Today’s News 30th December 2024

• Engineering Reality: A Century Of Cultural Control, Part I – The Architecture Of Control
  Engineering Reality: A Century Of Cultural Control, Part I – The Architecture Of Control

  Authored by Joshua Stylman via substack,

  A Century of Cultural Control From Edison’s Monopolies to Algorithmic Manipulation

  Author’s Note: For years, I understood advertising was designed to manipulate behavior. As someone who studied the mechanics of marketing, I considered myself an educated consumer who could navigate rational market choices. What I didn’t grasp was how this same psychological architecture shaped every aspect of our cultural landscape. This investigation began as curiosity about the music industry’s ties to intelligence agencies. It evolved into a comprehensive examination of how power structures systematically mold public consciousness.

  What I discovered showed me that even my most cynical assumptions about manufactured culture barely scratched the surface. This revelation has fundamentally altered not just my worldview, but my relationships with those who either cannot or choose not to examine these mechanisms of control. This piece aims to make visible what many sense but cannot fully articulate – to help others see these hidden systems of influence. Because recognizing manipulation is the first step toward resisting it.

  This investigation unfolds in three parts: First, we’ll examine the foundational systems of control established in the early 20th century. Next, we’ll explore how these methods evolved through popular culture and counterculture movements. Finally, we’ll see how these techniques have been automated and perfected through digital systems.

  

  Introduction: The Architecture of Control

  In 2012, Facebook conducted a secret experiment on 689,000 users, manipulating their news feeds to study how changes in content affected their emotions. This crude test was just a glimpse of what was coming. By 2024, algorithms would not be used to simply shape what we feel, but what we believe it is even possible to think.

  Social media platforms are now able to predict and modify behavior in real-time, while streaming services automatically and continuously curate our cultural consumption, and digital payment systems track every single transaction. What began as simple emotional manipulation has become comprehensive consciousness control.

  This power to mold human perception didn’t emerge overnight. The mechanisms of cultural control we see today were built over more than a century, evolving from Edison’s physical monopolies to today’s invisible digital chains. To understand how we arrived at this point of algorithmic consciousness control – and more importantly, how to resist it – we must first trace the historical foundations of these systems and the deliberate architecture of control that shaped them.

  The psychological manipulation revealed by the Facebook experiment may seem like a modern phenomenon, but its roots stretch back to the earliest days of mass communication. One of the first architects of cultural control was Thomas Edison, whose establishment of the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908 laid the groundwork for a century of systematic influence.

  Part One: Laying the Foundation

  When Thomas Edison established the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908, he created more than a monopoly – he demonstrated how five key mechanisms could systematically control information and shape consciousness: infrastructure control (film production equipment), distribution control (theaters), legal framework (patents), financial pressure (blacklisting), and legitimacy definition (“authorized” vs “unauthorized” content). These same mechanisms would evolve and reappear across industries and eras, becoming increasingly sophisticated tools for engineering public consciousness and controlling the boundaries of possible thought and expression.

  The Rise of Institutional Control

  While Edison was establishing control over visual media, a broader system of institutional power was rapidly taking shape. The early 20th century would witness an unprecedented convergence of concentrated control across multiple domains.

  When antitrust action broke up the Edison Trust in 1915, control simply shifted from Edison’s patent monopoly to a small group of studios. While presented as creating competition, this “breakup” actually consolidated power in an oligarchy of studios that could more effectively and subversively coordinate content control and messaging – a pattern that would repeat in future antitrust actions.

  While the Trust’s breakup appeared to create competition, new forms of control quickly emerged. The Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) established in 1934 demonstrated how moral panic could justify systematic content control. Just as Edison had controlled film distribution, the Hays Code controlled what could be depicted on screen, establishing templates for narrative manipulation that would persist into the digital age.

  Edison’s template for controlling visual media would soon be replicated across other domains. As I detailed in ‘The Information Factory’, Rockefeller deployed an identical template in medicine: infrastructure control (medical schools), distribution control (hospitals and clinics), legal framework (licensing), financial pressure (strategic funding), and legitimacy definition (“scientific” vs “alternative” medicine). This wasn’t just about eliminating competition – it was about controlling what constituted legitimate knowledge itself.

  This wasn’t a coincidence. The early 20th century witnessed unprecedented bureaucratic convergence, as formerly separate domains – medicine, media, education, finance, entertainment, and scientific research – began operating with remarkable coordination. The walls between public institutions, private industry, and government agencies became increasingly permeable. Major foundations played a crucial role in this convergence. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, while presenting themselves as philanthropic organizations, effectively shaped academic research priorities and social science methodologies. Through strategic grant-making and institutional support, they helped establish and maintain approved frameworks for understanding society itself. By determining what research got funded and which ideas received institutional backing, these foundations became powerful gatekeepers of acceptable knowledge—extending Rockefeller’s medical model into the broader intellectual sphere.

  

  This unprecedented administrative alignment represented more than coordination – it established interlocking systems for controlling both physical reality and public consciousness. From Edison’s control of visual media to Rockefeller’s definition of medical knowledge to the Federal Reserve’s monetary control, each piece contributed to a comprehensive architecture of social control. What made this system so subtly pervasive was its masterful packaging – each erosion of autonomy was presented as progress, each restriction as protection, each form of control as convenience. The public not only accepted but eagerly embraced these changes, never recognizing that their choices, beliefs, and very understanding of reality were being carefully engineered through institutions they trusted.

  The power of this converged system was first demonstrated at scale in profoundly reshaping America’s global role. The narrative of American ‘isolationism’ emerged as one of the most influential shapers of public consciousness. While America had long projected power through banking networks, corporate expansion, and gunboat diplomacy, this reality was gradually reframed and cunningly marketed to an unsuspecting public By establishing a story of American withdrawal from world affairs, advocates for military intervention could position themselves as reluctant modernizers guiding a hesitant nation toward global responsibility. J.P. Morgan’s simultaneous acquisition of major newspapers, controlling 25% of American papers by 1917, helped establish this narrative framework. It wasn’t just about profit – it was about establishing the machinery of public consciousness management in preparation for coming conflicts desired by the ruling class.

  By the 1950s, Operation Mockingbird formalized this influence as the CIA systematically infiltrated major media organizations. The program demonstrated how thoroughly intelligence agencies understood the need to shape public perception through seemingly independent channels. Building on methods refined during wartime propaganda efforts, Mockingbird’s techniques would influence everything from news coverage to entertainment programming, establishing templates for information manipulation that continue to evolve today.

  What Operation Mockingbird achieved through human editors and planted stories, today’s platforms accomplish automatically through content moderation algorithms and recommendation systems. The same principles of narrative control persist, but the human intermediaries have been replaced by automated systems operating at breathtaking speed on a global scale.

  This media-intelligence nexus was exemplified by William S. Paley, who transformed CBS from a small radio network into a broadcasting empire. During World War II, Paley served as supervisor of the Office of War Information (OWI) in the Mediterranean theater before becoming chief of radio in the OWI’s Psychological Warfare Division. His wartime experience in psychological operations directly informed CBS’s postwar programming strategy, where entertainment began to serve as an effective vehicle for social engineering. Under Paley’s leadership, CBS became known as the ‘Tiffany Network,’ masterfully blending entertainment with subtle manipulation techniques refined during his psychological warfare service. This fusion of entertainment and social control would become the template for modern media operations.

  This machinery of mass influence would adapt to emerging technologies. By the 1950s, the payola scandal revealed how record companies shaped public consciousness through controlled exposure. Presented as a controversy about DJ bribes, payola actually represented an evolved system for shaping popular taste. The companies controlling these cultural channels maintained deep institutional ties – Paley’s CBS Records continued its military contractor relationships, while RCA’s role in shaping mass culture traced back to its 1919 formation as a Navy-coordinated communications monopoly. Created to maintain domestic control of strategic communications, RCA’s expansion into broadcasting, records and consumer electronics preserved these foundational connections to military and intelligence networks. These methods of cultural control didn’t develop in isolation – they were part of a broader system of social engineering that expanded dramatically during periods of global conflict.

  While historians typically treat the World Wars as discrete conflicts, they are better understood as phases in a continuous expansion of social control mechanisms. The infrastructure and methods developed between these conflicts reveals this continuity – the wars provided both the justification and testing grounds for increasingly sophisticated systems of mass psychological manipulation. Military installations like Lookout Mountain Air Force Station in Laurel Canyon weren’t just bases – they were centers for psychological warfare operations, perfectly positioned near the heart of the entertainment industry. Lookout Mountain alone produced over 19,000 classified films, while maintaining high-level connections to Hollywood production

  By 1943, this system was so well established that the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) explicitly outlined its strategy in a now-declassified document. Their assessment was unequivocal: motion pictures represented ‘an unparalleled instructional medium’ and ‘a patent force in attitude formation’ that could ‘stimulate or inhibit action.’ The document further stated that the US must ‘exploit the potentialities of the motion picture as a weapon of psychological warfare.’ This wasn’t just about controlling information—it was about fundamentally altering how people understood and experienced reality itself.

  While Edison and Rockefeller were establishing physical control systems in America, the entertainment industry was already being integrated into intelligence operations. This pattern stretched back to the industry’s earliest days – Harry Houdini is rumored to have collaborated with British intelligence during World War I, using his performances as cover to gather information in German enclaves. From Charlie Chaplin’s films being analyzed for propaganda potential to Mary Pickford’s war bond drives setting the precedent for celebrity messaging, World War I marked the birth of systematic coordination between Hollywood and intelligence agencies. During World War II, these connections were formalized through the OSS, evolving into today’s Entertainment Liaison Office, through which agencies like the Department of Defense actively shape desired military-themed film narratives.

