-American support over the past month, stated that “it is clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza” after the war.
Something has to give.
The Biden administration’s specific position on Gaza after the war is downstream of its broader obstinance when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a speech in Tel Aviv on Nov. 3, Blinken reiterated the Biden administration’s continued support for a so-called “two-state solution” to the conflict. “Two states for two peoples,” Blinken intoned — presumably based, as it was for the Obama administration before it, on the absurd “1967 borders,” which would pinch the Jewish state to 9 miles wide at its narrowest point and which former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin once lambasted as “Auschwitz borders.”
The Biden administration, in other words, is of the opinion that the Hamas Holocaust of Oct. 7 was not a paradigm-shifting geopolitical event. Biden, Blinken and the rest of the Democratic foreign policy establishment are of the belief that the single biggest slaughter of Jews since Hitler was not a game-changer — the sort of event that causes one to revise underlying assumptions and reassess a situation from the ground up. They believe that nothing fundamentally has actually changed; after Israel is satisfied with its work in Gaza, it will get right back to more conciliation and territorial concessions.
It is more plausible that the tooth fairy exists than the “two-state solution,” as presently conceived, ever becomes reality. Indeed, the original proposed “two-state solution,” following the European powers’ post-World War I carving up of the Middle East, would have made all of “Mandatory Palestine” — encompassing the entirety of the Land of Israel, “from the river to the sea” as it is now said — a Jewish state, and would have made the Emirate of Transjordan (today, the kingdom of Jordan) a so-called “Palestinian” state. But the modern “two-state solution,” which would have Gaza and the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria form the basis for an independent “Palestinian” state, is a fantasy that should have died after Yasser Arafat’s Second Intifada — and definitely should have died after the pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023.
To continue to believe — after all the unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7, after the reality that “Palestinian self-determination” in Gaza following Israel’s unilateral disengagement in 2005 resulted in the barbaric and genocidal (but democratically elected!) rule of an Islamist reich — in a “two-state solution” is to reveal oneself to be entirely out-of-touch to anything smacking of empirical reality. It is to reveal one’s worldview as so deeply ideological, so wholly based on fanciful academic theorizing, and so completely divorced from facts on the ground, that one will have inadvertently outed himself as a complete and utter fool.
There is an alternative explanation for those still stubbornly peddling a “two-state solution.” It is a darker explanation than mere incompetence or mental deficiency: a desire to simply see more Oct. 7 pogroms and more dead Jews. Indeed, many on university campuses are barely concealing their desire for precisely this.
After Oct. 7, it is clear that the 2005 disengagement from Gaza will go down as one of Israel’s all-time historical mistakes, along with ceding the Temple Mount to the Jordanian waqf after the Six-Day War, the disastrous lack of preemptive action before the Yom Kippur War, and the Oslo Accords with Arafat. The world has seen what leaving Gaza to “Palestinian self-determination” results in: a jihadist entity that indiscriminately fires rockets at Israeli civilians and commits Nazi-like war crimes. The very least Israel must do is reassert operational control of Gaza’s borders and security; ideally, a military occupation or formal re-annexation would be on the table.
Biden is understandably concerned about his reelection prospects next fall. There is only so much in the way of Muslim-American support he can afford to lose. Like a true cynic, he has apparently chosen to shore up that support to the exclusion of our close ally’s existential security.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 19:00 - Biden DOJ Quietly Hires More Lawyers For Vaccine Injury Lawsuits
Biden DOJ Quietly Hires More Lawyers For Vaccine Injury Lawsuits
In January, the CDC was forced to reveal the results of its VAERS safety signal monitoring for COVID-19 vaccines (thanks to a FOIA request by Zachary Stieber of the Epoch Times), which painted an alarming picture. The analysis, spanning Dec. 14 2020 through July 29, 2022, revealed:
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There were 770 different types of adverse events that showed safety signals in ages 18+, of which over 500 (or 2/3) had a larger safety signal than myocarditis/pericarditis.
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The CDC analysis shows that the number of serious adverse events reported in less than two years for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is 5.5 times larger than all serious reports for vaccines given to adults in the US since 2009 (~73,000 vs. ~13,000).
