Today’s News 5th July 2023

• French Riots Already Cost €1 Billion In Damage
  French Riots Already Cost €1 Billion In Damage

  Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

  France has suffered €1 billion in damage due to widespread rioting, said Geoffrey Roux de Bézieux, head of France’s largest employer federation, the Movement of the Enterprises of France (MEDEF), during an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien.

  

  “More than 200 shops were completely looted, 300 bank branches destroyed, 250 tobacconists affected, with operating methods of absolute violence. Everything was stolen, even cash registers, before setting fire to destroy. The insurers are mobilized to go as quickly as possible, I am quite confident that the businesses concerned will be compensated,” he said. Despite Bézieux’s claim that businesses will be paid out, insurance companies often raise premiums on businesses due to increased risk of future riots.

  

  Police officers responding to nation-wide riots walk past a souvenir store in Paris, Saturday, July 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

  However, according to Bézieux, this tremendous figure does not even factor in the effect on tourism, and also does not include damage to public institutions like schools, libraries, police stations, as well as the hundreds of vehicles torched during the nationwide riots. The rioters, for example, targeted one of the biggest libraries in the country, the Marseille Alcazar library, with arson damage likely costing taxpayers millions alone to restore.

  “It is too early to give a precise figure but we are at more than a billion euros, not counting the damage to tourism. The videos of the riots, which circulated around the world, damage the image of France. It’s always difficult to know if the impact will be lasting, but there will certainly be a drop in bookings this summer when the season was promising. Trips have already been canceled,” said Bézieux.

  The George Floyd riots in the United States had cost an estimated €2 billion, however, many experts argued that was a low estimate. France, meanwhile, is a much smaller country, and already hit the figure of €1 billion worth of damage in just seven days.

  

  Police investigators work in damaged and looted sports store after a third night of unrest, Friday, June 30, 2023 in Paris. Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

  The latest damage figures coming out of France must also be factored into the debate around immigration and arguments that Europe needs more foreigners to shore up public finances. Claims that the migrants will be needed to pay into the pension system of European countries have already been debunked numerous times, as they already cost countries like France and Germany tens of billions every single year for housing, education, and jobless benefits. If anything, these populations are burning a massive hole in the public finances of nations across the West.

  However, when the financial damage of the French riots is also factored in, along with the significant resources dedicated to policing these migrant communities, arguments about the financial benefits of mass immigration appear to be, at least in France, quickly leading to a backlash amongst the public.

  In fact, the vast majority of French people – even before the riots – were saying that France had taken in too many migrants and that immigration had brought more disadvantages than advantages.

  Increasingly clear who was behind the attacks

  The videos of the riots show that the vast majority of rioters were urban youth with a foreign background, however, court cases are also confirming this to be the case.

  CNews reporter Amaury Bucco posted a tweet pointing out that four rioters tried for the looting of stores in Paris and for receiving goods from these stores: three of them are migrants, including two illegal Algerians, one was under a deportation order (OQTF).

  

  In a separate development, in Marseille: a 21-year-old man, son of a Malian diplomat, who came to demonstrate in tribute to Nahel, was arrested during the night for theft.

  “Immediate appearances in Marseille: a 21-year-old man, son of a Malian diplomat, who came to demonstrate in tribute to Nahel, arrested during the night with four pairs of glasses and six pants. Again, clean record and again, the prosecution requests prison time,” wrote French journalist Clara Martot Bacry.

  Comparutions immédiates à Marseille : un homme de 21 ans, fils de diplomate malien, venu pour manifester en hommage Nahel, interpellé dans la nuit avec 4 paires de lunettes et 6 pantalons. Là encore, casier vierge et là encore, le parquet requiert de la prison

  — Clara Martot Bacry (@clara_m_b) July 3, 2023

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/05/2023 – 02:00

• Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.
  Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

  Authored by Chris Hedges via Scheerpost.com,

  The U.S. public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war…

  

  The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change.

  Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

  The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against. 

  The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup which ousted the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.

  But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant. 

  “First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States,” admitted Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

  “Second, Ukraine’s effective defense of its territory is teaching us lessons about how to improve the defenses of partners who are threatened by China. It is no surprise that senior officials from Taiwan are so supportive of efforts to help Ukraine defeat Russia.

  Third, most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American servicemembers.”

  Once the truth about these endless wars seeps into public consciousness, the media, which slavishly promotes these conflicts, drastically reduces coverage. The military debacles, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue largely out of view. By the time the U.S. concedes defeat, most barely remember that these wars are being fought. 

  The pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos migrate from administration to administration. Between posts they are ensconced in think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, The Atlantic Council and The Brookings Institution — funded by corporations and the war industry. Once the Ukraine war comes to its inevitable conclusion, these Dr. Strangeloves will seek to ignite a war with China. The U.S. Navy and military are already menacing and encircling China. God help us if we don’t stop them.

  These pimps of war con us into one conflict after another with flattering narratives that paint us as the world’s saviors. They don’t even have to be innovative. The rhetoric is lifted from the old playbook. We naively swallow the bait and embrace the flag — this time blue and yellow — to become unwitting agents in our self-immolation.

  Since the end of the Second World War, the government has spent between 45 to 90 percent of the federal budget on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest sustained activity of the U.S. government. It has stopped mattering — at least to the pimps of war — whether these wars are rational or prudent. The war industry metastasizes within the bowels of the American empire to hollow it out from the inside. The U.S. is reviled abroad, drowning in debt, has an impoverished working class and is burdened with a decayed infrastructure as well as shoddy social services. 

  Wasn’t the Russian military — because of poor morale, poor generalship, outdated weapons, desertions, a lack of ammunition that supposedly forced soldiers to fight with shovels, and severe supply shortages — supposed to collapse months ago? Wasn’t Putin supposed to be driven from power? Weren’t the sanctions supposed to plunge the ruble into a death spiral? Wasn’t the severing of the Russian banking system from SWIFT, the international money transfer system, supposed to cripple the Russian economy? How is it that inflation rates in Europe and the United States are higher than in Russia despite these attacks on the Russian economy? 

  Wasn’t the nearly $150 billion in sophisticated military hardware, financial and humanitarian assistance pledged by the U.S., EU and 11 other countries supposed to have turned the tide of the war? How is it that perhaps a third of the tanks Germany and the U.S. provided were swiftly turned by Russian mines, artillery, anti-tank weapons, air strikes and missiles into charred hunks of metal at the start of the vaunted counter-offensive? Wasn’t this latest Ukrainian counter-offensive, which was originally known as the “spring offensive,” supposed to punch through Russia’s heavily fortified front lines and regain huge swathes of territory? How can we explain the tens of thousands of Ukrainian military casualties and the forced conscription by Ukraine’s military? Even our retired generals and former CIA, FBI, NSA and Homeland Security officials, who serve as analysts on networks such as CNN and MSNBC, can’t say the offensive has succeeded. 

  And what of the Ukrainian democracy we are fighting to protect? Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022? How do we explain the killing of over 14,200 people and the 1.5 million people who were displaced, before Russia’s invasion took place last year?

  How do we defend the decision by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban eleven opposition parties, including The Opposition Platform for Life, which had 10 percent of the seats in the Supreme Council, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, along with the Shariy Party, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, State, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc? How can we accept the banning of these opposition parties — many of which are on the left — while Zelenskyy allows fascists from the Svoboda and Right Sector parties, as well as the Banderite Azov Battalion and other extremist militias, to flourish? 

  How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed “fifth columnists”  sweeping through Ukraine, given that 30 percent of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government that harass and attack the LGBT community, the Roma population, anti-fascist protests and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the decision by the U.S and its Western allies to block negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow apparently being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty? 

  I reported from Eastern and Central Europe in 1989 during the breakup of the Soviet Union.  NATO, we assumed, had become obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed security and economic agreements with Washington and Europe. Secretary of State James Baker in Ronald Reagan’s administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended beyond the borders of a unified Germany. We naively thought the end of the Cold War meant that Russia, Europe and the U.S., would no longer have to divert massive resources to their militaries. 