  Sculpting Consciousness of the Masses

  While American industries were perfecting control of physical infrastructure and entertainment, British intelligence was developing something even more fundamental – methods to control consciousness itself. Understanding that territorial control was temporary but the power to shape beliefs, desires, and worldviews could be permanent, their innovations would transform social engineering forever. In 1914, they established what began as an innocuous sounding entity called ‘Wellington House,’ which would evolve into increasingly bold bureaucratic iterations – the ‘Department of Information,’ and finally the explicitly Orwellian sounding ‘Ministry of Information.’ Through this organization, they systematized mass psychological manipulation based on new principles – that indirect influence through trusted voices works better than direct propaganda, that emotional resonance matters more than facts, that people trust peer sharing over authority. These psychological principles would become the foundational algorithms of social media platforms a century later. These insights didn’t fade with time – they evolved. When Facebook conducts A/B testing on emotional contagion or social media algorithms promote peer-to-peer sharing over institutional sources, they’re deploying Tavistock’s psychological principles in real-time.

  This work evolved through the treatment of shell-shocked soldiers at the Tavistock Clinic (later the Tavistock Institute), where Dr. John Rawlings Rees and his colleagues discovered how psychological trauma could be used to reshape not just individual consciousness, but entire social systems. Through systematic study of trauma and group psychology, they developed methods to shape not just what people could see, but how they would interpret reality itself. The Institute’s work revealed how psychological vulnerability could be used to reshape both individual and group behavior – insights that would prove invaluable as mechanisms of influence evolved from overt censorship to subtle manipulation of perception.

  Though largely unknown to the public, Tavistock would become one of the most influential organizations in shaping modern social control methods. While most people today know Tavistock only through recent controversies over gender-affirming care, the institute’s influence extends back generations, shaping cultural narratives and social transformation since its inception. Their current work represents not an anomaly but a continuation of its long-standing mission to reshape human consciousness.

  Former MI6 intelligence officer John Coleman’s seminal work The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations provided an insider’s view of its operations. More recently, researchers like Daniel Estulin, Courtenay Turner and Jay Dyer have further examined its profound impact.

  The Institute’s most refined achievement was transforming psychological theories into practical tools for cultural engineering, particularly through popular music and youth culture. By embedding their principles into seemingly spontaneous cultural trends, they created a template for social programming invisible to its subjects.

  These methods would first be tested through music. The State Department’s jazz diplomacy program of the 1950s-60s revealed how power centers understood music’s potential for cultural design. While Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie toured as ‘jazz ambassadors,’ another powerful influence was shaping the jazz scene from within. The Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter – born into the Rothschild banking dynasty – became a crucial patron of bebop artists like Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, both of whom would die in her homes years apart. While her passion for jazz may have been genuine, her deep involvement in the scene coincided with the era when the U.S. State Department and CIA were actively using jazz as a tool of cultural diplomacy. This patronage, whether intentional or not, foreshadowed a pattern of European banking aristocracy’s involvement in supposedly revolutionary musical movements.

  In Part Two, we’ll explore the next phase of consciousness control which operated through culture itself. The early experiments in jazz would evolve into an invisible and systematic program of cultural engineering. Institutions would design and ignite cultural movements that appeared organic and by doing so, governing bodies would shape not just what people thought, but their entire framework for understanding anything and everything.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 23:20

• Chinese Man Gets Death Sentence For Ramming Car Into Crowd, Killing 35
  Chinese Man Gets Death Sentence For Ramming Car Into Crowd, Killing 35

  Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A Chinese man who killed at least 35 people last month by driving his car into a crowd was sentenced to death on Dec. 27, amid growing concerns over a recent wave of deadly attacks across the country.

  

  The driver, identified as Fan Weiqiu, acted out of anger stemming from “a broken marriage, personal frustrations, and dissatisfaction with the way financial assets were divided during his divorce,” according to a statement from the intermediate court in Zhuhai, a city in southern China.

  Fan pleaded guilty to endangering public safety through dangerous methods, according to the court’s announcement.

  The incident occurred on the evening of Nov. 11, when Fan drove his SUV into a group of people exercising at the Zhuhai Sports Centre.

  It took nearly 24 hours for Chinese authorities to report on the casualties from the violent attack. According to local police, at least 35 people have died, with 43 others suffering severe injuries as a result of the incident. At the time, the authorities said Fan, who was in a coma and had injuries consistent with self-harm, was apprehended at the scene.

  Swift Censorship

  On China’s internet, censors responded quickly, suppressing eyewitness accounts and videos related to the incident. By the evening of Nov. 12, searches on the popular microblogging platform Weibo yielded mostly official statements, with little presence of videos or photos of the incident.

  The sports complex was closed on the day of the attack. On the morning of Nov. 13, members of the public left bouquets at one of the gates, only to see them removed within minutes. Some cleaning staff told AFP that they were following an “order from the top.”

  Meanwhile, BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell was shoved by a man while reporting outside the complex on Nov. 12. While the man’s identity remains unclear, the BBC pointed out that such incidents are not uncommon in China, where local Communist Party officials often recruit groups of individuals to act as outraged locals, tasked with obstructing foreign reporters from covering sensitive events.

  Recent Deadly Incidents

  The incident, described by some Western media outlets as the deadliest in a decade, was one of a spate of tragic events that have occurred across China in recent months.

  On Oct. 28, at least five people, including three children, were severely injured in a stabbing incident, according to local police, who identified the suspect as a 50-year-old man surnamed Tang.

  On Nov. 16, eight people were killed and 17 others injured during a mass stabbing rampage at a vocational college in eastern China. Arrested at the scene was a 21-year-old male, identified only as Xu—a former student at the Wuxi Vocational College of Arts and Technology in Yixing in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. Police said he later confessed to the killings.

  On Nov. 19, a driver rammed his vehicle into a crowd outside a primary school in Changde, central Hunan Province, injuring an unspecified number of people.

  Recent waves of random attacks have sparked concerns among outside observers, with some highlighting a growing desperation under the tight grip of the Chinese Communist Party.

  “Logically, if someone has a grievance, they should target the person responsible. But he may not even be able to find that person,” Li Yingzhi, an exiled rights activist, previously told The Epoch Times. “Why resort to killing innocent people? Because he has reached complete despair and no longer wants to live.”

  

  Li links these violent attacks to systemic issues in China, where people were left with little recourse to seek justice or voice dissent.

  “First, there is suppression of free speech and a lack of press freedom. Second, the petitioning system is ineffective. Third, the judiciary fails to function properly. These are all systemic issues,” he said.

  “If there were effective channels to resolve problems, it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  Katabella Roberts and Cindy Li contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 22:45

• Biden Is Wrong To Double Down On Syria
  Biden Is Wrong To Double Down On Syria

  Authored by Alexander Langlois via American Greatness,

  On December 19, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that there are roughly 2,000 troops stationed in Syria – 1,100 more than previously shared with the public. Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder disclosed the new number almost off-handedly, without explanation for the shock news as Syria experiences a generational moment following former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapse on December 8. The announcement personifies the ongoing and widespread disdain of American political and military leaders for transparency on military operations abroad.

  

  Indeed, the laxness with which Ryder announced the new deployment numbers is unacceptable. These forces are not, as the spokesperson claimed, simply “temporary rotational forces” but reflect the worst excesses of mission creep that have come to define U.S. military operations in the post-9/11 era. Ryder’s follow-on statements, in the same breath as his claims of the temporary nature of the deployment, highlight this bleak reality: “Right now, there are no plans to cease the defeat-ISIS mission.”

  Rather, the Biden administration feels empowered to expand that mission and lie to the American people about what exactly it is doing in Syria. Such an outcome results from unchecked executive power in the U.S. government and Congressional reluctance to question support for anything labeled as counterterrorism (CT) operations. Worse, the announcement comes as news surfaces that U.S. President Joe Biden experienced “good days and bad days” as early as 2021 concerning his mental acuity – another inconvenient fact hidden from U.S. citizens, raising questions regarding who has actually been steering policy in the White House.

  The inconvenient truth for Biden’s advisors is simple: U.S. forces continue to operate in a country that has not invited them to establish a presence and without any constitutionally mandated Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) required to make such military operations legal under U.S. law. Only Congress can pass an AUMF – the president cannot unilaterally declare one. Flimsy arguments connecting the Islamic State to Al-Qaeda – arguing that the former grew out of the latter – are another ugly expansion of unchecked executive power aimed at limiting U.S. citizen input on the critical decisions of their elected officials.

  Such a pass must be rejected. For two decades, U.S. officials have worked to expand global military power in a resource-draining deluge of unsustainable overextension. On the same day as Ryder’s announcement, the U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – the primary defense appropriations package – to the tune of $895 billion. As U.S. debt approaches $37 trillion, the government should be more transparent on such issues – not less. Yet rather than taking that approach, the Pentagon failed its seventh straight audit in 2024.

  This unacceptable situation is why expanding the defeat-ISIS mission should be rejected, especially given the facts on the ground. To be sure, while the Islamic State has expanded its operations in Syria in 2024, the number of attacks pales in comparison to the height of the group when ISIS actually held and governed territory. With less than 20 attacks in September, compared to hundreds in April 2022, the Islamic State is no longer a serious threat to U.S. interests—and its reach is extremely limited. It has long been unable to conduct international attacks from either Syria or Iraq.

  Most of its fighters in these two countries remain in prisons operated by local U.S. partners – namely the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria. While some cite the presence of roughly 10,000 fighters in these prisons as an army-in-waiting for the group, the reality is alternative policy options exist for both securing these prisons and limiting the wider supposed threat while ending – not expanding – the defeat-ISIS mission.

  Those options include regional partnerships, not limited to Turkey or the plethora of armed groups operating in Syria today. Given the Islamic State’s inherent weakness, it should not be difficult to establish a sustainable agreement – namely one that ends the U.S. presence in the country by allowing those capable local actors with more of an interest in ending the threat from re-appearing in their communities. An open-ended U.S. presence will not fully resolve this problem, as personified by never-ending CT operations across Africa and Asia with no end in sight.

