- Police To Target Americans For Their Ideological Beliefs And Behaviors
Police To Target Americans For Their Ideological Beliefs And Behaviors
Via Mass Private I,
Much has been written about President Joe Biden’s new Domestic Terror law, but nothing I have seen until now shows just how horrifying it is.
To say that the White House uses the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) like political puppets to push their own agenda would be an understatement. The New Yorker chronicled four DHS secretaries who were forced to resign by October 2019, and a fifth who resigned this January.
So when I heard about DHS counterterrorism chief John Cohen having a hard time containing his enthusiasm over Biden’s new domestic terrorism law in a GW Program on Extremism webinar I knew it couldn’t be good.
Ricardo Vazquez Garcia, from Homeland Security Today describes what happened.
Garcia does a great job of framing the Feds justification for creating a new War On Terror by targeting American citizens.
“A lot of progress was made by the U.S. government in dealing with the threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations and in particular dealing with the way those organizations operated, the way they recruited individuals, the way they communicated, the way they developed plans, the way they saw to introduce operatives into the domestic environment, the way they sought to recruit people here domestically,” Cohen said. “I think it is safe to say that the U.S. created quite a robust counterterrorism capability. The challenge is the threat we face today is significantly different than the one we faced after Sept. 11,” DHS counterterrorism chief John Cohen said.
As America closes in on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, the Feds want the public to believe that unknown terrorist organizations are recruiting your neighbor[s] to become a domestic extremist. But it is not just any neighbor, this time it is far-right “extremists” or White supremacists and Trump supporters who they want to recruit.
For years DHS officials have warned Americans of the dangers that lurk just outside their front doors or worse in the far-flung Middle East where extremists are plotting to bomb us, shoot us, or poison our water systems. The only difference to the terrorists that await Americans is that now they are allegedly targeting a person’s ideological beliefs.
According to Cohen, “the most significant terrorist threat facing the U.S. today comes from individuals or lone offenders, and small groups of individuals who based on an ideological belief system, primarily an ideological belief system they self-connect with online activity, but they’ll go out and commit an act of violence on behalf of that belief or a combination of ideological beliefs, or a combination of ideological beliefs and personal grievances.”
What does this mean for Americans?
It means that the Feds can target individuals for expressing anti-government sentiments.
“In many respects, this is a much more individualized threat, and what I mean by that is if you look at the lethal attacks that have occurred in the U.S. over the last several years, they have been conducted by individuals who spend incredible amounts of time online viewing extremist content, content about past violent attacks, they tend to be individuals who have shared behavioral health or environmental characteristics,” Cohen said.
Targeting people for their ideological beliefs is horrifying in and of itself. Biden’s new domestic terror law will also give law enforcement the right to target people based on their behaviors.
“What we mean by that, yes, the motive and ideological beliefs are important as part of the analytic process, but the threat tends to come from individuals who have a very superficial understanding of the ideological belief system they use as the validation for an act of violence, but they do have shared behavioral characteristics,” Cohen said.
If any of this is beginning to sound like China, one only need look at Hong Kong to see the similarities. Speaking out in print against an authoritative regime is an arrestable offense, demonstrating against police brutality is an arrestable offense and so on.
As a recent Brietbart article pointed out, there is no “official Pentagon definition of extremism.” So how can our government give more powers to law enforcement to surveil and arrest suspected “domestic extremists”?
Mike Berry, the general counsel for First Liberty Institute, said he asked the Counter-Extremism Working Group (CEWG) how it intended to define “extremism” and the answer he got was something to the effect of: “We’re still working on that, we’ll probably take the existing definition and expand it.” Berry said that response was “problematic.”
When an organization that backed President Trump warns people about Biden’s new domestic terror law, it is time for all of us to take notice.
Berry warned, “I just don’t know how you can reconcile the Constitution with trying to criminalize someone’s thoughts and beliefs.” And that is the crux of the problem.
When DHS counterterrorism chief Cohen goes on record saying, “There have been several cases where individuals have not met the threshold for domestic terror yet they eventually go out and commit an act of violence”, they are admitting that this is another scam that the mass media is only too happy to perpetuate.
When the Feds and the mass media started asking Americans to “enhance domestic terrorism reporting” by reporting family members and co-workers, you know law enforcement has become a mirror image of other authoritarian regimes.
“Our goal is to enhance domestic terrorism analysis and improve information sharing throughout law enforcement at the federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial level, and where appropriate with private sector partners.”
“This involves creating contexts in which those who are family members or friends or co-workers know that there are pathways and avenues to raise concerns and seek help for those who they have perceived to be radicalizing and potentially radicalizing towards violence,” the White House official said.
Imagine if I used the same logic that the Feds and law enforcement use. It could go something like this:
One day, I looked outside my window and saw my neighbor talking to a Black man and then I saw them talking to someone who appeared to be a Muslim but I couldn’t see the person’s face because it was covered with a hijab. Then I saw my neighbor putting anti-government and Black Lives Matter signs in their front yard; they even put up a Pride flag. The next day, my neighbor knocked on my front door asking me to sign a police reform petition. Little did I know that my wife and kids had already signed the petition.
The next day when I went to work, I overheard my co-workers saying that they planned to march in a Black Lives Matter protest and asked me to sign a police brutality petition.
So when I got off work I immediately called DHS’s new, “Be On The Lookout For Domestic Terrorists” hotline and filed reports on my neighbors, my family and co-workers, I even called my local police department and filed reports with the local Fusion Center. I did this to protect my Homeland, because you never really know about a person’s ideological beliefs and behaviors. (FYI, there is no domestic terrorism hotline, yet.)
When did freedom of expression become a tool for law enforcement to identify family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers as potential extremists?
Giving law enforcement more powers to target people based on made-up or junk science and unsound definitions of domestic terrorism has all the earmarks of an ever-expanding police state that began 11 years ago.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 23:40 - Putin's 'City-Killer': Russia Launches World's Largest Nuclear-Armed Submarine
Putin’s ‘City-Killer’: Russia Launches World’s Largest Nuclear-Armed Submarine
It’s being popularly dubbed “Putin’s city-killer” – and is also being widely acknowledged as the largest submarine in the world to be built for 30 years: Russian Navy’s ‘Special Mission’ K-329 Belgorod has been put to see for the first time within the past days, undergoing sea trials.
Estimated at 178 meters (584 feet) long and about 15 meters (49 feet) across, it’s twice the size of the UK Royal Navy’s largest submarines, but more impressively is equipped with AI-guided nuclear tipped underwater drones which according to one prominent Western source are capable of hitting coastal targets lying 6,000 miles away.
Belgorod, via Defence View The Belgorod has been known about and teased by the Kremlin for years, but is now being hailed in Russian media as a “game changer”.
One military expert with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Dr. Sidharth Kaushal, explained to The Mail on Sunday:
“The Belgorod is large enough to act as a mother ship for a unique set of smaller vessels which have deep-diving capabilities and the ability to tamper with undersea infrastructure.
It’s well equipped for sabotage and clandestine operations. Its Poseidon nuclear torpedoes could also be a very effective means of attacking an aircraft carrier in wartime – one against which at present no defense exists.”
