- US In Talks On Establishing Military Bases In Finland
US In Talks On Establishing Military Bases In Finland
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
The US and Finland are working out a deal that would allow the US to establish a military presence in the Nordic country, as Helsinki is now a member of NATO.
According to Newsweek, Finnish Foreign Ministry official Mikael Antell confirmed the two nations are negotiating a Defense Cooperation Agreement that may allow for the construction of significant military infrastructure on Finnish soil.
Getty Images The potential agreement would not include nuclear weapons, although Finnish officials have previously not ruled out hosting nukes. The US has nuclear weapons stationed in five NATO countries under the alliance’s nuclear sharing program but not in any nations that became members after the end of the Cold War.
Antell said the potential DCA “enables troops to enter the country, stay on the ground, the pre-storage of material and possible infrastructure investments through the funds granted by the US Congress to the Pentagon.”
The US and Finland have been in talks on the DCA since last fall, and discussions on the deal took place in Helsinki last week.
“The agreement also defines the facilities and areas where the cooperation would be focused,” Antell said. “They are basically military areas and garrisons. In principle, there can be more than one, but the discussions are still open in this regard.”
Finland shares an over 800-mile border with Russia, and its ascension into NATO means the region will become further militarized. Moscow has plans to beef up its military presence near the border in western Russia and has said it will take more steps to respond to the expansion of NATO infrastructure in Finland.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/04/2023 – 02:00 - The Obsession With Sweeping Away The Past Is Highly Destructive For Civilization
The Obsession With Sweeping Away The Past Is Highly Destructive For Civilization
Authored by Michael Bonner via The Epoch Times,
The following is a commentary by Michael Bonner on his new book, “In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present.”
Do we live in a civilization?
When I was growing up in the 1990s, amidst all the exuberance of the American unipolar moment, I certainly thought I lived in a civilization, and an advanced one at that.
The mood of the time was captured in the near-universal misunderstanding of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the “end of history,” as well as in the Disney cartoon “Aladdin.” Both “Aladdin” and Fukuyama invited us to imagine “a whole new world,” and both did so coincidentally in 1992. Nothing, it seemed, could halt the steady progress of a new age of peace, stability, wealth, and freedom.
But, in the West, so much seems to have gone wrong since that moment.
Disaster in Iraq, Rwanda, and the Balkans should have disturbed western complacency, but didn’t. Neither did the damage done by neoliberal economics, hyper-globalization, outsourcing, and the de-industrialization of the West.
The 1990s also saw the rise of the Taliban, and the following century opened with the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan and the attacks of 9/11 in America. Since then we seem to have lurched from one crisis to another: warfare and humiliation in the Middle East, the failure to export liberal democracy abroad, financial collapse, terrorism, and latterly the pandemic, supply chain problems, inflation, and renewed warfare in Europe.
All this is to say that the “whole new world” we were promised in the ’90s is much like the old one, only worse. And the theory of irreversible progress seems increasingly implausible in the face of steady decline.
But this doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can do.
Decline isn’t irreversible either. If that were true, then human civilization would never have recovered from its first collapse thousands of years ago. Renewal is possible even after a long interval, as is shown, for example, by the revival of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the ebb and flow of civilization in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China despite repeated foreign conquest. So no matter how bad things may seem, civilization can recover.
But how would we bring about this renewal? The modern answer centres on innovation: doing something revolutionary and starting over again. Most of us now living in the West are used to thinking of practically all aspects of life in the same way that we think of technology. One technological change supersedes another, and each change rapidly ushers in another one. The same process supposedly governs social and moral development. This mode of thought passes without question now. But it would have seemed very disagreeable to a peasant who lived through the French Revolution, a Ukrainian farmer enduring Stalin’s five-year plans, or an indigenous inhabitant of the New World whose life was upended after the arrival of Europeans.
The Western obsession with sweeping away the past is highly peculiar, of course, and it is also highly destructive.
In contrast, all the great recoveries—whether successive Egyptian or Chinese dynasties, the European Renaissance, or the Islamic Golden Age—were inspired by imitating older cultural models. Even the so-called Scientific Revolution involved Copernicus and Galileo revisiting Byzantine and Perso-Arabic theories of physics and astronomy. Greek philosophy and mathematics owed a huge debt to far older Near-Eastern models salvaged from the Late Bronze Age Collapse around 1177 BC. And Confucius claimed to be a mere transmitter of the customs and values of the ancient Zhou state founded in 1046 BC.
The Western obsession with revolutionary change and novelty grew out of the Age of Discovery, matured throughout the Reformation and Enlightenment, and ossified into an ideology in the early 20th century. The ideological part was the work of Italian poet and art critic Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose “Futurist Manifesto” appeared in 1909.
(L-R) Italian futurists Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, and Gino Severini in front of Le Figaro, Paris, on Feb. 9 1912. Marinetti, author of the “Futurist Manifesto,” urged the total repudiation and destruction of the past. (Public Domain)
Marinetti urged the total repudiation of the past and the rapid acceleration of technological and social changes. He worshiped the alleged beauty of speed. He hated museums, praised war as a form of hygiene, and wanted to see ancient cities utterly destroyed.
The “Futurist Manifesto” crystallized trends that are still with us. The informal motto of Silicon Valley is “move fast and break things.” Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos, for instance, could be considered Futurist prophets of fast cars, trains, rocket ships, high-speed downloads, and near-instantaneous deliveries. Tech companies and CEOs still speak of accelerating change, and the constant action and insomnia favoured by Marinetti are the virtues of the modern office worker.
Futurism could be considered the Mother of All Ideologies.
In Italy, the Futurists turned Fascist. They were Bolsheviks in Russia, and Nazis elsewhere. They all agreed with Marinetti’s vision: progress meant repudiating and destroying the past. In the fascist utopia, the state would serve only the strong. Communism would usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nazism reimagined the Marxist class struggle as a conflict among races, and envisioned the end point of history as the thousand-year Reich. These Golden Ages all lay ahead, owing nothing to history. And, as Marinetti seemed to foresee, they would take shape amidst obscene destruction and murder.
Thus the most horrific disasters in human history have a common origin not in the veneration of the past, as some believe, but in utopian visions of the future. So why, we might ask, is future-orientation still such a powerful idea? And if looking to the future is so bad, what should we do instead?
This is what my book “In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present” is about. It attempts to explain what makes human civilization what it is. It shows what we are in danger of losing through decline or collapse, and points the way toward renewal. The book argues that civilized life itself arose because our ancient ancestors developed a connection with the past and felt that they had a place in history—a feeling that we are now very close to losing. And it asserts that every former renewal of civilization has been inspired by memory of the past and a deliberate effort to imitate it.
Despite the uncertainties and tensions of contemporary life, and the perception of decline, we should remind ourselves that the future we think we want is never the future we actually get. But, if we want it to, civilization will outlast our failures.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/04/2023 – 00:10 - 'Godfather Of AI' Quits Google And Warns World About Impending 'AI-Driven' Crisis
‘Godfather Of AI’ Quits Google And Warns World About Impending ‘AI-Driven’ Crisis
The “Godfather of AI” resigned from his position at Google, where he has worked for over a decade. He joined a growing chorus of critics who warn of the existential risk artificial intelligence systems pose to humans.
On Monday, Google computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton tweeted:
“In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.”