  Ultimately, the issue of U.S. military overreach is bigger than Syria, even if the country is central to debates on U.S. forces abroad. Officials must recognize that U.S. primacy on the regional and global stage does not come from doing everything, everywhere, all at once. Rather, it is achieved through strategic honesty and military restraint that right-sizes efforts abroad based on necessity as the world is – not how unelected officials wish it to be.

  Misleading the American public cannot remain the U.S. foreign policy norm, which already discounts the will of the average American citizen in a smugness that has long pervaded the space. As announcements like the one on Syria indicate, the time is now to shift away from this unsustainable and anti-democratic approach.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 22:10

• US Expands Cyber Countermeasures As List Of China Telecom Hack Victims Grows
  US Expands Cyber Countermeasures As List Of China Telecom Hack Victims Grows

  Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The White House has identified a ninth U.S. telecom network that Chinese state hackers have compromised in a sweeping intrusion, a senior official said on Dec. 27, as authorities take steps to prevent similar cases of cyberespionage and hold the cyberattackers liable for their actions.

  Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, revealed the new information in a press briefing as officials continue to assess the scope of the cybersecurity breach from China’s state-backed Salt Typhoon hacking group, which has carried out a wide-ranging espionage campaign since 2022.

  

  The hacking operation has affected major telecommunications companies and dozens of nations, with Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink among the targets. Officials said in early December that these hackers are still embedded in U.S. infrastructure.

  Neuberger said in an earlier conference that the hackers had focused on “very senior” American political figures and stolen vast troves of American data. She said on Friday that they still don’t have a good sense of the total scope of the breach.

  “Our understanding is that a large number of individuals were geolocated in the Washington DC, Virginia area,” she said.

  Only a fraction of them had their communications affected, Neuberger said, as the hackers are more interested in eavesdropping on U.S. government officials.

  “The scale we’re talking about is far larger on the geolocation, probably less than 100 on the actual individuals,” she said.

  As officials scramble to understand the impact of the Chinese cyber intrusion, they also began a multi-agency effort to fortify U.S. infrastructure against such operations.

  Shortly after the briefing, the Justice Department issued a final rule naming China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela as countries of concern over their ambitions to exploit sensitive U.S. personal and government-related data by bulk. Under the rule, certain individuals and groups whom authorities deemed as threat actors are barred from transactions involving six types of U.S. data, including certain personal identifiers such as social security numbers or government identification numbers, precise geolocation data, biometric identifiers, human genetic or molecular data, personal health data, and personal financial data.

  Those transactions “pose an unacceptable risk to the national security,” a Justice Department statement said, noting that those adversarial nations could use the data to conduct cyber espionage, malign foreign influence, bolster military capabilities, and “track and build profiles on U.S. persons,” including military and intelligence officers for blackmail, coercion, and espionage. These data could also become tools for these states to spy on its targets, such as dissidents, political opponents, or marginalized communities, to intimidate them and curtail freedoms, the department said.

  The regulation applies to entities over which China has an ownership of 50 percent or more, those that principally conduct business in China or are organized under Chinese law, their contractors and employees, and foreign individuals who primarily reside in China.

  Violators could face a civil fine of up to $368,136 or twice the amount of the transaction involved, whichever is greater. Criminal penalties include up to $1,000,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison.

  The Department of Health and Human Services on Dec. 27 also proposed a rule to protect the U.S. health care system from cyberattacks.

  The proposed measure would modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, making the first change to the act’s security rule in 11 years, according to a statement. It would mandate stepped-up protection for personal health information by health plans and health care clearinghouses, as well as most health care providers and their business associates.

  The department’s Office for Civil Rights said the number of individuals impacted by large health care breaches soared more than tenfold between 2018 and 2023, and is likely to grow.

  In the wake of the Salt Typhoon hacking campaign, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has urged “individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions” to “immediately” stop using regular phone calls and text messages. They should only use end-to-end encrypted communications and “assume that all communications between mobile devices—including government and personal devices—and internet services are at risk of interception or manipulation,” the agency warned.

  The hacking group has targeted now-Vice President-elect JD Vance and now-president-elect Donald Trump, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris.

  

  To deter Chinese hacking attempts, Neuberger said, the first step is to build a “defensible infrastructure.”

  “We wouldn’t leave our homes, our offices unlocked, and yet our critical infrastructure, the private companies owning and operating our critical infrastructure often do not have the basic cybersecurity practices in place,” she said in the press call.

  Authorities are also scrutinizing government contracts to enforce stricter cybersecurity practices, Neuberger said. In doing so, she said, the United States is following in the footsteps of Australia and the UK.

  “The nation’s secrets, the nation’s economy, lies on our telecommunications sector,” she said.

  “When I talked with our UK colleagues and I asked, ‘Do you believe your regulations would have prevented the Salt Typhoon attack?’ their comment to me was, we would have found it faster, we would have contained it faster.”

  Neuberger said it was a “powerful message.”

  In early December, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the National Security Agency collectively published a guide instructing telecom companies to mitigate cyber intrusions.

  “Those networks are not as defensible as they need to be to defend against a well resourced, capable offensive cyber actor like China,” Neuberger said.

  In assessing the Salt Typhoon breach, she said, authorities have found one administrator account that had access to more than 100,000 routers.

  “So when the Chinese compromised that account, they gained that kind of broad access across the network,” she said.

  Neuberger said officials are looking to segment the telecom networks so that in the event of a cyber attack, the potential damage could be contained.

  The Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 5 proposed cybersecurity rules requiring communications service providers to certify annually that they have a plan to protect against cyberattacks.

  The rule is waiting for a vote by Jan. 15, Neuberger said, noting that they are eager to see bipartisan support across the commission to see it through.

  The Chinese were “very careful about their techniques. They erased logs,” she said. And as “we will never know regarding the scope and scale of this,” she said, the United States is “looking forward.”

  An appeals court on Tuesday upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to bar China Unicom Americas, the U.S. operation of a top Chinese state wireless carrier, from accessing the U.S. telecom market.

  Neuberger said more actions will be coming out in the next few months.

  “Let’s lock down this infrastructure. And frankly, let’s hold the Chinese accountable for this,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 21:35

• How Massive Debt, Stiff Competition Dashed Spirit Airlines
  How Massive Debt, Stiff Competition Dashed Spirit Airlines

  Authored by Austin ALonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Spirit Airlines’ financial failure could mean fewer options and higher ticket prices for Americans flying on a tight budget.

  On Nov. 18, the Dania Beach, Florida-based ultra-low-cost carrier famous for its cheap base fares, announced it was seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

  

  Spirit is currently attempting a reorganization in bankruptcy court so it can pay back its creditors and return to business. Ahead of its Chapter 11 filing, the company had already announced a new vision designed to make the airline more like America’s other low-cost carriers.

  Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Nicole Aguiar told The Epoch Times via email that the airline will continue to operate as usual during its restructuring process.

  Still, others in the industry—notably United Airlines Holdings Inc. CEO J. Scott Kirby—say the reorganization process is merely a milestone on the road to Chapter 7 liquidation.

  “I think the current business plan is not going to work,” Kirby told reporters in early December. “Chapter 11 will be a brief pit stop on the way to Chapter 7.”

  Whether the company can keep flying is yet to be determined, but it seems inevitable that Spirit’s ultra-low-cost version will fade into memory. If Spirit disappears completely or abandons its ultra-low-cost business model, its pricing pressure, which forces competing carriers to lower their prices, may disappear forever.

  A Perfect Storm

  Ryan Ewing, a longtime industry observer and the editor of airline trade publication AirlineGeeks, told The Epoch Times that Spirit found itself in a tempest created by competition from other airlines, a rapidly increasing cost of doing business, a massive shift in airline demand that began during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and finally, a failed acquisition by JetBlue Airways Corp.

  Ewing said that Spirit, founded in 1992, was profitable for much of its existence, despite consumer criticism of its business practices. In May, consumer insights firm J.D. Power ranked Spirit as the second-worst economy or basic economy airline in terms of consumer satisfaction. Only its ultra-low-cost rival Frontier Airlines fared worse.

  Joseph Smith, director of aviation services at Miami-based investment banking firm Cassel Salpeter & Co., told The Epoch Times the company was able to make money because it attracted a younger clientele, vacationers looking to travel on a budget, and served routes other airlines may avoid due to a lack of profitability.

  It was successful in its niche.

  Everything changed in 2020 when pandemic panic ground both international and domestic flights to a halt or kept planes nearly empty for months. While demand recovered by 2024, financially, Spirit never has.

  

  Shortly after Spirit announced it was beginning the process of reorganizing its business to pay back its creditors, the company released a third-quarter earnings report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That report, published on Nov. 25, said the company’s collective liabilities were almost twice as great as its assets.

  It said Spirit’s assets on Sept. 30 totaled about $1.21 billion. Meanwhile, its liabilities were $2.54 billion. Those liabilities included more than $1.25 billion in “long-term debt, net, and finance leases.”

  The report was released without an earnings call as the company has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange as part of the bankruptcy process.

  Spirit’s third-quarter report also disclosed that the company recorded a quarterly net loss of $308.2 million and had lost $643.8 million through the first nine months of 2024. In the same nine-month period the year before, the company had lost $263.8 million.

  The report revealed the company had seen its total operating revenue fall to about $3.67 billion in the first nine months of 2024 from about $3.97 billion in the same period of the prior year.

  These were not new problems for Spirit, however. It has not turned an annual profit since 2019. Its annual report from 2023 said the company recorded a net loss of $447.4 million in 2023, $554.1 million in 2022, and $472.5 million in 2021. The 2021 annual report said the company recorded a net loss of $428.7 million in 2020. The 2020 yearly statement indicated it was profitable from 2016 to 2019.

  From an operational standpoint, Ewing said Spirit was saddled with elevated labor, fuel, and airplane maintenance costs driven by inflation, new labor agreements with union employees, and unreliable jet engines. The pain was exacerbated by growing, costly service interruptions caused by cancellations and delays related to air traffic controller shortages near its base of operations in Southern Florida.

  “That business model that Spirit pioneered requires that the structural costs remain lower,” Ewing said.