  The so-called “peace dividend,” however, was a chimera.

  If Russia did not want to be the enemy, Russia would be forced to become the enemy. The pimps of war recruited former Soviet republics into NATO by painting Russia as a threat. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of millions in western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware. This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits. 

  It was universally understood in Eastern and Central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO expansion was unnecessary and a dangerous provocation. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War is a business.

  In a classified diplomatic cable — obtained and released by WikiLeaks — dated Feb. 1, 2008, written from Moscow, and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NATO-European Union Cooperative, National Security Council, Russia Moscow Political Collective, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine.

  “Not only does Russia perceive encirclement [by NATO], and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests,” the cable reads. “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. . . .”

  “Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the long-term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership . . .” the cable read.  “Because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention. Trenin expressed concern that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the U.S. and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.”

  The Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if the western alliance had honored its promises not to expand NATO beyond Germany’s borders and Ukraine had remained neutral. The pimps of war knew the potential consequences of NATO expansion. War, however, is their single minded vocation, even if it leads to a nuclear holocaust with Russia or China. 

  The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.   

  *  *  *

  The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 23:45

• Where Confidence In Cops Is Highest (And Lowest)
  Where Confidence In Cops Is Highest (And Lowest)

  The riots in Paris appear to be easing following six days of heightened tensions, sparked by the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk by police last Tuesday morning.

  

  With the issue of police brutality once again under the spotlight, the following chart by Statista’s Anna Fleck looks at where confidence in police is highest and lowest around the world, based on indicators such as poor response times, heavy-handed arrests and the use of force in questionable circumstances.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  But how does confidence in law enforcement in France compare to the rest of the world? 

  Gallup recently released its Law & Order Index, which is a composite score based on reported confidence in the police, feelings of personal security and incidences of theft or mugging in different countries over the past year. Gallup found that France had a score of 85 out of 100, putting it on the same confidence level as the Philippines, Hong Kong, Croatia and Slovakia as well as slightly above the global average of 71.

  Singapore had the highest level of confidence in law and order in this edition of the index with a score of 96, followed by the autocratic nation of Tajikistan at 95. The lowest confidence levels were seen in Afghanistan, unsurprising considering ongoing violence in the country.

  Gabon, Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone also found themselves at the bottom of the law and order confidence rankings.

  China was not included in the 122 countries in the report. In 2019, it had received the third best result with 94 out of 100.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 23:15

• Plan To Pour Radioactive Waste From Fukushima Nuclear Plant Into Pacific Ocean Is Safe: IAEA
  Plan To Pour Radioactive Waste From Fukushima Nuclear Plant Into Pacific Ocean Is Safe: IAEA

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has concluded that Japan’s plans to release radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean are consistent with international safety standards.

  

  In a report published on July 4 (pdf), the IAEA, a United Nations body, said that the findings followed a comprehensive assessment and safety review of the treated water stored at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (FDNPS).

  Additionally, the IAEA said that “controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea” as currently planned by Japan’s government and the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), would have a “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”

  The report is the result of a nearly two-year assessment conducted by an IAEA task force made up of top specialists from within the agency advised by “internationally recognized nuclear safety experts from eleven countries,” according to a press release.

  Around 1.2 million cubic meters in volume of water used to cool the fuel rods of the Fukushima plant will be released under the plan over the next three to four decades in order to prevent accidental leaks and to allow for the plant’s decommissioning.

  As part of the plan, the IAEA said it will conduct an independent and objective safety review during the discharge phase, with a continued on-site presence and live online monitoring throughout.

  Japan has not specified a date for the water release.

  The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was triggered by a deadly 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in the northern region of Japan which knocked out the plant’s cooling systems, triggering the meltdown of three reactors.

  While the water stored at the FDNPS has been treated through an “Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS)” to remove “almost all” radioactivity, it still remains tainted by tritium, a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen which can bond with oxygen to make water, making it difficult to fully remove.

  

  Backlash Over Plans

  Tritium can increase the risk of cancer if consumed in extremely large quantities. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets a maximum contaminant level for tritium at 20,000 picoCuries per liter.

  The World Health Organization sets its maximum concentration level much higher, at around 13 times the amount of the EPA’s recommendation.

  Before the water is discharged into the Pacific Ocean, it will be diluted by Japanese authorities to bring the tritium to below regulatory standards, IAEA said. Multiple nuclear power plants throughout the world regularly release wastewater containing tritium above the concentration of TEPCO’s treated water, according to reports.

  However, a string of nations including China and South Korea have opposed the release of the radioactive water, citing health and safety concerns. Local fishing groups have also raised concerns over the possibility that the move could severely impact business even if they catch uncontaminated fish, as have tourism companies, beach businesses, and tourism bodies.

  In June Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called the plan “extremely selfish and irresponsible,” adding that the ocean is “humanity’s common good, not Japan’s private sewer.”

  Wang cited reports stating that the radioactive element Caesium-137, or Cs-137, in black rockfish that were caught in the harbor surrounding the power plant in May far exceeded safety levels, reaching 18,000 Bq/kg, 180 times above the standard laid out in Japan’s food safety law.

  “The Japanese government has repeatedly sought to whitewash its discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, claiming the water to be harmless and the discharge to be justified and calling it the only option. Yet facts prove otherwise,” Wang said at the time.

  

  Health, Environmental Implications

  The Pacific Islands Forum, an intergovernmental organization consisting of 18 nations including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, has also criticized the proposed move, urging Japan to hold off on the release until definitive environmental and human health implications have been established.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 22:45

• Victor Davis Hanson: What The Fourth Of July Was Not
  Victor Davis Hanson: What The Fourth Of July Was Not

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

  Our national Fourth of July holiday – currently the nation’s 247th since the first in 1776 – marks the birth of the United States.

  

  The iconic Declaration of Independence was published on the 4th and largely written by Thomas Jefferson. Its core sentence would become among the most famous words in American history:

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  Those aspirations at the outset pledged the new American nation to hold to its promises “that all men are created equal.”

  In other words, so-called white males established a foundational document whose inherent logic was that the millions of Americans not yet born—who would not necessarily look like them, or share their ancestry—would become their political equals.

  Most nation founders do not envision the future of their country in terms that might not privilege those of their own tribe.

  In contrast, today it would be difficult for a foreign national to become a full-fledged Chinese, Mexican, or Iranian citizen, with full equal rights, who either did not look like, or embrace a religion different from, the majority population.

  What followed from the Declaration was a constant demand from many quarters for America to live up to its own exalted words.

  Eighty-five years later, that promise culminated in a horrific Civil War that cost 700,000 American lives to remove the stain of slavery, and to honor the promise of the Fourth.

  “All men are created equal” further entailed another century of protest and reform, until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s finally enshrined into law equality of opportunity statutes.

  But note what the Declaration was not.

  There was no full embrace of all the later French Revolutionary slogans of Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

  Instead, the Declaration promised that all men should start out equally through guaranteed protections to live their lives as they please and ensure their liberty.

  The new government made, then, no claims that all Americans must be egalitarian. There was no promise that Americans must be equal in all aspect of their lives—or else.

  Such mandated sameness might threaten the idea of  “liberty,” and the ability of each citizen to pursue one’s own version of happiness.

  Nor did the Declaration pledge a common “fraternity.” Americans were under no compulsion to embrace some collective brotherhood  or shared orthodox political sentiments.

  So Americans would not be ensured an equality of result—or what we may know now as “equity.”

  Unlike other revolutionary governments, the founders of America never promised to create utopian “new men” who would become alike in all aspects of their being.

  The foundational date of our “new order” was canonized as 1776. Yet note it was not some pretentious Jacobin “Year 1”—as if everything in the past was to be erased.

  Unlike revolutionary France’s 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” the American Declaration was far more modest in its confidence in what government could or should achieve.

  Jefferson inserted no such French wording about government power concerning “social distinctions” or “disturbing the public order” or “in proportion to their means.”

  Other republics birthed parliamentary systems.

