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It can be difficult to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. But with the Substack Daily Dose, you will have easy access to important news and happenings from the day, as well as what was covered during our shows, all in one place.
Image Credit: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.Alex Wong/Getty Images
The Federal Reserve will slash interest rates by an eye-popping 275 basis points next year, according to UBS.
That's nearly four times as steep a cut as the market is expecting.
UBS expects a mid-2024 recession to encourage the central bank to start easing.
The US economy will slip into recession next year – and that'll lead to the Federal Reserve bringing in steep interest-rate cuts, according to one top European bank.
UBS said Tuesday that it's expecting the Fed to respond to falling inflation and an economic slump by slashing rates by an eye-popping 275 basis points – nearly four times the 75-basis-point reduction the market is currently expecting, per the CME Group's Fedwatch tool.
"One of the key features of UBS's forecast is the very pronounced Fed easing cycle seen unfolding from March 2024 onwards," a team led by economist Arend Kapteyn and strategist Bhanu Baweja said in a research note published Tuesday, adding that they expect rates to plunge to just 1.25% in the first half of 2025.
The Fed's cuts would be "a response to the forecasted US recession in Q2-Q3 2024 and the ongoing slowdown in both headline and core inflation," UBS added.
Since March 2022, the Fed has lifted borrowing costs from near-zero to around 5.5% in a bid to clamp down on soaring prices. Inflation hit a four-decade high of 9.1% in June last year, but has since started to cool – although it's still running way clear of the central bank's 2% target.
That tightening campaign would be expected to weigh on the economy, but the US has avoided a recession so far. The country's gross domestic product expanded 4.9% in the third quarter, for its highest growth rate in two years.
Meanwhile, the jobs market has also held up in the face of the Fed's interest-rate hikes, with the unemployment rate creeping up in recent months but still hovering below 4%.
The recession prediction laid out by Kapteyn and Baweja appears to clash with a separate outlook shared by UBS's head of asset allocation for the Americas earlier this month.
Jason Draho said in a presentation that the US economy's surprising resilience this year has set the stage for a "roaring '20s" period defined by higher GDP growth, inflation, bond yields, and interest rates.
Since those who took out student loans are now having to repay them, United States retail sales have plummeted. According to the Bank of America, who have been mysteriously all-knowing for months, this morning’s U.S. retail sales print will be better than expected.
However, Goldman Sachs warned last month that retail sales could stumble hard because “the largest effects of the hit from the resumption of student loan payments will come in October.”
There could be a problem with inflation as well. Wages are not keeping up with the cost of living and people are struggling to make ends meet during these interesting economic times.
After last month’s big upside surprise, the consensus was for a 0.3% drop Month over Month (MoM) in retail sales but the actual print came in better than expected, declining just 0.1% MoM (the first decline in 7 months).
Both headline and core retail sales Year over Year (YoY) growth slowed in October.
Retail sales ‘control group’ (which excludes food services, automobile dealers, building materials, and gasoline stations) and is used for GDP calculations, rose 0.2% MoM in October, according to a report by ZeroHedge.
The FCC voted today on a plan that gives the Federal government full control over the Internet. The plan passed by a 3-2 margin. A press release posted immediately after the meeting stated, in part, “Under the new rules, the Commission can investigate possible instances of discrimination of broadband access, work with companies to solve problems, facilitate mediation, and, when necessary, penalize companies for violating the rules. The FCC will review consumer complaints of digital discrimination of access through an improved consumer complaint portal and staff will meet monthly to assess trends in complaint patterns. Finally, the Commission adopted model policies and best practices that will support states, local and Tribal governments in their efforts to combat digital discrimination.”
The decision means that the Biden Administration is well on its way to implementing the plan that FCC commissioner Brendan Carr said “…reads like a planning document drawn up in the faculty lounge of a university’s Soviet Studies Department.” Commissioner Carr sent out his letter of dissent last week to warn the public about this “unlawful power grab” that “chooses central planning over free market capitalism.”
The plan is marketed as though it will prevent digital discrimination and a way to ensure equal access to broadband internet in the United States. While equal access is a component of liberty and freedom, this plan gives sweeping access and regulatory control over all aspects of the Internet business. According to the plan document, the FCC would have the power to regulate the following aspects as it relates to each Internet Service Provider:
“Network infrastructure deployment, network reliability, network upgrades, network maintenance, customer-premises equipment, and installation, speeds, capacities, latency, data caps, throttling, pricing, promotional rates, imposition of late fees, opportunity for equipment rental, installation time, contract renewal terms, service termination terms, and use of customer credit and account history, mandatory arbitration clauses, pricing, deposits, discounts, customer service, language options, credit checks, marketing or advertising, contract renewal, upgrades, account termination, transfers to another covered entity, and service suspension.”
The plan goes on to state that all these aspects need to be within the realm of Federal regulation because they could all affect a consumer’s ability to access broadband. The plan further states, “Consequently, we agree with Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law that adopting a flexible approach is necessary ‘to capture the long tail of intangible variables that are difficult to list exhaustively and are subject to change.’ Second, our definition provides us with the advantage of flexibility, which will “future-proof” our rules as technologies, policies, and practices change over time. For these reasons, we reject the argument that by including certain quality of service metrics in 60506(a)(2), Congress foreclosed consideration of other measurable elements of service quality in evaluating whether equal access has been achieved.”
Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was taken to task by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk on X on Monday after she made the announcement that on the first day of her presidency, she would require all social media users to be verified by their name in order to protect national security.
"This is disgusting," presidential contender Ramaswamy said. He has stated repeatedly that he is "a free speech absolutist."
"Super messed up," Musk replied. "She can stop pretending to run for president now." Musk has been an outspoken advocate for free speech rights in America, so much so that he bought the Twitter social media platform when it was obviously suppressing free speech. It was later revealed that Twitter execs had conspired with the government to enact that suppression under the guise of combatting "misinformation" and "disinformation."
"When I get into office, the first thing we have to do, social media accounts—social media companies, they have to show America their algorithms. Let Americans see why they're pushing what they're pushing. The second thing is every person on social media should be verified by their name," she said with passion.
"That's—first of all, it's a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say. And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots. And then you're gonna get some civility when people know their name is by what they say," Haley said.
"Accountability," chimed in the news anchor.
"And they know their pastor and their family members are gonna see it? It's gonna help our kids and it's gonna help our country," she concluded.
"Nikki Haley said anonymous online speech is a 'national security threat,'" FIRE's Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr told The Post Millennial. "We must all be wary of compromising core freedoms by giving politicians a blank check to water them down any time they invoke 'national security.'
"Anonymous speech — whether the Founders writing the Federalist Papers or any one of us writing under an anonymous Twitter account — is core protected expression. Democracy relies on free speech to function and the ability to speak anonymously gives all of us the breathing room to weigh in on sensitive topics. Prohibiting anonymous online speech poses a greater threat to participation in our democracy — and thus, national security — than Nikki Haley and other politicians who would join her call may realize."
Last month, Google agreed to pour up to $2 billion into the AI startup Anthropic. Normally, that would be a gargantuan amount of money for a startup to raise. But in Anthropic’s case, it isn’t even the biggest deal it’s done this season – in September, Amazon agreed to invest a separate $4 billion into the company.
If you’re a casual observer of the AI boom, it might seem like there’s a lot of fierce competition. But behind the scenes, leading AI startups have something in common: a narrow set of investors.
Guo explained why AI startups need so much money: “Foundation models like GPT-4 or Claude need hundreds of millions of dollars to train, and millions more to run at scale. These upfront costs go towards data collection, training runs, and fine-tuning.”
On paper, AI companies are in a bind, Guo added. “It takes serious capital to build and train new foundation models, but the [return on investment] is far from certain. GitHub Copilot is the only product I’m aware of that’s making over $100 million in revenue and isn’t losing tons of money in the process. Though, when you consider the training costs, it’s unclear whether Copilot is net profitable over its entire history.”
Who then, can bankroll new AI development, without the certainty of financial returns? Big tech companies, and specifically cloud platforms.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
OpenAI kicked off the current wave of billion-dollar funding rounds when it closed a massive investment from Microsoft last year. The details have never been made public but it has long been rumoured to have been a $10 billion deal.
In fact, if we look at some of the best-funded AI companies, there’s a surprising trend. Many of them have taken money from the same five names: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Salesforce.
Below are ten of the best-funded AI companies (plus Hugging Face, because it’s pretty important to the AI ecosystem). Of these eleven, only two (Cerebras and Scale AI) haven’t taken investment from one of the five tech companies mentioned.
Here’s how the investments are broken down:
When we think of big tech today, there’s Google (aka Alphabet), Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple. “Of those, the first three are all over these investments,” Guo said, “while Apple and Meta are nowhere to be found. And while we don’t yet know Apple’s generative AI plans, Meta is playing a big role in the AI landscape.”
Ironically, the biggest obstacle to Microsoft, Google, and others controlling the next generation of AI technology is Meta. Rather than invest in AI startups, Meta’s strategy seems to be to develop cutting-edge models, and then openly release them.
YouTube (Google) is yet another in a series of tech behemoths that feel the need to declare their stance on content, including its effective algorithmic manipulation, just as US primaries are ushering the country into another year of presidential elections.
Beating around that bush – Google representatives now talk about processes, procedures, and tools of censorship of health-related information that, unfortunately, can easily be “repurposed” to serve other, for example, political ends.
Much of the conversation rests on what Google wants to portray as its laurels from “the previous epidemic” – which too many people and creators see from a diametrically opposed point of view, as a dark time of nearly unbridled censorship and suppression of free speech.
A video now published by Yahoo Finance reveals not only that Google has a “chief clinical officer,” but also how that officer, Michael Howell, sees the role of this super powerful tech corporation in determining what users are likely to see, see first, or see at all on a platform like YouTube.
Howell, naturally, sees nothing wrong with this and even, to all intents and purposes, brags that YouTube is working to make sure legacy media have advantage over independent creators, and that the latter may easily face censorship.
That’s the takeaway from his words, which he chose to phrase thus: YouTube works to “lift up high quality content, even as we work to lower, and make less prominent content that isn’t accurate or helpful to users.”
