Today’s News 5th June 2021

• Tiananmen Square: The Massacre The Chinese Regime Tries To Erase
  Tiananmen Square: The Massacre The Chinese Regime Tries To Erase

  Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times,

  Thirty-two years later, the Chinese communist regime still tries to repress the memory of the bloody massacre of June 4, censoring all mentions, detaining outspoken dissents, and keeping younger generations unaware of what actually happened that night.

  

  A student displays a banner with one of the slogans chanted by the crowd of some 200,000 pouring into Tiananmen Square in Beijing on April 22, 1989. (Catherine Henriette/AFP/Getty Images)

  Much of the world has been aware of the truth that the communist regime’s leader sent troops to quash the protesting students who called for a more open society at Tiananmen Square, the center of the capital Beijing, on June 4, 1989, resulting in the killing of thousands of Chinese students. But in the land controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), censorship continues.

  Chen Siming, who posted a photo memorializing the bloody event, was given a 15-day administrative detention by authorities of Zhuzhou city of the southern province of Hunan on May 31.

  For years, Chen has persisted in memorializing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. In 2018, he was detained for taking photos in a park with a tank in the background on June 4.

  “I had been detained four times since 2017, three for memorizing the June 4,” said Chen in the tweet on May 30.

  “But I still want to memorize the most important day in contemporary history, which is a citizen’s responsibility.”

  Huang Xiaomin, a supporter of the student-led pro-democratic movement, is being held in detention, said his daughter on May 29, for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a frequent charge used by the CCP to silence critics, the Weiquanwang blog first reported.

  The reason is still unknown, Huang’s friend, surnamed Xie, told The Epoch Times in an interview, but he mentioned that the local authorities summoned Huang on the phone while he had tea with Huang on May 28.

  Meanwhile, another outspoken dissident is missing in southwestern China. Yang Shaozheng’s wife has lost contact with him for over two weeks, his friend Yang Zili, told NTD on May 31.

  The former economics professor, Yang Shaozheng, who was fired for criticizing the CCP in 2018, had been summoned by authorities several times, said Yang Zili, a friend and fellow activist. His wife believes that Yang is probably being detained by the authorities, the friend added.

  Another activist from southwestern Sichuan Province told The Epoch Times that the police came to his home on Thursday, warning him to be silent on June 4 and July 1, the ruling CCP’s anniversary day. An activist in Beijing, who also prefers not to disclose their name, told The Epoch Times that the local authorities informed him that he should travel to other cities on June 4 and July 1.

  Unconcerned Youths

  The continued censorship has repressed references to Tiananmen from the Chinese internet and erased them from students’ history books, including the name of the then top leader of the regime, Zhao Ziyang.

  Many young Chinese grew up unaware of the brutal event 32 years ago, as teachers fear touching sensitive topics defined by the CCP. Media outlets controlled by the state are not allowed to report on it. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson only described it as a “political disturbance” when asked by Western journalists.

  A middle school teacher in Hunan Province, surnamed Huang, admitted that young people in mainland China, under the pervasive censorship of information, have become indifferent.

  “The young generation limits their attention to money, good wine, savory dishes, and having fun. They are indulging in Douyin on the phone,” Huang said in an interview with Radio Free Asia. Douyin is a popular social media platform, TikTok’s sister app in China.

  “For equality and justice, they don’t have such ideas. They only want enjoyment,” Huang said.

  The young Chinese people’s growing lie-down movement—a careless attitude toward work, career, marriage, friendships, child-raising, and consumerism—has become a headache to the authorities.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 23:40

• Watch: Futuristic Backpack Helicopter 'CopterPack' Takes Flight For First Time 
  Watch: Futuristic Backpack Helicopter ‘CopterPack’ Takes Flight For First Time 

  Australian-based startup CopterPack published a new video on YouTube of what appears to be an electric backpack helicopter flying for the first time. 

  The lightweight airframe is constructed from a carbon fiber honeycomb, with two propellers on either side of the operator, lifting the person into the air. 

  

  The video shows the flight and how remarkably stable the electric backpack helicopter is, all thanks to its self-leveling autopilot. 

  Judging by the video, there is no tail rotor, as the two main propellers are adjusted by the operator with a joystick for control. 

  

  The futuristic form of personal transportation is quite impressive, but there is very limited information on the specs of the electric backpack helicopter. For instance, flight time, maximum altitude height, and top speed are critical pieces of information the company has yet to release. Meanwhile, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been searching for an Iron Man-style jet suit per its solicitation on website Sam.Gov (System for Award Management). DARPA is calling on private industry to deliver jet suits or “Portable Personal Air Mobility System.” 

  Perhaps we found the perfect fit? 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 23:20

• As The Big Lie About Sicknick Persists, Alleged Attackers Languish In Jail
  As The Big Lie About Sicknick Persists, Alleged Attackers Languish In Jail

  Authored by Julie Kelly via AmGreatness.com,

  No one killed Brian Sicknick. But that isn’t stopping the Biden Justice Department, the media, every Democratic politician, and now Sicknick’s loved ones from perpetuating the lie.

  

  On August 26, 2020, Kevin Phomma was arrested in Portland for assaulting several police officers with bear spray during that city’s nonstop siege by Antifa and Black Lives Matters protesters. Phomma and others surrounded the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, blocked traffic, and fought with law enforcement.

  In a press release announcing his arrest, the Justice Department said, “Phomma doused several officers with pepper spray while they attempted to arrest him. Once in custody, officers discovered the pepper spray was in fact a powerful bear deterrent pepper spray.”

  Phomma, 26, also had a three-inch dagger in a sheath strapped to his left hip.

  He was charged with a dozen counts ranging from civil disorder—a felony—to unlawful use of mace. He appears to contribute little to society except for his skills as a professional protester.

  A few days after his arrest, Phomma was released on bail.

  His trial is still pending; his lawyers claim the civil disorder charge is “a vestige of opposition to civil rights for Black Americans.” (He does not appear to be black.)

  While Phomma roams free, acting as the aggrieved party rather than the aggressor, the two men who allegedly sprayed officer Brian Sicknick with a chemical irritant on January 6 are not so lucky.

  George Tanios and Julian Khater were arrested in March and accused of “attacking” Sicknick with a chemical spray; the indictment, not coincidentally, was filed just a few weeks after the initial account of Sicknick’s death—the murder-by-fire-extinguisher story—was exposed as a lie.

  Desperate to sustain the lie that a police officer was killed by bloodthirsty Trump cultists on January 6, the media and Democrats quickly pivoted to the idea Sicknick died from an allergic reaction to the bear spray.

  Tanios and Khater, who traveled together to hear Donald Trump’s speech that day, face four charges of using and carrying the “dangerous and deadly weapon” on January 6.

  Unlike Kevin Phomma, one charge filed against Tanios and Khater is “assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.”

  Unlike Phomma and his accomplices, Tanios and Khater also are charged with conspiracy for allegedly pre-planning the assault on a federal officer.

  Also unlike Phomma, neither man has been able to post bail; a federal judge last month agreed with Joe Biden’s Justice Department to keep the pair behind bars awaiting trial. D.C. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, a Reagan appointee, even rejected a $15 million bond package backed by 16 relatives of Julian Khater—an amount three times higher than the court-ordered bail for Harvey Weinstein, as one reporter noted.

  “They attacked uniformed police officers and I can’t get around that,” Hogan said in a May 11 hearing. Hogan, 83, repeatedly claimed Sicknick was “violently attacked.”

  Even though Hogan acknowledged their “excellent backgrounds,” the men are a danger to their community, the judge argued, because they attempted to “halt democratic processes in their attack on Congress.”

  Since they didn’t get the Kevin Phomma treatment, Tanios and Khater, like dozens of Capitol defendants, now languish under solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail specifically used to house January 6 detainees.

  Neither man has a criminal record. Tanios, 39, is a business owner in Morgantown, West Virginia, and has three children under the age of five. Khater, 32, is a college graduate who worked for the family’s restaurant business until one was forced to shut down last year due to the pandemic.

