Today’s News 23rd December 2022

• Visualizing Healthcare Spending & Life Expectancy, By Country
  Visualizing Healthcare Spending & Life Expectancy, By Country

  Over the last century, life expectancy at birth has more than doubled across the globe, largely thanks to innovations and discoveries in various medical fields around sanitation, vaccines, and preventative healthcare.

  Yet, while the average life expectancy for humans has increased significantly on a global scale, there’s still a noticeable gap in average life expectancies between different countries.

  What’s the explanation for this divide? According to World Bank data compiled by Truman Du, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang suggests it may be partially related to the amount of money a country spends on its healthcare…

  More Spending Generally Means More Years

  The latest available data from the World Bank includes both the healthcare spending per capita of 178 different countries and their average life expectancy.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the analysis found that countries that spent more on healthcare tended to have higher average life expectancies up until reaching the 80-year mark.

  

  However, there were a few slight exceptions.

  For instance, while the United States has the largest spending of any country included in the dataset, its average life expectancy of 77 years is lower than many other countries that spend far less per capita.

  What’s going on in the United States? While there are several intermingling factors at play, some researchers believe a big contributor is the country’s higher infant mortality rate, along with its higher relative rate of violence among young adults.

  On the other end of the spectrum, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea have the highest life expectancies on the list despite their relatively low spending per capita.

  It’s worth mentioning that this wasn’t always the case—in the 1960s, Japan’s life expectancy was actually the lowest among the G7 countries, and South Korea’s was below 60 years, making it one of the top 30 countries by improved life expectancy:

  

  In fact, the last 60 years have seen many countries substantially increase their average life expectancies from the 30-40 year range to 70+ years. But as the header chart shows, there are still many countries lagging behind in Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

  How High Can Average Life Expectancy Go?

  Since people are living longer than they’ve ever lived before, how much higher will average life expectancies be in another 100 years?

  Recent research published in Nature Communications suggests that, under the right circumstances, human beings have the potential to live up to 150 years.

  Projections from the UN predict that growth will be divided, with developed countries seeing higher life expectancies than developing regions.

  

  However, as seen in the above chart from the World Economic Forum and using UN data, it’s likely the gap between developed and developing countries will narrow over time.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 23:20

• Dozens Of CCP-Linked Experts, Celebrities, Officials Die During Recent COVID-19 Outbreak
  Dozens Of CCP-Linked Experts, Celebrities, Officials Die During Recent COVID-19 Outbreak

  Authored by Sophia Lam via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  China, its capital in particular, has been hit hard by the recent wave of COVID-19 that is sweeping the country.

  

  After dozens of professors and teachers from top Chinese universities passed away during the past 30 days, four more prominent Chinese figures have been reported to have died in the three days Sunday to Monday, respectively. They were aged from 39 to 89.

  According to Shanghai-based news portal The Paper, Tsinghua University professor Wu Guanying, China Film Art Research Center’s former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary Chen Jingliang, former member of the editorial board of Xinhua News Agency Fang Xuehui, and celebrated Peking Opera performer Chu Lanlan all died within the three days.

  The Paper wrote that they died of illness after medical treatment failed to help them. The report didn’t specify which illness caused their deaths.

  Biographies of 4 Scholars and Celebrities

  Professor Wu Guanying, who died on Dec. 20 at the age of 67, was a professor of the Department of Information Art & Design at the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University. He was best known as one of the designers of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics mascots. He also participated in the design of many sets of stamps and gold and siver coins of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, and was the designer of the New Year greeting series stamps.

  Chen Jingliang, born in April 1946, joined the CCP in 1979, according to The Paper. He started as a translator at China Film Group Corporation in 1970 and was the former CCP secretary of the China Film Art Research Center from 1994 to 2006 when Chen retired. He was a member of China’s Film Censorship Committee, which is overseen by China’s National Radio and Television Administration. Chen died on Dec. 19 at the age of 76.

  Fang Xuehui was born in December 1933 in Indonesia. He worked for the CCP’s mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency’s Jakarta regional office in the 1950s and settled down in China in 1966. He was an editor with Cankaoxiaoxi (“Reference News”), published by Xinhua News Agency, which translates and re-publishes articles by foreign news agencies. It was once only available to the CCP’s cadres and their families.

  Chu Lanlan was born in 1983 and passed away on Dec. 18 at the age of 39. She worked with the CCP’s military performing arts troupe to create Peking Opera singing and dancing pieces. She performed in various performances hosted by the CCP’s Central TV and Beijing TV.

  Over 30 Deaths Reported in One Month at 2 Top Chinese Universities

  From Nov. 10 to Dec. 10, a total of 19 retired professors and teachers of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University reportedly died amid the most recent wave of the pandemic outbreak, as reported by China’s news portal Sina.

  

  Huang Kezhi, a professor of Tsinghua University’s Department of Engineering Mechanics and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, died on Dec. 6 at the age of 95. Huang, a CCP member, was one of the founders of the Department of Engineering Mechanics, according to The Paper.

  Tsinghua University is home to some of the most prominent alumni, including the current CCP top leader Xi Jinping, his predecessor Hu Jintao, and former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji.

  On Dec. 11, an article titled “Taking the Protection of the Life and Health of Old Comrades as the Top Priority of the Current Epidemic Prevention and Control” was published on the official website of Tsinghua University, which says three working teams have been set up to guarantee the pandemic control and medical treatment of retired teachers and professors of the university. The article is reposted by Sina, a Chinese digital news portal.

  Netizens checked the obituaries published by Peking University from Nov. 6 to Dec. 5 and found that 15 scholars of the university passed away during the period. Among them, 89-year-old Yang Gen, CCP member and professor of the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University, died on Nov. 30.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 23:00

• Putin To Sign Response To G7's Oil Price Cap Early Next Week, Touts "No Losses"
  Putin To Sign Response To G7’s Oil Price Cap Early Next Week, Touts “No Losses”

  President Putin indicated Thursday that Russia’s long-awaited response to the G7 oil price cap will come next Monday or Tuesday, in a defiant message asserting there will be no losses for Russia’s economy due to the cap.

  After long warning Europe its punitive anti-Moscow measures will backfire, he on Thursday repeated this theme that the price cap will trigger “a path toward destruction of global energy” – possibly sending prices to “sky-high” levels. “No individual damage for Russia, for the Russian economy, for the Russian fuel and energy sector is seen. We are selling approximately at prices set as the cap,” Putin said, according to a state media translation.

  

  “The goal of our geopolitical opponents, adversaries is clear – to limit revenues of the Russian budget,” Putin continued, before asserting: 

  “We nevertheless lose nothing from this ceiling; there are no losses for the Russian fuel and energy sector and the economy, the budget.”

  And he re-emphasized that there are “No losses because we are selling at these prices.”

  Interestingly a Foreign Policy op-ed published on the same day by chairman of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, Richard Morningstar, seems to agree and admits the following…

  “When Western leaders announced on Dec.2 that they had agreed on a $60 price cap on Russian oil exports they trumpeted it as a bold multinational achievement in energy diplomacy. But anyone who things this will be a significant hit to Russian oil revenues… is likely to be disappointed.”

  And more: “After all, Russian oil has sold at prices in the $60 range for much of the last sevral years. Moreover, since Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, global energy traders have already limited their offtake of Russian crude to some extent. When countires such as India and China snapped up the surplus, they negotiated steep discounts. But the discount for Urals crude, the main Russian benmark – nearly $40 per barrel compared with Brent oil in the early months of the war – has slowly dropped into the low $20 per barrel range, allowing Moscow to continue cashing in.”

  In contrast, Ukraine still has high hopes of a very different outcome, naturally…

  “We expect the collapse of profits from oil and gas exports to be at more than 50%, precisely because of the introduction of the EU embargo on oil and petroleum products and the introduction of price restrictions. Oil and gas account for 60% and 40% of federal budget revenues. We expect that Russia’s revenues will fall below the critical level of $40 billion per quarter,” Yuliya Svyrydenko, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine has said, echoing the whole impetus and rationale behind the cap as creating conditions that make it much more difficult for the Russian military machine to continue functioning.

  As for Putin, he the day prior also confidently said that his approach to the Ukraine special operation will remain one of “no limits” on spending. “The country and government is giving everything that the army asks for – everything. I trust that there will be an appropriate response and the results will be achieved,” Putin informed his top officials at the Defense Ministry’s annual meeting in Moscow.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 22:40

• Mother Finds Herself Under Military Scrutiny For Objecting To Sexuality Poster At School
  Mother Finds Herself Under Military Scrutiny For Objecting To Sexuality Poster At School

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

  A New Jersey mom continues to endure threats after a high-ranking military officer posted she was under investigation by security forces for objecting to student-made posters promoting terms like polysexual and pansexual at her local elementary school.

  Angela Reading is a former school teacher and, until her recent resignation, a member of the Northern Burlington County Regional School board of education.

  Reading told The Epoch Times that along with the U.S. Army officer’s social media posts warning she was under investigation for “causing safety concerns for many families,” North Hanover Township police chief Robert Duff contacted her and told her he had received emails from the military asking her to take her social media posts down about the sexuality posters.

  

  Reading said Duff originally said he would release the emails to her, but then reneged, telling her the military told him he couldn’t because “they were classified.”

