- Blinken Urges Allies To "Repatriate" & "Rehabilitate" Foreign ISIS Terrorists Held In Syria
Blinken Urges Allies To “Repatriate” & “Rehabilitate” Foreign ISIS Terrorists Held In Syria
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday actually called for ISIS members held in prisons across Syria to essentially be let go to their home countries – often in Europe. He applied the words “repatriate” and “rehabilitate” to literal ISIS terrorists and their families.
What’s more is that he was addressing European allies, meaning in this context he’s also referencing primarily foreign fighters who joined the Islamic State. The foreign jihadists have long been considered to be the most extreme among the extreme. Here’s what Blinken said at a defense conference in Rome, according to ABC News:
Kicking off the ministerial meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Rome on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on countries to “repatriate, rehabilitate, and where applicable, prosecute their citizens” imprisoned in Syria fighting for ISIS.
“It just can’t persist indefinitely,” he said of the problem of the cramped ISIS prisons run by the US-backed SDF in Syria’s Eastern desert.
One such camp is al-Hol, which has been a security nightmare. A recent report in BBC detailed: “According to figures released by al-Hol camp’s Kurdish-led authorities, almost 61,000 people are held at the site in Al Hasakah district, including more than 16,000 families. About 2,500 of those are families of foreign IS fighters.”
It could be that Blinken primarily had in mind family members of ISIS terrorists who are held in Syria’s prisons, but regardless it’s shocking how bluntly and easily he spoke of “rehabilitating” ISIS foreign fighters…
“We are seeing fighters of 13 and 14 years old, take up weapons to kill people, and we have to get at this from every possible angle,” he said further in the remarks.
In Rome at D-ISIS conference, Blinken says 10,000 ISIS fighters still under SDF detention in #Syria, calling the situation ‘untenable’ and effectively urging all countries to repatriate, rehabilitate and if needed prosecute their citizens. https://t.co/EAduH7BimI
— Hümeyra Pamuk (@humeyra_pamuk) June 28, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Another irony on top of Blinken lecturing allies that they must receive their foreign fighters back “home” is the fact that on Sunday night the Biden-ordered airstrikes actually targeted Iraqi and Syrian militia groups that actively fight remaining ISIS terrorists in the region.
SDF-administered al-Hol, via Al Jazeera But it remains that the US considers these groups currently fighting Sunni jihadists as “pro-Iranian” and “Iran-backed” – hence the Pentagon’s willingness to wage war on the Assad-Iran-Hezbollah axis while often willfully turning a blind eye to ISIS (and worse) and other Sunni terror groups.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/29/2021 – 02:45 - Former NHS Doc Exposes Six Impossible (British COVID) Things Before Breakfast
Former NHS Doc Exposes Six Impossible (British COVID) Things Before Breakfast
Authored by former HNS Doctor Toby Young via LockdownSkeptics.com,
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
I hope the readers will forgive a little self-indulgence on my part if I relate an anecdote from the tail end of my 12 years as a junior doctor in the early years of the first Blair government. At the time, the Health Secretary Alan Milburn (advised by the youthful Simon Stevens) had issued strict waiting time targets to all hospitals.
I was tasked with sorting out the numbers of patients on the surgical waiting lists at a large teaching hospital. It became apparent that if a patient had a date for surgery, they were no longer counted as ‘waiting’, even if that date was many months in the future. Accordingly, I issued dozens of patients dates for surgery and achieved compliance with the waiting time targets at a stroke.
There was just one problem. Both the managers and I knew that all those patients had virtually no chance of getting into the hospital on their designated dates. Due to lack of available beds, they would all be cancelled a couple of days before admission.
At a meeting with the CEO of the Trust, I pointed this out.
He looked me in the eye and said, “Let me make one thing clear to you. There is no problem with beds in this hospital.”
I briefly considered debating the assertion, but realised it was a pointless endeavour.
The facts did not fit the Chief Executive’s preferred narrative – so the facts had to change.
He was subsequently awarded a Knighthood for services to healthcare.
And so, here we are twenty years later – still believing six impossible things before breakfast.
We might call it the ‘rule of six’!
Here is my first example where a target failed to be matched by real world data. When considering facts there are three basic components. Understanding the collection process and the inherent errors and bias within that, the interpretation process, during which there will be a range of opinion, (although currently only one viewpoint is permitted) and finally presentation of the data which is open to the greatest amount of bias.
Graph 1 shows the actual number of patients admitted with COVID from the community in June (orange bars). The blue line indicates where SAGE predicted it would be as a consequence of easing lockdown restrictions. How annoying – the data does not correlate with the prediction. In fact, hospital admissions are stubbornly refusing to increase significantly.
Never mind. If we simply state loudly that something nasty ‘could happen’ in the future that will cover just about every situation where the observable data do not support the required conclusion. And we can also show Graph 2 – which records the number of positive ‘cases’ in May-June 2021. The public won’t realise that most of these cases were asymptomatic and they may well think that they are the same as people being admitted to hospital.
We should try not to show Graph 3, which puts the recent rise in ‘cases’ into its proper context. Graph 2 better supports the preferred narrative, so that is the preferred one to show at press conferences. By presenting the data in this way, we are not actually lying, just presenting to the audience the information that supports our preferred outcome and not referencing information that does not support our narrative. You may very well think this is misinformation. I could not possibly comment.
Second on my list of six is the Vaccine Minister, Nadim Zahawi. Before entering politics, Mr Zahawi ran YouGov, the political polling company. At the Government press conference on June 23rd, Mr Zahawi claimed that delaying the final milestone of ‘unlocking’ on June 21st had saved “thousands of lives”. How did he arrive at this statement?
A recent PHE document had this to say about the number of lives saved by the vaccines:
PHE estimates to May 30th 2021 based on the direct effect of vaccination and vaccine coverage rates, are that that 11,800 deaths were averted in individuals aged 80 years and older, 1,800 in individuals aged 70 to 79 and 400 in individuals aged 60 to 69 years giving a total of 14,000 deaths averted in individuals aged 60 years or older in England. There is increasing evidence that vaccines prevent infection and transmission.
Did Zahawi simply parrot the PHE estimates up to May 30th, wrongly using them as an estimate of the effect of delaying unlocking past June 21st? Is this a simple misattribution error on his part, or a deliberate attempt to mislead? I note that none of the bovine journalists in attendance at the press conference challenged him on these implausible figures. On the contrary, his assertion was obligingly retweeted by Beth Rigby from Sky.
I also note the heavy skew in prevented deaths to the older age group. Presumably, that’s because the more vaccinations are given to younger people, the Number Needed to Treat (NNT) to prevent one death goes up substantially. Based on recently published analysis of the Israeli experience, the NNT across the whole population was 16,000. Zahawi asserted that as of June 21st there were two million people over 50 who had only had one dose – let’s be generous and assume all these two million either are or are going to be vaccinated in the period between June 21st and July 19th. Using the real-world Israeli experience, this gives a predicted prevented death number attributable to vaccination of 125 for the period June 21st-July 19th (and that may be a substantial over-estimate).
Would Zahawi have been so cavalier with the facts if he had been giving a statement to the House of Commons? Is his carelessness with attributing statistical estimates a reflection on the practices of YouGov? The reader can decide for themselves on the second impossible thing before breakfast.
My third impossible belief is the assumption that people working for the government or supranational bodies such as UEFA or the G7 are either not susceptible to COVID infection and are therefore excused the requirements for regular testing and quarantine, or too important to be inconvenienced by the regulations for normal people.
Kate Andrews writing in the Spectator has helpfully outlined various ‘pilot schemes’ by which Government figures and other privileged people can move around the globe freely on the basis that their activities are more important than those of the people who elect them. Here is the official extract in relation to exemptions from the regulations.
How plausible is it that such arbitrary exemptions to the ‘rules’ will be limited to the Euro football competition or the G7 meeting? Isn’t it more likely, that, over time, the rich, powerful and well connected will be able to obtain exemptions? Maybe held on a mobile phone app for example as a ‘super vaccine passport’ allowing them to travel freely, unhindered by the majority of the population prevented from free movement by regulatory cost and red tape.
My fourth impossible belief relates to the data on COVID spread at mass gatherings and positive test ratios on people returning from overseas travel. Here is the link to the Events Research Programme report published on June 25th I encourage readers to explore this document in detail for themselves and discover the depth of population monitoring and control it contains. I find it deeply sinister.
The headline figures are that out of 58,000 people attending nine events, a total of 28 positive PCR cases were recorded (0.0005%). This has been reported in the press as good news from the perspective of re-opening public mass events and indeed it is.
But delve deeper into the actual report which heavily caveats the results and recommends ongoing and more in-depth surveillance. Against a backdrop of a population antibody positivity of 80% (ONS statistics), with 60% of the adult population having received two jabs and over 80% having had one, the idea that surveillance of this type has anything to do with protecting public health seems completely implausible to me. Mark Harper MP, chair of the COVID recovery group thinks it is implausible as well – on June 16th he tweeted: “Documents I have seen confirm that work is underway in Govt to plan for Covid restrictions this autumn and winter.”
My fifth impossible thing happened yesterday, Saturday June 26th. An enormous crowd marched from Hyde Park to Parliament Square with only the most cursory comment from the national broadcaster – and that attributed it to multiple protesting groups, rather than anti-lockdown protestors. If I hadn’t been there, I would not have believed it. I’m not a natural demonstrator – only ever attended one previous protest in 1984. Today convinced me that if there is a route out of this crisis, it will be by direct political action. What limited coverage there has been on the mainstream media has claimed the anti-lockdowners on the march were led by Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers. There is no doubt that some people on the protest were carrying such banners, but the vast majority were normal people, similar to myself. The frustration and rage at the deceptions and propaganda practiced by our elected representatives and salaried state servants were palpable. I’m already looking forward to the next one.
Last on my list are the actions of the recently departed Health Secretary. According to his press statement on Friday June 25th, Mr Hancock believed that his recent indiscretion captured on CCTV with his close personal assistant was a purely private matter. Much has already been written in the press and on social media about this issue and I will not add to the commentary, except to suggest that if Mr Hancock really does believe his personal conduct is a purely private matter, we really are through the looking glass.