  They usually spawned multiple splinter parties. They were characterized by sudden creations and collapses of ruling governments, depending on volatile public mood swings.

  Often backroom deals were common to appoint new presidents and prime ministers—or dismiss them.

  Instead, our Constitution, in classical fashion, established a bicameral Congress, an executive president and a supreme court.

  Their quite different powers were all checked and balanced by one another.

  Then their prerogatives were further limited by a federal system of individual states’ rights to form their own laws not entailed by the Constitution.

  Regularly scheduled elections, a formal Bill of Rights, a two-party system, and a single continuous Constitution naturally followed.

  Few consensual governments have ever emulated the more difficult American model—and thus so far never achieved a 247-year continuity of a single republican system.

  Certainly, Americans went through a variety of crises that challenged the viability of the Declaration—the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the culture war of the 1960s, and the current woke revolution of the 2020s.

  Terrible laws of discrimination were and are still sometimes passed contrary to both the Constitution and the Declaration.

  But so far, the sparse wording of the Declaration has prevailed.

  America’s Constitution was not hijacked by the likes of a French Napoleon.

  There has been no Nazi take-over of our democracy as in 1930s Germany.

  We have not been plagued by dozens of brief ad-hoc coalition governments akin to Italy’s volatility.

  So on this Fourth let us cherish the Fourth of July for what it promised—and what it thankfully did not.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 22:15

• Robot Guest-Conducts The Korean National Symphony Orchestra
  Robot Guest-Conducts The Korean National Symphony Orchestra

  Authored by Savannah Fortis via CoinTelegraph.com,

  The android robot EveR 6 and conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi co-conducted a performance of six pieces with the Korean National Symphony Orchestra…

  

  A robot graced the stage at the National Theatre of Korea to conduct the Korean National Symphony Orchestra on June 30, marking South Korea’s first robot-conductor public appearance.

  EveR 6, the android that co-conducted the performance titled “Absence,“ is a design produced by the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH). The robot is equipped with a humanoid face and has a human-life form with a torso, two arms, a neck and a head.

  KITECH trained EveR 6 through “motion capture” technology via sensor attachments that digitally record a conductor’s baton trajectory. The robot is also trained to keep track of the speed of the baton’s movements.

  Before the performance, the theatre released a teaser video on its YouTube channel, showing glimpses into the rehearsal and training process. 

  The robot was joined on stage by conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi, who co-conducted the performance. Choi is reported to have said that one of the most challenging aspects for robots is “real-time interaction and communication,” particularly in the musical context.

  He said EveR 6’s “critical weakness” is that it cannot listen. However, Choi also said that “the robot was able to present such detailed moves much better than I had imagined.“

  예술과 기술의 만남

  안드로이드 로봇 에버6 와
  지휘자 최수열 이 함께하는 국악관현악,
  국립국악관현악단 ‘부재’

  지휘자의 부재(不在)를 통해
  지휘자의 가치를 찾아가는 여정 어떻게 보셨나요

  댓글을 통해 여러분들의 소감도 들려주세요👂🏻 pic.twitter.com/cklul89RYg

  — 국립극장 (@ntok_) June 30, 2023

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

  Choi and EveR 6 both took turns conducting pieces, with the robot guiding three of five pieces and then performed one-piece side by side. After the concert, Choi said: 

  “It was a recital that showed that (robots and humans) can co-exist and complement each other, rather than one replacing the other.“

  Cointelegraph reached out to the Korean National Symphony Orchestra for comments from the musicians who were conducted by the android but didn’t immediately get a response.

  Audience members in attendance were mixed, with one concertgoer Lee Young-ji commenting on the robot’s skill to keep rhythm. The attendee said it lacked “breath” and that:

  “It seemed there was some work to be done for the robot to do the job.”

  Another audience member, Song In-ho, said the robot performed at a very basic level and would be able to do more if equipped with an artificial intelligence (AI) system that could help it understand and analyze the music.

  Nonetheless, the performance was the first of its kind in South Korea. Previously, a robot created by Honda called Asimo guest-conducted a performance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2008.

  In 2017, a robot named YuMi guest-conducted a performance in Switzerland. In 2020, a Japanese-designed robot named Alter 3 conducted a seven-minute piece of music deemed an “android opera” called Scary Beauty.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 21:45

• From The Fourth Of July To Le Quatorze Juillet
  From The Fourth Of July To Le Quatorze Juillet

  By Philip Marey, Senior US Strategist at Rabobank

  The high tech trade war between China and the US continues. China will start export controls on gallium and germanium, two minerals used in the production of semiconductors, and a range of related metals on August 1. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is preparing to restrict the access of Chinese companies to US cloud-computing services. Later this week, Treasury Secretary Yellen will visit China to improve relations.

  Yesterday, the ISM manufacturing index fell to 46.0 in June, from 46.9 in May, The Bloomberg consensus expectation was a rebound to 47.1. The ISM manufacturing has been below the neutral level of 50, which distinguishes between expansion and contraction, since November, but has now reached its lowest level since May 2020, shortly after COVID-19 broke out in the US. The employment sub-index fell to 48.1 from 51.4, indicating a net loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector in June. The prices paid index fell to 41.8 from 44.2, well below the Bloomberg consensus expectation of 44.0. This underlines that inflation in goods has fallen back, with services being the main driver of elevated inflation at the moment. Note that the services PMIs are still consistent with expansion. The final estimate of S&P Global’s US manufacturing PMI remained at 46.3 in June, also well below the critical level. Note that we still expect the US recession to start in the second half of this year. The manufacturing PMIs, which are always the first to head south, are already flashing red. That is also why we have doubts about another Fed rate hike after July, if Powell insists on a more moderate pace that would skip the September meeting and leave November as the next hiking month.

  Meanwhile, the civil unrest in France continues, after spreading to a couple of cities in Belgium and Switzerland. The role of social media should not be underestimated here, as Brussels and Lausanne are both largely French-speaking cities. While the police officer who killed the 17 year old during a traffic stop in Nanterre on June 27 has been arrested, the riots could not be prevented as frustrations about policy brutality have been brewing in the banlieues. In contrast to the US, where the middle class lives in the suburbs and the working class and poor in the inner cities, in France it’s the other way round: the middle class lives in the cities and the working class and poor in the suburbs (‘banlieues’). Don’t think of the banlieues as endless rows of detached houses with well-kept gardens, but rather as a collection of neglected high rise housing projects. Similar to the US, the geographical sorting has taken place along ethnic lines. And also similar to the US, the French police are often seen as occupying forces. The thin blue line of lower middle class officers, protecting the rest of the middle class from the working class and the poor.

  Earlier, in a letter, the French police union called the rioters “vermin” and “savage hordes.” Violent confrontations between the police and the youth in the banlieues have taken place since the 1980s. More recently, in 2005, riots in the French banlieues lasted for three weeks, which would imply that we still have two weeks to go. This could take the riots to Le 14 Juillet, the French equivalent of the 4th of July.

  Economists like to quantify opinions. How about this one? In recent days, there have been two crowdfunding efforts related to the reason for the riots. As of Monday, more than one million euro has been collected to support the police officer who shot the 17 year old, while 234,000 euro has been collected to support the mother of the dead kid. Bienvenue en banlieue.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 21:15

• We Need A Constitution That Means What It Says
  We Need A Constitution That Means What It Says

  Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire,

  Some U.S. senators have famously kept a pocket Constitution handy to use as a prop at political rallies; a few may have even read it. But at this point in American history it no longer matters whether they, or anyone else, can read the words of the Constitution because the words no longer mean what they say.

  

  Take, for instance, the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that state legislatures do not have the sole discretion to determine how federal elections will be run in those states. Instead, state courts are given veto power over the decisions of the legislature.

  The mainstream media (and of course their Democratic Party allies) celebrated the court’s decision in Moore v. Harper that rejected the so-called “independent state legislature” theory. The New York Times called the theory “dangerous.” Vox said the ruling was a “big victory for democracy.” Those who supported the independent state legislature “theory” were called extreme, fringe, radical, and worse. In other words, they were Trump supporters.