  Duff also refused to release them to The Epoch Times, saying he had no comment about the situation, and that “we should ask the military” about it.

  No one from the nearby McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Joint Base, a large Air Force installation that hosts five wings—where Army officer Christopher Schilling is stationed—responded to inquiries by The Epoch Times.

  Schilling’s rank had initially been reported in national news as lieutenant, but The Epoch Times has been able to confirm he is a major assigned to the 78th Training Command as an operations officer.

  Schilling has also been reported by some national press as being a parent, but a school official—speaking on the condition of anonymity—said she wasn’t aware of him having any children in the school district.

  The Epoch Times has been unable to contact Schilling.

  Fears Over Community Safety

  The Army officer posted on Facebook that “the Joint Base leadership takes this situation very seriously and from the beginning have had the security forces working with multiple state and local law enforcement agencies to ensure the continued safety of the entire community.”

  Schilling also posted that one of Reading’s children was in the 2nd grade, commenting that the posters were hung in a school for 4th to 6th graders.

  “That literally gave me the chills,” Reading told The Epoch Times, “that he was posting about kids and seemed to have detailed knowledge of them.”

  Reading said she was so terrified that she immediately pulled her children out of school out of concern for their safety.

  Reading is the latest in a growing group of parents and other citizens across the United States who have become headline news after being accused of inciting violence for objecting to sexually explicit material in public schools.

  Nicole Solas, from Rhode Island, was pictured on a front page news story labeled “Domestic Terrorists” for her objection to explicit LGBT sex education—including one curriculum that likened sexual preference to choosing a type of pizza in a middle school assignment.

  Well-Organized Ambush

  Virginia mom Stacy Langton’s national notoriety began after she read from the book “Gender Queer,” which she found in school’s elementary school library, to the Fairfax County School Board.

  Langton’s microphone was shut off and she was reminded there were children in the audience.

  Kari MacRae, a Massachusetts grandmother, was fired from her teaching job in another town, was pressured to resign from the Hanover school board, and was the subject of what appeared to be a well-organized ambush during an impromptu public comment session, after she objected to LGBT and CRT curriculum in the schools.

  MacRae said she sympathizes with Reading.

  “She is trying to protect not just her own child, but all the children, because she sees how this is going to impact future generations and she the need to stand up and say enough is enough,” said MacRae. “There is a difference between inclusivity and indoctrination and that’s what they are trying to do here.”

  Like MacRae, Reading too said she was blindsided by a packed auditorium of people who appeared to come from out of town to protest against her.

  “The crazy thing is that all I basically said is that the poster was inappropriate,” said Reading.

  She also had only posted on a private Facebook group, made up mostly of conservative parents.

  “All I can think is there must be a mole on there,” she said.

  

  As for the poster in question, the collage, if still up it covers an entire wall at the Upper Elementary School (UES). It was hung just outside the entrance into the school’s auditorium, which is used by the entire district for events.

  The district was hosting a math night when Reading said her 7-year-old daughter, who is enrolled in a talented and gifted reading program, pointed out the poster and asked her what a “polysexual” was.

  After doing some inquiring the next day, Reading said she was told the poster was for an “Inclusion and Diversity” in-class project and that the kids came up with their own terms, not the school or teachers.

  Interestingly, as Schilling pointed out, the kids came up with “mostly sexual-themed posters” for the diversity project with little to no other subjects typically linked to the idea of diversity such as religion, ethnicity, body shape, and other visual characteristics.

  “This giant poster is riddled with rainbows and all the LGBT flags,” said Reading. “There’s a flag for polysexuals, a flag for pansexuals, bisexuals, asexuals, gender queer, nonbinary, transgender, androgynous, gender fluid, and it was 4th to 6th graders who came up with this all by themselves?”

  Facing Online Abuse

  In the middle of the sexual-orientation flags is written in big letters “LGBT.”

  Reading said she found the poster appalling because the terms, by their own definition, are about “sexual attraction”—not appropriate subject matters for 9 to 11-year-olds.

  It was only after she was told to “live with it” by school officials that she went online about the poster.

  Reading has been repeatedly called a bigot and a hater on a variety of social media platforms, and in published news stories, and is the subject of a new change.org petition that has labeled her an extremist.

  Schilling and Reading’s array of critics have largely accused her of putting children from military families who live on the joint base in danger and went so far as to accuse her of “inciting violence” with her objection to the posters.

  Superintendent Helen Payne, who released a statement about the case, did not respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times.

  In her statement, Payne wrote that the school has “been in continuous close contact with the North Hanover police” over the issue.

  “They are taking any risks very seriously, are aware of our concerns, and have been working on their end to provide any support we need.”

  Reading has, however, also won her share of support including from parents who have criticized Schilling for using his authority to threaten her.

  In one of his posts Schilling wrote, “Most younger kids would only focus on the pretty colored flags. The few that ask about the words can easily be explained as “those words describe other types of families and change the subject. Much worse is on billboards or flags flying in people’s yards …”

  Backing For a Concerned Mother

  In a statement to The Epoch Times, Gregory Quinlan, executive director of the Center For Garden State Families, took special aim at Duff for going along with the pressuring of Reading instead of protecting her and her First Amendment rights.

  “Police chief Robert Duff clearly forgot what it meant when he took the oath of office to protect the U.S. Constitution. His job is to defend the rights of Angela Reading, not take them away,” said Quinlan.

  He also said anyone can see that Reading said nothing “that incited violence.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 22:20

• "Baltimore City Becomes Graveyard" Amid Dangerous Murder Wave
  “Baltimore City Becomes Graveyard” Amid Dangerous Murder Wave

  It has been two years since Baltimore welcomed Mayor Brandon Scott with an ambitious new crime-fighting plan. So far, progress has been horrible. 

  “I will reduce homicides by 15% each year of my term and get us below 300 homicides my first year,” vowed the new Mayor.

  As of Thursday, homicides in the Democrat-controlled city have hit 322, not too far from record highs after a murderous summer. 

  Baltimore City’s 2022 cumulative homicide trend is on par with the deadly years before Scott entered office. 

  

  The city had one of the deadliest summers in years. 

  

  With a population of around 600,000, the metro area is one of the most dangerous places in the country on a per capita basis. The murder rate stands at about 58.27 per 100,000.

  Mayor Scott’s plan to fix the city has been a nightmare with no real progress: 

  “Baltimore City done become a graveyard — memorials on every corner,” resident Karl McDonald, who joined a recent anti-violence march in the neighborhood, told AP News. 

  Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s policies of not prosecuting low-level crimes since 2020 have accelerated the city’s demise. 

  Meanwhile, Baltimore City Police Department is hemorrhaging officers as a shortage inhibits the ability to conduct meaningful patrols in high-crime areas — allowing gangs to completely control neighbors where black markets thrive and gunfire is rampant. 

  Violence in the city is so bad that a local chapter of the NAACP urged Gov. Larry Hogan to declare a “public emergency” and deploy the National Guard to prevent further collapse. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 22:00

• As RSV Rages, States Intentionally Limit Hospital Beds
  As RSV Rages, States Intentionally Limit Hospital Beds

  Authored by Jaimie Cavanaugh & Daryl James via RealClear Wire,

  Doctors sounded the alarm after Thanksgiving: COVID, flu and RSV cases continue to climb, creating a triple threat pushing many hospitals to capacity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls it a “perfect storm for a terrible holiday season.”

  

  One Boston hospital reports doctors caring for patients in the hallways of emergency departments. A mother in Silver Spring, Maryland, says her 6-year-old son had to wait a week for access to an intensive care unit after he was hospitalized with RSV. Similar stories have emerged in Michigan, New Jersey and elsewhere.

  What public officials rarely mention is that all of these states, and most others, intentionally limit hospital bed supply. Before health care providers can enter a market, add a wing to an existing facility or reallocate space, they must get a government permission slip called a “certificate of need” (CON). Overall, 38 states and Washington, D.C., impose some type of CON requirement.

  The approval process is cumbersome, often adding months and tens of thousands of dollars to urgent projects. Sometimes the government’s final answer is no, meaning private investors cannot spend their own money to expand medical services. Patients must settle for less.

  The regulations might make sense if they helped keep people safe, but CON mandates have no medical purpose. Different government groups already license doctors and nurses, approve drugs, test medical devices and set standards of care.

  CON boards focus instead on money. They consider how each proposed project might affect the bottom line of existing health care providers. Many states even allow incumbents to intervene on their own behalf, attacking the applications of potential direct competitors.

  If states took a similar approach in other industries, McDonald’s could stop mom-and-pop burger joints from opening nearby. The Home Depot could block small hardware stores. And LA Fitness could criminalize new gyms.

  The intent is to prevent health care overinvestment, supposedly to keep costs under control. But the reality is economic protectionism. Established providers gain access to an exclusive club closed to outsiders.

  Membership has its privileges. CON holders don’t have to worry about startup enterprises luring away customers with faster, cheaper or friendlier service. The government runs interference, blocking entrepreneurship and protecting the status quo.

  CON holders also can take their employees for granted. Limited supply means less mobility for doctors, nurses and other health care professionals, especially when states allow the enforcement of noncompete clauses on top of CON restrictions.