Anyway, he’s gone and the prurient speculation around Hancock’s sexual activities are quite irrelevant to our main dilemma, the root of which lies in the dysfunction of government in a ‘managed democracy’. We are in a position where the skills and attributes needed to get elected are totally divergent from the skills needed to govern well. Elected politicians have become PR spokespeople for their factions, while unelected and unaccountable career civil servants actually run the process. Having spent my entire career observing such characters at work in ‘our NHS’, that’s something to be very worried about.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/29/2021 – 02:00 - When A President Lies
When A President Lies
Authored by David Rosen via Counterpunch.org,
“Did you, too, O friend,
suppose democracy was only for
elections, for politics, and for a party name?”– Walt Whitman, “Democratic Vistas” (1871)
Joe Biden received much media praise for his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin on June 16th. However, little attention has been paid to an issue posed by an Associate Press reporter in a press conference following the meeting: “U.S. intelligence has said that Russia tried to interfere in the last two presidential elections, and that Russia groups are behind hacks like SolarWinds and some of the ransomware attacks you just mentioned.”
In response, Biden answered:
Let’s get this straight: How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he is engaged in?
He concluded,
“It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to make sure it maintains its standing as a major world power.”
Sadly, Biden was lying, whether intentionally or out of false claim of ignorance.
It appears that NBC News was the only mainstream media outlet that raised concern about Biden’s assertion. It noted, “the United States does interfere in foreign elections. We’ve done it for decades.” It added, “denying this basic historical reality does us no favors with the rest of the world; indeed, it hampers our ability to continue to champion democracy and human rights.” It follows outlining numerous incidents in which the U.S. intervened in the domestic electoral affairs of other countries.
A quick search for information about U.S. backing of coups and military interventions in foreign elections is revealing. Wikipedia identifies 77 “U.S. involvement[s] in regime change” from the late-19th century through the 2010s; William Blum identifies 57 “instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War.” The political scientist Dov Levin notes, “between 1946 and 2000, the United States and the USSR/Russia intervened in this manner 117 times, or, put another way, in about one of every nine competitive national-level executive elections during this period.” In a 2013 study, Foreign Policy magazine detailed seven CIA orchestrated coups in the post-WW-II era.
The follow list details some of incidents when the U.S. – to use Biden’s words — “interfering with the elections directly of other countries” since World War II.
Syria, 1949 – as reported by Time magazine, it is “’one of the first covert actions that the CIA pulled off,’ since it had been created in 1947, according to Douglas Little, professor of history at Clark University.”
Iran, 1953 — CIA orchestrated a coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh; according to the CIA: “It was the potential … to leave Iran open to Soviet aggression — at a time when the Cold War was at its height and when the United Sates was involved in an undeclared war in Korea against forces supported by the U.S.S.R. and China — that compelled the United States [REDACTED] in planning and executing TPAJAX [the code name of the coup operation].”
Guatemala, 1954 – the U.S. State Department moved against Guatemalan Pres. Jacobo Árbenz after he introduced land reforms that threatened the holdings of the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company; the coup forced Árbenz from power.
Cuba, 1959-present – the U.S. government supported Fulgencio Batista, a former soldier and Cuban dictator from 1933 to 1944, who seized power for a second time in a 1952 coup. On January 1, 1959, the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro, forced Batista to flee the island. In April 1961, the U.S. launched the Bay of Pigs invasion, an unsuccessful attempt to remove Castro from power. The U.S. followed with an embargo of the island that lasted 60 years. In 1983, Pres. Ronald Reagan labeled Cuba a “terrorist state” and, in 1996, the Helms-Burton Act was adopted, further tightening the embargo. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama eased some of the restrictions but, in 2017, Pres. Donald Trump reinstated the embargo.
Congo, 1960 – the U.S. Senate’s 1972 Church Committee found that the CIA “continued to maintain close contact with Congolese who expressed a desire to assassinate [Patrice] Lumumba,” and that “CIA officers encouraged and offered to aid these Congolese in their efforts against Lumumba.”
Dominican Republic, 1961 — the Church Committee found that the CIA backed the assassination of the dictator, Rafael Trujillo, through the provision of “[m]aterial support, consisting of three pistols and three carbines, was supplied to various dissidents…. United States’ officials knew that the dissidents intended to overthrow Trujillo, probably by assassination…”
South Vietnam, 1963 – following the defeat of French forces in Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to Vietnamese nationalist forces led by Ho Chi Minh, the U.S. military sought to contain communist from the North; as detailed in the Pentagon Papers, in 1963, South Vietnamese generals — with CIA support — seized and assassinated country’s leader, Ngo Dinh Diem.
Brazil, 1964 – U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon feared that Brazilian Pres. Joao Goulart would “make Brazil the China of the 1960s” and Pres. Lyndon Johnson told CIA officials planning the coup, “I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do.” President Lyndon Johnson told his advisors planning the coup,
Chile, 1973 – the CIA backed the Chilian military’s violent overthrowing of the democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende, paving the way for the brutal — and U.S.-friendly — Augusto Pinochet
Afghanistan, 1979-present — during the 1980s, the CIA funded military operations to frustrate the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Fighting between CIA-funded Afghans and the Russians continued through 1988 when the Russians decided to withdraw, and the CIA ended its aid in 1992. However, the attacks of September 11, 2001, led the Bush administration to conduct operations against terrorists throughout the world. Osama bin Laden, the apparent mastermind behind the September 11th attacks, was based in Afghanistan where a U.S. military occupation will last until September 11, 2021.
Nicaragua, 1981-1990 – in November 1981, Pres. Reagan signed National Security Directive 17, authorizing the CIA to back “democratic” leaders and take actions against the Sandinistas to stop the spread of “communism” in Nicaragua; in October 1986, Congress approved $100 million in funds for the Contras; the following year, after the discovery of private resupply efforts orchestrated by the National Security Council and Oliver North, Congress ceased all but “non-lethal” aid in 1987. The war between the Sandinistas and the Contras ended with a cease-fire in 1990.
Russia, 1996 – as originally reported in the Los Angeles Times, “a team of American political strategists who helped Gov. Pete Wilson with his abortive presidential bid earlier this year said this week that they served as Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s secret campaign weapon in his comeback win over a Communist challenger.” Following the recent Biden-Putin summit, The Guardian notes,” without the chaos and deprivation of the US-backed Yeltsin era, Putinism would surely not have established itself.”
Venezuela, 1998-present — since Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998, the bipartisan Washington establishment has been out to put an end to what has been dubbed Latin America’s “pink tide” of socialism. As The Intercept reported, “In 2002, the Bush administration encouraged and supported a (failed) coup against Chavez. … In 2015, the Obama administration made the absurd decision to formally declare Venezuela an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to U.S. national security.” In 2019, the Trump administration called Nicolás Maduro, “illegitimate” and recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the interim president.
Presidents lie – it goes with the job. If Biden lied about the U.S.’s role in innumerable coups and regime changes, one can only wonder what else he is lying about.
More troubling, with the exception of NBC News and The Guardian, the mainstream media chose to ignore or avoid challenging Biden, thus reinforcing their role as echo chambers of Democratic-corporate establishment agenda.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/29/2021 – 00:10 - India May Have Failed To Count As Many As 1 Million COVID Deaths
India May Have Failed To Count As Many As 1 Million COVID Deaths
With nearly 400K COVID-19 deaths, India has the world’s third-highest coronavirus death toll, following the US (in first place with more than 600K+) and Brazil (coming in second with 510K+). For months now, we have been reporting on commentary from analysts and public health experts speculating that India’s total COVID deaths might be 2x the official number. Some journalists have even found evidence of deaths that weren’t included in the official tally.
On Monday, a story published by WSJ cited modeling from the University of Washington’s IHME institute, the not-very-accurate purveyor of COVID-19 forecasting, which suggests that India’s COVID-19 death toll might be as high as 1.1MM. This would mean that the wave of infections that spread across India in April and May (largely driven by the Delta variant) may have been the deadliest outbreak yet.
Lacking accurate data on deaths is a problem for scientists trying to determine exactly how much deadlier the “Delta” variant is when compared with earlier strains of the virus. An accurate count is “a very important part of understanding how big a threat new variants are,” said Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Dr. Murray believes the scale of under-counting of COVID-linked deaths in India is similar to the scale of under-counting seen in Africa and Latin America. But even greater than the under-counting of deaths, of course, is the under-counting of total cases, he added that the institute estimates India has detected only about 3% to 5% of all infections due to insufficient testing.
Another academic believes COVID deaths in India might be as much as 5x higher than the current tally, which would place the death toll closer to 2MM. That’s according to Murad Banaji, a mathematician at the Middlesex University in London who has been tracking the pandemic in India, estimates the country’s real death toll could be around 5x the reported figure, based partly on mortality and serosurvey data (which purports to show the percentage of antibodies in the population, data that has been collected and relied upon by India’s public health authorities).
Of course, as we noted above, it’s not just India. The WHO believes the true number of COVID-19 cases around the world is 2x to 3x higher than the official tally.
But India’s undercounting of deaths is especially severe because overwhelmed hospitals started turning away patients during the April-May outbreak, leaving many to die in their homes are cars. Many of these patients weren’t counted because their deaths didn’t take place in a hospital, but at home, without them ever being tested for COVID.
Several Indian states have set up compensation funds to help families that lost loved ones during the pandemic. However, these funds typically require proof that the death was caused by COVID-19, leaving thousands of families effectively shut out of one of the most reliable sources of government support.
In the village of Sirondhan in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, for example, Vijay Pal Singh said his 38-year-old wife, Mithilesh Devi, fell ill last month with a fever and struggled to breathe. Mr. Singh said he took her to the village clinic and several hospitals in the district, but none had available beds or testing kits.
“She died at home, gasping for oxygen,” Mr. Singh said. Her death wasn’t included in the official Covid-19 tally, he added.