  But because of their involvement in the events of January 6, they are being treated as hardened criminals. “[W]ithout the violent efforts of these specific individuals to injure and/or incapacitate law enforcement officers who were executing their duties and protecting our democracy, the barrier lines would never have been breached, and rioters would likely not have gained entry into the Capitol Building,” prosecutors wrote to the court in April seeking pre-trial detention. “The defendants were spokes in the wheel that caused the historic events of January 6, 2021, and they are thus a danger to our society and a threat to the peaceful functioning of our community.”

  Those accusations, on their face, are preposterous. Barrier lines, mostly made of bike racks, already had been crossed by the time Tanios and Khater arrived and neither man entered the Capitol building. If their intent was to help the mob siege the building, why didn’t they go in?

  Further, the government’s evidence against the men is inconclusive if not nonexistent. The FBI investigator in charge of the case couldn’t give a clear depiction of how the spray was used or prove the chemical hit any of the officers, including Sicknick. Also, it wasn’t bear spray.

  Videos purporting to show the assault do nothing of the sort, in fact, the cherry-picked clips should work in favor of the defense since there is no proof Khater used the can of spray or that its contents hit officer Sicknick. (Tanios is not accused of spraying the chemical but faces the same charges as Khater; the pair also have been charged with conspiracy.) Moreover, unless we accept the word of the government, it’s not even clear that the officer in the video actually is Brian Sicknick.

  Again, not coincidentally, the government released its selective footage a week after the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office finally released a long-delayed autopsy report on Sicknick. The officer, age 42, died of natural causes, a stroke caused by blood clots near his brain.

  No one killed Brian Sicknick. But that isn’t stopping Joe Biden’s Justice Department, the news media, every Democratic politician, and now Sicknick’s loved ones from perpetuating the lie that Trump supporters contributed to his untimely death.

  Gladys Sicknick, the officer’s mother, appeared on Capitol Hill this week, demanding to meet with U.S. senators opposed to the 9/11-style commission on January 6. “Because of what [U.S. Capitol Police] did, the people in the building were able to go home that evening and be with their families,” she said in a statement. “Brian and many other officers ended up in the hospital. I suggest that all congressmen and senators who are against this bill visit my son’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery and, while there, think about what their hurtful decisions will do to those officers who will be there for them going forward.”

  “Clearly they’re not backing the blue,” Sandra Garza, Sicknick’s longtime partner, told Jake Tapper in a CNN interview Friday afternoon after the Senate rejected legislation creating the commission. Garza also insisted, without evidence, that “people had handguns on them” during the protest.

  This misleading rhetoric does more than help bolster Democrats’ false narrative about January 6; it has very dangerous consequences for two men, still presumed innocent until proven guilty, trapped in the hyperpartisan Beltway judicial system. They are accusing Julian Khater and George Tanios, essentially, of murder and using them as human props in a destructive crusade against the Right.

  Both men have appealed Hogan’s ruling. Their appeal will make its way to the D.C. Circuit Court, which has a mixed record on authorizing the release of January 6 defendants.

  If only George Tanios and Julian Khater could get the Kevin Phomma treatment.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 23:00

• Houseboats Evacuated From California's Lake Oroville Amid Megadrought 
  Houseboats Evacuated From California’s Lake Oroville Amid Megadrought 

  In Northern California’s Butte County, at least 130 houseboats were evacuated from Lake Oroville as water levels fell to dangerously low levels.

  

  The lake’s record low is 646 feet, and the state’s Department of Water Resources expects that level to be breached in August. If that happens, public boat ramps would be inaccessible for the first due to low water levels. According to Aaron Wright, public safety chief for the Northern Buttes District of California State Parks, who spoke with AP, the only boat access point to the lake would be an old dirt road constructed in the late 1960s. 

  Eric Smith, an Oroville City Council member and president of its chamber of commerce, said the lake would not be usable this year. Over a million visitors visit the area each year. Without visitors, enjoying boat parties, wakeboarding, or relaxing in the sun, the local economy could take a hit as it attempts to recover from the virus pandemic. 

  As of Wednesday, The Weather Channel states the lake was at 38% of capacity and 45% of the average early June water level. Low water levels forced park officials to order 130 houseboats to exit the lake in recent weeks. 

  

  The mighty lake provides drinking water to 27 million people and water to 4-5 million acres of farmland. Severe drought conditions plague the area, and low snowpack levels from the Sierra Nevada have culminated into a perfect storm. 

  According to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis, the state’s 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than average for this time of year. 

  Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom spoke about the urgent action needed to address possible water shortages. 

  “With the reality of climate change abundantly clear in California, we’re taking urgent action to address acute water supply shortfalls in northern and central California while also building our water resilience to safeguard communities in the decades ahead,” Newsom said on May 10. “We’re working with local officials and other partners to protect public health and safety and the environment, and call on all Californians to help meet this challenge by stepping up their efforts to save water.”

  As a historic megadrought, likely produced by La Nina, decimates the western half of the US, the federal government could declare the first-ever water shortage in the coming months, which would prompt cutbacks in water usage for several western states. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 22:40

• H.R. 1: A Cautionary Tale of Unintended Consequences
  H.R. 1: A Cautionary Tale of Unintended Consequences

  Authored by Ken Cuccinelli II and Dominic Rapini via RealClearPolitics.com,

  For as long as politicians have been passing legislation, there have been measurable consequences to that legislation – both intentional and unintentional. Usually, the final impact is not known for years after a law is passed. We could write a book predicting problems with the proposed federal bill, H.R.1, the so-called For the People Act, but the state of Connecticut has given American taxpayers a timely preview of the burdens and waste we can expect from just one of the bill’s many government mandates. Specifically, the requirement that states must mail out ballot applications to all registered voters will unnecessarily spend, and ultimately waste, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

  

  The 2020 elections in Connecticut provide a cautionary preview of this proposed requirement in H.R. 1 to send absentee ballot applications (ABR) to every registered voter. Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise W. Merrill (pictured) did exactly that, spending $7.1 million in federal taxpayer money sending out unsolicited ABRs for the primary and general elections. A total of 3.6 million applications were mailed, yet only 865,000 were converted to actual votes. That’s a cost of $8.20 per ballot returned – by any measure, a poor yield on that investment.

  The sad irony about this waste of taxpayers’ money is that the applications were available to voters free of charge either at town halls or on the State of Connecticut website. One had only to pick up the form in person or download and print it in the comfort of his own home. Other states have similarly convenient options for obtaining ABRs and provide for ballot applications to be requested online, by email or by phone. Citizens in these states take responsibility for their right to vote, and the states facilitate their doing so, rather than mandate it.

  Connecticut’s effort also came with a much greater and intangible cost. In 2020, election officials processed 10 times the normal amount of absentee-ballot applications. Experienced town clerks and registrars from 169 towns remarked that the 2020 election was like “drinking through a fire hose.” Municipal election officials were unprepared and understaffed to handle the heavy volume of unsolicited mail-in ballots. As a result, normal ballot-vetting practices were abandoned in the deluge, and clerk offices could not fulfill their normal duties for weeks before the election. How do you measure the impact of that kind of disruption? The simple process of voters requesting ballots indicates to election officials the workload that they are facing and allows for proper planning and staffing.

  Aside from being another punch line to long-running jokes about government waste, Connecticut’s $8.20 ballots revealed another flaw: More than 8% were undeliverable. In the August primary alone, dated voter rolls accounted for 100,000 undeliverable applications. For the general election, an estimated 184,000 ballot applications could not be delivered. Add that number to the 197,000 inactive voters who failed to vote in the last two federal elections, and the total pool of voters on the rolls who might be dead, moved, or duplicate swells to 381,000. This amounts to a clear invitation for fraud.

  At the national level, H.R. 1 would mandate the mailing of absentee-ballot applications to 168 million registered voters. The Brennan Center for Justice conservatively estimates that a mail-in option for all American voters would cost upward of $1.4 billion, including investments in postage, printing, ballot-tracking systems, and many other logistical and ballot-security technologies. If these ballots were returned at a similar rate as those in Connecticut, most of these tax dollars would simply be wasted.

  While the financial costs of H.R. 1 are certainly concerning and undeniable, the dangers it poses to election integrity should be front and center. Incredibly, using Connecticut’s 2020 experience as a guide, under H.R. 1, the 8% of unsolicited ballots that revealed dead, duplicate, or moved voters would not be enough to clean the voter rolls. H.R. 1 makes that task much more difficult –presenting another tempting opportunity for fraud.