  James Gellert, the founder and executive chairman of financial analytics firm RapidRatings International Inc., told The Epoch Times that Spirit also became a victim of its own success. The company was so good at undercutting so-called legacy carriers that it inspired companies such as Chicago-based United Airlines Inc. to expand their basic economy offerings.

  Additionally, as a publicly traded company always seeking quarter-to-quarter profits and growth, Spirit started entering into markets where it could not profitably operate, Gellert said.

  

  Both Gellert and Smith said Spirit was dealt a significant blow when an attempted $3.8 billion acquisition by JetBlue fell through in January.

  The deal called for the Long Island City, New York-based airline to acquire Spirit but was blocked by a federal judge’s decision that was made on antitrust grounds. Originally, Spirit was looking to merge with Frontier, but JetBlue made an unsolicited offer to purchase Spirit during the courtship.

  In his decision, U.S. District Judge William Young said JetBlue’s acquisition would have taken away a critical, ultra-low-cost option for American consumers. In effect, Young’s decision likely sealed Spirit’s fate.

  Turnaround or Shut Down?

  In its second-quarter earnings release published on Aug. 1, Spirit president and CEO Ted Christie acknowledged the company’s struggle to generate income. The company said Spirit was launching a turnaround plan focused on “low-fare travel with new, high-value travel options that will allow guests to choose an elevated experience at an affordable price.”

  Read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 21:00

• No Easy Fix For The Housing Problem
  No Easy Fix For The Housing Problem

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

  After World War II, a major priority for U.S. policymakers was to push home ownership for as broad a swath of the population as possible. In many ways, the agenda was a success. Happy families living in fine homes all over the United States, one income from a stable job, and two cars became the mark of prosperity, and a point of advertising for the American experiment the world over.

  Every TV show featured exactly this.

  

  Two decades into the 21st century, that dream is broken, as most people cannot even think about home ownership even with two incomes. The latest trends show skyrocketing prices and, unlike 2008, this seems less like a bubble than pure inflation with little hope of falling prices. Existing owners, of course, do not want price declines in any case.

  Already, the taxes and costs of insurance have grown equal to the mortgage payment itself, which means that in terms of overall expenditure, the sticker price might be only a quarter of what you will spend over 30 years, according to The Wall Street Journal.

  Many people look at this situation and wonder what the point is. There are ways to use whatever liquid assets you have to earn money rather than spend it this way.

  In the past few months, I’ve heard many suggestions for fixing this problem. None of them is promising.

  Some make matters worse.

  First, people suggest more Federal Reserve interventions. Keep in mind, however, that the Fed can control only one rate—that which is charged to member banks. That rate will influence others down the line within the yield curve structure. The influence is not always predictable. In fact, it can sometimes result in a steeper curve, presenting a bitter problem: lower short-term rates combined with higher rates. This result reflects expectations of the future.

  This is precisely what is happening right now. The Fed keeps lowering the federal funds rate even as mortgage rates increase.

  

  (Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

  The other problem is that lower rates feed inflation and thus threaten to increase housing prices, insurance costs, and therefore also property taxes. Therefore, Fed intervention will not fix any existing problem and contributes to making the situation worse rather than better.

  Second, people are suggesting restrictions on institutions buying with cash offers. This is designed to address what intuitively strikes everyone as unfair and unjust. You are negotiating on a house, lining up your borrowing, selling assets for a down payment, and out of nowhere some cash buyer comes along and snatches it away.

  No question that this is happening, with the largest financial firms buying the asset that they believe to be the most lucrative on the market right now, which is housing. But how in the world would one restrict such purchases? Owners want to sell to the best buyer regardless. It seems strange to intervene in property rights in ways that would make that impossible.

  It’s also not clear how that would affect home prices. Whether a home is purchased with cash or borrowed money does not affect housing prices overall. Such interventions would likely create unanticipated problems. For example, it would certainly reduce the number of rental units available and thus make the housing problem worse, not better.

  Third, people are suggesting that the federal government make special mortgage rates available for borrowers of a certain sort, perhaps families with children or teachers or some other class. I’ve heard numbers such as 3 percent being thrown around. This is not a good idea. It would end up subsidizing the most risky borrowers and recreate the very conditions that led to the housing crisis of 2008. It would also increase demand for housing and apply upward rather than downward pressure on prices.

  The same can be said of the idea of granting tax write-offs or outright subsidies for down payments. That would worsen the deficit and only drive up prices to the point of the subsidy itself.

  Fourth, we hear talk of dramatically increasing the supply of housing in underdeveloped areas. Trump administration teams have floated the idea of freedom cities, for example, with huge development subsidies. Again, this amounts to yet another public expenditure that adds to the fiscal problem and does not address the real problem, which is that people want housing close to their places of work. It achieves nothing to build huge developments in places without enterprise infrastructure, as China has learned over several decades of boondoggles.

  Fifth, people suggest public housing and outright price control, both truly terrible options. In the 1930s, there was a great deal of optimism about the idea of government-provided housing for everyone, but those dreams died by the 1970s. Government can neither build nor manage housing, and even existing units reveal the problem. Every major city has a blighted area filled with public housing that everyone despises. No one wants more of that in their area.

  If none of these solutions is right, what can be done?

  We need to fix the problem of inflation above all else, because that is what is driving insurance costs so high. Insurance is a pricing of risk, and the rising prices in every area of repair, including labor costs, has made it unaffordable in many locations. In fact, this is a major reason why cash purchases are so popular: You don’t have to pay for broad insurance coverage. Fixing inflation will require restraint on money printing. Nothing else gets to the heart of the problem.

  Property taxes should be reduced or abolished, but that is a matter for states and localities, not the federal government. And many cities and states are faced with impossible fiscal cages: Lowering property taxes means less revenue for schooling and crime control, the result of which is to drive residents out rather than attract them. There is no easy solution to this, though state-level vouchers for private forms of schooling are promising. But there again, we have a solution that is several stages removed from the problem we are trying to address.

  Regulations on development at the federal level have become a terrible cost that has inhibited building and expansion of the housing stock. These days, it is nearly impossible even for an individual to build without fitting the new home to green-energy-compliant standards, for example. All of this needs to go. If it were my choice, I would completely defund the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It has been a very long menace and serves no other function than to feed tax dollars to large developers—a classic example of a captured agency.

  All of these solutions can help, but there is no magic answer to restoring the 1950s-era dream of universal housing ownership. It’s not even clear that it makes much sense anymore, as most young people prefer the flexibility of renting. They can find better uses for liquid funds than tying them up in property that carries huge liabilities in taxes, interest, and insurance.

  Meanwhile, focusing reform efforts on regulatory costs, inflation, and schooling options could end up doing more to repair the housing problem than any direct interventions in the market as it currently functions.

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 20:25

• Cold Weather Deaths Double In US, Minorities & Elderly Most At Risk
  Cold Weather Deaths Double In US, Minorities & Elderly Most At Risk

  Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times,

  Americans are dying from cold weather at more than twice the rate they did two decades ago.

  

  A total of 40,079 deaths were recorded from 1999 to 2022, with cold temperatures as either an underlying or contributing cause of death, according to a research letter published Dec. 19 in JAMA Network.

  The authors of the letter, affiliated with Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to analyze death certificates.

  The letter highlights a long-term trend of increase in the rate of cold-related deaths, more than doubling from 0.44 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 0.92 per 100,000 people in 2022.

  Cold-related deaths were highest among U.S. adults aged 75 years and older. Older people are more susceptible to cold weather due to their limited ability to regulate their body temperature and a greater prevalence of chronic health conditions.

  While the elderly experience the most deaths overall, the middle-aged group is seeing the fastest rate of increase in cold-related fatalities. Men were more likely to die from cold-related causes than women.

  These findings are “striking” because these deaths are preventable, Michael Liu, a doctor of medicine student at Harvard Medical School and the study’s first author, told The Epoch Times.

  Reasons for the Increase

  Data from the research letter also indicated that while American Indian, Alaska Native, and black people were more likely to die from cold-related deaths each year than any other racial or ethnic groups, Hispanic and white populations saw the most significant increases in the annual mortality rate attributed to cold weather.

  “There is also increasing evidence that social risk factors that predispose to cold-related deaths are rising in the U.S., including higher rates of social isolation and unsheltered homelessness,” Liu added.

  Liu noted that although he and his team cannot accurately predict trends going forward, “it is possible that deaths due to cold may increase over time.”

  “There is evidence that climate change has been associated with more extreme winter weather events,” he said.

  Another factor that may contribute to increasing deaths from cold in the United States over time is the aging population.

  “This population has a more limited thermoregulation capacity and a greater burden of underlying health conditions,” Liu said.

  Structural risk factors like not having sufficient home insulation or heating may also be contributing to cold-related deaths.

  American Indian, Alaska Native, and black populations, are particularly at risk due to living in homes with inadequate home insulation or heating. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, from July 2021 to May 2023, 36.4 percent of households facing energy insecurity were black.

  Additionally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that winter months have seen death rates 8 to 12 percent higher than those in non-winter months across the United States for several years.

  Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 19:50

• So Much For 'Liberated Syria'…Jolani Says It Will Take Four Years To Hold Elections
  So Much For ‘Liberated Syria’…Jolani Says It Will Take Four Years To Hold Elections

  Western mainstream has been celebrating the overthrow of Assad at the hands of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani (who has reverted to his given name of Ahmed al-Sharaa).

  Mainstream media has also been busy reporting every statement of his supposed ‘moderate’ and reform agenda. Generally these reports haven’t been critical of his words, or cared to delve into the long history of killings, kidnappings, and human rights abuses of HTS (previously known as Nusrah Front, or al-Qaeda in Syria). 

  But Jolani has given a fresh interview interview with Al-Arabiya on Sunday in which he made clear that he doesn’t expect elections to be held for up to four years. He also stated that writing a constitution for the new Syria will take three years.