In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.
— Geoffrey Hinton (@geoffreyhinton) May 1, 2023
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In an interview with The New York Times, Hinton said it was only after quitting Google that he could openly talk about the dangers of AI.
He still believed the systems were inferior to the human brain in some ways but he thought they were eclipsing human intelligence in others. “Maybe what is going on in these systems,” he said, “is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain.”
As companies improve their AI systems, he believes, they become increasingly dangerous. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of AI technology. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”
Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said. -NYT
One of his most immediate concerns is that the internet will be flooded with fake videos, photos, and news, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”
Hinton is concerned that automation will disrupt the job market. Chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, can already replace personal assistants, translators, and others who handle routine tasks.
“It takes away the drudge work,” he said, adding, “It might take away more than that.”
A recent Goldman Sachs research note predicted that AI could lead to some 300 million layoffs among highly paid, non-menial workers in the US and Europe. As Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius put it:
“Using data on occupational tasks in both the US and Europe, we find that roughly two-thirds of current jobs are exposed to some degree of AI automation, and that generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating our estimates globally suggests that generative AI could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation” as up to “two thirds of occupations could be partially automated by AI.”
And on Monday, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said AI could replace 30% of its back-office jobs over the next five years.
Back to Hinton, where he continued to warn AI will eventually eclipse human intelligence:
“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that.
“But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”
He said he didn’t sign the letter in March when more than 1,000 technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, called for a six-month moratorium on developing new AI tools more powerful than GPT-4. That’s because he didn’t want to openly criticize big tech while working for Google.
In 2018, Hinton and two other colleagues received the Turing Award, or “the Nobel Prize of computing,” for their work on neural networks. Google acquired his company in 2018 for $44 million, which developed powerful technologies that led to the creation of chatbots.
In a separate interview, Hinton told BBC News, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have.”
“The big difference is that with digital systems, you have many copies of the same set of weights, the same model of the world.
“All these copies can learn separately but share their knowledge instantly. So it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”
One of the most significant risks he sees is authoritarian leaders can use AI technology to “manipulate” the masses.
Hinton’s concerns may be coming a bit late, as the technology is already in use. Similar concerns have been expressed by engineers and scientists in the past, in relation to nuclear power and biochemistry. It’s inevitable that the world will eventually face an AI-driven crisis.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 23:50 - Blinken's Immaculate Conception Defense: Why Things Are Likely To Get Worse For The Secretary Of State
Blinken’s Immaculate Conception Defense: Why Things Are Likely To Get Worse For The Secretary Of State
Below is my column in the New York Post on the response of Secretary of State Antony Blinken to allegations that he was the original source for the Russian disinformation claim behind the Hunter Biden laptop. I wrote previously that Blinken is struggling to avoid the look of a “made man” who earned his bones in the Biden Administration.
Things are now likely to get worse after a U.S. senator added an alleged false statements charge to Blinken’s controversies.
Here is the column:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is claiming the political version of the immaculate conception.
In a Fox interview, Blinken suggests that he is free of blame in the creation of the 2020 letter from former intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely Russian disinformation.
Despite the primary organizer of the letter naming him as the Biden campaign adviser who first raised the claim, Blinken insists that he remains without sin.
All of the letter signatories are taking the same position.
No one is at fault in one of the most calculated false stories ever planted in the midst of an election cycle.
That would be hard enough to believe, but it’s not even the only lie Blinken is accused of telling in relation to Hunter Biden.
Blinken is also facing questions over allegedly false statements made to Congress related to Hunter Biden.
He claims he never emailed Hunter, when messages on the president’s son’s laptop show he did.
Let’s start with the letter.
With an enabling media, Joe Biden was able to use it to dismiss the evidence of possible influence peddling and criminal conduct on the laptop.
During the presidential debate, an irate Biden cited the letter as proving that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” He added that “nobody believes” that the laptop was real.
Media and social media companies then buried the story, including some like Twitter banning its discussion before the election.
In the close election, the false story worked to negate a damaging scandal of corruption involving millions of dollars from foreign sources, including some involving figures associated with foreign intelligence.
After the Republican takeover of the House, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell was called before Congress to give a statement.
When pressed on how this letter came about, Morell reportedly did not hesitate: Blinken.
He said Blinken was “the impetus” of the false claim.
Morell then organized dozens of ex-national security officials to sign the letter claiming that the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
On Monday, Blinken told Fox News State Department correspondent Benjamin Hall that “with regard to that letter, I didn’t — it wasn’t my idea, didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it. And I think the testimony that the former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, put forward confirms that.”
Morell called him the “impetus” for the letter. So perhaps Blinken is trying to dance on the semantic pinhead of being the “impetus” as opposed to the “solicitor” of the claim. Morell did not appear to have any doubts or hesitation after speaking with Blinken and quickly assembled an array of experts to make the false claim. Morell admitted to Congress that one of his goals was “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”
So it turns out no one is at fault. Not the “impetus,” not the organizer, not the signatories, not the media. Indeed, maybe it is the public for being chumps in buying this scam.
Blinken is facing a more serious question raised by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who declared that Blinken told “boldface” lies when he testified under oath to Congress in 2020 on the controversy. Johnson said that Blinken said he never emailed Hunter Biden.
Yet emails between the president’s son and Blinken were recently disclosed. They suggested that the two were in communication in 2015 while Blinken was working in the Obama administration and Hunter was on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Johnson stated on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that “we know that he lied boldface to Congress about never emailing Hunter Biden. My guess is he told a bunch of other lies.”
There are also emails that suggest that Hunter communicated through Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan, who now serves as Biden’s cabinet secretary.
We still need more details on the underlying facts, but, if true, the allegations could constitute both criminal and impeachable offenses. Blinken reportedly made these statements as part of the process leading to his confirmation. If he lied, it could constitute making a “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” to Congress under 18 US 1001.
If Blinken lied or committed perjury, it could also constitute an impeachable offense. One complicating issue is that this did not technically occur while in office but in pursuit of that office. Moreover, there may be other statements since becoming secretary of state.
Of course, during the Clinton impeachment, the question of whether perjury constitutes an impeachable offense was raised. When I testified at the impeachment hearing, I maintained that it clearly does meet the standard of a “high crime and misdemeanor.” In my view, it did not matter the subject matter.
Others, like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, were equally certain that perjury did not meet that standard in the Clinton case.
The fact is that cabinet and high-ranking officers have often been accused of false statements without facing impeachment or even prosecution.
Ironically, the letter includes one notable example.
Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper during the Obama administration was accused of perjury before the Senate but was not sanctioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate or the Obama Justice Department.
He later signed the Hunter Biden letter.
That history may be reassuring for Blinken.
However, whatever the outcome, Blinken has some explaining to do and one thing is clear: There is nothing immaculate about the Hunter Biden scandal.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 23:30 - China Clamps Down On Corporate Data, Ramps Up Exit Bans
China Clamps Down On Corporate Data, Ramps Up Exit Bans
As China beefs up its military to focus on “preparations for war” (per the US State Department-funded Radio Free Asia), Beijing is also ramping up restrictions on corporate information provided to overseas clients, as well as exit bans on corporate executives who simply want to leave the country.
In recent months, Chinese financial data providers have stopped providing detailed information on the nation’s companies to outsiders, Bloomberg reports.