  The 2020 elections were the most frenetic in recent American history. Election officials expanded convenience at the expense of election security and spent monies for short-term objectives like unsolicited mailings with poor cost-benefit results. We learned (again) from Connecticut’s experience that government doesn’t always get it right and that taxpayer money is often wasted. H.R. 1 would solidify these short-term mistakes into a law with broad long-term consequences that would increase threats to the integrity of American elections. States have run their own elections for over 230 years – never perfectly, but certainly better than an H.R. 1 federal takeover would achieve. The misnamed For the People Act should be rejected.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 22:20

• McDonald's Tests AI-Powered Automated Drive-Thrus At 10 Chicago Restaurants
  McDonald’s Tests AI-Powered Automated Drive-Thrus At 10 Chicago Restaurants

  As fast-food restaurants and small businesses struggle to find low-skilled workers to staff their kitchens and cash registers, America’s biggest fast-food franchise is seizing the opportunity to field test a concept it has been working toward for some time: 10 McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago are testing automated drive-thru ordering using new artificial intelligence software that converts voice orders for the computer.

  McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said Wednesday during an appearance at Alliance Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions conference that the new voice-order technology is about 85% accurate and can take 80% of drive-thru orders. The company obtained the technology during its 2019 acquisition of Apprente.

  Over the last decade, restaurants have been leaning more into technology to improve the customer experience and help save on labor. In 2019, under former CEO Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s went on a spending spree, snapping up restaurant tech. Now, it’s commonplace to see order kiosks in most McDonald’s locations. The company has also embraced Uber Eats for delivery. Elsewhere, burger-flipping robots have been introduced that can be successfully operated for just $3/hour (though “Flippy” had a minor setback after its first day in use).

  

  The concept of automation is currently being used, in some places, as a gimmick. And with the dangers that COVID-19 can pose to staff (who can then turn around and sue), we suspect more “fully automated” bars will pop up across the US.

  One upscale bistro in Portland has even employed Robo-waiters to help with contactless ordering and food delivery.

  The introduction of automation and artificial intelligence into the industry will eventually result in entire restaurants controlled without humans – that could happen as early as the end of this decade. As for McDonald’s, Kempczinski said the technology will likely take more than one or two years to implement.

  “Now there’s a big leap from going to 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants across the US, with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect permutations, weather — and on and on and on,” he said.

  McDonald’s is also exploring automation of its kitchens, but that technology likely won’t be ready for another five years or so – even though it’s capable of being introduced soooner.

  McDonald’s has also been looking into automating more of the kitchen, such as its fryers and grills, Kempczinski said. He added, however, that that technology likely won’t roll out within the next five years, even though it’s possible now.

  “The level of investment that would be required, the cost of investment, we’re nowhere near to what the breakeven would need to be from the labor cost standpoint to make that a good business decision for franchisees to do,” Kempczinski said.

  And because restaurant technology is moving so fast, Kempczinski said, McDonald’s won’t always be able to drive innovation itself or even keep up. The company’s current strategy is to wait until there are opportunities that specifically work for it.

  “If we do acquisitions, it will be for a short period of time, bring it in house, jumpstart it, turbo it and then spin it back out and find a partner that will work and scale it for us,” he said.

  On Friday, Americans will receive their first broad-based update on non-farm employment in the US since last month’s report, which missed expectations by a wide margin, sparking discussion about whether all these “enhanced” monetary benefits from federal stimulus programs have kept workers from returning to the labor market.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 22:00

• Buchanan: Were The Wars Wise? Were They Worth It?
  Buchanan: Were The Wars Wise? Were They Worth It?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan,

  Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the “last full measure of devotion” to their country.

  Heart-rending is an apt description of those stories; and searing are the videos of those who survived and returned home without arms or legs.

  But the stories could not help but bring questions to mind.

  While the service and sacrifice were always honorable and often heroic, never to be forgotten, were the wars these soldiers were sent to fight and die in wise? Were they necessary?

  

  What became of the causes for which these Americans were sent to fight in the new century, with thousands to die and tens of thousands to come home with permanent wounds?

  And what became of the causes for which they were sent to fight?

  The longest war of this new century, the longest in our history, the defining “endless war” or “forever war” was Afghanistan.

  In 2001, we sent an army halfway around the world to exact retribution on al-Qaida for 9/11, an attack that rivaled Pearl Harbor in the numbers of dead and wounded Americans.

  Because al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden had been given sanctuary by the Taliban in Kabul, who refused to give him up, we invaded, overthrew that Islamist regime and cleansed Tora Bora of al-Qaida.

  Mission accomplished. But then the mission changed.

  In control of a land that had seen off British and Soviet imperialists, we hubristically set about establishing a democracy and sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to hold off the rebel resistance for two decades while we went about nation-building.

  We did not succeed. All U.S. troops are to be gone by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And the Taliban we ousted has never been closer to recapturing power in Kabul.

  Today’s issue: How do we save the Afghans who allied with us in this war, so that they do not face the terrible vengeance of a victorious Taliban.

  The second American war of this century was the invasion and occupation of Iraq, to strip its dictator, Saddam Hussein, of weapons of mass destruction with which he intended to attack the United States.

  Begun in 2003, the war has lasted 18 years. No WMD were ever found. Most U.S. troops have come and gone. And today, the Baghdad regime rules at the sufferance of Shiite militia who look to Tehran for guidance and support.

  Afghanistan and Iraq cost us 7,000 dead and 40,000 wounded.

  Were they necessary wars? Were they wise? Were they worth it?

  In the second decade of this century, we intervened in Syria to back the “good rebels” seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad and became the indispensable ally in Saudi Arabia’s murderous air war to stop the Houthi rebels from consolidating power in Yemen.

  In both Syria and Yemen, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been wounded, killed, uprooted or driven into exile. Both countries are listed among the humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century.

  Having helped to inflict so much damage on those countries, did we succeed in our missions?

  Today, after six years of fighting, the Houthi still control the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, and Assad just won a fourth term as president with 95% of the vote.

  In 2011, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. air attacks on Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya, beginning a NATO intervention that would lead to his overthrow and lynching.

  In 2020, however, the future of Libya was not being decided by the European Union or U.S. but fought over by proxy forces supported and supplied by Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia. And Barack Obama had conceded that the worst mistake of his presidency was not to plan for the aftermath of his 2011 decision to topple the Libyan dictator.

  Again, the men and women sent to the Middle East to fight these wars did their duty and deserve the gratitude of their countrymen that they received this Memorial Day weekend.

  But where is the accounting from those who sent them to fight, bleed and die in what turned out to be unwinnable wars — or, at the least, wars they were not given the requisite weapons or forces to win?

  What makes these questions of importance, and not only to historians, is that the cry of the hawk may be heard again in the land.

  We hear calls to confront Iran before the mullahs build an atom bomb, and to challenge Putin and arm Ukraine to retake Crimea and push Russia out of the Donbass. We hear talk of the American Navy contesting Beijing’s claims in the East and South China Seas, including to Taiwan.

  The stories of Memorial Day should make us think long and hard before we launch any more unnecessary, unwise, or unwinnable wars.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 21:40

• Louis Vuitton Under Fire For "Absolutely Disgusting" Palestinian Headscarf Knockoff
  Louis Vuitton Under Fire For “Absolutely Disgusting” Palestinian Headscarf Knockoff

  Popular Instagram account “Diet Prada,” with close to 3 million followers, called out LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, commonly known as LVMH, for selling an overpriced headscarf inspired by the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh. 

  “So LVMH’s stance on politics is “neutral,” but they’re still making a $705 logo-emblazoned keffiyeh, which is a traditional Arab headdress that’s become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. Hmmmm…” Diet Prada said. The post includes multiple hashtags in support of “Free Palestine.” 

  

  “A jacquard weave technique is used to create the intricate Monogram patterns on its base of blended cotton, wool and silk,” the description of LVMH’s $705 “monogram keffieh stole” read. “Soft and lightweight with fringed edges, this timeless accessory creates an easygoing mood.”

  

  Diet Prada, with such a vast audience, sparked backlash for LVMH’s headscarf across social media. It appears, as of Thursday, the product listing on the company’s website doesn’t exist anymore. 

