Today’s News 18th December 2022

• 'Absurd' To Call Oath Keepers Insurrectionists Or A National Security Threat, Former FBI Agent Testifies
  ‘Absurd’ To Call Oath Keepers Insurrectionists Or A National Security Threat, Former FBI Agent Testifies

  Authored by Joseph Hanneman via The Epoch Times,

  The Oath Keepers did not try to overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6 and are not a threat to national security because the group is anti-tyranny, not anti-government, a former FBI agent and Department of Defense analyst testified Dec. 15-16 in Alaska Superior Court.

  

  John Guandolo, who handled counter-terrorism and criminal investigations during nearly 13 years as an FBI special agent, said he found “absurd” the idea that Oath Keepers tried to overthrow the federal government. Guandolo was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a personal capacity.

  Some of the Oath Keepers might have broken federal laws on Jan. 6 for allegedly trying to delay the counting of Electoral College votes, Guandolo said, “but to conflate that to being the same as the entire organization wants to overthrow the U.S. government by violence … that’s absurd,” Guandolo said. “And I think it’s an unprofessional assessment.”

  Guandolo’s testimony came on the third and fourth days of a state trial to determine if Rep. David Eastman (R-Wasilla) should be removed from office under the Alaska Constitution because he is a life member of the Oath Keepers. Eastman won reelection on Nov. 8 by a 24-point margin.

  Alaska Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna issued a temporary restraining order preventing the state of Alaska from certifying the House 27th District election results until the trial ends.

  Former GOP candidate Randall Kowalke—who left the Republican Party in 2019—sued Eastman personally in July, claiming a loyalty clause in the Alaska Constitution should bar him from office because the Oath Keepers allegedly advocate for the overthrow of the federal government.

  

  Alaska State Rep. David Eastman (R-Wasilla) was sued in July 2022 in an effort to force him from office for being a member of Oath Keepers. (Photo courtesy of David Eastman)

  Earlier in the bench trial before McKenna, two analysts from centers on domestic extremism testified that the Oath Keepers went into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and tried to overthrow the government.

  ‘A Far Cry’ from Insurrection

  Testifying from his office in Dallas, Guandolo told the judge there is no evidence to support that accusation. He ripped the testimony of analysts Jonathan Lewis and Matthew Kriner as “grossly incomplete” and “wholly unprofessional.”

  Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and Oath Keepers Florida leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Nov. 29 for actions on Jan. 6, in a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Washington. Four other defendants were acquitted of seditious conspiracy, but convicted of other offenses.

  “The phrase that I saw most often [in indictments] was that so-and-so intended to affect the government by stopping or delaying the congressional proceeding, which was to certify the election,” Guandolo said when questioned by defense attorney Joseph Miller.

  “That is a far cry from overthrowing the U.S. government by force of violence.”

  Guandolo said the plaintiff’s experts appeared to have pre-existing ideas about the Oath Keepers, because they failed to examine the good work the group does, such as hurricane relief and guarding a bakery against mob violence during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014.

  He noted their alleged lack of knowledge of Jan. 6 provocateur Ray Epps, and their failure to interview even one member of the Oath Keepers as evidence.

  In earlier testimony, Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, claimed that Epps did not incite people to go into the Capitol on Jan. 6. He said that was a “discredited conspiracy theory.”

  Viral videos showed Epps in downtown Washington on the evening of Jan. 5 saying: “Tomorrow—I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested—we need to go into the Capitol.”

  Guandolo said the plaintiff’s focus “was on only specific negative acts and opining on those specific negative acts, without any mention, and, again, based on their own testimony, no apparent knowledge of the positives and the mission statement across the country at the numerous operations the Oath Keepers have undertaken since their founding.”

  After meeting and speaking with “hundreds” of Oath Keepers over the years, Guandolo said, he concluded the group has no bias against the government.

  “They are not anti-government or anti-authority,” Guandolo said.

  “They’re anti-tyranny and anti-anything that infringes on the natural rights and constitutional rights of American citizens.”

  Guandolo expressed concern with the use of terms such as “domestic violent extremism,” used by academic experts and even in a recent FBI bulletin on domestic threats in America.

  “There is no legal definition for violent extremism, which is exactly our adversaries’ intent,” Guandolo said. “And as a matter of fact, I heard yesterday the phrase ‘violent extremism’ defined by plaintiffs’ witness as somebody who’s willing to do violence in furtherance of achieving their goal.

  

  Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, appears on a screen during a House Select Committee hearing to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 9, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

  “And what’s problematic about that from a legal standpoint,” he said, “is that describes members of the U.S. military, that describes police officers, that describes U.S. citizens who are exercising their natural right to defend themselves, as well as their constitutional right to do so and their lawful right to do so.”

  Use of the term domestic violent extremism is “an information operation,” Guandolo said, because “it doesn’t legally actually define anything. And the way the plaintiff’s witnesses defined it, it basically can be used against anybody that uses violence. And violence is neither good nor bad.”

  ‘I Couldn’t Tell You That’

  Kriner, a senior research scholar at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, was asked by Miller on Dec. 15, “Why do we even have an oath to the Constitution?”

  Kriner replied: “I couldn’t tell you that.”

  Guandolo said he was troubled by that answer. “Again, I and I’m not trying to make any other kind of statement other than it tells me it’s either a grossly biased perspective that the witness is coming from, or they just don’t know,” Guandolo said. “And in either case, I think is really unprofessional.”

  The oath to defend the Constitution against “all enemies, foreign and domestic,” is a crucial part of America, Guandolo said.

  “… When police officers and military people and elected officials and judges take these oaths, it literally is the foundation for our entire system,” he said, “because our fidelity is to the Constitution.”

  Guandolo said Oath Keepers Vice President Greg McWhirter, who also served as an FBI informant during the Jan. 6 investigation, would have been “duty-bound, if there was a known, organized effort to overthrow the U.S. government,” to report it.

  McWhirter’s role as an FBI informant came out during the Rhodes trial. A former sheriff’s deputy in Marion County, Ind.,  McWhirter suffered a cardiac event just before his scheduled trip from Montana to Washington to testify in the trial.

  “Mr. McWhirter, you know, obviously had access to Mr. Rhodes, knew … what Oath Keepers was doing and what they were up to,” Guandolo said, “and of course he would have been duty-bound to report something such as an organized effort to violently overthrow the government.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 23:30

• These Are The World's Most Expensive Cities
  These Are The World’s Most Expensive Cities

  The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has recently published its Worldwide Cost of Living Index for 2022.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, New York and Singapore jointly top the rankings as the world’s most expensive cities to live in, while last year’s number one, Tel Aviv, now ranks in third place.

  This is the first time New York City has topped the list. This partly comes down to the United States’ high rates of inflation this past year. As shown by Statista’s chart, Los Angeles and San Francisco are also among the world’s most expensive metropolises.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  However, the roundup also includes four European cities: Zurich, Geneva, Paris and Copenhagen. In Western Europe, price increases were mainly attributable to rising gas prices, as well as the unequal valuation of the euro, as cited by the EIU.

  The annual index compares prices of more than 200 everyday products and services such as food, clothing, rent and transport in 172 cities around the world. The cities included in the study are compared with the base city of New York, with an index set at 100.

  According to this year’s index, the average cost of living in the world’s largest cities increased by 8.1 percent in 2022, as a repercussion of the war in Ukraine and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

  “The war in Ukraine, Western sanctions on Russia and China’s zero-Covid policies have caused supply-chain problems that, combined with rising interest rates and exchange-rate shifts, have resulted in a cost-of-living crisis across the world,” Upasana Dutt, who was responsible for leading the research, said in a statement. Dutt added that the average price increase in the cities analyzed is “the strongest we’ve seen in the 20 years for which we have digital data.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 23:00

• The War For Eight Billion Minds
  The War For Eight Billion Minds

  Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,

  The heavy perils we face today include centralized governments micromanaging society, the growing prospect of global war, the growing prospect of forced surrender, and the replacement of reasoned debate and free speech with state-sanctioned “narratives” and censorship: totalitarian governance seems not far behind. This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

  

  The torrents engulfing us appear to be potentially catastrophic. In a few short years, the world has endured the COVID-19 pandemic, forced government lockdowns, extreme economic volatility, commodity shortages, and the World Economic Forum’s attempts to exploit this cascade of crises as an excuse to usher in a structural “Great Reset” in which global food and energy consumption can be strictly regulated according to the “climate change” goals of an unelected cabal. Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.

  While health bureaucrats and politicians claimed to be “following the science,” mandatory compliance with unilateral rule-making precluded reasoned, good-faith debate. The predictable result: the lethal consequences of the Wuhan Virus were exacerbated by the lethal consequences of misguided public policies imposed to fight the virus. Students whose schools were shuttered now suffer the lifelong effects of learning loss. Patients whose timely diagnoses and preventative care were forestalled now suffer the debilitating outcomes of untreated disease. Small businesses unable to endure prolonged closures are gone for good. Middle class savings once reserved for unexpected “rainy day” funds or children’s future educations have dried up. Credit card debt is on the rise, while more and more people struggle to survive on less. The “safety nets” of government welfare programs have ballooned to leave nation states more indebted than ever but have also proved too perforated with leaky holes (often draining needed resources straight into the bank accounts of corporate campaign donors, interest group lobbyists, and foreign hackers) to keep society’s most vulnerable afloat. Governments’ justifications for reckless fiscal, monetary, and credit policies during short-term emergencies have weakened nations’ prospects for long-term solvency and the likelihood that they will be capable of preserving stable currencies. Still, for all the harms their actions have caused, governments have issued no apologies for enforcing such life-altering policies while silencing critics. It is as if “narrative engineers” have adopted an official position that they are incapable of being wrong.

