- Remembering Hate Speech: Victor Davis Hanson
Remembering Hate Speech: Victor Davis Hanson
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,
It has been a canard of the Left that “words matter.” We are lectured that “hate speech” leads inevitably to street violence.
So how ironic that the Left defames nearly half of America as dangerous “semi-fascist” extremists, white-raged and privileged, ultra MAGA, and guilty of all sorts of thought crimes from secession to civil insurrection? And what is the result?
Does this constant demonization matter? And what are the bitter fruits of such labors? After all, what did Barack Obama long ago mean by “clingers” or once Hillary Clinton by “deplorables” and “irredeemables”?
What did Joe Biden imply by “dregs” and “chumps” and “semi-fascists”? Or what did the FBI lovebirds really mean by smelly Walmart goers and “hillbillies”? After a point, did not America get this monotonous message?
And what does Joe Biden really mean when he recycles his academic advisors’ tired tropes of right-wing insurrectionists threatening the republic?
MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. . . . MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards—backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love . . . They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country . . . MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.
When the president fuels the now familiar old narrative by claiming that 75 million who voted for Donald Trump do not live in the “light of truth” but in the “shadow of lies,” and they do not follow “the rule of law,” some questions naturally arise.
First, what evidence does the president adduce to prove that 75 million Morlocks in the shadows are liars and avoid the “light of truth” of the Eloi? By what criteria does he use to judge them “semi-fascists”?
Is his proof the 120 days of violent looting, arson, violence, and death in the summer of 2020—virtually green-lighted by mayors, the media, and, yes, the current vice president? Who “fanned the flames of political violence” and were a “threat to the rule of law”?
Does Biden mean half the country is not respecting the Constitution by its systematic attack on our long-standing constitutional precepts, from the Electoral College and the rights of states to set voting laws? Are the “semi-fascists” trying to pack the Supreme Court? End the filibuster? Bring in two states solely to elect four left-wing senators?
Does the president mean the illegality of the often-rogue Washington-centric FBI, whose past director and legal counsel have lied to federal investigators and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? Does he refer to himself who was enriched by the grifting efforts of his wayward son? Do semi-fascists brag that they got foreign state attorneys fired for looking into the shady dealings of their own family? Perhaps Biden was railing against scores of big-city state attorneys who systematically refuse to enforce the law, and so leave the innocent at the mercy of serially released criminal felons?
Second, what are Americans in the Old Testament/eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth Prophet Biden’s eyes to do with those miscreants?
What should America then do when half the country prefers to live in the “shadow of lies,” and rejects the “light of truth”?
Sic the FBI on them to monitor their speech at school board meetings? Hire 87,000 IRS agents to continue the Obama-era policies of weaponizing the IRS? Bring Lois Lerner out of retirement?
Put them in solitary confinement for “illegal parading”?
Keep them out of their capital by stringing barbed wire and militarizing it with 30,000 federal troops?
Draft the Democratic Party to work with the FBI in destroying a political candidate through false dossiers, paid informants, and concocted conspiracies?
Leg-irons for former Trump officials?
Performative FBI SWAT raids on their homes?
Government workers colluding with private companies to censor free speech and expression?
A new Ministry of Truth?
Who then is destroying the rule of law? Joe Biden, who violated his oath of office and nullified the entire corpus of federal immigration law, in 1850s fashion, and allowed 3 million illegally to enter his country?
Joe Biden, who by fiat illegally canceled an expected half-trillion dollars in student debt?
Joe Biden, who recalibrated the FBI into a first-family retrieval service of lost computers and diaries of his wayward children?
Or is the shadow-dweller who “does not respect the Constitution” none other than Hillary Clinton who hired two foreign nationals to compile dirt on her Republican opponents in hopes of warping an election, or the FBI who also hired both her paid fraudsters as FBI informants in efforts to aid the Clinton smear?
Is urging a candidate never to concede if he lost the popular vote or boasting of joining #TheResistance to an elected president whom she pronounced “illegitimate” anti-Constitutionalism? Or maybe destroying subpoenaed emails or destroying court-ordered evidence?
And who exactly are the merchants of racial hatred about whom we so often hear?
Is it the same Joe Biden who claimed Barack Obama was the first black presidential candidate who could speak intelligently? The same Joe Biden who screamed to a group of accomplished black professionals that Mitt Romney would put “y’all back in chains”? The same Biden who bragged that his heroic Southern segregationist senatorial colleagues never called him “boy”?
Or is it Joe the healer who called black media hosts “junkie” and “You ain’t black”?
Perhaps it’s the unifier Biden who spun racist Corn-Pop stories about how he had faced down criminal black gang leaders? Or the ecumenical Biden who called a senior African American aide “my senior advisor and boy”? Who boasted that young black children used to love to feel the golden hairs on his tan legs?
Or would Biden mean by racists none other than the current Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina, Krystle Matthews? She recently gushed that one must “treat white people like sh-t”?
Or was it Kelisa Wing, the Pentagon’s “Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at the Department of Defense Education Activity”? She in the past complained, “I’m exhausted with these white folx in these [professional development] sessions,” and “I am exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women. Where can I get a break from white nonsense for a while.”
At one time, stereotyping millions as a toxic collective was the classic definition of racism.
Is Wing a target of what Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley promised when they boasted of scouring the Pentagon ranks to root out racism and racial rage?
Or maybe Biden was referring to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot?
She barred reporters from one-on-one interviews on the basis of race with the putdown, “By now, you may have heard the news that on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as mayor of this great city, I will be exclusively providing one-on-one interviews with journalists of color.”
When Joe Biden talks about the supposed violent, racist, MAGA dwellers in darkness, does he produce data for his allegations? Are his proverbial white-male insurrectionists committing violent crimes at five times their numbers in the general population?
Do MAGA Midwesterners threaten Orthodox Jews in New York or Asians in San Francisco? What do statistics suggest about who is disproportionately committing these hate crimes that Biden would otherwise characterize as typical of those living in the shadows or in lies?
Are the MAGA voters swarming the homes of Supreme Court Justices? Are they running them out of restaurants? Are they mobbing at the doors of the Court to threaten justices by name, and warning that liberal justices won’t “know what hit you” as they justifiably “reap the whirlwind”?
Is Biden’s putatively dangerous Trump supporter out killing a teenager who, postmortem, is dubbed a political activist opponent; running down dozens at Christmas parades; threatening a U.S. senator and his wife as they exited the White House; or attempting to assassinate key members of Congress?
At the University of Oregon are white MAGA denizens in the “shadows of lies” screaming “F—k the Mormons” during football games, or plastering the Stanford campus with anti-Semitic posters of “Ben B Gone” bug spray to gin up violence to stop the implied Jewish insect Ben Shapiro from speaking?
We are reaching a critical juncture now in America.
Writing off half the population as irredeemable and deplorable or semi-fascists is not a sustainable proposition. And we can see how it is not.
Is the chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at the Department of Defense relieved or worried that the army will not have enough white raging males to die in the next optional war in the Middle East at twice their percentages in the population? The Army has only met 50 percent of its annual recruiting target.
When Biden demonizes in now stereotypical fashion—and without data—an entire 75 million person demographic, when the popular culture has legitimized smearing these millions as dangerous “racists” fueled by “white rage,” and when the media manufactures a series of fake melodramas—from the Russian collusion hoax to the Russian disinformation use of his son’s laptop to the Jussie Smollett lie, the Covington kids slander, or the Duke lacrosse and volleyball mythologies—at some point is it any wonder that we are beginning to witness an epidemic of violence directed at the supposedly privileged, or the supposedly politically incorrect, whether targeting random solitary women for violent acts or purported conservatives or any demographic who are all apparently deserving such punishment due to their race or political beliefs?
Joe Biden’s “Phantom of the Opera” rant will be memorialized as the most reckless and venomous presidential speech in recent history. Such vile rhetoric fuels even viler reactions—and eventually filters down to the street where criminals believe that shooting a congressman or mobbing a Supreme Court justice or killing a solitary jogger or a teen-aged “Republican” is some sort of reification of what they feel is now acceptable retribution.