It was designed with the advanced Poiseidon torpedoes in mind as part of Russia’s broader nuclear deterrence arsenal.
Here’s more on why the gigantic Belgorod poses a major challenge for US and other Western attempts to classify and thus understand the vessel from a separate naval analysis source:
Belgorod it’s intended purpose presents Western analysts with an enigma. She will combine two seemingly contradictory roles. The first is as a host submarine (read ‘mothership’) for deep diving nuclear powered midget submarines. These are capable of working on cables and other objects on the sea floor. The concern in NATO is that these could include the undersea internet cables connecting Western countries. This is termed a ‘special mission’ in navy parlance (which is full of euphemisms for covert activities).
The second role is one of nuclear strike and deterrence. For this she will be armed with six ‘2м39′ Poseidon torpedoes. These are a whole new category of weapon not fielded by any another navy. They have been described as ‘Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedoes’.
Each of these AI-driven torpedoes are themselves over 20 meters long, and at least according to Russian military claims have a practically unlimited range in terms of what they could reach across entire oceans.
The timing of the submarine’s sea trial launch days ago is also a “propaganda victory” of sorts given last week’s dangerous Black Sea warning shots incident off Crimea involving Russia chasing away from its waters the UK’s HMS Defender.
British defense officials within days after the incident expressed “surprise” at how rapidly things escalated, given it seems they didn’t expected Russia to that quickly initiate live fire warnings.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 23:20 - Georgia Secretary Of State Seeking Election Takeover Of Fulton County: "Enough Is Enough"
Georgia Secretary Of State Seeking Election Takeover Of Fulton County: “Enough Is Enough”
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is pursuing the taking over of Fulton County’s elections operations, claiming that the Atlanta-area county has habitually failed to count votes.
“I think people are saying enough is enough,” Raffensperger said during a Just the News podcast on June 30.
“I’m tired of it, but so is everyone else who lives in the other 158 counties [in Georgia].”
Raffensperger, a Republican who has been frequently criticized by former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election, stated that he will invoke Georgia’s recent election integrity law that allows Georgia’s Elections Board to take over elections operations in localities that have issues with counting ballots.
The law, SB 202, was approved by the Georgia state Legislature and signed into law earlier this year. The Department of Justice announced last week that it will file a civil rights lawsuit against the measure.
Raffensperger was asked during the podcast about whether he would recommend that the Elections Board take over Fulton County by using the law.
“Yes is the answer to your question,” he said.
“With SB 202, habitually failing counties can—actually the state election board can come in and replace the election director and really take over the governance of that.”
Raffensperger also noted that he sought the ouster of a top Fulton County elections official, but the county declined to do so.
During the podcast interview, Raffensperger cited a report released by elections monitor Carter Jones in June that detailed alleged irregularities at a Fulton County vote-counting center in November 2020.
“What [Jones] said was it’s all this mismanagement,” he said, noting that county “mismanagement” and “dysfunction” erodes the public’s trust in the election system and “really lends itself to conspiracy theories.”
“So it needs to be fixed. It’s our largest county.”
Representatives from Fulton County didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
His announcement comes in the midst of an investigation into Fulton County election forms regarding ballots’ chain of custody that allegedly went missing.
Amid claims that Fulton County can’t “produce all ballot drop box transfer documents,” Raffensperger said in a June 14 statement that his office is investigating the matter.
Other counties that have failed to follow the state’s rules and regulations regarding drop boxes are also being reviewed, he said.
A spokesperson for Fulton County at the time appeared to dismiss the reports, telling The Epoch Times that officials “followed procedures for the collection of absentee ballots from Fulton County drop boxes.”
“We maintain a large quantity of documents and researching our files from last year to produce the ballot transfer forms. We have been in communication with the secretary of state’s office to update them of our progress on this matter.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 23:00 - Fentanyl Seizures At Southern US Border Spike 4000%
Fentanyl Seizures At Southern US Border Spike 4000%
President Biden’s border crisis has morphed into a drug crisis as Mexican cartels have taken over parts of the southern border. These criminal gangs are pumping record amounts of fentanyl across the border and contributing to a spike in drug overdose deaths.
According to NBC News, US Border Patrol agents seized 4000% more fentanyl this year than in 2018. Biden’s relaxed immigration policies have allowed cartels and illegal aliens to overrun parts of the border. Agents have so far seized 41 pounds of fentanyl in 2021, compared with nine pounds in all of 2020, two pounds in 2019, and one pound in 2018.
NBC’s data is primarily focused on seizures between land port of entries, such as in the open desert.
“For the first time, we’re starting to see these tactics where fentanyl is being smuggled between ports of entry,” Chief Border Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez said. “Cartels are very creative. They find ways to intimidate migrants and find ways to illegally have them transport that narcotic into the United States.”
Forty-one pounds doesn’t seem like a lot of drugs, but keep in mind the powerful narcotic is 80-100 times stronger than morphine, and just one kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds, can potentially kill 500,000 people. Do the math, and the seizure so far this year is strong enough to kill approximately 9.3 million Americans.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents tell NBC that fentanyl has become the drug of choice for cartels to smuggle into the US because it’s easy to transport and very profitable.
At land ports, fentanyl and meth seizures are also up 719% and 781%, respectively. Cartels are flooding the deadly drug at every possible opening on the southern border, and Biden’s broken border policies make it possible.
A shocking 90,722 overdose deaths were reported in the US through November 2020. If the trajectory continues, overdoses this year could surpass last year’s figures. The virus pandemic intensified the drug crisis (read: here & here) as millions of people lost their jobs and the economy plunged into a recession. Still, millions are without jobs and are spiraling down a deep hole of drugs and alcohol. On top of this all, Biden’s failed border policies to undo former President Trump’s strict border security had made the drug and immigration crisis many times worse.
Tragically, this dangerous situation playing out at the southern border was very predictable. Republicans may use Biden’s failed border policies against Democrats for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections.
This week, a billionaire Republican and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem were able to fund a future deployment of the state’s National Guard to the border as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has frequently fought the Biden administration about their lousy job protecting Americans from cartels and illegal aliens.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 22:40 - Pennsylvania Democrats To Propose Bullet Tax And Encoded Rounds To Track Ammo Owners
Pennsylvania Democrats To Propose Bullet Tax And Encoded Rounds To Track Ammo Owners
Authored by Beth Brelie via The Epoch Times,
A 5 cent per bullet tax will be proposed in Pennsylvania as part of legislation to be brought forth by two state House Democrats, Rep. Manny Guzman and Rep. Stephen Kinsey.
The tax would fund a state police database of ammunition sold in Pennsylvania.
The planned legislation would require ammunition manufacturers to encode ammunition provided for retail sale in Pennsylvania, and to provide ammunition serial numbers to the Pennsylvania State Police for the ammunition database. The plan was revealed in a joint memo to the state legislature by Guzman and Kinsey.
“Since 2015, only 21% of the nearly 8,500 shootings that Philadelphia has endured have resulted in an arrest or conviction,” the memo said.