  Patients are the ultimate losers. Hospitals make the most money when they operate near capacity, but the business model leaves families vulnerable during major outbreaks.

  COVID already provided a wakeup call. California, Texas and 10 other states — covering 40% of the U.S. population — started the pandemic with an edge. They fully eliminated their CON laws years before the emergency, resulting in more hospital beds, surgery centers, dialysis clinics and hospices per capita than the national average at the end of 2019.

  Other states had to backtrack. “Conning the Competition,” a report from our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, finds that 24 states and Washington, D.C., quickly suspended their CON requirements when COVID infections began to spread, allowing health care providers to respond more quickly to the crisis.

  Rather than learn their lesson, most of these states returned to full CON enforcement by 2022 as if nothing happened. Now they are scrambling again.

  What they fail to grasp is that putting artificial limits on hospital beds is a dangerous game. Policymakers ignore decades of evidence when they cling to CON laws. Congress found the federal CON law to be a failure in 1987 and repealed it. The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice looked at CON laws again in 2008 and found no public benefit. Multiple studies since then show CON costs exceed the benefits.

  Repealing CON laws would not end COVID, the flu or RSV. But it would end a rigged system that benefits big hospitals at the expense of entrepreneurs, health care professionals and patients — including the ones crowded out of emergency rooms and pediatric wards this holiday season.

  Jaimie Cavanaugh is the author of “Conning the Competition” and an attorney at the Institute for Justice in Minneapolis. Daryl James is an Institute for Justice writer.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 21:40

• Boston Dynamics' Creepy Robo-Hounds Decorate A Christmas Tree
  Boston Dynamics’ Creepy Robo-Hounds Decorate A Christmas Tree

  Netflix’s post-apocalyptic drama “Black Mirror” featured a terrifying vision of robot dogs hunting humans. The quadruped robot resembles the actual real-life robot design by Boston Dynamics. 

  Over the years, videos published by Boston Dynamics’ remind us that robot dogs aren’t fantasy but reality. The US-based company’s “Spot,” a 70-pound robo-hound, is already out in the field. It has already been hailed by the New York Police Department as a high-tech crime-fighting sidekick and even used during field training exercises by the French military. 

  While Boston Dynamics can post all the cute and fun-loving videos of Spot, and even festive ones, like three robo-hounds decorating a Christmas tree, these machines are still creepy. 

  As previously noted, Boston Dynamics has pledged not to weaponize its robots and asked others in the industry to do the same. But China could care less and has equipped robo-hounds with machine guns.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 21:20

• Omnibus Bill Has Extra Funds For DOJ To Pursue More Jan. 6 Lawsuits
  Omnibus Bill Has Extra Funds For DOJ To Pursue More Jan. 6 Lawsuits

  Authored by Madalina Vasiliu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The $1.7 trillion, 4,155-page omnibus government funding bill that passed the Senate this afternoon, contains funds for the Justice Department (DOJ) to pursue additional lawsuits related to the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.

  

  The bill lists various funds, based on Jan. 6 events.

  It would give U.S. attorneys $2.63 billion—an increase of $212.2 million—”to further support prosecutions related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and domestic terrorism cases,” according to the summary provided by the House Appropriations Committee.

  The bill also has $734.5 million for the U.S. Capitol Police, up $132 million over fiscal year 2022. That includes incentives for law enforcement personnel for overtime pay, officer retention, and recruiting. These benefits include tuition credits, wellness, and trauma counseling.

  It would cover security officers on contract for mission needs and First Responder Unit training, K-9 unit expansion, and Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) facility costs and training, including leadership development and life-cycle replacements for necessary security, safety, and communications equipment.

  The Capitol architect would receive $1.3 billion, a $541 million increase over the fiscal year 2022 budget.

  Additionally, the bill would include $11.33 billion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), “for efforts to investigate extremist violence and domestic terrorism.”

  The amount represents an increase of $569.6 million compared with the 2022 fiscal year. That would be $524 million above President Joe Biden’s budget request.

  “After a lot of hard work, Democrats will fulfill our promise to pass reforms to the Electoral Count Act into law,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Dec. 20.

  “Two years after January 6, the attack on our Capitol remains an indelible stain on our democracy, and updating the Electoral Count Act is one of the ways we can prevent another January 6 in the future.”

  The omnibus bill includes the intention to make it tougher to reverse a certified presidential election as a direct reaction to the Jan. 6 events at the Capitol. It would raise the threshold for objecting to state electors from one House member and one senator to one-fifth of both chambers.

  On Dec. 19, nine members of the Jan. 6 committee agreed to bring criminal charges against former President Donald Trump related to that day’s events. A conviction on any of the charges would make it illegal for him to run for president again.

  The same committee referred four Republican legislators to the House Ethics Committee for defying subpoenas earlier this year.

  …

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 21:00

• Canadian Government Tells Kids They'll Be On Santa's 'Naughty List' Without COVID Vaccine, Masks
  Canadian Government Tells Kids They’ll Be On Santa’s ‘Naughty List’ Without COVID Vaccine, Masks

  It’s the end of 2022 and the world is still witnessing new heights of Covid absurdity and fear-mongering authoritarianism coming from government figures.

  Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam has issued a new public health announcement for the Christmas holidays, which comes in the form of a 2-minute interview with “Mrs. Clause” from the “North Pole”. In it, children are warned that they could be on Santa’s “naughty list” if they don’t get the Covid-19 vaccine and mask up. Adults too are told that they won’t make the “nice list” if they don’t have their boosters.

  Parents and Caregivers, I had a great chat with Mrs. Claus about things we can do to make this a happy and healthy holiday season. Here’s the scoop from the #NorthPole: pic.twitter.com/pgKY5NPEyV

  — Dr. Theresa Tam (@CPHO_Canada) December 21, 2022

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

  Dr. Tam begins the video with the “good news” that the vast majority of Canadians have made the nice list this year after having been vaccinated. 

  And “Mrs. Claus” responds: “It just warms my heart to see everyone in Canada, especially kids, working so hard to keep the holidays safe…” The suggestion is that the minority of citizens who remain unvaccinated or without their boosters are “naughty”. 

  Mrs. Claus then informs the children that she and Santa are “both up do date with our vaccinations, including Covid boosters and flu shots.” This is the holiday image Canada wants to convey to impressionable young children – that coronavirus now threatens the mythical North Pole, apparently. 

  From there the Christmas message goes into the kind of guilt-tripping rhetoric we’ve all come to expect from the Canadian government, and its top health official who is the equivalent of Dr. Fauci. 

  

  “I always tell Santa to make a list and check it twice,” Mrs. Claus says, and goes through the “list” by telling children to “stay up to date on your vaccinations” as well as “wear a mask… and make sure it’s nice and snug.”

  Dr. Tam follows by telling families that if they gather for the holidays, “open a door, or a window” to let fresh air in.

  All of this might actually be a step up for Canada when compared to the first couple years of the pandemic, given that across major cities there were strict curfews severely hindering freedom of movement, and not even relatives could visit family members after dark on fear of being ticketed by police. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 20:40

• Musk’s Neuralink Promising For Disabled, 'Ethical Concern' For Masses, Experts Say
  Musk’s Neuralink Promising For Disabled, ‘Ethical Concern’ For Masses, Experts Say

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Neuralink implant that aims to allow a person to control a computer with thoughts has good potential to achieve its initial goal of helping paralyzed people communicate. It may, at least to some extent, help restore vision for the blind. It may, to a significant degree, restore limb control for those with spine injuries, according to several neuroscientists.

  

  But when it comes to Neuralink’s broader goals of letting healthy people interface with computers directly via the mind, the technical capability is achievable, but would lead to expansive ethical, safety, security, privacy, and even philosophical issues, experts told The Epoch Times.

  Neuralink—founded in 2016 by the world’s richest man, prolific entrepreneur Elon Musk—recently applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human trials of its brain implants. The company staged a three-hour presentation of its progress, including demonstrations of a monkey controlling a computer with its mind, a robot that can handle some of the most delicate parts of the required brain implant insertion surgery, as well as a pig whose legs can be controlled remotely by a computer.

  The presentation also included a monkey with a brain implant that made it see flashes of light, a step toward the company’s proposition to restore vision for the blind.

  “The overarching goal of Neuralink is to create, ultimately, a whole brain interface. So a generalized input-output device that in the long term literally could interface with every aspect of your brain and in the short term can interface with any given section of your brain and solve a tremendous number of things that cause debilitating issues for people,” Musk said during the presentation.

  

  The Neuralink technology “makes a lot of sense” for helping people with disabilities, said Nicho Hatsopoulos, a neurology professor at the University of Chicago and one of the pioneers of brain-computer interface development.

  “It is impressive, actually,” he said after seeing the Neuralink presentation.

  Mark Churchland, associate professor of neuroscience at Columbia University and an expert on brain signal decoding, commended Neuralink for bringing the brain-computer interface technology a long way from experiment to product.

  “They seem to have a solid wireless interface, which is not an easy thing to build. And going from needing racks of equipment and computers to needing an iPhone is impressive,” he said.

  “In terms of the actual experiments, it’s not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but if you’re doing it better and more easily, that counts for a lot.”

  When it comes to the company’s plans to one day mass-produce the implants for use by anybody and everybody, both Hatsopoulos and Churchland were much more reserved.