In sum, what we used to know as “hate speech” is now presidentially acceptable speech, and what has followed from it is no surprise.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 23:40 - "Murderapolis": Ground Zero For 'Defund The Police' Movement Now Suffering Horrendous Crime Wave
“Murderapolis”: Ground Zero For ‘Defund The Police’ Movement Now Suffering Horrendous Crime Wave
In the mid-1990s, the murder rate was so high in Minneapolis that it earned the nickname, “Murderapolis.”
Now, more than two years after the Democrat stronghold turned into ground zero for the ‘defund the police’ movement after the murder of George Floyd, Murderopolis is back.
In a kind of Newtonian response, the city became the epicenter of the culturally seismic “Defund the Police” movement. But that progressive local effort fizzled with a decisive referendum last November.
Now, with its police department under investigation by the Department of Justice, the city of 425,000 is trying to find a way forward amid a period of heightened crime that began shortly after Floyd’s death. –CNN
In 2020, murders jumped from 46 to nearly 80. In 2021, 93 people were killed in the city. This year, homicides are on track to surpass 2020.
“The criminals were celebrating. They were getting rich” after police withdrew from violent neighborhoods in the wake of Floyd’s killing, said longtime resident, KG Wilson. “They were selling drugs openly.”
Wilson’s 6-year-old granddaughter was killed in May of 2021 after getting caught in the crossfire of a shootout in north Minneapolis.
Others are blaming the pandemic.
“It unsettled settled trajectories,” said former federal prosecutor, Mark Osler, who now teaches at St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. “Kids who were going to school, who would have graduated but drifted off because there is no school — we’re seeing a lot of the violent crime is by juveniles.”
After the left demonized cops following Floyd’s murder, the Minneapolis PD headcount dropped from 900 in early 2020 to around 560 in August – a loss of more than 1/3 of the force.
The hate was so strong that a 2021 ballot measure which would have replaced the Minneapolis PD with a new “public health-oriented” Department of Public Safety, barely failed – with 56% of voters rejecting it (61% in north Minneapolis).
Then, the city council got wise as crime skyrocketed – dealing a final blow to the “defund” movement with a vote to re-fund the police by reversing a cut they’d made the prior year. Mayor Jacob Frey, meanwhile, has proposed beefing up the police budget for the next two fiscal years.
Feeling of lawlessness
According to the report, some 60% of police calls for shots fired have come from the north side, despite it making up just 15% of the population. Young men are openly selling drugs in public during the day, such as a gas station on Broadway ave. dubbed the “murder station” due to all the fatal shootings.
“You pull up to get gas — they try to sell you drugs,” said Paul Johnson, 56. “And not just three or four, but it’s a bulk of people.”
Johnson’s friend, Brian Bogan, said he moved from north Minneapolis to relatively safer St. Paul, because he didn’t want his kids growing up in an area where you don’t know if “it’s fireworks or gunshots.”
911 wait times have jumped
After Floyd’s death average 911 response times from from 10 or 11 minutes in May of 2020, to 14 minutes later in the year – jumping in 2021 to more than 17 minutes in the north side’s fourth precinct, where they remain.
Some nights are so busy that the dispatchers are directed to hold all non-priority-1 calls citywide; these would include reports of property damage, suspicious persons or theft. That happened during a frenetic five-hour stretch on the night of September 8, when officers responded to multiple shootings and calls for shots fired — many of them in north Minneapolis; one near the “murder station” — that left two dead and seven wounded. -CNNThings have gotten so bad that the Minneapolis PD has flatly refused to respond to certain crimes in a timely manner – such as thefts and stolen goods. According to the police, hostility towards officers has compelled them to take a slower approach in certain parts of town.
Police officials have characterized the slower response times as an “expected byproduct of a depleted force that has witnessed an overwhelming wave of retirements, resignations and disability leaves” due to post-traumatic stress.
“There’s really been a very fundamental challenge to our sense of purpose in law enforcement,” said interim Minneapolis Police Chief Amelia Huffman. “(Minneapolis) is the eye of the storm. So all of those challenges and the pressure is magnified, you know, a hundred fold — a thousand fold.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 23:20 - New Zealand Prime Minister Calls For A Global Censorship System
New Zealand Prime Minister Calls For A Global Censorship System
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.
Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:
But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?
This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.
We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.
Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies without noting that non-extremists use the same free speech to counter such views. To answer her question on “how do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists” is that you convince people using the same free speech. Instead, Ardern appears to want to silence those who have doubts.
While referring to a global censorship coalition as a “light-touch approach to disinformation,” Ardern revealed how sweeping such a system would likely be. She defended the need for such global censorship on having to combat those who question climate change and the need to stop “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology.”
“After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?”
That is the same rationale used by authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Russia to censor dissidents, minority groups, and political rivals. What is “hateful” and “dangerous” is a fluid concept that government have historically used to silence critics or dissenters.
Ardern is the smiling face of the new generation of censors. At least the old generation of censors like the Iranians do not pretend to support free speech and openly admit that they are crushing dissent. The point is that we need to be equally on guard when censorship is pushed from the left with the best of motivations and the worst of means.
As the great civil libertarian Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 23:00 - Fake Meat Sales Plummet On High Prices, Woke Messaging
Fake Meat Sales Plummet On High Prices, Woke Messaging
A few years ago, life was good for the fake meat industry. Beyond Meat had been given vast amounts of real estate in grocery stores, and had scored a deal with Burger King to sell “Impossible” Whoppers. McDonald’s rolled out a McPlant burger (which was quietly shelved last month). Snarky woke advertisements permeated the airwaves and interwebs as plant-based ‘meats’ were on the rise. In fact, Beyond Meat waas valued at over $10bn in 2019, more than Macy’s or Xerox – with the most bullish investors claiming that plant-based meat would make up 15% of all meat sales by 2030.
McDonald’s trialed a McPlant burger, left, but quickly discovered it was unpopular. Photograph: McDonalds/PA Now, as Bloomberg reports, the fake meat industry is getting ground into hamburger – and that doesn’t include cannibalistic nose-biting execs, according to Deloitte Consulting, LLC.
Sales of refrigerated meat alternatives at retailers are down 10.5% by volume for the 52-weeks ending September 4, 2022, according to data from Information Resources Inc., or IRI. While higher prices are the top reason for the slide, it’s not the only one, according to Jonna Parker, a fresh food specialist at the market research company. -Bloomberg
“Proteins that were cheaper on a price-per-pound basis did fare better,” said Parker, who noted that semi-vegetarian shoppers who used to opt for the alternative product will now choose the less-expensive real thing. In short, people are less willing to pay a premium for fake meat, especially considering that ‘taste and health concerns’ are playing a role.
According to Deloitte, the fake meat industry has a perception problem. Based on a July survey of 2,000 consumers, there’s been a decline in the belief that plant-based meat is actually healthier and environmentally sustainable vs. meat from animals.
Despite the increasing alarm over climate change, the number of Americans who are vegetarian or vegan has remained relatively stable over the last 20 years. About 5% of Americans in 2018 said they are vegetarian, while 3% are vegan, according to a Gallup poll.
Even when participants in a study conducted at Purdue University in Indiana were given information about the carbon footprint of meat production, participants were more likely to go with regular meat over a plant-based alternative.
Bhagyashree Katare, an author of the study, said that participants may have been put off by the taste of plant-based meat and the fact that it is not necessarily a healthier alternative to regular meat. Many plant-based meat alternatives are comparable to their real meat counterparts in nutritional content. That it costs about the same as meat also diminishes its attractiveness to consumers. -The Guardian
“If I’m spending money in a restaurant, and I’m a meat eater, why would I spend money on plant-based meat? I would rather eat an actual burger,” said Katare. “It’s a technology, and it takes a long time for people to trust the technology and adopt it. I think that’s where plant-based meat is. Maybe the technology will improve, and it will get better health-wise.”
Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters What’s more, the actual market may be much smaller than previously thought – which coincides with a ‘growing cultural resistance to its “woke” status’ – even among people who are trying in earnest to reduce their consumption of red meat.