At least 30 people died in the village in late April and early May, many suffering from Covid-like symptoms, according to villagers and social workers. A further 47 died in two neighboring villages.
Villager Dharamvir Singh said one or two people died almost every day during the worst weeks of the second wave. He says he believes he and four members of his family were infected. No one was tested.
“The official numbers, at least for our village and a few others close to us, are totally wrong,” Mr. Singh said.
Government officials in the state insist that the official numbers are correct, and that there are no plans to expand or revise the tallies. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government praises states with lower numbers while castigating states with higher numbers. While some states and cities have adjusted their tallies, the official numbers likely remain far below the true figures. A recent investigation in the state of Bihar found nearly 4,000 more Covid-19 deaths, raising its toll by over 72%.
At the very least, more communities across India are resorting to COVID prophylactics like Ivermectin, measures that have apparently helped India to finally bring its outbreak under control.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 23:50 - Former Intel Chief Calls For "Larger Discussion" On UFOs, Warns They Display Technology US Doesn't Have
Former Intel Chief Calls For “Larger Discussion” On UFOs, Warns They Display Technology US Doesn’t Have
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), also known as UFOs, appear to display technology that the United States does not have and could not defend against.
Ratcliffe made the remarks in an interview on Fox News that aired Saturday, one day after the public release of a much-anticipated government report on UAPs or UFOs (pdf), which found “no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation” for the aerial phenomena, although it left open the possibility of an alien origin.
“I’m actually glad that there’s a report out there,” Ratcliffe said in the interview, adding, “the bottom line is, unidentified aerial phenomena—many, many cases we’re able to explain it away for reasons like visual disturbances, or weather phenomenon, or foreign adversaries and their technologies, or even our own experimental technologies with certain aircraft and vehicles.”
At the same time, he said were are a number of cases where none such explanations applied.
“What this report really underscores … is that there are a number of instances—and the specific number remains classified—but a number of instances where we’ve ruled all of that out,” he said.
“And there are technologies that we don’t have and frankly that we are not capable of defending against—based on those things that we’ve seen, multiple sensors, in other words, where not just people visually see it but where it’s picked up on radar, where it’s seen on satellites,” Ratcliffe said, adding that, “it’s an issue of national security.”
Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is seen on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, on Dec. 12, 2020. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
Ratcliffe suggested it’s unsettling that some of the aerial phenomena defy explanation.
“It’s not good to say, ‘Gosh, we don’t have good answers.’ And so, we have to have a larger discussion to try and figure out specifically what this is all about,” he said.
The report, which was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in conjunction with a U.S. Navy-led UAP task force, studied 144 observations of unidentified aerial phenomena, dating back to 2004, of which 11 caused “near misses” for military pilots.
“UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary,” the report reads.
The report added that defense and intelligence analysts don’t have enough data to determine the nature of UAP observed by military pilots, noting that they could fall into a number of categories, including foreign adversary systems, natural atmospheric phenomena, or “other,” a catchall category that, theoretically, could include extraterrestrial technology.
“UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security,” the report stated, adding that the phenomena “probably lack a single explanation.”
The Pentagon established the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force last August to explore observations of aircraft of unknown origin. The task force aimed to “detect, analyze and catalogue” such events, and to “gain insight” into the “nature and origins” of UFOs, the Pentagon said.
In the run up to the release of the report, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said last month that members of Congress and other officials need to seriously investigate UFOs and the potential threat they pose.
Speaking to CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the Florida Republican described a “stigma on Capitol Hill,” in which some lawmakers “are very interested in this topic,” but some “kind of giggle when you bring it up.” However, he cautioned, “I don’t think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.”
The senator said he wants the Pentagon to come up with a process to take UAP seriously.
“I want us to have a process to analyze the data every time it comes in,” he said. “That there be a place where this is cataloged and constantly analyzed, until we get some answers. Maybe it has a very simple answer. Maybe it doesn’t.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 23:30 - "Scared Me To Death" – 2 Earthquakes Rattle Baltimore City In Days
“Scared Me To Death” – 2 Earthquakes Rattle Baltimore City In Days
Something very odd is happening around the Baltimore Metropolitan Area, where two earthquakes have been recorded in a matter of days. The occurrence of earthquakes in the metro area is rare.
When we think of earthquakes in the US, they’re usually in California, the Coastal Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii, among other hotbed areas.
But Baltimore?
WBAL-TV reports that a 2.6 magnitude earthquake rattled the area on Friday, and another 1.7 magnitude hit on Sunday.
“These little ones like this are just a very quick jolt,” Dan Blakeman, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), told The Baltimore Sun newspaper.
“The 1.7 — if it turns out to have been felt, and it’s possible — it’d just be by people very close to where it happened,” Blakeman said.
“There could be a couple of others here,” Blakeman continued. “A lot of times, you’ll get small quakes like this, and we’ll have maybe three or four of them, and we just call it a swarm, basically because there’s no real big aftershock. There’s no way to predict if there will be another one or not.”
Wanda Binns, a resident of Woodlawn, the epicenter of the first quake, told WBAL, “it scared me to death. Certainly, you would expect to see it on the West Coast. Who would think of something like this happening here?”
“It was a little scary,” said Kim Dixon of Woodlawn. “There was shaking of the house that I never experienced before.”
The last quake to strike the area was felt in 2011 when a 5.8 magnitude was recorded in Richmond, Virginia.
Is the awakening of an ancient fault on the East Coast in nearing?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 23:10 - Critical Race Theory Banned In 6 States (That's 44 States Too Few)
Critical Race Theory Banned In 6 States (That’s 44 States Too Few)
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is banned in 6 states and pending bans in at least 18 more.
What Is Critical Race Theory?
Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine U.S. law as it intersects with issues of race in the U.S. and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.
CRT views race and white supremacy as an intersectional social construction which serves to oppress people of color and marginalized communities at large (i.e gender and class).
CRT emphasizes that merely making laws colorblind on paper may not be enough to make the application of the laws colorblind; ostensibly colorblind laws can be applied in racially discriminatory ways.
The above snip is from Wikipedia. The map is from NBC News on June 17, somehow missing Florida.
CRT may seem benign at first glance, but it’s not. The third snip above holds one of the keys.
How activists and educators preach and teach CRT is the key to understanding how divisive the theory is in practice.
Activists claim America is fundamentally racist, math is racist, the SAT College Entrance Exam is racist, and Whites are racists simply by being White.
Critical Race Theory Poll
The above chart is from the YouGov report Just one-third of Americans have heard of critical race theory and believe they know what it means.
The chart says the poll was January 23-June 15. The Poll Data it says the survey was June 13-June 15 a more believable date range.
Critical Race Theory by Gender and Race
The above data is unweighted. The first chart reflects weighted data. Only blacks support CRT.
The poll lacks seriously needs a question regarding CRT as actually taught.
If more people actually understood what is going on, “bad for America” would soar.
Battle Over Critical Race Theory
With the above background set, please consider the WSJ article Battle Over Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory is the latest battleground in the culture war. Since the murder of George Floyd last year, critical race theory’s key concepts, including “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility,” have become ubiquitous in America’s elite institutions. Progressive politicians have sought to implement “antiracist” policies to reduce racial disparities, such as minorities-only income programs and racially segregated vaccine distribution.
The ideology has sparked an immense backlash. As Americans have sought to understand critical race theory, they have discovered that it has divided Americans into racial categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed” and promotes radical concepts such as “spirit murder” (what public schools supposedly do to black children) and “abolishing whiteness” (a purported precondition for social justice). In the classroom, critical race theory-inspired lessons have often devolved into race-based struggle sessions, with public schools forcing children to rank themselves according to a racial hierarchy, subjecting white teachers to “antiracist therapy,” and encouraging parents to become “white traitors.”
According to a recent YouGov survey, of the 64% of Americans who have heard about critical race theory, 58% view it unfavorably, including 72% of political independents.
That’s a major liability for the political left. Sensing that they are losing control of the narrative on race, left-leaning media outlets have launched a furious counterattack. Liberal pundits at the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC and elsewhere have begun spinning a new mythology that presents critical race theory as a benign academic concept, casts its detractors as right-wing extremists driven by racial resentment, and portrays legislation against critical race theory as an attempt to ban teaching about the history of slavery and racism. All three charges are false.
The most successful campaigns have been led by racial minorities who oppose the manipulative and harmful practices of critical race theory in the classroom. Asian-Americans in particular have argued that critical race theory will undermine merit-based admissions, advanced learning programs and academic standards.
Left is Losing the Debate
The Journal notes that revolts against critical race theory training at high schools in liberal cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
I have commented on CRT previously, not necessarily by that name.
Racial Profiling
On May 16, 2019 I discussed College Entrance Exam SAT Score Racial Profiling where 964=1223.
To compensate for the fact that Blacks score lower on average than Asians and Whites, SAT to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’ and colleges are using that score. Numerous lawsuits ensued.
On December 9, 2019, diversity scores were in full swing as noted in Adversity Scores: The Latest Dumbing Down of US Education
I did not associate SAT racial profiling with CRT, but that is what’s behind it.
Political Interviews
Chicago Mayor Will Only Give 1-on-1 Interviews to Journalists of Color
I have my eye on the midterm elections. Extreme Wokeism, math is racist, and progressive nonsense will cost Pelosi.
Expect a midterm backlash.https://t.co/QNKsajyZCr
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) May 21, 2021
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Math is Racist
On May 4, 2021, I noted To Promote Equality, California Proposes a Ban on Advanced Math Classes
Actual California Board of Education Statements
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The inequity of mathematics tracking in California can be undone through a coordinated approach in grades 6–12.
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Middle-school students are best served in heterogeneous classes.
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The push to calculus in grade twelve is itself misguided.
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To encourage truly equitable and engaging mathematics classrooms we need to broaden perceptions of mathematics beyond methods and answers so that students come to view mathematics as a connected, multi-dimensional subject that is about sense making and reasoning, to which they can contribute and belong.
The Woke Liberals Have a Bad Case of Progressophobia
The situation is so extreme that even Leftist Bill Maher has had enough.