  “We’re going to have to have some serious ethical conversations,” Hatsopoulos said, noting that “it’s one thing to help restore function in people who have a disability,” but “another thing to augment people.”

  “Augmentation is going to be a big ethical concern,” he said.

  Churchland was more blunt.

  “I think that is likely a really bad idea,” he said.

  Other experts raised concerns as well, ranging from philosophical questions over free will to security and privacy issues with regard to data collected from the brain as well as the potential to hack the implant.

  Level 1: Mind Mouse

  Neuralink’s initial goal is to enable physically incapacitated people to control a computer. At the current stage of development, the implant is roughly the size of a small stack of quarters. To install it, first, a piece of skin would be cut and peeled off the skull of the patient. Then, a small hole would be drilled in the skull. Next, a series of extremely thin, flexible wires would be connected to a thin needle one by one and stuck by a robotic machine inside the surface layer of the brain in the motor cortex area. The implant would be placed inside the hole in the skull, sealing it. The skin would be sewn over it and, as it heals, the implant would become invisible from the outside.

  The person would be asked to think, for instance, about moving their hand in a certain direction. Corresponding brain activity signals from the implant would be collected over a period of time, translated to computer data and commands via artificial intelligence and voila—the implant would then allow the person to control a computer with their mind.

  The Neuralink presentation proved the concept by showing a video of a monkey with the implant. The primate moved a mouse cursor to highlighted positions on a computer screen, getting bits of banana smoothie through a tube as a reward.

  

  The underlying technology is real and a similar experiment has been repeated many times by researchers using various methods, according to Shinsuke Shimojo, a professor of experimental psychology at the California Institute of Technology.

  In fact, a similar effect can be achieved even without sticking wires inside the brain as some brain activity can be detected on the surface of the head, he said, noting he’s currently working on one such technology.

  “It can be recordable reasonably well from the electrodes outside of the skull,” Shimojo said. “Those are done already and it’s going to be even better.”

  The more invasive path Neuralink has taken is more ambitious and more delicate.

  Regulatory authorities don’t allow invasive experimental techniques unless there’s an urgent medical need, Shimojo noted.

  “It’s not a science problem. It’s an ethical problem,” he said.

  Such experiments have so far been approved on a small scale for research purposes.

  In the early 2000s, implants developed by Cyberkinetics, a company co-founded by Hatsopoulos, were tested on several physically disabled patients. The project fizzled out because its investors lost interest, he said.

  The underlying software was acquired by a company called BrainGate in 2008 and clinical trials with small groups of patients have been ongoing at several research institutions, including one called BrainGate2 under the leadership of Leigh Hochberg, an engineering professor at Brown University.

  Science has only recently reached a point where multiple companies have decided to try to move it from research to a marketable product, Hochberg said.

  He’s currently helping several such companies, including Neuralink, which is now in talks with the FDA to run clinical trials that could lead to official approval of its implant as a form of treatment.

  “Clinical trials of this type would generally take a few years,” Hochberg said.

  Each new iteration of the implants would then require further trials, though he hopes software improvements of the system could be incorporated “with perhaps more speed.”

  The technology has been aided by advances in machine learning, which allows matching brain signal patterns with specific actions, such as moving a mouse cursor in a particular direction. Machine learning allows the correlation of brain patterns with physical outcomes without the need to understand the function of each specific neuron.

  “That’s the difference between the scientific approach and the engineering approach,” Shimojo commented.

  Scientists try to find out how things work, such as by exploring “how each neuron is wired” or “what’s the hierarchy of information processing in different parts of the brain,” he said. As a result, they try to drill down to causal relationships.

  Engineers, on the other hand, try to solve a problem. If an artificial intelligence finds a pattern that matches the desired result 95 percent of the time, that may be good enough, he noted.

  “I think right now, it’s moving, especially because of this deep learning progress, in that direction.”

  Level 2: Artificial Eye

  The next step for the Neuralink technology would be to restore sight, the presenters said. The same implant would be inserted at the back of the skull and connected to the visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible for processing images from the eyes. A video stream from a camera would then be encoded as neural signals and used to stimulate neurons responsible for image processing, thus rendering a picture.

  This seems to be possible in principle, but there may be difficulties in practice.

  “There are some constraints that can be removed eventually by just technical advance. And then there are some intrinsic limitations related to how the visual cortex itself is organized,” Shimojo said.

  Some neurons in the visual cortex indeed correspond to a location in the visual field. That means correct stimulation of one location in the brain produces a flash of light at a particular location in one’s vision and stimulation of another location produces a flash of light at a different place. Experiments of this kind have been done in apes and Neuralink demonstrated one.

  But “so far, the resolution is very, very low—ridiculously low,” Shimojo said.

  The flashes of light such stimulation produces can only be positioned on a grid of perhaps 12 by 12 pixels, he said.

  The picture quality can be improved by stimulating more neurons, i.e. inserting more electrodes into the brain. The Neuralink implant currently uses over 1,000 electrodes with a promise of 16,000 electrodes on the same chip. For the visual aid, the presentation proposed two implants with 16,000 electrodes each. If each electrode could be used to stimulate multiple “pixels,” perhaps a picture quality on par with a 1980s computer can be achieved.

  But even if the number of electrodes is further boosted in the future, the resulting image quality would still be limited, according to Shimojo.

  The problem is that if one creates a topographic map of the visual field, assigning each neuron to its position in the field, the result is nowhere precise enough to make up a clear image.

  “The topographic map is kind of crude and diffuse. It’s not pinpoint,” he said.

  People see with clarity thanks to complex, multi-layer image processing by the brain where the signal can travel back and forth between the layers and where neurons help adjacent neurons with the tasks.

  It’s not clear how the implant could achieve a comparable result, according to Shimojo.

  “It’s not easily solved by the technical side,” he said.

  Musk went as far as to suggest vision can be restored for people who are congenitally blind because even such people possess a visual cortex.

  “Even if they’ve never seen before, we’re confident that they could see,” he said.

  Hatsopoulos wasn’t so convinced.

  “I’m not clear that that’s possible,” he said.

  The issue is that the visual cortex “develops over the first several years of life” and the visual input from the eyes “helps organize how the visual cortex will function,” Hatsopoulos explained.

  Around the age of two, the brain loses the initial ability to develop so rapidly.

  That early development is “crucial,” he said, giving the example of children born with cataracts. The condition can be remedied by surgically replacing eye lenses, but it needs to be done early on. If the operation is performed too late, the patient won’t be able to see, even though all the physical parts are present and functioning.

  “Everything is perfectly fine, but the person will not understand the visual input coming in,” Hatsopoulos said.

  Level 3: Stretching the Limbs

  The Neuralink presentation outlined how the implants could restore limb control for people paralyzed after spine injuries. Aside from the implant in the motor cortex, another several implants would be inserted into the spine. Signals from the brain would then be recorded and sent to the spinal implants, bridging the part where the spinal cord is severed or damaged.

  In principle, this is fully achievable, according to the experts.

  “In fact, we’re doing that right now,” Hatsopoulos said. His university is working with a different implant technology that allows a patient to control a mechanical arm via the mind.

  One challenge is to record from many neurons at the same time “to give you the rich kind of movement that you would want to get” in order to produce “movement that’s somewhat normal,” he said.

  Reading from maybe a thousand neurons should suffice to restore “functional movement,” such as allowing a person to feed or dress themselves, Hatsopoulos said.

  “Maybe not as quickly as they would if they had an intact system, but they can do it,” he said.

  Based on its technical specifications, the Neuralink implant should enable a wide range of movement. Its presentation included a video of a pig with brain and spinal implants that bent its leg and stretched its thighs in response to commands sent to the implants.

  Facilitating complex movement, such as playing a piano, would probably require thousands of electrodes, Hatsopoulos said, noting “we’re taking baby steps right now.”

  Another challenge is fine-tuning the stimulation so it targets muscle threads that don’t tire quickly.

  “You’ve got to do more than just activate muscles,” Churchland said.

  “You’ve got to activate them in a relatively natural way to avoid fatigue. And that’s definitely doable, but it’s certainly not trivial.”

  It’s helpful in this endeavor that patients usually actively cooperate to make the solution work. Even though the number of electrodes may create a bottleneck, with effort, patients could rewire their brains to take maximum advantage of the interface.

  “With practice, they can get better at it,” Hatsopoulos said.

  The ability to move, however, is not enough. To truly restore function to a limb requires fixing the sense of touch too.

  That means recording sensory impulses from the limb and sending them to another implant in the brain’s sensory cortex.

  In principle, that has already been done as well. Stimulating some brain cells, for example, can create an impression that one is touching something, Hatsopoulos said, referring to experiments done at his university. The issue, again, is reading from and stimulating enough neurons to create a sufficiently robust touch experience.

  The technology still has a long way to go in this regard, Hochberg acknowledged.

  “It’s early, but exciting days,” he said.

  For truly natural movement, however, one would need to go further yet.

  A healthy person not only senses limb movement from what he touches externally, but also gets a sense of movement and limb position from inside the body.

  The phenomenon is called proprioception. Scientists know that certain brain areas receive those kinds of sensory inputs, but it’s not quite known how it works.

  “That’s the next frontier in this field,” Hatsopoulos said. “No one has cracked that yet.”