  The only problem is that if the theory is extreme, then so is the U.S. Constitution, because no matter how much the 6-3 majority insists otherwise, it isn’t a theory at all. It is the plain language of the Constitution. Check it out for yourself.

  Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution says specifically, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

  It is not the governor or the courts or even the people of the state which set election rules, according to the Constitution, but the legislatures. Mind you, the state legislatures are not entirely unchecked in their decision making, but it is the Congress of the United States that provides the checks and balances, not the courts.

  And as for presidential elections, the matter is even more cut and dried. Article 2, Section 1, declares, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

  Notice again that the Constitution gives state legislatures the exclusive power to determine the manner in which electors are appointed to vote for president and vice president. In this case, even Congress does not have the authority to override the legislatures.

  Yet now the Supreme Court has determined that the words of the Constitution do not mean what they say. This is pure revisionism, and plainly the result of judicial activism. The plenary power of the state legislatures to make the final decision about federal elections is settled conclusively by the fact that for many years after the adoption of the Constitution, it was common in many states for electors to be chosen directly by the legislature with no election at all. Not only did the courts have no say in the matter; neither did the people.

  We don’t have to defend that practice in order to confirm that it is clearly constitutional, and having said so, we can also declare that the Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper has not interpreted the Constitution, but written a new one. If we the people decided that it was inappropriate for the state legislatures to make the rules for how to elect federal officials, we could have done what the Constitution calls for and sought to amend it. But instead, lawyers have waged war upon the English language and enlisted activist judges and justices to implement interpretations that are based more on sentiment than common sense.

  If we are being honest, it is not just crazy liberals who twist the words of the Constitution to mean whatever they want. Not long ago, I wrote a column titled “Do Democrats Value Abortion More Than the Constitution?” It lambasted Biden and others who want to create a law to protect abortion.

  As I explained then:

  Congress has no such ability. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress. They are remarkably straightforward – and limited. Raise taxes, borrow money, regulate international commerce and commerce among the states, establish a process for naturalizing citizens, coin money and punish counterfeiters, establish post offices, establish copyright and trademark laws, establish lower courts, regulate pirates, declare war, raise armies and a navy, provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions, and create and maintain a small district that shall be the seat of government.

  Search as you will, you won’t find any congressional power to promote social justice or to impose a moral standard on the nation. Unfortunately for lovers of limited government, Republicans have proven to be just as willing to ride roughshod over the Constitution as their Democrat counterparts. Former Vice President Mike Pence, whom I defended in my prior column, has now publicly called for a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. No matter how much you abhor abortion, it is impossible to find any words in the Constitution which give Congress the power to regulate such a medical procedure.

  So regardless of how many members of Congress (or former vice presidents) tuck a Constitution in their pockets, it is also impossible to make them read it, let alone be guided by it.

  As a final note, I should probably give credit to the Supreme Court for overturning the policy of affirmative action in college admissions in two separate cases last week. It turns out that all those references in the Constitution to equality and equal protection of the law actually mean something. At least they do today. But for 45 years since the court’s ruling in the Bakke case, students who were rejected for college admission because of the color of their skin were just supposed to grin and bear it. Sure, the 14^th Amendment prohibits states or state agents from “deny[ing] to any person … the equal protection of the laws.” But once again the plain language of the Constitution was ignored until last week.

  I would propose writing an amendment that forced elected and appointed officials of the United States to follow the Constitution as written, not the one with invisible asterisks and footnotes and a “social justice clause,” but chances are it would be found unconstitutional anyway – or at least inconvenient.

  Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His newest book, “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends,” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter or Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 20:45

• Tesla Production In China Increases 20% In June
  Tesla Production In China Increases 20% In June

  It wasn’t just in the United States where Tesla impressed with deliveries heading into the end of Q2 – the company also saw its output in China increase by a whopping 20%, according to Bloomberg. 

  Last month Tesla shipped 93,680 vehicles from its Shanghai plant, according to data from China’s Passenger Car Association. That number is up from 78,906 last year and 77,695 last month. 

  The company’s robust sales are still being helped along by price cuts it put into place at the beginning of the year, with Bloomberg noting that “after a price war leading into the Shanghai auto show in April, deliveries started to pick up again and the overall market for new-energy vehicles remained strong.”

  

  Recall, Tesla stock rocketed higher on the shortened trading day on Monday, rising nearly 7% at its high of the day.

  At the end of Q2 Tesla posted 466,140 deliveries for the quarter, ahead of Bloomberg’s consensus estimate of 448,351. The auto manufacturer produced 479,700 vehicles in the quarter, exceeding estimates of 456,617.

  

  Tesla delivered 19,225 Model S/X vehicles in the quarter, beating expectations of 14,606.

  

  The EV manufacturer also delivered 446,915 Model 3/Y vehicles in the quarter, exceeding estimates of 437,386.

  

  We’ll be sure to keep an eye on this trend in future quarters, especially as Tesla continues to expand globally. For now, however, the market’s focus will likely remain on the headline numbers beating expectations.

  Recall, over the last month, we have been covering how legacy automakers like Ford and GM, paired with new EV companies like Rivian, have adopted Tesla’s charging standard, allowing their vehicles to utilize Tesla’s nationwide network of Superchargers. As such, we have been documenting how Tesla’s charging standard is now quickly becoming the EV industry’s charging standard. 

  Hilariously, days ago, both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley downgraded Tesla. Despite the downgrade two weekends ago, shares held steady after their recent 3 month rally, up nearly 75% off their 52 week lows. Goldman, led by analyst Mark Delaney, noted that the stock price moving higher, in addition to a tougher pricing environment for autos, were two of the reasons for downgrading the name.

  Like clockwork. TSLA up 6% https://t.co/Js9mLzCnCb

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 3, 2023

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 20:15

• Censorship Wounds Worse Than Words
  Censorship Wounds Worse Than Words

  Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClear Politics,

  In the United States and Britain, ill-informed and poorly reasoned opinions about transgenderism, climate change, COVID-19, Islamic extremism, working-class political inclinations and voting patterns, race, sex, hate speech, and identity politics dominate progressive elites’ thinking and drive their policymaking. This alone would pose no special challenge to freedom and democracy. Misguided views, short-sighted laws, smug moralizing, and abuse of power leave their mark in the best of times. They will persist as long as human beings remain fallible, self-interested, subject to appetite and emotion, and desirous of wealth, status, and dominion.

  

  The deeper concern is the determination on the part of journalists, professors and university administrators, K-12 educators, government bureaucrats, high-tech titans and social-media moguls, entertainment-industry movers and shakers, and corporate executives – a preponderance of what was once called “the establishment” – to silence dissent from progressive orthodoxy through law and popular opprobrium. That puts liberal democracy itself at risk, not least by prompting the right to injudiciously retaliate with bans of its own.

  Censorship degrades the quality of information available to voters and officeholders. Flawed assumptions, bad ideas, and haughty attitudes can be rectified by confrontation with sounder assumptions, better ideas, and suppler attitudes. The suppression of speech, however, deprives error of illumination. It converts legitimate positions to suspect products of special pleading and coercion. And it insulates true opinions from that contact with alternative perspectives, messy realities, and fiercely held conflicting convictions that transforms inert knowledge into living wisdom.

  Censorship also undercuts the respect for fellow citizens and the rights of others that sustain political cohesiveness in a liberal democracy. By designating some opinions as unquestionable and others as unutterable, an overbearing majority – or a crafty and resolute minority – can purge the public square of those citizens who harbor proscribed thoughts and refuse to genuflect to authoritative conclusions. The right to free speech, moreover, is indissolubly bound up with all the other basic rights and fundamental freedoms. I cannot vindicate my equal rights to religious liberty, assembly, petition of government, self-defense, property, and due process of law without the opportunity – unencumbered by fear of formal government sanction and of informal social ostracism – to advance my views publicly and, also of crucial importance, to hear others offer their perspectives.