  

  Every one of his appointed transitional government ministers is from the al-Qaeda linked organization, some of them designated terrorists. For example, we reported previously:

  On Thursday, Syria’s de facto authorities appointed former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra Front co-founder Anas Hassan Khattab as the head of the country’s general intelligence agency.

  Khattab, also known as Abu Ahmed Hudood, was blacklisted as a “terrorist” by the UN Security Council in September 2014 for his close association with Al-Qaeda.

  “Organizing elections may take four years; any valid elections will require a comprehensive population census,” Jolani told the Saudi-based outlet.

  He claimed that this lengthy delay and preparations would happen as “preparatory to a longer interim government.” In essence he’s admitting that despite some hailing the dramatic events of this month as a “revolution” which brought “freedom” to Syria, the reality is that he as an unappointed ruler will control the country for many years to come.

  Still, he’s running a PR campaign, trying to attract Western support and investment – and the dropping of US sanctions – and so his key line has been that all Syrians will have a home in the future Syria. But Alawites, Christians, and Druze are reporting attacks and vandalism against their religious sites by unchecked foreign jihadists and intimidation by HTS members. 

  “The Idlib experience is not suitable for all of Syria, but it is a nucleus,” Jolani said when the interviewer asked about Idlib being governed by strict Sharia law.

  “I am proud of everything Saudi Arabia has done for Syria, and Saudi Arabia has major investment opportunities in Syria,” Jolani also said about his relations with Saudi Arabia.

  The de facto Islamist leader of Syria is anything but a champion of democracy. Elections were held within a year after collapse of Soviet Union, East Germany etc. Jolani wants 4 years to turn the Syrian state into an apparatus of Muslim Brotherhood & affiliates power https://t.co/oZiWo5LBH0

  — Ghanem Nuseibeh (@gnuseibeh) December 29, 2024

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

  “Liberating Syria guarantees the security of the region and the Gulf for the next 50 years,” he added. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Saudi Arabia and Qatar heavily weaponized and funded the radical Islamic insurgency against Assad and the Syrian people over much of the last decade, also with deep CIA involvement.

  …So much for the revolution of ‘freedom’.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 18:40

• Yellen Says US Will Hit Debt Ceiling Mid-January, Forcing Treasury To Employ 'Extraordinary Measures'
  Yellen Says US Will Hit Debt Ceiling Mid-January, Forcing Treasury To Employ ‘Extraordinary Measures’

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the United States will hit its statutory debt ceiling around the middle of January, a development she said will prompt the Treasury to resort to “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its obligations.

  

  Yellen outlined the looming fiscal challenge in a Dec. 27 letter to congressional leaders, urging them to act to protect the nation’s economic credibility and preserve fiscal stability.

  She noted that the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 temporarily suspended the debt ceiling through Jan. 1, 2025, enabling lawmakers to avert default during contentious budget negotiations. A day after that deadline—on Jan. 2—a new debt limit will be set based on the total amount of outstanding debt subject to the statutory limit as of the end of Jan. 1. Yellen noted that the debt is projected to temporarily decrease by $54 billion on that date due to scheduled Medicare trust fund redemptions, providing a brief reprieve before extraordinary measures become necessary.

  “Treasury currently expects to reach the new limit between January 14 and January 23, at which time it will be necessary for Treasury to start taking extraordinary measures.” Yellen wrote.

  Extraordinary measures, often described as accounting maneuvers, allow the Treasury to free up cash and delay default. These measures, however, are a short-term solution. Once exhausted, they leave the government unable to meet its financial obligations without congressional intervention. Yellen emphasized the urgency of action, warning that a failure to address the debt ceiling would severely damage the nation’s economic credibility.

  “I respectfully urge Congress to act to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she wrote.

  Yellen’s warning comes as the national debt has climbed to a staggering $36 trillion, driven by decades of government spending outpacing tax revenue under both Republican and Democratic administrations. High inflation that soared after the pandemic led the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates, increasing borrowing costs and debt service payments.

  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) recently noted that interest payments on America’s public debt have nearly tripled since 2020 and in 2024 were higher than spending on Medicare and national defense. The nonprofit estimated that interest payments will continue climbing over the next decade and beyond, exceeding Social Security spending by 2051 to become the top expense.

  “The alarm bells are clearly ringing when it comes to our unsustainable national debt,” CRFB analysts wrote in the note. “Policymakers should put in place reforms that reduce the growth of debt and stabilize it as a share of the economy before interest and debt spiral further out of control.”

  President-elect Donald Trump has proposed eliminating the debt ceiling altogether, or at least extending it through 2029, a move that would give his incoming administration more breathing room by avoiding repeated debt cap standoffs on Capitol Hill.

  Congress first established a debt limit of $45 billion in 1939 and has since raised it 103 times as government spending has consistently exceeded tax revenue. As of October 2024, publicly held debt hit 98 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a sharp increase from 32 percent in October 2001. CBO projects that public debt will rise to 122 percent of gross domestic product in 2034.

  Maya MacGuineas, president of CRFB, warned in a recent statement that the risks of rising debt include slower economic growth, higher inflation, and constrained fiscal flexibility that would hamper the government’s ability to respond to economic downturns or global crises.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 18:05

• Your Brain Flushes Out Waste Every Night… Here's How To Help It Clean Up
  Your Brain Flushes Out Waste Every Night… Here’s How To Help It Clean Up

  Authored by Flora Zhao via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As we fall asleep, the brain begins clearing out waste.

  It operates like a late-night laundry service, with all the water valves opened and washing machines running at full capacity to remove dirt from piles of clothes, flushing the wastewater into the drain.

  

  The brain continuously produces various wastes, and if these are not cleared in time, we feel it. The signs can range from feeling foggy and fatigued to experiencing cognitive impairment.

  Fortunately, efforts can be made to optimize waste clearance during the night.

  Flush the Waste

  The human brain is one of the most metabolically active organs, accounting for about 20 percent of the body’s total energy expenditure. This high level of activity generates significant waste. Smaller byproducts, such as carbon dioxide, urea, and ammonia, diffuse into capillaries and are cleared through the bloodstream. Larger neurotoxic proteins—including beta-amyloid and tau, both widely associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, cannot be eliminated through the bloodstream alone due to their size.

  In the past, it was believed that the brain lacked a lymphatic system to remove waste and relied solely on internal mechanisms for clearance.

  However, in 2012, researchers discovered a specialized mechanism within the brain, analogous to the lymphatic system and capable of flushing out larger waste products from deep within the brain. This system was named the glymphatic system, a portmanteau of “glial” (referring to glial cells) and “lymphatic.” It is also known as the pseudo-lymphatic system.

  

  Surrounding the arteries in the brain is a sheath-like structure, with cerebrospinal fluid flowing through the space between the artery and this sheath. During sleep, the brain’s blood vessels constrict, increasing the space between the vessels and the sheath, which allows more cerebrospinal fluid to flow in. As the arteries pulse, the cerebrospinal fluid is pumped through brain tissue, flushing out waste—such as beta-amyloid and tau proteins—from the deeper spaces between brain cells, eventually clearing it from the brain.

  Deep Sleep

  “Waste-removing processes in the brain barely operate during wakefulness. It is very much a process that occurs in our deep-sleep stages,” Moira Junge, who holds a doctorate in health psychology and is the CEO of the Sleep Health Foundation in Australia and an adjunct clinical associate professor at Monash University, told The Epoch Times.

  Sleep is divided into two states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. NREM makes up 75 percent of total sleep time and is further divided into three stages, N1, N2, and N3—each reflecting progressively deeper levels of sleep.

  During N3, brainwaves are at their slowest.

  “It’s such a deep sleep that you’re not easily disturbed by the external environment; for example, you don’t hear the dog barking outside nor hear your partner come to bed,” Junge said.

  During sleep, the body moves through the stages sequentially, forming a complete sleep cycle lasting around 90 minutes. Throughout the night, a person typically experiences four to five sleep cycles.

  

  The glymphatic system becomes more active during sleep, especially during deep sleep, allowing for more effective waste clearance, said psychiatrist Dr. Jingduan Yang, founder of the Yang Institute of Integrative Medicine in Pennsylvania.

  In a mouse study published in Science, researchers used tracers to monitor changes in cerebrospinal fluid flow. They found that during sleep, the interstitial, or intervening, space expanded by more than 60 percent, and the tracer influx increased. The brain’s clearance rate of beta-amyloid doubled during sleep (or under anesthesia) compared to the awake state.

  Accumulated Beta-Amyloid

  Unfortunately, Americans today are sleeping less than ever.

  In 2023, 42 percent of Americans perceive that they get enough sleep, according to Gallup’s December 2023 poll. One in five people sleep fewer than five hours a night—compared to just 3 percent in 1942.

  Shorter sleep duration can also be attributed to people going to bed increasingly later. One study found that delaying bedtime by just one hour reduces total sleep by 14 to 33 minutes each night.

  In addition to going to bed later and sleeping less, we are also not sleeping well. According to the American Psychiatric Association, more than 50 million people in the United States suffer from chronic sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea.

  These issues directly reduce and disrupt deep sleep, shortening the critical window during which the glymphatic system works at peak efficiency. This, in turn, leads to greater waste accumulation in the brain.

  People reporting less adequate sleep and more sleep problems had greater amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s disease-sensitive brain regions.

  A 2021 human study found that even a single night of sleep deprivation can impair the brain’s ability to clear waste.

  An earlier clinical trial showed that despite the expected relatively sizeable interindividual variation in levels of a type of amyloid-beta, the average beta-amyloid accumulation from three morning samples of unrestricted sleep was 6 percent lower than that of three evening samples.

  In comparison, participants who stayed awake for 24 hours exhibited amyloid-beta levels up to 75.8 picograms per milliliter higher. This demonstrated that unrestricted sleep reduced amyloid-beta proteins but that sleep deprivation counteracted this effect. Furthermore, the longer the sleep duration—provided it was not excessive—the greater the reduction in beta-amyloid biomarkers.