  Level 4: Cyborgs

  Musk envisions Neuralink going far beyond helping the disabled. He portrayed it more as a natural next step from a smartphone or smartwatch. Just like “replacing a piece of skull with a smartwatch for lack of a better analogy,” as he put it.

  “I could have a Neuralink device implanted right now and you wouldn’t even know. I mean, hypothetically, I may be one of these demos. In fact, one of these demos I will,” he said to laughs and cheers from the audience.

  He argued that “we are all already cyborgs in a way that your phone and your computer are extensions of yourself.”

  “I’m sure you found if you leave your phone behind you end up tapping your pockets and it’s like having missing limb syndrome,” he said.

  Neuralink for healthy people, however, may be far in the future, if it ever comes.

  “The FDA is not going to approve this for use in healthy individuals. At least in this version of the implant,” Hatsopoulos said, noting that “you would have to show an incredible level of safety.”

  Shimojo expressed a similar sentiment.

  “If the safety is proven, then there’s a possibility, in the long, long future, that maybe intact, healthy people have electrodes inside of the brain. But I don’t think that’s going to happen soon,” he said.

  The technology would likely have to get to a point of giving disabled people greater capabilities than healthy people have.

  Musk believes the implant would indeed bestow superior capabilities.

  “We’re confident that someone who has basically no other interface to the outside world would be able to control their phone better than someone who has working hands,” he said.

  But even if the implant is technically safe in the sense that it wouldn’t accidentally harm the user and even if it eventually passes regulatory muster, the technology faces other problems that may prove intractable.

  Data Security

  The Neuralink implant currently communicates with a computer using Bluetooth. That can be hacked by a number of easily available tools, according to Gary Miliefsky, a cybersecurity expert, head of Cyber Defense Media Group, and a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

  “If you’re in the proximity of the person you will probably be able to steal some data. So that’s not secure,” he said.

  As a first step, the communication between the implant and a computer would need to be encrypted, but that would drain the battery and processing power on the implant.

  Even then, “people will find ways to hack” the implants, Miliefsky said.

  There are already devices that can “unwind” SSL and TLS encryption protocols commonly used to secure emails, he said. And new technologies can go even further.

  “Quantum computing can probably break today’s encryption pretty easily,” he said.

  There’s “quantum-proof” encryption on the horizon, but the processing power it requires is far beyond anything a small implant could handle now or even in the upcoming decades, he estimated.

  “Nothing is bulletproof. Nothing is foolproof. When they tell you it’s unhackable, it’s usually hacked in five minutes, whatever it is,” he said.

  Even if the implant-computer communication is somehow secured, the brain activity data could still be exfiltrated from the computer, such as by infecting the computer with malware.

  “Seventy percent of new malware gets past all the virus scanners,” Miliefsky noted.

  And even if the data is somehow secured on the computer, it would still need to be accessed by technicians servicing the implant.

  Anybody with insider access to the Neuralink system would immediately become a prime target for every intelligence agency and every malicious actor in the world, Miliefsky acknowledged.

  “They’ll be unsuspecting victims. Absolutely,” he said.

  And that doesn’t even include the issue of covert operatives of all sorts lining up for jobs at Neuralink.

  “Insider threat defense is a big issue,” Miliefsky said.

  Yet another area of concern is that, once the data exists, there’s a chance the government could use the legal process to force Neuralink to preserve the data and share it for purposes of criminal investigations, counterintelligence, national security, and intelligence collection.

  Brain Hack

  The implications of a hacked implant appear difficult to fully grasp.

  People seem to be willing to accept some level of privacy intrusion. Smartphones, for example, can easily be used to listen in on a person and track one’s movement.

  “We’re walking around with spyware every day,” Miliefsky said.

  A brain implant, however, can produce personal data on another level of intimacy.

  From the motor cortex, an implant could record a wide range of body movements, according to Hochberg.

  “It continues to, I think, both amaze and pleasantly surprise a lot of people in the field just how rich the information is that can be extracted from small areas of the motor cortex,” he said.

  From the visual cortex, everything a person sees could theoretically be recorded, albeit likely in low resolution.

  Moreover, the implant would be under the skin, meaning it can’t be removed by the user and it can’t be turned off as it needs to maintain the capability of being turned on and off remotely.

  Worse yet, the implant can send signals into the brain too. Issuing commands to the motor cortex could make one move involuntarily.

  Theoretically, it’s possible to make a remote-controlled human, Hatsopoulos confirmed.

  Sending visual signals could make one see things that aren’t there, distract a person, or perhaps obstruct vision with flashes of light, the Neuralink experiments indicate.

  Churchland, however, dismissed such concerns as too far removed from the technology’s current reality.

  “It’s not physically impossible, but it’s extremely improbable,” he said.

  “Concerns about external manipulation, I think, are fanciful for the foreseeable future.”

  Level 5: Far From ‘The Matrix’

  Musk expects to go even further. As the electrode insertion technology improves, the implant will be able to reach deep areas of the brain as well, according to the presentation.

  Those parts of the brain are responsible for thought activity such as memory processing, emotion, motivation, and abstract thinking.

  Yet the know-how for decoding signals from these parts of the brain is so far limited, according to Shimojo.

  Machine learning can recognize patterns with a high degree of probability, but some level of ambiguity may be “intrinsic,” he said.

  “The brain is complicated and one neuron is not participating in one task. The same neuron can be participating in different networks for entirely different purposes. It’s really highly context-dependent and environment-dependent.”

  Whether it’s possible to fully decode such thought processes remains an open question.

  “Even among neuroscientists, there are different opinions,” he said, noting that such difficulties may need “some clever creativity to deal with.”

  “So is this eventually overcome? It may be, but it’s very long-run. It’s not as easy as those demonstrations may indicate.”

  Hypothetically, the ability to truly read and write in deeper areas of the brain would raise profound ethical and philosophical questions.

  Accessing memory processing centers, for example, would open another floodgate of privacy and security issues, according to Miliefsky, from password theft to national, corporate, and personal secret exfiltration.

  “There is not a single computer on the internet that I would say is safe and secure from a loss of privacy or having enough security that you could say, ‘Jimmy, who’s got the implant, all of his private thoughts are still secure.’ And it’s not going to happen,” he said.

  Furthermore, linking brain parts responsible for decision-making with an AI would put in question the integrity of free will, Shimojo argued.

  “If you and AI together make a decision about an action, is that your free will or is it hybrid free will?” he asked.

  “Is it ok for people? Is it ok for society? What‘s going to happen to elections, for instance?”

  As Musk explained during multiple talks, interfacing with an AI is actually the primary goal of why he pursued the implant technology to begin with.

  His original motivation for starting Neuralink, he said, was to address the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

  During the presentation and in previous talks, he opined that as AI develops, it’s likely to far surpass human intelligence. At that point, even if it turns out to be benevolent, it may treat humans as a lower life form.

  “We’ll be like the house cat,” he said at the Recode’s Code Conference in 2016.

  The solution would be to prevent AI power from getting centralized in a few hands, he argued.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 20:20

• North Korea Is Supplying Russia's Wagner Mercenaries: White House
  North Korea Is Supplying Russia’s Wagner Mercenaries: White House

  After months of issuing vague allegations that North Korea is supplying Russian forces with tens of thousands of artillery shells, which both sides have denied, the Biden administration on Thursday is finally out with something specific, saying that Pyongyang has delivered arms to Wagner group.

  Wagner is the notorious private military contractor whose founder is said to be close to Vladimir Putin, and dubbed in Western reports as “Putin’s chef”. Western media has long accused Wagner operatives of committing war crimes in Ukraine, and before that on deployments in Syria.

  “Wagner is searching around the world for arms suppliers to support its military operations in Ukraine,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said in a Thursday press briefing. “We can confirm that North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery to Wagner, which paid for that equipment,” he added.

  

  Kirby described the private Russian contractor as competing for power among official Kremlin ministries, acting as a “rival” also to the established defense ministry. A number of reports lately have suggested that Wagner mercenaries have operated with impunity and separate rules of engagement in Ukraine over the last ten months.

  “Wagner is emerging as a rival power center to the Russian military and other Russian ministries,” Kirby explained, also stating that Wagner is spending over $100 million each month for Ukraine operations.

  While European Parliament weeks ago formally slapped a ‘terror’ label on Wagner, the US is still said to be mulling the action, also vowing to ratchet sanctions on the Putin-connected firm. 

  More broadly, the White House has so far resisted calls from more hawkish corners of Congress to label Russia a state sponsor of terror, and is now said to be considering calling Russia an “aggressor state” – however, there’s no precedent for this term and it appears entirely made up by the administration in order to appease critics.

  As CNN describes, “An aggressor state designation, unlike the label state sponsor of terrorism, is not an official State Department category that would trigger specific US sanctions, and critics say it would be easier for the president to rescind that designation than the state sponsor of terrorism one.”