  In his short book, “A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable,” Brendan O’Neill shows himself a hero of free speech and a champion of the moral and political conditions in which it thrives. The chief political writer for the maverick British magazine “Spiked,” O’Neill argues “that the constant churn of political correctness – or cancel culture or wokeness or intolerance or whatever we’re calling it – represents not just an over-the-top clampdown on speech, but a crisis of Enlightenment.” The phrase “cancel culture,” he stresses, fails to capture the gravity of the threat. “Every enlightened idea – science is real, race is not, women should have rights, freedom is good, reason is the best tool for making sense of our world – risks being crushed under the forever spinning wheel of correct thought,” O’Neill writes. “Our curse is not just to bear witness to the intermittent silencing of controversial commentators, but to watch as liberty, objectivity, democracy, equality and the other great gains of the modern era are sacrificed one by one at the altar of new orthodoxies that pose, so falsely, as progressive thought.”

  O’Neill is not content, though, to faithfully record the outrages against liberty and clear thinking. His sizzling essays, which draw effortlessly on history and maneuver deftly through contemporary political culture, summon readers to keep liberty alive. The censors “can cancel our speeches, our jobs, our respectability, sometimes even our rights,” he acknowledges, “but they cannot cancel this – the freedom of every person to think and believe as he sees fit.”

  Take, for example, “Her Penis,” the essay with which O’Neill begins. “Nothing better captures the irrationalism of our age, and also the slippery authoritarianism of it, than the fact that this nonsensical phrase is frequently uttered, and as much in the respectable press as in the gender Bedlam of internet discussion forums,” he states. One can appreciate O’Neill’s indignation while affirming that all human beings are equal in rights, compassion and concern is due to those who suffer gender dysphoria, and respect is owed to those adults who have made an informed decision to bring their bodies in line with their gender. Nevertheless, his objection is simple. If you are a woman, you don’t possess XY chromosomes and male genitalia, and if you possess XY chromosomes and male genitalia, you are not a woman. Yet the phrase “her penis,” as he copiously documents, now appears routinely. In one egregious case, a British man convicted of rape and pedophilia who claimed to be a woman was sent to a woman’s prison where he sexually assaulted two inmates. At trial, O’Neill reports, “the prosecuting lawyer described White’s approach of one of the female inmates as follows: ‘Her penis was erect and sticking out the top of her trousers.’”

  The casual coupling of “her” and “penis,” O’Neill contends, reflects not only the corruption of journalists and jurists but also a failure of judgment and reason. It shows that wokeness, contrary to progressive apologists, has sunk into official discourse. It demonstrates the willingness of experts and the authorities to deny nature on behalf of the new transgender orthodoxy. It confirms the power “of the cultural despotism plaguing Anglo-American society,” which erodes clarity of expression, common sense, and science. And it brings into focus how, instead of honoring individuals, the proliferation of pronouns and the coercive measures employed to spread their use – and penalize their misuse – induces subservience to “the religion of gender fluidity.” The amazing inroads in recent years – in schools, government bureaucracies, and corporations – made by the dogma that one’s gender is whatever one says it is illustrate George Orwell’s signature insight that control over language confers control over thought.

  Progressive thought police, O’Neill argues in a chapter called “Islamocensorship,” also enforce the absurd view that the very notion of Islamic extremism expresses Islamophobia. One example is the charge made by British academics that criticism of the hijab – various head coverings worn in public by Muslim women – must reflect gendered hostility to Islam. It follows, O’Neill mordantly points out, that the Islamic Republic of Iran suffered a severe bout of Islamophobia last September when, following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the police who had arrested her for failing to wear her hijab properly, young people across the country rose to protest Tehran’s mandatory hijab laws.

  Just as it is a crime in Iran to criticize Islam, so too is it an offense against intellectual orthodoxy in the English-speaking academic world to call attention to oppression and violence within Muslim communities and Muslim majority nation-states. The penalties differ: “Here you’ll find yourself accused not of blasphemy, but of Islamophobia. Here you’ll be subjected not to physical lashes, but to a tongue-lashing – ‘phobic’, ‘racist’, ‘bigot’, all of it. Here you won’t be locked up, but you might be locked out – exiled from polite society and blacklisted from campuses for your profane thoughts.” But the silencing is similar. Reminiscent of Iran’s ayatollahs, U.K. and U.S. professors and bureaucrats in effect enforce prohibitions on blasphemy against Islam.

  Where blasphemy is barred, cursing of the impure, the unclean, and the vulgar is required. A favorite target for the West’s woke is older, white, male members of the working class.

  In “Rise of the Pigs,” O’Neill explores the casual contempt with which British intellectual and political elites disparage white men who voted for Brexit as gammon – cured ham or bacon. “So widespread was the use of the gammon slur in liberal and leftish chatter post-Brexit that, in 2018,” writes O’Neill, “the Collins English Dictionary chose it as one of its words of the year.” The reduction of fellow citizens to pig meat signifies their unfitness for politics. The evidence? They voted against elite wishes. The elites’ solution? Limit public discussion by controlling the information that reaches the people. While the proffered justification for the new censorship – as for the old – is separating true from false, in practice the restriction of access to supposed “misinformation” or “disinformation” aims to conceal or delegitimize facts, considerations, and arguments that distract from or weaken the progressive narrative. At bottom, the progressive assault on free speech reflects anti-democratic ire. The educated must censor because otherwise the clash of opinions will confuse the ignorant and gullible masses or, worse, empower them to vote as they see fit.

  O’Neill warns that in the struggle to preserve free speech it is a mistake to deny its enemies’ insistence that words wound: “It is precisely because words can wound, precisely because of their power to unsettle, that they should never be restricted.” Although not the goal, pain and perplexity are inseparable from the exploration from which we learn who we are as citizens and human beings. Only by risking the wounds and daring to be disoriented can we arrive at a responsible understanding of what in our political societies must be conserved and what must be improved.

  Woke censorship renders heretics – especially those who defy the prejudices of the age by defending free speech – more vital than ever to liberal democracy.

  Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on Twitter @BerkowitzPeter.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 19:45

• Watch: Woke Demonstrators Protest Supreme Court Rulings With Bizarre Ritual
  Watch: Woke Demonstrators Protest Supreme Court Rulings With Bizarre Ritual

  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that “woke” isn’t a religion.  Activists at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in New York gathered in black garb, chanting and wailing in an unhinged procession following the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on Affirmative Action and student loan debt relief.  The reversal of Affirmative Action policies in US colleges is supported by a majority of Americans, with many viewing the use of skin color and ethnicity in school admissions as a form of codified racism.  

  The political left argues that colleges should take into account the “adversity” that minority students have overcome as a factor in acceptance while ignoring their academic accomplishments (or lack thereof); the Supreme Court has essentially ruled that race is not a useful indicator of adversity.  The SC is correct in this conclusion, but the political left has responded to the decision along with others that have not gone in their favor with abject rage and indignant shock. 

  Happening Now: Demonstrators gathered outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in New York, following Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in higher education and other recent court rulings pic.twitter.com/Zf6DVspJuf

  — Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) July 4, 2023

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  These kinds of performances are reminiscent of religious ceremony, or cult ceremony, and showcase a desperate need by activists for a form of spiritual redress – It’s not just performance art.  What we are seeing are the early stages of the formation of what you might call an “anti-religion,” or a religion of the self that also deifies political ideology.  As we have witnessed in recent months, they are even adopting repetitive mantras…

   

  Normal people might view this behavior as mentally unstable, and it is.  But it is also an attempt by leftists, who are often devoid of internal meaning, to slap together and fabricate their own religious identity.  Why?  Because subjective Apocalypse movements need more than oppression status, they need a metaphysical experience.  They need the power and the horror of a righteous trance.  Don’t be surprised to see many more public displays like these from woke activists going forward as the movement continues its regression into zealotry.                

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 19:15

• Bidenomics: Big Government, Industrial Policy And Centralized Control
  Bidenomics: Big Government, Industrial Policy And Centralized Control

  Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  With an eye toward the upcoming presidential elections, the White House has launched a new public relations campaign called “Bidenomics,” to define President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

  “I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s working,” Biden stated at a June 17 union rally in Philadelphia, begging the question: what is Bidenomics, and is it working? 