In a scathing attack on CRT, Maher says The Woke Liberals Have a Bad Case of Progressophobia.
Please click on the link for a video and transcript.
To stop this nonsense in it tracks, six states have banned teaching CRT. It’s a case of 6 down 44 to go.
Whether voters understand the CRT name or not, they can see what’s happening.
Appellate Court Strikes Down a Piece of Biden’s Race-Based America Rescue Plan
On May 28, I noted Appellate Court Strikes Down a Piece of Biden’s Race-Based America Rescue Plan
The Court ruled: “The Way to Stop Discrimination on the Basis of Race Is to Stop Discriminating on the Basis of Race.”
I suspect a strong voter backlash against Biden’s radical attempts to appease Progressives and states efforts to promote race discrimination in the alleged name of justice.
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 22:50 -
- New Study Finds COVID-19 'Very Well Adapted' To Specifically Infect Humans
New Study Finds COVID-19 ‘Very Well Adapted’ To Specifically Infect Humans
An Australian team of researchers has published a new study which found that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, appears to be specifically adapted to attack human cells, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Flinders University professor and vaccine researcher Dr Nikolai Petrovsky was part of a team that discovered that Covid-19 is uniquely adapted to attack human cells. The scientists from Flinders University and La Trobe used powerful computers to model the protein receptors in a number of animal species to see how the coronavirus’s spike protein attached itself to them.
The theory was that if the coronavirus attached itself readily to an animal like a bat or a pangolin, it would have likely been the species that the bug used to make its leap into the human population.
However, the modelling found that the coronavirus’s spike protein was best suited to attacking protein receptors in humans.
“The computer modelling found the virus’s ability to bind to the bat ACE2 protein was poor relative to its ability to bind human cells,” said Flinders University epidemiologist and vaccine researcher Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, adding “This argues against the virus being transmitted directly from bats to humans.”
“Hence, if the virus has a natural source, it could only have come to humans via an intermediary species which has yet to be found.”
Other animals found to be relative susceptible to infection include pangolins, dogs and cats – all of which have been ruled out as an intermediary species between bats and humans.
RMSD of overlay of S protein RBD (pink = with pangolin and turquoise = with human) complex with human ACE2 (red) or pangolin ACE2 (blue) after MD simulation showing different geometry of the two complexes. “Overall, putting aside the intriguing pangolin ACE2 results, our study showed that the COVID-19 virus was very well adapted to infect humans,” Professor Petrovsky said.
The findings lend more weight to the lab-origin theory, which postulates that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became infected with SARS-CoV-2 and inadvertently spread the disease, or that it was intentionally released.
The Australian team’s report, In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species and implications for virus origin, can be found in the journal Scientific Reports.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 22:30 - 542% Increase In Convicted Sex Offenders Arrested At Border
542% Increase In Convicted Sex Offenders Arrested At Border
Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times,
Border Patrol agents have arrested 353 illegal aliens with sex-related criminal convictions so far this fiscal year. A large number of the detainees had prior convictions for crimes involving a minor.
In the same period in fiscal 2020, agents apprehended 55 criminal sex offenders, and 58 total in all of fiscal 2019.
The number of criminals illegally crossing the southwest border has spiked in tandem with the border crossing surge this year. Convicted criminals are the most likely population of illegal aliens trying to avoid capture by Border Patrol.
Border Patrol has detected more than 250,000 illegal aliens who have evaded capture so far this year, according to the newly-appointed Acting Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz on June 24. It’s impossible to estimate how many have evaded Border Patrol without detection.
“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t read a paper or a report from my agents that talks about criminal aliens, sexual offenders that they’ve apprehended out there,” Ortiz said during an event in Del Rio, Texas.
“Those folks aren’t getting released in these communities. Guess what happens to them? They go to jail. When they get out of jail, they go back to their country of origin.”
According to reports by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), many of the criminals being caught have already been deported, sometimes on multiple occasions.
On June 24, agents in Rio Grande City, Texas, arrested convicted sex offender, Benito Gomez-Lopez, from Mexico. Gomez-Lopez was arrested in May 2020 by the Burleigh County Sheriff’s Department in North Dakota for possession of certain prohibited materials and promoting a sexual performance by a minor, according to CBP.
He pleaded guilty to both counts and was sentenced to three years confinement, but was repatriated to Mexico in July 2020.
On June 14, a Peruvian child rapist was arrested by Border Patrol after he entered the United States illegally near Roma, Texas, according to CBP. Pedro Asuncion ORE-Quispe, 43, had been deported in 2020 after serving over five years for felony rape of a child in Idaho.
On June 20, Mexican national Isidro Efrain Gallardo-Rangel was apprehended as part of a group of 24 illegal aliens near Laredo. Gallardo-Rangel is a registered sex offender with an extensive criminal history and a conviction for indecency with a child in 2018 in Dallas, Texas, according to CBP.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz at a community meeting in Del Rio, Texas, on June 24, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Del Rio Sector
Once a relatively quiet region for illegal border crossings, the Del Rio Sector in Texas is now the second busiest, after the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas.
“We’ve seen a tremendous increase. So far this year, this fiscal year, today, we’ve caught 144,000 people in the Del Rio sector,” said sector chief Austin Skero on June 24.
“We’ve gone through this before—we’ve seen these increases, these surges, for the last 30 or 40 years. It’s never been this bad. I’ll tell you that straight up, I’ve never seen it this bad.”
Skero said the sector has seen a 1,400 percent increase in the number of sex offenders arrested by Border Patrol agents.
A photo from a game camera that caught illegal aliens walking through private ranch land in Jim Hogg County, Texas, on March 25, 2021. (Courtesy of Susan Kibbe)
A Del Rio resident said that prior to January he had seen two illegal aliens pass through his backyard.
Now, he said, it’s hundreds a day.
“I have four daughters—does it concern me when you say there’s a 1,400 percent increase in sex offenders? Yes, it concerns me,” the resident said during a border update on June 24.
“I’m concerned about the single men who are running through my backyard, sneaking. And I’m about a 50 percent success rate on whether or not I get an agent to come out to my place when I call. And when they do, it’s awesome, they bring helicopters, they bring support.
“Otherwise, I’m sitting there unarmed and there’s a guy soaking wet in my backyard screaming at me in Spanish. I don’t know what to do with this guy.”
The resident asked Border Patrol if they could provide some type of training to citizens to prepare them for such encounters.
Skero suggested for residents to not engage with illegal aliens who are on their property and to call Border Patrol.
“We’re going to come just as soon as we can. Sometimes it will be immediate, sometimes it might take us an hour.”
But, he said, if an illegal immigrant is endangering a resident’s family, or is being assaultive, call 911.
Del Rio Border Patrol Sector Chief Austin Skero at a press conference in Del Rio, Texas, on June 24, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
State Response
At the behest of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) started surging extra law enforcement resources to the border beginning in March.
In the three months from March 4 through June 3, DPS has arrested 1,489 criminals.
In addition, State Troopers have been involved in 340 vehicle pursuits along the border and have dealt with 630 vehicle bailouts. A bailout occurs when a vehicle being pulled by law enforcement stops and the illegal immigrant occupants scatter and flee to avoid capture.
Abbott issued a state of disaster declaration on June 10, highlighting 34 border counties that are struggling with cross-border crime and illegal immigration.
“We’re going to start making arrests, sending a message to anyone thinking about coming here: You’re not getting a free pass. You’re getting a straight pass to a jail cell,” Abbott said.
Last week a prison unit in Dilley, Texas, was being emptied in preparation for illegal alien criminals.
Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also issued a call for help to other governors on June 10.
“With your help, we can apprehend more of these perpetrators of state and federal crimes, before they can cause problems in your state,” Abbott and Ducey, both Republicans, wrote in a letter.
So far, several Republican governors have pledged support by way of sending law enforcement personnel or National Guard troops.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 22:10 - India Sends 50,000 More Troops To Disputed Chinese Border In Major Escalation
India Sends 50,000 More Troops To Disputed Chinese Border In Major Escalation
After a past year of continued simmering Himalayan border tensions, particularly after the deadly June 2020 incident wherein Chinese and Indian border troops were in a fierce clash, India has escalated its stance by moving 50,000 additional troops to the Chinese border.
While the nuclear armed nation already has an estimated 200,000 stationed there, Bloomberg is reporting the alarming “historic shift towards an offensive military posture against the world’s second-biggest economy“.
Times of India: ongoing troop surge to border. New Delhi is framing this as a necessary response to China’s own high altitude build-up, which reportedly stretches back to last summer, when there were skirmishes particularly along the India-Chinese border Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Galwan Valley. China has even of late reportedly militarized high altitude civilian airbases along it border with India.
Chinese permanent or semi-permanent bases began to appear in that disputed region, as well as tanks and artillery units late last summer into Fall of 2020. The initial June 15 Galwan Valley incident which left 20 Indian troops dead and an untold number of PLA casualties, had been the worst incident in years.
Here’s more on the significance of this “Goliath vs. Goliath” moment which too few among Western pundits seem to be taking enough notice off via Rabobank…
While previous deployments were aimed at blocking Chinese intrusions, the latest reportedly allows “Indian commanders more options to attack and seize territory in China if necessary in a strategy known as an ‘offensive defense.'” This is in response to a Chinese build-up, including the construction of airfields, runway buildings, bomb-proof bunkers, fighter jets, long-range artillery, and tanks. Markets will ignore the very fat tail risks inherent in two Asian Goliaths acting like this because of the liquidity provided by the US central-bank giant – yet the latter has no real sway in this sphere.
So all of this means we could soon witness another deadly border conflict on par with the June 15, 2020 fight which resulted in multiple rounds of attempted military-to-military peace talks.
India deploys 50,000 more personnel along the China border, as Beijing boosts troops, weapons and infrastructure.
Is it a fresh threat perception or offensive defensive?
On #Gravitas, @palkisu brings you report on India’s biggest defence shift
Tonight at 9 PM IST pic.twitter.com/47gaA0T6BM
— WION (@WIONews) June 28, 2021
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While those talks did appear to effectively diffuse the immediate potential for the outbreak of a wider border war, they clearly didn’t do much in terms of deterring a troop build-up on either side.