The whole interview is positioned as an exploration of how “misinformation grows and spreads” supposedly in sync with the amount of content and the number of users. There is even the assertion made by Yahoo that medical sector “misinformation” is not only very present among users but also “in the broader medical community.”
While this may or may not signal continued censorship of “disfavored” medical professionals, YouTube Head of Healthcare & Public Health (yes, that’s a YouTube job title these days, too) Dr. Garth Graham shared that the platform is the first to start “labeling health information that’s coming from licensed doctors, licensed nurses, licensed healthcare professionals.”
And even after all these years of sometimes completely arbitrary censorship YouTube is supposed to be taken as a “credible source of information (users) can trust” – as it works with the National Academy of Medicine and of course, the World Health Organization (WHO) to craft its definitions, and then “raise that up” – i.e., algorithmically promote, at the expense of other content.
Graham had more curious things to say, such as that while clearly committed to censoring what (or, whatever) Google decides is “delicate (sic) and dangerous information” – people are still supposed to view it as an “open platform”!
Either Graham doesn’t know what an open platform is, or he hopes YouTube/Google users don’t.
There’s also a good amount of patronizing toward those users, as in them needing to be hand-held (by Google) pretty much all the way in order to discern information from misinformation and make appropriate decisions.
“So, you know, we’re an open platform, but the real goal is how do you balance getting good information to people at the right time (…) while making sure that we remove delicate or dangerous information.”
Asked how Google has already managed (shocker) to get the government to participate in posting videos promoting their policies and what “conversations” preceded this, the Google exec said that “the entire healthcare eco-system” was already “energized” to get their message across.
And he counted the government as well as hospitals and physicians as part of this eco-system. One of them, last but not least, is the WHO.
What we know for certain from a great number of internal documents that have emerged over the past months both from Twitter and Facebook is that these two were being “led” to do certain things by the government and its agencies.
Google’s position in the interview is suggested to be the opposite – namely, at one point Howell is asked if the company basically instructed all these national and international healthcare players on what content to make, and have “trending” (mostly artificially, one might add.)
Howell dances around this question – or statement – by saying that the (pandemic) produced a community of creators from the health sector.
But as we know, many of them also got their voices silenced, however, that is not something anyone should expect Google to address.
Instead, the talk is obviously about the “approved” community of healthcare creators.
But, says Howell: “If there’s no good content out there that people want to watch, it’s very hard to show (that) content to users.”
And, cynics would say – then you write an algorithm that shoves that content into everybody’s “recommended” videos anyway.
But, Howell decided to claim that “people responded well to YouTube’s partnerships” – where that last word means, government and international bodies and institutions.
President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he values the conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that it's important the two presidents understand each other.
"I value our conversation because I think it's paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication," Biden said.
The two world leaders met at the Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California, on the sideline of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
Biden and Jinping are expected to discuss concerns about fentanyl, Israel's war on Hamas and military communications, according to NBC News.
China President Xi Jinping said Wednesday during a meeting with President Biden that his country and the U.S. turning their backs on each other now is "not an option."
"It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has terrible consequences for both sides," Xi also said. "The world at large is big enough for the two countries to succeed."
This is the first time Biden and Xi, who preside over the world's No. 1 and No. 2 economies, respectively, have met in person this year.
The press was escorted out of the room following the opening remarks of both leaders.
The Kremlin on Wednesday said it would follow the high-stakes summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who are set to meet Wednesday for the first time in a year.
“The two countries are building bilateral relations, it is their right,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that “every meeting of that kind which involves the world’s two largest economies is important for everyone.”
Image Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Nov. 15 (UPI) — Former President Donald Trump filed a motion Wednesday to have his civil fraud case in New York thrown out, alleging that the judge and his clerk are biased.
In a 30-page filing, Trump’s attorneys allege that Judge Arthur Engoron and clerk Allison Greenfield have “tainted” the proceedings, The Daily Beast reported. They said a mistrial is the only way to “salvage what is left of the rule of law.”
“This appearance of bias threatens both defendants’ rights and the integrity of the judiciary as an institution,” the filing said. “Greenfield’s unprecedented role in the trial and extensive, public partisan activities, would cause even a casual observer to question the court’s partiality.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the case against the Trump Organization, rebuked Trump’s effort to move for a mistrial. She said he is “trying to dismiss the truth and the facts.”
“Donald Trump is now being held accountable for the years of fraud he committed,” a spokesperson for the attorney general said. “He can keep trying to distract from his fraud, but the truth always comes out.”
Trump has often been at odds with Engoron and increasingly directed his ire toward Greenfield. Earlier this month, Engoron issued a gag order against Trump and his legal team, barring them from making comments about confidential communications between the judge and his staff. The gag order was later expanded to include Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr.
Engoron issued the order, citing threats that have flooded his office since the trial began. Trump has been fined more than once for violating the order.
“Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them under any circumstances,” Engoron said.
On the witness stand, Trump made several comments alleging Engoron had a bias against him. He became defensive shortly after being sworn in last week, saying the prosecutors, district attorneys and others were all “Trump haters.”
“The judge will rule against me because he will always rule against me,” Trump went on to say.