  

  The timing of the product release comes after the Israeli–Palestinian conflict erupted last month. Louis Vuitton’s color choices appear similar to Israel’s flag and perhaps taking a political position. 

  Over the years, the keffiyeh headscarf has come to symbolize Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation

  

  Social media users were outraged by the brand’s insensitivity, calling it out for “cultural appropriation.” 

  this is so wrong on so many levels. the palestinian genocide is not something for you to capitalise on?! @LouisVuitton pic.twitter.com/YiN5ba8bMP

  — tazzy (@Tastastickk) June 1, 2021

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  So Google’s search engines associates the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh as a “symbol of terrorism”, yet @LouisVuitton has no shame to culturally appropriate it omg. Guess it’s a “cool accessory” if rich white people wear it, eh? pic.twitter.com/N3UlSX6RyA

  — Anita Zsurzsan 🇵🇸 (@iamjourjean) June 2, 2021

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  Absolutely disgusting @LouisVuitton Cultural appropriation of a land under oppression and using the colours of the oppressors! No info about its history either! #PalestineWillBeFree pic.twitter.com/gR52yM6O9M

  — Dr. Noshin ✨ (@Nosh09) June 2, 2021

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  Louis Vuitton is not the only fashion designer selling overpriced knockoffs of Palestinian keffiyehs. Fendi, an Italian luxury fashion brand, has released its own take on the headscarf, selling it for $835. This is capitalism at work. 

  At least Louis Vuitton’s “monogram keffieh stole” had to word stole(n) in it…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 21:20

• COVID-19 Has Forever Destroyed Americans' Trust In Ruling Class 'Experts'
  COVID-19 Has Forever Destroyed Americans’ Trust In Ruling Class ‘Experts’

  Authored by Josh Hammer via The Epoch Times,

  As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the “rulemaking” governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.

  Put more simply, the most straightforward version of the argument offered by partisans of the administrative state amounts to, “Trust the experts.” And over the century-plus since Wilson’s presidency, the “trust the experts” leitmotif has moved well beyond the realm of prevailing dogma for mandarins in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather, for large swaths of the citizenry and the elected official class, “trust the experts” now reigns supreme for everything from the military (“Trust the generals!”) to public health (“Trust the epidemiologists!”).

  And therein lies the rub.

  

  The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 in America have dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of America’s ruling class and the ruling class’s implicit appeal to its authority as a coterie of highly trained and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this more than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attained celebrity status during the pandemic as the nation’s leading immunologist and forward-facing spokesman for our public policy response. As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, “Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History,” Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic, waffling on what the “science” demands at any given moment while still always seeming to err on the side of draconian overreaction.

  Recent Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post only underscore the point.

  Perhaps most damningly, the FOIA requests revealed a February 2020 email to former Obama-era Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell explaining that store-bought face masks are “really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.”

  He also added that the “typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”

  Of course, barely over a month after Fauci’s unearthed email to Burwell, Americans were required to wear masks pretty much every time they left their house—and mask-skeptical posts were censored or deleted by the ruling class’s preferred private-sector enforcement arm, Big Tech. And none of this is to even broach the separate issue of the extensive COVID-19-era societal lockdowns, which were never justified on the scientific metrics despite being ubiquitously promoted by those excoriating lockdown-skeptical conservatives to just shut up and “trust the science.”

  In addition to the Fauci FOIA cache, there is also the Democratic Party and the media’s inexplicable 180-degree turn on the plausibility of the Wuhan lab leak theory—that is, the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic has as its origins not a zoonotic transmission at a local “wet market” but an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting dangerous coronavirus research (partially subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer) and happens to be located within the immediate vicinity of the then-novel virus’s first confirmed cases. The lab leak theory was always plausible, if not probable, but those who promoted it as a possibility from the onset—such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and then-President Donald Trump—were routinely lambasted as Sinophobic conspiracy theorists.

  There was never any compelling reason to dismiss the lab leak theory out of hand, and in retrospect, it seems that those who did so were likely motivated more by “orange man bad!”-style anti-Trump personal animus than anything else. The Biden administration has recently called for a 90-day intelligence community review into the origins of the pandemic, which is welcome news for those of us who have called COVID-19 a “Chinese Chernobyl” demanding serious geopolitical accountability since day one—but sad news for those who may have presumed a modicum of intellectual honesty from our political elites.

  American politics is currently in the throes of a populist moment. That populist moment is characterized by widespread distrust of elites and a perceived ever-widening chasm between the ruling class’s prerogatives and the wishes of the American people at large. As we finally begin to emerge from COVID-19, that chasm will only grow wider. The ruling class has finally sullied itself one time too many.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 21:00

• Cargill Taps Startup Producing Smart Cow Masks To Trap Methane Burps 
  Cargill Taps Startup Producing Smart Cow Masks To Trap Methane Burps 

  Cows produce significant amounts of methane as part of their digestive processes. Cow belching, a source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, could be solved by a new methane-absorbing wearable device. 

  According to Bloomberg, agriculture behemoth Cargill Inc. tapped UK-based startup Zelp Ltd., which is dedicated to significantly reducing the environmental impact of the livestock industry through smart cow masks that filter methane burps. 

  

  Cargill said Tuesday the devices would be used for its European dairy farmers in 2022. The price of each mask has yet to be publicly discussed, but Zelp said each cow would cost $80 per year as part of an annual subscription fee. 

  Detailed on Zelp’s website under the technology tab, the smart cow mask neutralizes methane, records valuable statical data, and is integrated with mobile communication gear. Besides neutralizing methane, the mask also gathers many data points about the cow, including geo-location, early disease functions, heat detection, emission quantity, and oxidized volume of methane. 

  Cargill’s vast customer network could make smart masks for the livestock industry standard in the years ahead as the elites of the world attempt to transition the global economy to a much greener future (or at least that is what it appears). 

  “Cargill has an impressive reach across dairy farms in Europe,” said Zelp Chief Executive Officer Francisco Norris. “They are uniquely positioned to distribute our technology to a large number of clients, both farmers and dairy companies, maximizing the roll-out from the very first year we hit the market.”

  Bloomberg describes the smart mask almost like a “catalytic converter” on a car, filtering out the burps.

  A set of fans powered by solar-charged batteries sucks up the burps and traps them in a chamber with a methane-absorbing filter. Once the filter is saturated, a chemical reaction turns the methane into CO₂, which is then released. – Bloomberg

  Some 95% of methane released by cows comes out as burps and through the nose.

  

  Enteric fermentation is the digestive process that results in cow belching. 

  

  Global emissions from livestock account for about 14.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Cargill has joined the global push to cut carbon emissions across its supply chain by 30% by 2030. As we’ve previously discussed, many of these targets are “pie in the sky” figures. 

  Though there’s a big push by corporations and governments to cut carbon emissions in the years ahead, elites and politicians have no visible interest in curbing emissions of their fuel-guzzling private jets, superyachts, and supercars. 

  If we’re not careful, one day, we’ll all be wearing masks that monitor our methane output and will be taxed on that. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 20:40

• Pandemic Closures Cost NYC Construction Industry $9.8 Billion
  Pandemic Closures Cost NYC Construction Industry $9.8 Billion

  By Construction Dive,

  • Closures due to the Covid pandemic resulted in $9.8 billion in lost construction activity and 74,000 direct and indirect lost jobs in New York City, according to a report by the Building Trades Employers’ Association. The decline in jobs contributed to a $5.5 billion loss in total wages, the report said.

  • The decline in activity also affected the city’s Minority and Women Business Enterprises, as more than 85% of MWBEs are expected to be out of businesses in the next six months, according to a New York City Comptroller’s Office survey cited in the report.

  • “A decade of employment growth was wiped out in two months last year,” the report said, quoting the New York City Independent Budget Office, which noted that it will take at least five years to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

  

  The report also points out the importance of construction unions in New York City, calling them a major driver of the city’s economy.

  • Each $1 spent on construction yields $1.31 spent in the city.

  • Each $1 million spent on construction creates a total of eight jobs in the city.

  • Each job on a construction site results in a multiplier of 1.32 jobs.

  • Construction and real estate comprise 20% of the city’s GDP, while providing 10% of jobs and 5% of wages.