Below: map showing contested border regions with both Pakistan and China, including site of the last Galwan Valley clash, which gained international attention resulting in a series of threats and counter-threats at the time…
On this note, one Indian former army commander pointed out to Bloomberg that “Having so many soldiers on either side is risky when border management protocols have broken down,” given that “Both sides are likely to patrol the disputed border aggressively. A small local incident could spiral out of control with unintended consequences.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 21:50 - Jason Whitlock: Dear Black America, We Are Being Lied To…
Jason Whitlock: Dear Black America, We Are Being Lied To…
Authored by Jason Whitlock via TheBlaze.com, (emphasis ours)
Dear Black People:
We are being lied to and set up. The mainstream media, Democratic politicians, social justice activists, and perhaps even your church pastor have led you to believe America is in the midst of a racial conflict similar to the Civil War and the civil rights movement.
They have pitted us against the Proud Boys, the KKK, rural militia groups, and Trump supporters in a made-for-TV race war. Just five years after Barack Obama completed two terms as president of the United States, we’re supposed to believe America has been overrun by violent white supremacists determined to reinstate segregation, Jim Crow laws, and maybe even slavery.
Evidence of this massive wave of 1920s-style bigotry amounts to three things:
1) Republicans want all voters to show a government-issued ID;
2) On January 6, unarmed Trump supporters crashed the Capitol and took pictures inside Nancy Pelosi’s office;
3) Across the nation, police kill on average 250 black men and 450 white men per year.
Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a fourth piece of evidence. Colin Kaepernick failed to land a job as a starting quarterback after pissing off a large segment of football fans by taking a knee during the national anthem.
Those are the main smoking guns proving that white supremacy is the most dangerous domestic threat America faces. George Floyd, a habitual criminal and drug addict, is the Crispus Attucks of this raging race war. He is our rallying cry and hero.
It’s a setup. We’re being used as decoys and distractions in a war that has nothing to do with race.
The real war is about global power and the future of America’s system of government. This country’s elite, global citizens, and corporations prefer communism over capitalism and democracy. They prefer China’s system over our system.
America has been the world’s leader in racial progress and fairness. The mainstream media are not allowed to explain this to you. Advertisers, aka major corporations, will no longer support media outlets that back our current democratic and capitalistic systems of governance.
You say, what about Fox News? Turn it on. It’s filled with a bunch of MyPillow and wounded soldier commercials. America’s big, global corporations, the ones looking to improve their market share in China, are not financially supporting Fox News. The most popular voices at Fox News dislike China.
The faux race war the mainstream media have promoted is a tool being used to convince you and non-black Americans that our system of government has been a giant failure.
They want you to believe that a great reset is necessary to achieve fairness.
The reset is communism, which starts with the gateway drug of socialism and ends in full-blown Marxism. China is run by the Communist Chinese Party. Communism has no respect for individual freedom or religion of any kind. Communism has no tolerance for political dissent.
Your religion and free speech will not survive the reset. Communism is racial oppression’s best friend. When a nation is stripped of religious faith and free speech, few people have the courage to defend the rights of minorities. The elites cozying up to China do not care about you. They are aware of how despicably China treats black people. They are aware of how China squashes dissent.
Do your own research on communism and what it stamps out and how it oppresses. Don’t take my word.
You might be wondering why Oprah Winfrey or LeBron James or some other super popular black celebrity isn’t telling you what I am. They’re global elites. The reset won’t hurt them or their loved ones. Communism favors wealthy elites far more than capitalism and democracy do. Oprah, LeBron, and the other uber-wealthy black tokens will thrive under socialism and communism.
You won’t. Unless you’re a 6’6″ basketball star or some other black entertainer capable of entertaining the people in power. That’s a tiny percentage of black people.
Why won’t your favorite white cable newsman or newswoman tell you what I’m telling you? Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, Joe Scarborough, aren’t they our allies? No. They’re not. They’re political lobbyists working on behalf of the corporations and politicians pushing the reset.
OK. What about me? You might think I’m a political partisan working on behalf of conservative Republicans. That is certainly how I’ve been painted by left-leaning media outlets and social media platforms. And I’m now partnered with Blaze Media, a platform that leans right.
Judge my career. I have been at this for more than 30 years. I have been equally despised by the left and the right. I have publicly feuded with Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. I’ve been a guest on their old Fox News and MSNBC shows. I’ve worked and/or written for ESPN, Fox Sports, the Huffington Post, Playboy Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. I spent years bashing Sarah Palin.
I don’t play for any political team. I’ve never voted. I go wherever I believe I can speak, follow, and write the truth. The truth I believe the most is that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.
I believe Jesus is under attack. That’s why I’m at Blaze Media. You can’t defend Jesus at corporate media outlets. Advertisers won’t allow it. You can discuss the religion of racism every day at ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox Sports. But it’s taboo to discuss the cure for racism — Jesus — on those platforms.
I’m not saying any of this because there’s a big paycheck for black men espousing my views. The money for black broadcasters and journalists is connected to preaching the race-bait religion.
Let me be clear. I’m not broke by any stretch. I’ve earned and saved a substantial sum of money. But I’ve bypassed far more money than I’ve earned with the choice I’ve made to follow the truth wherever it leads and my refusal to support the racial groupthink dictated by global elites.
My faith won’t allow me to jump on board with the lunacy, racism, and sacrilege of Black Lives Matter, a movement founded by three lesbian self-admitted trained Marxists. BLM is an atheist movement in support of LGBTQ issues and the reshaping of America into a communist country. BLM is part of the deception.
Black people tell me all the time: “I don’t support the BLM organization, but I support the slogan and sentiment.”
Let me translate that. You despise the devil’s tree but love the fruit it produces. That’s some Don Lemon-Lori Lightfoot-Van Jones-Colin Kaepernick level of hypocrisy. You know, all the Malcolm X-wannabe, anti-white radicals in relationships with white partners. They hate the white tree but can’t live without the white fruit.
We have to stop letting everyone use us. We’re being played. We’re all being played, black and white working-class people. It’s all a giant setup. Look at what they did to Trump supporters. They were manipulated into storming the Capitol, and then the corporate media portrayed it as a bloody, violent KKK rally intended to overthrow democracy. The so-called “insurrection” is an excuse for the government to seize more power and crush dissent.
We, black people, have been convinced the crushing of working-class white people is good for us.
It’s not. Working-class white people, Christian white people, are our true allies, not the elites. We can’t see that because of the made-for-TV hyper-focus on racial conflict.
The defunding and demoralizing of police are tactics deployed to increase violence in major cities. Local media outlets are focusing on this rise in crime, national media outlets have followed suit, and social media platforms are generating viral videos exposing the crime wave.
Guess who are the stars of this content. Black perpetrators.
It’s all a massive setup. The stirring of racial animus between Obama worshippers and Trump worshippers is orchestrated by billionaire elites, executed by trained Marxists, promoted by millionaire influencers in the media, sports, and entertainment worlds, and co-signed by religious leaders pursuing popularity.
Black America, print this letter and share it with family, friends, co-workers, and, most importantly, your pastor.
My critics will tell you: “Oh, Jason Whitlock is a sellout. He hates black people.”
That’s laughable. It’s part of the deception. I despise the people deceiving us, manipulating us to participate in a racial clash that will be used to destroy the religious and individual freedoms that liberated us.
There’s a reason black and brown people across the globe fight to get into this country and excel when they do. They love the American tree and the fruit it produces.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 21:30 - State Media Admits Kim Jong Un Looks "Emaciated", Says Population Is "Heartbroken"
State Media Admits Kim Jong Un Looks “Emaciated”, Says Population Is “Heartbroken”
“Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim.” That’s according to Reuters after regional media has for a couple of weeks been consumed with speculation based on examinations of recent before and after photos.
In mid-June, North Korean state media had issued new photos of Kim, after the strongman ruler hadn’t been seen publicly for a month. Compared to just a few months prior, he exhibited rapid weight loss. From then, side-by-side photo sets have been continuously analyzed for clues of what could be driving the new gaunter, thinner appearance: perhaps disease? or just a healthier diet and workout regimen? Extreme stress over the food and health crisis deeply impacting the country?
Via NK News, based on a KCTV, June 22, 2021 appearance. What’s more unusual, strongly suggesting something serious could be happening with his health, is that his appearance is actually subject of commentary on North Korean state media itself.
This further suggests Pyongyang wants the world to know something is going on:
“Seeing our respected comrade General Secretary [Kim Jong Un] become emaciated like that, all the people became so heartbroken,” said a middle-aged man in an interview aired Friday evening.
“Everyone is talking about it. We all just started to cry,” the man added. Korean Central Television (KCTV) aired the interview in a program on reactions from around the country to new propaganda songs released this week glorifying Kim and the ruling party.
Given there’s a rapidly worsening food scarcity crisis inside North Korea, which Kim himself has increasingly addressed with unusual bluntness in official statements, Kim’s thinness could also be an intentional effort to display a “solidarity of suffering” of sorts with the common citizenry.
Thus his appearance itself (possibly manipulated or edited in state broadcasts?) could be part of a propaganda effort to induce greater sympathy among the populace as well as globally.
It was just weeks ago that Kim “warned about possible food shortages and called for his people to brace for extended Covid-19 restrictions as he opened a major political conference to discuss national efforts to salvage a broken economy.”
Recent video of Kim entering state chambers while looking gaunt…
Before-and-after videos show that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un noticeably lost weight. On Sunday, the country’s state media offered a rare public segment on it, although the reason for the weight loss is unclear https://t.co/RhQEqL7dXH pic.twitter.com/H9szU1rA1W
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 27, 2021
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For over the past year North Korea has been even more isolated than usual, with Pyongyang having ordered a total closure of all borders in efforts to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading – a drastic move which at the same time has resulted in less food and medicines making it in.
