- Chinese Communist Party Is "Cornered" As World Awakens To Its Abuses
Chinese Communist Party Is “Cornered” As World Awakens To Its Abuses
Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,
More than ever, the Chinese Communist Party is finding itself backed into a corner as the world wakes up to its human rights atrocities, according to Nury Turkel, the vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
“China has never been this isolated in the recent memory, and the isolation is making them belligerent,” Turkel told The Epoch Times at the annual International Religious Freedom Summit.
“That’s why they are picking fights with camp survivors,” he added.
Turkel was referring to attempts by Chinese officials to publicly shame Uyghur women who gave first hand accounts of sexual abuse at the internment camps in Xinjiang, where up to 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are held under what the regime claims to be a “counter-terrorism” campaign.
Nury Turkel, the current vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, speaks in an interview with The Epoch Times in May 2021. (The Epoch Times)
In a February press conference, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson held up pictures of the former detainees and called one of them, Tursunay Ziyawudun, an “actress” and accused her of “spreading lies.”
Such behavior, coming from a government official, hardly measures up to the image of “the country that everybody’s scared of,” said Turkel.
Activists including members of the local Hong Kong, Tibetan and Uyghur communities hold up banners and placards in Melbourne, Australia, on June 23, 2021, calling on the Australian government to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over China’s human rights record. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
Ziyawudun shared her story at the opening of the second day of the Summit. During her year in a camp, beginning in 2018, Ziyawudun said, she saw police officers take Uyghur women from the cells to do “whatever they wanted.” Some of the women were brought back near the point of death. Some others had lost their minds. She witnessed a Uyghur woman in her 20s being raped, while three Han police officers did the same to her.
“These memories make my heart bleed,” she told the attendees on July 14.
Turkel noted that virtually every speaker on Wednesday highlighted the suppression in Xinjiang, which, following the U.S. lead, a growing number of countries have recognized as a “genocide.”
“That’s a miscalculation on Beijing’s behalf,” Turkel said of the regime’s human rights abuses.
“They think that they could get away with this as they have done to the Falun Gong practitioners and they have done to Tibetans for years and years.”
Global outcry over human rights atrocities in China have been increasing, with lawmakers pushing for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics from within their respective governments.
Over the past week, the U.S. blacklisted over a dozen Chinese entities that had a role in aiding abuses in the Xinjiang region and the regime’s military modernization, while at the same time it dialed up warnings of business risks in Xinjiang. Forced organ harvesting, a state-sanctioned practice primarily targeting Falun Gong practitioners but also other prisoners of conscience, is also drawing greater scrutiny.
The mounting pressure is not being missed in Beijing. For Chinese leader Xi Jinping to call for communist officials to create a “lovable” Chinese image—this in itself is a sign of insecurity, according to Turkel.
“They are cornered,” he said.
A file image of Nury Turkel, the vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, meeting with the then U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Chinese dissidents in July 2020. (Ron Przysucha/U.S. State Department)
An Uyghur American attorney, Turkel was born in a Chinese re-education camp in Kashgar where his mother was imprisoned. That was during the height of the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long violent campaign that swept China into chaos and killed millions.
Turkel has not returned to China since coming to America 26 years ago. Two years after he left, the regime’s military crushed a large demonstration in his father’s hometown.
The global push back, in his eyes, has come “a little too late.”
It “shouldn’t take a genocide” and it shouldn’t be the end of Hong Kong democracy “for the international community to have this rude awakening,” he said.
A Brookings Institute report, published last year, estimated that the regime has exported its mass surveillance platforms to over 80 countries since 2008. Chinese influence in the West is “everywhere,” in the business, media, academia, and government, Turkel said.
With the regime continuing to project its narrative worldwide, the United States should instead break out of that framework and stop worrying about “how the CCP does things,” said Turkel.
“As a free nation, as a free people, we should do what is right,” he said, adding that “eventually, this will force them to change.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 23:40 - Lego Demands US Gunmaker To Halt Sales Of "Block 19" Pistol
Lego Demands US Gunmaker To Halt Sales Of “Block 19” Pistol
Danish toymaker The Lego Group has slapped a US gunmaker with a cease and desist letter after it sold Glock handgun kits that resembled Lego blocks, according to The Guardian.
Utah-based Culper Precision marketed their handgun as the “Block 19,” a “childhood dream come to life.”
On June 24, Precision posted an image of a Glock 19, decked out in blue, red, and yellow blocks that make the weapon nearly indistinguishable from a child’s toy, besides the butt of the ammo clip.
“Here’s one of those childhood dreams coming to life, the Block 19 prototype, yes you can actually build Legos onto it. That RMR is comprised of miscellaneous pieces and a red lightsaber. We superglued it all together and surprisingly it survived a little over 1500 rounds in full auto at Shootah this past weekend!” the company wrote on the social media platform.
The kits sold for $549 to $765 and made the Glock 19 look harmless because it appeared to be built out of Legos.
Gun control activists were angered with Precision and demanded The Lego Group send a cease and desist letter.
“Our organization reached out to Lego, which then sent a cease and desist letter to the reckless gun maker,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action, which promotes stricter gun controls.
Culper Precision’s president, Brandon Scott, told the Washington Post a lawyer advised him to stop selling the Block 19 because The Lego Group might have a solid case. He agreed to comply with the cease and desist letter.
“They had a similar reaction to you,” Scott said. “Where it was like: ‘Is it wise to make a gun look like a toy?'”
While Precision might not be able to sell the Block 19, it’s only a matter of time before the 3D-printing community of gun buffs creates a computer-aided design of lowers and or uppers for pistols and or even rifles that resemble harmless Legos.
We’ve already mentioned that people are disguising weapons as Nerf guns.
Once the 3D-printing community grabs hold of something on forums, there’s no way to stop it.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 23:20 - White House Admits To Flagging Posts To Be Censored By Facebook
White House Admits To Flagging Posts To Be Censored By Facebook
We have previously discussed the extensive censorship programs maintained by Big Tech, including companies like Twitter and Facebook taking sides in major controversies from gender identification to election fraud to Covid-19. The rise of corporate censors has combined with a heavily pro-Biden media to create the fear of a de facto state media that controls information due to a shared ideology rather than state coercion. That concern has been magnified by demands from Democratic leaders for increased censorship, including censoring political speech, and now word that the Biden Administration has routinely been flagging material to be censored by Facebook.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden administration is working with Facebook to flag “problematic” posts that “spread disinformation” on COVID-19. She explained that the Administration has created “aggressive” policing systems to spot “misinformation” to be “flagged” for the social media companies.
Psaki doubles down on calls for censorship of “disinformation:”
“It should not come as any surprise we are in regular touch with social media platforms…and we want to know that the social media platforms are taking steps to address this.” pic.twitter.com/YxIsFJ2iwg
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 16, 2021
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The concern is obvious that this allows for a direct role of the government in a massive censorship program run by private companies. There have been repeated examples of the censoring of stories that were embarrassing or problematic for the Biden Administration. Even when Twitter expressed regret for the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election, there was an immediate push back for greater censorship from Democrats.
The concern is that these companies are taking to heart calls from Democratic members for increased censorship on the platform. CEO Jack Dorsey previously apologized for censoring the Hunter Biden story before the election. However, rather than addressing the dangers of such censoring of news accounts, Senator Chris Coons pressed Dorsey to expand the categories of censored material to prevent people from sharing any views that he considers “climate denialism.” Likewise, Senator Richard Blumenthal seemed to take the opposite meaning from Twitter, admitting that it was wrong to censor the Biden story. Blumenthal said that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demanded an answer to this question:
“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”
“Robust content modification” seems the new Orwellian rallying cry in our society.
Here’s more of Jen Psaki issuing decrees on who should and shouldn’t be allowed to use social media, then smugly scoffing at the notion that this should concern anyone on the ground that we’re going to die if we don’t submit to the White House’s orders:https://t.co/3bAR2J9RMF
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 16, 2021
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The same problems have arisen on Covid stories. For a year, Big Tech has been censoring those who wanted to discuss the origins of pandemic. It was not until Biden admitted that the virus may have originated in the Wuhan lab that social media suddenly changed its position. Facebook only recently announced that people on its platform will be able to discuss the origins of Covid-19 after censoring any such discussion.