  Geopolitical conflict is wrenching the post-WWII international order apart. While America’s and the European Union’s “climate change” policies have already inflated the costs of energy, food and much else, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added to ordinary Europeans’ financial pain and jeopardizes the continent’s security more broadly. China’s territorial ambitions threaten peace in Taiwan, Japan, across Southeast Asia and beyond. The United States’ efforts to enlarge NATO’s European membership, while expanding its mission objectives into the Indo-Pacific, all but ensure that the U.S., China and Russia remain on a collision course.

  Policymakers cannot help seeing parallels to the quickly falling geopolitical dominoes that ushered in WWI and WWII over the course of a few fateful weeks. They cannot help looking at the unsustainable accumulation of government debt around the world and the avalanche of investment derivatives balancing unsteadily upon fragile currencies unmoored from any real value in gold or silver and fearing the risks of a severe depression. They cannot help seeing Russian revanchism and Chinese territorial expansion as signs that the Great Powers have set course down a dangerous path. The more nervous about the future policymakers are, the more committed they seem to enforcing a standard “narrative” they can control.

  It was the detonation of two nuclear warheads over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course, that brought combat in the Pacific Theater to a close and ended WWII with an exclamation point.

  Now we stand on a new kind of battlefield. Just as with nuclear weapons, civilians have nowhere to hide from this war’s effects. Weapons systems are spread out across the Internet, deployed on mobile phones and active on every computer chip, tracking, sharing, and pushing digital information throughout the world. Instead of explosives and bullets, we have competing “narratives” whizzing past. The breadth of the campaign to control what information we see, how we process that information, and ultimately what we think and say makes even the most effective psychological operations of the past look antiquated and rudimentary. Whereas “mutually assured destruction” has so far succeeded as a deterrent against nuclear war, the tantalizing opportunities for governments to use programs of mass digital surveillance and communication to spread lies, manipulate opinion, and affect human behavior have created a kind of mutually assured dystopia, “where people lead dehumanized, fearful lives.”

  In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler spoke with boisterous energy and theatrical gesticulation before tens of thousands of stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and Nazi Party faithful. Today, the dictator’s raised stage has been replaced with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and anywhere else a pop-up online audience can be found. The visual stimuli that enthralled Hitler’s crowds are now reproduced with the release of pleasure-causing endorphins rushing to the brain after every “politically correct” online statement is “rewarded” with approval from strangers providing instant fame. Online “influencers” have become the goose-stepping middlemen for campaigns of mass propaganda that touch more humans in a day than a decade of Hitler’s speeches. In an age when information has never been more easily accessible, the world is awash in lies.

  Instead of encouraging public debate and rational argument, governments push the constant drumbeat of the “narrative” above all else. A citizen either obediently accepts the government’s vast and intrusive COVID-19 rules, or that person is labeled a “COVID denier.” A citizen either obediently accepts the government’s vast and intrusive “climate change” rules, or that person is labeled a “climate denier.” A citizen either accepts Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation“, or that person is labeled a “Russian sympathizer.” Daring to say otherwise could get one banned from social media, professionally sanctioned, or even fired from a job. Except none of these established “narratives” has proved true.

  In hindsight, it is clear that lockdowns unleashed more health, educational and economic problems than they solved. As Europe faces an expanding energy crisis that leaves its populations vulnerable to the cold, it is clear that “climate change” policies can kill those they are purportedly meant to protect. And as Elon Musk’s recent release of internal Twitter communications proves, Hunter Biden’s laptop was not only real news censored from the public during a presidential election. Political speech was also censored through the collaborative efforts of the FBI and more than 50 intelligence community agents in violation of the First Amendment. In each case, the “narrative” proved to be either misleading propaganda or an outright lie. Yet they were created and sustained by online communication platforms that pushed the lies and excluded the truths.

  As global events increasingly threaten Western stability, governments have demonstrated no inclination to entertain a diversity of viewpoints or discussions along the way. Instead, the more serious the issue, the more committed to a single, overarching “narrative” they seem to become. Dissent is despised. Reasoned argument is lampooned. A citizen is expected to blithely accept government-approved messaging disseminated online, or risk the wrath of the technocracy.

  This war for eight billion minds means that citizens must be more vigilant than ever in processing and evaluating what they see and read. Whether they like it or not, they are under attack at all times from those who seek to manipulate and control them. As in the last century, we are surrounded by totalitarian propaganda routinely disguised as “the truth.” In this century, though, the reach and scale of mass indoctrination seems endlessly expanding.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 22:30

• The USA Is Still Not The Most Innovative Country In The World
  The USA Is Still Not The Most Innovative Country In The World

  Since 2000, global investment in research and development (R&D) has tripled to $2.4 trillion.

  R&D spend is also casting a wider global net. In 1960, the U.S. made up nearly 70% of global R&D spending, and by 2020 this had fallen to 30%. From job creation and public health to national security and industrial competitiveness, R&D plays a vital role in a country’s economic growth and innovation, impacting nearly every corner of society—either directly or indirectly.

  Along with R&D spend, other key ingredients play an important role in driving progress and innovation. These include technological adoption, scientific research, and venture capital activity, among others.

  In the infographic below, Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld ranks the world’s most innovative economies using data from the UN’s WIPO Global Innovation Index.

  

  What Defines an Innovative Economy?

  Innovation is inherently challenging to quantify, but the Global Innovation Index is a longstanding attempt to do just that.

  The framework used for the index was designed to create a more complete analysis, comprising of 81 indicators across seven categories to calculate a country’s score:

  

  As the above table shows, the framework aims to identify indicators that foster an innovative environment and breakthrough technologies.

  It’s worth noting that each country’s overall innovation score is a mix of these categories, and countries with similar scores can be strong in different areas.

  The 50 Most Innovative Countries in 2022

  Switzerland ranks at the top⁠ for the 12th year in a row—above the U.S., South Korea, and Israel.

  For many, this may come as a surprise. However, the country’s intellectual property rules are considered world-class, and they are complemented by strong collaboration between universities and industry. In addition, the country attracts top talent thanks to its high quality of living.

  At second is the United States, which is a top spender on R&D at over $700 billion per year. Globally, four of the five top R&D spending companies are in America: Amazon ($42.7 billion), Alphabet ($27.6 billion), Microsoft ($19.3 billion), and Apple ($18.8 billion).

  Rank	Country / Region	Score
  1	🇨🇭 Switzerland	64.6
  2	🇺🇲 U.S.	61.8
  3	🇸🇪 Sweden	61.6
  4	🇬🇧 United Kingdom	59.7
  5	🇳🇱 Netherlands	58.0
  6	🇰🇷 South Korea	57.8
  7	🇸🇬 Singapore	57.3
  8	🇩🇪 Germany	57.2
  9	🇫🇮 Finland	56.9
  10	🇩🇰 Denmark	55.9
  11	🇨🇳 China	55.3
  12	🇫🇷 France	55.0
  13	🇯🇵 Japan	53.6
  14	🇭🇰 Hong Kong	51.8
  15	🇨🇦 Canada	50.8
  16	🇮🇱 Israel	50.2
  17	🇦🇹 Austria	50.2
  18	🇪🇪 Estonia	50.2
  19	🇱🇺 Luxembourg	49.8
  20	🇮🇸 Iceland	49.5
  21	🇲🇹 Malta	49.1
  22	🇳🇴 Norway	48.8
  23	🇮🇪 Ireland	48.5
  24	🇳🇿 New Zealand	47.2
  25	🇦🇺 Australia	47.1
  26	🇧🇪 Belgium	46.9
  27	🇨🇾 Cyprus	46.2
  28	🇮🇹 Italy	46.1
  29	🇪🇸 Spain	44.6
  30	🇨🇿 Czech Republic	42.8
  31	🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates	42.1
  32	🇵🇹 Portugal	42.1
  33	🇸🇮 Slovenia	40.6
  34	🇭🇺 Hungary	39.8
  35	🇧🇬 Bulgaria	39.5
  36	🇲🇾 Malaysia	38.7
  37	🇹🇷 Turkey	38.1
  38	🇵🇱 Poland	37.5
  39	🇱🇹 Lithuania	37.4
  40	🇮🇳 India	36.6
  41	🇱🇻 Latvia	36.5
  42	🇭🇷 Croatia	35.6
  43	🇹🇭 Thailand	34.9
  44	🇬🇷 Greece	34.5
  45	🇲🇺 Mauritius	34.4
  46	🇸🇰 Slovakia	34.3
  47	🇷🇺 Russia	34.3
  48	🇻🇳 Vietnam	34.3
  49	🇷🇴 Romania	34.1
  50	🇨🇱 Chile	34.0

  Countries across Europe also feature prominently in the top 10, including Sweden (#3), the United Kingdom (#4) and the Netherlands (#5).