Wind Information Co. in recent months ended allowing clients using its platform outside mainland China from accessing its corporate registry database, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The change is due to regulatory requirements, and other parts of their service are continuing as normal, they said, declining to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
Investors operating in China are facing a more challenging environment despite Beijing’s push to improve ties globally. US consultancy firms are under the spotlight in particular, with authorities in recent weeks targeting the China offices of Bain & Company, Mintz Group and Capvision, according to media reports. The government last month passed a new counter-espionage law that expanded the list of activities that could be considered spying, intensifying the risks for foreign firms. -Bloomberg
According to George Magnus, the move “underscores” the CCP’s construction of a new wall to the rest of the world.
“In decades of private sector and academic research, I’ve stumbled into occasional publishing problems with sensitive governments, but never come across sensitive governments shutting down or restricting access to domestic data sources,” he said.
Wind Information Co. collects data on over 200 million enterprises as well as 270 million legal representatives and executives, according to its website. The information includes shareholder and affiliate data, as well as fundraising and investing activities, legal disputes and operation risks.
Meanwhile, Beijing is also implementing exit bans – barring people from leaving the country, including foreign executives, Reuters reports.
Scores of Chinese and foreigners have been ensnared by exit bans, according to a new report by the rights group Safeguard Defenders, while a Reuters analysis has found an apparent surge of court cases involving such bans in recent years, and foreign business lobbies are voicing concern about the trend.
“Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China has expanded the legal landscape for exit bans and increasingly used them, sometimes outside legal justification,” according to a report from Safeguard Defenders.
“Between 2018 and July of this year, no less than five new or amended (Chinese) laws provide for the use of exit bans, for a total today of 15 laws,” said the group’s campaign director, Laura Harth.
According to the group, which cites a 2022 academic paper which found 128 cases between 1995 and 2019, “tens of thousands” of Chinese are being banned from exit at any given time – a huge escalation assuming this is accurate. Reuters, having analyzed records on exit bans, reports an eight-fold increase in cases between 2016 and 2022.
One such person prevented from leaving China earlier this year is Singaporean executive at the US due-diligence firm Mintz Group, which said in late March that authorities had raided the firm’s China office and detained five local staff under suspicion of engaging in unlawful business operations. CCP police also visited Bain & Co’s Shanghai office and questioned the staff.
“Because of rising tensions between the U.S. and China, the salience of this (exit ban) risk has risen,” said Lester Ross, a veteran lawyer in China who has handled exit ban cases.
“I’ve seen a rise in companies and entities being concerned about this and asking for our advice on how to prepare and reduce risks” of exit bans, Ross said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 23:10 - So Much For SkyNet – Warehouse Robot Collapses After Working 20 Hours Straight
So Much For SkyNet – Warehouse Robot Collapses After Working 20 Hours Straight
Authored by Katie Hutton via TheMindUnleashed.com,
When you’re working on the production line at a factory and trying to fulfill ever-changing deadlines, being a busy robot might make life challenging.
It is even more gruesome when you consider that the robot in question was designed to last for the longest amount of time possible.
Meet Digit. The motorized moving mess of bolts and wires known as Digit was the subject of the evaluation. And to be honest, throughout the twenty hours that it was working hard, Digit put in quite the effort and exhibited all of its nifty tricks and circuitry sorcery to all who were there.
Those unfortunate enough to have witnessed the tail end of Digit’s demos definitely had at least one or two eyebrows raised.
With a 99% success rate over about 20 hours of live demos, Digit still took a couple of falls at ProMat.
We have no proof, but we think our sales team orchestrated it so they could talk about Digits quick-change limbs and durability. #ConspiracyTheories pic.twitter.com/aqC5rhvBTj
— Agility Robotics (@agilityrobotics) April 6, 2023
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AFTER ALL, DIGIT DID EXPERIENCE SOME DEGREE OF FAILURE. AS IN, HE WAS OUT OF THE RUNNING FOR THE TIME BEING AFTER ITS COLLAPSE. THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANY, ON THE OTHER HAND, BRAGGED OF A PHENOMENAL SUCCESS RATE OF 99.99 PERCENT FOR JOBS COMPLETED BY WAREHOUSE BOTS.
“We started with scientific breakthroughs and layered on top of that world-class engineering,” they said in a press release.
“We approach everything with a focus on function. Our robots were designed from day one to do work and get the job done,” they add.
In April, Agility Robotics posted the video, announcing that the hard-working bot has successfully completed over nearly 20 hours of live demonstrations despite suffering a few “scrapes and bruises” while doing its responsibilities.
Liz Clinkenbeard, vice president of communications at Agility Robotics, disclosed to the Associated Press that the company wants to show how a cool robot like Digit can pick itself up and move on when things are going badly for it.
“We wanted to show that Digit did fall a couple times, that it’s a normal part of any new technology, and it’s not a big deal,” she said. When Digit drops, it is often because of a fault in the program or with the sensor.
Is this stability testing or an excuse to take Digit out on a nice spring day? Sometimes it’s hard to know the difference. ☀️ pic.twitter.com/yFk6NSgsBb
— Agility Robotics (@agilityrobotics) April 28, 2023
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“SOMETIMES IT MAY NEED A REPAIR; RARELY SOMETHING THAT TAKES MORE THAN 15-20 MINUTES,” SHE ADDED. “WE DO WANT TO BE CAREFUL ABOUT NOT OVER-HUMANIZING A MACHINE OR ASCRIBING INTENT.
WHILE DIGIT LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE A PERSON, IN REALITY IT IS A COMPUTER THAT CAN DO PHYSICAL WORK, AND IT’S FOLLOWING A PROGRAM.”Since then, the footage of Digit falling over has been posted across many social media platforms. The footage has resulted in some quite obscene jokes being made concerning the well-being of the robot.
Some of the comments made on social media about Digit hinted that the hard-working AI may have offed itself because of the menial tasks it was forced to perform for little pay.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 22:50 - Escape The Collapse? Billionaire Buys 5,000 Acre Farm Near Jackson Hole
Escape The Collapse? Billionaire Buys 5,000 Acre Farm Near Jackson Hole
In the event of a societal collapse or a banking crisis escalating into a financial meltdown akin to 2008, some billionaires own vast amounts of farmland around the world, which serves not only as a hedge but also provides spacious retreats for them to take refuge.
Despite a US housing market that has frozen for average folks after a record-breaking run in mortgage rates and home prices still at elevated levels, triggering the worst affordability in a generation, billionaires are still making moves.
The latest is billionaire industrialist Steven Rales, who recently purchased “Diamond G Ranch,” a property that spans 5,000 acres and is located 90 minutes east of Jackson Hole, for a whopping $71 million, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing property records.
The property has everything one needs to escape the apocalypse. And or, if that doesn’t happen, have valuable land that will only appreciate.
“It has an estimated 5 miles of the Dunoir River on private land with immediate access to 2.5 more miles on public land that is rarely accessed by the public. The Dunoir is a world-class trout fishery with trout in the 20 plus inch category. Wildlife – Bear, elk, moose, antelope, mountain lion, coyote, wolverine, multiple bird species, and both bighorn sheep and mountain goats are often seen in the adjacent national forest. It is one of the richest, wildest places for wildlife we have ever seen,” said real estate firm Hall and Hall, who brokered the deal late last year.