The Trump Organization has been charged with committing criminal tax fraud by inflating the values of its properties. It faces up to $250 million in damages.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib is part of a secret social media group in which its members have glamorized Hamas in its war battle with Israel after the terror group attacked and killed hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians last month, Fox News Digital has found.
The Michigan Democrat is a member of the Palestinian American Congress group on Facebook. The group is hidden from non-members and does not appear on the platform's search engine, though Fox News Digital was able to gain access to it.
The group's founder, Maher Abdel-qader, who has extensive ties to Tlaib and has also been linked to other liberal politicians, has come under fire in the past for his antisemitic social media posts, including questioning if the Holocaust ever occurred.
Rashida Tlaib is a member of the private Palestinian American Congress Facebook group. (Fox News Digital screenshot of the secret Palestinian American Congress Facebook page)
The Palestinian American Congress group, of which Tlaib is a member, has featured pro-Hamas posts in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
On Oct. 12, one group member posted: "We don't want to throw you in the sea...we want you to ride it back from where you came." The message was accompanied by a picture of an elderly Israeli woman and a Hamas fighter holding her captive.
A post on the Palestinian American Congress page (Fox News Digital screenshot of the secret Palestinian American Congress Facebook page)
On Oct. 19, another group member wrote about the "achievements" of the "resistance in Northern occupied Palestine," including dozens of dead Israeli soldiers. The post included a picture of a Hamas fighter.
A post on the Palestinian American Congress page (Fox News Digital screenshot of the secret Palestinian American Congress Facebook page)
"Since yesterday I have been attached to the TV watching the news," one group member posted on Oct. 10, addressing the "American Media" and saying, "You, and the people directing you, are the problem, you created it almost 100 years ago, made it official 75 years ago and you have been feeding its flam ever since."
"You consider Hamas a terrorist organization and I am not going to argue with you at the same time you have been broadcasting that they have been killing women and children, guess that is what terrorists do at the same time no mention to the killing of Palestinian women, children and entire families killed on a daily basses (sic) by the [peace-loving] state of Israel using American gifts of weapons and jet fighters."
"Yesterday I didn't see Hamas I saw the grand kids (sic) of the refugees that ethnically cleansed from their homeland attacking the grand kids (sic) of the colonists whom sent them to diaspora," they later wrote.
On Wednesday Republican Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) confronted FBI Director Chris Wray on FBI operatives working inside the crowds on January 6, 2021, during the House Homeland Security Committee hearing on domestic threats within the U.S.
This confrontation took place exactly a year after Rep. Higgins confronted Director Wray for FBI assets working inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Chris Wray refused to answer the questions – last year AND today!
During the hearing today, Rep. Higgins told Chris Wray:
Rep. Higgins: A year has passed. We sit here again, a year later. We, the people, still do not have a definitive answer from you or anyone else in the Biden administration regarding the FBI presence and participation in the months leading up to the November election and in the weeks and days prior to January 6 and on January 6 here in DC. We can’t get a straight answer, although we have a tremendous amount of evidence harvested and reviewed over the course of the last year, which you will see.
Rep. Higgins continued:
Rep. Higgins: You’re saying no violence orchestrated by FBI sources or agents… Are you familiar with, you know what a ghost vehicle is, Director? Director of the FBI certainly should. Do you know what a ghost bus is?
Chris Wray: A ghost bus?
Rep. Higgins: A ghost bus.
Chris Wray: I’m not sure I’ve used that term before.
Rep. Higgins: Okay. It’s pretty common in law enforcement. It’s a vehicle that’s used for secret purposes. It’s painted over. These two busses in the middle here. They were the first to arrive at Union Station on January 6, 500. I have all this evidence. I’m showing you a tip of this iceberg, Mr. Chairman. These two busses, Mr. Chairman, painted completely white, these busses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants stressed as Trump supporters deployed unto our Capitol on January 6. Your day is coming,
Rep. Clay Higgins then posted this photo of the secret ghost buses inside Union Station on January 6, 2021. Here again is the photo from Union Station.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) releases photo of alleged FBI “ghost buses” in Union Station on Jan. 6, 2021 during questioning of FBI Director Chris Wray on 11-15-2023.
UPDATE: Following the hearing UltraMJTruth posted video of another set of ghost buses that reportedly rolled into Washington DC on January 6. The buses were allegedly filled with Antifa terrorists.
Election interference is more intricately planned and well-funded than previously realized. The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government recently released an interim staff report titled: "Weaponization of “Disinformation” Pseudo-experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Political Speech."
The report unravels the criminal conspiracy to deprive Americans of their Free Speech rights, originally protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The report also finds that actors within the federal government are collaborating with “disinformation-fighting” firms to control the information that is shared online and throughout the public square. This criminal conspiracy uses censorship to deceive the public. These censorship operations manipulate public discourse and threaten the very fabric of democracy, while establishing an elaborate system of election interference and engineering.
Multiple organizations working with federal operatives to silence Americans
The Congressional report exposes the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which is contracted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the sole purpose of censoring Americans and controlling their conversations. The EIP was developed by the Atlantic Council in 2020 and was immediately used by the U.S. government to target American’s free speech rights. This shadow group has done nothing but promote corporate propaganda and elevate false government narratives, all under the guise of “combating disinformation.”