For example, when Cracker Barrel announced they were adding Impossible Foods’ sausage to its menu over the summer, it faced fierce opposition via social media.
As The Guardian notes, the McDonald’s McPlant burger was shelved last month, as the push to get US meat eaters to switch to plant-based alternatives has proven a challenge.
Multiple chains that partnered with the company, including McDonald’s, have quietly ended trial launches. In August, the company laid off 4% of its workforce after a slowdown in sales growth. Last week, its chief operating officer was reportedly arrested for biting another man on the nose during a road rage confrontation.
It’s a dramatic reversal of fortune. Just two years ago, Beyond Meat, its competitor Impossible Foods and the plant-based meat industry at large seemed poised to start a food revolution. -Guardian
“The bulls in the industry, I think, had a very wild, very optimistic estimate of how big the market could get,” said Mizuho Securities analyst John Baumgartner. “There was a lot of exuberance in this category. It was new, it was different, it was on trend.”
Plant-based meat companies have been experimenting with different recipes to capture hungry customers. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP “But the consumer environment is tough, and this stuff is not cheap,” he added.
Year-to-date, Beyond Meat stock is down 77%, and is valued at less than $900 million.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 22:40 - The Dystopian Vision Of The Health-Information Police
The Dystopian Vision Of The Health-Information Police
Authored by Laura Powell via The Brownstone Institute,
When Assemblymember Evan Low, the principal author of California Assembly Bill 2098, told the California Senate Committee that his bill was “really straightforward, very straightforward,” many of us in the gallery failed to restrain ourselves from expressing our incredulity.
He delivered this statement at the conclusion of a hearing that had lasted over an hour, during which it seemed no two Senators on the committee had the same idea of how the law would operate. Assemblymember Low had struggled to respond to questions from the committee and had often resorted to simply reading the text of the bill. That June 26 hearing presented the only time any legislators questioned the bill during its entire passage through the legislative process.
Assembly Bill 2098 would empower the Medical Board of California to go after the licenses of physicians who disseminate “misinformation” or “disinformation” regarding Covid-19. The bill in its latest iteration defines misinformation as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” The inscrutability of this definition lies at the core of the bill’s opponents concerns.
No clear scientific consensus exists with respect to this novel virus, and even if it did, it may be proven incorrect later. Without clear guidance regarding what would constitute “misinformation,” physicians can only guess if they risk losing their licenses for expressing their good-faith disagreements with positions of public health officials. Even if in practice, the Medical Board only applied the law to speech that the First Amendment does not protect, the law’s vagueness would render it unconstitutional, because it would tend to cause doctors to censor themselves.
The million-dollar question remains unanswered: Who would be targeted by Assembly Bill 2098? On one hand, the California Medical Association, the bill’s sponsor, cites the example of doctors who call “into question public health efforts such as masking” as creating the need for this bill. Likewise, the taxpayer-funded lobbying group County Health Executives Association of California decries “a small minority of medical professionals” who have led some Californians to “reject public health measures such as masking and physical distancing.”
The analysis of the bill from the Senate committee, in discussing the need for this bill, cited the example of the state of Florida refusing to take action against the license of Florida Surgeon General for, among other things, “question[ing] the value of face masks in preventing the spread of the pandemic.” The idea that the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of Covid is part of the “contemporary scientific consensus” confirms physicians’ fears that they would risk discipline for questioning any edict from public health on Covid.
On the other hand, when critics of Assembly Bill 2098 argue that questioning the effectiveness of masks falls well within the bounds of legitimate difference of opinions, proponents poo-poo their concerns about the law being applied in an overly broad way and insist that the law would only be used against truly “bad doctors.” But imbuing bureaucrats with power while trusting they will not exercise it would be incredibly foolish.
Some, such as Assemblymember Low, bill co-author Assemblymember Akilah Weber, and a representative of the California Medical Association, imply that this bill would only apply in cases of intentional harm. There is nothing in the letter of the law that limits the bill’s reach to situations where someone was harmed or where the information was disseminated knowing it was false. (Intentionally misleading would fall under the definition of “disinformation” as opposed to “misinformation.” An earlier draft of the bill mentioned harm to a patient as a factor for the Medical Board to consider.)
Members of the Medical Board of California itself have expressed confusion about how the law would be applied and withheld its support initially. MBC President Kristina Lawson, an attorney who has been a driving force behind this bill, claims to have clarity about how it would be applied but apparently is only willing to discuss the matter in private.
While most proponents say as little as possible regarding Assembly Bill 2098’s implications, one group is more vocal and less guarded in its statements. Two self-described “frontline” California doctors, Nick Sawyer and Taylor Nichols, formed No License for Disinformation (NLFD) in September 2021.
As its name suggests, the organization’s purpose is to promote policies that use the threat of medical license revocation to discourage doctors from spreading information it believes to be false. Sawyer has twice testified before legislative committees in favor of Assembly Bill 2098. NLFD’s prolific tweets and other public statements paint a dystopian picture that reflects opponents’ worst fears of the type of authoritarian regime proponents wish to impose.
NLFD pushes the idea that there is, as Sawyer described it his testimony before the Assembly committee on April 19, a “well-coordinated and well-funded network of doctors” who promote “anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, sow distrust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal government, and ultimately the Covid-19 vaccines.”
At the outset, note the irony that NLFD frequently criticizes “conspiracy theorists” while promoting its own conspiracy theories. And NLFD not only wants to silence those who undermine faith in public health measures, but anyone who “sows distrust” in the government. Let that sink in.
NLFD’s tweets elaborate on its conspiracy theories, which are, like most conspiracy theories, built on weak evidence that magnify tenuous connections. A recent tweet shared a long thread posted by one of its founders that purports to uncover a web of right-wing “disinformation” purveyors funded by oil money. It implicates, among others, anyone associated with the Great Barrington Declaration or Brownstone Institute and specifically names UCSF professor and doctor Vinay Prasad, journalist and author David Zweig, and Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Stefan Baral as part of this cabal.
An August 13, 2022 tweet promotes a Substack article, written by NLFD “Research Consultant” Allison Neitzel, which calls America’s Frontline Physicians, Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, and The Unity Project the “Big 4” responsible for a “physician-led attack on public health.” NLFD has often identified these four as its primary targets, sometimes adding the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons and Urgency of Normal to its hit list. NLFD asserts, without any basis, that these groups work together.
Some of NLFD’s targets, such as the Urgency of Normal’s leadership, are mainstream physicians. NLFD dismisses them as ranging from “formerly well respected immunologists to outright frauds.” It links to a long thread from one of its founders that accuses Urgency of Normal of being part of a right-wing operation to promote an “anti-mask narrative.”
It complains that CNN gave Dr. Jeanne Noble, Associate Professor at UCSF, a platform. It retweeted a tweet calling for Dr. Lucy McBride to be reported to the medical board for opposing mask mandates in schools and responded with a link directing the public on how to do so.
It dismissed every doctor who participated in a roundtable hosted by Florida Governor DeSantis, which included Dr. Tracy Høeg, as “Covid deniers” and “disinformation doctors” and warned that no one should accept medical advice from any of them.
These attacks contradict any claim that NLFD claims only wants to silence doctors who peddle dangerously false medical advice rather than those who have good-faith disagreements with official Covid policy.
The inclusion of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration—Sunetra Gupta, Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya—at the top of NLFD’s hit list is puzzling. Not only does the declaration espouse a conventional viewpoint, none of the Great Barrington Declaration’s authors is a practicing physician and therefore law like Assembly Bill 2098 would not affect them.
NLFD has called out the Great Barrington Declaration around a dozen times and frequently targets Stanford professor Bhattacharya in particular (he earned a medical degree but does not practice medicine or hold a medical license). NLFD doesn’t just accuse Bhattacharya of being wrong, it accuses him of intentionally lying, calling him a “disinformation doctor” and a “prominent purveyor of Covid-19 disinformation,” accusing him of telling lies that have killed people (along with Vinay Prasad), and insinuating he should be reported for perjury. In addition to its direct attacks, NLFD has retweeted dozens of criticisms of Bhattacharya and seemed to delight in a journalist getting Twitter to temporarily suspend his account for a minor oversight.