  South Korea (#6), is known for its high R&D intensity. This is driven by its industrial conglomerates, known as chaebols, that are generally family-owned. Samsung and LG are among its largest companies, known for their high degree of corporate-academic collaboration.

  Below, we will take a closer look at the most innovative countries by region.

  North America

  In North America, the U.S. ranks highest. The country has long been known as a global leader in innovation, with a strong track record of introducing new ideas and technologies that have transformed the way we live and work. The U.S. ranks #1 in a number of indicators, including university-industry R&D collaboration and intangible asset intensity.

  Ranking second in the region is Canada (Global rank: #15). Across all countries, it ranks first on measures of joint venture and strategic alliances per billion dollars of GDP (PPP) and number of venture capital (VC) recipients per billion dollars of GDP (PPP). In 2021, VC investment topped $14.7 billion across 752 deals.

  

  Another interesting example is Honduras (#113). Driving innovation in the country is a new economic zoning experiment called Zones for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs).

  To date, these zones have attracted about a quarter of a billion dollars in private investment funding and have created thousands of new jobs.

  South America

  Chile (#50) ranks first across the region, thanks to its promising tech sector. To date, it is home to an estimated 8,000 tech companies. The country also has the highest scale of mobile connectivity in the region. In late 2021, it launched the first 5G network in South America.

  

  Following Chile is Brazil (#54), which saw a record number of IPOs in 2021 that were valued at nearly $7 billion.

  Middle East and Central Asia

  As the highest ranked in the region, Israel (#16) is the sole country globally that spends over 5% of GDP on R&D. Overall, it is a global leader in patent applications and information and communication technology (ICT) services exports.

  For context, the country’s density of start-ups per capita is 16 times that of Europe.

  

  The small island nation of Cyprus (#27) follows in second, supported by government funding focused on start-ups. Meanwhile, Turkey (#37) in third, is home to six unicorns*, fostered by its development of a megatech corridor through Istanbul to Izmir.

  *A unicorn is a privately-held startup that has a valuation of over $1 billion.

  Europe

  With 15 of the top 25 economies in the world, Europe is a powerhouse for fostering innovative ecosystems.

  The continent is also a leader in social progress, equality, and life satisfaction. The region scores 30 on inequality according to the Gini Index compared to 41 for America.

  

  For many, technological output isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Europe, but VC deals surged over 53% in 2021. London, Berlin, and Paris were leading cities for VC activity.

  East Asia and Oceania

  South Korea (#6) ranks highest across East Asia and Oceania, and has established itself as a leader in technology and innovation on the global stage. Through its New Deal initiative, the government is spearheading projects on smart healthcare, AI, and smart industrial complexes. At the same time, it is accelerating the construction of eco-friendly infrastructure and renewable energy.

  South Korea’s Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia have made considerable ground in electric vehicle (EV) production, comprising 9% of the U.S. EV market, the second-highest share after Tesla.

  

  China sits just outside the global top 10, and now ranks #1 in multiple indicators, including labor productivity growth and trademarks by origin. China’s economic output per employed worker increased an impressive 4.2% annually from 2011 to 2019, on average.

  Africa

  The highest ranked in Africa is the island nation of Mauritius (#45).

  Underscoring its rank is the strength of its institutions and market sophistication. Meanwhile, the government is accelerating investment in tech incubators, research-business collaboration, and tax incentives for R&D investment.

  

  South Africa (#61) follows Mauritius on the list, with the city of Cape Town attracting a proposed $300 million Amazon headquarters.

  Panasonic opened their headquarters in Cape Town in 2018. Oracle, IBM, Google, and Microsoft also have offices in the country’s expanding tech hub.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 22:00

• Biden's Latest JFK Document-Dump Is A Joke
  Biden’s Latest JFK Document-Dump Is A Joke

  Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

  Waiting for a government – any government – to release their “secret” files is a waste of your time, and reading anything they eventually publish is doubly so.

  If you didn’t learn that from the nothing-burger that was the 28 pages on 9/11, or the pathetic exercise in revisionism that made up the Afghanistan Papers…you should definitely have learned it today.

  Yes, Joe Biden’s administration has just released their promised “secret” JFK papers.

  

  Turns out that Oswald acted alone.

  I know, I was shocked too.

  Further, the release dials back on the (very slight) anti-Russia messaging of last year’s release.

  In December 2021, the previous batch of “secret” files revealed Oswald met with a KGB agent in the days running up to the assassination.

  The latest batch reassures us that Oswald never worked for the KGB, and that the Russians thought he was “too crazy” to recruit.

  One gets the impression that has as much to do with managing propaganda positioning over the war in Ukraine as anything else. Either way, its a ridiculously transparent attempt to reinforce the “lone wolf” lie.

  “He was too crazy and unstable even for the Russians!”

  Laughable.

  Further, one particular “secret” memo claims…

  the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner”.

  Yes, before Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald they were apparently “not connected in any manner”. He had never met Oswald before the assassination, and barely had any idea who he was when he shot him on November 24th.

  This means the current “official story” is that Ruby randomly chose to attend the press conference where Oswald spoke on the evening of November 22nd, despite not being a member of the press.

  During this press conference, Ruby correctly pointed out Oswald had joined the “fair play for Cuba committee” (presumably an inspired guess, seeing as they did not know one another).

  Then, two days later and on a complete whim, he decided to sneak back into the police station carrying a gun and shoot a man he had never met for no reason at all, in the parking lot of a police station, while surrounded by police officers.

  That’s what these “secret files” tell us…the same ridiculous story as the very unsecret Warren Commission.

  So, yet again, we see just how pointless these long-awaited government releases are, and how they are only every used to reinforce the official narrative.

  It was always going to be that way.

  After all, JFK has been dead for six decades, that is more than enough time to redact, edit, censor and indeed forge documents ’til they tell the story you want to tell.

  Hell, it’s possible these files didn’t even exist until a couple of days ago. Why on Earth should we give the CIA, FBI or National Archives the benefit of the doubt?

  Supposing they are sitting on some cache of massively incriminating evidence…are they really likely to release it? Just because someone asks nicely?

  Imagine the police rocking up to a murder suspect’s house, knocking politely, and asking if he wouldn’t mind going inside and fetching all the evidence that he killed his wife. Then quietly waiting sixty years for him to do it.

  The entire process is a farce.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 21:30

• Gates, Bezos Invest In Australian-Designed Brain Implant
  Gates, Bezos Invest In Australian-Designed Brain Implant

  Authored by Daniel Y. Teng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are betting on the New York-based Synchron as the answer to Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

  

  Founded by Australian professors Tom Oxley and Nick Opie, the company on Dec. 16 announced it had closed a $110 million Series C funding round involving Bezos Expeditions, Gates Frontier, and ARCH Venture Partners.

  The Synchron Switch is a “brain-computer interface” that is implanted in the blood vessels at the surface of the motor cortex of the brain via the jugular vein.

  Once set, the interface will detect and wirelessly transmit information from the brain, allowing severely paralysed individuals to control personal devices without needing to use their hands.

  The funds will be put towards a pivotal clinical trial.

  

  

  “We have an opportunity to deliver a first-in-class commercial [brain-computer interface],” said Oxley, also the CEO of Synchron, in a statement.

  “The problem of paralysis is much larger than people realize. 100 million people worldwide have upper limb impairment,” he added.

  ARCH Managing Director Robert Nelson said Synchron was helping individuals with untreatable conditions “regain connection to the world.

  “It is an exciting time for neurotechnology,” he said.

  How Does it Compare to Musk’s Neuralink?

  Clinical trials are currently underway in the United States and Australia with Opie saying the procedure was minimally invasive—a factor he believes sets it apart from Musk’s Neuralink.

  “We don’t need to remove the scalp and skull or put electrodes directly into delicate brain tissue,” he said in comments obtained by AAP.

  “We’ve come up with a clever way of getting to the right place in the brain just by using the body’s naturally occurring highways and blood vessels.”

  He added this ensured patients recovered faster as well from the procedure.

  So far, four Australian paralysis patients have received implants since undergoing the procedure at Royal Melbourne Hospital in 2020.

  “All of those patients were able to control a computer with their mind,” he said. “And there were no serious device-related effects.”

  The first U.S. patient was treated in July 2022 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York after Synchron received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year.

  In contrast, Musk’s Neuralink has yet to receive approval from the body and is also facing questions over potential animal welfare violations.

  Musk had wanted to start human trials in six months, yet the billionaire is also reported to have approached Synchron about a potential investment.

  Opie says no deal is on the table.

  Other investors include Reliance Digital Health, Greenoaks, Alumni Ventures, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Project X, as well as existing investors Khosla Ventures, NeuroTechnology Investors, METIS, Forepont Capital Partners, ID8 Investments, and Shanda Group.

  AAP contributed to this article.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 20:30

• Point Of No Return: Beijing's Move To Covid Coexistence Is Here To Stay
  Point Of No Return: Beijing’s Move To Covid Coexistence Is Here To Stay

  By Houze Song of MarcoPolo.org

  With China’s upcoming Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC), markets will be looking for any pro-growth signals after a year of turbulence. But the most consequential action for growth has already happened: the decision to abandon Zero Covid.