The report finds that the federal government and public universities worked together to pressure social media companies to censure conservative political opinions, true information and even jokes. The censorship almost always benefited one side of the political spectrum. Information shared by Republicans and conservatives was targeted as “misinformation” and routinely removed from platforms, even when true, while false information shared by Democrats and liberals was allowed to flourish through algorithmic programs.
The EIP can be broken down into four other “partners,” including the following: the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public (CIP) Graphika, and, of course, the Atlantic Council. Each organization has a specific role to play in their censorship gambit. One organization conspires to identify and isolate “spreaders of misinformation.” Another organization is tasked with building a psychological profile on its targets, while detailing the networks and social media sites that their targets interact on. Yet another organization is conscripted to communicate directly with the social media companies and suggest that their targets be censored and removed from their platforms. These companies routinely pressured social media companies to identify offending posts, and kept an open line of communication back to the EIP and the government official that originally demanded the censorship.
The organizations openly talk about their “Platform Takedown” operation, which was specifically developed to target undesirable information and have it removed from major social media platforms. Accordingly, social media companies may shadow ban a user’s posts and limit their “discoverability.” These organizations controlled the narrative on topics like “election misinformation” and “vaccine misinformation” – essentially deceiving the public on matters of historical importance.
Former intelligence officials conspire to control what people think and share online.
Graphika is openly described as a company that specialized in “cutting-edge technology that creates large-scale explorable maps of social media landscapes.” Graphika provides so-called in-depth analysis that can help “clients and partners understand complex online networks and take decisive action.” Graphika works directly with Harvard, Oxford and DARPA to target Americans for wrong-think. These Americans are then slandered across the internet, their professional reputations challenged and their licenses suspended.
The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public is all about thought control. Their mission is “to resist strategic misinformation,” to “promote an informed society,” and to “strengthen democratic discourse." To them, strengthening the democracy and public discourse must include a takedown of public knowledge and targeting Americans for wrong-think. As of November 2023, the CIP is focusing on the identification and takedown of information from X users (formerly Twitter) who they view as the “new elites.” The “new elites” that are targeted for censorship and defamation include influencers who have large followings on the X platform.
Likewise, the Atlantic Council employs former U.S. intelligence officers to takedown Americans who tell the truth online. The Council's newfound Digital Forensic Research Lab has “operationalized the study of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and fake news, documenting human rights abuses and building digital resilience worldwide.” This is fancy doublespeak for: "We are censoring the truth to make the world a safer place, a place where official lies must be honored to comfort our collective consciousness into a state of psychological submission."
According to the Council's website, they are open about their desire to target Americans and falsely label them as “harmful,” while removing them from the conversation. “Further research and capability building are necessary to avoid the further proliferation of these threats,” the website reads. "Within industry, decades of “trust and safety” (T&S) practice has developed into a field that can illuminate the complexities of building and operating online spaces. Outside industry, civil society groups, independent researchers and academics continue to lead the way in building collective understanding of how risks propagate via online platforms—and how products could be constructed to better promote social well-being and to mitigate harms."
This is a sophisticated way of saying: “We know what’s best for everyone to see and hear. We will tell people what is appropriate to think. We, the all-knowing, will determine who is a threat, and we will censor them and eliminate them from the conversation to provide a more perfect 'democracy.'"
Despite promising to deliver one million new artillery rounds to Ukraine by next March, the European Union (EU) is now saying that this will no longer be possible because Europe's weapons industry is severely lacking.
According to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, the EU will simply not be able to make good on its pledge to further arm Ukraine in its fight against Russia as Brussels promised earlier this year.
The EU had hoped to fulfill its pledge within 12 months by dipping into its existing ammunition stockpiles, as well as by obtaining more shells from arms manufacturers. The reality is that the European bloc is way behind schedule, and the goal is now "unattainable."
"The one million won't be achieved," stated Pistorius ahead of a meeting this week among EU defense chiefs in Brussels. "One must proceed on this assumption."
According to Pistorius, European nations have inadequate production capabilities to achieve this lofty goal. Even if the entire European economy were to shift into wartime mode, it would still not be enough to produce that much ammo for when Ukraine says it needs it.
Pistorius was skeptical about the promise from the very start, fearing early on that it was unrealistically ambitious. It turns out he was spot-on, with Kuleba also echoing to the media that "unfortunately" Pistorius' concerns have come true.
"There are questions, and we are, so to speak, ringing the bells a lot and loudly," the minister stated, adding that the EU is willing to deliver the promised number of shells on principle, but cannot actually do so in reality because of the "pathetic state of the defense industry."
Ukraine demanding "more and faster" munitions, but Europe and the West cannot deliver
If there is anything thus far that points to Ukraine's failure in the fight against Russia, it is the simple fact that Ukraine is running out of weapons, ammunition and bodies. And its Western welfare suppliers are lagging behind with no way to deliver on their promises.
Ukraine continues to demand that "more and faster is needed," but Brussels is unable to give Volodymyr Zelensky's regime what it is demanding, which points to a soon-realized Russian victory.