In recent years, the list of billionaires, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet, purchasing farmland has been increasing. And we’ve shown readers that farmland is an excellent hedge in economic downcycles: “US Farmland Bucks Real Estate Downturn.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 22:30 - World On Cusp Of Woke Totalitarianism As Governments Act To End Freedom Of Speech
World On Cusp Of Woke Totalitarianism As Governments Act To End Freedom Of Speech
Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag via ‘Public’ substack,
Media blackout as politicians in EU, US, UK, Brazil, Ireland, Canada, and Australia seek to jail citizens for wrongthink under the cover of a Big Lie about “hate speech”…
The Twitter Files gave us a window into how government agencies, civil society, and tech companies work together to censor social media users. Now, key nations are attempting to enshrine this coordination into law explicitly.
Around the world, politicians have either just passed or are on the cusp of passing sweeping new laws, which would allow governments to censor ordinary citizens on social media and other Internet platforms.
Under the guise of preventing “harm” and holding large tech companies accountable, several countries are establishing a vast and interlinked censorship apparatus, a new investigation by Public finds.
Politicians, NGOs, and their enablers in the news media claim that their goal is merely to protect the public from “disinformation.” But vague definitions and loopholes in new laws will create avenues for broad application, overreach, and abuse.
In Ireland, for example, the government may soon be able to imprison citizens simply for possessing material that officials decide is “hateful.” Under the RESTRICT Act in the US, the government may soon have the authority to monitor the Internet activity of any American deemed a security risk.
Governments aim for total control. In Canada, a state agency can filter and manipulate what Canadians see online. In Australia, a single government official can compel social media companies to remove posts.
Governments and allied NGOs intend to force tech companies to comply with their rules. UK lawmakers have threatened to imprison social media managers who don’t censor enough content. And Brazil has introduced severe penalties for platforms that fail to remove “fake news.”
The key area of action is the European Union. It is seeking sweeping new powers to regulate social media companies. And if it acts, it may change how social media companies operate worldwide, given the EU’s economic power and influence globally.
Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, large tech companies must share their data with “vetted researchers” from non-profits and academia, which would cede content moderation to NGOs and their state sponsors.
The US’s RESTRICT Act, sponsored by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), threatens 20 years in prison or a $250,000 fine for accessing blacklisted websites through “virtual private networks,” or VPNs, which are ways to create a private connection between a computer or phone and the Internet.
There has been no moment similar to this one in the roughly 30 years of widespread public Internet usage in Western societies.
Officials have introduced these policies mostly in the dead of night with little publicity or outcry. There has been a virtual blackout of what’s happening by mainstream news media corporations, with many appearing to support the new laws.
As shown with the Twitter Files, the Censorship Industrial Complex is as much about discrediting accurate facts, true narratives, and content creators who threaten its power while boosting the ones that do.
We are thus witnessing the emergence of a governmental apparatus with the power to control the information environment in ways that determine what people believe to be true and what is false.
As such, it is no exaggeration to say that the West is on the cusp of a new and much more powerful form of totalitarianism than either Communism or Fascism, which were limited in their reach by geography.
If we are to defeat it, we must understand it.
Why are governments seeking to crack down on freedom of speech from New Zealand to the Netherlands and Brazil to Canada? Why now? And why are they getting away with it?
Inside The Plot To Censor The Planet
RESTRICT Act sponsor Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) (center) with United Kingdom MP Damian Collins (L) and Ukrainian MP Hanna Hopko (R) at a press conference by government-funded censorship advocacy NGO called “The Atlantic Council” on July 16, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).
The timing of the global crackdown on free speech does not appear to be coincidental.
What’s happening now appears to represent the re-grouping of censorship advocacy that occurred after that defeat. With some notable exceptions, the demand for censorship is being driven by center-Left parties, with NGOs playing a subservient role.
…
Politicians are invoking a Woke defense of “preventing harm” that is very different from the older pretext for censorship, national security. The push is race-based, immigration-based (e.g., Ireland), trans-based (e.g., Ireland and Australia), and safety- or health-based (e.g., the EU).
…
Meanwhile, there is no evidence of an increase in the killing of trans people or even that trans people are killed at a rate higher than the average person. In truth, no minority group in history has gone from stigmatized to celebrated faster than trans people.
…
Why now?
The election of Biden, the failure of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” and the release of the Twitter Files all appear to have forced censorship advocacy to move from the U.S. to other nations, particularly Europe, in order to censor Americans and the rest of the world through the back door.
…
We believe elites have overreached. If they felt secure in their censorship agenda, they wouldn’t be hiding and rushing it through legislatures worldwide or trying to sneak censorship on the U.S. through the European Union.
* * *
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 22:10 - China Updates Conscription Law, Eyeing 'High-Tech Regional Conflict' Over Taiwan
China Updates Conscription Law, Eyeing ‘High-Tech Regional Conflict’ Over Taiwan
China rolled out a new recruitment policy this week, including an update to its military conscription law, which came into force Monday after being approved by the State Council and Central Military Commission.
The effort is aimed at creating a more high-tech and cyberwarfare capable army involving highly skilled personnel. The new guidelines explicitly say the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should “focus on preparations for war” and needs more soldiers utilizing high-tech weaponry.
Image: AP The guidelines expand the military’s ability for short-notice enlistments in instances of highly qualified recruits, as well as prior service personnel, and even college students who have knowledge of space and cyberwar domains.
According to some of the updated policy and rules:
The amended rules require the recruitment of “high-quality soldiers” in a “lawful, precise and efficient manner.”
There is scope for wider mobilization of the population in the event of war, including the recruitment of women to active service if numbers require it, as well as previously demobilized soldiers, who may return to their old posts and rank “if they meet the requirements.”
“During wartime, the State Council and the Central Military Commission may adjust the requirements and methods used to enlist citizens to active service,” according to one of rules published in state news agency Xinhua.
This came the same week as an Axios report which reviews how each allied US country in the Pacific is nervously preparing for possible showdown over Taiwan.
“A war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan would be a nightmare scenario for America’s allies in the Pacific, but it’s becoming increasingly clear what roles they might play if one breaks out,” wrote Axios.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 21:50 - Attempt To Remove Soros-Backed Prosecutor Moves Forward; She Vows To Fight 'Witch Hunt'
Attempt To Remove Soros-Backed Prosecutor Moves Forward; She Vows To Fight ‘Witch Hunt’
Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Days after an embattled prosecutor vowed she would never resign from office, a judge ruled that removal proceedings against her would continue.
On May 2, Visiting Judge John Torbitzky ordered seven out of 10 claims against St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to move forward. He denied her lawyers’ request to throw out all of the accusations.
Torbitzky has been presiding over the case that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey brought against Gardner, a Democrat.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner speaks in St. Louis, Mo., on Jan. 13, 2020. (Jim Salter/AP Photo) Gardner has accused Republican Bailey of playing politics.
Bailey filed a petition alleging that Gardner shirked her responsibilities and should forfeit her elected office. Her lawyers say Gardner committed no intentional acts that would warrant her removal.
Torbitzky said he made “reasonable inferences” that Gardner willfully failed to “prosecute cases, make charging decisions, keep victims informed, and ensure defendants and victims receive a speedy trial,” as Bailey alleges.