  The key questions now are

  1. will the Zero Covid exit endure?

  2. how much will property rebound?

  3. will there be more significant stimulus?  

  Here we briefly unpack our views on these three questions.

  Covid: China Has Crossed the Rubicon Toward Coexistence

  Although 4Q growth will still come in around expectations in our recent outlook, we underestimated the degree to which an about-face on Zero Covid would occur. One of the key factors is that the pre-Party Congress politics on Zero Covid have evaporated, making it much easier to shift course. Combined with bottom-up demands and an economy in dire straits, those advocating an exit have won. At this point, we expect China to embark on a swift exit and reach near full opening by the end of 1H2023.

  If anything, the concern now is whether China is exiting hastily without much planning for case surges and ensuring sufficient hospital capacity. To be sure, the path from containment to coexistence will be paved with its share of chaos and setbacks, but we believe that China has passed the point of no return and is decisively moving to coexistence.

  Fast-moving developments in the Chinese capital bear monitoring as a leading indicator. That’s because what happens in Beijing won’t stay in Beijing—that is, with the Chinese capital already confronting a bad surge, the government’s acceptance of case spread without reversing course will send a strong signal across the country for emulating the approach. At this point, even with infections mounting, we believe the government is unlikely to tighten controls again and will hold the line on reopening.

  Property: From Rescuing Developers to Stimulating Demand

  The property sector’s prospects have improved as of late because state banks have been quietly lending to property developers without resorting to a formal splashy bailout. But there is strong reluctance behind these actions, as the central government is serious about reducing banks’ exposure to the property sector and maintaining its fiscal prudence.

  So Beijing will want to shift the burden of the property rescue from the state to households as soon as possible. And the Covid exit presents as good an opportunity as any for Beijing to seize on to unleash more household spending. We expect announcements on stimulating property demand during the CEWC, including measures such as reducing down payment and mortgage rates.

  Skepticism on whether demand-side stimulus will work is warranted, since incentives for property purchases have been largely unsuccessful to date as sales declined by more than 20% through October. But at the same time, Chinese households have accumulated 6 trillion yuan (~$1 trillion) in excess savings this year, largely as a result of not buying homes. That pent-up demand is more likely to materialize this time because the Covid exit will lead households to reconsider their outlook as the economy reopens.

  With households more willing to take on debt and resume property purchases, that will also improve the cash flow of property developers that depend on sales. That will lead the state sector to withdraw its lending once the sector appears more stable.

  Fiscal Stimulus: Overly Conservative

  While the Zero Covid exit and a potential property rebound are looking up, there remains the risk that stimulus will be withdrawn too quickly. While we believe that the on-budget fiscal deficit will modestly increase in 2023, the overall macroeconomic policy stance will likely be contractionary.

  For one, any increase in the fiscal deficit will not be able to offset the ending of other stimulus measures such as the tax refund and the central bank’s dividend payments—together accounting for 3% of GDP in 2021. Second, the latest Politburo meeting once again puts financial risk as a top concern for 2023, effectively ruling out broad-based monetary easing.

  The bottom line is that the move to Covid coexistence will be the biggest boon to growth in at least two years, even as a weaker stimulus will be a headwind to growth in 2023. We will have more detailed analysis of China’s economic prospects in our 1Q2023 Macro Outlook.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 20:00

• Shadowy US Spy Firm Promises To Surveil Crypto Users For The Highest Bidder
  Shadowy US Spy Firm Promises To Surveil Crypto Users For The Highest Bidder

  Authored by Kit Klatenberg via MintPressNews.com,

  Leaked files reviewed by MintPress expose how intelligence services the world over can track cryptocurrency transactions to their source and therefore identify users by monitoring the movements of smartphone and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, such as Amazon Echo. The contents comprehensively detonate the myth of crypto anonymity, and have grave implications for individuals and states seeking to shield their financial activity from the prying eyes of hostile governments and authorities.

  

  The documents are among a trove related to the secret operations of Anomaly 6, a shadowy private spying firm founded by a pair of U.S. military intelligence veterans.

  The company covertly embeds software development kits, or SDKs, in hundreds of popular apps, then slices through layers of “anonymized” data in order to uncover sensitive information about any individual it chooses anywhere on Earth, at any time. In all, Anomaly 6 can simultaneously monitor roughly three billion smartphone devices – equivalent to a fifth of the world’s total population – in real-time.

  Having previously hawked its wares to U.S. Special Operations Command, as this journalist revealed on December 6, Anomaly 6 is now using British private military company Prevail Partners – heavily involved in the West’s proxy war in Ukraine – to market and sell its product to a variety of Western military, security, and intelligence agencies the world over. This is despite the company’s own founders fearing its global dragnet could be completely illegal under national and international data protection regimes.

  The company’s international surveillance reach could be more sweeping – and invasive – than even that of the C.I.A. and N.S.A. MintPress can reveal individuals, organizations, and states seeking to bypass traditional financial structures and systems loom prominently in Anomaly 6’s mephitic crosshairs, and spying on their transactions is a pivotal component of its sales pitch to government and private clients. This Orwellian technology leaves cryptocurrency users the world over nowhere to hide.

  WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?

  Ever since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009, anonymity has been an absolutely fundamental tenet of cryptocurrency. The ability to make and receive payments incognito through a secure, decentralized platform without needing to register a named bank account, or even interact with established financial gatekeepers at any stage, was and remains a unique selling point for the asset.

  The principle of anonymity is taken so seriously by crypto practitioners and aficionados alike that industry platforms are graded according to their levels of privacy. Many crypto entrepreneurs, some of whom manage hundreds of millions of dollars for clients, conduct business without ever disclosing their names, or any identifying information at all. Venture capital firms have even invested vast sums in crypto ventures with wholly pseudonymous founders, an unprecedented sectoral development.

  

  Anomaly Six’s website features no other data but the company name, contact and location

  In recent years, however, there have been several clear indications that cryptocurrency anonymity is under significant threat, and indeed could already have been mortally compromised by the U.S. intelligence apparatus. In June 2021, it was revealed that the F.B.I. had successfully traced and recovered $2.3 million in Bitcoin extorted by hackers from Colonial Pipeline in a ransomware attack, which had shut down the company’s computer systems, causing fuel shortages and a spike in gas prices.

  U.S. officials declined to reveal how they tracked where the ill-gotten funds had ended up, and identified the ultimate owners of 23 separate cryptocurrency accounts belonging to DarkSide, the hacking collective responsible for the cyberattack, although public statements by C.I.A. director William Burns in December that year may provide a clue. Speaking at a Wall Street Journal summit, he acknowledged that his Agency was engaged in “a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency.”

  “This is something I inherited. My predecessor had started this,” he said. “Trying to look at second- and third-order consequences as well and helping with our colleagues in other parts of the U.S. government to provide solid intelligence on what we’re seeing as well.”

  While it’s certainly true that cryptocurrency’s anonymity is attractive to criminal elements and terrorist groups, there are a wide variety of entirely legitimate reasons for seeking privacy in financial transactions, and preventing regulators, big banks, and governments from keeping an eye on what one is doing.

  For example, political and social movements of every stripe in all corners of the globe have embraced the asset, as they can be financially supported from overseas without any paper trail being left at either end. In turn, activists can send money to each other and make purchases in secret, and organize events and construct local and international support networks, leaving authorities none the wiser.

  In Venezuela, cryptocurrency has provided vital respite to an entire country, as crippling U.S.-led sanctions have in recent years deprived both its government and citizens of access to, and the ability to buy, even basic necessities, including food and medicine. The national currency’s value reduced to almost zero, crypto transactions offer a literal lifeline by which goods and services can be accessed, and import and export restrictions imposed by Washington circumvented.

  ‘PATTERNS OF LIFE’ AND ‘BED DOWN LOCATIONS’

  A February 2021 U.N. special rapporteur report on the impact of American sanctions on Venezuela ruled they were “collective punishment,” and Caracas lived on just 1% of its pre-sanctions income. The previous March, Alfred de Zayas, formerly an independent expert for the United Nations Human Rights Council, calculated that over 100,000 Venezuelans had died as a result of the restrictions.

  Despite this monstrous human toll, and countless calls from prominent rights groups and international institutions to end the suffering, Washington rigidly enforces the sanctions regime, and seeks to harshly punish any individual or organization helping Caracas skirt restrictions. While measures have eased slightly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Stateside prosecution of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, abducted from Cape Verde in October 2020, for selling food to the Venezuelan government is ongoing.

  Saab could be soon joined in the dock, if Anomaly 6 has anything to do with it. One of the company’s leaked sales presentations provides several case studies showing how its spying technology can be used by security and intelligence services to “derive understanding of the actions of individuals associated with sanctions violations.”

  By homing in on the location of the Venezuelan government’s sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange, the National Superintendence of Cryptoactives and Related Activities (Sunacrip), which manages all crypto activities in the country, Anomaly 6 identified two specific IoT devices “which show the value of the A6 dataset in this endeavor.”

  

  Scouring data generated at the site back to January 1, 2020, Anomaly 6 found thousands of signals emitted by IoT devices and smartphones. From there, it “built out the pattern of life for the devices in that search” – in other words, the locations device owners traveled to and from, when, and where they lived. In all, these devices produced “over 593,374 geographic points of reference”, in Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela.