According to media reports, the European External Action Service, which functions as the EU's foreign policy division, recently announced that member states are severely lagging with respect to the ammunition pledge.
With less than three months to go before the deadline arrives, the EU has provided just 30 percent of the one million shells, which is hardly enough for Ukraine to continue the fight against Russia.
Russia has clearly indicated that Western nations like those in Europe as well as the United States have already become de facto parties to the conflict simply by their providing of arms, intelligence and training to Kiev's military.
Moscow's view is that no amount of Western defense aid, including the one million rounds that will simply not arrive before the deadline, are enough to change the course of its military campaign. In other words, Russia is already basically declaring victory over Ukraine.
Meanwhile, there are growing fears that there will very soon be a direct conflict between Russia and NATO, the latter of which is clearly siding with Ukraine no matter what.
"By supplying the weapons that are being dropped on hospitals in Gaza, the U.S. is also guilty of genocide and Israel a party to the Gaza war," one commenter also pointed out.
"The same is true here. By supplying weapons to Ukraine that are killing Ukrainians on Ukrainian soil, the EU is a major participant to this war."
Ukraine’s ruler Volodymyr Zelensky, is old news. The ruling class of the United States is set to sign a spending bill that does not include aid for Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a spending bill on Tuesday which Speaker Mike Johnson proposed last week to avoid a government shutdown. The Republican caucus was split over the vote, while all but two Democrats supported it. The so-called “stopgap” legislation included no money for Ukraine aid, according to a report by RT.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he wanted a vote in his chamber to happen “as soon as possible,” after hearing from the Biden administration that it was on board. During his consultations, “both of us agreed, the White House and myself, that if this can avoid a shutdown, it will be a good thing,” he told journalists. The shutdown deadline is November 17. –RT
The issue of Ukraine military aid has become a major political issue on Capitol Hill and contributed to the downfall of Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. He was ousted in September by his own party, which has a slim 221-213 majority in the House of Representatives, one segment of the ruling class.
The Freedom Caucus (which is anything but considering they are all members of the ruling class) makes up some three dozen conservative lawmakers who were at the forefront of the unprecedented “rebellion”. Some of those rulers have criticized Johnson’s bill. A statement ahead of the vote said that “Republicans must stop negotiating against ourselves over fears of what the Senate may do.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is doing his best to inflame tensions in the Middle East. We all knew that he was a lunatic, but the inflammatory rhetoric that is coming out of him now is the sort of thing that we would expect to hear from leaders of Hamas or Hezbollah. During a “fiery speech” on Wednesday, Erdogan accused Israel of being a “terror state”, and he boldly declared that Israel’s leaders must be held accountable as war criminals in international courts…
“Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan today said Israel was a ‘terror state’ committing war crimes and violating international law in Gaza, while repeating his view that Hamas gunmen are not terrorists but a ‘political party elected by Palestinians’.”
“In a fiery speech to members of his party, Erdogan said Turkey would work to ensure that Israel’s political and military leaders are recognised as ‘terrorists’ and brought to trial in international courts.”
“They [Israel] have been speaking about murdering all those people using nuclear weapons, so let me call on Benjamin Netanyahu — do you have nuclear weapons or not? Explain this, if you have the courage.”
“You are threatening people with atomic bombs, nuclear bombs. It does not matter what you have, you are a goner,” he said.
When Erdogan said “you are a goner”, was he referring to Netanyahu or the nation of Israel as a whole?
Someone really needs to ask him that question.
I think that Erdogan is tempted to intervene directly in this war, but Turkey’s membership in NATO will hopefully prevent him from doing that.
Of course Erdogan is right about one thing.
Israel does possess nuclear weapons, and if the Israelis get pushed into a corner they will use them.
So let us hope that this war does not spiral out of control.
Unfortunately, there have been more clashes along the northern front.
“The IDF said it struck terrorist infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon and a terrorist cell which attempted to fire anti-tank missiles at Israel on Tuesday afternoon.”
“The IDF added that terrorists fired anti-tank missiles and mortars toward IDF posts near Margaliot, Arab al-Aramshe, Yiftah, Shomera, and Matat on Tuesday.”
Within 48 hours, Hezbollah forces launched multiple attacks against Israeli targets in the areas of Al-Malikiah, ‘Barkat Risha, Duviv, Yiftah Qadesh and Ramot Naftali.
According to information and videos, Hezbollah forces hit IDF positions and forces with Russian-made anti-tank systems 9M133-1 Kornet-E, 9M113 ‘Konkurs’, 9M131M “Metis-M1”, with Iranian ATGMs “Dehlavieh” and “Toophan” ( reverse-engineered BGM-71 TOW) and Chinese 107mm Type 63-2 Fadjr-1, 122mm 9M22U/Arash and 333mm ‘Falagh-2 high-explosive rockets.
There are fears that Hezbollah has also acquired the EM version of the Kornet which doubles the range to 8-10 km as a video shows a 1PN79M-3 thermal targeting system.
Additionally in another video, Hezbollah forces have been equipped with 9K32(M) Strela-2(M) MANPADS, RPO-A Shmel portable thermobaric missiles and Chinese W85 machine guns.