  It remains unclear at this point the precise type of weapons alleged to have been supplied to Wagner Group by the North Koreans. The broader Russian military is reportedly running low on artillery, which has been expended in the eastern and southern front lines at a rapid rate. In an official statement Pyongyang later in the evening denied the allegation. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 20:00

• 2022 Was Bitcoin's Year Of Differentiation
  2022 Was Bitcoin’s Year Of Differentiation

  Authored by Mickey Koss via Bitcoin Magazine,

  2022 was marked by high-profile financial sovereignty issues and crypto implosions. The case for Bitcoin has never been more clear…

  

  2022 started with a bang, especially in Canada. Whether or not you agree with the premise behind the Canadian Trucker Protest, I think most can agree that freedom of speech is a keystone right in modern Western Democracies.

  But when the Canadian government began to crack down on protestors by freezing bank accounts, people turned to Bitcoin to help them survive. Organizations like GoFundMe not only blocked the protestors from receiving the money that had been raised, but they even attempted to pass the money along to causes that they aligned with. After some uproar, GoFundMe ended up refunding the money, but the message was clear: comply.

  However, Bitcoin allowed truckers to skirt these restrictions.

  

  Source

  Above is a snippet from an article from the Motley Fool, written in March 2022. Though I don’t agree with its conclusion or reasoning, the fact that traditional outlets were asking questions like that was a massive signal that perhaps the normies are starting to catch on.

  More recently, the Iranian government announced that it would be freezing the bank accounts of women who refuse to wear hijabs, traditional Muslim head covering, in public. This came after the threat of imprisonments and executions in order to quell ongoing protests for the freedom of expression there. As of December 8, 2022, one protester had already been executed by hanging by the Iranian government.

  The fact is, nobody is going to save you. Ethereum insists on being the new decentralized money of the internet, and yet, the protocol is enforcing Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions on its base layer. It’s becoming pretty clear that Bitcoin is perhaps the only easily-transportable freedom money left. I think this distinction became all the more clear as 2022 continued.

  THE ALTCOIN BONANZA GOES DOWN IN FLAMES

  “The same technology that allows for peer-to-peer money has allowed for peer-to-peer scams.”

  –Lyn Alden, “Swan Signal” episode 92

  From Celsius, to Three Arrows Capital, Luna, FTX, BlockFi, Voyager, and even Gemini, companies that deal in altcoins all felt pain in one form or another — Leverage, rehypothecation, algorithmic Ponzi schemes and the like. It seems to be that the biggest use case for crypto is making a quick buck at the expense of others, while rug pulling normies as your exit liquidity. It’s like the 1990s tech boom all over again.

  One of the most interesting parts of this whole debacle were the accusations of a lack of bitcoin held at FTX after its balance sheet was revealed in bankruptcy filings. Whether or not the accusations are true, the fact that it’s a legitimate question is illuminating. It appears to have sparked a fire. I think, slowly but surely, people are starting to see the difference and realize that Bitcoin and crypto really aren’t the same things after all.

  THE TURNING POINT OF 2023

  Bitcoin has differentiated itself not only from the traditional banking system in a meaningful way, but from crypto as well.

  The FTX debacle has highlighted the necessity for self custody: that your coins may not actually exist and the only way to find out if they’re real is to take custody. Bitcoin is now leaving exchanges in droves.

  

  Rocky Wold on LinkedIn, accessed December 2022

  Could this be a turning point for Bitcoin? Could people be waking up to the importance of self custody en masse? Only time will tell. I am optimistic that this trend will continue, taking the power from centralized exchanges and their ability to enforce censorship on behalf of hostile regimes. As far as I’m concerned, the more bitcoin in self custody, the better.

  If you’re still hesitant to take self custody I recommend watching some BTC Sessions demonstrations. It’s really not that difficult and the peace of mind is priceless. I nearly lost everything earlier this year when Celsius blew up. Don’t be like me. Stop procrastinating and take possession of your bitcoin today. Only then will you truly understand why and how it’s different.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 19:40

• Alan Dershowitz: Jan. 6 Panel’s Criminal Referral Of Trump 'Clearly Unconstitutional'
  Alan Dershowitz: Jan. 6 Panel’s Criminal Referral Of Trump ‘Clearly Unconstitutional’

  Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The House Jan. 6 committee’s referral of former President Donald J. Trump to the Justice Department for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution, according to Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz.

  

  The committee, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously to refer Trump for four criminal charges during its last hearing on Dec. 19, including one charge that would prevent him from ever holding office again.

  “In my view, it’s clearly unconstitutional,” Dershowitz told Just the News on Monday. “Article One limits the power of Congress through legislative actions. This is not a legislative action, naming a specific individual and referring them to the Justice Department. It’s not legislative and it tramples on the authority of the executive branch.”

  The charges the committee recommended included insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, making a false statement to the federal government, and conspiracy to defraud the federal government.

  Under U.S. law, “whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

  As of yet, no one has been charged with insurrection in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, though some defendants have been convicted of or are facing seditious conspiracy charges.

  According to Dershowitz, the 14^th Amendment does allow for Congress to act against an individual if that person was engaged in an insurrection or rebellion like the Civil War, but the committee did not act under that provision.

  Adding that it was his belief that the Justice Department would likely accept and then ignore the referrals, the lawyer noted: “Remember, they now have a special counsel. They have the ability to investigate. They have a much higher standard of prosecution than Congress does. So, they will politely ignore what Congress has said.”

  

  Trump Responds

  Following Monday’s hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, explained the panel’s reasoning in making the referrals.

  “Our criminal referrals were based on the gravity of the offense, the centrality of the actors, and the evidence we had available to us. There were undoubtedly other people involved, but we were stymied by virtue of a lot of people refusing to come and testify, refusing to give us the information they had, or taking the Fifth Amendment. So, we chose to advance the names of people where we felt certain that there was abundant evidence that they had participated in crimes.”

  Trump, however, dismissed the charges in the criminal referral as “fake” and an attempt to keep him from running for president again in 2024.

  “The people understand that the Democratic Bureau of Investigation, the DBI, are out to keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win and that this whole business of prosecuting me is just like impeachment was—a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party,” he said in a statement shared via Truth Social.

  Trump also contended that the committee’s move would make him stronger, stating: “These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Americans know that I pushed for 20,000 troops to prevent violence on Jan 6, and that I went on television and told everyone to go home.”

  In his speech at The Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell”—a remark that the Jan. 6 select committee has often cited as evidence that he intended to incite violence at the Capitol.

  However, in a less-publicized statement from the speech, the former president also stressed that his desire was for the crowd to “peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard.”

  Further, after the situation at the Capitol had deteriorated to the point of violence, Trump released a recorded statement urging the protestors to “go home, and go home in peace.”

  “I know your pain; I know your hurt,” the then-president said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. … But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order.”

  Legislators Weigh In

  As news of the committee’s referrals spread on Capitol Hill, lawmakers shared their perspectives on the matter, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

  “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations,” the Republican senator said in a statement, according to The Hill.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 19:00

• McDonald's Unveils Automated Restaurant In Texas With No Human Contact
  McDonald’s Unveils Automated Restaurant In Texas With No Human Contact

  Soaring labor costs and inflation have accelerated McDonald’s push into automation. The fast-food chain unveiled its first concept restaurant earlier this month in Forth Worth, Texas, without human interaction.

  The company wrote in a press release, “There’s never been a McDonald’s restaurant quite like this before.”

  

  It features automated ordering kiosks — there are no cashiers — even automated machines dispense orders to customers, either through the drive-thru or inside. The one thing McDonald’s didn’t automate was the kitchen. 

  Food blogger “foodiemunster” posted a video of the new concept restaurant. 

  You asked for $25 minimum wage

  You get: First fully automated McDonalds in Texas pic.twitter.com/hd5AsBTOwX

  — ELIJAH (@ElijahSchaffer) December 22, 2022

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

  Fast-food chains have been testing robots for years. Inflation is compressing margins for restaurants, forcing them to consider automation to save on labor costs. 

  The cost of robotics has decreased over the years, allowing companies to make broader investments in the space. 

  The search for cost savings will be in the form of automating low-wage/low-skilled labor, something we’ve warned for years that would eventually displace millions of workers this decade. 

  Chipotle, Wing Zone, White Castle, and Jack in the Box are other restaurant chains investing in robotics. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 18:40

• Why Are So Many Men Leaving The Workforce?
  Why Are So Many Men Leaving The Workforce?

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Last week, CNN featured a story called “Men are dropping out of the workforce. Here’s why” The article went on to tell us virtually nothing at all about why so many men are leaving the workforce. Although as many as seven million men have stayed out of the workforce for varying reasons, the CNN piece was really about how more women are joining the workforce, and how wonderful it is that more women are working in “male dominated” fields. The fact that more women are joining the workforce, however, tells us nothing about why men are leaving. Indeed, the CNN piece offered only one reason to answer why men are leaving the workforce: they’re becoming stay-at-home dads.

  

  That category, however, is fairly small and numbers only in the hundreds of thousands. That leaves us wondering why millions of men have left the workforce for reasons other than raising children. If we look deeper into the available information on the question, the reality appears to be a lot less rosy than CNN’s suggested reason of “their wives are so doggone successful, these men decided to stay home and raise the kids.” 

  

  Source: Census Bureau, Table SHP-1: Parents and Children in Stay-at-Home Parent Family Groups.

  Instead, the reasons driving the lion’s share of missing men to leave the workforce appear to be illness, drug addiction, a perceived lack of well-paying jobs, government welfare, and the decline of marriage. None of these are reasons to celebrate, and few of these reasons lend themselves to any quick fixes through changes in law or policy. 