“Far too often, all that is left for the police to find is a victim and a bullet. By making the bullet a more useable piece of evidence, independent from the associated firearm, we can give our law enforcement officers the tools that they need to solve more of these heinous crimes.”
“By maintaining a record of purchases of ammunition,” the memo continues,
“our law enforcement officers will be able to easily trace the ownership of any ammunition involved in a crime. This proposal is a much more reliable method of forensic tracing than current systems like ballistic fingerprinting, since determination of a bullet’s code does not require any special skills or equipment, and it serves as an objective identifier.”
“It is time for us to keep track of these lethal weapons and ensure that we have the tools necessary to convict individuals who use their firearms for unlawful purposes,” the memo said.
The plan would impose a 5 cent per round tax. Ammunition owners could file for a tax credit of one-half of a percent (0.5 percent) of the gross amount of the tax paid.
That is, a 50 cent tax return for every $100 spent in bullet taxes. A purchase of 2,000 rounds would cost $100 in tax.
Gun Owners of America-Pennsylvania Director Val Finnell says the plan amounts to registration and taxation of a constitutional right, to own ammunition.
“If you register your ammo, that’s a prelude to confiscation, just like firearms registration would be,” Finnell said, noting that if a bill to ban certain ammunition is passed, an ammunition database would show law enforcement who has ammunition to confiscate.
“This is the agenda of Philadelphia Democrats: registration and confiscation,” Finnell said. “They say ‘we just want common-sense gun laws to help police’ but criminals are going to obtain guns anyway. The only ones it affects are law-abiding citizens.”
Finnell predicts the bill will not move in the Republican-led General Assembly.
Republican state Rep. Matthew Dowling, chair of the Pennsylvania House Second Amendment Caucus, says lawmakers shouldn’t be weighing down state police with managing an ammunition database that should not exist.
“Not only is this onerous for state police who should be using resources in other ways, it’s a violation of privacy standards,” Dowling said.
“This is on top of the fact that we have a massive shortage of ammo. Law-abiding citizens are having a hard time trying to get their hands on ammo. This will only make it more difficult for them.”
It is unclear how such a law would address unmarked ammunition from other states or the ammunition already owned by Pennsylvanians.
Neither Guzman nor Kinsey responded to calls and emails requesting comment.
Although Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s mask mandate and other COVID-19-related restrictions have ended, Kinsey’s Philadelphia constituent office had a recording explaining the office is closed “out of an abundance of caution” due to the risk of COVID-19. Kinsey did have staff in his Harrisburg capitol building office.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 22:20 - Canadian Asset Manager Charged With $3.6 Million Scheme Frontrunning His Firm's Trades
Canadian Asset Manager Charged With $3.6 Million Scheme Frontrunning His Firm’s Trades
A Canadian trader named Sean Wygovsky was charged with insider trading by a federal court in New York on Friday. Wygovsky is alleged to have reaped $3.6 million by stealing confidential information to front-run his firm’s trades.
The firm wasn’t identified by the government or by Bloomberg, who reported the charges on Friday.
Using the accounts of close relatives and family, he attempted to conceal his activity. The relatives and family then kicked back “at least hundreds of thousands of dollars” in illegal trading profits, the government alleges.
In an official DOJ release, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “As alleged, Sean Wygovsky illegally exploited his access to his employer firm’s yet-to-be-executed trade orders to make numerous trades in anticipation of the bump or dip the firm’s buying or selling would cause. To conceal the scheme, Wygovsky allegedly made his front running trades through brokerage accounts of certain of his relatives. As alleged, Wygovsky made or directed over 700 timely transactions that netted him more than $3.6 million in illegal profits. Now Sean Wygovsky is in custody and facing serious criminal charges.”
FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “Over the course of several years, as alleged, Wygovsky made hundreds of short-term trades based on inside information that ultimately reaped more than $3 million in profits. Schemes like the one alleged here grossly affect the integrity of our financial markets and remain a top priority for our financial fraud investigative teams.”
Wygovsky was arrested in Austin, Texas and is expected to appear in federal court in Texas later on Friday.
In addition to facing criminal charges, he is also facing a civil suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission based on similar allegations.
He was employed by his firm since 2013 and has been charged with securities fraud and wire fraud, both of which carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, if a conviction is reached. The Employer Firm is an asset management firm based in Toronto, Canada, with at least approximately $19 billion in assets under management, the DOJ said in its press release.
Traders on FinTwit pointed out that his LinkedIn appears to show he was employed at Polar Asset Management Partners:
One of the biggest investors in the #PotStocks space in Polar Asset Management.
They could be in some big big trouble here for allowing front running. pic.twitter.com/7CltHbwkzu
— Betting Bruiser (@BettingBruiser) July 2, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 22:00 - Supreme Court Declines To Hear Appeal From Florist Who Refused Service Over Same-Sex Wedding
Supreme Court Declines To Hear Appeal From Florist Who Refused Service Over Same-Sex Wedding
Authored by Jack Philips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear an appeal over a florist’s refusal to offer service for a wedding of a same-sex couple, allowing a state court’s ruling that the shop engaged in unlawful discrimination.
The court ruled 6-3 in declining to take it up. At least four justices need to vote in favor of granting a petition to authorize a review of a case. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas voted in favor (pdf) of taking the case.
The Supreme Court didn’t provide an explanation for its denial to hear the case, stating, in part: “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.”
In June, the Washington state Supreme Court issued a ruling against the florist, Barronelle Stutzman, who refused to create a floral arrangement for Robert Ingersoll’s same-sex wedding in 2013.
The state court had “branded Barronelle a ‘discriminator’ and ordered her to attend, facilitate, and create custom floral art celebrating all marriages or none,” Kristen Waggoner, an attorney for Stutzman, had written to the justices.
Stutzman had argued that her floral arrangements were effectively speech that is protected under the First Amendment.
“Like all artists, Barronelle speaks through her custom creations,” Waggoner wrote to the high court and argued that the floral arrangements as “multimedia works incorporating flowers.”
The Epoch Times has contacted Barronelle’s lawyers for comment following the Supreme Court’s refusal to take the case.
However, lawyers for Ingersoll and Curt Freed, who filed the lawsuit, claimed that Stutzman violated anti-discrimination laws for refusing to make the floral arrangement for the wedding. The attorneys further stipulated that Stutzman is essentially trying to seek a “floral art” exemption to anti-discrimination laws.
“The notion of a First Amendment right to discriminate has been rejected as often as it has been raised,” wrote Ria Tabacco Mar, a lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, to the Supreme Court.
Several weeks ago, the court issued a unanimous ruling that sided with a Catholic adoption agency in Philadelphia that says religious beliefs prevent it from working with same-sex foster parents.
“It is plain that the City’s actions have burdened CSS’s [Catholic Social Services’] religious exercise by putting it to the choice of curtailing its mission or approving relationships inconsistent with its beliefs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in that ruling. The agency, he added, “seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 21:40 - Apple Warns iPhone Can "Interfere" With Cardiac Devices
Apple Warns iPhone Can “Interfere” With Cardiac Devices
Apple has released a long list of products it says should be kept away from implanted pacemakers and defibrillators because it may “interfere” with the medical devices.