NLFD’s messaging has an unquestionably partisan slant, despite claiming to be nonpartisan. It has posted dozens of tweets critical of the Republican Party. Some of these criticisms do not clearly relate to the organization’s mission of combating misinformation.
For example, this August 8, 2022 thread attacks Republican lawmakers for opposing a drug pricing control provision in a bill. The same day, another tweet alleges that the GOP Doctors Caucus is allied with “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. They attempt to tie this issue in with their mission by asserting that Republicans in general are “affiliated with licensed physicians” spreading Covid misinformation.
In another recent example, NLFD posted a clip from 2017 accusing Rand Paul of being in cahoots with Putin. It had previously suggested that Paul should be reported to the medical board for reasons it doesn’t identify. NLFD has even branched out to opine on political issues totally unrelated to the practice of medicine, encouraging the public to report “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school board members or staff to the FBI.
NLFD has numerous posts elaborating on its idea of a right-wing, Republican-led conspiracy to spread disinformation. It uses the phrase “disinformation pipeline” to describe an alleged process by which Republicans in state legislatures deliberately harm public health by “institutionalizing disinformation” through, for example, passing laws that shield doctors from discipline for controversial Covid treatments. It claims that the overall Republican agenda is to “create fear/animosity/victimhood amongst supporters, whipping up anti-science/anti-government sentiment making them more likely to take up arms against the government.” It has asserted that “[a]ll COVID disinformation doctors are inextricably tied to Trump.”
Many of NLFD’s conspiracy theories are quite dark and disturbing. It recently retweeted a thread from its own Nick Sawyer, which argues that the United States is currently in the midst of a civil war, which goes unrecognized because it is an information war. Another recent tweet exhorts: “This is an information war, a battle for the truth, and [every] American is a soldier. Get up to speed and start fighting for evidence based reality. No one is going to do this for us.”
NLFD’s primary weapon in this imagined information war is censorship, but it also advocates for criminal prosecution for expressing the wrong ideas. It frequently encourages its followers to report physicians to their medical boards, even if they have no relationship with them. It also frequently calls on Twitter to deplatform accounts it feels say things that are untrue. But it goes even further, tagging the FBI and posting a link to the FBI tip line, asking its followers to report people for alleged misinformation.
It tags the United States Department of Justice’s Criminal Division in its tweets. It calls its targets a “threat to national security.” NLFD erroneously claims that under current California law, a physician can be criminally prosecuted for any untrue statement. NLFD wants to go far beyond having medical boards discipline licensed physicians—they want to see their enemies in jail.
Against this backdrop of NLFD’s other public statements, it’s hard to imagine how Sawyer managed to sound sincere when he told the Senate committee:
“This bill is not supposed to cause problems with physicians’ free speech around academic discussion. This bill will allow the medical board to discipline doctors who say things like the vaccines cause AIDS or that the vaccines are killing more patients than Covid, using manipulated data or that the vaccines are implanting microchips so the government can track you. I’m all for academic debate—in fact, we wouldn’t be where we are today without robust academic debate, but that’s not what this is about.”
Make no mistake—Assembly Bill 2098 is not just about protecting patient safety. That is why one member of the Medical Board of California warned that the bill would be counterproductive to the Board’s mission.
Assembly Bill 2098 was not the brainchild of Assemblymember Low or any other California lawmakers. It’s part of an effort to enact similar policies around the country, sparked in large part by a declaration from the Federation of State Medical Boards in July 2021.
California is often described as a bellwether: “As California goes, so goes the nation.” That saying rings especially true with respect to Assembly Bill 2098, given that this is a test case for a national movement and that Governor Gavin Newsom has obvious presidential aspirations.
The bill will become law on January 1 unless the governor vetoes by September 30, and even then, the Democrats who voted for the bill have sufficient numbers to override a veto. Then we will discover whether our high courts still uphold the principle of free speech or whether they will allow themselves to be co-opted by the soldiers fighting to be the arbiters of Truth.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 22:20 - Ukraine Confirms Receipt Of Longer-Range Missiles It's Long Sought From US
Ukraine Confirms Receipt Of Longer-Range Missiles It’s Long Sought From US
Despite this past week which has seen US officials echo growing concerns over Moscow’s ratcheting nuclear rhetoric – which Ukraine too has said it is taking seriously – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is now boasting his country has received a new, advanced US missile system.
He confirmed in a fresh interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) has been long sought after by Kyiv, but previously in the war repeatedly denied:
Zelensky thanked the U.S. for the system as well as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems it’s received, but added that his troops “absolutely need the United States to show leadership and give Ukraine” additional air defense systems it has requested.
NASAM system, via Raytheon Missiles & Defense Ukraine began urgently asking for transfer of the NASAMS by early summer, but the Biden administration as reluctant to provide missile systems with longer range, concerned they would be used to strike inside Russian territory and thus drag Washington and Moscow into direct cofronation.
According to a CNN report in June, “Ukrainian officials have asked for the missile defense system, known as a NASAMS system, given the weapons can hit targets more than 100 miles away, though the Ukrainian forces will likely need to be trained on the systems, a source said.”
But that’s apparently no longer enough of a concern to halt these longer range systems, despite the Kremlin repeatedly warning that attacks on its territory with foreign weapons are a severe red line.
According to The Hill:
The Biden administration approved the shipment of six of the missile systems late last month as part of a nearly $3 billion lethal aid package to bolster Kyiv as it battles the Kremlin invasion.
The NASAMS are considered “medium-range” systems, but are considered an improvement over prior missiles sent to Ukraine, which typically had a max range of 30 to 50 miles. The NASAMS are capable of defending against aircraft, cruise missiles, as well as drones and were designed by the US and Norway.
But Zelensky in the CBS interview didn’t waist time asking for more, as has been typical, saying that amid his forces achieving success in the ongoing eastern counteroffensive they urgently need more tanks, artillery, and more missiles.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 22:00 - Nikola Recalls All The Electric Trucks It Has Built So Far
Nikola Recalls All The Electric Trucks It Has Built So Far
By Alan Adler of FreightWaves
Nikola Corp. is recalling all 93 battery-electric Nikola Tre Class 8 trucks it has built to date because improper installation of the shoulder anchorage assembly of the seat belts could reduce protection in a crash.
Nikola imports cabs from Italy, where they are built by manufacturing partner Iveco, which is responsible for the defect.
The electric truck maker began regular production at a new plant in Coolidge, Arizona, in March. It reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Sept. 14 that it has no warranty or customer claims for the issue.
The assembly as designed and installed could become detached under the weight of a passenger. The seat belt anchor assembly design does not allow full thread engagement for the anchor bolt. It may cause cross threading, a condition in which a fastening screw does not engage correctly with a nut.
Discovered during predelivery inspection
During a predelivery inspection at a dealership on July 18, a Nikola employee discovered the shoulder anchorage on the passenger side seat belt was disconnected from the B-pillar adjuster. Nikola told Iveco, which said the final torque on the passenger seat belt shoulder anchorage was not installed to specification.
Nikola will replace the components of the seat belt anchor assembly and the adjuster on all vehicles for free. The replacement component is narrower than the original, allowing the assembly to completely thread.
Customer and dealer letters about the defect will be mailed between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1.
The NHTSA recall number is 22V689.
Milton trial resumes Wednesday
Separately, the federal fraud trial for Nikola founder Trevor Milton resumes Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Dour market conditions, and possibly attention from the trial, dragged Nikola’s stock price 24.02% lower last week to close at $3.89 a share, just above its 52-week low of $3.82.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 21:40 - Oil Prices Set To Spike Again Due To Struggling Global Supply Chain
Oil Prices Set To Spike Again Due To Struggling Global Supply Chain
A short respite from rising oil and gasoline prices is about to end as 2022 comes to a close. The reasons are numerous, but almost all of them relate directly to the supply chain. Mainstream estimates suggest a return to $100 per barrel for the Brent which would inflate gasoline prices back to around $5 per gallon on average in the US. These projections are likely conservative.