  From this amorphous corpus, Anomaly 6 identified one device with “a unique travel pattern which makes it worth further investigation.” In particular, its movements indicated a “very well-defined pattern of life in and around Caracas” – although the company professed to be “much more interested in its travel to the Colombian border in the Cúcuta/San Antonio del Táchira border area.”

  

  That Anomaly 6 was able to track this device while in flight was said to highlight a “unique aspect” of its dataset. The device “took a less than seven hour trip from Caracas to San Antonio del Táchira (Juan Vicente Gómez International Airport) which landed (or was on final approach at 0923 on 23 Feb).”

  “With less than 10 flights a day on average to this airport (pre-Covid 19), it would not be difficult to ascertain a short list of personalities of interest with access to Venezuelan passenger name records,” Anomaly 6 bragged. “Additionally, we can see that this device transits to the border crossing locations in the short time it was located in the area.”

  This border area was of note for Anomaly 6 as, “according to open source reporting, historically, Venezuelans have used border areas for cash pickup/drops to skirt sanctions put in place by the international community.” Such activities “provide access to hard currency to actors and governments which have been cut off from U.S. dollar trading platforms.”

  

  A “second device of interest” was found to have traveled to Medellín, Colombia, and its “pattern of life” indicated its owner had “connections to the financial/banking environment.”

  “Both of these devices exhibit [patterns of life] that warrant further exploration, especially when combined with fact [sic] they have been located at the Sunacrip HQ,” Anomaly 6 concluded. “Further investigation can find bed down locations as well as other insights for business locations, international travel, and other device co-location.”

  THE DEVIL TURNS AROUND

  Due to a highly successful mainstream media campaign over many years to demonize the government of Venezuela, and by extension its people, it is likely some American citizens will be entirely unsympathetic to Caracas’ plight, and approve of efforts to prevent the state bypassing sanctions. However, the ease with which Anomaly 6’s tools of mass surveillance could be domestically deployed, and the likelihood they already have, should give them pause.

  As I revealed in my initial report, Anomaly 6 can identify U.S. smartphone users by name, address and travel history. Another leaked sales presentation details how by linking a single anonymous individual’s smartphone signal recorded in North Korea to a network of hotels, schools, and other sites, the company determined with pinpoint accuracy their identity, marital status, where they worked and lived, the names of their children and the schools and universities at which they study, and more.

  Such capabilities would no doubt be of much interest to the C.I.A. and N.S.A. – both of which are in theory prohibited from spying on U.S. citizens, but have been recurrently embroiled in controversy for engaging in such activity.

  Concerningly, it has been revealed that the C.I.A. for many years sought to bulk collect international financial data in service of tracking the Islamic State’s funding sources, and incidentally vacuumed up voluminous quantities of sensitive information on U.S. citizens in the process.

  Heavily redacted records related to the connivance were unearthed due to pressure from senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Upon reviewing the material, they wrote to U.S. Director of Intelligence Avril Haines, righteously admonishing the C.I.A. for brazenly ignoring longstanding constitutional checks and balances on the Agency’s domestic activities.

  “[The C.I.A.] has done so entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes with FISA collection,” they fulminated.

  Anomaly 6’s services, of course, mean the C.I.A. and N.S.A. can dodge restrictions at home, without fear of landing in hot water. Other agencies permitted to monitor Americans can likewise now do so without a warrant too. And there is no reason to believe that its spying would be restricted to financial transactions, either

  “Anomaly 6 data can be used in multiple use cases to support cyber intelligence and operational use end states,” the leaked crypto sales deck declares. “By utilizing multiple targeting methodologies, this data can support the building of a far superior intelligence picture that enables clients to move towards actionable end states. Fusing A6 data with other classified and unclassified data sets places the client at the forefront of the cyber mission space.”

  Other leaked Anomaly 6 files openly discuss how its technology is ripe for both “counterintelligence” and “source development” purposes, and it’s not merely U.S. citizens in the firing line. The firm boasts of having spied on the movements of “devices from other friendly countries,” including members of the Five Eyes global spying network, and France and Germany.

  In other words, Anomaly 6 turns every citizen on Earth into a potential “person of interest” to intelligence agencies, and thus a target for recruitment, surveillance, harassment, and much, much worse, the most intimate details of their private lives easily accessible by shady actors with a few clicks of a button, and without their knowledge or consent.

  While the mainstream media is yet to acknowledge the leak of the company’s sensitive internal papers, this has all the makings of an Edward Snowden-level international scandal of historic proportions. If Anomaly 6 is to be successfully stopped in its tracks, and Western intelligence agencies prevented from egregiously violating the privacy of innumerable individuals without compunction or oversight, it will require concerted collective action from concerned citizens worldwide.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 19:30

• The World's Countries Compared By 20 Key Metrics
  The World’s Countries Compared By 20 Key Metrics

  Which countries have the largest populations? What about the rural versus urban population divide? And which countries have the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP), military expenditures, or tech exports?

  Instead of comparing countries by one metric, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang introduces this animation and series of graphics by Anders Sundell uses 20 different categories of World Bank data to compare countries.

  The data was sourced in July 2022 and contains the latest available data for each country.

  Below, we provide some context on eight of the 20 categories, and share some facts on the top ranking countries for each category.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by GDP

  

  View the full-size map

  With a GDP of nearly $23 trillion in 2021, the United States has the largest economic output of any country in the world. While China is currently second on the list, some projections have China’s nominal GDP surpassing America’s as early as 2030.

  And even more evident on this map is the weight of economic power to Western countries and just a few Asian countries. Africa, South America, and the rest of Asia are tiny in contrast.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by Population

  

  View the full-size map

  China ranks first as the world’s most populated country, with a population of 1.4 billion. China has been the world’s most populated country for more than 300 years, but this could change in the near future.

  According to the UN’s latest population prospects, India’s population is expected to surpass China’s as early as 2023. However, it’s still unclear what the consequences of this shift will be.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by Population 65+

  

  View the full-size map

  While China also takes the top spot when it comes to total elderly population, it’s worth noting that Japan has a larger per capita population of people aged 65 and over.

  According to the ​​Population Reference Bureau, nearly 12% of China’s population is 65 or older, while in Japan, more than 28.2% of people are 65+.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by Urban Population

  

  View the full-size map

  Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the world’s population lived in rural areas. But by the early 1900s, urbanization started to skyrocket, and now more than half of the world’s population lives in cities.

  China’s urbanization really took off as soon as the country’s economic reforms began in the late 1970s. As of 2021, China’s urban population of roughly 861 million people made up 63% of its overall population.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by Rural Population

  

  View the full-size map

  Many Asian and East African countries rise to the front when it comes to rural population comparisons, but India easily has the world’s largest share with around 898 million people.

  As of 2021 figures, about 65% of India’s population is rural. This is actually a significant drop compared to the 1960s, when the country’s rural population made up a whopping 82% of its overall population.

  Still, that’s still significantly higher than Western countries. For instance, only 17% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by Land Area

  

  View the full-size map

  When it comes to comparing countries by sheer size, Russia comes first with a land area of 16.4 million square kilometers—that’s nearly 2x bigger than China, which comes second on the list.

  According to National Geographic, Russia is so big, it accounts for one-tenth of all land on Earth. The country has 11 different time zones, as well as coasts on three separate oceans.

  Why isn’t Canada ranked second? Though it is generally accepted as the world’s second largest country, around 8.9% of its total area is made up of water. In pure landmass, China and the U.S. have an edge.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by Fuel Exports

  

  View the full-size map

  The U.S. ranks as the world’s top fuel exporter, with the United Arab Emirates in close second.

  According to the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas sector is responsible for about 8% of America’s total economic output, measured by GDP.

  And this map also highlights the many other countries dependent on energy for GDP. This includes OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran, as well as well-known energy exporters like Norway and Russia.

  Top 10 Countries Worldwide by CO2 Emissions

  

  View the full-size map

  While China ranks first as the world’s biggest carbon emitter, it’s worth mentioning that the country is not even in the top 10 when looking at per capita carbon emissions.

  That being said, China’s annual emissions of 10.7 billion tons CO₂ make up a massive share of global emissions. They are more than double the second largest emitter, the United States.

  Comparing Countries by Other Metrics

  This series of graphics shows 20 distinct measures of comparing countries, but they are just a few of the hundreds of possible examples.

  From different economic measures like remittances, employment, and GDP to the multitude of factors that one can find in a demographic census, each comparison can yield different results and shed new lights on how countries relate to each other.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 19:00

• SBF Changes Mind On Extradition To US After Four Days In Bahamian Jail
  SBF Changes Mind On Extradition To US After Four Days In Bahamian Jail

  After spending just five days in a Bahamian jail cell, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is backpedaling on his decision to contest extradition to the United States to face fraud charges, Reuters reports, citing a person familiar with the matter.

  

  According to the report, SBF will appear in court on Monday to formally consent to extradition – which will pave the way for him to appear in US court to face charges that he commingled customer deposits to cover expenses and debts, and to make investments through his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC.