  Read the rest here…

  Need help sleeping? Click here…

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 17:30

• Musk Appears To Soften Pro-Foreign Worker, H-1B Visa Stance Amid Online Spat
  Musk Appears To Soften Pro-Foreign Worker, H-1B Visa Stance Amid Online Spat

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Tesla billionaire and X owner Elon Musk appeared to soften his stance on H-1B visas on Saturday night after saying he’d “go to war” for the visas, amid an ongoing online spat over immigration and the tech industry.

  

  Tensions erupted between wealthy members of the tech world, including Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for what they describe as highly skilled workers in their industry by using H-1B visas, and Trump supporters who have long championed more stringent immigration policies to give priority to American workers.

  On Saturday night, Musk responded to a mega-thread on social media platform X that criticized how H-1B visas are being used.

  “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H-1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically,” he wrote.

  “I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.”

  Musk was responding to a remark from investor Robert Sterling, who said that:

  “America needs to be a destination for the world’s most elite talent. But the H-1B program isn’t the way to do that.”

  The H-1B visa program allows up to 65,000 highly skilled foreign workers annually, plus 20,000 foreigners who obtained an advanced degree from a U.S. institution, to fill specialized roles in the U.S. workforce.

  

  Separately, Musk has been accused of censorship from conservatives after multiple prominent accounts that criticized his views on immigration and H-1B visas lost access to premium features.

  Laura Loomer, a conservative activist and independent journalist who has long backed President-elect Donald Trump, wrote on X in multiple posts over the weekend that the social platform demonetized her account of more than 1.4 million followers. Her account appears to now lack a verified blue check mark.

  Loomer said that it was because she posted comments that were critical of Musk and his allies’ views on immigration as well as H-1B visas.

  “Why are X users who pay for @premium having their posts listed as ‘probable spam’ on my posts @elonmusk?” she wrote late on Saturday. “This is censorship. I understand you don’t like me, but this is nothing but retaliatory censorship?”

  Last Tuesday, Loomer criticized tech billionaires for descending “upon Palm Beach” as Trump works on his transition team at Mar-a-Lago. Two days later, Musk responded by saying: “Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore.”

  Later that week, she said that her account lost access to premium features.

  Others who also said their accounts lost premium access include InfoWars host and Jan. 6 defendant Owen Shroyer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, and the ConservativePAC, which all have hundreds of thousands of followers apiece.

  “My verification badge is now under review. Weird! Didn’t change anything,” wrote Wax, who also spoke out against H-1B visas. As of Sunday, however, Wax appears to have had his verification badge restored.

  “All of our influencers have now lost verification status, as well as our own page,” the Trump-supporting ConservativePAC wrote. “Our brand did nothing. We spoke out against HB1 visas and it appears that @elonmusk intentionally shut us down? Is this the new status quo from America’s ‘most free’ social media platform?”

  So far, Musk has not publicly responded to the recent accusations of censorship on X. The Epoch Times contacted the platform for comment but received no response as of Sunday.

  Musk and Ramaswamy, who were tapped to head the Trump-backed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), engaged in X infighting over whether immigrants who come to work at U.S. tech companies on H-1B visas or Americans would be better tech workers. Ramaswamy, in particular, drew ire for a lengthy post the day after Christmas that appeared to criticize a caricature of American culture.

  “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote. “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”

  Musk appeared to echo his sentiments, writing in a post that the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.” A number of pro-Trump accounts took umbrage with Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s comments.

  On Saturday, meanwhile, Trump weighed in on the controversy and appeared to back Musk and Ramaswamy, telling the New York Post that he supports the H-1B program.

  “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” said Trump, although the president-elect had restricted access to such visas during his first term in office.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 16:20

• Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, Dead At 100
  Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, Dead At 100

  The Washington Post reports that the 39th US president, Jimmy Carter, passed away on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia.

  

  James E. Carter III, the son of the former president, confirmed that his father passed away earlier today at the age of 100.

  

  He was the oldest living US president in history. Although his son confirmed the death, he did not provide an immediate cause. 

  

  Here’s more from WaPo:

  In a statement in February 2023, the Carter Center said the former president, after a series of hospital stays, would stop further medical treatment and spend his remaining time at home under hospice care. He had been treated in recent years for an aggressive form of melanoma skin cancer, with tumors that spread to his liver and brain.

  He was predeceased by his wife, Rosalynn Carter, who died in November 2023 at 96. He is survived by his four children, 11 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

  Carter entered politics in the 1960s as a Democrat at the state level. By the 1970s, he had been elected governor of Georgia. He served as US president for one term, from 1977 to 1981.

  Bookmark & Send This To Everyone Before They Vote In The 2024 Election

  “When Mr. Carter became president, inflation was 4.8%. It is now running at 12.7% — We don’t have inflation because the people are living too well. We have inflation because the government is living too well” pic.twitter.com/CgO8jjwAv2

  — Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 2, 2024

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

  WaPo noted, “When Mr. Carter left Washington in January 1981, he was widely regarded as a mediocre president, if not an outright failure,” adding, “The list of what had gone wrong during his presidency, not all of it his fault, was long. It was a time of economic distress, with a stagnant economy and stubbornly high unemployment and inflation.”

  

  Correct. 

  Joe Biden is now the worst living president in history.

  — Thomad Lund🇺🇸 (@LundThomad) December 29, 2024

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

  Carter became the oldest living US president following the death of George H. W. Bush in late 2018 at the age of 94. In recent years, he maintained a low profile due to the Covid pandemic and had been in hospice care for over a year.

  Before the former President died, Jimmy Carter fulfilled his wish to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/cgmfoDl2Mv

  — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 29, 2024

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

  The non-profit ‘Carter Center’ also confirmed the passing of the former president:

  Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, died peacefully Sunday, Dec. 29, at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family. He was 100, the longest-lived president in U.S. history.

  President Carter is survived by his children — Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Rosalynn, and one grandchild.

  “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”

  There will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., followed by a private interment in Plains, Georgia. The final arrangements for President Carter’s state funeral, including all public events and motorcade routes, are still pending.

  The Carter Center will provide updates about ceremonies and activities to honor the life of President Carter as they become available here and soon on the official Carter Family Tribute Site (https://t.co/Tg5UZt7kPV). Read our statement: https://t.co/CNBUBpffPz

  — The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) December 29, 2024

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

  *Developing… 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 16:17

• A Decade Of McFlation
  A Decade Of McFlation

  Fast food joints used to be the go-to choice for convenient, budget-friendly meals, but over the years, they’ve becoming increasingly tough on the wallet.

  One major franchise that has seen substantial price hikes over the past decade is none other than the Golden Arches. This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, shows the price increase of 10 McDonald’s menu items from 2014 to 2024.

  

  The data comes from Finance Buzz and was accessed in May 2024.

  FinanceBuzz analyzed menu prices from 2014, 2019, and 2024 for 10 items available consistently across those years, sourcing data from menu price websites, restaurant official sites, and archived records via the Wayback Machine. Additional adjustments were made to account for franchise pricing variations.

  McRaising the Prices

  Below, we show the price increases of 10 different McDonald’s menu items according to Finance Buzz.

  

  McDonalds is by far the industry leader in fast food, and they’ve also led the way in terms of menu price increases this past decade, according to Finance Buzz.

  Among the restaurants Finance Buzz measured inflation for, McDonald’s was the top of the list with a 100% average price increase across 10 different menu items since 2014.

  Four of their menu items have more than doubled in price since 2014, including their McDouble burger, medium fries, and Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, which used to cost $5.39 and will now run customers back almost $12.

  The McChicken sandwich saw the greatest price increase, almost tripling in price from $1.00 in 2014 to $2.99 in 2024.

  To learn more about fast food inflation over the years, check out this graphic that shows the average price increase of 10 menu items of 10 American fast food chains.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 15:45

• Ukraine Receives First Ever Natural Gas Shipment From US As It Cuts Energy Ties With Russia
  Ukraine Receives First Ever Natural Gas Shipment From US As It Cuts Energy Ties With Russia

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  Ukraine has received its first-ever shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, marking a pivotal step in Ukraine’s efforts to cut energy supply ties with Russia amid dismal relations between the two warring neighbors.

  

  The LNG shipment—around 45,000 tons—was delivered to Ukraine via a Greek terminal in the Mediterranean on Dec. 27, according to DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy firm. While the United States supplies roughly 40 percent of Europe’s LNG imports, this is the first direct purchase of U.S.-sourced LNG by Ukraine.

  While European countries have been reducing their reliance on gas imports from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, LNG transiting Ukrainian territory still accounts for roughly 5 percent of the European Union’s (EU) imports.

  “The arrival of this LNG cargo is a clear signal of DTEK’s determination to play its part in strengthening Ukraine and Europe’s energy security,“ DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said in a statement.

  ”Cargoes like this are not only providing the region with a flexible and secure source of power, but are further eroding Russia’s influence over our energy system. We are very grateful to the United States for the strategic contribution it is making to Europe’s energy security with such shipments.”

  In a few days, a five-year deal for Russian gas flows to Europe, which transit through Ukraine, is set to expire on Dec. 31. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised briefing on Dec. 26 that time has run out for a new gas transit deal with Ukraine, which brings LNG to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Austria.

  “They announced that they would not renew the contract,” Putin said, saying that Ukraine was punishing Europe by its refusal to extend the transit agreement.

  “There is no contract and it is impossible to conclude it in 3-4 days,” Putin said, adding that Russia was prepared to supply gas to Europe via Poland through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

  Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in mid-December that Kyiv was prepared to devise an agreement to transit gas through its territory to Europe, and he ruled out extending any existing deal with Russia.

  Friday’s shipment is the first of a number of expected LNG deliveries from the United States to Ukraine, according to DTEK, which in June signed a deal with U.S. energy group Venture Global for gas shipments through the end of 2026 from Venture Global’s Plaquemines facility. Additionally, DTEK will be buying up to 2 million tonnes per year of LNG from Venture Global’s CP2 facility over the next 20 years.