The judge dismissed three allegations that didn’t fit the type of conduct that could lead to an officeholder’s removal.
Gardner also faces other accusations. Last week, a separate judge found that her office’s no-shows at court proceedings warranted an allegation of “indirect criminal contempt.” A hearing in the contempt case is set for May 30.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that an assistant prosecutor involved in that case has resigned, as did a second assistant who avoided a contempt citation.
The recent departures are adding to judges’ concerns about Gardner’s office being understaffed, a court spokesman said.
‘Witch Hunt’ Alleged
During a public meeting at a local church on April 29, Gardner said her enemies “want to capture every word I’m saying, so they can use this as a soundbite for criminal contempt or a vehicle to try to take me out of office.”
“What you’re seeing is a witch hunt,” she said in the meeting recorded by KSDK News and posted on YouTube.
Gardner declared emphatically: “I’m not leavin’. I’m not resigning. I’m not doing nothing. [sic] You will have to remove me.”
And, at one point, she said, “You can’t take me out, because I’m not afraid of none of this [sic].”
Gardner, seeking reelection in 2024, is among many progressive prosecutors who received backing from funds from billionaire George Soros. According to The Missouri Times, Gardner’s campaign benefited from Soros’s largesse. Several Soros-backed prosecutors have been accused of being soft on crime.
‘Change of Judge’
In the removal case, Torbitzky’s ruling followed an April 18 hearing where he heard arguments from both sides.
The state Supreme Court, which appointed Torbitzky, will need to select another judge to hear the case. Torbitzky had no choice but to grant Gardner’s lawyers’ request that he be replaced.
A Missouri procedural rule allows “a change of judge” once in every civil case, no questions asked. When they filed a motion under that rule, Gardner’s lawyers gave no reasons for seeking a replacement judge.
Meanwhile, Bailey is accusing Gardner’s lawyers of stonewalling requests for records and stalling the proceedings.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 21:30 - US Navy Enlists Drag Queen For 'Digital Ambassador' Role To Attract More Recruits
US Navy Enlists Drag Queen For ‘Digital Ambassador’ Role To Attract More Recruits
And the Department of Defense wonders why multiple military branches are projected to miss their recruitment goals this year? The Navy expects to fall short by over 6000 sailors in 2023, while the military struggles with a growing lack of interest, not to mention a lack of physically viable candidates. So, they have embarked on a new strategy, giving their marketing the Bud Light treatment.
That’s right, the Navy has recruited a squadron administrator and drag queen using the name “Harpy Daniels” to be their new “Digital Ambassador.” The post is designed to inspire more civilians to join the Navy.
The U.S. Navy hired this non-binary drag queen as a “digital ambassador” to try to recruit people pic.twitter.com/l3LIEtndVD
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 2, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The attempted “woke-ification” of the US armed forces is a growing trend, with military brass defending the teaching of CRT (Critical Race Theory) among officers and numerous recruitment ads depicting far-left concepts. Here is a training video from the Navy featuring two engineers from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center explaining the use of pronouns, gender neutral language and how to be a “good ally” to the LGBT community.
And who can forget this social justice advertising gem from the US Army:
For good measure, let’s not forget the woke and narcissistic messaging of recent CIA recruitment ads:
The Navy claims that DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives are not hurting recruitment, yet interest in military service continues to plummet in the face of the woke shift.
The repellent nature of leftist branding efforts in the military should be obvious. In the past, the majority of those volunteering for military service have always been politically conservative or independent, with only 29% of current serving identifying as Democrats. Leftists have long been widely opposed to military participation in general, even though, ironically, the Democrats are now becoming the preeminent party of war when it comes to Russia and the Ukraine situation.
They want America to go to war, they just don’t want to be forced to fight those wars themselves. War is an ugly business replete with unfairness and inequity. Trying to appeal to progressives within Gen Z is not going to work out well for the DoD.
Another factor is the mindset of the average leftist – It is a philosophy that lends itself to weakness, entitlement and often mental illness, making training goals difficult or impossible. Over 42% of Gen Z has been diagnosed with at least one mental health condition. This is why many businesses are now more likely to reject applications from job seekers that use preferred pronouns in their resumes. These people are far more trouble than they’re worth.
The only recourse for a woke military would be to dramatically lower standards and turn basic training into a day care, which is exactly what they have been doing incrementally over the past several years. The question is if this is delusional or deliberate self sabotage. Is the US military being deconstructed from within? Or, are these people simply inept?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 21:10 - 15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days
15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days
On Monday, the White House announced its Covid-19 vaccine requirements for federal employees, federal contractors, and international air travelers will expire on May 11, coinciding with the end of the Covid public health emergency. The 15 Days to Flatten the Curve that began on March 16, 2020, stretched to 1,141 days.
In some ways, the repeal is a victory against the irrational tyranny behind the vaccine mandates that have been part of the entire lockdown paradigm. Americans no longer have to choose between taking an experimental, ineffective medical product and keeping their job. We no longer have to endure the irrationality of enforcing vaccine mandates for air travelers but not for illegal immigrants at our southern border. We no longer have to listen to the tyrannical paternalism behind forcing people to receive a shot that they don’t want while insisting that it is saving their lives.
At the same time, however, it is far from a victory; we have returned to what should be the normal state, and we already witnessed the suffering that the mandates incurred. Millions of people were forced to choose between the truth of their convictions and earning a living. Others lost years of visiting loved ones in foreign countries. The people who implemented this Hell remain in power, and they appear unremorseful.
The Biden Administration did not admit error in its policies; instead, it took great pride in its two years of forced jabs.
“Our COVID-19 vaccine requirements bolstered vaccination across the nation, and our broader vaccination campaign has saved millions of lives,” the White House boasted.
“While vaccination remains one of the most important tools in advancing the health and safety of employees and promoting the efficiency of workplaces, we are now in a different phase of our response when these measures are no longer necessary.”
There is no solid evidence for any of those claims. And substantial policy questions remain. Since March 2020, Covid served as the basis for political initiatives far beyond the realm of public health. It was used as the justification for eviction moratoriums, travel restrictions, domestic-capacity restrictions, closures, mask mandates, and student debt relief. Considering the future requires an understanding of the Biden White House’s mandate regime.
The History of the Mandates
Beginning in July 2021, President Biden issued a series of Covid vaccine mandates.
In September 2021, he announced, “Next, I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch federal employees to be vaccinated — all. And I’ve signed another executive order that will require federal contractors to do the same. If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated.” He then announced that the Department of Labor would require all employers with 100 or more workers to get vaccinated.
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” he scolded unvaccinated Americans. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”
The following month, Biden banned international air travelers from entering the United States without proof of receiving the Covid shots. Visitors remained able to enter the country testing positive for the virus so long as they had agreed to the President’s mandatory injection program.
But President Biden’s disappointment in his citizens did not convince the American public of the righteousness of his crusade. In the ensuing months, the shots’ lack of efficacy became readily apparent, and Americans were reluctant to get their “boosters.”
Biden did not relent, however. He publicly scolded Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers for not getting the shots and insisted that there was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” going into 2022.
In August 2022, the White House faced backlash when tennis superstar Novak Djokovic was unable to participate in the U.S. Open because of the ban on unvaccinated international air travelers. The strict enforcement did not apply to illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. A reporter asked the White House to explain this enforcement discrepancy later that month.