  At Least Six Million Missing Men 

  As I noted earlier this month, there are at least six million men of “prime age” (age 25-54) who are out of the workforce for various reasons. Historically, this number has been getting larger at a rate faster than growth of total men in that age group. That is, fewer than 3 percent of prime-age men were “not in the workforce” in the late 1970s, but 5.6 percent of men in this group were out of the labor force in 2022. That translates into approximately 7.1 million men according to the Census Bureau’s count of men “not in labor force.” 

  

  Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  We could contrast this with the proportion of women who are not in the labor force. Fewer prime-age women today are out of the labor force than was the case in the late 1970s. Women tend to remain out of the labor force in much larger numbers of men, so we find that in 2022, the total number of women out of the labor force is approximately 15 million. That number is smaller than what was common in the late 1970’s, however. As more women have joined the labor force over the past 40 years, more men have left. 

  

  Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  Again, it is important to emphasize we are talking about prime age men here, and we’re excluding older and younger populations in which retirement and schooling remove large numbers of workers from the workforce.

  Even including only prime age men, however, Alan B. Kreuger notes that the workforce trend in the US is headed downward faster than other wealthy countries:

  Although the labor force participation rate of prime age men has trended down in the United States and other economically advanced countries for many decades, by international standards the labor force participation rate of prime age men in the United States is notably low.

  Why Men Leave the Labor Force

  Determining reasons for leaving the labor force is not easy, as the data depends heavily on surveys and on extrapolation.  According to the census bureau, however, number less than 250,000 men in recent years are outside the labor force in order to care for children full time. This is only a tiny fraction of the total number of parents who leave the labor force to be stay-at-home parents. That leaves more than six million men who have left the labor force for some other reason. 

  Wages and Social Status

  One thing is fairly clear: labor force participation is worse for men with less schooling. As Kreuger notes, labor force participation for prime age men has fallen for men at all education levels, “but by substantially more for those with a high school degree or less.” Indeed, labor force participation has barely fallen for men with advanced degrees, but has gone into steep decline among high school dropouts and those with no college. 

  

  Source: Ariel J. Binder and John Bound, “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 33, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 170.

  Closely connected to this is the relative wage growth among these groups. While inflation-adjusted wages have increased significantly for men with college-level schooling or more, the same is certainly not true for men with “some college” or less. In these latter groups, earnings have stagnated since 1965, having risen throughout the mid 1970s, falling below the 1965 wage by 1995, and then slowly returning to 1960s levels. While this does not represent a sizable fall in wages in real terms since 1965, it is a large drop relative to the wages of men with more schooling. 

  

  Source: Ariel J. Binder and John Bound, “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 33, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 165.

  (Women, incidentally, have not seen nearly as large declines in wages based on levels of schooling.)

  This growing earnings gap between men at various education levels has been blamed for driving the exit of so many men from the workforce. For example, in a report from the Boston Federal Reserve earlier this month, research Pinghui Wu concludes that relative decline in wages drives more men to leave the workforce than has the overall decline in real wages. Moreover, Wu ties the decline in relative wages to declines in “a worker’s social status.” This effect is seen most strongly in non-Hispanic white men and younger men. Wu writes: “non-college-educated men are more likely to leave the labor force when the top earners in a state make disproportionately more than the other workers.”

  Falling social status has been tied to low job-satisfaction, disability, and higher mortality. All of this tends to lead to lower workforce participation. Moreover, men at lower education and lower wage levels tend to be more prone to workplace injury, given the nature of the work. Indeed, as Ariel Binder and John Bound have shown, men who have exited the labor force say they are frequently in pain, and take pain medication regularly. Men in this group who are over 45 years of age also tend to be more frequently eligible for government disability benefits. Binder and Bound suggest that the expansion of disability benefits in recent decades “could explain up to 25 percent of the rise in nonparticipation among 45–54 year-old high school graduates (without college).”

  The Decline of Marriage

  Wu, Binder, and Bound all also point to another important factor in falling male workforce participation: changes in marriage patterns. 

  Wu notes that men with lower social status fare more poorly in the marriage market, and that “marriage market sorting [a] potential channels through which relative earnings affect men’s labor force exit decisions.” This would also help explain why declining social status also appears to especially affect younger men who are more likely to be active in pursuing a spouse. 

  Binder and Bound meanwhile note declining marriage rates are closely tied to workforce participation overall. This works in both directions: Declining incomes lead to declines in marriage. But unmarried men also have less incentive to actively seek employment. Marriage also may hamper a man’s ability to draw income from existing relatives. Binder and Bound write:

  As others have documented, family structure in the United States has changed dramatically since the 1960s, featuring a tremendous decline in the share of less educated men forming and maintaining stable marriages. We additionally show an increase in the share of less-educated men living with their parents or other relatives. Providing for a new family plausibly provides a man with incentives to engage in labor market activity: conversely, a reduction in the prospects of forming and maintaining a stable family removes an important labor supply incentive. At the same time, the possibility of drawing income support from existing relatives creates a feasible labor-force exit.

  It’s not just men with lower levels of schooling who marry less often, however. Marriage has indeed declined more for lower-income men than higher-income men. Declining marriage rates at the middle-class level and below, however, likely drive falling labor participation independent of wages. That is, “changing family structure shifts male labor supply incentives independently of labor market conditions” as unmarried men are simply less motivated to work.”

  What Is to Blame?

  The importance of relative wages points to the importance of economic factors in the decline of working men.  

  Enormous growth in government intervention in the twentieth century has led to a reversal of nineteenth century trends and led instead to capital consumption. It is notable that since the 1970s, savings and investment have declined, and Mihai Macovai notes ” the real stock of capital per worker has grown in a clear and sustained manner only until the end-1970s and fell afterwards until the trough of the Great Recession.” This has led to declining worker productivity and lower wages for many workers.

  In more recent years, covid lockdowns impacted lower-income workers the most, and lockdowns are likely to raise overall mortality among these workers, as well, even years after the lockdowns ended. Unemployment and intermittent employment is tied to higher mortality rates and disability in both the medium and long terms.

  Finally, a powerful factor is the central bank’s monetary policy which has been linked to a rising gap between higher-income workers and lower-income ones. Easy-money policy has been especially damaging to wealth-building for lower-income groups, as Karen Petrou notes in her book Engine of Inequality:

  Ultra-low [interest] rates fundamentally eviscerated the ability of all but the wealthy to gain an economic toehold; instead they lead investors to drive up equity and other asset prices to achieve their return … but average Americans hold little, if any, stock or investment instruments. Instead, they save what they can in bank accounts. The rates on these have been so low for so long that these thrifty, prudent households have in fact set themselves back with each dollar they save. Pension funds are just as hard-hit meaning not only that average Americans can’t save for the future, but also that the instruments on which they count for additional security are unlikely to meet their needs.

  But not all can be blamed on economic policy. The importance of marriage as a factor in workforce participation illustrates that some aspects of declining workforce participation lie beyond mere economics. Marriage rates for the middle class have continued to fall even in periods when median wages have increased—such as the 1990s. These trends are tied to changes in ideology, religious observance, and a host of social factors. Other factors such as rising drug addiction and obesity affect workforce participation as they are tied to disability and poor health, often at elevated rates among lower-income workers.

  In other words, government policy certainly plays a sizable role in declining male workforce participation, but changing American culture cannot be ignored.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 18:20

• TSLA Shares Spike After Musk Says 'No More Share Sales Til 2025'
  TSLA Shares Spike After Musk Says ‘No More Share Sales Til 2025’

  After another ugly day for the EV carmaker, Tesla shares are rising the after-hours market following comments from Elon Musk that he will make no more Tesla stock sales until 2025.

  “I’m not selling any stock for 18-24 months. I needed to sell some to make sure there was dry powder for a worst case scenario. You have my commitment that I won’t sell any stock till at least two years from now. I won’t sell stock next year under any circumstances.”

  Shares are up 4% in the after-hours…

  

  Speaking on Twitter Spaces (here), with 57,000 people listening, Musk also noted that:

  “If we do have another 2009 situation, the stock price of everything’s going to be lower…

  …frankly we’re overdue for a recession”

  Adding that with a “hard landing coming. Why would anyone have stocks?”

  As far as his time being stretched across numerous companies, Musk noted that his attention is primarily focused on Tesla, adding that the carmaker is a far more complex beast than Twitter…

  “Twitter is around 10% of the complexity of Tesla.”

  The Tesla CEO also stated that:

  “My vote is to do a buyback once we’re able to properly calibrate the scale of the recession and make sure Tesla is healthy and not spending its cash reserves and putting the company at risk.”

  Musk added that:

  “I stand by my prediction that long term, Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. I’m actually fairly confident that will be the case.”

  The discussion was far-reaching with Musk pressed on his political views, which prompted him to quickly respond that he “will not suppress his views to boost the share price.”

  And likely will spark some controversy when one attendee asked him about his ‘trans’ views to which he replied “he doesn’t hate anyone,” and commented that enforcing the use of “pronouns give people an excuse to be an asshole.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 17:45

• Are Universities Doomed?
  Are Universities Doomed?

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

  Elite university degrees certify very little. And the secret is out…

  

  In a famous exchange in the The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

  “Gradually” and “suddenly” applies to higher education’s implosion. 