  That said, legal experts tell Reuters that a trial is likely over a year away.

  As Fox News reported last week, the Bahamas prison where SBF was reportedly heading – Fox Hill – is “harsh” due to “overcrowding, poor nutrition [and] inadequate sanitation,” along with cells that are “infested with rats, maggots, and insects.”

  

  “He will be in sick bay for orientation purposes and then we will determine where best to place him,” said Bahamian Commissioner of Correctional Services Doan Cleare in a statement to Reuters.

  A 2021 U.S. State Department report said prisoners at Fox Hill described “infrequent access to nutritious meals and long delays between daily meals.” 

  “Maximum-security cells for men measured approximately six feet by 10 feet and held up to six persons with no mattresses or toilet facilities. Inmates removed human waste by bucket. Prisoners complained of the lack of beds and bedding,” according to the report. “Some inmates developed bedsores from lying on bare ground. Sanitation was a general problem, and cells were infested with rats, maggots, and insects.“

  “Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate access to medical care were problems in the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services men’s maximum-security block,” the report continued. “The facility was designed to accommodate 1,000 prisoners but was chronically overcrowded.”

  On Thursday, Bankman-Fried sought bail from the Bahamas Supreme Court following his Dec. 12 arrest. On Tuesday he was remanded to Fox Hill Prison after Chief Magistrate JoyAnn Ferguson rejected his request to remain at home while awaiting a hearing on his extradition to the US.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 18:00

• Denver Mayor Declares Emergency, Says City 'On Verge Of Reaching Breaking Point' Amid Influx Of Illegal Immigrants
  Denver Mayor Declares Emergency, Says City ‘On Verge Of Reaching Breaking Point’ Amid Influx Of Illegal Immigrants

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The city of Denver declared a state of emergency on Thursday in order to stave off a local humanitarian crisis amid an influx of illegal aliens from the southern border, mainly from El Paso, Texas.

  

  Mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, issued the declaration as several hundred illegal aliens, mostly from Central and South America, have arrived in the state in just the past few days alone.

  “Let me be frank: This influx of migrants, the unanticipated nature of their arrival, and our current space and staffing challenges have put an immense strain on city resources to the level where they’re on the verge of reaching a breaking point at this time,” Hancock said at a news conference on Thursday.

  “What I don’t want to see is a local humanitarian crisis of unsheltered migrants on our hands because of a lack of resources,” the mayor added.

  According to Hancock’s office, more than 900 aliens have arrived in Denver over the past several months, including more than 600 people since Dec. 2.

  Another 247 aliens have arrived since Monday alone, while 75 turned up at a local homeless shelter overnight on Thursday evening, according to his office.

  

  Denver ‘On the Verge of Reaching Breaking Point’

  Approximately 404 aliens are currently being accommodated in the city’s emergency shelters, including 102 at church and nonprofit shelter sites, the mayor’s office said.

  The “anticipated nature” of the arrival of the influx of illegal aliens has placed extreme pressure on the city’s efforts to shelter them, leading to limited space which is being further exacerbated by a lack of staffing, Hancock’s office said during Thursday’s news conference, noting that winter weather was set to make the situation worse.

  Hancock added that Denver is currently “at the level where we are on the verge of reaching breaking point at this time.”

  “The declaration is another tool in the toolbox to help serve the increasing number of migrants arriving in Denver, particularly as winter weather sets in,” Hancock said.

  Under the emergency declaration, Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, will be alerted that Denver is enacting a state of emergency.

  Denver will then be able to access additional emergency resources to help manage the influx of aliens, and will also be able to continue requesting financial assistance from various funding sources.

  Hancock said that, together with community partners, and the help of local churches and nonprofits, the city continues to provide aliens—the majority of which are coming to the city having entered the United States through El Paso, Texas—with emergency shelter.

  

  Hancock Takes Aim at Biden Admin

  Denver has already forked out more than $800,000 on the illegal alien sheltering effort, and that number is expected to increase significantly.

  A majority of the aliens who have arrived in Denver are from Venezuela, according to Hancock, and are fleeing a political and humanitarian crisis in their home country.

  The mayor took aim at the Biden administration for failing to address the “critical situation” or respond adequately, despite being aware of it.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 17:30

• Musk Releases Doxxing Journalists From Twitter Jail After Poll
  Musk Releases Doxxing Journalists From Twitter Jail After Poll

  Twitter CEO Elon Musk reinstated a handful of left-wing journalists who had been booted from Twitter days ago for violating the social media platform’s “doxxing” policies.

  Shortly after midnight, Musk tweeted, “the people have spoken … accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”

  The people have spoken.

  Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now. https://t.co/MFdXbEQFCe

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2022

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

  Musk decided to lift the suspensions of the lefty journalists who shared his private jet locations earlier in the week after a Twitter poll he conducted on Thursday night showed 58.7% of the 3.7 million users who voted wanted the journalists reinstated “Now.” 

  Unsuspend accounts who doxxed my exact location in real-time

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

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

  Some of the accounts that were suspended include Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar, Tony Webster, NYT’s Ryan Mac, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, WaPo’s Drew Harwell, Mashable’s Matt Binder, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, and VOA’s Steve Herman. 

  “Matt Binder is back,” the Mashable journalist tweeted early Saturday.

  Matt Binder is back https://t.co/cTZtuShaFm

  — Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 17, 2022

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

  Olbermann’s account remains suspended as of early Saturday morning. 

  

  Musk accused the journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts. He said in a Twitter Space on Thursday:

  “You doxx, you get suspended. End of story. That’s it.” 

  All of this stems from an incident on Wednesday where Musk alleged a “crazy stalker” attacked the car one of his children was riding in. 

  Musk said, “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.”

  “Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok,” Musk added. 

  Musk also said: 

  “If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!”

  One of the first accounts suspended was @elonjet, a Twitter account operated by a college kid that tracks Musk’s private plane locations (the account is still suspended).

  Lefty journalists who had years of running amok on the social media platform where rules didn’t apply to them but only applied to their opposition have finally got a taste of what it’s like to end up in Twitter jail. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 17:12

• Trump Vows To Ban Feds From Targeting 'Misinformation' If Elected
  Trump Vows To Ban Feds From Targeting ‘Misinformation’ If Elected

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will bar the federal government from using terms such as “misinformation” and “disinformation” to describe domestic speech if he’s reelected.

  

  In a video released by the New York Post, Trump said that if he’s named the winner in 2024, one of his first executive acts will target federal rules around speech. The advertisement-like clip showed Trump making his announcement in front of two American flags.

  “Within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens,” Trump said.

  “I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as ‘mis-‘ or ‘dis-information’. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly—whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are,” he added.

  Since last week, several journalists have published installments of the “Twitter Files,” promoted by new Twitter owner Elon Musk, that revealed how Trump’s account was suspended in early 2021 as well as how officials and campaigns communicated with Twitter executives through back channels.

  The 45th president also proposed a “Digital Bill of Rights” that “should include a right to digital due process—in other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.”

  “In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt-out of content moderation and curation entirely, and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose,” Trump said.

  After taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden has called on news outlets and social media firms to tackle what he said is misinformation around COVID-19 and vaccines.

  “I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets: Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that is on your shows,” Biden said earlier this year. “It has to stop. COVID-19 is one of the most formidable enemies America has ever faced. We have got to work together, not against each other.”

  Months before that, Biden told reporters that Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms are “killing people” by allowing certain claims about the virus to proliferate.

  Activity

  A week after the midterm elections, Trump announced at his Mar-a-Lago resort that he would be embarking on a third campaign for president but has kept a relatively low profile since then.

  Trump has made few policy statements after his Nov. 15 speech declaring his candidacy and reportedly has not left Florida to campaign or hold rallies. Republicans, meanwhile, underperformed during the 2022 midterms after forecasters predicted a “red wave” in both the House and Senate.

  Days after announcing his candidacy, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to lead investigations into Trump’s 2020 election challenges and handling of records since he left office. The FBI searched Trump’s home in August, recovering what Department of Justice prosecutors say were classified materials.

  Meanwhile, Trump faced controversy for a dinner meeting with rapper Kanye West and political commentator Nick Fuentes. On Truth Social, the former president described West as a “seriously troubled man” in confirming the meeting: “I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win.”

  Trump’s Twitter account, which has around 90 million followers now, was recently reinstated by Musk after the Tesla CEO conducted a poll that found a majority of users wanted the former president back on the platform. So far, Trump has not used his once-highly engaged account and has told media outlets that he will stick to using Truth Social instead.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 16:30

• Texas Gov. Abbott Seeks State Probe Of NGOs Aiding Illegal Immigrants Crossing Border
  Texas Gov. Abbott Seeks State Probe Of NGOs Aiding Illegal Immigrants Crossing Border

  Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is asking the state’s attorney general to open an investigation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are helping illegal immigrants who are crossing the border from Mexico.

  “With the end of Title 42 just days away, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Texas–Mexico border has reached an all-time high,” Abbott, a Republican, told Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a letter made public on Dec. 15. “Indeed, this past Sunday, over a 24-hour span, over 2,600 illegal immigrants crossed the border near El Paso and illegally entered Texas. These numbers are likely to increase in the coming weeks.”