DOOCY: “Facebook used to block people from posting that covid may have originated from a lab… Is there any concern things you are trying to block may some day turn out to be accurate?”@PressSec: “We don’t take anything down. We don’t block anything.” pic.twitter.com/EmGqS44F2G
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 16, 2021
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The back channel coordination with Facebook further supports the view that this is a de facto state-supporting censorship program. That is the basis for the recent lawsuit by former President Donald Trump. As I have previously noted, there is ample basis for objection to this arrangement but the legal avenue for challenges is far from clear. The lawsuit will face difficult if not insurmountable problems under existing law and precedent. There is no question companies like Twitter are engaging in raw censorship. It is also true that these companies have censored material with a blatantly biased agenda, taking sides on scientific and social controversies. A strong case can be made for stripping these companies of legal protections since they are no longer neutral platforms. However, private businesses are allowed to regulate speech as a general matter. It will take considerable heavy lifting for a court to order this injunctive relief.
Here’s a mashup of VACCINE MISINFORMATION from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Does Jen Psaki want Big Tech to CENSOR this?pic.twitter.com/vqnucmZjnj
— Kyle Martinsen (@KyleMartinsen_) July 16, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
That is why we need legislative action. That includes removal immunity protections. However, the government should also consider the creation of an alternative to these companies which are now a threat to our political system. A few companies now control a huge amount of the political discourse in this country and have shown a clear bias in taking sides (even on issues later found to be wrong). Since litigation is likely to fail, legislation would seem an imperative. Congress has been spending hundreds of billions with utter abandon. Yet, there is little discussion over a government subsidized platform for social media or other measures to break up this unprecedented level of corporate control over our political discourse. I am no fan of government programs, particularly as it relates to media. However, Apple, Google, and these other companies are now operating like monopolies, including crushing competitors like Parlor. That is a direct and growing threat to our political process.
We need to consider a short-term investment in a social media platform that will focus any censorship on direct threats or criminal conduct. There is currently a lack of not only competition but any real opportunity for competition to challenge these companies. Either we have to redefine what we treat as monopolies or we need to invest in the establishment of competing platforms that are content neutral like telephone companies.
This is why I have described myself as an Internet Originalist:
The alternative is “internet originalism” — no censorship. If social media companies returned to their original roles, there would be no slippery slope of political bias or opportunism; they would assume the same status as telephone companies. We do not need companies to protect us from harmful or “misleading” thoughts. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not approved speech.
If Pelosi demanded that Verizon or Sprint interrupt calls to stop people saying false or misleading things, the public would be outraged. Twitter serves the same communicative function between consenting parties; it simply allows thousands of people to participate in such digital exchanges. Those people do not sign up to exchange thoughts only to have Dorsey or some other internet overlord monitor their conversations and “protect” them from errant or harmful thoughts.
The actions by Twitter and Facebook on Election Day were reprehensible and wrong. That should have been sufficient cause for action by Congress. It is now growing more precarious and chilling by the day.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 23:00 - Amazon Wins FCC Approval For Radar Device To Monitor Sleep
Amazon Wins FCC Approval For Radar Device To Monitor Sleep
Amazon.com Inc. has been granted a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) waiver to use radar to monitor people’s sleep.
The FCC approval document, published last Friday, described a device to include a “radar sensor” for “contactless sleep tracing.”
The federal agency that regulates communications across the country wrote that Google made a similar request for its Pixel smartphone in 2018. “As with Google, Amazon describes how it plans to use its Radar Sensors to enable touchless control of device features and functions.”
The capability of the new device “can aid persons with disabilities, as well as to provide sleep-related health and wellness applications,” the FCC continued.
“The use of Radar Sensors in sleep tracking could improve awareness and management of sleep hygiene, which in turn could produce significant health benefits for many Americans,” Amazon said in its filing. “Radar Sensors will allow consumers to recognize potential sleep issues.”
The company provided very few details about what products the new radar sensor would be embedded into but provided a hint that the device would be “non-mobile.” The thought here is that it could be equipped with Echo devices.
There was no timeline on when the radar-equipped devices would be unveiled, nevertheless, shipped to customers.
Amazon has been making a strong push into the health space between Halo wristbands and Amazon Pharmacy. Now the mega-corporation wants to monitor your sleep and extract whatever valuable data it can to subliminally sell you products to improve your well-being.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 22:40 - Democrats And Republicans Unite To Demand US Invasion Of Cuba
Democrats And Republicans Unite To Demand US Invasion Of Cuba
Authored by Michael Tracey via mtracey.substack.com,
There are some parts of the US where municipal elected officials who ordinarily concern themselves with things like trash removal, parking regulations, and petty graft are occasionally expected to take passionate stances on foreign policy issues. Israel would be that issue in certain heavily Jewish enclaves around the New York City area, although recently those political dynamics have shifted somewhat. In select Hudson County, NJ towns like North Bergen, West New York, Guttenberg, and Union City — that foreign policy issue is Cuba.
Protesters demand US military intervention in North Bergen, NJ. All photos by MT Example: Although he conceded he was “not an expert” and therefore not in a position to recommend any specific US policy action in response to protests currently underway in the island nation, North Bergen “Public Safety” commissioner Allen Pascual told me this week he longed for the days when the “Rat Pack” could run wild in Cuba. So that’s the kind of Wikipedia-level cultural nostalgia driving at least some portion of Cuba-related opinion among these low-level municipal officials. Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. serenading succulent young ladies amidst plumes of cigar smoke and organized crime oligopolies, or something.
Pascual had been participating in an emergency “Cuban Liberation” rally and march that kicked off in his stomping grounds of North Bergen, then proceeded south down through Guttenberg, and culminated at City Hall in West New York. I would estimate there were somewhere between two and four thousand people there — but don’t hold me to that, because attempting to guess crowd sizes always leads to trouble. In any event, the participants were substantially more rabid than I would expect to see at any “pro-Israel” rally under present circumstances. And I say “rabid” not necessarily as a pejorative — just to capture how uninhibited and enthusiastically expressive these Cuban-American rally-goers were. It’s likely a function of Cuban-Americans operating within their own relatively-more-insular political/demographic subgroup than “pro-Israel” factions.
Sometimes referred to as “Havana on the Hudson,” this area is populated by the largest enclave of Cuban-Americans outside Florida. Hudson County is also a place where you can simultaneously serve as a NJ State Senator and Mayor, which is absolutely brilliant for accumulating and entrenching political cache, as well as accumulating and entrenching one’s public pension. Brian Stack has been mayor of Union City for nearly 21 years, and a simultaneous NJ State Senator for 13. (Four years of faithful NJ Assembly service before that.)
Brian Stack (center) Nicholas Sacco (left) and Hudson County Sheriff Frank Schillari (right) all declared support for US military action against Cuba As one of the few English-speakers addressing the rally, Stack really let loose and explicitly called for a US military invasion of Cuba. “The same as we’ve liberated other countries,” he subsequently told me. “We should’ve been in Cuba many many years ago… just like we went in and liberated Kuwait.” He continued, “Cuba, no doubt about it — this should be a democracy. And we have a great opportunity now with something that’s 90 miles off the Florida Keys, to make it a democracy.”
Asked (by me) whether recent US military inventions should inspire confidence in the success of this plan he was proposing, Stack said: “Listen, I’m not here to judge the invasions around the world.”
Fortunately for those who regard a potential US invasion of Cuba as insane, Brian Stack doesn’t have direct influence over the conduct of US foreign policy. He’s an elected official in one of the few parts of the country where there is genuinely a mass constituency for US military action against Cuba, and from the standpoint of political self-interest his rabble-rousing activities are perfectly explicable. But he does have influence over Democratic Party machine politics in New Jersey. As a resident of the area, I can attest that there are currently campaign billboards all over the place emblazoned with his photo smiling alongside Gov. Phil Murphy, with both having just prevailed in uncontested Democratic state primaries. (Although, side note: Stack is one of the many New Jersey Democratic power brokers who endorsed Chris Christie.)
And he was not a mere participant at this “Cuban Liberation” extravaganza; Stack personally organized the rally on 24 hours’ notice along with fellow Democratic mayors Nicholas Sacco, Wayne Zitt, and Gabriel Rodriguez. So this was effectively a state-run and state-endorsed event, which is a curious contrast with other forms of less “official” public protest. (Avowed state-backing was also a feature of many “BLM” rallies that took place last summer.)
Sacco is another quintessentially NJ political creature. Amazingly, he’s been mayor of North Bergen since 1991 and a State Senator since 1994, thus drawing two public salaries (“double-dipping”) for a whopping 27 years. This dual office-holding practice was legislatively banned in 2008, but Sacco was “grandfathered” in, as was Stack. That frees them both up to engage in a little military intervention advocacy on the side. “If it takes the force and strength of the United States, it should be used to free those people,” the famed double-dipper Sacco declared Tuesday.