  During the 1990s “culture wars” universities were warned that their chronic tuition hikes above the rate of inflation were unsustainable. 

  Their growing manipulation of blanket federal student loan guarantees, and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants always was suicidal. 

  Left-wing indoctrination, administrative bloat, obsessions with racial preferences, arcane, jargon-filled research, and campus-wide intolerance of diverse thought short-changed students, further alienated the public—and often enraged alumni.

  Over the last 30 years, enrollments in the humanities and history crashed. So did tenure-track faculty positions. Some $1.7 trillion in federally backed student loans have only greenlighted inflated tuition—and masked the contagion of political indoctrination and watered-down courses. 

   But “gradually” imploding has now become “suddenly.” Zoom courses, a declining pool of students, and soaring costs all prompt the public to question the college experience altogether. 

  Nationwide undergraduate enrollment has dropped by more than 650,000 students in a single year—or over 4 percent alone from spring 2021 to 2022, and some 14 percent in the last decade. Yet the U.S. population still increases by about 2 million people a year.

  Men account for about 71 percent of the current shortfall of students. Women number almost 60 percent of all college students—an all-time high. 

  Monotonous professors hector students about “toxic masculinity,” as “gender” studies proliferate. If the plan was to drive males off campus, universities have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. 

  The number of history majors has collapsed by 50 percent in just the last 20 years. Tenured history positions have declined by one-third to half at major state universities. 

  In the last decade alone, English majors across the nation’s universities have fallen by a third.

  At Yale University, administrative positions have soared over 150 percent in the last two decades. But the number of professors increased by just 10 percent. In a new low/high, Stanford recently enrolled 16,937 undergraduate and graduate students, but lists 15,750 administrative staff—in near one-to-one fashion.

  In the past, such costly praetorian bloat would have sparked a faculty rebellion. Not now. The new six-figure salaried “diversity, equity, and inclusion” commissars are feared and exempt from criticism.

  Since 2020, the old proportional-representation admissions quotas have expanded into weird “reparatory” admissions. Purported “marginalized populations” have often been admitted at levels greater than percentages in the general population. 

  Consequently, “problematic” standardized tests are damned as biased and antithetical to “diversity.” 

  To accommodate radical diversity reengineering, the only demographic deemed expendable are white males. Their plunging numbers on campus, especially from the working class, are now much less than their percentages in the general population—regardless of grades or test scores. 

  At Yale, the class of 2026 is listed as 50 percent white and 55 percent female. Fourteen percent were admitted as “legacies.” In sum, qualified but poor white males without privilege or connections seem mostly excluded. 

  Stanford’s published 2025 class profile claims a student body of “23 percent white.” Fewer than half of the class is male. Stanford mysteriously does not release the numbers of those successfully admitted without SAT tests—but recently conceded it rejects about 70 percent of those with perfect SAT scores.

  In fact, universities are quietly junking test score requirements. Ironically, these time-honored standardized tests were originally designed to offer those from underprivileged backgrounds, or less competitive high schools, a meritocratic pathway into elite schools. 

  At Cornell, students push for pass/fail courses only and the abolition of all grades. At the New School in New York, students demand that everyone receives “A” grades. Dean’s lists and class and school rankings are equally suspect as counterrevolutionary. Even as courses are watered down, entitled students still assume that their admission must automatically guarantee graduation—or else!

  Skeptical American employers, to remain globally competitive, will likely soon administer their own hiring tests. They already suspect that prestigious university degrees are hollow and certify very little.

  Traditional colleges will seize the moment and expand by sticking to meritocratic criteria as proof of the competency of their prized graduates. 

  Private and online venues will also fill a national need to teach Western civilization and humanities courses—by non-woke faculty who do not institutionalize bias. 

  More students will continue to seek vocational training alternatives. Some will get their degrees online for a fraction of the cost. 

  Alumni will either curb giving, put further restrictions on their gifting, or disconnect. 

  Eventually, even elite schools will lose their current veneer of prestige. Their costly cattle brands will be synonymous with equality-of-result, overpriced indoctrination echo chambers, where therapy replaced singular rigor and their tarnished degrees become irrelevant. 

  How ironic that universities are rushing to erode meritocratic standards—history’s answer to the age-old, pre-civilizational bane of tribal, racial, class, elite, and insider prejudices and bias that eventually ensure poverty and ruin for all.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 17:40

• Eight Teen Girls Charged In Toronto Stabbing Death Likely Wanted Victim's Bottle of Alcohol: Police
  Eight Teen Girls Charged In Toronto Stabbing Death Likely Wanted Victim’s Bottle of Alcohol: Police

  Authored by Marnie Cathcart via The Epoch Times,

  Eight young females have been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of a 59-year-old Toronto man, Toronto Police Homicide Detective Sergeant Terry Browne said at a news conference on Dec. 21. He said it is believed the girls were trying to get a bottle of alcohol from the victim.

  “Eight young girls and most under the age of 16⁠—if this isn’t alarming and shocking to everyone, then we’re all in trouble quite frankly,” Browne told reporters.

  “I’ve been in policing for almost 35 years and you think you’ve seen it all,” Browne said.

  “Anyone who isn’t shocked with hearing something like this has clearly just thrown in the towel and just said that anything is possible in this world.”

  The girls made their first court appearance on Dec. 18 and have been remanded into custody. The next court date has been set for Dec. 29.

  

  Witnesses Needed

  Police have asked members of the public to come forward if they witnessed the event or have video footage. Investigators are requesting any video surveillance from the intersection of York Street and University Avenue in Toronto on Dec. 18 at 12:05 a.m. Any surveillance footage in the area from an hour before that until a couple hours after that are appreciated as well.

  Browne described the alleged attack as a “swarming.” He said the girls⁠—three aged 13, three aged 14, and two aged 16⁠—were allegedly in an earlier altercation in the area earlier in the evening of Dec. 17, around 10 p.m. Police said the girls met through social media and came from varying parts of the city.

  “I wouldn’t describe them as a gang at this point,” said the police officer, adding that what is alleged to have occurred “would be consistent with what we traditionally call a swarming or swarming type of behaviour.”

  “Maybe these were eight young women that wanted to make a name for themselves and see if they could become socially famous,” he said.

  Police believe they all acted in unison.

  ‘Swarm’

  “They are all equally culpable,” he said. “There is no doubt in our minds that they were all working as a singular entity in a swarming mob mentality when they chose to attack this man.”

  “We don’t know how or why they met on that evening and why the destination was downtown Toronto,” said Browne.

  “We don’t know how long they’ve been acquainted.”

  Three of the youth have had prior contact with police services. Police also secured a number of weapons but have not indicated what was taken into evidence.

  The homicide occurred on Dec. 18 at approximately 12:17 a.m. Police responded to a call for help to the York Street and University Area, after being told that a man had allegedly been assaulted and stabbed by a group of teenage girls.

  The victim was transported to the hospital with life-threatening injuries but did not survive. The man’s name has not been released as police said next of kin is still being notified. The police will not name the young girls as their identity is protected by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

  The man was not homeless, although police said he had moved into the shelter system in late fall, despite having a very supportive family in the area.

  “I wouldn’t necessarily call him homeless, maybe just recently on some hard luck,” Browne said.

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

• Philadelphia Hits 500 Homicides For Second Year In A Row
  Philadelphia Hits 500 Homicides For Second Year In A Row

  Philadelphia marked a second year of out-of-control violence, hitting 500 homicides this week as elected officials scramble to address two of the worst years in a long time.

  

  “As of today, 500 people’s lives have been cut short by senseless violence in our city,” said Mayor Jim Kenney (D) during a Monday press conference. That’s 500 of our friends, neighbors, colleagues and family members. As we enter this holiday season, I can’t help but think of all the incredible potential that has been extinguished by this loss of life.”

  Most affected are black males between the age of 18 and 45.

  

  

  While down 7% from 2021, when the city reported 562 killings – the highest on record, Philly’s crime wave has caught the attention of state lawmakers, who in November took the unprecedented step of impeaching District Attorney Larry Krasner by a vote of 107-85, over the city’s lack of action and alleged misconduct.

  

  Krasner was also accused of obstructing a House committee investigation, according to Fox News.

  “They have impeached me without presenting a single shred of evidence connecting our policies to any uptick in crime,” Krasner said at the time. “We were never given the opportunity to defend our ideas and policies – policies I would have been proud to explain. That Pennsylvania Republicans willfully avoided hearing the facts about my office is shameful.”

  Two weeks ago we reported that crime in Philadelphia has gotten so out of control that local gas station owners have turned to hiring heavily armed guards.

  “They are forcing us to hire the security, high-level security, state level,” said Karco gas station owner, Neil Patel, who has recruited Kevlar-clad S.I.T.E. agents packing AR-15s or shotguns. “We are tired of this nonsense; robbery, drug trafficking, hanging around, gangs,” Fox5 reported at the time.

  

  The final straw for Patel after his business was reportedly vandalized by young people who stole an ATM machine. His car has also been a casualty of crime, according to the report.

  “We wear Kevlar, we are trained, my guards go to training every other week, they’re proficient with [their guns] and with their taser, they know the law,” said police chief Andre Boyer.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 12/22/2022 – 16:40

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