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Twice as many mRNA COVID-19 vaccine reports were classified as serious compared to all other vaccines given to adults (11% vs. 5.5%). This meets the CDC definition of a safety signal.
Read more on that here…
In April, the Biden administration rejected several demands for compensation from people who have been injured by the Covid-19 vaccine, despite the fact that injury reports have been on the rise – as evidenced by a February report by Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado over a 4,400% increase in life threatening conditions reported to in the state to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since the 2021 rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, several lawsuits have been filed against the Biden administration by vaccine-injured individuals over worldwide vaccine contracts that indemnified drugmakers from litigation, as well as for censorship surrounding the big tech crackdown on people sharing their experiences after receiving Covid-19 vaccines.
DOJ Hires Lawyers
In response to the mounting vaccine injuries, the Biden DOJ quietly began hiring more lawyers in October to handle vaccine litigation. In a posting to USAJobs.gov, the Washington DC Office of Office of Constitutional and Specialized Tort Litigation – Vaccine Litigation Staff asks for individuals who can fight “claims of injury as a result of the receipt of vaccines” covered by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (“Vaccine Act”).
The job pays between $94,199 and $183,500 for whatever soulless Devil’s Advocate acolyte take a job fighting vaccine injured Americans.
The position is a unique trial practice in support of public health, science, and medicine. The legal and medical issues at stake in each case vary. Trial attorneys independently manage heavy caseloads, and while streamlined procedures are utilized, many cases involve complex scientific issues of causation that require expert witnesses in medical fields such as pediatrics, neurology, immunology, and epidemiology. In cases in which petitioners are found entitled to compensation, the litigation occasionally requires use of damages experts to develop an appropriate life care plan for the injured party, including medical treatment and related care needs, and the determination of other compensable damages, such as lost earnings and pain and suffering, often awarded through a structured settlement.
Attorneys with limited experience will focus primarily on litigating cases in a “claims” type posture, typically involving less complicated issues of science and medicine, limited damages, and fewer court appearances, with the possibility of transitioning to handling more complex cases in litigation over time.
Attorneys appear frequently before the Office of Special Masters in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and also appear before the judges of the Court of Federal Claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit when handling appeals. Responsibilities include factual and legal research, medical record review, brief writing, and working with expert witnesses to develop the defense of claims, as well as to address the life care needs of vaccine-injured petitioners in some cases. The majority of cases are resolved informally, and thus attorneys engage regularly in settlement and damages negotiations, including alternative dispute resolution, and drafting settlement memoranda.
Hilariously, while the DOJ came after Elon Musk’s SpaceX (which deals with matters of national security) for not hiring illegal immigrants, the vaccine injury job posting requires applicants to be “a U.S. Citizen or National.”
Other interesting job requirements include:
- Must be able to obtain and maintain a Top Secret security clearance with eligibility for Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) access depending on organizational assignment / duty location.
- Financial Disclosure: If selected, you will be required to disclose financial information in accordance with DOJ and Federal ethics guidelines.
- You will be required to complete a pre-employment security investigation and background check which includes a drug screening.
We think they’re going to need more than eight.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 18:40 -
- JP Morgan Urges Oil And Gas Clients To Cut Methane Emissions
JP Morgan Urges Oil And Gas Clients To Cut Methane Emissions
By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com
Reducing methane emissions and addressing methane leaks in operations are immediate actions from which both businesses and the climate will benefit, JP Morgan, one of the world’s top fossil fuel financiers, said in a new report on Wednesday.
JP Morgan’s “The Methane Emissions Opportunity” white paper urges companies to boost efforts to cut methane emissions and says that the Wall Street bank recognizes methane abatement as an opportunity “to support accelerated efforts by our clients to reduce operational emissions.”
“Consistent with that objective, we have set a net zero-aligned emissions intensity reduction target for the Oil & Gas sector’s operational (Scope 1 and 2) emissions in our financing portfolio, including reducing leakage, venting, and flaring of methane as key drivers,” JP Morgan said in the report.
“We recognize that different technologies and solutions will make sense for different types of operators, and we aim to work with industry participants to support the deployment of effective solutions.”
According to the bank, recent events such as the war in Ukraine have highlighted the urgent need to provide energy resources securely, reliably, and affordably while scaling solutions and strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
“These objectives are not mutually exclusive. The world can — and must — do both,” JP Morgan said.