  BTEA put forth 14 public policy recommendations, 13 of which would cost no additional money, according to Louis J. Coletti, the organization’s president and CEO. Many of them suggest changes to the procurement process on the state and city level.

  “The public procurement process in New York is freaking broken,” Coletti told Construction Dive. The process to procure jobs and get them started takes far too long, he said.

  As a result, BTEA hopes to rebuild rapidly by encouraging legislation allowing every public authority in the state to use a design-build procurement process, establishing a public procurement reform task force and expediting the permitting process by the New York City Department of Buildings.

  The DOB, which handles regulations, inspections, permitting and licensing for the city, declined to comment on the report.

  BTEA also called attention to the general liability insurance cost under the city’s Scaffold Law, which imposes absolute liability on gravity-related injuries, even those to or caused by an impaired worker. Coletti described the Scaffold Law as “absurd.” He isn’t alone in that sentiment.

  In late April, three New York contractor groups and the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to do away with the Scaffold Law for contractors working on the $11.6 billion Hudson River Tunnel project.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 20:20

• Frenzied Crypto Traders In South Korea See Coins As Their "Last Chance Of Escape"
  Frenzied Crypto Traders In South Korea See Coins As Their “Last Chance Of Escape”

  South Korea has become ground zero for speculative crypto traders looking to try and build wealth by hoisting their life savings into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

  This means wild successes when the price bitcoin and other coins moves higher, but also devastating mood swings when cryptos crash. 

  “I can’t think of anything… It’s completely unbearable,” one young woman told Nikkei after investing her life savings of about $900 into virtual currency “as a way to build a nest egg in a country where saving for the future”.

  She had been riding high in April when cryptos were making new highs, but has since experienced a 40% drawdown. She told Nikkei: “I’ll have to hold until the price goes up again. I’m not sure how many years that will take, though.”

  She’s a microcosm of a country which accounts for 10% of all trades in crypto. The massive volume sometimes means that cryptos can trade with premiums of up to 20% in South Korea. Trading is focused mostly on altcoins, with only about 10% of the virtual trade going to bitcoin.

  

  And the traders are mostly people in their 20s and 30s. 2.5 million new accounts were opened in the country during the first quarter of 2021. 33% of those were people in their 20s and 31% were people in their 30s. 

  53% of university students polled in a new survey this week “expressed a positive opinion about investing into cryptocurrency” while 24% said they have pulled the trigger.

  The biggest appeal was listed at 33% of participants drawn to the “high rate of return”. But even more of a stand out is the 15% who referred to crypto as the “last chance of escape” from their current social status.

  The “last chance of escape” is indicative of many South Korean traders who believe that the “conventional path to happiness their parents took — getting married, buying a home and having kids” no longer is attainable. Instead, they look to cryptos to try and “reverse their fortunes”. 

  And those who speak out against cryptos are ridiculed. Eun Sung-soo, chairman of the Financial Services Commission said last month that cryptos “are not securities bound by the Capital Market Acts, but are instead virtual assets with no known substance.” 

  Eun said: “The government has no duty to protect them. If they are walking down the wrong path, adults must warn them that they are making a mistake.”

  

  That touched off a “firestorm of criticism from young people.” Some called for Eun’s resignation, posting things online like: 

  “You have people in their 40s and 50s speculating on housing upon which our citizens livelihood depends, yet it is inappropriate for people in their 20s and 30s to invest in coins? There’s a whole lot we can learn from The Grown-Ups.”

  South Korea is implementing new rules for crypto come later this year, requiring crypto platforms to partner with banks to ensure legitimacy. Bithumb, Upbit, Coinone and Korbit have already struck banking deals, while most other banks are hesitant to strike deals. 

  Even more worrisome is the fact that many crypto trades are being financed with debt. The country’s central bank noted that household debt grew 8% at the end of 2020 from a year earlier – however, debt by those between 20-39 was up 17%.

  Kim So-young, professor of economics at Seoul National University, concluded: “The level of borrowing by young people is not that great, so a series of personal bankruptcies by that contingent will only have a minor effect on the financial system. However, young people who are about to enter the labor market are going bankrupt and being left unable to plan for the future, which will result in a loss for the economy as a whole.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 20:00

• Why Is There Such Reluctance To Discuss Natural Immunity?
  Why Is There Such Reluctance To Discuss Natural Immunity?

  Authored by Jon Sanders via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  If you’re among those of us who aren’t tribally invested in Covid politics but would like good information about when life will resume as normal, chances are you’re interested in herd immunity. You’re likely not interested in having to rely on the Internet Archive for good information on herd immunity. Alas, it’s become a go-to place for retrieving, as it were, previously published information on herd immunity that became inconvenient post-vaccine and then virtually Memory-Holed.

  

  Over the past 15 months, the litany of Experts’ True Facts and Science regarding various aspects of SARS-CoV-2 has changed more often than the starting lineup of a bad minor league ball club. Covid-19 is spread by droplets, especially from asymptomatic people, until one day it was airborne all along and people who weren’t sick in all likelihood weren’t even sick. Stay at home, you’re safer indoors, even stay away from parks and beaches; well, actually, outdoors is the place to be. Masks don’t work against viruses and are actually unhealthy to wear if you’re not sick, then suddenly they did work and without one you might as well be shooting people. Everyone knows and PolitiFact verified that the virus couldn’t have been created in the prominent infectious disease lab doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in bats coincidentally at Covid Ground Zero until, one day, PolitiFact had to retract the entire “Pants on Fire!” article. And so forth.

  Unfortunately, information about herd immunity has also not been immune to this kind of meddling. Until recent months, people readily understood that active immunity came about either by natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity. Natural immunity comes from battling and defeating an actual infection, then having your immune system primed for the rest of your life to fight it off if it ever shows up again. This immunity is achieved at a sometimes very high personal price. 

  Vaccine-induced immunity is to prime your immune system with a weaker, non-threatening form of the invading infection, so that it’s ready to fight off the real thing should you ever encounter it, and without your having first to risk severe illness or death. 

  Those interested in herd immunity in itself likely don’t have a moral or political preference for one form of immunity to the exclusion of the other. Immunity is immunity, regardless of whether a particular person has it naturally or by a vaccine. All immunity contributes to herd immunity.

  Others, however, are much less circumspect. They seem to have forgotten the ultimate goal of the public campaign for people to receive vaccination against Covid-19. It’s not to be vaccinated; it’s to have immunity. People with natural immunity — i.e., people whose immune systems have faced Covid-19 and won — don’t need a vaccine.

  They do, however, need to be considered in any good-faith discussion of herd immunity. There are two prongs to herd immunity, as we used to all know, and those with natural immunity are the prong that’s being ignored. It’s not just mere oversight, however. Fostering such ignorance can lead to several bad outcomes:

  • People with natural immunity could be kept from employment, education, travel, normal commerce, and who knows what other things if they don’t submit to a vaccine they don’t need in order to fulfill a head count that confuses a means with the end

  • The nation could already be at herd immunity while governors and health bureaucrats continue to exert extreme emergency powers, harming people’s liberties and livelihoods

  • People already terrified of Covid — including especially those who’ve already had it — would continue to live in fear, avoiding human interaction and worrying beyond all reason

  • People could come to distrust even sound advice from experts about important matters, as they witness and grow to expect how what “the experts” counsel diverges from what they know to be wise counsel while it conforms to and amplifies the temporary needs of the political class

  Those of us wanting good information certainly don’t want any of those outcomes. But others seem perfectly fine to risk them. They include not only elected officials, members of the media, political talking heads, self-important bureaucrats, and their wide-eyed acolytes harassing shoppers, but strangely also highly prominent health organizations.

  For example, late last year Jeffrey Tucker showed that the World Health Organization (WHO) suddenly, and “for reasons unknown,” changed its definition of “herd immunity.” Using screenshots from a cached version on the Internet Archive, Tucker showed how the WHO altered its definition in such a way as to erase completely the role of natural immunity. Before, the WHO rightly said it “happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.” The WHO’s change stated that it happens “if a threshold of vaccination is reached.” Not long after Tucker’s piece appeared, the WHO restored natural immunity to its definition.