It should be noted that it’s unusual for the mainstream financial media or mainstream analysts to suggest the idea of a renewed energy price spike. With mid-term elections closing in, higher gas prices would put a damper on any chances democrats might have in maintaining a political majority. Stagflationary pressures already top the list of public concerns in the US, far above social issues and geopolitical conflicts. Higher energy costs would be more than unwelcome going into winter.
This is the reason why Joe Biden has been so exuberant about releasing oil supplies from the US strategic reserves for the past several months. Biden’s plan unleashed 1 million barrels per day into the supply chain and is set to end in October. The reserves are now depleted to the lowest levels since 1984, with gas prices STILL nearly double what they were when Biden entered the White House. It is essentially market manipulation at the expense of US strategic readiness and for the express purpose of political gain.
That said, Biden’s ability to continue pouring oil onto the markets to keep gas prices down is dwindling, and even if he is able to continue the strategy past October, a red sweep in November would bring challenges and a freeze on reserves anyway.
Another factor is the failing attempts at a nuclear deal with Iran and the lifting of sanctions by the west. The free flow of Iranian oil will not be happening anytime soon, leaving western access to a major oil pool off the table.
The next issue is the ever changing situation in the Ukraine war. Russia is already receiving the brunt of the blame for global inflation, but this is clearly nonsense when we take into account the fact that inflation hit 40 year highs months before Russian invaded Ukraine and gas prices were rising well in advance of the conflict.
The accusation may become true in certain respects, though, as Russia cuts natural gas supplies to Europe and the EU flails around this winter looking for replacement energy sources. Europe’s desperate search for oil, coal and gas will siphon supplies away from the global markets leaving all other countries with less. The obvious result will be much higher prices for everyone.
There is also the issue of the stronger US dollar. As the petro-currency, most oil around the world has been purchased in dollars which allows Americans to enjoy lower prices. However, sanctions and economic tensions between east and west have led to a rising trend of bilateral trade agreements cutting out the dollar as the reserve currency. Furthermore, the strong dollar has also led to turmoil in FX markets and in foreign currencies like the Japanese Yen, which may lead to increased dumping of US Treasury holdings by international creditors. We could soon be facing a coordinated effort by central banks to crush the dollar even as the Federal Reserve seeks to strengthen the Greenback through interest rate hikes.
Barring a sudden crisis event such as an expansion of the war in Ukraine or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, oil prices are still set to rise as supply chain issues multiply.
The Department if Energy plans to replenish strategic reserves by purchasing oil stocks into the future at prices set today. The argument is that this will increase domestic oil production. The problem is that this discounts inflation in production costs for shale oil drillers. Set prices would only work as long as drillers can continue to make a reasonable profit. If they can’t, they will simply shut down. By extension, the plan also assumes that drillers will be able to produce excess beyond market demand to sell to the government.
If the government gets a first purchase arrangement, then drillers will not be able to supply as much oil to regular consumers and prices will continue to spike. If the government does not get a first purchase contract, then any excess will probably be snapped up by European buyers. Either way, general consumers will not enjoy any benefits of increased drilling if it occurs, and Biden’s fraudulent green energy agenda will only restrict oil producers even more. All in all, every observable factor suggests high oil and gas prices in the near term.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 21:20 - Export Slowdown Could Bring More Bad News For Yuan
Export Slowdown Could Bring More Bad News For Yuan
By George Lei, Bloomberg markets live reporter and analyst
Chinese exports are poised to slow further in the remainder of 2022, with various high-frequency datasets pointing to cooling global demand. Exports, a key growth engine that has lifted the Chinese economy since the pandemic, are sputtering. That could bring more bad news for the yuan.
South Korean data in September through the 20th suggest exports to China fell 14% year-over-year versus a 1% decline in exports to the US. This may be an ominous sign that global demand for consumer goods made in China — to which Korea provides inputs earlier in the supply chain — is softening, Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics, wrote on Monday. Hong Kong’s exports also sank 14.3% in August, the most since the pandemic first began in early 2020.
Plunging freight rates also point to cooling exports: A 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles fetched $3,779 last week, below $4,000 for the first time since September 2020 and half what it was three months ago, Bloomberg reported. More declines are expected in the coming weeks, according to Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.
The news couldn’t come at a worse time, with the offshore Chinese yuan now trading at the weakest since May 2020 — just a stone’s throw away from its record low — and economists rushing to cut China’s 2023 economic-growth forecasts. Dollar-yuan may need to go a lot higher to boost China’s exports meaningfully; the Chinese currency has advanced versus most of Beijing’s trade partners, outside of the US and Hong Kong, for much of 2022.
Chinese exporters already are holding foreign currencies more tightly. The conversion ratio — which measures the share of export revenues converted into yuan — fell from 57% in the first eight months of 2021 to 36% this year through August, according to Macquarie economists Larry Hu and Yuxiao Zhang. If that ratio holds steady, an extra $118 billion could have been sold by exporters into yuan, Macquarie estimates.
Falling Chinese export volumes and expectations of a weaker yuan will only make exporters more reluctant to sell their dollars. The yuan’s downtrend isn’t likely to reverse unless that negative feedback loop is broken.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 21:15 - Liz Cheney Says Will Campaign For Democrats, Leave Republican Party If Trump Is 2024 Nominee
Liz Cheney Says Will Campaign For Democrats, Leave Republican Party If Trump Is 2024 Nominee
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said on Saturday that she will not remain a Republican if former President Donald Trump is the GOP presidential nominee in the 2024 elections, and that she would also be willing to campaign for Democrats to stop GOP nominee Kari Lake from being elected in the Arizona gubernatorial race.
Cheney, who has been called a “Republican in name only” by others in her party and lost the Republican primary to Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman in August, made the comments at The Texas Tribune festival in Austin.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Kari Lake is not elected,” Cheney said.
Former television anchor Lake, who is endorsed by Trump, won the Republican nomination in the Arizona primary election in August. Lake has been vocal in contending fraud in the 2020 election and has pledged to improve election security if she wins the gubernatorial race.
When asked by Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith whether doing everything she can to ensure Lake is not elected included campaigning for Democrats, Cheney simply stated: “Yes.”
Cheney, who has become one of the most vocal voices in the Republican Party against former President Donald Trump, later added that she would not remain a Republican if he were to gain the party’s nomination in 2024.
“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee. And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican,” Cheney said.
Cheney also mentioned Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has said he will campaign for Lake.
“He’s demonstrated that he’s somebody who has not bought into the toxin of Donald Trump—but he campaigned recently for Kari Lake, who’s an election denier, who is dangerous,” Cheney said.
…
Cheney announced in August that she’s considering running for president in 2024 but has not yet made a decision on the potential run.
“That’s a decision that I’m going to make in the coming months,” she said on Aug. 17 in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, despite having just lost in the Republican primary for the seat she now holds.
Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. She is also one of two Republican members sitting on the Democrat-led House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 21:00 - NYC Office Space Glut Made Worse By Remote Work As Older Towers Face High Vacancy
NYC Office Space Glut Made Worse By Remote Work As Older Towers Face High Vacancy
Is New York City’s central business district finally recovering after Covid-19? The simple answer is no. Although residential rents in Manhattan were inflated to record highs, the rise of remote work quelled any recovery for the office space market in the borough.
Bloomberg reported blocks of decades-old office buildings sitting partially empty are becoming a multibillion-dollar problem for building owners.
Even though Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and other Wall Street firms have pushed for a return to the office after the Labor Day holiday, NYC’s office-occupancy trends are still below half, according to card-swipe data provided by Kastle Systems.
Office vacancy rates have skyrocketed in NYC and other major cities worldwide, though it appears the US will have a slower office-market recovery — this is likely due to persisting remote working trends.
Columbia University and New York University released a report that found remote work trends could force companies to reduce office space. They said lower tenant demand could result in a 28%, or $456 billion loss in the value of offices across the US. About 10% of that comes from NYC.