A report by environmental groups from earlier this year showed that JP Morgan is no longer the world’s biggest financier of fossil fuels. Last year Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) became the top bank funding oil and gas. For the first time since 2019, US bank JP Morgan Chase dropped from the top spot of the biggest backer of fossil fuels.
Overall, U.S. banks dominated fossil fuel financing, accounting for 28% of all fossil fuel financing in 2022.
JPMorgan Chase remains the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, while Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are still among the top 5 fossil financiers since 2016.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 18:20 - Democrats Introduce Bill To Restrict And Track Ammo Sales While Criminalizing “Straw Purchases”
Democrats Introduce Bill To Restrict And Track Ammo Sales While Criminalizing “Straw Purchases”
Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren and California Congressman Robert Garcia have recently introduced a bill called the Ammunition Modernization and Monitoring Oversight (AMMO) Act. If passed, the bill would restrict bulk sales of ammunition, would require businesses who sell ammunition to obtain the same federal license as gun dealers, and would require businesses to conduct a background check on buyers.
Additionally, it would also apply the same prohibition on straw purchases for ammunition that currently exists for firearms. It would make it illegal for individuals to purchasing ammunition and then give that ammo to others, and it would require data sharing on ammunition sales.
Robert Garcia argues:
“The bottom line is no individual should be buying bulk amounts of ammunition without a federal background check from places like gas stations, pharmacies, and convenience stores – especially without any sort of regulation and no record of the sale. If we’re ever going to really take on the gun violence epidemic in this country, we need to regulate ammo accessibility. This bill aims to protect the American public from the devastating violence that occurs when individuals have access to unlimited amounts of weaponry.”
The bill prohibits bulk sales of ammunition based on the type of ammo. It specifically limits individuals to 100 rounds for .50 caliber ammo, and 1000 rounds for all other ammunition within a 5-day period. The full text of the bill can be found here.
Records of sales would be required and the data must be held by vendors for at least two years, while anyone buying ammo and transferring it to others without record could be punished with heavy fines and up to five years jail time.
The AMMO Act essentially places ammunition under the same ATF category as firearms while opening the door to subjective ATF rulings on ammo sales. Anti-gun lawmakers have long sought to undermine 2nd Amendment rights through the backdoor of ammo purchases. Some past attempts have included “micro-stamping” as not just a way to track each round back to a buyer, but also to make the production process so expensive for manufacturers that ammo prices rise exponentially.
The purpose of restrictions on “bulk ammo” sales is less certain. The average active shooting incident involves far less than 1000 rounds fired, so the new rule would do nothing to prevent criminals from engaging in such attacks. Shooting events involving 50 BMG ammo are almost non-existent, yet under the bill this caliber of ammo is the most restricted in terms of bulk sales.
That said, the restrictions combined with purchase tracking and background checks would be useful in identifying preppers and patriots; people who are much more likely to buy large amounts of ammo at one time. It should also be noted that few people other than preppers have an interest in spending the exorbitant funds required to shoot 50 BMG, which may explain the special restrictions on the caliber cited in the bill.
Federal agencies have consistently stated that they believe “domestic extremists” (their term for conservatives) are the greatest threat to the country. They have shifted their focus away from foreign terrorism and are aiming the bureaucratic apparatus at American citizens with constitutional ideals. The phrases “patriot rebellion” and “civil war” have been mentioned in the establishment media with increasing regularity as a growing concern for the government.
Despite the endless arguments that “an AR-15 would be useless against an F-16,” it’s clear that the powers-that-be have decided that civilian firearms access is more dangerous to them than they may have initially assumed.
Furthermore, making it illegal for the average citizen to share or resell ammo with others creates a pathway to a host of ATF intrusions and prosecutions. And, as we have seen with gun peripherals such as bump stocks, pistol braces and specialty triggers, once the ATF has their foot in the door on ammo they will exploit their newfound power to the furthest extent possible. As with most bills like the AMMO Act, the goal is to quietly whittle away at gun rights and frighten law abiding citizens with an ever growing list of potential violations. Nothing in these bills will save a single life from gun related violence.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/15/2023 – 18:00
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