“Many consumer-electronic devices contain magnets or components and radios that emit electromagnetic fields,” Apple said, adding that “to avoid any potential interactions with these types of medical devices, keep your Apple product a safe distance away from your medical device (more than 6 inches / 15 cm apart or more than 12 inches / 30 cm apart if wirelessly charging).”
Apple doesn’t explain what could happen when its products come in close contact with pacemakers and defibrillators. Still, one could assume the worst circumstance could be the deactivation of a medical device and may result in death.
“If you suspect that your Apple product is interfering with your medical device, stop using your Apple product and consult your physician and your medical-device manufacturer,” the company warned.
Here are the products Apple wants to keep away from your medical devices:
AirPods and charging cases
- AirPods and Charging Case
- AirPods and Wireless Charging Case
- AirPods Pro and Wireless Charging Case
- AirPods Max and Smart Case
Apple Watch and accessories
- Apple Watch
- Apple Watch bands with magnets
- Apple Watch magnetic charging accessories
HomePod
- HomePod
- HomePod mini
iPad and accessories
- iPad
- iPad mini
- iPad Air
- iPad Pro
- iPad Smart Covers and Smart Folios
- iPad Smart Keyboard and Smart Keyboard Folio
- Magic Keyboard for iPad
iPhone and MagSafe accessories
- iPhone 12 models
- MagSafe accessories
Mac and accessories
- Mac mini
- Mac Pro
- MacBook Air
- MacBook Pro
- iMac
- Apple Pro Display XDR
Beats
- Beats Flex
- Beats X
- PowerBeats Pro
- UrBeats3
Perhaps Apple’s warning comes as a new analysis in the American Heart Association Journal warns that certain Apple iPhones can cause significant issues with cardiac implantable electronic devices.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 21:20 - Facebook Now Sending Messages To Some Users Asking About Potentially ‘Extremist’ Friends
Facebook Now Sending Messages To Some Users Asking About Potentially ‘Extremist’ Friends
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Some Facebook users have recently reported being sent warning messages from the social media giant relating to “extremists” or “extremist content.”
“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?” one message reads.
“We care about preventing extremism on Facebook. Others in your situation have received confidential support.”
A giant digital sign is seen at Facebook’s corporate headquarters campus in Menlo Park, California, on October 23, 2019. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images) The message also provides a button to “Get Support,” which leads to another Facebook page about extremism.
Redstate editor Kira Davis, who said was sent a screenshot of the message from a friend, wrote: “Hey has anyone had this message pop up on their FB? My friend (who is not an ideologue but hosts lots of competing chatter) got this message twice. He’s very disturbed.”
How sweet…#Facebook is offering support🙄😂 #Censorship #extremism #CancelCulture pic.twitter.com/gJKNepZudG
— John Burnett (@IamJohnBurnett) July 1, 2021
And others reported getting a warning that they may have been “exposed to harmful extremist content recently.” The message then states that “violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment,” similarly offering a “Get Support” option.
“Facebook randomly sent me this notice about extremism when I clicked over to the app. Pretty weird. … The Get Support button just goes to a short article asking people not to be hateful,” another user on Twitter wrote.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times on July 1 that the company is currently running the warnings as a test to some users.
“This test is part of our larger work to assess ways to provide resources and support to people on Facebook who may have engaged with or were exposed to extremist content, or may know someone who is at risk. We are partnering with NGOs and academic experts in this space and hope to have more to share in the future,” the spokesperson said, without elaborating.
Hey has anyone had this message pop up
on their FB? My friend (who is not an ideologue but hosts lots of competing chatter) got this message twice. He’s very disturbed. pic.twitter.com/LjCMjCvZtS— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) July 1, 2021
The messages come after lawmakers have repeatedly targeted and pressured CEOs of big tech firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft, essentially accusing them of allowing “extremism,” misinformation, and cyberbullying on their platforms. Such social media companies have faced criticism from Republicans who have accused them of censoring conservative voices and limiting the reach—or outright blocking—content that portrays Democrat political figures in a negative light.
Conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, have argued for the revocation of Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which serves as a liability shield for online publishers. However, the movement to rein in Big Tech was dealt a blow earlier this week when a federal judge tossed a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against Facebook that had accused the firm of engaging in anti-competitive practices.
These warning messages, however, are sure to trigger even more negative feedback against Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, over fears that the company is attempting to stifle free speech. On Twitter, as screenshots of the warning messages were being shared en masse on July 1, many users expressed concern over the direction Facebook is taking.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 21:00 - Reality Check: Professor Pens Letter Explaining Natural Resource Drain Crated By "Net Zero Emission" Targets
Reality Check: Professor Pens Letter Explaining Natural Resource Drain Crated By “Net Zero Emission” Targets
While the idea of implementing net zero emissions by certain deadlines has sounded great for the companies, countries and states that have set targets, the reality of making it happen is slightly more difficult.
That’s what the U.K. is finding out after Natural History Museum Head of Earth Sciences Prof Richard Herrington penned a letter to the Committee on Climate Change on the vast amount of natural resources that will be necessary to make the conversion. The letter was delivered to Baroness Brown, who chairs the Adaption Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change.
In addition to noting that the U.K. would need a 20% increase in UK-generated electricity, the release also notes that “to meet UK electric car targets for 2050 we would need to produce just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production.”
The letter reads:
“The urgent need to cut CO2 emissions to secure the future of our planet is clear, but there are huge implications for our natural resources not only to produce green technologies like electric cars but keep them charged.
“Over the next few decades, global supply of raw materials must drastically change to accommodate not just the UK’s transformation to a low carbon economy, but the whole world’s. Our role as scientists is to provide the evidence for how best to move towards a zero-carbon economy – society needs to understand that there is a raw material cost of going green and that both new research and investment is urgently needed for us to evaluate new ways to source these. This may include potentially considering sources much closer to where the metals are to be used.”
It then points out obvious challenges in meeting the needs of converting all cars and vans to electric vehicles, especially as it relates to cobalt:
To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry.
The drain on resources would be felt globally, and not just in the U.K., the letter continues:
If this analysis is extrapolated to the currently projected estimate of two billion cars worldwide, based on 2018 figures, annual production would have to increase for neodymium and dysprosium by 70%, copper output would need to more than double and cobalt output would need to increase at least three and a half times for the entire period from now until 2050 to satisfy the demand.
Finally, it points out the rising energy cost of metal production (almost 4 times the total annual UK electrical output) and additional challenges of using “green energy” to provide the electricity for EVs:
Energy cost of metal production: This choice of vehicle comes with an energy cost too. Energy costs for cobalt production are estimated at 7000-8000 kWh for every tonne of metal produced and for copper 9000 kWh/t. The rare-earth energy costs are at least 3350 kWh/t, so for the target of all 31.5 million cars that requires 22.5 TWh of power to produce the new metals for the UK fleet, amounting to 6% of the UK’s current annual electrical usage. Extrapolated to 2 billion cars worldwide, the energy demand for extracting and processing the metals is almost 4 times the total annual UK electrical output
…
Challenges of using ‘green energy’ to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years’ worth of total global copper supply and 10 years’ worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms.