While anything could happen, it’s doubtful that Joe Biden will accede to these demands for military intervention. But in some ways, the pro-intervention advocacy on display in New Jersey could be even more influential on a Democratic administration than the pro-intervention advocacy also rabidly underway in South Florida, where Cubans are more reliably Republican. (GOP mayor of Miami Francis Suarez just called for US airstrikes.) Hudson County, NJ on the other hand is a major Democratic stronghold, and so calls for military action emanating out of it could scramble some of the expected partisan configurations surrounding the issue.
But perhaps most importantly, Union City is the political base of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a former Senate colleague of Biden and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He preceded Stack as mayor of Union City. While Menendez generally takes a predictably hard line on Cuba policy, just as he does on most other foreign policy issues including Israel and Iran, as yet he’s refrained from following in the footsteps of his mayoral successor Stack to endorse outright military intervention. (Although he did just proclaim this week on MSNBC, “We Have To Challenge The Regime,” whatever that means exactly.) Here is what Juan Pachon, a spokesperson for Menendez, told me:
To answer your question, Chairman Menendez was absolutely clear at a press gaggle earlier this week in saying there will NOT be military invasion or intervention in Cuba. I’ll let you quote from him but he went through the history of how even the most anti-regime and anti-communist presidents going back to Reagan had never entertained that as a real possibility. To my boss, that is exactly the type of rhetoric and theories that the regime wants to push
So, that’s the best indicator one’s likely to get that no military intervention is in the cards. In the Biden-to-Trump transition, Menendez has supplanted Marco Rubio (R-FL) as the most influential Senator on the matter vis-a-vis Executive Branch policy. Rubio, no doubt smarting from his demotion as Trump Administration pointman for fomenting regime change across Latin America — with his fevered antics having backfired spectacularly in Venezuela — now has limited sway. He’ll have to content himself with whipping up Twitter frenzies, and sporting a brand new repurposed Communist “raised fist” logo as his profile pic.
Yes, the woman holding this sign explicitly wanted “help” in the form of a US military intervention It should not be under-stated how fervently these Cuban-American populations want concrete US military action. With the exception of one sole person, every rally attendee I spoke to was explicit that the “help” they were seeking from the US was a military intervention. I deliberately did not “cherry-pick” these answers — it was the clear sentiment of Cubans-Americans engaging in public activism right now.
No matter how alienated the US populace is purported to be with US interventionism after so many failed misadventures of late, the logic of interventionism always seems to resurface. Which makes sense, given that the US is one of the few countries with the capacity to overthrow foreign governments at will. As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is reported to have once said: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
It’s extremely easy to posture as an “anti-interventionist” in the abstract — few would overtly brand as a committed “interventionist” these days — and then throw your skepticism out the window when it comes to specific circumstances in which you think it’d be a great idea to deploy US power to topple a foreign government.
Read the rest of the report here.Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 22:20 - Mountain West Attracts New Residents
Mountain West Attracts New Residents
Idaho is America’s fastest-growing state, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Its population increased by 2.1 percent to almost 1.8 million from July 2018 to June 2019. Nevada is the second fastest growing state, followed by Arizona.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, new residents moving in from other parts of the U.S. have for some years been responsible for the population increase in the U.S.’ three fastest-growing states in the Mountain West and Southwest of the country. The fourth fastest-growing state, Utah, is growing because of an excess of births over deaths.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Ten U.S. states decreased in population – if only slightly – between the two years.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, New York state was among them.
The state has lost population due to a decline in immigration that used to make up for people moving away. Population decline affected states in the Northeast as well as West Virginia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska and Hawaii.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 22:00 - The News Killed Satire
The News Killed Satire
Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Given what they say every day, how would you tell the difference between solemn official announcements and mischievous satire?
A couple of years ago a colleague suggested the idea that a group of us attempt to counter the rising passion of anti-Russia propaganda by satirising it. My reaction was that that was probably going to be a waste of effort because – this was in Trump’s time with Rachel Maddow and the rest spewing ever more preposterous conspiracy notions 24/7 – they were already well past the point of even being capable of noticing satire.
Nothing has made me change my mind since. Read this, for example, from Australia’s most-read newspaper – it’s about China but the point stands.
In other words, to distract the West from noticing the millions of Uyghurs shackled together in chain gangs tearing down mosques while being force-fed pork sandwiches, the communist dictators in Beijing have unleashed stories of cute cuddly animals. How could anybody satirise that? And if someone tried, would anyone notice that it was satire? How would you tell the difference between satire and earnest pronouncements from “scholars” at “think” tanks? Cuddly elephants are believable but cuddly pandas are over the top?
Or how about the BBC solemnly explaining three years ago How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon. What’s next? Putin weaponises cheese? Oops, Masha Gessen’s already done that with her unforgettable paean to
Putin weaponises your breakfast cereal! Falls rather flat after that, doesn’t it? All you’re left with is killer squids – nope, that’s been done too: Is 14-legged killer squid found TWO MILES beneath Antarctica being weaponised by Putin? (That cunning Putin has even managed to add six killer tentacles to the octopod – another breakthrough in Russian darkside science!) Beluga whales? No, too late!
In 2018 Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, which modestly describes itself as “the premier destination for in-depth analysis of daily headlines”, spent nearly three in-depth minutes explaining in depth that Russia had a border with North Korea which, somehow, showed that Putin’s stooge Trump was doing something horrible. Watch it yourself, unless you have a root canal appointment you’d rather go to. Again, satirise that! Now it is possible that she was performing an education service for those Americans who thought North Korea was in Australia or Oman. But, on the other hand, given that a court determined that
Perhaps it already was a sort of satire.
These “news” items above are, of course, themselves deflections. The Uyghur stories are mostly nonsense as this former believer explains. The torn-down mosques are selectively-used satellite pictures as this explains (and here’s the ever-ready Bellingcat selectively using the very same pictures). And the witnesses are always changing their stories as documented here. So it’s not actually Beijing that’s using stories about wandering elephants to distract attention, in fact: it’s just the other way around. Putin’s “weaponised humour” was directed at the ever-changing Skripal story – here is a short list of the preposterosities the officials expect us to swallow – so the BBC’s accusation is another deflection from reality. Weaponising cheese was anti-Putin nonsense that has already blown up now that Russia is basically self-sufficient in food – just another missed prediction from her ever-expanding list. As to Maddow, well she’s still weaving a Brownian movement of dots into webs of Russian conspiracies.
In the past I’ve done my own attempts at collecting the ever-churning nonsense about Russia and Putin that we’ve been subjected to: here in 2015 (Asperger’s syndrome, gunslinger walk), in 2019 at the height of the Trumputin insanity – remember this one?: Trump wanting to buy Greenland is yet another sign of Putin’s puppetry. How do you satirise that? Or this disgusting cartoon from the source of “All the News that’s Fit to Print“; that’s already been turned up so far past eleven that no satirist could turn the volume higher.
I challenge any satirist to do a skit on how four years of shrieking about Putin’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election came to a sudden slamming stop with the most secure election in history of 2020. Did Putin & his league of spooks suddenly forget how to rig foreign elections after, we were told, many many successful attempts? Was there a change of heart in the Kremlin and they tearfully realised it was wrong to swing foreign elections? Did they decide Biden would be better than Trump in their scheme to bring down the USA? Did Putin’s stooge Trump somehow so fortify the American election system that Putin was unable to put him back in? Has Rachel Maddow ever explained what happened? Or the WaPo? Or CNN? Four years of ranting about Putin’s control of US elections disappeared in an instant. Widespread knowledge of Why US Elections Are So Vulnerable to Russian Hacking turned, overnight, into a despicable conspiracy theory – Donald Trump’s Big Lie explained. And this at a time, mind you, when Russian hackers were supposedly hacking everything in the USA except its election. Satirise that, if you dare.
Of course the real answer is obvious: this time the “right guy” won and there was no need to invent a Russian collusion story to weaken the “wrong guy”.
So, when the need disappeared, so did the story and US elections became airtight again. But how do you satirise that? They knew what they were doing and telling the truth was the least part of it.
Which brings us to the real point and the reason why satire is a waste of time: you’re not supposed to remember the details; they don’t put details into their propaganda stories so you can remember them and compare them with other details. Not at all: the point is to leave an impression behind. In the foregoing case the object was to leave a bad smell around Trump’s victory – it was somehow – the details changed but the smell remained – wrong and illegitimate. Pee tapes came and went, Mueller rose and fell, Maddow found a map; always something new when the last thing rolled away. Satire can’t touch that – by the time the satirist has got his skit together about pussies, it’s time for the “all 17 intelligence agencies”; when the Mueller prayer candles burn out, Putin’s bribing Afghans to do what they happily do for free. But always Trump is somehow – can’t quite remember exactly how – suspiciously linked to an evil – forgotten the details there too, but undeniably evil – foreign bad guy. The show rolls along always with a new squirrel to distract you.