  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seemingly apropos of nothing, on May 19 issued a “safety communication” to warn that FDA-authorized SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests “should not be used to evaluate immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time.” The FDA’s concern appears to be that taking an antibody test too soon after receiving a vaccination may fail to show vaccine-induced antibodies, but why preclude its use for “identifying people with an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 from a recent or prior infection?” Especially after stating outright that “Antibody tests can play an important role in identifying individuals who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and may have developed an adaptive immune response.”

  Then there is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, that ubiquitous font of fatuous guidance. He had told people that herd immunity would be at 60 to 70 percent immunity, and then he started publicly cinching those numbers up: 75 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent, even 90 percent (as if Covid-19 were as infectious as measles). He is quoted in the New York Times admitting to doing so deliberately to affect people’s behavior:

  “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.“

  Now — or better put, as of this writing — Fauci has taken to arguing herd immunity is a “mystical elusive number,” a distracting “endgame,” and therefore not worth considering. Only vaccinations are worth counting. As he put it recently, “We don’t want to get too hung up on reaching this endgame of herd immunity because every day that you put 2 million to 3 million vaccinations into people [it] makes society be more and more protected.”

  While composing an article about natural immunity and herd immunity for my home state of North Carolina, I happened to notice that the Mayo Clinic had removed a compelling factoid about natural immunity. It’s something I had quoted in an earlier discussion of the matter and wanted to revisit it. 

  Here’s what the Mayo Clinic once wanted people to know in its page on “Herd Immunity and COVID-19” with respect to natural immunity: “[T]hose who survived the 1918 flu (influenza) pandemic were later immune to infection with the H1N1 flu, a subtype of influenza A.” The Mayo Clinic pointed out that H1N1 was during the 2009-10 flu season, which would be 92 years later. That finding attested to just how powerful and long-lived natural immunity could be.

  

  As can be seen from the Internet Archive, however, sometime after April 14 the Mayo Clinic removed that compelling historical aside:

  

  The Mayo Clinic also reoriented its page to feature vaccination over “the natural infection method” (method?) and added a section on “the outlook for achieving herd immunity in the U.S.” This new section stated that “it’s not clear if or when the U.S. will achieve herd immunity” but encouraged people nonetheless that “the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at protecting against severe illness requiring hospitalization and death … allowing people to better be able to live with the virus.”

  Why, from people who know better, is there so much interest in downplaying or erasing natural immunity? 

  Is it because it’s hard to quantify how many people have natural immunity? Is it out of a mix of good intentions and worry, that discussing natural immunity would somehow discourage (“nudge,” in Fauci’s term) people from getting vaccines who otherwise would? Is it simple oversight, being so focused on vaccinations that they just plain forgot about natural immunity? Or is something else at work?

  Whatever the reason, it’s keeping Americans in the dark about how many people have active immunity from Covid-19. It’s keeping people needlessly fearful and suspicious of each other. It’s empowering executive overreach. Worst of all, it’s tempting people to consider government and business restrictions on the unvaccinated, regardless of their actual immunity.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 19:40

• Temple Business Dean Asks Judge To Dismiss Charges For Manipulating MBA Ranking Data
  Temple Business Dean Asks Judge To Dismiss Charges For Manipulating MBA Ranking Data

  Former Temple University business school dean Moshe Porat is defending inflating his school’s ranking to U.S. News and World Report by feeding the periodical false data. 

  Porat asked a judge to dismiss fraud charges against him in a May 28 court filing, claiming “that the government hadn’t sufficiently shown that he profited from the alleged scheme,” Bloomberg reports.

  This was, of course, while he was running the school’s Richard J. Fox School of Business, which he headed up for more than 20 years. 

  Porat’s lawyers argued that “the Supreme Court had previously established that a certain amount of monetary gain was necessary to sustain a wire fraud charge” and that such a gain could not be proven, despite whether or not prosecutors could prove he engaged in a deceitful scheme. 

  Recall, we reported back in April when Porat was charged federally for “manipulating data” to become the number one ranked MBA program in the country. He was indicted on one count each of conspiracy and wire fraud. 

  Isaac Gottlieb, a statistics professor, and Marjorie O’Neill, who submitted data to magazines that rank college programs, were also named in the indictment, according to the report. 

  Temple’s online MBA had been ranked top in the nation by U.S. News and World Report since 2015. The university stayed at the top of the list for 3 years after that and used its ranking to attract students and win donations. 

  

  Porat allegedly hand picked a small group of employees to focus on the rankings, including stat professor Gottleib, who was also to reverse engineer the magazine’s ranking criteria. Porat appointed O’Neill as the sole liaison between the university and the magazine. 

  The indictment “claims Fox manipulated data in its part-time MBA program, conflating its data with other programs to drive better rankings,” NBC reported.

  U.S. News called out Temple’s online MBA data and stripped the school of its ranking. Temple was then forced to pay the U.S. Department of Education $700,000 and later settled a class action suit by offering $250,000 in scholarships.

  Temple called Porat the “mastermind” of the fraud and asked him to resign. 

  Attorney Carolyn P. Short wrote in court papers: “He conceived it, controlled it and kept it hidden, only to try later to cover it up. M. Moshe Porat bears personal responsibility for the Fox School’s intentional submission of false ranking data.”

  Porat says he is being used as a scapegoat by Temple. His lawyer commented: “We are disappointed that, after cooperating with the government in its investigation, the United States Attorney’s Office decided to bring these charges, which Dr. Porat vigorously denies.”

  “Dr. Porat dedicated forty years of his life to serving Temple University, first as a faculty member, and ultimately as Dean of the Fox Business School, and he did so with distinction. He looks forward to defending himself against these charges and to clearing his name,” the statement continued.

  The kicker? Porat is still a tenured professor at the university and is making $316,000 per year. He hasn’t taught a class or published research since 2018. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 19:20

• How Facebook Turned Its Market Success Into A Culture War On America
  How Facebook Turned Its Market Success Into A Culture War On America

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  In twenty-first century America, millions of Americans—Christians and social conservatives especially—are finding that the nation’s most influential institutions appear to be implacably hostile toward them.

  These institutions include universities, public schools, the news media, and government bureaucracies. Moreover, corporate America has increasingly embraced a posture of hostility toward groups considered to be “right wing” or conservative.

  

  Recent examples are numerous, to say the least. Major League Baseball, for instance, recently moved its all-star game out of the state of Georgia with the explicit purpose of punishing voters and policymakers who supported policies MLB didn’t like. These “objectionable” policies were mostly supported by conservatives. Meanwhile, YouTube—owned by Google corporation—bans content creators who express opinions Google’s employees and leaders disagree with. These opinions are usually ones we would consider to be “conservative” or at least “anti-Leftist.” Twitter and Facebook employ a similar bias when actively intervening to ban users and opinions deemed unacceptable by corporate personnel.

  In other words, corporate power is being used to wage ideological battles far beyond the usual issues of minimizing the firm’s tax burden or avoiding regulatory compliance costs. Corporate America has chosen a side in the culture war.

  This evolution from market entrepreneur to exploitive plutocrat illustrates a problem with the interventionist state in a mixed economy: economic power tends to be converted to political power.  Moreover, so long as consumers continue to pour resources into powerful firms through the marketplace, these firms’ exploitation of competitors, taxpayers, and ideological adversaries is likely to continue. 

  Market Democracy: How Firms Get Rich in the Marketplace

  Ludwig von Mises understood that in a market economy, the firms that are most successful are those that succeed in the “democracy” of the marketplace. Mises describes this “consumers’ democracy” in Socialism:

  “When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the marketplace.”

  In other words, the money goes where the consumers want it to go as directed in their daily spending decisions in the marketplace. Those business owners who convince consumers to willingly hand over their money are the business owners who end up controlling the most resources.1

  This is a frequent theme in Mises’s writing. If we imagine the market economy as an immense seafaring ship, Mises notes, the capitalists are only the “steersmen” of the ship. If they wish to succeed, the capitalists must ultimately take orders from the consumers who are the real captains of the ship.

  This is generally the case with most of the firms which we today find are increasingly and openly political and ideological. Firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the like became mega-companies by delivering a product or service that a large number of people freely chose to use.

  This doesn’t make these firms superior on a moral or philosophical level, of course. Just because a firm is good at delivering what the consumers want doesn’t mean it is spiritually edifying, or morally upright. These firms’ success merely means people like to use their products. The end. That’s it.