“How come migrants are allowed to come into this country unvaccinated but world-class tennis players are not?” asked Fox’s Peter Doocy.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to articulate an explanation.
“So as far — you know, just to — just since you asked about me — about him — you asked me about him. So, visa records are confidential under U.S. law. Therefore, the U.S. government cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases. Due to privacy reasons, the U.S. government also does not comment on medical information of individual travelers,” she stammered as she avoided the question.
She then told Doocy that the issue comparison between illegals crossing the border and international air travelers was unfounded because “they’re two different things.”
Djokovic reentered headlines in March 2023 when he was unable to participate in a Florida tournament because of the ongoing travel ban. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called on Biden to lift the restriction. When asked about the ban stemming from the President’s ban, Ms. Jean-Pierre deflected blame to the CDC, telling the press, “They’re the ones who deal with that. [The ban’s] still in place, and we expect everyone to abide by our country’s rule, whether as a participant or a spectator.”
Djokovic was unable to play in the tournament, but momentum against the Biden regime’s edicts gained steam. Later that month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking President Biden’s mandate for federal employees to receive the Covid jabs.
In April, President Biden signed a law that ended the Covid national emergency in a bill introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar. The bill passed the House in a 229-197 vote and the Senate in a 68-23 vote.
What happens now
A number of other pandemic-era policies will also end on May 11, including Title 42, which allows Border Patrol to immediately send illegal immigrants at the southern border back to Mexico. Texas Governor Greg Abbott expects up to 13,000 illegal immigrants to cross the US-Mexico border every day after the expiration.
This may exacerbate the ongoing crisis at the border. In the last 10 days alone, over 73,000 migrants have crossed the southern border as Title 42 comes closer to expiration. Border Patrol announced that in that time it stopped 19 sex offenders, six gang members, and a convicted murderer from entering the United States. Additionally, Border Patrol seized 19 pounds of heroin, 54 pounds of fentanyl, 1,052 pounds of meth, 676 pounds of cocaine, and 823 pounds of marijuana.
There are more issues at stake than immigration. The Supreme Court is considering whether the White House’s order to cancel student debt was constitutional. The Biden White House has defended its actions by claiming that the Heroes Act of 2003 allows the US Education Secretary to change federal student loan programs during national emergencies such as the Covid pandemic. Going forward, the White House will have to adopt new rationales for future executive actions related to student debt.
On the legal front, employment law firm Jackson Lewis reports that there are over 2,000 existing challenges to Covid 19 vaccine mandates in the courts right now, and over 35 percent involve public employers. Challenges to the federal mandates may now be moot, meaning courts will dismiss the cases because the mandates are no longer in effect. Plaintiffs will be able to return to work without adhering to the White House’s vaccine requirements, but there will also be no accountability for those in charge.
These days and for many months and years following, all the people involved in the pandemic response – not only government officials but media mouthpieces and Big Tech accomplices – will be rewriting history and hoping that everyone will forget the real history.
They are trying to avoid accountability and save whatever vestiges of despotism that they can, while hoping to institutionalize the powers that made all of this possible.
They cannot be allowed to win this struggle for essential rights, liberties, and truth.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 20:50 - Debt Ceiling, No Worries? Biden Offers $500K Grant For 'Pakistani Transgender Youth' To Learn English
Debt Ceiling, No Worries? Biden Offers $500K Grant For ‘Pakistani Transgender Youth’ To Learn English
While President Biden demands that Republicans pass a no-strings-attached, ‘clean’ debt limit increase without requiring Democrats to make sacrifices, his administration is throwing around cash like a drunken sailor at a whorehouse..
To wit, the Biden administration is now offering a grant to help teach English in Pakistan by providing, in part, “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”
According to the grant, the US State Department wants to teach English language skills to Pakistani youth so they can “better participate in the global community and prepare them for success in the workplace,” Fox News reports, adding that the grant aims to reach its goal by focusing on three components; (1) “Professional Development for English Language Teachers from Non-Mainstream Institutions; (2) Professional Development for novice Pakistani English language teachers; and (3) Professional Development for Transgender Youth and for Afghan Teachers, Students, and Young Professionals Residing in Pakistan.”
The program component that includes a focus on transgender youth accepts proposals from applicants “for a minimum of $25,000 and a maximum of $75,000 to implement: (1) intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth from the ages of 13-25, and (2) and intensive professional development courses for Afghan teachers, students, and young professionals residing in Pakistan.”
These components aim to improve English language communication skills among trainees and connect them to a professional alumni network. Participating teachers will “share what they learned in these trainings with English-language professional colleagues, thereby influencing pedagogy in their schools and communities.” -Fox News
Those interested in some of the $500K are encouraged to address the question of “What is the most effective way to reach the greatest number of Pakistani transgender youth and Afghan teachers, students, and young professionals from diverse locations across Pakistan?”
According to the State Department, the project focuses on transgender youth as it does with other “marginalized communities,” and noted that the funds won’t be used towards gender transitions.
“In this specific grant, the Department provides funding for English-language learning, an integral skill that helps unlock educational and employability opportunities, for marginalized communities, in this case transgender youth,” said the spokesperson.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 20:30 - No, Washington Post, The Experts Were The Whole Problem
No, Washington Post, The Experts Were The Whole Problem
Authored by John Tamny via The Brownstone Institute,
“On the field of war what is at stake is the thing that matters most to any man – the saving of his own skin.”
– Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 889
The quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a useful way to begin addressing the Washington Post editorial board’s confident assertion that “’A collective national incompetence in government’” was at the root of the U.S.’s alleged failure vis-à-vis the coronavirus in 2020.
According to the Post quoting from a recently released report (“Lessons from the Covid War”), “The United States started out ‘with more capabilities than any other country in the world,’ but “it ended up with 1 million dead.”
Were he still around, one guesses Tolstoy would mock the conceit of the Post’s editorialists.
That’s the case because “the thing that matters most to any man” is “the saving of his own skin.”
That this needs to even be said speaks to how wrongheaded the Post’s editorial board’s approach to the virus was, and still is.
It implies we have dead because government didn’t act properly, as though free people eager to live were unequal to a virus that the right kind of collective governmental action was more than equal to.
Ok, but what was government going to do? Better yet, what if the virus had struck in 2009 when Barack Obama was still in the White House. What would he have done? Would he have instructed a virus that was spreading faster than the flu to take a “time out?”
The simple truth missed by the Post is that as humans we’re wired to preserve ourselves. On the matter of life and the presumption of death, government is excess. Whatever solution Obama might have come up with, or whatever Donald Trump did come up with, or (try not to laugh) whatever Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would have done if the virus had revealed itself in 2021 would have been vastly unequal to the solutions crafted by free people.
Deep down the Post’s editorialists must know the above is true. Indeed, it’s not that the Soviet Union lacked experts, or that Cuba lacks experts now. The problem was and is that the remarkable knowledge of very few very smart people will never measure up to the collective knowledge of the citizenry. That’s why communism failed so impressively in the Soviet Union, and it’s why it fails in Cuba. Translated for those who need it, the people are the market and markets work.
As I make plain in my 2021 book When Politicians Panicked, the problem was experts and politicians substituting their limited knowledge for that of the people. That was the crisis. Not so, according to the Post and the report they cite.