Solar power is also problematic – it is also resource hungry; all the photovoltaic systems currently on the market are reliant on one or more raw materials classed as “critical” or “near critical” by the EU and/ or US Department of Energy (high purity silicon, indium, tellurium, gallium) because of their natural scarcity or their recovery as minor-by-products of other commodities. With a capacity factor of only ~10%, the UK would require ~72GW of photovoltaic input to fuel the EV fleet; over five times the current installed capacity. If CdTe-type photovoltaic power is used, that would consume over thirty years of current annual tellurium supply.
The letter makes it clear that there are several “inconvenient truths” associated with the reality of all of the “clean energy” virtue signaling that has been taking place. The letter follows last month when we published an article reporting that EVs may offer a negligible difference from ICE vehicles in CO2 emissions. It was the topic of a blog post by natural resource investors Goehring & Rozencwajg (G&R), a “fundamental research firm focused exclusively on contrarian natural resource investments with a team with over 30 years of dedicated resource experience.”
The firm, established in 2015, posted a blog entry entitled “Exploring Lithium-ion Electric Vehicles’ Carbon Footprint”, where they called into question a former ICE vs. EV comparison performed by the Wall Street Journal and, while citing work performed by Jefferies, argue that there could literally be “no reduction in CO2 output” in some EV vs. ICE comparisons.
Their analysis “details the tremendous amount of energy (and by extension CO2) needed to manufacture a lithium-ion battery.” Because a typical EV is on average 50% heavier than a similar internal combustion engine, the analysis notes that the “embedded carbon” in an EV (i.e., when it rolls off the lot) is therefore 20–50% more than an internal combustion engine.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 20:40 - New Emails Raise Fresh Allegations Of Influence Peddling By Hunter Biden, Contradict President Biden
New Emails Raise Fresh Allegations Of Influence Peddling By Hunter Biden, Contradict President Biden
We have previously discussed the concerted and often embarrassing blackout in the media on stories involving Hunter Biden’s influence peddling during his father’s tenure as Vice President. That includes the burying of the laptop story and the growing contradictions over his father’s denial of any knowledge or involvement in his shady business dealings. Even recent reports that Hunter may have paid prostitutes with his father’s account were blacked out by mainstream media which exhaustively pursued any story related to the Trump children and their dealings and life styles. Now, however, there is a major allegation that Hunter used access to his father to seal previously unknown deals with Mexican businessmen, including Carlos Slim.
A picture shows Hunter with the businessmen in the Vice President residence with his father.
As in the past, Americans interested in such stories have had to rely on the foreign press or a couple domestic sites for such information.
The new emails include references to the use of Air Force II by Hunter Biden to pursue the deals — a similar pattern revealed with regard to the China dealings. The emails detail a number of visits to Mexico, including a February 2016 flight on Air Force II with his father. On the plane was his business partner Jeff Cooper, who ran Illinois-based SimmonsCooper. That is one of the largest asbestos litigation firms in the country and Hunter was given 3 percent of Cooper’s venture capital firm Eudora Global, according to emails. President Biden’s brother (who featured in past controversial deals) was also reportedly involved in some of these efforts.
These dealings continued into 2018 as Hunter pushed for deals with Slim. One text message from July 24, 2018 reads “Spoke to my dad about ‘Slim ask” and Cooper responds “Oh that sounds SO F’ING GOOD.”
It obviously does not sound quite so good if you are a reporter who has been repeatedly assured by President Biden that he had no knowledge or involvement in any dealings with Hunter. That was previously refuted by various sources. Hunter himself contradicted his father’s repeated denial. Then there are the emails referring to the “Big Guy”, which witnesses say was Joe Biden. Then there is Tony Bobulinski who stated that he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss Hunter’s business dealings. Bobulinski is repeatedly praised by Hunter Biden in the emails and identified as the person in control of transactions for “the family.” He has directly contradicted Joe Biden’s denial of any knowledge or involvement in his son’s dubious dealings.
The new emails contain additional information directly contradicting President Biden. In addition to earlier pictures from golf trips and references to his involvement or knowledge, new material refers to a notable dinner arranged in Washington, D.C.
Hunter arranged for then Vice President Biden to have dinner on April 16, 2015 with his Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakhstani business associates. They appropriately chose a private room at Café Milano, a Georgetown restaurant that brags that it is “Where the world’s most powerful people go.” After the dinner, Hunter received an email from Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, to thank him for introducing him to his father: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
It is clear that Hunter Biden was selling access and influence. It appears that Joe Biden was aware of that effort. That is very serious. If these emails are false, this is a major story. If they are true, this is a major scandal. Presumably, however, this story will result in another run to the nearest ice cream shop for breathless coverage on the current frozen delights of the President.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 20:20 - Understaffed Restaurants Resort To Serverless Ordering
Understaffed Restaurants Resort To Serverless Ordering
There are signs that technology is starting to become mainstream in restaurants chains across the country. The introduction of automation has made the experience for guests more pleasurable while more streamlined for employees.
WSJ reports casual-dining chains, such as Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc., Applebee’s International, Inc., among others, are quickly adopting technology for payments that allow contactless ordering and paying.
Cracker Barrel’s patrons can order their meals through an app on their smartphone and even pay for the entire meal. As explained by the president of Cracker Barrel, the good news is that amid labor shortages, automation allows understaffed wait staff to handle volumes adequately.
“The more we can move volume to things like that, it takes the pressure off the labor in the stores,” said Sandra B. Cochran, Cracker Barrel’s president and chief executive. “Staffing has become challenging at Cracker Barrel, which has classified the personnel situation at 10% of its restaurants as “critical,” she said.
The automated ordering system frees up the server who once had to write the order on a pad then transfer it to a self-serve kiosk machine. Ordering and paying through an app allows the company to increase profit and margins and speeds up the ordering process. Servers can focus on other tasks while the app handles ordering and payment.
There has been some discussion about using tabletop technology versus traditional ordering through a server, said John Glass, a managing director and equity analyst covering restaurants at Morgan Stanley. “If face-to-face interaction is important to your brand, and you suddenly took it away, you’ve removed a layer of the brand differentiation,” he said.
But in a new world where technology is pouring into restaurants amid aims for a contactless environment, the move could also prove beneficial for the customer. Ordering from their phones means that a server won’t screw up dishes, substitutions, and the amount of food that someone wants.
Deepthi Prakash, global director of product and marketing TBWA\Worldwide, an Omnicom Group Inc. advertising agency, said the casual-dining app means “more and the tables turn over faster, because they can get their orders and they can get their bills sooner.” This is also a big plus for restaurants that face labor shortages.
Technology is creeping into every corner of the restaurant industry. Back-end systems are also being overhauled to make managers lives less chaotic.
Applebee’s is another restaurant that has invested in front-end technology at its eateries. It has given servers in around 500 of its 1,705 restaurants hand-held tablets for processing orders instead of entering them into a central computer system.
“Bottom line—the servers love these tablets because it makes their job easier and allows them to make more money,” John Cywinski, president of the grill and bar chain, said.
There’s no turning back as automation technology investments will only increase in a contactless world as the evolution here will be the introduction of robotics that will replace human wait staff.