  

  Abbott’s reference to Title 42 is to a public health emergency order issued by President Donald Trump to stop the spread of COVID-19 across the southern border that authorized federal agents to return immigrants crossing the border to Mexico to await processing of their cases, including claims of seeking asylum in the United States. A federal court ruled earlier this year that the order will be halted on Dec. 21.

  “But as the facts on the ground continue to change, we must remain vigilant in our response to this crisis. There have been recent reports that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may have assisted with illegal border crossings near El Paso,” Abbott told Paxton.

  “We further understand NGOs may be engaged in unlawfully orchestrating other border crossings through activities on both sides of the border, including in sectors other than El Paso. In light of these reports, I am calling on the Texas Attorney General’s Office to initiate an investigation into the role of NGOs in planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.”

  Abbott’s letter to Paxton comes a day after the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project made public the results of a massive analysis of more than 30,000 anonymized cell devices used by illegal immigrants after entering the United States and receiving resettlement care and services via NGO facilities.

  The Heritage project tracked the devices to nearly every congressional district in the country, according to Mike Howell, director of the conservative foundation’s Oversight Project.

  “We now have undeniable proof that NGOs are the Biden administration’s partner in facilitating and perpetuating this historic border crisis. What’s most shameful is that these NGOs are using not just taxpayer dollars to complete the final link in the drug cartels’ human smuggling operation, but also funds donated by Americans across this country who have no idea their charitable giving is being used for this purpose,” Howell said in a statement.

  “They are working hand-in-glove with the open-borders advocates in the Biden administration to resettle untold numbers of illegal aliens across this country every month, willingly advancing the left’s goal of reshaping the American electorate and advancing their political objectives.

  “These organizations have no business engaging in such behavior. They should be investigated, held accountable, and defunded. And make no mistake, the Oversight Project is just getting started in showing the role these groups are playing in not only continuing this historic border crisis, but in fueling the cartels’ business model and encouraging millions of individuals to subject themselves to misery, suffering, and death along the journey to the border. We are ready and willing to cooperate with Texas law enforcement to pass along information regarding what we find.”

  There are dozens of NGOs involved in various ways in assisting immigrants coming into the United States. It isn’t illegal to provide such care and services to legal immigrants, but multiple federal laws may be broken when illegal immigrants are involved.

  Among such NGOs, according to the state of California, are Amnesty International USA, Catholic Charities USA, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and Refugee Council USA.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 15:30

• FBI Whistleblower Slams Ted Lieu, Says He Was Moved Off Child Porn Cases To Focus On J6
  FBI Whistleblower Slams Ted Lieu, Says He Was Moved Off Child Porn Cases To Focus On J6

  Following the latest ‘TWITTER FILES‘ drop, which revealed that “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” journalist Matt Taibbi commented that “Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts.”

  Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.

  — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022

  In response, California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu lashed out – telling Taibbi: “I’m on the House Judiciary Committee that has oversight over the @FBI and you are lying,” adding “The FBI has lots of agents chasing child sex predators and terrorists. Please stop undermining and lying about federal law enforcement.”

  To which researcher Tracy Beanz asked FBI whistleblower Steve Friend to chime in.

  Oh? Hey @RealStevefriend !! Maybe you wanna hop in here and help him?

  — Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) December 17, 2022

  Friend, a former 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, notably came out in October to claim that the agency went into hyperdrive to track down and investigate January 6th cases to promote the appearance of right-wing domestic terrorism, at the expense of other investigations – such as child trafficking.

  

  Friend was suspended and stripped of his gun and badge in September for refusing to participate in SWAT raids against January 6th subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses, according to the NY Post.

  As Taibbi wrote in November of Friend;

  He worked a child pornography detail before being transferred to the assignment that would upend his life: investigating J6. The FBI not only took Friend off vital work chasing child predators to pursue questionable investigations of people maybe connected with the Capitol riots (often in some misdemeanor fashion), they used dubious bureaucratic methods he felt put him in an impossible spot.

  Essentially, the FBI made Friend a supervisory agent in cases actually being run by the Washington field office, a trick replicated across the country that made domestic terrorism numbers appear to balloon overnight. Instead of one investigation run out of Washington, the Bureau now had hundreds of “terrorism” cases “opening” in every field office in the country. As a way to manipulate statistics, it was ingenious, but Friend could see it was also trouble.

  As a member of a dying breed of agent raised to focus on making cases and securing convictions, Friend knew putting him nominally in charge of a case he wasn’t really running was a gift to any good defense attorney, should a J6 case ever get to trial.

  “They’re gonna see my name as being the case agent, yet not a single document has my name as doing any work,” Friend says. “Now a defense lawyer can say, ‘Hey, the case agent for this case didn’t perform any work.’ Labeling the case this way would be a big hit to our prosecution.”

  And so, in response to Lieu’s tweet, Friend wrote: “Hey @tedlieu, I’ll be happy to explain how I was moved from investigating child exploitation and human trafficking and told to focus on January 6. I was told child pornographers should be considered a “local matter.””

  Absolutely @tracybeanz. Hey @tedlieu, I’ll be happy to explain how I was moved from investigating child exploitation and human trafficking and told to focus on January 6. I was told child pornographers should be considered a “local matter.” https://t.co/iE7KJ9fZt7

  — @RealStevefriend (@RealStevefriend) December 17, 2022

  So far crickets from Lieu, though he’s quite the prolific Tweeter so maybe Friend will get a response.

  The FBI, meanwhile, responded to Taibbi’s “The Twitter Files” thread, in which he said that between January 2020 and November 2022, former Twitter Senior Director of Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth, had exchanged over 150 emails with the agency.

  “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities,” the FBI said in a statement. “Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 15:00

• Taibbi Hits Back After Critics Attack During 'Twitter Files' Release
  Taibbi Hits Back After Critics Attack During ‘Twitter Files’ Release

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  Toward the end of work on this story a controversy blew up around the Twitter Files. I learned a little on Thursday night, and then apparently missed a whole drama that took place online Friday while I was trying to put the FBI story together.

  Once that story was out, I saw just a few critics weigh in before falling asleep. This morning highlights were passed on to me by friends. The gist was expressed by MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, who’s taken over the role of Ardent Establishment Moralist from Rachel Maddow, who had a firm grip on it until she spent three years bollocking the Trump-Russia story.

  Mehdi’s had a raging cable-on for all things Elon Musk for a while, apparently.

  Here’s a tweet from yesterday:

  Is this a joke? Taibbi is doing a new Twitter Files thread while continuing to ignore what Musk has done to journalists on this platform for the past 24 hours? Even Weiss has called him out, but Taibbi seems to want to tweet through it. Wow. https://t.co/bkruKarMzP

  — Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) December 16, 2022

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

   I actually wasn’t silent about it (see last night’s Substack piece), but even if I had been, so what? These Twitter Files stories that are coming out are getting at issues that have nothing to do with Elon Musk, Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar, Barney the Dinosaur, or anyone else.

  This is a chance for ordinary Americans to see, from the inside, how their tax dollars have been spent building an elaborate, systematized method of censorship and opinion control, with agencies like the DHS and the DOJ/FBI at the helm. These “enforcement” agencies are not fighting or investigating crime (or even, say, terror plots), they’re just collecting domestic intelligence on a grand scale, and seeking to distort the public’s perception of reality through mass moderation, via programs we’ve been told little to nothing about.

  Hasan believes that just as we’re getting this state-sponsored mass-censorship program in our sights, I should stop, beat my breast on Twitter about an unrelated topic every other corporate journalist in the world is already wailing about, and make the story about me at exactly the moment we’ve found good reason for people to focus their attention on agencies like the FBI and the DHS.

  There’s a divide in media, mostly generational, with conspicuous exceptions. The current reigning breed of press figure — Mehdi is a perfect example — imagines himself or herself to be first and foremost a political animal, someone who’s primary job is to advocate at all times for a point of view.

  There’s an extraordinary emphasis on “calling out,” a concept that didn’t exist when I started doing this job. A parallel example to the lunacy of last night would be the parade of people in the past weeks who insisted I had a responsibility — because we both happened to be on the Twitter Files story — to confront Bari Weiss about past actions of hers involving Columbia University and professors accused of bias against Jewish students.

  Because I didn’t throw a fit and walk out on a great story when Bari came on the scene, it’s evidence I’ve “aligned myself with the right.” I imagine once word gets out we were also civil and cooperative as we rummaged through the digital pile, this will be another count in the indictments against us both.

  This is the same bugbear that afflicted signatories of the “Harper’s Letter,” many of whom found themselves accused of hypocrisy because they co-signed a statement with (circle one) Bari/J.K. Rowling/David Frum/Katie Herzog/Jesse Singal/Others, who were deemed Bad People for reasons X, Y, Z, etc. The idea was, we don’t judge people on the basis of what they say anymore. Instead, by co-signing a statement with others, we are now responsible — indeed, we’ve implicitly endorsed — the collective actions and opinions accrued over the lifetimes of all the people whose signatures are on the same page with ours.

  Therefore you must not sign a statement, even if you believe in every word of it. You have to attach conditions: I won’t sign, you’re supposed to say, until the following three objectionable people are removed. You have to “call out” the very people who may have just gulped hard before agreeing to co-sign a petition with you.