  After all, we can point to plenty of successful enterprises that aren’t exactly laying the foundation for a virtuous and prosperous commonwealth. Pornographers, for instance, make boatloads of money. They’re very popular with consumers. At least with male ones. This doesn’t make pornographers national treasures. 

  Corporate Welfare Is Only Part of the Picture

  But it is hard to deny that firms like Google and Facebook got to where they are by winning “votes” in the “consumers’ democracy.” Nonetheless, some critics of today’s corporate jihad against ideological adversaries insist that these firms are only successful because they are “monopolies” or that they only gained so much market share by dirty tricks and corporate welfare schemes.

  These claims are generally unconvincing. Certainly, these firms are today able to gain some advantages by manipulating the policy environment through lobbying and other political efforts. Yes, these firms have likely managed to increase profits and diminish competition through intellectual property laws, through tax breaks, and through regulations that favor large firms over small firms. These are bad things, and these firms increase the profitability of their companies at the expense of both competitors and taxpayers. 

  But the primary and most fundamental reasons that these firms became large and powerful in the first place is the fact they were skilled at the game of market democracy. Direct competitors to Google and Facebook and Twitter exist. Few people choose to use them.  There are plenty of things to watch on television other than major league baseball—many of which are a lot less boring than baseball. Yet countless consumers continue to watch MLB games anyway. 

  Those who dislike these companies don’t like to hear it, but this is the reality: Google, MLB, Facebook, et al are powerful companies not simply because they are big and enjoy some regulatory advantages. They’re winning mostly because the general public either actively likes them or at least can’t be bothered with finding alternatives. 

  If we are upset with the fact that these companies command immense amounts of resources and can use these resources for political purposes, it’s easy to find who is most to blame: the American consumer. 

  The Losing Side of Market Democracy

  In a system of market democracy, the consumers chose the winners. But since we live in a mixed economy and under an interventionist regime, those winners are now using their resources to crush their ideological opponents. 

  This is very frustrating to those on the receiving end of this corporate political aggression, of course. Perhaps even more discouraging is the fact that everywhere they look, conservatives and Christians see relatives and neighbors continue to voluntarily pour their own money and resources into the firms that are avowed enemies of anyone skeptical of today’s corporate ideological zeitgeist. No matter how hostile of condescending these firms and their leaders get, hundreds of millions of consumers of all ideological bents just keep slavishly logging in to Facebook and watching many hours of videos on YouTube.  

  What Can Be Done?

  For those who keep losing to their ideological opponents in the marketplace, this raises a question: if a large number of consumers insist on supporting firms and CEOs who are openly hostile to a certain segment of the population, what can be done?

  There are three possibilities:

  1. Use the regime’s coercive power punitively against one’s ideological opponents.

  2. Use regime power to strip opponents of any advantages they may enjoy in terms of monopoly power, regulatory favors, tax advantages, and political influence.

  3. Deprive these ideological opponents of resources by successfully competing against them in the democracy of the marketplace.

  The first option is the most attractive to the average American playing a short-sighted game. It’s the usual political “solution”: I see a problem, so let’s pass new government regulations to “fix” things! In this case, we might envision laws designed to  make social media companies be “fair.” Of course, we’ve seen attempts at making media be “fair” before. Federal regulators spent much of the twentieth century regulating “fairness” in media. To see the success of that effort, we need only look at most TV news. Regulation fails again and again. Moreover, it only paves the way for larger amounts of bureaucratic control over the lives of ordinary Americans. When the other side again gains control of the regime, these regulatory powers are then used against those who naively thought the regulations would fix anything.

  The second option is more promising. It is always a good idea to seek out and destroy any regulations, statutes, or taxes that favor large firms over smaller firms and potential competitors. This means abolishing any tax “incentives” that can be accessed by large firms, but not by smaller firms. It means slashing the duration of patents and other forms of intellectual property. It means ending any special legal protections enjoyed by these firms—such as those in so-called Section 230. 

  But even with all those legal advantages and tricks removed, these firms may continue to be successful and influential firms for many years to come. So long as these firms enjoy the votes of consumers in the “consumers’ democracy” the firms are likely to be profitable. The firms will consequently have access to immense amounts of resources, with which they can buy political influence and promote their own vision for American society. 

  Only when these firms face real competition from successful competitors—or when consumers change their buying habits in other ways—will the situation change. That’s bound to happen eventually. But for those who fear the political clout of these corporate behemoths, it’s imperative to speed up the process. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 19:00

• Manhattan Office Supply Continues To Soar Even As City Reopens 
  Manhattan Office Supply Continues To Soar Even As City Reopens 

  More than a year since the virus pandemic began, New York City’s economy is roaring back open. But at least one segment of the metro area’s economy remains in dire straits: the office space market. 

  According to Bloomberg, citing a commercial real estate brokerage report by Colliers, Manhattan’s supply of office space continues to hit new records even as leasing increases. 

  The availability rate rose for a 12th straight month in May to 17%; inventory since the pandemic began jumped 70% to a whopping 92 million square feet. 

  Colliers had some good news. It said demand is coming back with leases increasing 8% versus last May, while the average asking rents rose 0.4% to $73.26 a square foot.

  Even before the pandemic, Manhattan’s office market was in a slump. Compound that work-at-home fad as becoming the “new normal” and the supply glut of corporate space in the borough could be a long-lasting trend, pressuring rents and eventually forcing building operators into financial distress. 

  

  According to data from Kastle Systems, approximately 18% of office workers in the metro area are back at work as of late May. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Facebook Inc. are some companies preparing to bring employees back to offices in the coming months. 

  Colliers said subleasing represented 23% of total availability, the lowest since last July. It said sublease inventory space is 75% more than since the pandemic began.

  Emptied skyscrapers across Manhattan don’t just apply to office buildings. There’s also surging residential inventory as people have been fleeing the liberal-run city in droves for suburbia. After all, who wants to be cooped up in a studio flat during a virus pandemic as the town descends into a socio-economic disaster. For the same price as a flat in Manhattan, one can purchase a home with acreage in the countryside. 

  Kastle’s data on Americans getting back to work on a nationwide basis show returning to the office is happening at a snail’s speed. 

  

  It seems like work-at-home is becoming permanent, and commercial real estate could be in for a reckoning once the Federal Reserve begins to taper.  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 18:40

• Ron Paul: Bitcoin Must Be Taken Seriously In The Age Of "Free Money"
  Ron Paul: Bitcoin Must Be Taken Seriously In The Age Of “Free Money”

  Authored by Mathew Di Salvo via Decrypt.co,

  

  In brief

  • Miami’s Bitcoin 2021 conference kicked off today.

  • Ron Paul railed against the Federal Reserve and said it should be scrapped.

  • “Bitcoin better be considered seriously,” said the former Texas congressman. 

  The Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami kicked off today with libertarian and ex-presidential candidate Ron Paul slamming the Federal Reserve and saying that Bitcoin needs be “considered seriously,” given the current state of the economy and the Fed’s monetary policy.

  The former black sheep of the Republican Party told the Miami crowd that the US’s current monetary policy is a disaster and that the central bank should be scrapped entirely. Paul made a name for himself during the 2008 and 2012 US presidential elections with calls to “end the Fed.” 

  Touching on President Joe Biden’s $6 trillion budget proposal—which would be the biggest federal spending since World War 2—Paul said that current economic policy can’t go on for much longer. 

  “The problems are going to get worse,” he told an enthusiastic crowd.

  “There’s a lot of free money that’s circulating these days, and it’s all fake and it’s all political corruption that goes in. Free money means they either print it or steal it.” 

  He added:

  “If you know anything about me, I’ve been in politics a couple of years…I have a solution. One of my solutions for foreign policy was when we were in places we shouldn’t be in, I said, ‘We just marched in, let’s march out.’” 

  “And that’s what we should do with the Federal Reserve too—we don’t need the Federal Reserve, it’s built with corruption so what we need to do is get rid of it,” he said.

  Paul, a former Republican congressman for Texas, was referring to the US government’s stimulus package initiated last year to confront the economic effects of lockdowns and quarantines as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

  The US government has since pledged to spend more—something that the most ardent cryptocurrency enthusiasts think will eventually cause inflation, the downfall of the dollar and the mass adoption of Bitcoin.