One of the delights of the Biden/Harris Administration is the return of old favourites.
Here’s John Kirby explaining in 2014 why it’s Russia’s fault that it’s at NATO’s doorstep and, returned in 2021 as Pentagon spokesman, why Russia was “typically” disinforming us about firing warning shots at HMS Defender. I defy anyone to satirise that. Masters of BS – can’t say anything more than that, can you? Psaki and Kirby, together again. And where’s Harf, no mean practitioner herself? Prove them liars, they don’t care.
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.
For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. (Harry G Frankfurt: On Bullshit)
For satire to be effective, there must be some connection to reality; but these people don’t care about reality so there can’t be any satire. Putin weaponises humour, children’s cartoons, vaccines and many more – here’s a list – but, O would-be satirist, anything you can imagine is probably already been solemnly discussed by the usual consortium of ex-security organ apparatchiks posing as objective experts.
And, given what they say every day, how would you tell the difference between solemn official announcements and mischievous satire anyway?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 21:40 - "Woke" Pregnant Man Emojis Could Be Introduced This Year
“Woke” Pregnant Man Emojis Could Be Introduced This Year
The next emoji draft list was revealed Thursday by Emojipedia and contained a gender-neutral “person with crown,” interracial handshakes, and what appears to be a mustached “pregnant man.”
Emojipedia blog appears to be highlighting their level of wokeness as they say the mustached pregnant man emoji “recognizes that pregnancy is possible for some transgender men and non-binary people.”
The creative minds, especially behind the pregnant man emoji, might be confused since men can’t get pregnant. Perhaps the emoji is just a man with a beer gut experiencing heartburn.
Emoji fans are now voting on their favorite emojis in a draft that ends Saturday. “This isn’t a part of the approval process, just a fun way to gauge which draft emojis people are most keen to use. So get voting, and the winner will be revealed on July 17 aka World Emoji Day,” Emojipedia blog said.
Here’s the latest draft list of woke emojis.
Once selected, the most popular emoji will be finalized in September and released on Goggle Pixel in the fourth quarter and on Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and Samsung Galaxy within the first half of 2022.
The use of emojis has been soaring worldwide.
Twitter users mocked the pregnant man emoji:
I’m really over this pregnant man bullshit https://t.co/GT0vZxQaft
— Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) July 15, 2021
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Just a little reminder that under no circumstances can men get pregnant. https://t.co/TfkjAG7YAV
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) July 15, 2021
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Buzzing that the “after Sunday dinner” emoji is finally here 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 https://t.co/5PeOgmBn4Z pic.twitter.com/sfpCsBJhld
— Rich Glover (@rich_glover89) July 15, 2021
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The level of wokeness today defies logic. Perhaps it’s time for some people to wake up.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 21:20 - Taibbi: The Myth Of The Winnable Culture War
Taibbi: The Myth Of The Winnable Culture War
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
In response to the predictably voluminous criticisms of yesterday’s article, “Spying and Smearing is ‘Un-American,’ not Tucker Carlson”:
I disagree with Tucker Carlson on a variety of issues. I’m not saying this to “distance myself,” but rather to make a point that imagine he’d agree with, also the point of the article: there’s a difference between disagreeing, and what we’ve begun to do in media since Trump’s arrival.
Take one of Carlson’s most-criticized recent statements:
#Tucker: Why does America benefit from having tons of people from failing countries come here? @FoxNews
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 30, 2017
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I disagree with the assumption that people who come to America from countries more dysfunctional than ours will bring the problems of their home countries with them. It’s an oft-cited statistic, but Nigerian immigrants are the most educated people in America, with 61% holding at least a Bachelor’s degree, nearly twice the rate of both native-born Americans and immigrants overall. There are similar numbers involving immigrants from South Asia, Korea, China, and other parts of the world.
Were this a debate with Carlson, I’d argue that conservatives are the ones who should be howling for more immigration, as three out of four naturalized immigrants say they are “very proud” of being Americans. This is a much higher number than native-born Americans, 69% of whom say they are “ashamed” of some parts of our culture (just 39% of immigrants agree). Immigrants work at a higher rate than native-born Americans, their children are educated at higher rates, and maybe the most patriotic.
He’d counter, and I can imagine what some of those arguments would be. But he’d be happy to have the debate. He might change my mind about some things, perhaps I’d change his about others. The other day, he described looking on Twitter after the Cuba situation blew up. “Three separate prominent conservative figures were against American intervention,” he said. “That’s change.”
The perception that conservatives don’t change their minds is as stupid as my belief that liberals would never cozy up to the CIA and NSA turned out to be. Conservative attitudes toward war, gay rights, surveillance and a host of other issues have shifted radically in recent years. Also, people don’t act and think solely as groups, as there’s enormous variance within every demographic. Pretending otherwise is a pernicious media myth. But I’m getting off track.
Here’s what we do now, instead of arguing: we fling terms like “white supremacist,” “transphobe,” “conspiracy theorist,” and “fascist” around, knowing that if the words stick, they lead to outcomes: boycotts, firings, removal from Internet platforms, etc. When Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy compare Carlson to Alex Jones, they do this knowing Jones was booted off the Internet, so it’s a not-so-subtle way of voting for that same outcome.
Fine, many of you will say; I want Tucker Carlson booted off the air, and the Internet. I’d argue there are a lot of problems with thinking that way (this is exactly what censorship proponents said they wouldn’t do three years ago when the Jones situation happened, i.e. start arguing for removal of more mainstream conservatives), but beyond that, the technique isn’t limited just to Carlson.
When Ezra Klein proposed an open borders policy to Bernie Sanders years ago, Sanders balked, saying it was a Koch Brothers idea designed to provide big companies with cheap labor. Pundits were apoplectic. “Bernie Sanders’s fear of immigrant labor is ugly — and wrongheaded,” decried Vox. The Guardian said he’d fueled “domestic, nativist sentiments,” while Jacobin said he’d “played into a right-wing nativist trap.” Buzzfeed later compared his stance to that of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, “known for his anti-immigrant, white nationalist rhetoric.”
Sanders spent much of his five years as a presidential contender fending off such not-so-subtle accusations of racism, nativism, misogyny, “toxicity,” being “alt-right” and “alt-left,” being a “white savior figure,” being a useful idiot for Russia, even anti-Semitism. When he criticized the press, or talked about “elites,” he was accused of being Trump. There was very little direct engagement with him on his policy beliefs, and a lot more rhetoric aimed at him as a person, most of which was unanswerable.
Sanders, who was popular in the same media spaces I worked in, where being labeled a bigot is the worst thing imaginable, never quite figured out how to deal with these criticisms. He tried to change his message downplaying “identity politics,” proposed a near-total moratorium on deportations, and repeatedly made the mistake of validating bogus or bad-faith criticisms of him, for instance agreeing that online “Bernie Bros” were “disgusting” and pledging to do something about “that crap.
None of it worked, and criticisms only intensified. He should have called out the tactic. Regarding Bernie Bros: all candidate bases have vicious online communities, and some are filled with clearly paid instigators, who even win praise in other outlets writing about other candidates. The Los Angeles Times saluted Kamala Harris for nurturing an effective “modern political army” in the “K-Hive,” which had trolls writing all sorts of racist and lurid things, like “Gotta kill, very violently.” As Matt Orfalea in Grayzone pointed out, the hypocrisy in the treatments of the two movements was transparent, as seen in this pair of Daily Beast headlines:
This has become our whole style of political argument: hit someone with an unanswerable accusation and then, as Lyndon Johnson would say, make the sonofabitch deny it.
It’s why so much effort was spent denouncing “economic anxiety” as code for racism, why Hillary Clinton accused both Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard of being foreign assets, why the New Yorker ran a story arguing Glenn Greenwald’s criticism of Russiagate was rooted in his disdain for “the ascendance of women and people of color in the [Democratic] Party,” why Cenk Uygur is accusing “alt left” enemies of being “paid by the Russians,” why Current Affairs went after impossibly congenial podcast host Krystal Ball by accusing cohort Saagar Enjeti of being a human gateway drug to Hitler, why critics went after Substack by claiming it was racist and transphobic (or, most amusingly lately, “bad for democracy”), why former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for putting the lives of black staff “in danger” by running a Tom Cotton editorial, and, yes, why Andrew Weissman went after Carlson by saying sowing distrust in the NSA is “un-American.”