On the eastern edge of Gaza, dawn is still a few minutes away on the morning of October 7. A group of Hamas militants wait, some packed into a white pickup truck, others on motorbikes. They run through a few final checks, making sure they are recording video and that their weapons are ready.
An explosion in the distance appears to be the signal to move.
As they race to the border, the men shout “Allahu Akbar,” a phrase that means “God is great” in Arabic.
After three minutes of driving, they cross the first border fence that separates Gaza from Israel. The fence is mangled, leaving a large opening through which they pass, though it is difficult to know if it is from the explosion heard moments earlier.
Video from the attack provided to CNN by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) offers a new window into a portion of the Hamas operation launched from Gaza’s eastern border. The video comes from the bodycam of one of the terrorists who took part in the attack. The IDF said it released the video to show the reality of what happened on October 7, a day that Israeli officials have compared to 9/11, when an estimated 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 others taken hostage in Hamas’ brutal assault inside Israel.
The video marks the first time that Israel has publicly released footage of Hamas tunnels in Gaza it says were being used on the day of the attack. It’s unclear if the same person is using the camera in the underground clip, which shows a larger room that serves as a junction leading to a series of narrower tunnels. Wires run along the shafts, although there is no apparent overhead lighting. Instead, the only bright spot comes from a flashlight. Some supplies rest on the floor, along with several blue barrels.
At one point, the men underground point the flashlight down into a deep vertical shaft with a ladder running along one side. There is writing in red spray paint on the concrete walls. One sign reads, “What’s hidden is far worse.”
The video of the attack is an unbroken recording of 100 minutes, starting before the assault and continuing until the camera stops. CNN has geolocated the locations seen in the footage and confirmed they match other footage from the attack.
As the group passes the first border fence, the gunman with the camera shouts repeatedly, “Go right!” He appears to know where he is headed, indicating the depth of planning and coordination as Hamas launched a multi-pronged assault across the Gaza border.
Less than two minutes later, the militants cross the second security fence. They are in Israel and heading toward a kibbutz, racing along dirt roads between plowed fields among a group of motorbikes. Many of the men have rifles like AK-47s, while some carry rocket-propelled grenades slung across their backs.
Seventeen minutes into the video, the pickup truck stops as the gunman opens fire for the first time across an open field with Israeli buildings visible in the distance. It is unclear if he hits anything. For a few minutes, the group pauses and appears to regroup. One man urges everyone not to shoot into the air and waste fire.
At one point, the group thanks God that they made it this far as they wonder where the Israeli soldiers are. So far, their movement has been virtually unimpeded across Israeli territory.
At a field near the Israeli town of Kissufim, the gunman with the bodycam exits the car and advances across a field with other militants. The video shows him run past one man who readies a rocket-propelled grenade on his shoulder. They cover each other as they advance, firing as they move.
The Queens landlord accused of stabbing his girlfriend and two tenants to death blamed the grisly slayings on “a lot of pressure” Wednesday — as cops searched his car for the missing murder weapon and his bloody clothes.
David Daniel, 54, wearing a white Tyvek suit, held his head down as police led him out of the 113th Precinct stationhouse, one day after arresting him in the gruesome killings.
“Why did you do it?” a Post reporter asked Daniel.
“A lot of pressure,” he answered.
“Did you say a lot of pressure?”
“Yeah,” the accused killer replied. “Pure pressure.”
Cops took Daniel into custody after he walked into the precinct at around 7:05 a.m. Tuesday and told an officer that he was “having issues” with his tenants, who were late on their rent, according to NYPD officials.
“I did something bad,” he allegedly said.
Cops responding to the single-family home in the St. Albans neighborhood found Daniel’s 51-year-old live-in girlfriend — identified as Coleen Fields — lying face-down in a second-floor bedroom with her throat slashed and multiple stab wounds, including to her left breast, law enforcement sources told The Post.
The tenants, Wayne Thomas, 57, and Evette Sweeney, 55, were discovered dead in the basement, each with multiple stab wounds.
Surveillance footage obtained by cops showed Daniel leaving the home around 6:20 a.m., carrying a black garbage bag into his gray 2015 Nissan Murano and driving off, according to sources.
Cops were searching the car, which was still parked at the precinct Wednesday and appeared to be well-kept.
NYPD officials said Daniel was eerily calm as he confessed to cops “that he killed three people and he gave the location and that he left the backdoor open,” recounting the crime in a “very matter-of-fact” way.
He stood stone-faced inside a Queens courtroom later Wednesday afternoon as he was arraigned on three counts of second-degree murder and one count of criminal possession of a weapon.
“The bloody crime scene was the result of extraordinary brutality,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz noted in a statement following the hearing, saying that her office would show in court that Daniel had “viciously stabbed his defenseless victims to death.” Judge Scott Dunn ordered Daniel held behind bars without bail, pending a return to court on Friday.
Fields’ ex-husband said Wednesday the death of the “loving and gentle person” was devastating, shocking and hurtful.
“Despite what you’re going through, you don’t murder your girlfriend,” Steve Fields, 63, told The Post. “You have issues with the tenants. It has nothing to do with her.”