For those unfamiliar with why restaurant operators are turning to automation – it has to due with soaring labor and food costs, the need for better efficiency, and the standardization of operations to reduce errors.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 20:00 - Navy Unit Forced To Take Part In Mandatory 'Diversity Hike' Waving LGBT Flags
Navy Unit Forced To Take Part In Mandatory ‘Diversity Hike’ Waving LGBT Flags
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Active duty members of the Navy in San Diego were forced to take part in a mandatory ‘diversity hike’ during which they flew LGBT flags while American flags were nowhere to be seen.
“A woman whose husband is active duty Navy sent me this. His command held a “diversity hike” in honor of Pride Month. Attendance was mandatory. They hiked while waving a rainbow American flag,” tweeted Matt Walsh.
A woman whose husband is active duty Navy sent me this. His command held a “diversity hike” in honor of Pride Month. Attendance was mandatory. They hiked while waving a rainbow American flag. pic.twitter.com/ctx66HNoi5
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 29, 2021
As Chris Menahan explains, the event was promoted by the Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 303, which celebrated “Pride Month” with a “Pride Hike” at Sunset Cliff last week.
The servicemembers were made to carry a version of the LGBT flag which incorporates the stars and stripes, although no actual American flag was flown.
A photo from the hike shows one of the men turning away from the camera, perhaps in protest at being forced to be involved.
This Chad right here refusing to face the camera. pic.twitter.com/qAno41Bzxx
— 𝕺𝖗𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖉𝖔𝖝 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖗𝖞☦️ (@HaasDelgado44) June 29, 2021
“It appears as though in April male sailors in the same unit had to hold up these humiliating signs telling one another not to commit rape,” writes Menahan.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently appeared before a House Armed Services Committee where he faced accusations that the U.S. military was going “woke”.
While attempting to deny the claim, Milley actually did everything to confirm it was true while also insisting he wanted to understand “white rage,” a concept invented by left-wing extremists as part of Critical Race Theory to denigrate white people.
As we highlighted last week, Nellis Air Force base responded to controversy about a drag queen show hosted by the base by saying the performance was “essential to the morale, cohesion, and readiness of the military.”
Attempts by the woke cult to subvert the military began under the Obama administration, during which in some instances cadets were made to take part in an event called Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, which sought to raise awareness for sexual assault victims by having men wearing Army Combat Uniforms parade around in red high heels.
But no, of course the military isn’t going woke, who would be stupid enough to even suggest that?
Meanwhile, China and Russia continue to laugh hysterically while training their soldiers to engage in elite combat.
* * *
Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/
In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 19:40 - US Suffers Explosion In Urgent Mental-Health Cases As COVID Recedes
US Suffers Explosion In Urgent Mental-Health Cases As COVID Recedes
The latest indication that the COVID-19 pandemic (and the heavy-handed lockdowns imposed in the US and elsewhere) is leading to a relatively quiet, but still severe, mental health crisis appeared in Monday’s Wall Street Journal via a report about the surge in urgent mental-health-related cases clogging up emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals around the country.
And as the US increasingly moves to reopen, the whiff of newfound freedom is apparently pushing more people over the edge.
WSJ begins its story at Pittsburgh’s largest psychiatric hospital, where one doctor working the overnight shift has seen the average number of daily cases double to nearly two dozen from nearly a dozen.
“It seems like everyone has been holding their breath for a year, and now, it’s just a total explosion of everything, both in terms of high volume but also the severity of cases,” Dr. Sparks said. “You see a lot more people who were, pre-pandemic, kind of overwhelmed and stressed, and now they have full-on anxiety disorders or depression.”
The wave of mental-health cases has “grown into a tsunami”, flooding an already overtaxed health-care system. Emergency departments say they are being overwhelmed by patients who either deferred care, or simply couldn’t access it, during the pandemic, or whose symptoms were exacerbated or aggravated by the lockdowns.
Some doctors fear this is only the beginning, and that the full impact of the pandemic on mental health won’t be ascertainable for years. Here’s a breakdown of some of the other key information from the WSJ story:
- Children have been hit particularly hard. School closures have led to serious mental-health issues going unnoticed because teachers and school psychologists are a primary source of referrals. Even before the pandemic, the country faced a shortage of mental-health professionals serving juveniles: the American Academy of Pediatrics last year estimated the need for child psychiatrists at 47/100K people, roughly 4x the number in practice. Emergency-room visits for mental-health crises among 12- to 17-year-olds increased 31% between 2019 and 2020 according to the CDC. At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, pediatric-outpatient volume surged 30% in the first four months of 2021 compared with the year earlier. “We have more kids waiting for care than we ever have before,” said Abigail Schlesinger, the hospital’s chief of child and adolescent psychiatry. “We’re in the mental-health emergency phase of this pandemic.”
- Suicides have risen among minors. Emergency-room visits for suspected suicide among kids 12-17 rose 22% last summer compared with the previous year, and 39% this past winter compared with the previous winter.
- More mental-health crises are ending up in emergency rooms in part because outpatient facilities, including private psychiatrists’ offices, therapy practices and crisis centers, are simply overwhelmed. “For us, it’s definitely a lot of people who either had pre-existing conditions or have neglected to address their new onset of emotional imbalance,” said Damir Huremovic, a psychiatrist at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island. “Many developed anxiety or insomnia, and they tried to see a provider but no one was taking new patients, and then things sort of just snowballed.”
- Crisis hotlines are bumping. Overall volume at Resolve, a crisis hotline serving an impoverished slice of Pittsburgh, saw rates of calls between January and April surge 27% compared with the year-earlier period. For the past six months, Resolve has been handling hundreds of phone calls a day, with as many as 50 of them serious enough to require a home visit by trained clinicians. That’s 2x to 3x the level from two years ago. “Isolation is the overarching theme,” said Jeff McFadden, a phone crisis clinician at the center who says the volume of calls is the highest he has seen in his 13 years at Resolve. “It’s everything from ‘I’m lonely’ or ‘my girlfriend broke up with me,’ to ‘I’ve got a gun right next to me, give me a reason to live’…There’s this perfect storm where people feel trapped in their own houses and alone. We’re seeing it more and more.”
- Delays in finding care are also a problem. “Clinics that used to be able to get people in within a couple of days, it now takes a couple of weeks or months,” one doctor said. The past year has “broken all the paradigms” for how to treat mental-health cases in the community.
Increasingly, the doctors and nurses who care for patients seeking urgent care for psychiatric issues are feeling job-related stressors like burnout intensify. “You can only take so much when you’re sleep-deprived, exhausted, and juggling other people’s problems like balls on fire for so many nights in a row,” one doctor said.
And another an epidemic of health-care workers taking leave or quitting due to burnout is the last time the health-care system needs.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 19:20 - Judge Orders Minneapolis To Hire More Police Officers Amid Crime Surge
Judge Orders Minneapolis To Hire More Police Officers Amid Crime Surge
Authored by Isabel Van Brugen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A judge on July 1 ruled in favor of a group that filed a lawsuit demanding more police officers be brought into the city, after city council members and activist groups advocated to replace the police department following the death of George Floyd.