These are all debate-pre-emptive strategies. When Clinton went after Gabbard, we stopped talking about whether or not military intervention in Syria was a good idea, and moved to debating whether Gabbard was an accomplice to genocide. Critics of Russiagate from the start had to calculate their appetites for being accused of supporting Putin or Trump. Anyone even considering going on Fox now can expect to spend years answering questions about abetting fascism and white supremacy. Argument goes out the door: the discourse becomes entirely about courage and career risk. How much flak are you willing to take? How much can you afford to take?
This is why people who probably have very different or even opposite politics on the policy level, like Greenwald and Carlson, are suddenly in a broadcast partnership. They’re part of a dwindling club left in major media who are defying these tactics. In a hypothetical universe where this moral panic era subsides, one could envision them going back to violently arguing with one another over immigration, spending, policing, etc. But for now they’re on the same side, not on issues, but against a tactic.
It’s become fashionable especially in Democratic Party politics (but more lately on the Republican side, too) to embrace this maximalist form of debate on the grounds that it works. De-platforming works, boycotts work, shaming works, they say; shaming is how we effect change. These people like to point to the fact that Alex Jones is effectively a non-factor in public life now, and Milo Yiannopoulos has vanished, even Donald Trump is a sideshow, and so on.
Two things about this. One, just because you can’t see someone anymore, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Donald Trump’s 74 million supporters haven’t disappeared just because Trump’s off Twitter. They’re now listening in the tens of millions to shows like Steve Bannon’s War Room. True, advertisers are mass-boycotting Carlson, but if they succeed in getting his show pulled, that audience won’t go to CNN, they’ll find some other haven. Maybe their next broadcast guru will be someone who doesn’t ask Sidney Powell for evidence of election fraud, doesn’t warn about Covid-19 early, doesn’t argue against war in Iran or Syria. If you’re going to try to eliminate this or that voice, be aware there’s a downstream calculation involved that may not turn out the way you think.
Point two is related: rhetorical coercion tends to backfire. For all the relentless messaging about how Trump’s racism left nonwhite voters with only one choice last fall — an idea symbolized by Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff “You ain’t black” comment — Trump gained with every nonwhite demographic last fall. This was an eyebrow-raising political story, but an absolutely extraordinary media story, one that spoke to the fact that even mass quantities of certain types of messaging can be counterproductive.
Remember how Republicans in the Bush era talked about blue-state enemies? Their conventional wisdom was that liberals equated with terrorists, liberalism was a “mental disorder,” liberalism was “treason.” Their rhetoric did not include a vision for the other half of America outside of conversion or expulsion. Plenty of this is still going on, but the updated version is prevalent now among Democrats, who are trying to make a strategy of absolute non-engagement stick with additional tools like platform censorship and domestic surveillance.
As any married person knows, there are certain words you never say in a fight, because you’ll still be living together when it’s over. Americans, like it or not, are married to one another. That’s not accommodationist talk, it’s just fact. The people we disagree with aren’t going anywhere, and it makes more sense to talk to them than not.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 21:00 - Betting On The Everything Bubble: Governments Worldwide Are Testing The New Limits Of Debt
Betting On The Everything Bubble: Governments Worldwide Are Testing The New Limits Of Debt
There’s nothing quite like being an observer of what is likely going to be one of the most important case studies in monetary policy and global economics in textbooks some years from now: the everything bubble.
Among those taking stock of just how far countries around the globe have “pushed it” with the amount of debt they have taken on is the Wall Street Journal, who wrote this week about how the pandemic has inflated the everything bubble further than anyone could have imagined.
Those advocating for the debt say it could usher in global growth. Those opposing it make the obvious case that eventually the laws of economics will get the best of things and we’ll have to ‘pay the piper’.
Highlighting just how much we’re pushing it, the report notes that the U.S. government is on course for a budget deficit of $3 trillion for the second year in a row and that Japan’s central-government debt is about to surpass a quadrillion yen, or about $10 trillion. Japan’s inflation has stayed at zero despite $800 billion in economic stimulus as a response to Covid.
Worldwide government debt is up to 105% of GDP as of 2020. Prior to the pandemic, this number stood at 88%. The IIF predicts that this worldwide debt could rise by another $10 trillion this year, to reach $92 trillion.
Even countries like Greece – not far removed from almost being forced out of the Eurozone due to its debt – are pushing limits again. Former Italian finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan said: “The change is that there is no obvious ‘sinner’. After the financial crisis, there was a blame game. Covid was an exogenous shock. A huge policy response was necessary.”
Not unlike an addict, the higher inflation goes, the more inexpensive government debt eventually becomes to pay back. The lower rates go (and stay), the higher the incentive to keep taking on debt.
While most of the world adopts this careless strategy, countries like China and oil producing countries in the Middle East have been adding to their savings by running trade surpluses and putting the proceeds into U.S. Treasury bonds.
But believe it or not, there are some who simply think rates can stay low and inflation can run hot forever. Summing up the method of thinking for those advocating for unlimited debt is Paul Sheard, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He said: “The world has changed. The intellectual frameworks have evolved. We don’t need to worry about debt.”
Advocates at J.P. Morgan claim that the U.S.’s rate of borrowing “will barely make a dent in global gross savings, which are worth more than $25 trillion a year,” the Journal reports.
Elena Duggar, associate managing director of credit strategy and research at Moody’s Investors Service, said: “There’s something that saves the advanced economies from that pickup in debt we see, and it’s the low debt-servicing costs.”
But critics point out the obvious: spending in the U.S. has simply gotten out of control and we may have already let the inflation “genie” out of the bottle, which could decimate quality of life for many middle and lower class Americans.
Charles Goodhart, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee and an emeritus professor at the London School of Economics thinks that governments are learning that reactions like those we took in 2008 “work” at the same time they are beginning to “fail”. In other words, he thinks we’re behind the 8-ball in how we’re addressing current policy versus historical policy.
“The generals are always fighting the last war. Governments didn’t do enough before, so they’re going to overdo it this time,” he said.
“If you look at the path of global fiscal policy, it’s a massive bet on the secular stagnation hypothesis. It’s a bet on a massive private savings glut and investment dearth for a long time to come,” Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said in 2014.
De Grauwe concluded: “There are still limits to government debt. They are just much further out than we used to think.”
You can read the full WSJ writeup here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 20:40 - 'Defund the Police' Advocate Rep. Cori Bush Spent $54,000 On Private Security Company: FEC
‘Defund the Police’ Advocate Rep. Cori Bush Spent $54,000 On Private Security Company: FEC
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Congresswoman Cori Bush speaks during her election-night watch party on Nov. 3, 2020. (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images) Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a member of the far-left “squad,” spent over $50,000 on a private security firm over the past three months, according to campaign filings.
Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings show her campaign spent more than $54,000 on RS&T Security Consulting, LLC., for “security services” between April 15 and June 28.
A cached version of RS&T Security Consulting’s website—which is offline—shows the business provides “executive protection agents” for “first-class executive protection and security for national and international figures.” It’s not clear why the website was taken down or if the business is still active.
The website also shows Secret Service-like agents as an example of what services are provided.
“Our Protection Specialists are highly skilled in a multitude of armed and unarmed protective services, surveillance system instillations and private investigative services,” the website says. “Our diverse close protection teams are trained, licensed personnel whom are experts in the private and public sector in 136 cities throughout the United States,” it adds.
She also paid $15,000 to a Nathaniel Davis for “security services” around the same time. It’s unclear who Davis is or what services he offered, although Davis’s address in the filings is the same as Bush’s campaign headquarters, Fox News reported.
Since she was elected into office, Bush has consistently called for defunding or “transforming” police departments. When various cities cut police funding in the midst of left-wing riots and demonstrations last year, the Missouri Democrat cheered the move.
“Today’s decision to defund the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is historic. It marks a new future for our city,” Bush said in an April statement when the City of St. Louis stripped funding to the St. Louis Police Department. “For decades, our city funneled more and more money into our police department under the guise of public safety, while massively underinvesting in the resources that will truly keep our communities safe,” Bush added.
Bush also praised the City of Austin, Texas, for defunding its police department.
“Defunding the police isn’t radical, it’s real,” she wrote in January on Twitter of the move.
Other than Bush, fellow “squad” members Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have also spent their campaign funds on private security—although apparently not nearly as much as Bush has. According to FEC filings, Ocasio-Cortez spent about $4,000, Omar paid $2,800, and Pressley paid $3,500.
Bush, meanwhile, spent $35,000 on security services from RS&T, Maryland-based private security firm Whole Armor Executive Protection, and Davis during the first three months of 2021, federal records show.