Partially empty office towers are leading to slower economic recovery in NYC. Many buildings with high vacancy rates were constructed between 1950-80 and had no meaningful upgrades.
The area is clustered with buildings from the 1950s to 1980s, many of which haven’t been meaningfully upgraded in decades. The few that have been renovated struggle to compete with counterparts in tonier addresses on Park, Fifth and Madison avenues and new mega-developments on Manhattan’s far west side.
The Third Avenue buildings have become “leave-behind space” rather than the types of offices that attract world-class tenants, said Nick Farmakis, vice chairman at Savills. — Bloomberg
The picture remains cloudy for NYC because converting office space buildings to residential is challenging and expensive. Manhattan has had some conversions, but owners and developers are met with many challenges of zoning and architectural restrictions.
“The problem with Midtown is a lot of buildings need air and lights that the city requires, and you don’t always get that,” said Ran Eliasaf, founder and managing partner of investment firm Northwind Group, which is exploring residential conversions in the city. “Not every Class B building is an ideal target for conversion.”
Older buildings are also being left behind as businesses desire newer ones or relocate out of the city. This leaves NYC with a rising number of older office buildings with high vacancy rates and has begun to impact how much property taxes the city brings in.
New York, like other cities, relies heavily on property taxes to fund schools, police and firefighters, as well as other services. Property taxes are the biggest source of revenue for the city, delivering about $1 out of every $3 taken in. And offices account for about a fifth of that.
Before the pandemic, the levies had climbed by about 6% a year on average, driven by rising property values. That helped finance new programs and services, as well as keep up with rising labor costs, said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan budget watchdog and research firm.
Manhattan’s major office districts were no exception, generating steadily more revenue. But, in the fiscal year that ended June 30, the first to take into account the impact the pandemic had on real estate, tax levies from those areas declined by 11% to $5.24 billion.
The biggest drop was in a part of Midtown East north of Grand Central that the city’s Department of Finance calls “Plaza,” which contains some of the Third Avenue properties.
— Bloomberg
The takeaway is that NYC has too many old office buildings that are no longer appealing to companies because of various factors due to remote working and the desire for new shiny new towers with top-of-the-line amenities.
Remember, we’ve pointed out There’s An Amazing Glut Of Office Space In Every Major Metro Area and Office Space Market Faces “Economic Downturn” Due To Perfect Storm Of Factors.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 20:40 - California To Ban Natural Gas Heaters By 2030
California To Ban Natural Gas Heaters By 2030
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
California has made yet another step on its way to complete reliance on renewable energy by banning the use of gas-powered water heaters and furnaces from 2030.
The proposal to ban these products was approved unilaterally by the California Air Resources Board yesterday, Bloomberg reports.
“We’re really hopeful that this is the beginning of a domino effect and other states will follow California’s lead,” said Leah Louis-Prescott, an associate at RMI, a clean energy non-profit.
The ban does not cover gas stoves for now but many cities in California are seeking to discourage the use of gas stoves and a switch to electric-only appliances.
Now, with the gas furnace ban, Californians will have to familiarize themselves with heat pumps: all-electric heating appliances that are gaining popularity in Europe as an alternative to traditional heating methods.
Touted as the way forward in heating technology, heat pumps are praised for efficiency and emission footprint but they do have constraints such as temperature and they add to electricity consumption, which could strain a grid designed for a certain—lower—level of consumption.
Earlier this month California moved to ban the sales of internal-combustion engine cars from 2035. While climate activists have welcomed the news, there are some issues, such as the fact that EVs in California, which is the biggest EV market in the States, only make up 15 percent of new car sales, per figures from the California New Car Dealers’ Association.
Going from 15 percent to 100 percent in 11 years would be challenging for a car industry that is already struggling to find enough raw materials for the millions of EVs companies have committed to manufacture.
Meanwhile, California continues to get some 40 percent of its power from fossil fuels. This needs to change if the state is to hit its own target of a zero-emission grid by 2045.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 20:20 - Just 1.5% Of Eligible People Have Gotten Updated COVID Booster
Just 1.5% Of Eligible People Have Gotten Updated COVID Booster
Only 1.5% of those eligible to receive the new Covid booster jab – which was tested on just 8 mice, not humans, before the FDA approved it – have taken the updated shot, according to data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Approximately 4.4 million people have taken the tweaked booster shot from Pfizer and Moderna after they were rolled out three weeks ago around Labor Day weekend. The bivalent shots were designed to target both the original Covid-19 strain, and the currently circulating Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, NBC News reports.
“I would expect a much higher proportion of Americans to have gotten the booster by this point,” said Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Scott Robers, who said the relatively low uptake was “demoralizing.”
“The fact that this booster came out days before Biden said the pandemic is over is a huge mixed message,” said Roberts, who added that a lack of public awareness surrounding the shots – or the ‘prevailing narrative that the pandemic is ending’ might have hindered the rollout. “Now it’s going to be that much harder to convince those at risk who are on the fence to get a booster.”
As of Tuesday, the US had shipped over 25 million boosters to tens of thousands of sites.
Approximately 80% of the US population has received at least one shot of the primary Covid vaccine, and almost 68% are considered ‘fully vaccinated’ by the CDC – meaning they’ve received two doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s offering, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
experts are still gathering real-world data, since the shots were distributed without results from human trials. Laboratory studies found that the boosters generated strong antibody responses against BA.4 and BA.5, and human trial data showed that a similar vaccine yielded a strong antibody response against the initial omicron strain, BA.1.
Authorization of the bivalent boosters for children ages 5 to 11 may be just weeks away, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at an event this week with the Covid-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project. -NBC News
Word of the slow uptake comes after Denmark recommended that only those over the age of 50, or who are at risk of developing severe Covid-19, receive the vaccine.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 20:00 - NYC Council Eyes Buying Back Used Needles From Drug Addicts
NYC Council Eyes Buying Back Used Needles From Drug Addicts
Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,
The New York City Council is considering a proposal to establish a buy-back program in hopes of stemming the spike in overdose deaths and discarded used drug needles on the streets.
Introduction 609, sponsored by East Harlem Councilwoman Diana Ayala, would establish a pilot program that offers up to 20 cents for each needle, syringe, or sharp used at the city’s two legal injection sites, with a cap of $10 per individual per day.
The program would only be open to active drug users who come to an overdose prevention center (OPC), use the clean needle provided there for drug injection, and dispose of it at the site, according to the proposal. New York City currently has two OPCs, one in Washington Heights and the other in East Harlem. Both sites were opened in November 2021 as part of former mayor Bill de Blasio’s initiative to reduce overdoses.
If implemented, the program would last for a year. The city’s public health department at that point would recommend whether or not to continue the program or whether to expand it to cover needles and syringes that have been used somewhere other than an OPC.
“The intent of the bill is to get those folks that are using on our streets and open spaces to bring back the dirty needle (possibly to OPC site) as opposed to discarding them improperly,” Ayala, a Democrat, wrote in a Twitter thread. Others called the proposal “misguided” and an invitation to drug addicts to the city.
Queens Councilwoman Joann Ariola, a Republican, argued that taxpayers money shouldn’t be spent on paying people to use drugs.
“It’s not going to benefit the person who is the drug addict who is using the needles,” Ariola told New York Post.
“It could be harmful to the person who is collecting these needles. And who’s paying the [twenty] cents per needle? Where is that money coming from? I think the taxpayers are paying for enough!”
The creation of New York City’s OPCs came after Gov. Kathy Hochul in October 2021 signed a law to decriminalize the possession and sale of hypodermic needles and syringes across the state. As a result, the city’s police officers were directed to stop arresting people who possess, sell, or even share needles that are commonly used by addicts to inject drugs such as heroin.
According to the bill that became law, decriminalizing the possession and sale of needles will encourage more people to come to places like the OPCs, which provide clean needles and naloxone to reverse overdoses.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican who represents parts of South Brooklyn and Staten Island, opposed de Blasio’s plan to open what she described as “heroin injection centers.” In November 2021, she sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling on the Department of Justice to take action to enforce federal anti-drug law.