In addition to the widespread media attention given to Kim’s health, South Korean and Western intelligence agencies routinely monitor his appearance, looking for signs of health or other issues.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 21:10 - NSA Whistleblower Reveals To Tucker Carlson That Biden Admin Spying On His Communications
NSA Whistleblower Reveals To Tucker Carlson That Biden Admin Spying On His Communications
Tucker Carlson says an NSA whistleblower has stepped forward and provided evidence that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on him.
“Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the US government, who reached out to warn us that the NSA (National Security Agency) has been monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air,” said Carlson.
“The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on, that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There’s no other possible source for that information, period. The NSA captured that information without our knowledge, and did it for political reasons.
The Biden administration is spying on is. We have confirmed that. This morning we filed a FOIA request asking for all information that the NSA and other agencies have gathered about this show.”
Watch:
Tucker Carlson says a whistleblower told him that he is being spied on by the NSA and that he filed a FOIA request for information:
“The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that.” pic.twitter.com/LY2vmDLFTK
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 29, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsReaders will of course be familiar with the NSA spying revelations brought to light by Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks. Now let’s review some more recent headlines:
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 20:56 - 5 Signs That Show That The Depravity In America Has Reached An Entirely New Level
5 Signs That Show That The Depravity In America Has Reached An Entirely New Level
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
No matter how bad things get in this country, you can rest assured that we will always find a way to sink even lower. From the very lowest levels of society all the way to the very highest levels of society, the level of depravity that we are now witnessing all around us is absolutely stunning. At this point, most Americans do not have any sort of a solid moral foundation, and it shows. Everyone is just basically doing whatever seems right in their own eyes, and that has resulted in complete and utter chaos. We are a very, very sick nation, and we are getting even sicker with each passing day.
Let me give you five examples of what I am talking about…
#1 25-year-old Joel Davis was supposed to be one of the good guys. He was nominated for a Nobel prize after founding an organization that sought to end sexual violence against children, but how he has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for doing things that are absolutely unthinkable…
The founder of an organization dedicated to ending child sex abuse has been sentenced to 13 years in prison on child rape and child pornography charges.
Joel Davis, 25, was convicted of ‘enticing a child to engage in illegal sexual activity,’ possession and distribution of child pornography, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss announced on Tuesday.
Of course Davis is far from alone. There are 780,407 registered sex offenders in America today, but that number only includes those that have actually been caught.
At this point, our society is absolutely teeming with sexual predators, and they are represented on every level of society.
#2 Country music fans are supposed to be much better behaved than most other music fans, but even they are starting to behave like crazed mindless zombies. During a “Redneck Rave” in Kentucky this past weekend, there were numerous acts of violence and four dozen people were charged with various crimes…
Police said that by the end of the five-day bash, dubbed the “Redneck Rave,” one man had been impaled, one woman had been strangled to the point of unconsciousness, and one throat had been slit. In all, Edmonson authorities arrested 14 people, and charged four dozen people from five states.
If even country music fans are starting to get this wild, I think that is a really troubling sign for our society as a whole.
#3 Chicago has been a very violent city for a long time, but when Yasmin Perez and Gyovanni Arzuaga were dragged out of their vehicles and shot by an angry mob, it shocked the entire world…
Disturbing video footage circulating on social-media that apparently captured the 9:15 p.m. assault shows the victims either being pulled or falling out of their car — which was flying a Puerto Rican flag — then blasted at close-range by a single gunman.
Arzuaga, 24, was fatally shot in the head, while Perez, the 25-year-old mother of the couple’s two children, was left in critical condition from a gunshot to the neck, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
We have now learned that Perez has died too.
The couple had two children together, and now both of their parents are dead.
What are those two children supposed to do now?
#4 According to text messages obtained by the Daily Mail, it appears that Hunter Biden paid a Russian prostitute $25,000 using a financial account that was linked to his very famous father…
Hotel bills show Hunter then moved to a $470-per-night room at The Jeremy in West Hollywood later that month, where he hired another escort while under the protection of two recently retired Secret Service agents.
And messages saved on the laptop show Joe Biden might have inadvertently been the person actually paying the bill for the wild week, according to the messages obtained by the Post.
In recent days, a number of extremely shocking revelations about Hunter Biden and the Biden family have come out in the British press.
But the bigger story is that the corporate media in the United States is almost completely ignoring these revelations. Telling the truth about the Bidens would hurt the agendas that they are trying to push, and so the Bidens are off limits for now.
Our corporate media is deeply, deeply corrupt, and that isn’t going to change.
#5 The week, we learned that a CDC “safety group” has acknowledged that COVID shots are causing many teens to develop a “heart inflammatory condition”…
A CDC safety group said there’s a “likely association” between a rare heart inflammatory condition in adolescents and young adults mostly after they’ve received their second Covid-19 vaccine shot, citing the most recent data available.
There have been more than 1,200 cases of a myocarditis or pericarditis mostly in people 30 and under who received Pfizer’s or Moderna’s Covid vaccine, according to a series of slide presentations published Wednesday for a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Even though they know that this is happening, they are just going to keep giving injections to more kids.
In the end, how many thousands upon thousands of young Americans will develop myocarditis or pericarditis as a result?
I could make this list much longer, but I think by now you get my point.
From the very top to the very bottom, the very fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams.
So many of the “good guys” turn out to be quite evil, and often the wickedness in the halls of power is even worse than it is in our streets.
Millions of Americans are working so hard to find a political solution to our problems, but the truth is that there is great depravity all across the political spectrum. Replacing one set of depraved politicians with another set of depraved politicians is not going to accomplish much of anything.
In the end, what we are facing is a heart problem. The hearts of the American people need to change, but at this point much of the population is eagerly rushing toward more evil as rapidly as they can.
Many of us will continue to call for a renewal in America, but time is running out.
There is a little bit less sand in the hourglass with each passing day, and it won’t be too long before we reach the moment when it is entirely empty.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 20:50 - Israel Sees Explosion Of Cases In Vaccinated Patients Caused By "Delta" Variant
Israel Sees Explosion Of Cases In Vaccinated Patients Caused By “Delta” Variant
More evidence is emerging to suggest that the Delta COVID variant poses a very real threat, even to patients who have already been fully vaccinated.
As a reminder, the WHO’s new naming scheme has the most pervasive variants named after greek letters. Right now, the Delta variant is causing the most trouble worldwide.
Source: SCMP
It prompted UK PM Boris Johnson to delaying the end of the UK’s COVID-19 restrictions, which have been rolled back with agonizing slowness, as many Britons have complained. It is also now causing a wave of lockdowns and travel restrictions around the world as countries with lower vaccination rates have come to see it as a serious threat. Meanwhile, despite Israel’s efforts to try and suppress the variant, more cases of Delta have been detected across the country, forcing Israel’s public health authorities to consider more drastic measures.
An outbreak of the Delta variant in Israel has spread to many vaccinated people, with about half of the adults infected already being fully innocualted with the Pfizer vaccine. Along with Moderna’s jab, the two mRNA-based vaccines are believed to be more than 90% effective against preventing COVID-19. Still, as more evidence of spread among the vaccinated arises, Pfizer and Moderna will have more incentive to market “booster” vaccines as they transition to protecting the vulnerable against COVID over the long term.
Ran Balicer, the head of Israel’s COVID-19 government advisory committee, said that about 90% of new infections in the country were likely caused by the Delta variant.
“The entrance of the Delta variant has changed the transmission dynamics,” Balicer said.
Children under the age of 16, most of whom haven’t yet been vaccinated, accounted for roughly half of the new cases.
Israel has seen the Delta variant drive cases higher for the first time in months, as the average daily count of new cases has risen to 200 from around 10 a day for most of June. It doesn’t look like much, but public health officials fear it might be the start of another wave of infections, undermining PM Bennett and former PM Netanyahu’s efforts to crush COVID entirely.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 20:30 - Is China's Bitcoin Mining Ban A Benefit In Disguise?
Is China’s Bitcoin Mining Ban A Benefit In Disguise?
Authored by Fan Yu via The Epoch Times,
Beijing’s broadening ban on cryptocurrency mining has – for now – crippled the industry and sent bitcoin prices collapsing. But as bitcoin miners move to other regions and countries, China’s recent action could usher a period of greater stability for the cryptocurrency.
More diverse distribution of mining power and higher usage of renewable energy could also be in store.
In late May, China’s State Council issued treatises to crack down on bitcoin trading and mining. The notices came after China’s central bank began implementing its own digital currency.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deems cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin a nuisance, disrupting economic order and facilitating illegal transfers of wealth. In addition, Beijing has decried the massive power consumption of bitcoin miners.
Following the CCP’s call, several provinces and territories including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Sichuan, have begun enforcement measures to shut down mining operations.
And this has sent bitcoin prices tumbling. Bitcoin prices plunged below $30,000 the week of June 14 after hitting its all-time highs above $60,000 in April.
Why the tumble? The CCP’s ban on mining has disrupted the computing power available to maintain and update the bitcoin blockchain.
China was estimated to hold more than half of bitcoin’s mining capacity, with the majority of bitcoin miners located in the Xinjiang Autonomous region and Sichuan province. Around 65 percent of the world’s bitcoin mining was located in China as of 2020, according to an analysis by the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. While that market share has declined somewhat more recently, China still dominates bitcoin processing power.
Unlike mining operations of minerals such as gold and iron, bitcoin mining does not involve hulking equipment. Bitcoin miners utilize warehouses of computers to solve computational problems to verify transaction, update, and maintain the bitcoin blockchain. In effect, the miners keep the bitcoin blockchain updated and in turn, are compensated with new blocks of bitcoin for their work.
Since China’s ban bitcoin’s hash rate—the computational power available to mine the cryptocurrency, which is a reflection of the efficiency of the bitcoin blockchain network—has dropped by nearly 50 percent over the last month, according to data from cryptocurrency firm The Block. Xinjiang and Sichuan provinces alone are thought to have contributed to 30 percent of total mining power.
This is definitely a near-term headwind for the industry. But China’s crackdown could be a long-term net positive development for the cryptocurrency industry.
For one, neither China’s ban nor the subsequent collapse in hash rates should be surprising. In fact, it’s shocking that so much bitcoin mining power was concentrated in China to begin with.