The Epoch Times reached out to Bush’s office for comment.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 20:20 - Olympic Staffer Hospitalized In First Serious COVID Case Tied To Summer Games
Olympic Staffer Hospitalized In First Serious COVID Case Tied To Summer Games
It’s ironic that despite all the efforts undertaken by the Games organizers to ensure the safety of Olympic athletes during the upcoming Tokyo Summer Games will likely be all for naught – as the Games seems almost pre-destined to be labeled a “super spreader event’ after the fact.
Even though spectators have been banned from all Olympic events, a Nigerian delegate has become the first visitor to Japan admitted to the hospital after testing positive for COVID, according to local media reports.
The delegate, who isn’t an athlete, is in their 60s. They tested positive Thursday as Tokyo reported a new record tally of daily new cases.
What’s more, athletes are already testing positive. On Friday, the Australian Olympic Committee revealed that tennis player Alex de Minaur, who is ranked 15th in the world, has tested positive prior to his departure for the Games, meaning he will need to sit out the competition for which he has been training for years.
“We’re very disappointed for Alex,” said Australia’s chef de mission, Ian Chesterman. “He said that he’s shattered, not being able to come … but he has sent his very best wishes for the rest of the team.”
De Minaur returned two positive tests in Spain before he was due to fly to Japan, David Hughes, the AOC’s chief medical officer, told a news conference.
In the US, USA Basketball revealed Thursday that Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal had tested positive. Other athletes and staff associated with the Games have tested positive in Tokyo and abroad as Delta drives cases higher. Japan has aggressively accelerated its vaccine rollout, but only 30% of its adult population has received at least one dose.
But COVID isn’t the only issue plaguing the Olympics. On Friday, a top Japanese government spokesman Katsunobu Kato revealed that a Ugandan athlete had gone missing. Police and the team’s host city, Izumisano in western Japan, are mounting a search, he said. Izumisano city authorities identified the missing athlete as 20-year-old weightlifter Julius Ssekitoleko.
With the Games set to begin next week, Tokyo is confirming new COVID infections at the fastest pace in six months.
The disaster that the Olympics have become is having a serious backlash for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, as millions of Japanese feel they have been robbed of the pomp and celebration (not to mention the economic boost) that typically accompany an Olympics hosting duty. The latest polls show support for Suga is teetering just north of the “danger zone” – less than 30%. That’s the level below which many of Suga’s predecessors have either quit, or been forced out.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 20:00 - Biden Mulls Intervention In Cuba To Provide WiFi Remotely
Biden Mulls Intervention In Cuba To Provide WiFi Remotely
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
The US is considering ways to provide the people of Cuba with internet access, President Biden said on Thursday. The Cuban government reportedly cut off internet access in response to protests that took place earlier in the week, but according to AFP, the access was restored Wednesday, although social media sites are still restricted.
“They have cut off access to the internet. We are considering whether we have the technological ability to reinstate that access,” Biden said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Supporters of Cuba protests in Tampa this week, via AP. It’s not clear how the US would provide internet inside Cuba since the government would likely view it as a violation of sovereignty. Biden made the comments after Florida Governor Ron Desantis sent the president a letter urging for the federal government to take action to restore the internet. Desantis insisted that the technology to do it remotely exists.
“Technology exists to provide Internet access into Cuba remotely, using the innovation of American enterprise and the diverse industries here,” Desantis wrote. He drew parallels to the Cold War when the US government-funded radio broadcasting into the Soviet Union.
“Similar to the American efforts to broadcast radio into the Soviet Union during the Cold War in Europe, the federal government has a history of supporting the dissemination of information into Cuba for the Cuban people through Radio & Televisión Martí, located in Miami,” he said.
Radio & Televisión Martí is a US state-funded radio broadcaster that started in the 1980s to transmit news into Cuba. It was based on the model of Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, which was initially funded by the CIA and broadcast in Soviet states.
“I urge you to act immediately to provide all necessary authorizations, indemnifications, and funding to American businesses with the capability to provide Internet access for the people of Cuba. Steps must be taken immediately,” Desantis wrote.
The people of Cuba are engaged in the noble cause of fighting against a communist dictatorship. One of the most effective things we can do as a country to support the Cuban people is to get internet connectivity back on the island. Time is of the essence in Cuba.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) July 15, 2021
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On Tuesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accused the US of inciting unrest in Cuba through a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #SOSCuba. It’s not clear if the US government was involved in the Twitter campaign, but Washington has a history of trying to use social media to stir unrest in Cuba.
In 2010, the US launched a social media network in Cuba that used text messages known as ZunZuneo. US government documents revealed in 2014 showed that the idea of the project was to develop a “Cuban Twitter” that would build a userbase using “non-controversial content.” Then, when there were a substantial number of users, the US operator would introduce political content to form “smart mobs” to rally against the government.
ZunZuneo reached a peak of 40,000 users, but was dissolved in 2012. While it sounds like a CIA project, ZunZuneo was funded by the US Agency for International Development.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 19:40 - Federal Judge Rules DACA Is Illegal, Blocking New Applications
Federal Judge Rules DACA Is Illegal, Blocking New Applications
DACA, the Obama-era program that gave illegal immigrants brought to the US as children protected status, is now facing serious legal jeopardy after a Federal Judge in Texas invalidated the initiative in a ruling that declared it illegal. It will (at least temporarily) block all new applications to the program.
However, the ruling, handed down by Judge Andrew Hanen of the US District Court in Houston, would bar future applications but does not immediately cancel current permits for hundreds of thousands of people. Nuances in the judge’s decision will allow the program to stand – for now, at least.
The DACA program offers temporary protections to any immigrants in the country without legal authorization who were 30 or younger when it was first introduced. To qualify, DACA recipients must have arrived in the US by 2007, before they turned 16, and they must satisfy other conditions like being a student or graduate and having no major criminal record. Obama created the program by executive fiat after a bill called the Dream Act failed to pass Congress. Recipients are often referred to by Democrats and the media as “Dreamers”, a label dreamed up by Democratic political strategists.
If the government can’t “rectify” the judge’s complaints – something that would likely require Congressional action – then the program may be scrapped altogether. So far, the program has extended legal status to roughly 800k illegal migrants brought to the US as children.
SCOTUS has already ruled on DACA in the past, but an expected legal challenge by the Biden Administration will likely see the issue wind up in front of the court once again.
The state of Texas led the effort to terminate the program, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia. Officials in those states had argued that the program was improperly adopted and left them with the burden of paying for education, health care and other benefits for the migrant children.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 19:20 - The Greens Hijack Biden's $3.5 Trillion Budget Proposal (That Could Be A Blessing)
The Greens Hijack Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Budget Proposal (That Could Be A Blessing)
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
The Democrats’ Congressional proposals keep getting sillier and sillier…
Deal or No Deal?
BREAKING: Clean Electricty Standard is included in budget deal.
CES is the cornerstone of the progressive, practical transformation to a clean energy future we urgently need.
— Senator Tina Smith (@SenTinaSmith) July 14, 2021
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“Deal” means agreement among radicals. The Greens hijacked Biden’s already strained budget.
Clean Electricity Standard
Please consider Reconciliation Package to Include Clean Electricity Standard.
In an interview with The Hill prior to her tweet, Smith, who is crafting the clean electricity standard legislation with Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), said she had expected the standard to be part of the legislation.
The senator also told The Hill that while the details of the standard will have to be worked out in negotiations, she’s hoping to see a requirement for 80 percent clean electricity by 2030.
“My goal is to get to 100 percent clean electricity as soon as possible. President Biden’s goal is to be doing it by 2035,” she said, referencing Senate rules that allow reconciliation bills to raise the deficit for no more than 10 years.
White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy has said that the clean electricity standard is among her priorities for the legislation.
Smith said she’d include power coming from wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric or nuclear — and fossil fuels only when they use carbon capture technology to prevent their emissions from going into the atmosphere.
Smith also stressed the importance of the clean energy standard, calling it the “centerpiece of our strategy for addressing climate change.”
She said she opposes partial credit for unabated natural gas, which is less carbon-intensive than coal and oil, but still emits planet-warming gases.
Taxing Imports is Part of the Plan
The New York Times reports Taxing Imports is Part of the Plan.
Democrats have agreed to include a tax on imports from nations that lack aggressive climate change policies as part of a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget plan stocked with other provisions aimed at ratcheting down fossil fuel pollution in the United States.
The move to tax imports was made public Wednesday, the same day that the European Union outlined its own proposal for a similar carbon border tax, a novel tool that is designed to protect domestic manufacturing while simultaneously pressuring other countries to reduce the emissions that are warming the planet.