Minneapolis Police Deputy Chief Art Knight speaks with people in Minneapolis, Minn., on June 16, 2020. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) Hennepin County District Judge Jamie Anderson issued a writ of mandamus (pdf) ordering the city to hire more police officers, specifically that Minneapolis should have at least 730 officers or .0017 of the 2020 census population, whichever is higher, by the end of June 2022.
An unprecedented number of officers quit or went on extended medical leave after Floyd’s death and the unrest that followed, which included the burning of a police precinct. With new recruit classes, the city anticipates it will have 674 officers available at the end of the year, with another 28 in the hiring process, the Star Tribune reported.
Floyd died May 25 last year after being restrained by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd’s death sparked widespread riots and protests. Chauvin was sentenced on June 25 to 22 1/2 years in prison for second-degree murder.
The death of Floyd triggered left-wing demonstrations, riots, and violence across the country as well as calls to “defund the police,” which some critics have said has led to a significant rise in crime across major U.S. metropolitan areas in recent months. Minneapolis was particularly hit hard by weeks of riots, arson attacks, looting, and violence in the wake of Floyd’s death, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage.
Amid calls to dismantle the department, some residents have begged the city to hire more officers, citing longer response times and an increase in violent crime.
“Minneapolis is in a crisis,” the eight plaintiffs linked to the conservative Upper Midwest Law Center wrote in their lawsuit, noting the recent spike in violent crime in the city, FOX 9 reported.
In his decision, the judge wrote that the eight plaintiffs, all Minneapolis residents, were able to show that the lack of officers in the city is linked to the surge in crime and has caused personal injuries.
“This is a huge victory for the Petitioners and all residents of Minneapolis, especially those in the most diverse neighborhoods feeling the brunt of rising crime rates,” Doug Seaton, president of the Upper Midwest Law Center, said in a statement in response to the decision.
“We applaud the Court’s decision and look forward to swift action by the City Council and Mayor to fund the police and ensure the safety of all Minneapolitans.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 19:00 - Dramatic Footage Shows Underwater Fireballs Erupting From Offshore Platform Gas Leak
Dramatic Footage Shows Underwater Fireballs Erupting From Offshore Platform Gas Leak
Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), said Friday an underwater pipeline connecting an offshore platform at the Ku Maloob Zaap oil development experienced a fracture, shooting flames out of the water.
The video of the incident is absolutely stunning and resembles almost a lava pit, but that’s just flames boiling to the surface in the Gulf waters.
🚨 Sobre el incendio registrado en aguas del Golfo de México, en la Sonda de Campeche, a unos metros de la plataforma Ku-Charly (dentro del Activo Integral de Producción Ku Maloob Zaap)
Tres barcos han apoyado para sofocar las llamas pic.twitter.com/thIOl8PLQo
— Manuel Lopez San Martin (@MLopezSanMartin) July 2, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Pemex dispatched multiple support vessels that were able to pump water over the flames. It took about five hours for the oil company to contain the gas leak, reportedly 150 meters from the drilling platform.
Ku-Maloob-Zaap is the most productive oil field in Mexico, accounting for 40% of its 1.68 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude production. Sources told Reuters, the development was producing 726,000 bpd at the time of the incident.
The source also shared an incident report of what may have caused the fire:
“The turbomachinery of Ku Maloob Zaap’s active production facilities were affected by an electrical storm and heavy rains,” the report said.
While the support vessels were spraying water on the roiling balls of flame erupting underwater, nitrogen was ultimately used to contain the pipeline leak.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 18:35 - San Jose To Tax Law-Abiding Gun Owners For The Actions Of Criminals
San Jose To Tax Law-Abiding Gun Owners For The Actions Of Criminals
The Democratic Party’s war against the second amendment opens a new front thanks to the San Jose City Council’s decision to tax law-abiding gun owners for the actions of criminals:
Gun owners in San Jose, California, will soon face a yearly tax and be required to carry additional insurance after their city council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to impose the new measures.
The forthcoming fee for gun ownership in the city has not yet been determined, but officials said that anyone found to be in noncompliance will have their weapons confiscated.
The city council’s aim is to try to recoup the cost of responding to gun incidents such as shootings and deaths. According to the Pacific Council on Research and Evaluation, which studied the issue and sent a representative to testify before the panel, gun-related incidents cost the city roughly $63 million every year in the way of paying for police officers, medics and other expenses, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Chief Justice John Marshall said that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and here the attempt is to destroy lawful gun ownership by imposing collective guilt on the law-abiding for the actions of the criminal and turning law-abiding gun owners into criminals for refusing to comply with an unconstitutional, punitive tax.
The endgame, as always, complete civilian gun confiscation.
Next up: A tax on sober drivers to pay for the actions of drunk ones.
Meanwhile, in other California war against guns news, various challenges to various California gun law are pending an en-banc hearing on Duncan v Bonta. (Previously.)
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 18:20 - Human Rights Groups Are Quitting YouTube Over Its Pro-China Censorship
Human Rights Groups Are Quitting YouTube Over Its Pro-China Censorship
In yet another glaring example of Google willingly doing China’s bidding, YouTube this month agreed to take down multiple videos posted by a well-known China-related human rights organization.
As Reuters recently reported, YouTube initially tried to pressure the group called Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights to censor its content in several videos documenting disappeared Uyghur citizens in China’s Xinjiang province, which YouTube interpreted as a violation of its anti-harassment policy given personally identifiable information was present.
Despite the group’s videos essentially including detailed news reporting, the Google-owned platform said it had too many strikes against it related to people featured showing their IDs. The organization was asked to blur the IDs.
The IDs were shown on the videos to verify that interviewees were indeed relatives of those believed to be missing inside Xinjiang’s vast ‘reeducation camp’ prisons. Instead of continuing to allow the videos to garner millions of views, spotlighting the ongoing crackdown against the Chinese Muslim minorities, YouTube instead “disappeared” the videos. The controversy began within the past years as follows:
Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China’s Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.
On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube’s guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its ‘cyberbullying and harassment’ policy.
While a number of videos have been reportedly restored on appeal, Atajurt Kazakh was alarmed enough over the crackdown to announce it would move its content to a less restrictive blockchain-based platform.
YouTube later defended the move, describing that its harassment policy “clearly prohibits content revealing someone’s personally identifiable information, including their government identification or phone numbers.” It claimed to further be enforcing policies “equally for everyone”.
Meanwhile in related news…
TIME magazine fails to disclose CCP funding for content in its latest print edition.
The mag struck a $700k ad partnership with China Daily, the state-controlled propaganda outlet. @TIME has not responded to repeated inquiries about the non-disclosure https://t.co/hFLb9zyWC1
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 1, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Following the media attention, YouTube began restoring the videos while saying it would further evaluate its current policies. Reuters documented that the social media platform still urged the human rights group to comply, noting that “YouTube asked Atajurt to blur the IDs.”
However, it remains that “Atajurt is hesitant to comply, the channel’s administrator said, concerned that doing so would jeopardize the trustworthiness of the videos.” So far close to 1,000 videos have been moved to the blockchain-driven alternative side Odysee, in a move which other rights and journalism organization may soon follow.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 18:00 - Virus Z: A Thought Experiment
Virus Z: A Thought Experiment
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
What’s striking about our thought experiment is how little reliable data we have about the transmissibility of our hypothetical Virus Z and the long-term consequences of its mutations.