The CCP has been battling cryptocurrencies for almost a decade. Back in 2013, Beijing barred all financial institutions from handling cryptocurrencies. China then banned all initial coin offerings in 2017. By mid-2019, the People’s Bank of China blocked access to all domestic and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges to snuff out trading activity. While the CCP stopped short of declaring ownership of cryptocurrencies illegal, it had in effect banned all forms of trading and exchange, including barring domestic financial institutions from exchanging digital currencies with the yuan. Those actions were mostly centered around limiting wealth transfer but the CCP’s intent has been clear since 2013.
So what does this mean for bitcoin and bitcoin mining? In the near term, with bitcoin mining capacity decreasing due to the CCP’s crack down, bitcoin mining becomes much more lucrative.
“As more hashrate falls off the network, difficulty will adjust downwards, and the hashrate that remains active on the network will receive more for their proportional share of the mining rewards,” Kevin Zhang, vice president of crypto mining equipment company The Foundry, said in a recent CNBC interview. In other words, the incremental “reward” for mining bitcoins is higher when there are fewer miners.
But there are other longer term positives.
Less geographic concentration promises to make the bitcoin blockchain less vulnerable to the whims and regulations of a single country. Many Chinese mining operations have shipped their equipment abroad, with the United States and Kazakhstan as net beneficiaries.
For example, the Shenzhen-based and NYSE-listed BIT Mining has shipped most of its mining equipment outside China, according to statement from the company. Approximately 320 mining machines were delivered to a facility in Kazakhstan and the company said its operations should be back online by June 27.
A large portion of mining is expected to shift to the United States. CNBC’s Eunice Yoon tweeted on June 21 that a Guangzhou-based logistics firm was transporting 6,600 lbs of bitcoin mining computers destined for Maryland.
#China logistics firm in Guangzhou confirms to @CNBC it’s airlifting 3,000kg (6,600lbs) #bitcoin mining machines to Maryland, USA. Fenghua International advertises products delivered to door, tax on both ends cleared. Price per kilo: as low as $9.37! #cryptocurrencies pic.twitter.com/8yUjZjhpkk
— Eunice Yoon (@onlyyoontv) June 21, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Another potential beneficiary is the state of Texas, which also happens to have some of the most pro-bitcoin politicians in the United States. Texas has some of the country’s lowest energy prices and a growing share of renewable energy sources.
And energy diversification is key. Relocating bitcoin hash rates from China to the United States—which has a much more diversified energy supply—would improve bitcoin mining’s carbon footprint, a key criticism of the cryptocurrency.
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin until its hash rates reached 50 percent from clean energy sources. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren has also criticism bitcoin for its energy usage and resulting impact on the environment.
While longer term viability of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin are still up in the air, moving mining capacity outside of China is at least a tangible first step in addressing those concerns and criticisms.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 20:10 - "It's So Out Of Control": Airlines Mull Ending Alcohol Service As In-Flight Incidents Skyrocket
“It’s So Out Of Control”: Airlines Mull Ending Alcohol Service As In-Flight Incidents Skyrocket
Now that Covid lockdowns are ending, Americans can get back to what they do best: getting into fist fights on airplanes.
Yes, despite the fact that travel restrictions are ending and citizens can get back to vacationing over the summer, things continue to get ornery in the “friendly skies”.
The incidents have become so common, there has been a discussion about ending everyone’s favorite travel companion: alcohol on flights.
Paul Hartshorn, Jr., communications chair for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, told Yahoo: “Our flight attendants are being verbally abused—it’s safe to say on every flight. [They’re] physically abused in numbers we’ve never seen in the airline industry. It’s so out of control, it’s almost unbelievable.”
American Airlines flight attendants filed 1,500 passenger disturbance reports in April, the report noted. Hartshorn continued: “More times than not, it is exacerbated by the use of alcohol in the terminal or sneaking it on board. So those go hand in hand.”
This has resulted in the flight attendants union pushing for a delay to return alcohol service to flights. Many airlines paused alcohol service during the pandemic. American Airlines says service will resume after September 13, when it will also lift its mask rules.
Hartshorn continued: “The decision to delay the alcohol until masks are no longer required was a flight attendant union move. American didn’t want to do that, that was APFA.”
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA president Sara Nelson also advocated for the ban: “The incidents of violence on planes is out of control and alcohol is often a contributor. The federal government should provide guidance to airlines and airports on pausing alcohol sales for a period of time. We should do everything in our power to remove contributors to the problem.”
One aptly named aviation expert, Christine Negroni, added: “I know going back many many years alcohol has been considered a high trigger for unruly passenger behavior. But I don’t know if you can put all the blame on alcohol.”
As a result, the FAA is stepping up consequences for unruly behavior, Yahoo notes:
Federal officials are taking some additional steps to try to tamp down the issue. The Federal Aviation Administration has announced a “zero tolerance policy” against any interference with flight crews, as well as a handful of lofty civil fines—as high as $32,750—against passengers who committed some of the more egregious infractions.
Recall, it was just two weeks ago we wrote about two men who were ejected from a flight in San Francisco over an argument about elbow room.
Two passengers had to be removed from the plane after an argument over elbow room on an armrest. We suggested then what we’ll say again now: Maybe airlines should take note of what these disruptions cost as they figure out new and creative ways to cram economy flyers even closer together.
Google product director Jack Krawczyk documented the spat on Twitter, writing: “On my first flight in 15 months, of course we were rerouted back to the gate because two passengers got into a physical altercation over elbow placement upon arm rests.”
The flight was on its way to Las Vegas when the incident took place before takeoff, the NY Post reports. The men involved in the altercation haven’t been identified, but were detained when an officer arrived at the gate.
Despite neither man wanting to “pursue further police action”, they weren’t allowed back on the flight.
One response to Krawczyk’s Tweet read: “This is fucking why I HATE traveling economy. You’re cramming a bunch of uneducated low lives into cheap seats with barely any leg and arm room and expecting them to be civil? Throw in them having to wear masks now and good LUCK.”
And with airlines strapped and the government bailout dole looking like it’s finally drying up, it doesn’t look as though the situation is going to be getting better for air travelers anytime soon.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 19:50 - The Technocratic Mindset Produces Only Misery And Failure
The Technocratic Mindset Produces Only Misery And Failure
Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,
It has the most fundamental aspect reality backwards
Saw this article come across, come across my news alert for “Transhumanism”. In it Dr. David Eagleman talks about how not only can we augment human senses with fantastic new abilities (like to “see” heat and electromagnetic patterns), but how we’ll even be able to build machines that think too.
There is a line in his thinking that one can glean from the article: on one side of the line are enhancements and augmentations to the human experience which are startling and amazing and which will transform our societies: even more radical life extension will be in the cards quite soon (for those who can afford it).
Like I told Steve Bannon when we talked Transhumanism: For all intents and purposes we already have radical life extension. In the years of the Roman Empire, average life expectancy was between 18 and 25 and most people would die before age 11, from something like diarrhea. This was just normal and nobody thought it would ever change.
Where Eagleman crosses into technocratic thinking is when he veers into the idea of being able to build thinking machines. The logic is that because we’ll be able to increasingly bioengineer our own living bodies, it means we should also be able to bioengineer a mind into machines using the same principles.
I think this is wrong and it’s the same theoretical mistake that leads directly to technocratically inspired catastrophes.
Yes, we continue to build on technological advancements, but we also commit a lot of unforced errors that inflict incalculable misery on humanity. These errors may manifest as policy blunders, economic crises and worse. Most recently, for example, we seem to have gotten ourselves into a global pandemic because a bunch of technocrats funded some gain-of-function experiments in hopes of preempting the next pandemic. Do you see the dynamic here?
Over the years a lot of thinkers have pointed out that technoractic policy tracks, devised by centralized groups of experts within an elite managerial class, often bring about the very conditions they were impaneled to obviate. Raising minimum wages increases unemployment, holding interest rates to zero creates economic instability and increases wealth inequality, forcing green energy initiatives creates systems with lower energy efficiency and higher carbon footprints
Banning guns increases gun violence, censoring “hate” speech fosters more hatred and polarization. It’s almost as if the managerial class has no awareness of second-order effects. When they inexorably come to pass they are often blamed on the very people who were counselling against the initial policy in the first place.
Thus, financial meltdowns are blamed on runaway free markets and capitalism gone wild. Global warming (if it truly plays out along prognosticated lines) is blamed on industries who are most rapidly transitioning toward greener energy anyway (like Bitcoin mining).
Climate change is another theme that exemplifies the technocratic dynamic: As a society we’re going to transition off of fossil fuels no matter what anybody thinks about the environment because we’re already past peak oil, and peak demand will probably flatline around 100M bpd and start coming down from there in a secular downtrend, for a variety of reasons (prolonged economic malaise and the ascent of green energy).
Yet the most viable pathway toward transitioning away from fossil fuels, nuclear (and in this I include Thorium), is currently relegated as problematic by technocrats and ideologues.
It all seems backwards and for a long time I’ve been positing a fundamental root cause of this backwardation. I’ve settled on something I’ve talked about before, but now I think I didn’t fully realize how fundamental this key point is. When I sat down to resume work on my forthcoming book about Techno-Utopianism and Transhumanism I tried to write around it and avoid it. But I realized I couldn’t. It is so core to the overall technocratic mindset and it’s so controversial that I have to caveat it before I say it:
The caveat is that I don’t identify as a Christian or even a religious person per se. But I’m not an atheist either, and I’m not even agnostic. What I’m about to say is derived from my own understanding of scientific inquiry, not theological.
The premise is that what we have the mind/matter equation completely backwards in the way we think about how the world works.
Conventional thought is that what we experience as consciousness is something that emanates from the brain. Like steam from a kettle. This is also the core assumption of AI. If we build something that resembles a brain, it’ll think. It’s a kind of Frankenstein approach that Eagleman alludes to in his article.
That won’t work and AI will never be achieved as long as the mechanistic, material reductionist worldview persists. Yet, technocrats put a lot of faith in AI, and they think models derived from AI are or will be superior to anything we can figure out on our own because they were outputted by machines with a bigger/faster/hardware brains.