Unlike the Europeans, who outlined their plan in a 291-page document, Democrats released no details about their tax proposal on Wednesday. Calling it simply a “polluter import fee,” the framework does not explain what would be taxed, at what rate or how much revenue it would expect to generate.
Carbon Emissions in Tons
Carbon Emission Percentages
Economic Madness
The US only accounts for 14.5% of carbons and the EU another 8%.
It is well beyond crazy for the US and EU to propose to tax the word to reduce carbons by 55-80% by 2030.
Yet, that is the goal of economic illiterates on both continents.
EU Kicks Off Biggest Push Yet on Climate, Braces for a Fight
Meanwhile, in Europe, EU Kicks Off Biggest Push Yet on Climate, Braces for a Fight.
The European Union rolled out an ambitious climate plan to transform every corner of its economy on Wednesday, and braced for years of tough negotiations to turn it into reality.
Every industry will be forced to accelerate its shift away from fossil fuels in order to cut pollution by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. To achieve that, the bloc will bring new industries such as shipping into what’s already the world’s largest carbon market; ban new combustion-engine cars by 2035; impose new costs on dirty home heating; and force the aviation industry to emit less and pay more.
“Nothing we presented today is going to be easy. It’s going to be bloody hard,” European Commission climate chief Frans Timmermans said. But he said the “existential threat which is the climate crisis” called for radical steps.
EU officials are at pains to emphasize that the transformation must be fair. The bloc has earmarked 72 billion euros ($85.1 billion) in a new fund to help compensate those who lose out, with the money –which is based on current prices — coming from the expanded market for carbon emissions.
291-Page Document No One Can Explain
The EU border tax is scheduled for 2026. European officials propose a phase-in period to figure out how the tax would actually work in practice to give time for countries to prepare.
“Europe was the first continent to declare to be climate neutral in 2050, and now we are the very first ones to put a concrete roadmap on the table,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Blessing in Disguise?
yes. To understand why, first let’s take a look at what is happening beneath the surface in the EU, then the US Senate.
Eurointelligence discusses Opposition to 2035 CO2 Phase-Out
FAZ writes this morning that there is opposition within the European Commission to the phasing-out of the fuel-driven motor car by 2035. Valdis Dombrovkis, Commission vice president, and Thierry Breton and Adina Valean, commissioners for the internal market and transport, favour a postponement to 2040. This debate reminds of us of the postponement of the exit from coal in Germany, which has been put back to 2038. What is happening right now all over Europe is that governments and the Commission are buckling under pressure from industry, and are choosing the soft option of delaying most of the adjustment to the next decade.
Among governments, France is leading to those who favour 2040 as an exit. A 14-year transition phase is beyond the life span of current management boards of car companies. It’s the next guy’s problem.
The other area of disagreement concerns interim targets. The original Commission proposal foresaw a 65% reduction until 2030. Realistically, that would only be achievable if manufacturers already start making and selling electric cars in large quantities by then. It will be interesting to see whether this number, too, will be watered down. If you pick 2040 as your zero target, it would be logically consistent to pick a lower reduction target for 2030 as well – in the order of 50%. That would mean that the whole timeline gets pushed back.
It is also important to remember that this is just the proposal itself. We would not be surprised if the EU Council waters it down even further.
Green Party Implodes in Germany
On June 26, I noted Green Party Implodes in Germany
An Infratest dimap poll, published June 10, debunked one of the more persistent myths about Germany – that it is naturally a green country. Germany has a strong Green party, but there is a specific history to that, one that one should not be confused with general attitudes in society.
Here are some of the highlights. Should the state outlaw behaviour that is particularly damaging to the climate? 53% say No. Are you in favour of higher petrol prices? 75% say No. Should the government encourage a shift from fuel-driven to electrical cars? 57% say No.
The Greens are back to where they were at the beginning of the year, at around 20-22% – which we think is where the current core support lies.
The above snips from Eurointelligence.
Reconciliation Odds
The price tag of infrastructure is $1 trillion or so. Pelosi says she will not pass a standalone infrastructure bill.
The reconciliation package is another $3.5 trillion, and Bernie Sanders is arguing for $6 trillion.
I fail to see how Senator Joe Manchin (D) from West Virginia (a coal producing state) will get on board with the incredible demands of Senator Tina Smith.
Add Senator Jon Tester (D) Montana to that list of those questioning this madness.
Potential Saving Grave
The more demands the extreme radicals place, the more likely the moderates will run away. In the US it only takes one moderate to avoid economic disaster.
If Tina Smith and Nancy Pelosi insist on economic nonsense, Biden’s entire $3.5 trillion reconciliation package will turn to ashes.
That is the potential saving grace of these economically mad proposals.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 19:00 - Insult To Injury: Russia Declares US Has Utterly "Failed" After 20 Years In Afghanistan
Insult To Injury: Russia Declares US Has Utterly “Failed” After 20 Years In Afghanistan
Russia this week warned the United States military to stay out of Central Asian nations bordering Afghanistan, such as Tajikistan, while emphasizing this is Russia’s own sphere of influence and that the window for American and NATO attempts to stabilize Afghanistan have long ago come and gone.
This after earlier this month Taliban leadership boasted of having taken 85% of the country, something Kabul authorities balked at, while also admitting that clashes are growing fiercer and in many more places. President Biden last week also declared US “objectives achieved” and said the troop draw down would be “complete” by August 31st; however, the Kremlin is now declaring that Washington has utterly “failed” in Afghanistan after two decades there.
The provocative comments by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came in a press conference in Uzbekistan on Friday. He further strongly suggested that the US is now fumbling the draw down, which is contributing to the country once again descending into war-torn chaos. Crucially the security summit was attended Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Ashraf Ghani and Sergei Lavrov Lavrov said the White House is steadfast on portraying the Afghan mission in “the most positive colors” while it remains that “everyone understands that the mission failed”.
Among the specific dire outcomes he pointed to included the resurgence of Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists in the region, and that Afghan drug production and trafficking are booming. Russian officials have long maintained that instability in Central Asia has a direct impact on Russia’s own border regions.
“In recent days we have unfortunately seen a rapid deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan,” he said according to Russian media. “In light of the hasty withdrawal of the US and NATO troops, there is huge uncertainty around the future of the political and military situation in this country,” he explained to reporters.
“It’s clear that, in this situation, there is a real risk of instability spreading to neighboring countries“. Currently Russian allies like Tajikistan are greatly bolstering their border forces and are allowing Russian military drills. International reports indicated Tajikistan’s army is sending some 20,000 extra reservists to the border with Afghanistan, after thousands of refugees and even hundreds of Afghan national troops have poured in amid Taliban advances.
FM #Lavrov: US is not just withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. It is withdrawing them de facto having admitted that its 20-year-long mission failed. The terrorist threat has not diminished. On the contrary, it has increased many times over since 2001, when the US went there pic.twitter.com/qYRw8yLvgB
— Russia in RSA 🇷🇺 (@EmbassyofRussia) July 12, 2021
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Interestingly the Russian foreign minister also called proposed Pentagon plans to deploy forces to surrounding countries a ‘failure’ as well…
“First of all, Pakistan and Uzbekistan have already officially announced that this is out of the question, they will not place such infrastructure on their territory. […] None of our allies announced their intention to expose their territory, their population to such a risk,” Lavrov said.
Indeed late last month in an interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan slammed the door shut on the possibility of hosting CIA or US troops for cross-border security raid from his country.
When asked by Swan , Khan said bluntly: “Absolutely not. There’s no way we’re going to allow it,” Khan said, before repeating resolutely, “Absolutely not.” Other regional countries have since followed in their voicing refusal to let the US establish a security foothold for potential future Afghan-related missions.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 18:40 - California Postpones New Social Justice Math Framework
California Postpones New Social Justice Math Framework
Authored by Jack Bradley via The Epoch Times,
The California Board of Education voted unanimously to postpone a new mathematics framework that incorporates ethnic and social justice studies after critics argued it would “de-mathematize math.”
The board postponed the Mathematics Curriculum Framework—a document guiding how teachers should implement the state’s math standards—during its July 13 meeting, following a letter signed by 468 higher educators and business leaders in the fields of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.
“California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way,” Independent Institute senior fellow Williamson M. Evers said in a July 13 statement.
“This postponement means the state board of education has heard the message loud and clear. STEM leaders don’t want California students left behind by introducing politics into the math curriculum.”
Evers criticized the proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework for including into the curriculum aspects of social justice, and racial equity.
“A real champion of equity and justice would want all California’s children to learn actual math—as in arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus—not an endless river of new pedagogical fads that effectively distort and displace actual math,” he said.
Evers pointed out that the standards may distract from actual mathematics by tasking students to solve “problems that result in social inequalities,” and developing their “sociopolitical consciousness.”