“Opening taxpayer-funded heroin shooting galleries is not a proper solution. These centers not only encourage drug use but they will further deteriorate our quality of life,” she said.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 19:40 - FBI Misled Judge, Then Seized $86 Million In Cash From Beverly Hills Safe-Deposit Boxes
FBI Misled Judge, Then Seized $86 Million In Cash From Beverly Hills Safe-Deposit Boxes
The FBI ‘drilled and pried’ their way into 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at a private vault company in Beverly Hills after misleading a judge about their plan to permanently confiscate everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.
Agents took photos and videos of pay stubs, password lists, credit cards, a prenuptial agreement, immigration and vaccination records, bank statements, heirlooms and a will, court records show. In one box, agents found cremated human remains. –LA Times
The FBI and US attorney’s office in Los Angeles justified the 5-day dragnet forfeiture at the US Private Vaults store by assuming that hundreds of anonymous box holders were storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes.
At the end of the operation, agents had recovered more than $86 million in cash, and a ‘bonanza’ of gold, silver, rare coins, jewelry and other items of value.
Now, around 700 box holders who aren’t implicated in any crimes liken the raid to police barging into a building’s 700 apartments and taking every tenant’s possessions when the only evidence of wrongdoing is against the landlord.
The plaintiffs in the class-action suit have asked U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner to declare the raid unconstitutional. If he grants the request, it could force the FBI to return millions of dollars to box holders whose assets it has tried to confiscate.
It could also spoil an unknown number of criminal investigations by blocking prosecutors from using any evidence or information acquired in the raid, including guns and drugs. -LA Times
“The government did not know what was in those boxes, who owned them, or what, if anything, those people had done,” said their lawyer, Robert Frommer. “That’s why the warrant application did not even attempt to argue there was probable cause to seize and forfeit box renters’ property.”
After the raid, the FBI posted a notice in the store window where customers could claim their property. Those who came forward had their bank records, state tax returns, DMV files and criminal histories investigated, agents testified.
Since the raid, the US attorney’s office has attempted to block public disclosure of court papers which revealed the government’s deception – however a judge rejected their request to keep them under seal.
The FBI is trash. It is both a domestic terrorist organization and a criminal cartel, and it should no longer be allowed to exist in what used to be a free country with laws. https://t.co/KaV0L6X3Xh
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 26, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe origins of the raid date back to 2015, when local detectives and federal agents spotted drug suspects walking in and out of US Private Vaults, located in an upscale strip mall. Customers, who could rent boxes anonymously, entered the store’s vault using a biometric eye scan according to a LA County sheriff’s deputy.
The U.S. Private Vaults store in a strip mall on Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) By 2019, the feds and local law enforcement were able to search more than a dozen boxes, from which around $5 million was seized from five drug dealers, a bookie and a debit card thief. Then, the FBI began investigating the business itself – charging them with conspiracy to sell drugs and launder money, using a precious-metals store next door to help drug dealers launder cash by converting it to gold and silver, which was then stashed in their anonymous boxes. The company pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to launder drug money in an ongoing investigation.
Both the FBI and US attorney’s office have denied misleading the judge or ignoring his conditions – claiming that they had no obligation to tell him about their plan for indiscriminate confiscations based on the blanket assumption that every customer was hiding assets tied to potential crimes.
According to FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller, the warrants were lawfully executed “based on allegations of widespread criminal wrongdoing,” adding “At no time was a magistrate misled as to the probable cause used to obtain the warrants.”
How the FBI worked the system
FBI agent Lynne Zellhart, a former Sacramento attorney, made sweeping allegations of criminal wrongdoing by box holders – arguing that it would be “irrational” for anyone not breaking the law to store assets at US Private Vaults, when a bank could better safeguard them.
“Only those who wish to hide their wealth from the DEA, IRS, or creditors would” rent a box anonymously at US Private Vaults, she wrote.
But the FBI’s evidence against customers was thin.
Agents had seen some of them pull up to the store in vehicles with Nevada, Ohio and Illinois license plates, Zellhart wrote.
“Based on my training and experience in money laundering investigations, Chicago, Illinois is a hub of both drug trafficking and money laundering,” she said. “I believe these patrons were using their USPV box to store drug proceeds.” She cited no facts to back up the suspicion. -LA Times
In fact, Zellhart only mentioned nine box holders who she said were “linked” or “associated” with law enforcement investigations – and again provided no facts specifying criminal conduct.
To provide cover for the fact that innocent box holders might be swept up, she admitted that US Private Vaults tried “to attract a non-criminal clientele as well, so as not to be too obvious a haven for criminals.”
At her deposition, Zellhart was asked, “Was it your opinion that most of the people who rented safe-deposit boxes were criminals in some way?” to which she replied “I was expecting a lot of criminals,” adding “I don’t know about most.”
The FBI assured US Magistrate Judge Steve Kim that the FBI would respect customers’ rights based on the affidavit’s 84th and 85th pages, written by assistant US attorney Andrew Brown, who underlined the government’s lack of evidence to justify any criminal search of the customers’ property.
“The warrants authorize the seizure of the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents,” Brown’s section of the affidavit read. “By seizing the nests of safety deposit boxes themselves, the government will necessarily end up with custody of what is inside those boxes initially.”
The affidavit told Kim that agents would “follow their written inventory policies” and “attempt to notify the lawful owners of the property stored in the boxes how to claim their property.”
Under FBI policy, it said, inspection of each box would “extend no further than necessary to determine ownership.” But agents’ inspection of the boxes went substantially further — just as the government planned, according to FBI records filed in court.
By the time Kim got the warrant request, the FBI had been preparing an enormous forfeiture operation for at least six months, according to Jessie Murray, the chief of the FBI’s asset forfeiture unit in Los Angeles. -LA Times
Under US forfeiture laws, the government must have evidence that it was derived from criminal conduct or used to facilitate it.
Judge Kim was explicit in limiting the scope of the raid, writing: “This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes.” He then gave the FBI permission to take inventory of box contents to protect against accusations of theft, and then ordered agents to notify owners not implicated in crimes so that they could recover their property.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 19:20 - Psaki Admits Democrats Will Lose If Midterms Are A 'Referendum' On Biden
Psaki Admits Democrats Will Lose If Midterms Are A ‘Referendum’ On Biden
Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Sunday said the Democrats will lose if the November midterm elections are a “referendum” on President Joe Biden.
“If it is a referendum on the president, they will lose. And they know that. They also know that crime is a huge vulnerability for Democrats, I would say one of the biggest vulnerabilities,” Psaki said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sept. 25.
On the contrary, Psaki said that if the focus of the midterm elections is on the “most extreme” party, mentioning House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) by name, the Democrats will secure a victory in November.
With a little more than 40 days to go before the November elections, Biden’s public approval rating remains low. According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, 39 percent of Americans approved of the president, while 57 percent disapproved.
Additionally, 67 percent of the respondents said the United States was heading in the wrong direction, while 21 percent said the country was on the right track.
Another recent Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll found that 50 percent of Americans thought Biden “should do more” on “blocking illegal immigrants” from entering the United States.
Even Democrats are abandoning Biden as the party’s nominee for president in 2024. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, just 35 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents prefer Biden for the 2024 nomination, while 56 percent say the party should pick someone else.
Referendum
Some Republicans have long billed the midterm elections as a referendum on Biden, most famously former President Donald Trump.
“This election is a referendum on skyrocketing inflation, rampant crime, soaring murders, crushing gas prices, millions and millions of illegal aliens pouring across our border, race and gender indoctrination, converting our schools,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Sept. 3.
Trump added, “And above all, this election is a referendum on the corruption and extremism of Joe Biden and the radical Democrat Party.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) speaks to The Epoch Times at CPAC 21 in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2021. (The Epoch Times)
Also on Sunday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on Twitter that “It’s not breaking news Democrats don’t want the midterm elections to be a referendum on Biden.”
Earlier this month, Joe O’Dea, the GOP candidate for senator in Colorado, also said the November race is a referendum on the president.