  “With this landmark agreement, we will help bolster Ukraine’s security of natural gas supply, aid continued recovery and economic growth in the region, and further strengthen European energy security,” Mike Sabel, CEO of Venture Global, said in a statement.

  Friday’s first-ever shipment of U.S.-sourced LNG to Ukraine followed President-elect Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose tariffs on EU countries if they don’t buy more oil and gas from the United States.

  Trump’s tariff threat targeted the EU–U.S. trade deficit in favor of Europe, which in 2023 amounted to around $57 billion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 15:10

• New Israeli Airstrikes Near Damascus Kill 11: War Monitor
  New Israeli Airstrikes Near Damascus Kill 11: War Monitor

  The government in Damascus has changed, but Israel’s relentless aerial assaults on Syria have not. A Sunday Israeli strike targeted an old army weapons depot northeast of the capital.

  “An Israeli airstrike in the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday killed 11 people, according to a war monitor, as Israel continues to target Syrian weapons and military infrastructure even after the ouster of former President Bashar Assad,” reports The Associated Press.

  

  The depot which was struck has been described as belonging to “Assad’s forces” in the industrial town of Adra. But Israel has been known to launch massive strikes in heavily populated areas, resulting typically in significant civilian casualties.

  In the days and weeks after the December 8 takeover of the country by anti-Assad jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Israel has conducted hundreds of attacks seeking to degrade and destroy the national stockpile of weapons and advanced anti-air defenses.

  Syria under the Assad government was known as having the most advanced air defense missile system in the region, having long been supplied by Russia.

  Israel has used the opportunity of Assad’s ouster to permanently decimate Syria’s sophisticated weapons systems, including large-scale bombings of chemical weapons research centers, the main locations which are on the outskirts of Damascus.

  This is also to prevent the return of Iranian forces to the country, and perhaps to ensure that whatever government rules Syria years from now can have no access to ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.

  At this point, Israeli tanks are a mere 20 miles from Damascus, and the Israeli military has seized Syrian land which extends out from the Golan Heights.

  Adra saw heavy fighting throughout many years of the war in Syria, and at one point was occupied by al-Qaeda…

  According to sources, at least 17 people were killed by the israelis and others injured in airstrikes targeting the Adra Industrial City in Damascus pic.twitter.com/cgCPyK21pK

  — Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) December 29, 2024

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

  Israel also plans to indefinitely occupy the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon which is the highest mountain in the region and a strategic geographic height. Its leadership has claimed this is necessary to establish a security buffer zone.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 14:35

• "The Bond Markets Are Revolting" – Ed Dowd Exposes Biden Admin's "Incompetence… Or Fraud"
  “The Bond Markets Are Revolting” – Ed Dowd Exposes Biden Admin’s “Incompetence… Or Fraud”

  Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of phinancetechnologies.com is back with more data on how the Biden Administration propped up a failing economy during the 2024 election year. 

  

  Dowd contends “crisis level spending” was being administered, along with some bigtime “fraud.” 

  Dowd says, “We had 10% deficit to GDP during the Great Financial Crisis (2008 – 2009) when we actually had a crisis.  We had 8% deficit to GDP during this election year.  You have to ask yourself, what was the crisis?” 

  “The crisis was to get the Biden Administration (and Kamala) re-elected.  So, they went on binge spending.  They borrowed from the future to try to ensure they won.  

  They did it two ways:  They hired massive amounts of government personnel to float the economy, and they also did illegal immigration. 

  We are thinking it was 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants that came in the last four years.  The majority of the illegal immigrants came in the last two years.  That stimulated the economy and raised the velocity of money as those people were given money. 

  All the NGO’s that facilitated the illegal immigration also got money, and that stimulated the economy.  This deficit added $2 trillion, and that was unproductive assets.  So, we borrowed from the future to create more government jobs and imported unprecedented amounts of illegal immigrants that don’t add to the economy. 

  That’s what we have, and President Trump’s policies are going to reverse all that sugar juice.  There are going to be mass deportations and reduced government spending. 

  That short term juice is going away, and it was not sustainable anyway.  The bond markets are revolting, and that could not have gone on much longer.”

  But it was not just massive money printing and debt creation that hid how bad the real economy was, it was very crooked data.  Dowd says,

  “We also had bureaucratic incompetence or fraud or whatever you want to call it.  They were padding the non-farm payroll numbers to the tune of 1.25 million jobs…

  If you look at the chart, which we don’t have here, it’s insane. 

  It’s one of the biggest misses between reality and estimates we have ever seen. 

  It’s a seven-sigma event.  It’s 1.25 million jobs.  It’s already started downward revisions…

  The 3rd quarter GDP of 3% will be revised down, and when we get . . . the data in February, there will be more GDP economic revisions down. . . . The capital markets made bad decisions on this data.  The Fed made bad decisions on this data, and corporations made bad decisions on this data.  The price tag is coming due in 2025.  Not only that, but we have a slowing economy across the globe…

  The amount of foreign assets in our stock market has never been higher, and this is all going to reverse.  The price will be paid in 2025. . . .What’s coming is coming.  It’s how low do we go, and when do the animal spirits kick in?  So, there is pain coming, and it’s up to the Trump Administration to get all their policies enacted.  Then we have a hope and a prayer coming out the other side that we will be way better off. 

  The bottom line is there is pain coming regardless.  The question is how fast can we restart with Trump’s policies?”

  Dowd likes gold as part of a portfolio, and he is suggesting people get some cash in hand. 

  Dowd says the war in Syria is going to intensify, and you will be hearing much more negative news from that area in 2025. 

  Dowd, who wrote the popular book “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023,” says the epidemic caused by the CV19 injections will be with us for the rest of our lives. 

  Dowd released new data that added 800,000 people to the 4 million disabled we already had since the CV19 mRNA vax began.  Dowd says,

  “The other thing that is going on is the increase in cancers.  Science is following up . . . There is cancer causing agents in the mRNA vaccines, and we are seeing cancers on the rise. . . . There are new (medical insurance) claims among young workers, especially cancer claims. . . .

  Insurance rates are going up across the board. 

  The answer to what is going on is to raise prices.  They are not differentiating between the vaxed and unvaxed.  So, everybody’s prices are going up.  Health insurance is going to become unaffordable for most people.”

  There is much more in the 48-minute interview.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with money manager and investment expert Ed Dowd, author of the updated book called “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023” for 12.28.24.  The “sudden deaths” are still happening at epidemic levels!!

  *  *  *

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com click here

  You can order Dowd’s updated book called “Cause Unknown” by clicking here.

  If you want to go to Dowd’s website called PhinanceTechnologies.com, click here.

  (Be on the lookout for his new groundbreaking economic report coming out in January.)

  Dowd’s work on compiling data on deaths, disabilities and injuries caused by the CV19 bioweapon/vax is all free at his website called HumanityProjects.info. You can see the data by clicking here, and you can donate to the HumanityProjects.info by clicking here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 14:00

• US Homelessness Epidemic Explodes Under Biden-Harris
  US Homelessness Epidemic Explodes Under Biden-Harris

  The latest Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), reveals that homelessness across the United States has surged to record highs during the Biden-Harris administration. This is largely attributed to the ongoing housing affordability crisis. Additionally, Biden-Harris’ disastrous open southern border policies unleashed untold millions of illegal aliens, compounding the problem as Democrat-run cities are giving free hotel rooms to illegals while their own homeless populations suffer.

  The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that homelessness is up 18% this year.

  California is of course #1.

  Great job Democrats! pic.twitter.com/3RrVxZrlE3

  — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 27, 2024

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

  HUD’s report found 770,000 people were ‘experiencing homelessness’ on a single night in January 2024, an 18% jump from 2023 figures. This number does not include the nation’s entire homeless population because some stay with friends or family. 

  The figure follows a dramatic 12% rise in homelessness in 2023, and is the highest since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. 

  🇺🇸 While American tax money goes to foreign wars in Israel and Ukraine..

  This is America!

  A pandemic of poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and drug abuse.

  This is not America First. pic.twitter.com/s7bQwMkW97

  — Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) December 29, 2024

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

  “Migration had a particularly notable impact on family homelessness, which rose 39% from 2023-2024,” HUD wrote in the report. 

  HUD continued, “In the 13 communities that reported being affected by migration, family homelessness more than doubled. Whereas in the remaining 373 communities, the rise in families experiencing homelessness was less than 8%.” 

  Massively concerning is that 150,000 children experienced homelessness, a 33% jump in 2024 when compared to the prior year. The report does not separate the number of homeless immigrants vs. US citizens.

  Robert Marbut Jr., the former executive director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021, told AP News the latest HUD figures over the past four years are “disgraceful.” 

  “We need to focus on treatment of substance use and mental illness, and bring back program requirements, like job training,” Marbut said in an email response to the media outlet.

  While homelessness rose 18% in 2024, Democrat-run cities were giving free hotels to illegal immigrants.

  Never forget this.

  — Lance Gooden (@Lancegooden) December 29, 2024

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

  Besides Biden-Harris importing the third world to the first world and the worsening housing affordability crisis amid the government-sparked inflation storm, HUD blamed some of the homelessness on natural disasters. 

  HUD’s data is nearly a year old, and both the housing affordability crisis and illegal alien invasion have persisted. 

  Of note, more than half of people experiencing homelessness nationwide resided in just four states: California, New York, Florida, and Washington. 

  Hey @BernieSanders why is homelessness so much worse in blue states with the policies you advocate versus red states with policies that encourage getting a job?

  Here’s the chart from Biden’s HUD; compare TX & FL to CA, OR, NY & VT: https://t.co/yzA87a9FLY pic.twitter.com/QvgCAda5cz

  — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 28, 2024

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

  Gavin Newsom failed California. 

  Gavin Newsom bragging about the second derivative of homelessness is insane deflection.

  Here’s what homelessness under his “leadership” actually looks like, from his own state auditor: https://t.co/I4YvpPY6gc pic.twitter.com/HPmdHwTRLR

  — Kane 謝凱堯 (@kane) December 28, 2024

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

  Big sigh! 