Supposedly the “leaders of the United States could not apply their country’s vast assets effectively enough” such that “1 million died.” Wrong. Over and over again. To see why, imagine if 10 million Americans had died in March of 2020. Can the Post editorial board think of what government might have done that would have somehow improved on a feverish individual desire to survive against long odds? The simple truth glossed over by the Post is that the more threatening a virus is (and the Post seems to view what most didn’t know they were infected with as wildly threatening), the more superfluous government action is.
Really, who reading this needs to ever be forced to avoid behavior that might result in sickness, or even death? And if the reply to this question is that some people DO need to be forced, you’re making the best case of all for unfettered freedom. Think about it. Those who reject expert opinion are the most crucial “control group” as a virus spreads. By going against the grain, we learn from their freely arrived at actions if the virus is as lethal as presumed, or not, how it spreads, how to perhaps avoid its spread, and all manner of other important bits of information suppressed by one-size-fits-all national solutions.
It cannot be stressed enough that free people crucially produce information. Instead of allowing them to produce it in abundance in 2020, the response arrived at by Democrats and Republicans was to lock people in their homes, thus blinding a nation “with more capabilities than any other country” to the best approaches to a spreading virus. Please keep all of this in mind with the report’s assertion that the “most important and fundamental misjudgment” about the virus was how it spread. You think? Of course, the muscular assertion ignores yet again that if knowing how a virus spreads is of utmost importance, the only credible answer is freedom.
On the matter of the Trump administration, the Post supports the report’s conclusion that “The administration abdicated its wartime responsibilities to lead” only to leave the coronavirus battle to “states and localities.” If only. Back to reality, President Trump signed into law a $2.9 trillion bill that subsidized shutdowns across the country, thus locking people in their homes far longer than would have otherwise happened, and at the expense of untold amounts of economic output.
Consider the latter in light of the statement of the obvious that all advances in medicine have always been born of matching doctors and scientists with the abundant fruits of wealth creation. In 2020, rather than encourage the very wealth creation that has long been the biggest foe of death and disease (by far), panicky politicians quite literally chose economic contraction as a virus mitigation strategy. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the US political class, but not the Post’s editorialists or the authors of a report that the editorialists remarkably find insightful.
Rather than acknowledge the obvious about government and experts as the crisis, the Post editorialists and the experts they kneel before bemoaned a national abdication of “wartime responsibilities.” One gets the feeling Tolstoy would chuckle yet again. In his words, “The course of a battle is affected by an infinite number of freely operating forces (there being no greater freedom of operation than on a battlefield, where life and death are at stake), and this course can never be known in advance; nor does it ever correspond with the direction of any one particular force.”
In short, on matters of life and death, control is wretched, crisis-inducing excess.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 20:10 - Bolsonaro Raided, Aide Arrested Amid Fake Covid-19 Vaccination Records Scandal
Bolsonaro Raided, Aide Arrested Amid Fake Covid-19 Vaccination Records Scandal
The mansion of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and other locations in Brasília, and Rio de Janeiro were raided by police on Wednesday as part of an investigation into fake Covid-19 vaccine cards.
As part of the arrest, Bolsonaro’s “right-hand man” Lt Col Mauro Cid Barbosa was one of six people arrested Wednesday morning, The Guardian reports.
Two of Bolsonaro’s security guards were also taken into custody. The ex-president was expected to be questioned later on Wednesday. Bolsonaro’s mobile phone was seized at his residence in Brasília and he was obliged to hand over the password after initially resisting.
Federal police reportedly believe a series of official Covid vaccination records were falsified on Brazil’s health ministry database in order to produce bogus vaccination certificates that would permit international travel, including to the US. -The Guardian
The allegedly falsified records include those for Bolsonaro, his 12-year-old daughter Laura, and Mauro Cid Barbosa and his family. The records were reportedly entered into the health ministry’s database between November 2001 and December of last year – Bolsonaro’s last month in power after losing the last presidential election to far-left rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro, who repeatedly claimed that he had refused vaccination, had also refused to make his vaccination records public.
According to Lula, Bolsonaro should be brought to justice for his actions during the “slaughter” of Covid-19.
“Good morning and [have] a nice Wednesday,” Lula tweeted as police rummaged through Bolsonaro’s villa.
The investigation seems to involve suspicions that Bolsonaro forged vaccine certificates: i.e., he was never vaccinated by had documents attesting to his vaccination, including to enter the US. Bolsonaro denies this.
Read about this judge here:https://t.co/VCs9u4bM0l
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 3, 2023
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Other Bolsonaro foes chimed in.
“Brazil was governed by a group of Hollywood-style gangsters,” said leftwing congressman Guilherme Boulos in a tweet.
This isn’t the only investigation into Bolsonaro, who’s being probed over several suspected crimes and transgressions while no longer enjoying prosecutorial immunity.
Bolsonaro, meanwhile, told reporters he was “surprised” at the raid, and denied any involvement in “adulteration.”
“I wasn’t vaccinated. Full stop,” he said, adding “I have nothing else to say.“
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 19:50 - A Record Low 13% Of Eighth Grade Students Are Proficient In History
A Record Low 13% Of Eighth Grade Students Are Proficient In History
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
The Nation’s Report Card for history for 2022 is shockingly low. I have the solution…
Nation’s Report Card
Please consider the NAEP History Report Card at Grade 8 for the US.
NAEP reports scores at five selected percentiles to show changes over time in the scores for lower- (10th and 25th percentiles), middle- (50th percentile), and higher- (75th and 90th percentiles) performing students.
In 2022, the scores for students at the 10th, 25th, 50th, and 75th levels declined compared to 2018. Scores for lower-performing students declined more than the score decrease for those at the 75th percentile compared to 2018.
This is a continuation of a decline seen at all select percentiles except for the 90th percentile when comparing the 2018 scores to those in 2014.
In 2022, there were no significant changes in scores at any of the selected percentile levels compared to 1994.
299 out of 500, just under a 60% score, is in the top 10 percent of the class.
Proficiency Levels
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NAEP Basic Achievement Level: 252 (50.4 Percent Score)
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NAEP Proficient Level: 294 (58.8 Percent Score)
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NAEP Advanced Level: 327 (65.4 Percent Score)
2022 History Proficiency
Proficiency Synopsis
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Only 1 percent of “advanced” students could manage better than a 65.4 percent score.
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Only 13 percent of students were deemed “proficient” at 58.8 percent or better.
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Only 46 percent of students could manage to get just over half the questions correct.
When I Went to Grade School
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Below 70%: F
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70-77%: D
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78-84%: C
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85-92: B
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93+: A
My, how times have changed.
Proposed Solution (Sarcasm)
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Below 26%: F
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26-34%: D
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35-42%: C
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43-50%: B
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51+%: A
Of course, we need to take external factors into consideration. Anyone from a disadvantaged home gets to add 26 percentage points to their score.
Second we need to stop publishing results. Instead, we just post final grades.
Proficiency scores will skyrocket and we can then pat our education system on the back for a job well done.
* * *
Like these reports? I hope so, and if you do, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 19:30 -
- Nordstrom Closing San Francisco Stores, Citing "Deteriorating Situation" Amid Crime Crisis
Nordstrom Closing San Francisco Stores, Citing “Deteriorating Situation” Amid Crime Crisis
Stick a fork in San Francisco: the city seems to be beyond repair.