  

  According to a White House statement, Bidenomics rests on three pillars: massive “smart” government spending on renewable energy and semiconductors, support for unions and domestic manufacturing, and promoting competition. As a result, the White House states, “our economy has added more than 13 million jobs—including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs—and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom.” 

  The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science (CHIPS) Act of 2022 allocates $280 billion in federal spending to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. The Infrastructure Act of 2021 allocated more than $65 billion for “clean energy” projects. And the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act allocated an additional $394 billion for clean energy in the form of tax incentives, loans, and grants. 

  “I would define it as trickle-down big government,” Jonathan Williams, chief economist at the American Legislative Exchange Council, told The Epoch Times. “The common thread of this administration has been growth and expansion of government power, and certainly big government spending.”

  

  According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, when Biden took office, “America’s industrial base had been hollowed out. The vision of public investment that had energized the American project in the postwar years—and indeed for much of our history—had faded.“

  Sullivan, who, despite his focus on security issues, has become a spokesman for Bidenomics, has been highly critical of what has been called “Reaganomics,” or a platform of tax cuts, trade liberalization and deregulation.

  “There was one assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently,” Sullivan said during an April speech at the Brookings Institution.

  “President Biden … believes that building a twenty-first-century clean-energy economy is one of the most significant growth opportunities of the twenty-first century,” he stated. “But that to harness that opportunity, America needs a deliberate, hands-on investment strategy to pull forward innovation, drive down costs, and create good jobs.”

  Despite the administration’s argument that government is best positioned to direct private industry, some critics say that waste and failure are the hallmarks of government industrial policy.

  Political Investors

  “The government is not in the business of making good investments,” economist Arthur Laffer, a former advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as well as U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told The Epoch Times. “That’s not what they should be doing,” he said.

  “These guys are not good investors; they’re political investors,” Laffer said. The more the government seeks to influence the private sector, the more the private sector will orient itself toward producing what the government wants versus what consumers want. 

  

  “Bidenomics is nothing more than the application of government intervention to guide, direct and restructure the economy as the White House thinks it should be structured,” Steve Hanke, economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, told The Epoch Times.

  “This type of interventionism flies under the rubric of ‘industrial policy.’ It’s where government picks winners and losers by using levers of government policy, like taxes subsidies, regulations, tariffs, quotas, and even outright bans.”

  Recent examples of government ventures into private industry include Solyndra, a California maker of solar panels that received $535 million in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration before going bankrupt. 

  Under Bidenomics, automakers are being pushed by a combination of consumer subsidies, manufacturing grants, and ever-tightening emissions regulations to switch their production from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles (EVs). However, there is scant evidence that enough consumers will switch to EVs to justify the investments or that carmakers will be able to source enough lithium, cobalt, and other minerals to build EV batteries in large quantities, or that the U.S. electric grid can build enough new generation capacity and connect enough charging stations to charge EVs at scale. 

  At the same time, the Biden administration is working to reduce domestic production of oil, gas, and coal in favor of wind and solar, with the same supply issues that automakers face. The required minerals for wind turbines and solar panels are typically mined in countries that may not be friendly to the United States, and it has created a heavy dependence on China, which controls most of the refining of these minerals. 

  According to Hanke, who served on Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, “Bidenomics is nothing new. Advocates of industrial policy in the 1980s used to latch onto Japan as a model for industrial policy, arguing that it contributed to Japan’s emergence as an economic power after World War II. 

  “But since the last three lost decades in Japan, the industrial policy advocates have gone radio silent,” Hanke said. “It’s hard to imagine a more misguided way to make decisions than to put them in the hands of those who pay no price for being wrong.”

  Trillions in New Spending

  To date, the Biden administration has overseen more than $4 trillion in new spending, of which $1.6 trillion was passed by Congress on a partisan basis, $1.4 trillion was passed on a bipartisan basis, and another $1.1 trillion came from Biden’s executive actions. Despite this spending, the White House claimed in March that “the President’s Budget improves the fiscal outlook by reducing the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next decade.”

  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sees it differently, however. 

  “Under the President’s FY 2023 budget, the debt would grow be allowed to grow by $16 trillion over ten years, or $50,000 of debt per American citizen,” the CBO reported in March. “Under CBO’s current projections, the gross federal debt would increase from $31 trillion today (123 percent of GDP) to $52 trillion (132 percent of GDP) in 2033.”

  “Probably the worst part of Bidenomics is the enormous increase in spending,” Laffer said. “I never could have guessed anyone would have overspent like that. 

  “If you look at the national debt-to-GDP or any other measure, it’s gone way, way up,” he said. “This is an egregious reversal of what would be good economics.”

  Tax Policy Under Biden

  “Forty years of handing out excessive tax cuts to the wealthy and big corporations had been a bust,” Biden stated. By contrast, Bidenomics “is about building an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down.”

  While most of the tax hikes that Biden called for have so far failed to get through Congress, critics argue that Americans have experienced significant tax hikes nonetheless, due to another economic phenomenon to carry the president’s name: “Bidenflation.”

  “The inflation that has come in under Biden has pushed capital gains tax rates way up, because we have illusory capital gains that are now subject to capital gains taxation,” Laffer said. Because of inflation, he said, the nominal value of assets has increased dramatically, even though in terms of purchasing power “it’s the same thing.” 

  This results in a “tax on the illusory capital gains,” he said. Inflation has also pushed Americans into higher income tax brackets, despite the fact that wage gains often failed to keep up with rising prices, leaving Americans poorer but facing higher tax liabilities. 

  “If you look at the corporate rate, it’s still what it was when Trump left; and as you look at the personal income tax rates, 37 percent is still the highest,” Laffer said. “But if you look at all the inflation induced tax rate increases, they’ve been quite substantial.” 

  And this is in addition to the effective tax of inflation itself, which drives up the cost of goods and services as the dollar loses its value. Inflation was cited as the main reason why 76 percent of Americans polled in an Associated Press-University of Chicago survey in May had a negative view of Biden’s economic policies. 

  “There’s nothing that can bring the economy to its knees faster, and more damagingly, than an unhinged paper currency and high inflation,” Laffer said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 18:45

• Judge Blocks "Egregious" Biden Officials, Academic Watchdogs From Manipulating Social Media Narratives
  Judge Blocks “Egregious” Biden Officials, Academic Watchdogs From Manipulating Social Media Narratives

  A federal judge on Tuesday made the patriotic decision to block the Biden administration from meeting and communicating with social media companies over “protected speech.”

  

  In an extraordinary preliminary injunction, judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump-appointee, in aimed at halting government influence over public discourse prior to issuing a final ruling in the case which was brought by Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana, who allege that the federal government overstepped their bounds in their efforts to censor online posts that they worried would contribute to vaccine hesitancy, or undermine US elections (with facts?).

  The judge’s order puts limits on a number of executive agencies with a wide range of responsibilities across the federal government, including the Department of Justice, State Department, Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also names more than a dozen individual officials, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. -WaPo

  What’s more, the order prohibits Biden officials from “collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with” key academic groups behind various censorship campaigns, including the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of researchers led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

  Over the past seven months, Twitter owner Elon Musk revealed a large-scale, organized government effort to censor opinions which diverge from establishment-approved narratives, under the guise of protecting the public from ‘misinformation.’

  INFOGRAPHIC (Click on image to enlarge or Click Here to download)

  

  According to Stanford Law professor Evelyn Douek, “The injunction is strikingly broad and clearly intended to chill any kind of contact between government actors and social media platforms.“

  In their lawsuit, the state attorneys general accused the Biden administration of enabling a “sprawling federal Censorship Enterprise” to compel social media giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and voices, particularly conservatives who have accused the government of suppressing their speech, in what the plaintiffs described as “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”

  According to Judge Doughty, the AGs “have produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.”

  His order did carve out a few exceptions – including warning of national security threats, criminal activity or voter suppression, according to the Washington Post.