  Paul, who previously said that Bitcoin should be free from government interference, added that he doesn’t know much about cryptocurrency, but that it could provide solutions to what he deems is problematic government spending. 

  “[Government spending is] going to work well for Bitcoin,” he said.

  “Bitcoin better be considered seriously.” 

  The 2021 Bitcoin conference in Miami started today and will run until tomorrow, with over 50,000 people expected to attend. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor and pro-skater Tony Hawk are all guest speakers.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 18:20

• Journalist Raises $65K To Help AOC's Abandoned Abuela
  Journalist Raises $65K To Help AOC’s Abandoned Abuela

  After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) revealed this week that her grandmother is living in a dilapidated home in Puerto Rico, which she blamed on former President Trump, scores of people began wondering why the well-off Congresswoman (who lied about growing up poor) allowed her abuela to live in squalor while she lives it up in DC.

  this is gonna sound crazy but have you considered helping her https://t.co/0I8yzEirBR

  — Riva (@rivatez) June 2, 2021

  🤔Trumps fault? You have 2 apartments and a Tesla…maybe you can help her out? Just saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/TIIbaYy97D

  — Ed ☯️ The Obsolete Man…a Free Thinker (@DowdEdward) June 3, 2021

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

  Confronted with her own virtue-signaling, AOC spat out a word salad.

  You don’t even have a concept for the role that 1st-gen, first-born daughters play in their families.

  My abuela is okay. But instead of only caring for mine & letting others suffer, I’m calling attention to the systemic injustices you seem totally fine w/ in having a US colony. https://t.co/QN0ZVoyDt2

  — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAnd so, to help AOC’s neglected abuela, Daily Wire journalist Matt Walsh set up a GoFundMe page which has raised over $65,000 in a matter of hours, becoming GoFundMe’s “Top Fundraiser” for the day.

  

  The fundraiser reads:

  On June 2nd, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reported to Twitter  that her dear abuela has fallen ill and continues to live in squalid conditions since her home was ravaged by Hurricane María.

  One cannot be certain of the cost to repair grandma’s house, but surely most of the work could be completed for the price of AOC’s shiny Tesla Model 3.

  As AOC pointed out  to us, we “don’t even have a concept for the role that [incredibly successful children of two American citizens…] play in their families,” but clearly caring for their own grandparent isn’t part of it.

  Says the congresswoman, “…instead of only caring for [my own grandmother] & letting others suffer, I’m calling attention to the systemic injustices…”

  No, seriously. She really said that.

  Sadly, virtue-signaling isn’t going to fix abuela’s roof. So we are.

  Let’s all kick in to help save AOC’s abuela’s ancestral home. Any amount is appreciated, but the cost of a monthly lease payment on that Tesla is around $499…

  All proceeds will be donated to abuela, if she will accept them.

  The AOC Abuela fundraiser is now the number one “Top Fundraiser” on the GoFundMe homepage. @MattWalshBlog is a philanthropist the likes of which this world has never seen. pic.twitter.com/KgRqxmrMlE

  — Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) June 4, 2021

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

  GoFundMe must be sweating bullets right now.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 18:00

• MSM Wastes No Time Using Senate UFO Report To Promote Arms Race
  MSM Wastes No Time Using Senate UFO Report To Promote Arms Race

  After more than two years of UFO ‘evidence’ via the New York Times detailing dozens of encounters between Navy pilots and unidentified aerial phenomena, the punchline – according to an upcoming government report, is: ‘we don’t think it’s aliens, but it’s not Americans‘ – and therefore America should probably spend untold billions on figuring out how to make 90-degree turns at mach 5 and disappear into the ocean, after disabling a nuclear installation.

  Or, as journalist Caitlin Johnstone puts it: The MSM is wasting no time using the UFO report to promote an arms race.

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via substack:

  

  The New York Times has published an article on the contents of the hotly anticipated US government report on UFOs, as per usual based on statements of anonymous officials, and as per usual promoting narratives that are convenient for imperialists and war profiteers.

  Together with one voice, the anonymous US officials and the “paper of record” which is supposed to scrutinize US officials assure us definitively that the mysterious aerial phenomena that have reportedly been witnessed by military personnel are certainly not any kind of secret US technology, but could totally be aliens and could definitely be a sign that the Russians or Chinese have severely lapped America’s lagging military development.

  “The report determines that a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology,” NYT was reportedly told by the officials. “That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret.”

  Oh well if the US government has ruled out secret US government weaponry programs, hot damn that’s good enough for me. Great journalism you guys.

  One senior official said without hesitation that U.S. officials knew it was not American technology.

  He said there was worry among intelligence and military officials that China or Russia could be experimenting with hypersonic technology https://t.co/bgYtohKC9O

  — Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) June 4, 2021

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

  “Intelligence officials believe at least some of the aerial phenomena could have been experimental technology from a rival power, most likely Russia or China,” the Times reports. “One senior official briefed on the intelligence said without hesitation that U.S. officials knew it was not American technology. He said there was worry among intelligence and military officials that China or Russia could be experimenting with hypersonic technology.”

  “Russia has been investing heavily in hypersonics, believing the technology offers it the ability to evade American missile-defense technology,” NYT adds. “China has also developed hypersonic weaponry, and included it in military parades. If the phenomena were Chinese or Russian aircraft, officials said, that would suggest the two powers’ hypersonic research had far outpaced American military development.”

  The article goes on to describe how the US military have been “unsettled” by aircraft moving and behaving in ways known technologies cannot explain. The implication of scary foreign adversaries having “outpaced American military development” to such an extent is of course that the US military is going to require a far bigger budget with far more intensive weapons development.

  This would be the same New York Times that has consistently supported all of the US military’s devastating acts of mass murder around the world, by the way.

  This won’t be the last time we hear the imperial media warning us that UFOs may be a sign of a frightening gap in technology leaving the US defenseless against far more powerful foreign foes, and they’ve already been priming us for it. Republican Rachel Maddow aka Tucker Carlson has been shrilly pushing this narrative for weeks now and demanding that the US government do more to address the fact that in alleged encounters with these aircraft, “our military was completely outmatched technologically by whatever these were.”

  “UFOs, it turns out, are real, and whatever else they are, they’re a prima facie challenge to the United States military,” Carlson said on a segment last month. “They’re doing things the U.S. military does not allow, and they’re doing it with impunity. And they appear to be focused on the U.S. military.”

  “Why isn’t the Pentagon more focused on this? It seems like a threat if there ever was one,” Carlson huffed.

  In another segment Carlson had on military intelligence veteran Luis Elizondo, a leading figure in the steadily intensifying new UFO narrative which kicked off in 2017, claiming the aforementioned Senate report on the subject will reveal “an intelligence failure on the part of the US intel community on the level of 9/11.”

  “If there’s a foreign adversary that can put a nuclear warhead within moments over Washington DC, okay, that’s a problem,” Elizondo told Carlson’s Fox News audience.

  All this over some completely unverifiable testimony, and a few videos being confirmed by the Pentagon which can all be explained by easily identifiable mundane phenomena.

  I can’t predict the future, but I won’t be at all surprised if we begin seeing this arms race angle become the dominant aspect of this UFO story in the coming months/years. It would certainly fit the pattern of the US war machine and mass media promoting completely unverifiable allegations about foreign governments to justify further cold war escalations.

  In the early sixties President John F Kennedy falsely promoted the “missile gap” narrative, telling the public that the Soviet Union had surpassed the United States in nuclear weapons when he knew full well the US nuclear arsenal had always far surpassed the USSR’s in number, quality and deployment. Kennedy used this hawkish narrative to win an election and advance the largest peacetime expansion of US military power ever, leading directly to the events which gave rise to the Cuban Missile Crisis which came far closer to ending our world than most of us like to think about.

  I have no idea what if anything is going on with these UFO phenomena, but I do know the world-threatening new cold war the US is waging against Russia and China is insane. There is no valid reason our planet’s dominant power structures cannot at the very least cease brandishing armageddon weapons at each other and begin collaborating toward a better world together.

  Reject the propagandists and cold warriors, no matter how elaborate or bizarre their manipulations become. Keep an eye on these bastards, and help spread awareness of what they’re about.

  _______________________

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/04/2021 – 17:40

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