After 35 years, Nordstrom is closing its downtown San Francisco stores, citing “the deteriorating situation” in the city plagued by crime and governed by mindless progressives.
According to ABC7 News, the Nordstrom Rack on Market Street will close on July 1, and Nordstrom inside Westfield Mall will close in August.
Jamie Nordstrom, Chief Stores Officer, sent a letter to impacted workers of both stores and explained that “the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully.”
The impending exodus of Nordstrom comes as several other retailers, such as Office Depot, The Container Store, Anthropologie, Whole Foods, and Saks Off 5th, have all recently announced store closures. The reason for the closures is that cost of operation for retailers is soaring as progressive city officials won’t address out-of-control thefts and street crime.
Since 2020, twenty retailers have closed their stores in San Francisco’s Union Square, as the San Francisco Standard reported. All have pointed to theft. In other areas, CVS and Walgreens have shuttered stores.
As for the retailers who remain in the city, such as Target, they’ve had to lock entire aisles behind safety glass to prevent shoplifting.
This is what Target in San Francisco looks like pic.twitter.com/7mVnnbO8cK
— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) April 21, 2023
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The retail departures are yet another blow for the city as the tech downturn worsens, coupled with the regional banking crisis, which has spread into commercial real estate, mainly the office space segment.
The gold-standard measure of office occupancy trends is the card-swipe data provided by Kastle Systems. The average office occupancy in San Fran is around 45%, still well off the highs from pre-pandemic levels.
This means that workers have been slow to return to the office, which is evident as Salesforce, Meta Platforms, and other tech companies are hemorrhaging office space, hurting the local economy.
Other stores in the crime-ridden city may also be leaving soon due to approaching lease end dates.
* * *
Jamie Nordstrom, Chief Stores Officer, sent the following message to employees:
“Today we announced that we’ve made the difficult decision not to renew our leases at the San Francisco Centre Nordstrom store and our Market Street Rack store across the street. Market Street Rack’s last day of business will be July 1 and we intend to close San Francisco Centre at the end of August.
Decisions like this are never easy, and this one has been especially difficult. We’ve spent more than 35 years serving customers in downtown San Francisco, building relationships with them and investing in the local community. But as many of you know, the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully. With both leases set to expire, and after looking closely at our opportunities in the region, we believe we can better serve our customers there by focusing on our 16 nearby Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack locations, as well as online.
I want to be really clear that this decision had nothing to do with our team’s hard work. They should be proud of everything they’ve achieved together and the way they’ve shown up and served the community. We’re working with each impacted employee to support them through this transition and find new roles within the company wherever possible.
Stores continue to play a critical part in delivering our Closer to You strategy, and we continue to be opportunistic about new store locations, relocations and concepts. In fact, we have 20 new Rack store openings planned this year, with more to come in 2024. We also remain committed to the Bay Area market and have made significant investments in our stores there over the past several years. We recently announced a new Nordstrom Rack store will open in Pinole, CA, and completed a remodel at our Valley Fair Nordstrom store.”
Read the full statement from Westfield Mall below:
“The planned closure of Nordstrom underscores the deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco. A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area.
URW has actively engaged with City leaders for many years to express our serious concerns, which are shared by our customers and retailers. We have urged the City to find solutions to the key issues and lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity.
The current environment is not sustainable for the community, or businesses, and we are hopeful the City will implement the changes that are so urgently needed.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 19:10 - Watchdog: IRS Has Spent $10M On Weapons, Ammo, & Combat Gear Since 2020
Watchdog: IRS Has Spent $10M On Weapons, Ammo, & Combat Gear Since 2020
Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,
Anew watchdog report reveals that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been stockpiling $10 million worth of weapons, ammunition, and combat gear since 2020.
The New York Post reports that the findings, released by the group OpenTheBooks, show the IRS spending $5 million in 2021 alone as the agency ramped up the militarization of its agents. In the last three years, the IRS has spent a total of $2.3 million on ammunition, $1.2 million on ballistic shields, $474,000 on Smith & Wesson rifles, $463,000 on Beretta tactical shotguns, and $243,000 on body armor.
In addition to these purchases, the IRS’ expenditures include an additional $1.3 million that was spent on “various other gear for criminal investigation agents,” without any specifics as to what this “other gear” may entail.
The slew of new purchases build off of an arsenal that was already well-stocked prior to 2020, with the IRS already having in its possession roughly 5 million rounds of ammunition designated for its 2,159 special agents. Before 2020, the IRS owned 4,500 firearms, which included 621 shotguns, 539 semi-automatic rifles, and 15 submachine guns.
In conjunction with the spike in weapons purchases, the IRS has been hiring significantly more agents in all 50 states. In the job listing for new applicants, the agency notes that any potential applicants must be willing to “carry a firearm; must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations; must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”
The weapon stockpiling and additional hiring comes after the IRS was given over $80 billion in new funding as a result of the highly-partisan Inflation Reduction Act, which was worth $739 billion overall.
The agency has since claimed that the $80 billion was necessary in order to hire nearly 87,000 new agents across the country over the next 10 years, which has raised concerns among Republicans about the weaponization of an agency that has already been used to target conservatives in the past.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 18:50 - NYC's Novel Idea To Solve Rampant Car Theft Is Hand Out Free Apple AirTags
NYC’s Novel Idea To Solve Rampant Car Theft Is Hand Out Free Apple AirTags
Mayor Eric Adams announced that New York City would distribute hundreds of Apple AirTags to residents as part of a cunning plan to combat a spike in car thefts across the five boroughs.
“The aggravated number of grand larceny autos continues to drive up crime in our city,” said Adams. These GPS-tracking devices are a “really amazing piece of ingenuity” and will allow police to track stolen vehicles.
He said the 500 AirTags will be distributed to residents in the coming days. The Association for a Better New York donated the devices amid a spike in crime. The latest data shows car thefts jumped 19.4% in the Bronx from this time last year. Citywide, the number of stolen vehicles has risen from 3,756 to 4,184, up 11.4%, over that same period.
NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell had this to say about the AirTags:
“It allows our officers to be more strategic while mitigating pursuits, keeping us safe and keeping the community safe.
“Hopefully we recover your car undamaged, we take a bad guy off the streets, and you get a car back to conduct your business and it doesn’t impose on your life.”
The 21st century calls for 21st century policing. AirTags in your car will help us recover your vehicle if it’s stolen. We’ll use our drones, our StarChase technology & good old fashion police work to safely recover your stolen car. Help us help you, get an AirTag. #GSD pic.twitter.com/fTfk8p4lye
— NYPD Chief of Department (@NYPDChiefOfDept) April 30, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
While the mayor urged New Yorkers to use the AirTags, the internet laughed at the new plan…
“Democrats will do anything but enforce the laws,” a Twitter user said while replying to the story published by ABC News.
Someone questioned: “How is this going to help? The judges let the thieves go through their no bail program.”
People seem fed up with progressive city leadership…
“And then what? You track down the car with the thief still behind the wheel, what do you do? Arrest him for the 10th time and then let him out in 48 hours? I hope you’re buying a lot of air tags.”
This is all just for optics, as Adams fails to confront a wave of car thefts.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/03/2023 – 18:30
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