  The White House gave a lame, generic response, as expected.

  “This Administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” one official told the Post. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”

  According to Missoury AG Andrew Bailey, “The deep state planted a seed of suppression of government censorship, but that seed was fertilized, germinated and grew rapidly once President Biden took office.”

  “There are deep concerns here that the government’s unrepentant attitude demonstrates a willingness to continue to violate the First Amendment,” Bailey told the Post. “That’s why this wall of separation is so important, regardless of the steps that Big Tech is taking independent of our lawsuit.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 18:15

• Watchdog Group: Biden Administration Pushing To Make A.I. Inherently Left-Wing
  Watchdog Group: Biden Administration Pushing To Make A.I. Inherently Left-Wing

  Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

  As artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology takes off, the Biden Administration is allegedly pursuing efforts to make sure that such new technology adopts a left-wing worldview by default.

  

  According to Fox News, the report comes from the watchdog group American Accountability Foundation (AAF), which said in a new memo that top officials in the Biden White House are attempting to program “dangerous ideologies” into new A.I. systems.

  “Under the guise of fighting ‘algorithmic discrimination’ and ‘harmful bias,’ the Biden administration is trying to rig AI to follow the woke left’s rules,” said Tom Jones, the president of AAF. “Biden is being advised on technology policy, not by scientists, but by racially obsessed social academics and activists. We’re already seen the biggest tech firms in the world, like Google under Eric Schmidt, use their power to push the left’s agenda.”

  “This would take the tech/woke alliance to a whole new, truly terrifying level,” Jones added.

  One of the examples AAF cited in the memo is a plan released by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy last October, titled the “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.” The document claims, with no evidence, that there could be an “algorithmic discrimination” in the way A.I. responds to certain people based on race, gender, and other characteristics. Such programs, the White House orders, should be “reviewed for bias based on the historical and societal context of the data.”

  The White House document recommends “proactive equity assessments as part of the system design,” among other tactics, in order to make the A.I. more left-wing. A similar report was released in May by the White House’s Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, titled the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, which similarly claims that “AI systems are prone to ‘hallucinate’ and recapitulate biases derived from the unfiltered data from the internet used to train them.”

  In February, Biden signed an executive order demanding that all states “root out bias in the design and use of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence.”

  Such efforts to politicize A.I. were already hinted at – and warned against – by leaders in the field of A.I. and similar technology, such as Twitter owner Elon Musk. In December, Musk warned that “the danger of training AI to be woke — in other words, lie — is deadly.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 17:45

• Bidenomics Means The Most Expensive Independence Day Cookout Ever
  Bidenomics Means The Most Expensive Independence Day Cookout Ever

  As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the chart below, using data from the National Retail Federation, Fourth of July spending on food is expected to have risen to a record $9.5 billion this year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Based on its annual survey of U.S. consumers, having a cookout is the most popular way of celebrating Independence Day, with 65 percent saying they will host or participate in one (or a BBQ or picnic).

  In 2014, total spending was estimated at just $6.3 billion, and this year’s 23 percent year-over-year increase is the largest on record – even larger than that observed in the first pandemic recovery year. While inflation is cooling, higher prices are clearly fueling spending this year. With 87 percent of respondents saying they were going to celebrate this year, an average of $93.34 is forecast to be spent per person on food, up from $84.12 last year.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 17:15

• Independence From Tyranny: The Fight For Gun Rights In America
  Independence From Tyranny: The Fight For Gun Rights In America

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  When looking at how gun laws across the United States have changed over the past few years, there’s a lot to be hopeful for. Just this year, Nebraska became the 27th state to pass a “constitutional carry” bill into law, following in the footsteps of Florida, which passed similar legislation just a few days prior.  

  The residents of Florida and Nebraska now join 25 other states where American citizens can freely carry firearms concealed without needing a permit, just as our founding fathers intended when they wrote the Second Amendment into the Constitution.  

  Those two States won’t be the last to pass permitless carry bills either. There are several different bills at different stages of the legislative process in multiple states nationwide.  

  But let’s not forget, just a mere 15 years ago — the Second Amendment was not considered an individual right. If we look further back to the 1980s, there was only one constitutional carry state, Vermont. In addition, very few states would even allow carrying with a permit.  

  

  This is because, before 2008’s landmark District of Colombia v. Heller decision, the Second Amendment was considered a collective right that referred to a militia.  

  This interpretation allowed for all sorts of constitutional infringements, which is why Dick Heller sued Washington, D.C., over its city-wide ban on handguns.  

  We recently celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Heller decision on June 26th and have Heller to thank for laying the foundation for gun rights to this day.   

  Of course, no discussion of present-day gun rights would be complete without mentioning NYSRPA v. Bruen, the landmark case currently providing the legal tools for overturning the most egregious gun control nationwide.  

  The Bruen decision has halted some of the worst gun control passed this year. For example, Oregon passed Ballot Measure 114 by an extremely slim margin, with most of the “yes” votes coming from Portland, and the rest of the state voting “no.”. The Ballot measure changed gun law in Oregon to require a permit to purchase a firearm and banned large-capacity magazines.  

  But thanks to the Bruen decision, a legal challenge from Gun Owners of America has halted the law from going into effect. 

  On this 4th of July, Americans should remember the mentality of the Founding Fathers, who included the Second Amendment in the Constitution. They had just fought a war for independence against a tyrannical government.  

  From 1768-1775, the British began a policy to disarm American citizens.  

  In 1777, William Knox, the Under Secretary of State in the British colonial office, advocated for this exact policy, writing: 

  “The Arms of all the People should be taken away, & every piece of Ordnance removed into the King’s Stores, nor should any foundry or manufactory of Arms, Gunpowder, or Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without License; they will have but little need of such things for the future, as the King’s Troops, Ships and Forts will be sufficient to protect them from any danger.” 

  William Knox sounds a lot like the anti-gun politicians of today.  

  The Second Amendment guarantees all of our constitutional rights, and it ensures the protection of life and liberty. This is what the Founding Fathers wanted when they declared independence from the British 246 years ago.  

  We at Gun Owners of America are proud to see gun rights continue to expand, and we will continue working to repeal all infringements on the Second Amendment.   

  *   *   *

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 16:45

• Ukraine 'Preparing For Nuclear Explosion' As Russia Reduces Zaporizhzhia Plant Presence
  Ukraine ‘Preparing For Nuclear Explosion’ As Russia Reduces Zaporizhzhia Plant Presence

  Ukraine’s President Zelensky has once again been warning the public and the West that Russia is planning to stage some kind of disastrous nuclear fallout event centered on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest. The claims from Ukrainian top officials have been persisting for weeks at this point, but have grown louder in the last several days, as Americans are busy with July 4th festivities. 

  “There is a serious threat because Russia is technically ready to provoke a local explosion at the station, which could lead to a [radiation] release,” Zelensky claimed days ago at a joint news conference in Kyiv. Ukrainian intelligence is at the same time this week saying Russia’s military is reducing its presence there and has told staff to relocate to Crimea.

  The Guardian on Saturday cited Ukraine’s intelligence arm, the GUR, to say that “several representatives of Russia’s state nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, have already left” and further that “Ukrainian employees who stayed at the plant and signed contracts with Rosatom had been told to evacuate by Monday, preferably to Crimea, it said.”

  

  All of this is of course impossible to confirm, and such allegations centered on Zaporizhzhia have been consistent throughout much of the war, at times coming from both sides. 

  “On Thursday Ukraine conducted nuclear disaster response drills in the vicinity of the power station, regional officials said,” The Guardian wrote further.

  The Kremlin has expressly denied the Ukrainian allegations: 

  Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, replied saying that he had written to the UN security council and secretary general, António Guterres, to state: “We do not intend to blow up this NPP [nuclear power plant], we have no intention of doing so.”

  All this has resulted in heightened international scrutiny over operations at the plant. Ukraine says “the world is watching.” 

  The Ukrainian government has actually been making these claims for weeks, with some independent observers such as David Sachs saying this could set the stage for a “Gulf of Tonkin moment”. 