  The more we spend on homelessness, the worse it gets. Here’s where it’s all going: pic.twitter.com/Z5jPuZtswi

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 29, 2024

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

  This latest report should come as no surprise to readers already aware that “America’s Homeless Population Reaches Record High Under Biden-Harris Admin” and that the economy is in far more dire straits than the government has acknowledged (thank the BLS statisticians).

  It’s not just that this story was relevant before the election and they waited, it’s that they’re back to using “homeless” instead of “unhoused.” https://t.co/0V9xn1U8Oa

  — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) December 28, 2024

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 13:25

• Pandemic Hawks Circle Dr. Jay: Pundits Launch Attacks On Bhattacharya Ahead Of Confirmation Hearings
  Pandemic Hawks Circle Dr. Jay: Pundits Launch Attacks On Bhattacharya Ahead Of Confirmation Hearings

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  For those who opposed the censorship and cancel campaigns during the pandemic, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya became an iconic figure of resistance. Unfortunately, the same can be said of the anti-free speech movement and pandemic hawks. Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies, has been nominated as the next head of the National Institutes of Health. As I wrote this weekend in my column, the nomination was heralded by many as a turning point for the NIH. It is also a rallying cry for those who supported the earlier measures, as shown by a hit piece in Scientific American, accusing him of being a danger to the very lives of American citizens.

  

  Bhattacharya was censored, blacklisted, and vilified for the last four years due to his opposing views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses. He was recently honored with the prestigious “Intellectual Freedom” award from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.

  Before the pandemic, Bhattacharya was one of the most respected scientists in the world and served as the director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging.

  That all changed when he dared to question the science behind pandemic policies, including suggesting that natural immunity would be as good if not better protection for young healthy individuals.

  It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.

  Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses.

  Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

  Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.

  Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government.

  Others questioned the six-foot rule, which shut down many businesses, as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did it result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, but the media further ostracized dissenting critics.

  Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result of massive social and economic costs.

  Now, those who supported these policies are gathering to oppose Bhattacharya.

  It is hardly surprising that one of the first hit pieces came from Scientific American. The magazine not only helped lead the mob response to the pandemic but has also been criticized for abandoning neutrality in recent elections.

  Only a few weeks ago, editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth posted a raving, profanity-laden meltdown on social media in which effectively called over 77.3 million Americans who voted for President-elect Donald Trump both “fascists” and bigots.

  Now the magazine has published an article by Dr. Steven Albert, a professor and the Hallen Chair of Community Health and Social Justice at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health.

  Two specific attacks stand out in the piece.

  The “Personal Pique” of Censorship

  First, Dr. Albert suggests that Dr. Bhattacharya was never actually censored. He insists that what Bhattacharya calls censorship was merely the fact that “social media venues … dropped his messaging.” It is curious wording and it is not quite clear what Dr. Albert is trying to say.

  When Albert’s article appeared, various other outlets advanced the same claim. For example, MSNBC (which also was a leading outlet in the attacks on skeptics and dissenters during the pandemic) mocked the claim that Bhattacharya was censored.

  “The problem is there’s basically zero evidence to support Bhattacharya and his supporters’ claims of censorship. It is true that some internet sites appeared to remove or limit access to the document. But, as with medical professionals not being sure how best to handle Covid, the same was true of social media companies, which struggled with how best to handle the spread of potentially dangerous information that could have resulted in harm to users.

  Many companies chose, of their own free will and as they were allowed as private actors, to downplay certain information that they felt might do more harm than good. That is their own First Amendment-protected right as private entities in the United States.”

  The article goes on to suggest that there is no proof of censorship without government direction or control.

  As the ACLU has long maintained, censorship occurs in both private and governmental forums. The same figures insist that, if there is no violation of the First Amendment (which only applies to the government), there is no free speech violation. The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies.

  There is also ample evidence of government officials pushing social media companies to censor pandemic critics. MSNBC simply excuses the censorship by saying that these companies “struggled with how best to handle the spread of potentially dangerous information that could have resulted in harm to users.” In reality, the censorship itself cost the nation greatly. We never had the type of debate that we need on the efficacy of natural immunities, masks, or other precautions. We never explored the science supporting the six-foot rule. We suffered immense costs in education and the economy rather than allowing scientists on both sides to be heard equally on such forums.

  Instead, Bhattacharya became a persona non grata in academia and was subjected to cancel campaigns.  In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik decried how “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford allowed these scientists to speak at a scientific forum. He was outraged that, while “Bhattacharya’s name doesn’t appear in the event announcement,” he was an event organizer. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”

  Critics of Bhattacharya have also cited the fact that he retained his position, unlike some who were dropped by their institutions or associations. Survival is hardly the test of whether someone was censored or canceled.  Bhattacharya holds a position with academic protections, as do some of us fortunate to have tenure in this age of rage. The fact that he persisted and the American people rejected the establishment in this election is not proof that he was not targeted or blocked from academic settings or social media sites.

  Dr. Albert dismisses the censorship debate as a “personal pique” and “a distraction” that “should not obscure the central focus of U.S. public health policy during the pandemic.” Obviously, for many of us who value free speech and a diversity of viewpoints, it is a bit more than a “personal pique.”

  The “Vanity” of Personal Autonomy

  The second point that stood out in the Scientific American article was the warning that Bhattacharya is too focused on individual rights and personal autonomy to be the head of NIH. Dr. Albert declares:

  “Pitting personal autonomy against the application of science to policy is fine for vanity webcasts and think tanks, but inappropriate for NIH leadership. If he would rather focus on promoting personal autonomy in pandemic policy, perhaps he is being nominated to the wrong agency.”

  It is a chilling observation from a leading public health figure. NIH leadership suggests policies impacting a nation and must balance the costs and benefits of any given course. The NIH states that it is focused not just on “scientific integrity” but “public accountability and social responsibility in the conduct of science.” Isn’t individual rights part of that responsibility?

  I would hope that the head of NIH (indeed every NIH official) would place individual rights and personal autonomy as one of the most prominent considerations in setting policies.policy-making Indeed, the NIH routinely discusses and publishes papers on the importance of personal autonomy when discussing subjects like abortion.

  These two points are linked on some level. The nation was divided on many COVID policies, and doubts only grew with the censorship and intolerance that was evident during the pandemic. The NIH contributed to that mistrust with its heavy-handed tactics and viewpoint intolerance. One of the victims of that period will now head the NIH. That experience could be invaluable as Dr. Bhattacharya steers his agency toward a more transparent and tolerant path.

  *  *  *

  Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 12:50

• Latest Race Hoax: Slur Posted At College 'Fabricated' To Make Trump Backers Look Bad
  Latest Race Hoax: Slur Posted At College ‘Fabricated’ To Make Trump Backers Look Bad

  In the latest manifestation of a persistent phenomenon, a race hoaxer at a college stepped in to fill the gap between demand for racism and the supply — by creating fictional racism in the form of a written slur posted on the campus, school officials say.   

  This phony incident took place over Thanksgiving break at Rhodes College, a small private school in Memphis with an enrollment of about 4,000. A dozen sheets of paper that paired a racist message with support for then-recently-elected presidential candidate Donald Trump were left at the school’s National Pan-Hellenic Council Plaza, which is a tribute to the school’s historically black fraternities and sororities. Blacks represent 9.7% of the school’s enrollment.  

  According to reported accounts, the hand-written pages said “F*CK NI**ERS, TRUMP RULES.” The school immediately issued a campus security alert about a “reported hate crime of intimidation based on racial bias,” and included a list of “resources available for survivors,” which included personal counseling, along with guidance from the college’s Institutional Equity office.

  

  Black students conducted a silent protest in the lobby of the school’s library, wearing black clothing and posting signs with messages that included “Hold Racists Accountable,” “Stop Racists,” and “Hate speech will not be tolerated.” The university’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity held a paradoxical “open meeting” for black people only. “This is a chance for Black students, faculty, staff, and alumni to unite and develop actionable steps toward institutional change,” an announcement said. 

  Here’s how the “incident” was initially reported: 

  In what will come as no surprise to regular ZeroHedge readers, the whole thing turned out to be phony, as the school confirmed in a statement to Fox News Digital:  

  “Thanks to the tireless efforts of our Campus Safety officers and the Memphis Police Department, the investigation into the hate crime that occurred recently on our campus has ended with the identification of the perpetrator and the conclusion this incident was fabricated. This individual has admitted responsibility…This matter has caused enormous pain to our community, and we are taking the appropriate steps to hold this individual accountable, including all legal avenues that may be available to us.”

  

  Rhodes College’s quest for accountability has its limits: the school is keeping the culprit’s name and relationship with the institution a secret. The college did say the hoaxer reported the incident with hopes of blaming someone else for doing it.  

  Between the posting of the racist, Trump-supporting language and the announcement that it was a fraud, black student and Pan-Hellenic Council member Lauren Roberts complained that authorities weren’t working hard enough to find the (non-existent) bigot, telling WREG, “They are saying they are investigating and doing this and that and the third but it’s been two weeks and you still haven’t found anybody that’s kind of like a bummer to the black community, in my opinion.”

  The Rhodes College episode is the latest of many campus racism hoaxes. A very small sampling of other such frauds includes:  

  • A black male student who wrote racist graffiti on a dorm at Albion College 
  • A black female student who reportedly vandalized her own own dorm door at Wayne State
  • A black female student who posted a note reading “Black people don’t belong” to her dorm door at Southern Illinois
  • Three black female students who falsely claimed to have been victimized by a white mob on a bus at UAlbany

  Kentucky State University criminal justice and political science professor Wilfred Reilly wrote a book on race hoaxes and maintains a database which suggests less than a third of reported hate crimes are real. Reilly wrote that, with “absolute confidence,” it can be said that “the actual number of hate crime hoaxes is indisputably large…We are not speaking here of just a few bad apples.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/29/2024 – 12:15

Digest powered by RSS Digest