  The furor over who signed the Harper’s Letter succeeded in its obvious aim, which was to detract from its simple, humane message, which was good enough for Salman Rushdie and Noam Chomsky: “We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other.”

  Instead of debating this proposition, national media turned the Harper’s Letter — quickly rechristened the “now-infamous letter” by the likes of Forbes — into a referendum on the views of people like Bari and J.K. Rowling. Its organizer, Thomas Chatterton Williams, became the subject of appalling attacks, and even after criticizing Donald Trump both in the letter and out of it, was criticized for failing to add enough quantity to his critique, not adding that Trump is a violent demagogue and mendacious racist in addition to something less than a genuine proponent of free speech. The Atlantic even pretended to be aghast that the Harpers signatories could worry about free expression in the pages of a magazine that does not pay its interns.

  This was all a show, transparently designed to obscure the point. It’s beyond obvious the same phenomenon is going on with the Twitter Files.

  I mentioned a divide in the business. There is another breed of media figure, dwindling in number, which doesn’t care where any interesting information or documentation comes from. Those of us in that group know we’re legally allowed to publish material that’s been stolen, and we’ll take newsworthy revelations from hackers, foreign spies, political zealots of all stripes, and crazy people (especially crazy people: they are some of our best sources). Some of the best journalism has come from interviews with gangsters and convicted murderers. We don’t care: if the stuff is real and newsworthy, we’ll print it.

  Subscribers to TK News can read more here…

  As usual, the graphics in Friday night’s “Twitter Files” story make the entire thread too large to sneak through Gmail’s size limit. But a readable online version of the thread lives on the TK site. You can find it by clicking here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 14:30

• John Carmack Rage-Quits From Meta VR Project After Doomed Experience
  John Carmack Rage-Quits From Meta VR Project After Doomed Experience

  Video game industry legend John Carmack, the man who brought us Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, is done with Facebook’s virtual reality ‘metaverse’ project, which is apparently a complete mess.

  

  The 52-year-old Carmack, who joined Meta from Oculus after its $2 billion acquisition in 2014, said in an internal memo published in part by the NY Times, that he’s “wearied of the fight” and would focus on his own startup – AI firm Keen Technologies, for which he’s raised $20 million.

  “It has been a struggle for me,” Carmack wrote in the post. “I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough.”

  When Facebook bought virtual reality company Oculus in 2014, Carmack was one of the most influential voices in the VR world. He decided to stay with the company after CEO Mark Zuckerberg chose to pivot the company’s focus – and name – towards the metaverse.

  Yet even though Meta was moving swiftly into an area that Mr. Carmack specialized in, he was sometimes a dissenting voice about how the effort was going. He became known for internal posts that criticized the decision-making and direction set forth by Mr. Zuckerberg and Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer. Mr. Carmack had been working part-time for the company in recent years. -NYT

  In an August podcast interview, Carmack said Meta’s $10 billion in losses within the company’s augmented reality and VR division made him “sick to my stomach,” and that the company’s metaverse efforts have been bogged down by concerns over diversity and privacy.

  Carmack has also internally criticized features of the company’s Quest VR headsets – saying that the hardware of the Quest 2 headset was “exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning,” but that the software was lacking.

  

  “We built something pretty close to The Right Thing,” he said.

  Still, Carmack thinks that Meta has the best shot at pulling off VR.

  “V.R. can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta,” he wrote in his farewell post.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 14:00

• Social Media Coordination Between DOJ And FBI Is Not Limited To Twitter: Devin Nunes
  Social Media Coordination Between DOJ And FBI Is Not Limited To Twitter: Devin Nunes

  Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The social media coordination between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI isn’t limited to Twitter, former Congressman and current CEO of President Trump’s Truth Social, Devin Nunes, alleged in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 14.

  

  The Twitter Files, a collection of internal emails and communications made public by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, confirmed what many Conservatives have alleged for years. Namely, Twitter was shadow-banning accounts that didn’t fit a specific ideology and suspending accounts that bucked the chosen political narrative, Nunes claimed.

  

  But, the most concerning revelation in the Twitter Files, according to Nunes, is that the DOJ and the FBI had informants—whether paid or volunteers—that put forward a specific directive to Twitter, and that is likely happening on other social media platforms.

  “The coordination that the Department of Justice and the FBI clearly had with Twitter? I don’t think it stops there,” Nunes stated.

  “It seems like they were either running informants, or had paid informants, or had volunteers, where they were actively sending information on behalf of the government on who to look into, or who to ban, and that sort of thing.

  “The bigger issue is, Twitter is one thing, but what about Facebook? What about Instagram?”

  Censorship and Shadow-Banning

  According to Nunes, Trump developed Truth Social because, before Musk bought Twitter, Trump recognized that there was absolute control over public discourse in the United States.

  Furthermore, that control led to shadow banning and suspending social media accounts, so those accounts couldn’t criticize the controlling regime in the proverbial public square.

  

  And while Nunes further stated that he’d recently discussed the Twitter File drops with Trump—and in general, Trump is glad Musk purchased Twitter—Trump still believes Musk needs to release all of the Twitter Files to the public and not go through cherry-picked journalists.

  “What [do] we really need from Elon Musk and Twitter at this point? Just release all the files. Don’t just have selective journalists look at it. Release all the files so everyone can begin to evaluate them. You never know what you’re going to find [with more people looking at the files].”

  Nunes said he believes that by releasing all the files, even more will be uncovered by citizen journalists and by Congress. He added he’s not alone in the belief that Musk should release all files and noted that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO and founder, also called on Musk to release the Twitter Files to the public.

  Legacy Media Silence

  The Twitter Files contained explosive revelations. But the legacy media has largely avoided covering the drops. When asked why there was silence, Nunes stated that the legacy media had supported a particular narrative and political party.

  Musk revealing damaging information on government censorship has put the media in an interesting predicament where if they cover the files, they also expose their complicity and damaging information to their preferred political group.

  “There’s a strange cat-and-mouse game where [Musk] is sitting on what seems to be a treasure trove of really damaging information to not only the fake news media but also to probably many areas within the United States government,” Nunes stated.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 13:30

• Court Rules Against Biological Females Over Connecticut Transgender Athlete Policy
  Court Rules Against Biological Females Over Connecticut Transgender Athlete Policy

  A three-judge appellate panel on Friday dismissed a challenge to Connecticut’s transgender athlete policy, after a group of biological females said it was unfair that they have to race against biological males who identify as female.

  

  In its decision, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City upheld a lower court judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the policy, brought by four female runners opposed to letting transgender athletes compete in high school sports. According to the judges, the girls lacked standing to sue, calling their claims that they were deprived of wins, state titles and athletic scholarship articles ‘speculative.’

  “All four Plaintiffs regularly competed at state track championships as high school athletes, where Plaintiffs had the opportunity to compete for state titles in different events,” reads the ruling. “And, on numerous occasions, Plaintiffs were indeed “champions,” finishing first in various events, even sometimes when competing against (transgender athletes).”

  According to the judges, “Plaintiffs simply have not been deprived of a ‘chance to be champions.’”

  The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Council argued its policy is designed to comply with a state law that requires all high school students be treated according to their gender identity. It also said the policy is in accordance with Title IX, the federal law that allows girls equal educational opportunities, including in athletics.

  The American Civil Liberties Union defended the two transgender athletes at the center of the lawsuit — Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood. –AP

  A lawyer for the girls, Christiana Kiefer, said she and other attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom are considering how to respond, including a possible appeal to the US Supreme Court to review Friday’s decision.

  “Our clients, like all female athletes across the country, deserve fair competition,” she told AP in a phone interview. “And that means fair and equal quality of competition, and that just does not happen when you’re forced to compete against biological males in their sports.”

  “The vast majority of the American public recognizes that in order to have fair sports, we have to protect the female category, and I think you’re seeing that trend increasingly with states across the country passing laws to protect women’s sports. … This is certainly not the end of the road in the fight for fairness for female athletes,” Keiver added.

  It actually is kind of interesting to have to defend everything self-evidently correct in explicit terms now that everything self-evidently correct has come under attack https://t.co/0ObJ3O7hlJ

  — Wesley Yang (@wesyang) December 16, 2022

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

  Attorneys on the other side celebrated.

  “Today’s ruling is a critical victory for fairness, equality, and inclusion,” said ACLU attorney Joshua Block. “This critical victory strikes at the heart of political attacks against transgender youth while helping ensure every young person has the right to play.”

  In June, a poll conducted by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found that just 28% of the public supports transgender athletes being allowed to compete in female sports. 68 per cent of respondents believe that trans athletes “would have a competitive advantage over other girls” in youth sports.

  

  As Summit News noted earlier this year, top doctors told the New York Times that transgender swimmer Lia Thomas still has an unfair advantage over biological females despite the athlete having undergone testosterone suppressing therapy.

  And in October, female high school athletes in Burlington, Vermont were banned from their own locker room after making complaints to school officials about the inappropriate behavior of a biological male teammate that identifies as trans. 

  We cannot have biological boys with penises changing next to our daughters in locker rooms, and then have our daughters scolded by the school. This is so backwards. Shame on Vermont!

  — Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) October 3, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 12/17/2022 – 13:00

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