  

  Below is what Sachs wrote last month when Ukrainian claims regarding Zaporizhzhia plant grew louder and louder…

  * * *

  Is a Gulf of Tonkin moment at hand? Shortly after returning from his latest trip to Kyiv, Senator Graham along with Blumenthal introduced his resolution providing Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine in the event that, among other things, a nuclear facility is destroyed in Ukraine.

  Just coincidentally, the Ukrainian government including Zelensky and intel chief Budanov started issuing warnings about Russian plans to blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, even though the plant is under Russian control and blowing it up would have no strategic value.

  Ukrainian propaganda channels keep pumping this claim without evidence. Of course, a compliant media has not pressed them for any, simply repeating the claims as if they come from an unbiased source. If ZNPP gets destroyed, we won’t know for sure who did it, but we can be sure that the media will reflexively blame it on Russia, as they ludicrously did with the destruction of Nord Stream.

  Ukraine is losing the war like South Viet Nam, a “Gulf of Tonkin Moment” is necessary to put NATO soldiers in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/o59hlxqAJs

  — Juan Luis Tostado (@JuanLuisTostad1) July 3, 2023

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

  This press dynamic combined with the Graham-Blumenthal resolution actually creates a perverse incentive for *someone* to destroy ZNPP if they want to draw America deeper into the conflict. Biden has previously sworn that America will not get directly involved, on the grounds that would start World War III, but he also promised not to provide F-16s for the same reason.

  We know what happened with that promise. In 1965, LBJ committed large numbers of American troops to the Vietnam War after previously stating “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

  The outrage over the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which we now know to be a lie, created the pretext for that involvement. If ZNPP is destroyed, look for howls of outrage from the War Party seeking the “Americanization” of the Ukraine war to begin.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 16:15

• Secret Service Investigating How Cocaine Got In The White House
  Secret Service Investigating How Cocaine Got In The White House

  The Secret Service on Tuesday confirmed rumors from the day earlier that it was investigating an “unknown item” found inside the White House library on Sunday, which was described in radio traffic as a cocaine-like substance.

  “On Sunday evening, the White House complex went into a precautionary closure as officers from the Secret Service uniformed division investigated an unknown item found inside a work area,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement, adding that the D.C. fire department determined the substance did not present a threat… although it certainly could present Hunter Biden with hours of brand new video material for his infamous notebook.

  In a dispatch with an 8:49 p.m. timestamp, a firefighter with the D.C. department’s hazardous materials team radioed the results of a test: “We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride.”

  The brief broadcast was logged on a website called openmhz.com, which allows people to listen to live and archived radio transmission from police and fire departments. One of the officials familiar with the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open case, said the 8:49 transmission was from the White House call Sunday night. The official described the amount of the substance as small, which likely means that most of it had already been consumed.

  The discovery came two days after recovering crack cocaine addict Hunter Biden was last seen at the White House; yet even so there appears to be some “mystery” as to how the cocaine got there.

  

  The Biden family arrived back at the White House for Independence Day celebrations as the Secret Service continues to investigate the finding.

  Secret Service spokesman Gulielmi said that President Joe Biden was not in the executive mansion when the substance was discovered.

  “The DC fire department was called to evaluate and quickly determined the item to be non-hazardous. The item was sent for further evaluation and an investigation into the cause and manner of how it entered the White House is pending,” he said, laughably hinting that there was some “confusion” as to how crack got inside the Blowden Biden family’s DC estate as it is in the process of being auctioned off to Beijing. Here’s a thought: since Hunter has a habit of recording his every close encounter with crack cocaine, just check his cell phone’s latest video recordings.

  In its report, ABC notes that “Cocaine hydrochloride can be used as an anesthetic or to control bleeding, but it is also considered to have effects similar to crack cocaine, according to the study National Library of Medicine National Center for Biotechnology Information”, which suggests that the type of cocaine found was of a particular variety especially near and dear to Hunter’s heart.

  “The physiological and psychoactive effects of cocaine are similar regardless of whether it is in the form of cocaine hydrochloride or crack cocaine (cocaine base),” the study says. You do learn something new every day.

  The “item” was sent to a Secret Service lab for further testing, the sources said.

  The White House on Tuesday referred reporter questions about the matter to the Secret Service, because what else could they say: “to pay for Hunter’s crack addition, Joe had to sell even the Resolute Desk to Beijing.” Of course, that’s a silly joke: after all, just imagine what America’s international allies – and enemies – would think if any of this Jerry Springer Special, live from the White House, turned out to be even remotely true…

  

  The Biden’s cocaine antics take place just days after the younger Biden reached a plea deal with Justice Department prosecutors to avoid jail time after lying on a federal form to purchase a firearm. He checked a box claiming that he did not use and was not addicted to illegal substances – a fact that would disqualify him from buying the gun. The form contradicting the timelines and claims made in Hunter Biden’s own memoir.

  Biden critics and conservative decried Hunter’s plea deal, claiming that anyone other than the president’s son would receive jail time for the same offense. The deal also saw Hunter plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors which would have been a felony – and meant prison time – for anyone else but the president’s crack and whore-addicted son.

  Come to think of it, there was plenty of reasons for Hunter to be celebrating in the aptly named China White house.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 15:15

• Watch: RFK Jr Pushes Back When Accused Of Being A Candidate Who "Traffics Routinely In Conspiracies"
  Watch: RFK Jr Pushes Back When Accused Of Being A Candidate Who “Traffics Routinely In Conspiracies”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  During an interview with leftist outlet Reason, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr challenged the hosts to prove him wrong when they suggested that he continually spreads conspiracy theories.

  

  Reason editor at large Nick Gillespie told RFK Jr “One of the critiques of your candidacy or even your public profile is that you traffic routinely in conspiracies and that kind of conspiracist mindset where almost everything that we take for granted is bad.”

  “So it’s, you know, the Covid vaccines, you know, not only don’t work, but they’re more dangerous than Covid itself,” Gillespie continued, going on to reel off a list of ‘conspiracies’ that RFK has endorsed.

  5G and Wi-Fi are controlling, you know, controlling our mind. The government, you know, aspects of the government that are supposed to be in favor of trying to help people, actually hurting them. AIDS is not, you know, primarily caused by HIV or HIV is not involved in AIDS. Atrazine is changing frog sexuality and by implication, human sexuality. Your cousin is not, your cousin Michael Skakel is not guilty of the murder of Martha Moxley that he was found guilty of.

  You know, the 2004 election in Ohio was stolen. It kind of goes on and on. Do you how do you answer people who say, you know, like this is the sign of somebody whose thinking is fundamentally conspiracy-minded rather than kind of dealing with brute reality? You know, that is difficult and, you know, and terrible, but is not what you seem to be making of it.

  However, when Kennedy asked Gillespie to “show me where I get it wrong,”  and offered to go through each example point by point, the host didn’t seem too keen.

  “You did something that is very unfair. Which is, you made a series of characterizations of my beliefs that you read in the newspapers. Many of which are just wrong,” Kennedy stated.

  Conspiracy Theory is a CIA term that was formulated to keep people from investigating government corruption. Specially the intelligence agencies crimes.

  — MadCubaninTucson (@Arielhe97434333) July 3, 2023

  This was a horrible interview – almost dishonest. I would have liked to hear he responses to each of the points.

  — FLBIII Deux (@Jane4UsGirls) July 3, 2023

  Will you identify those that turned out to be true??

  — rgEPhoto🇺🇸Ŧ (@rgeasley) July 3, 2023

  He wasn’t confronted. He was hit with accusations & given no chance to explain himself. The interviewer was gutless. If it was 1% true he would have given RFK the rope to hang himself

  — Keith Shilts (@KeithAShilts) July 4, 2023

  Funny how you cut off his response once he had a chance to defend himself.

  Great journalism. 💩

  — Dipperful (@Dipperful) July 3, 2023

  Watch the full interview below:

  Related:

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 07/04/2023 – 14:45

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