Let’s run a thought experiment on a hypothetical virus we’ll call Virus Z, a run-of-the-mill respiratory variety not much different from other viruses which are 1) very small; 2) mutate rapidly and 3) infect human cells and modify the cellular machinery to produce more viral particles.
Like other viruses, Virus Z continually improves the odds of future replication via the natural selection of any mutations which improve its replication capabilities. Since viruses need host cells to replicate, the key advantages selected through mutation are evading hosts’ immune responses to invading viruses.
As in all organisms in which advantageous mutations arise and eventually spread throughout the organism’s genetic instructions, the natural selection of mutations in viruses is not teleological, meaning there is no set goal to the evolutionary process other than whatever is advantageous in a particular setting.
To use a football analogy, the viral mutations don’t have a goal of advancing 10 yards to get a first down and continue down the field to score a touchdown. Any mutation which helps the virus evade getting tackled by the host immune system is conserved, as the viruses which get tackled and gobbled up by the immune system are no longer replicating, while the virus which evades the immune system continues replicating. Whatever mutations that enable it to evade getting tackled are conserved in the genetic coding of all future viruses.
In our thought experiment, Virus Z is a novel respiratory virus, i.e. it spreads via particles of moisture exhaled by human hosts, so most human hosts don’t have a natural immunity to it because their body’s immune system has never encountered it before. As a result, many people exposed to Virus Z become ill as the virus triggers an immune response (inflammation, fever, congestion) which disrupts various processes (oxygen uptake, digestion, etc.)
Like many other pathogens, Virus Z leads to the death of some infected people with compromised or weakened immune systems. In our thought experiment, Virus Z leads to the hospitalization of a percentage of infected people and the death of around 2% of all people who contract the illness.
This is not an exceptional rate in human history, and like many other pathogens, Virus Z tends to sicken the old and frail who have less robust immune systems.
But nonetheless, 2% is not zero, and so bioscience develops a vaccine to Virus Z which successfully reduces the severity of the illness and this naturally lowers the rate of those dying from the viral illness.
The vaccine is tested for one goal: does it reduce the severity of the illness or not? As a result of this goal and the testing protocol, it’s unknown if the virus can remain at low levels in vaccinated individuals and be transmissible to others.
In other words, it’s unknown if some vaccinated individuals might be contagious even though they exhibit no symptoms of illness.
Just as flu shots are not 100% effective against all strains of influenza, it turns out the Virus Z vaccine is highly effective in reducing the odds of contracting the virus and the severity of any subsequent illness, but it doesn’t reduce the transmissibility to zero or the number of those who become ill despite being vaccinated to zero.
Since it’s not practical to constantly test every vaccinated individual, the number of vaccinated individuals who still harbor low levels of virus while being symptom-free (i.e. asymptomatic) is unknown. A vaccinated individual might be virus-free but then be reinfected by exposure to a new variant that survives the immune onslaught but does not generate symptoms.
So in this pool of X number of vaccinated individuals, the virus continues to mutate, with those mutations which help the virus evade the vaccine-enhanced immune system of the host being the mutations which are conserved, as the viruses which get tackled by the immune system no longer replicate while those with the helpful mutation continue replicating.
The viruses which evade the immune system tacklers are also selected for improved transmissibility, meaning those with limited transmissibility don’t infect other hosts while those with improved transmissibility (i.e. are more contagious) spread with relative ease to other hosts, both unvaccinated and vaccinated, as the vaccine suppresses transmissibility but doesn’t reduce it to zero.
Since the goal of the vaccine program was to reduce the number of those becoming severely ill and requiring hospitalization, the system only counts individuals who become ill enough to require hospitalization: those hospitalized are tabulated in two fields, unvaccinated or vaccinated.
As expected, the majority of those hospitalized with severe illness are unvaccinated, as the vaccine effectively reduced the number of people who develop severe cases after contracting the disease.
What the vaccine doesn’t do is reduce the number of vaccinated people who contract the disease to zero, nor does it reduce the transmissibility of vaccinated carriers of the virus to zero.
This means some unknown percentage (unknown because it’s not practical to routinely test tens of millions of people) of vaccinated individuals become carriers of the virus. Some unknown percentage will contract the illness but not severely enough to require hospitalization, so they won’t be counted by the system. A relative few will require hospitalization, and will be counted as “breakthrough cases,” i.e. vaccinated individuals who contracted the virus, became ill and required hospitalization.
But because the system doesn’t count vaccinated people who become ill and stay at home, the number of officially tallied “breakthrough cases” is an undercount of the total number.
Since relatively few vaccinated individuals who are ill at home will drag themselves to a testing facility to confirm they have Virus Z, the total number of vaccinated individuals who are carriers (i.e. are contagious) and who became ill enough to stay home is also unknown.
Like many other viruses, Virus Z triggers long-term debilitating symptoms in a percentage of those who become ill, and some percentage of these long-term effects occur in individuals whose illness was relatively mild. Since it’s it’s not practical to routinely test tens of millions of vaccinated individuals, the number who contracted the illness and are experiencing long-term debilitating symptoms is unknown.
What we do know via careful contract tracing is that one vaccinated individual transmitted the virus to 20 other people, both unvaccinated and vaccinated, in one encounter in an enclosed space, and this variant is genetically distinct from the initial Virus Z.
This is worrisome, as the transmissibility of a virus is more dangerous than than the mortality rate of those infected. If a virus with low transmissibility causes the death of 5% of those who contract the illness, and it sickens 1,000 people, then 50 of those stricken will die. A highly transmissible virus with a mortality rate of 2% may appear less dangerous, but if it sickens 100,000 people and 2% die, that’s 2,000 people who lost their lives.
Since the virus has been mutating in X number of vaccinated individuals at a rate of mutation typical of viruses (i.e. a high rate), a small but significant number of these millions of mutations help the mutated virus evade the host immune system and whatever advantages were conferred by the vaccine.
Within this pool of mutations which evaded the immune system tacklers, those mutations which also enhance transmissibility spread rapidly to other human hosts, both unvaccinated and vaccinated, depending on the relative effectiveness of the vaccination in each individual, the relative robustness of their immune system and a variety of other complex factors such as partial natural immunity, exposure to previous variants of Virus Z and so on.
Within this pool of mutations that enhance transmissibility, some percentage will enhance transmissibility to younger, healthier individuals who were less susceptible to the initial Virus Z.
What’s striking about our thought experiment is how little reliable data we have about the transmissibility of our hypothetical Virus Z and the long-term consequences of its mutations. What’s striking is the number of important data fields which are unknown, only haphazardly collected, or in which data is so incomplete that it is misleading.
Science cannot advance if data is unavailable, unreliable or so selectively gathered that it’s misleading. What’s striking about our thought experiment is how little is reliably known about Virus Z’s transmissibility, virulence or long-term effects.
* * *
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
* * *
My recent books:
A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).
The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/02/2021 – 17:40
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...