The framework “encourages focusing on ‘contributions that historically marginalized people have made to mathematics’ rather than on those contributions themselves which have been essential to the academic discipline of mathematics,” Evers said, citing the framework.
One of the signees of the open letter said:
“I consider myself a social justice warrior. Limiting access to advanced mathematics is not the way to address social inequity.
“We believe infusing mathematics with political rhetoric is alien to mathematics as a discipline, and will do lasting damage—including making math dramatically harder for students whose first language is not English.”
The board’s decision came nearly two months after the Instructional Quality Commission proposed necessary changes to the framework during its May 20 meeting.
“The math framework development timeline from 2019 is out of date and needs to be adjusted to allow for completion of edits directed by the Instructional Quality Commission,” California Department of Education spokesperson Scott Roark told The Epoch Times via email on June 15.
Educational equity policy groups Ed Trust-West and Californians Together have expressed support for the new math framework because it is “infused with the concepts of equity.”
“In short, the revisions present an important opportunity for [English learner] advocates to uplift equity throughout the public education system,” Ed Trust-West and Californians Together said in a statement.
Said Evers:
“Its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework is presented as a step toward social justice and racial equity, but its effect would be the opposite—to rob all Californians, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, who always suffer most when schools fail to teach their students.
Authors of the framework will incorporate requested changes and return it to the board for a vote in May 2022.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 18:20 - 73 Year Old Vietnam Vet Dead After Being Beaten In Broad Daylight During Attempted Carjacking In Chicago
73 Year Old Vietnam Vet Dead After Being Beaten In Broad Daylight During Attempted Carjacking In Chicago
Today in “Lori Lightfoot’s liberal utopia” news…
As if we needed any further proof that Mayor Lori Lightfoot is grossly incompetent and has completely lost control of her city, a 73 year old Vietnam War veteran in Chicago passed away due to a heart attack after an attempted carjacking that left him beaten in broad daylight.
Keith Cooper, who served his country honorably during two Vietnam War combat tours, was pronounced dead on Wednesday this week after being “repeatedly punched in the head” after two carjackers demanded he turn over the keys to his car while he was out running errands.
“[The suspects] tried to steal his car. You didn’t even get his car when you took his life. It was two guys preying on a senior citizen,” the victim’s son-in-law told Fox News. “He was like a bonus dad. He was my father-in-law, but he was like a dad. He was the best. Keith was the best.”
Witnesses attempted to stop the attack, the report says. His daughter, Kenika Carlton, said: “I’m just in shock. I’m still in shock because this is not the way I thought my day was going to go.”
He died days before his 74th birthday, the report notes. Two suspects have been detained for questioning.
2020 saw a 135% spike in carjackings in Chicago compared to 2019. 2021 has seen one 24 hour span where “at least five” carjackings took place, the report notes.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office did not immediately return a request for comment from Fox News. Big surprise.
Recall, just days ago Lightfoot was begging President Biden for help running her city. Meanwhile, when President Trump offered to “send in the Feds” to Chicago during his term, she declined. “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think this is a matter of incredible urgency,” Lightfoot said about asking for help.
But we think this Tweet says it best:
Just resign if you can’t do your job https://t.co/HrXA1E2nDt
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) July 7, 2021
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 18:00 - Federal Prosecutor Paused Hunter Biden Investigation Before Election, Shielding Then-Candidate Joe From Public Embarrassment
Federal Prosecutor Paused Hunter Biden Investigation Before Election, Shielding Then-Candidate Joe From Public Embarrassment
As the 2020 US election entered the home stretch last summer, Delaware US Attorney David Weiss chose to pause his investigation of Hunter Biden at a critical stage which would have publicly exposed the probe, according to Politico.
Weiss, a Trump appointee (on the recommendation of two Democratic senators, Tom Carper and Chris Coons) who climbed the ranks at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware starting in 2007, had received conflicting advice on whether to seek search warrants and a flurry of grand jury subpoenas. Ultimately, Weiss declined to take any action that could alert the public to the existence of the case – potentially causing a repeat of 2016 when the FBI reopened the Hillary Clinton email investigation after the Anthony Weiner laptop scandal forced their hand.
The probe, which is focused on possible tax law violations, has also examined Hunter Biden’s business dealings with foreign interests — a topic that has animated Biden detractors — and its existence first came to light amid a controversy about the leak of Hunter Biden’s laptop files. Since then, the case has become a political football: Some critics have suggested that the Trump administration’s political agenda influenced a parallel federal probe that scrutinized Hunter Biden in Pittsburgh, while some Republicans have called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to shield Weiss’s investigation from the influence of the Biden administration. –Politico
Now, Weiss is weighing whether to bring charges against Hunter – the son of a sitting president who has leveraged his family name into lucrative international dealings – some of which Joe Biden was involved in (which he lied about).
The rest of the Politico piece is essentially a biographical defense of Weiss.
Weiss grew up in a middle-class home in northeast Philadelphia in the 1960s and went on to attend Washington University in St. Louis. He returned to the Philadelphia area to attend Widener University School of Law, where, in his final year, he met with a round of rejections after applying for jobs at several law firms.
Instead, he got a gig clerking for the Delaware Supreme Court in 1984, then went on to take a job with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Wilmington, Del. One former colleague recalled a joke around the office that Weiss — who played third base for Wash U.’s baseball team — was hired to improve the office softball team. While there, he got his first up-close look at the underbelly of the Delaware Way.
Weiss’s big break came when Louis Capano Jr., a member of a family of prominent Delaware developers, brought a complaint to the state’s then-attorney general, Charles Oberly, as the two watched a Little League game. Capano was being forced to pay protection money to a member of the New Castle County Council, the body that oversees the Wilmington area and on which Biden had begun his political career.
Oberly referred Capano to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. With Weiss’s participation the Justice Department set up a sting targeting the councilman, Democrat Ronald Aiello.
In June of 1989, Weiss resigned his post as an assistant U.S. Attorney and was appointed special prosecutor to oversee Aiello’s case. Aiello went on to plead guilty to extortion.
That said, Weiss isn’t exactly on team Biden. Far from it, in fact. In 2007, Weiss left private practice to work for a George W. Bush-appointed US Attorney, Colm Connolly – a staunch conservative with a reputation for aggressive prosecution. Connolly clashed with then-Senator Joe Biden – who effectively blocked him from a federal judgeship after Bush nominated him in 2008. Instead, Connolly (now a private judge) entered private practice and Weiss stepped in as acting US Attorney.
Weiss and Connolly remain close.
Meanwhile, Weiss oversaw the prosecution of Biden bundler Christopher Tigani – whose family owns a beer distributorship in Delaware and maintained a longstanding relationship with the Bidens. In 2007, Tigani served as a bundler for Biden’s presidential primary campaign – soliciting contributions from his employees and their partners.
Tigani engaged in a “straw donor” scheme – whereby he would reimburse those employees for their contributions in order to evade a cap on how much he was able to personally give.
In 2010, after the FBI assembled enough evidence against Tigani, Weiss got him to cooperate on a wide-ranging probe of corruption within Delaware politics.
As POLITICO first reported last summer, Tigani, under Weiss’s supervision, wore a wire and recorded conversations with Biden’s former finance chief as well as a former Biden Senate staffer and a Delaware businessman close to Biden.
Tigani said that at the beginning of his attempted cooperation, he met with Weiss and several other officials. He said that Weiss laid out the government’s theory that politicians in Delaware were complicit in straw donor schemes.
The investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and, in the end, only Tigani was indicted on federal charges, to which he pleaded guilty. Tigani also later pleaded guilty to state charges of making straw-donor contributions to the campaigns of several Delaware politicians, including Beau Biden.
Looking back on his downfall, Tigani holds grudges against just about everybody involved, from the Bidens, to the News Journal, which first brought attention to his political influence, to the federal judge who oversaw his case, to his own father, with whom he remains embroiled in long-running litigation related to the family business. The rare exception is Weiss. “He was a straight shooter,” Tigani said of the man who sent him to prison.
By late 2018, Weiss’ office was investigating Hunter Biden in response to a number of leads – including his dealings with Chinese business associates. While pursuing allegations of money laundering and FARA violations, the criminal investigation eventually narrowed to whether Hunter had paid taxes on all of his income, according to a Politico source. By last summer, “the probe had reached a point at which investigators could have issued grand jury subpoenas and sought search warrants that might have revealed its existence at a time when many of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters were seeking to draw attention to Hunter Biden’s actions.’ Weiss, however, chose to delay taking any public actions against Hunter.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/16/2021 – 17:40
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