It is completely… wrong.
I think that what we experience as matter are energy patterns that emanate from an underlying, and conscious sub-strata of reality. This is basic quantum theory. Quantum theory can be problematic because it opens the door to all kinds of New Age Woo Woo, which may not even be entirely wrong at its core, but is prone to deeply flawed implementations (like anything, I guess).
People, and probably most living things, have a sense, an intuitive awareness of this sub-strata of reality. Our mythology and sacred texts are probably the stories of sometimes being more attuned to it and sometimes less so. The late British writer Colin Wilson wrote at length on the consciousness of the Egyptians of the upper kingdom, possibly over 7500 years BC. Their consciousness and language was pictorial not linear. It may even be possible (my extrapolation, not his) that the demarcation point between conscious awareness between individuals was blurred somewhat. Almost like the canine packs of Vernor Vinge’s Tines in ‘Fire Upon The Deep’.
Owen Barfield completely rejects the conventional idea of how our language evolved, that we started with “Ug ug” and developed from there. He thinks we had that pictorial awareness, a communications protocol unimaginable to us now, that in effect condensed downwards into linear language. This is a microcosm of the tension between how the technocratic mindset views everything as complexity arising from simple, mechanistic building blocks and a more informational / probabilistic / patternist view of reality.
Jean Gebser mapped the evolution of consciousness itself in The Ever Present Origin and today people like Ken Wilbur talk about how these different modalities of consciousness don’t supplant each other, like a linear development, but rather layer atop each other in a progression where each layer integrates those below it. At least the one we’re at today, the integrative consciousness, does so.My guess is in earlier days, a type of spiritual wonderment would have arisen from these glimpses of the underlying force. What I’ve grown to call “The Great Externality” because I was trying to describe it in non-religious terms. Maybe it’s more of a Great Sub-Carrier. Think if it like “dialtone of reality”. Spiritual philosophers like Alan Watts said the entire point of all life was that the universe was physically manifesting in order to experience itself. He wasn’t the first, obviously, its a variation of a theme that has been recurrent throughout all recorded history, and possibly even before.
So what happened?
Into this awareness came religions. Organized structures that would begin to dictate the basis on which members of society were to comprehend and approach this Great Sub-Carrier. Priesthoods evolved – the first monopolies. Religions. Hierarchies. Rulers. Subjects.
One of the earliest forms of social deviance was heresy: approaching the Divine Sub-Carrier from a direction outside the religious structure. Can’t have that.
This dynamic is as old as humanity. It could even be argued that historical progress is the story of the public coming to realize that the monopoly thought structure they were in was flawed or obsolete and then society moving on to the next one. The elites of the day would endeavour halt the progression or when that failed, co-opt whatever came next.
Then new elites would erect a new orthodoxy that placed them directly in the nexus of what was unknowable and what the rabble thought they needed to know in order to perform their primary function of ….servitude.
Today the great sub-carrier is best described by science, not religion. But again, the priesthood is saying that all knowledge of the sub-carrier should come through them. That’s Scientism. That’s Technocracy. Management by Experts.
The last two years of life on earth are a foretaste of a full blown technocracy. Follow The Science™, plebes.
Only our elites can fathom how to approach and extract knowledge from The Great Externality, but this time they’ve made things even worse because they have it exactly backwards. They think the Great Externality doesn’t even exist. It’s for flakes and Bible bangers. The technocratic priesthood holds that material reality is near completely understood and that our minds are side effects of chemical reactions in our brains.
They hold that if only we can crunch enough Big Data and calculate out all the models we’ll be, like God (who doesn’t exist), able to fix everything and eliminate all bad outcomes, for everybody, everywhere. We may even be able to eliminate death, and we could upload our consciousness (which is an illusion) into the cloud and live forever.
Because of this backwardation, we will always be careening from one catastrophe to the next, and most of them will be of our own making. We collectively suffer from an illusion that we are in control.
But we are not in control. We’re a pattern. A dance. A cycle. Waveforms. Vibrations. What we as humans do specifically well, which is our superpower and has led to our technological advancement which could conceivably continue on a trajectory that makes humanity an interstellar phenomenon, is adapt.
What technocrats can’t understand, or admit is that we can’t control what is going to happen. Either on an individual scale of people thinking in ways they’re not supposed to think, or geological, cultural, geopolitical or cosmic scales. We can’t get interest rates right, we can’t get everybody to agree on whether it’s “Gif” or “jif” and somehow we’re going to change the trajectory of the climate? Achieve immortality? Crank out a Singularity?
That is highly unlikely and in trying to preempt theoretical bad outcomes we typically bring about horrible actual outcomes. The lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, if it occurred and it is looking increasingly likely that it did, was the result of gain-of-function studies on bat coronaviruses. They didn’t do it as a bioweapon. It’s not a global conspiracy to institute a Great Reset (all that talk is opportunism more than planning).
They were trying to figure out how to plan for a future global pandemic that may catch humanity off guard and cause incalculable damage. What did they accomplish? They unleashed a global pandemic that caught humanity off guard and caused incalculable damage. Soon to be compounded by global, de-facto compulsory inoculations with experimental vaccines that have a distinctly politicized impetus behind them.
That same dynamic is applied to economics (its where the .COM crash and Global Financial Crisis came from), and social policy (the Woke movement), to climate is all the same technocratic mindset that doesn’t understand the order of reality (mind, then matter) but even worse thinks it knows it.
We’re stuck with that for awhile because the technocratic mindset is incapable of introspection or entertaining the possibility of being wrong about anything. The only move it knows is to double-down on failure.
The antidote to all this is massive decentralization on a global scale, which has the added benefit that decentralization by definition, is not something that gets decided from the top (it never is). It just happens, even in spite of the people in the centre of power who may feel something about their gravitas melting away.
That’s what has started to happen. A global opt-out. The Great Reject. As sure as the Reformation gave way to the Enlightenment despite the protestations of the Church, we’re headed into a world of networks and the sunset of nations. All the while the propagandists of the old order shrieking that in this direction lies certain doom.
The Enlightenment arose from an increase in the level of abstraction, structurally the universe changed from the Ptolemaic worldview (the world as the centre of all existence) to the Heliocentric solar system.
Now we’re experiencing a similar shift away from static top-down hierarchical structures as the natural shape of civilization and toward shifting, impermanent, overlapping networks. My guess is the beginnings of quantum mechanics, over 100 years ago was the setting the table for the wider realization that we don’t live in a ping-pong ball universe where consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain. Rather that reality is an intersection of probabilities and information between what David Bohm called The Implicate and Explicate orders.
When AI researchers turn their attention toward building something that more closely resembles a transceiver that taps into that sub-carrier of reality, they’ll have a shot at making something that actually thinks.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 19:30 - Hong Kong Bars UK Travelers Over "Extremely High" COVID Risks As Crackdown On "Foreign Influence" Continues
Hong Kong Bars UK Travelers Over “Extremely High” COVID Risks As Crackdown On “Foreign Influence” Continues
After Hong Kong police arrested more journalists from the now-defunct Apple Daily over the weekend, a sign that Beijing’s crackdown on democratic freedoms under the guise of the new “national security” law isn’t letting up, health authorities on Monday announced that they would bar travelers from the UK after reintroducing the UK to HK’s list of “extremely high-risk” countries.
Two sources confirmed the decision to the SCMP, the biggest English-language newspaper in HK (it’s also owned by Jack Ma, who is now officially under the CCP jackboot). The move comes just days after the city tightened quarantine rules for foreign visitors, and also after reports in the western press claimed Beijing plans to keep its borders closed to almost all foreign travelers until the second half of next year (with a handful of exceptions for countries with high vaccination rates).
Before ramping up the UK’s designation to “extremely high risk”, HK had already moved the UK to “very high risk”, meaning travelers would need to quarantine for 21 days upon arrival, a quarantine term that would exclude all but the most essential business travel. Hong Kong health officials claim that over the past week, the country has recorded 14,876 new COVID-19 infections and 11 related deaths on Sunday.
Between June 21 and 27, a total of 104,052 people tested positive for Covid-19, accounting for a 58.7 per cent increase compared to the previous week. The latest COVID cases and arrivals from the UK, Indonesia and Namibia took the city’s overall tally of confirmed cases to 11,920 infections, with 211 deaths.
Authorities in Hong Kong are also worried about a recent domestic case: a 24-year-old employee at Uptown Mall who was found to be infected has got health authorities worried about a 5th COVID outbreak should the busy shopping center end up being a “super spreader” site.
Health officials believe the 27-year-old man may have caught the virus at an airport testing centre, as he shared the same viral footprint as three domestic workers who recently arrived from Indonesia. The building where the 24-year-old woman lives, block 10 of Tai Po Centre, was ordered into an overnight lockdown for mandatory virus screening on Sunday evening. Compulsory testing was also required of recent visitors to the mall. But the lockdown operation, which ended at about 8.30am, uncovered no cases among the approximately 390 residents screened during the night.
Health officials previously said their genome analysis showed the 24-year-old woman carried the more transmissible L452R strain, but without the N501Y or E484K mutations, making it likely to be a Delta variant.
In other HK news, another editorial writer from the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper was arrested at the airport on Sunday while attempting to flee the city.
Helps that most people only wanna go the other way
*HONG KONG TO BAN ALL PASSENGER FLIGHTS FROM U.K. FROM JULY 1
— Justina Lee (@justinaknope) June 28, 2021
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Beijing has denounced the UK’s meddling as yet another example of the corrosive “foreign influence” that the new national security law – imposed on the territory last year by the CCP – prohibits.
Many pro-democracy supporters have fled to the UK, which has offered to naturalize any Hong Kongers fleeing Beijing’s crackdown on the city’s freedoms in violation of the international treaty that sets out the terms of Hong Kong’s transition back under Chinese control. The battle over Hong Kong’s fate has badly strained relations between the UK and Beijing. And now, with flights from the UK effectively eliminated, how much harder will it be for Hong Kongers to make a break for London?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/28/2021 – 19:10
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