“This election is a referendum on the trillions in spending and debt by Joe Biden and Michael Bennet that’s caused this inflation crisis,” O’Dea wrote on Twitter, who is facing incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
Pennsylvania
Psaki also said she has been following the senate race in Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is facing Republican candidate Mehmet Oz, noting that Republicans have been spending money on ads portraying the Democrat candidate as soft on crime.
“What’s been interesting to me is it’s always you follow the money, and where are people spending money,” Psaki said. “And in Pennsylvania, the Republicans have been spending millions of dollars on the air on crime ads against Fetterman because that’s where they see his vulnerability.”
She added, “So, yes, the economy is hanging over everything. But you do have to look at state-by-state factors, and crime is a huge issue in the Pennsylvania race.”
Oz and Fetterman are scheduled for a televised debate on Oct. 25. On Sunday, Oz took to Twitter to say he has a different approach to border management compared to his opponent.
“John Fetterman would be a rubber stamp for Biden’s reckless border policies & make the crisis at our southern border even worse,” Oz wrote on Twitter. “Securing our border may not be Biden or Fetterman’s top priority, but I’ll do everything I can to address this issue.”
Psaki left the White House in May and took a job at MSNBC as host for a new streaming program starting in 2023.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 19:00 - Meet The Fiercely Loyal "Guru" Behind Masayoshi Son At SoftBank
Meet The Fiercely Loyal “Guru” Behind Masayoshi Son At SoftBank
And so, all of a sudden, SoftBank – which has been suffering from a $23 billion loss at the hands of the global tech selloff – has a
scapegoatadvisor to Masayoshi Son.The
fall guy“guru”, profiled in an FT piece out this weekend, is Yoshimitsu Goto, who is described as being “fiercely loyal” to Masayoshi Son. Masa hired Goto all the way back in 2000 after stating: “I like the look of his eyes. Let’s hire him.”Perhaps Goto isn’t just getting press now because of SoftBank’s recent troubles – instead, perhaps it is because three of Masa’s top executives have jumped ship over the last 18 months and Goto has been the exception.
As FT notes, SoftBank has lost its chief operating officer Marcelo Claure and strategy chief Katsunori Sago. Rajeev Misra, head of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, all in short order in less than 2 years.
Goto, in the interim, has become “indispensable”, the report says. And that’s not because he continues to defend Masa as the company’s Vision Fund suffers from terrible performance.
Masa’s “guru” says that the plan with the Vision Fund is to “stay the course”: “I won’t be surprised [if Son changed his mind] but I don’t think that’s likely. Investment firm is this company’s ultimate style. The basis of Mr Son’s thinking is that change is the best growth strategy to avert risks.”
The report describes Goto’s job as “to persuade investors to scrap what he describes as the misleading image of the deal-driven, debt-saddled group” as reckless. He has also been in charge of taking Masa’s “big picture” ideas and converting them into “comprehensible pitches” for lenders.
That is to say, Masa’s ideas must first usually be incomprehensible. Color us not surprised.
And Goto does supposedly stand up to the boss once in a while, the report says. He told FT: “When an executive in charge of the company’s financing and cash flow says no, that’s the end of the story so I know the weight of my words when I say no.”
“I tell my team not to search for reasons why they can’t do it, but to think of ways that can be done if they were to try it. When it’s really impossible, there is no answer and that’s when I say we should not do this. Mr Son is rational so he gets it right away.”
The one cardinal rule Goto has is not to do anything that would compromise the firm’s relationship with Mizuho, where he formerly worked as a banker. “It takes a long time to build a relationship of trust but when it crumbles, it happens with the blink of an eye. I have never broken my promise with the banks in the past 20 years,” he told FT.
Koji Fujiwara, senior adviser at Mizuho Financial Group, said: “The current relationship between Mizuho and SoftBank Group would have been unthinkable without Mr Goto. That’s how important he is.”
Kiyoshi Miyake, the former deputy president of Mizuho Bank, concluded: “The ideas flow like water for Mr Son, and it was Mr Goto who said which of those can be done and which cannot be done.”
And as such, we’re near certain he’ll receive his fair share of the blame should the picture worsen for SoftBank…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 18:40 - $1 Million Yale University Research Project To Combat Racist Video Game Hair
$1 Million Yale University Research Project To Combat Racist Video Game Hair
By Madison Rehbehn of Campus Reform
Yale University’s Computer Science Department recently announced a $1 million donation given to them from the Bungie Foundation for a research project that fights against racist hair graphics in video games.
“It is widely assumed that the algorithms used to generate virtual humans are based in biological underpinnings that accurately reflect all races and ethnicities,” the announcement reads. “In reality, however, these algorithms are deeply biased and based on predominantly European features.”
The project will be led by Theodore Kim, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Yale.
According to Kim, the project will “serve as an example of how to identify the products of systemic racism in computer graphics and demonstrate how to take concrete steps to ameliorate their harm.”
Kim believes that this racial bias in video game hair stems from Computer Graphics Researchers that have “historically favored the simulation and rendering of straight hair, which is racially coded as European or Caucasian hair.”
As stated on Kim’s admin page, “[h]e researches topics in physics-based animation, which include the simulation of fire, water, muscles, skin, and virtual humans.”
In 2015, Pew Research Center conducted a study on how various racial and ethnic groups feel about video games. Their article showed that “[r]oughly half (47%) of American adults say they are unsure of whether video games portray minority groups poorly. Interestingly, this is the most common response regardless of race or ethnicity.”
The Pew Research Center’s study continued by adding, “Blacks (13%) are more likely than whites (7%) to say most video games portray minority groups poorly.” However, “close to half of all blacks (47%) say they are uncertain if video games depict minorities in a bad light.”
Campus Reform reached out to Yale University, Professor Kim, and the Bungie Foundation for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 18:20 - Pressure Mysteriously Plunges in Nord Stream 1, 2
Pressure Mysteriously Plunges in Nord Stream 1, 2
Update: It’s not just NS2: according to Reuters, Nord Stream AG, the operator of the Nord Stream 1 undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, said Monday it was looking into causes of a drop in pressure in the pipeline.
“Tonight, dispatchers from the Nord Stream 1 control centre recorded a pressure drop on both branches of the gas pipeline,” it said in a statement. “The reasons are being clarified.”
* * *
Reuters reported that the Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 pipeline experienced a sudden loss in pressure, and a leak was detected in Danish waters on Monday.
“A leak today occurred on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Danish area,” said Denmark’s energy agency.
Danish authorities said the leak occurred in the exclusive economic zone southeast of Bornholm island. Danish Maritime Authority announced all vessels must avoid the area:
“Mariners are advised not to navigate within a five nautical miles area of the mentioned position.”
Russian energy giant Gazprom, NS2’s operator, released a statement that said “marine authorities of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Russia have been notified immediately” about the pressure drop, adding an “investigation is ongoing.”
“Overnight the Nord Stream 2 landfall dispatcher registered a rapid gas pressure drop on Line A of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline,” NS2’s operator said.
NS2 spokesman Ulrich Lissek told AFP a “large bubble field near Bornholm” was spotted. He noted, “pipeline was never in use, just prepared for technical operation, and therefore filled with gas.”
Lissek said pressure inside NS2 usually is about 105 bars. It is now only 7 bars on the German side…
A spokeswoman for the German economy ministry said there’s “no clarity” on what caused the NS2’s pressure drop:
“We are currently in contact with the authorities concerned in order to clarify the situation. We still have no clarity about the causes and the exact facts.”
European NatGas prices weren’t affected by the news because the pipeline, intended to double NatGas volumes to Europe under the Baltic Sea to Germany, was never operational after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz canceled it after Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year.
The Russian-owned pipeline, which was intended to double the volume of gas flowing from St. Petersburg under the Baltic Sea to Germany, had just been completed and was filled with 300 million cubic metres of gas when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz cancelled it shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. —Reuters
Underwater pipeline leaks can be very dangerous. In July 2021, Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), had an underwater pipeline rupture that sparked massive fireballs.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/26/2022 – 18:00
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