Fields said he was with the slain woman for 10 years before they split in 2019 and divorced two years later — and said he never met Daniel.
Several neighbors in the St. Albans neighborhood, where Daniel bought the single-family home in 2017, said they also were shocked by the crime and recalled the accused killer as quiet and cordial.
Several neighbors in the St. Albans neighborhood, where Daniel bought the single-family home in 2017, said they were shocked by the crime and recalled the accused killer as quiet and cordial.
“I didn’t know he had tenants living there,” one local said Wednesday. “I never saw them.
“The whole thing is tragic. He could have found another way to deal with his problems,” she said. “He has ruined his life. I don’t see him ever getting out of jail. He killed three people.”
-Georgett Roberts, Joe Marino, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon and Larry Celona, New York Post
Last year the brightest flash of light ever seen in the night sky disturbed Earth‘s upper atmosphere in a way that has never before detected before, researchers said on Tuesday.
A massive burst of gamma rays from an enormous cosmic explosion around two billion light years away arrived at Earth on October 9, 2022, lighting up telescopes around the world.
Quickly nicknamed the “BOAT” — for Brightest Of All Time — the flash lasted just seven minutes but its afterglow was visible to amateur astronomers for seven hours.
The flash activated lightning detectors in India and triggered instruments that normally study explosions on the Sun called solar flares.
It also affected long wave radio communications in the lower ionosphere, a section of Earth’s upper atmosphere around 60 to 350 kilometres (37 to 217 miles) above the surface.
The BOAT also affected the upper ionosphere — the very first time a gamma-ray burst has been observed in this section of the atmosphere, a team of Italian and Chinese researchers said on Tuesday.
From 350 to 950 kilometres above Earth, near the edge of the space, the upper ionosphere is where radiation from the Sun turns into charged particles that form an important electric field.
Mirko Piersanti, a researcher at Italy’s University of L’Aquila, told AFP that experts in this field had been debating for two decades whether gamma ray bursts could have any impact on the upper ionosphere.
“I think we finally answered the question,” said Piersanti, the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers were lucky that the Chinese–Italian CSES satellite, which has an electric field detector, “was exactly in the zone that was illuminated by the gamma-ray burst” 500 kilometres above Earth in the upper ionosphere, he said.
“We found a shape in the electric field that had never been observed before,” Piersanti added.
“It is amazing,” European Space Agency gamma-ray expert Erik Kuulkers said in a statement.
“We can see things that are happening in deep space but are also affecting Earth.”
Piersanti said the research would help scientists understand the potential threat that other gamma-ray bursts could pose in the future.
The worst-case scenario would be if such a powerful blast came from much closer to home — say, within our own Milky Way galaxy. That could “completely erase” Earth’s ozone layer, he said.
This would expose everything on the surface to the full might of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, potentially wiping out life on Earth.
There has previously been speculation that past gamma-ray bursts could have caused ancient mass extinction events.
But Piersanti emphasised that much remains unknown.
It is also possible that the ionosphere would absorb all the gamma rays and “nothing would happen” to those of us on the ground, he explained.
Last year’s gamma-ray burst, officially called GRB 221009A, is believed to have been caused by either a massive dying star exploding into a supernova, or the birth of a black hole.
Given its immense power, it could also have been both — a supernova explosion leading to the creation of a black hole.
The blast came from the direction of the constellation Sagitta and travelled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth.
It is now 2.4 billion light years away because of the expansion of the universe.
On average, more than one gamma-ray-burst reaches Earth every day.
But one with the brightness of the BOAT is estimated to come around once every 10,000 years.
Australia's second-largest port operator has been hit by a cyberattack that paralyzed maritime freight movement Down Under.
Australian Federal Police are said to be investigating the cybersecurity incident, which took down container terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle.
DP World Australia, which controls about 40 percent of Australia's maritime freight industry, was forced to shutter operations amid the cyberattack, which left the operator's main system down and prevented trucks from picking up or dropping off containers.
"The company, in collaboration with cybersecurity experts, has worked tirelessly, making significant progress in re-establishing landside freight operations at its ports," DP World Australia said in a statement.
The latest updates suggest that DP World Australia has already made "significant progress" in bringing things back online. However, the port operator's main systems were still down as of this writing, though vessels can now load and unload containers at the terminal without issue.
"The cyber incident at DP World is serious and ongoing," tweeted Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil on X.
"DP World manages almost 40% of the goods flowing in and out of our country, and this incident is affecting the ports of Melbourne, Fremantle, Botany and Brisbane."
Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator, Air Marshal Darren Goldie, also tweeted about the incident, stating that the Australian government is continuing to work with DP World Australia "to resolve a nationally significant cyber incident that has affected operations at a number of ports around the country."
"DP World today advised the Australian government that the timeframe for interruptions to continue is likely to be a number of days rather than weeks," Goldie added.
Australian officials confirm that cyberattack left DP World's IT systems "disconnected from the internet"
It was confirmed that the cyberattack left DP World's information technology (IT) systems completely offline, which significantly impacted the company's operations at ports in Australia's largest cities.
The only way to fully resume cargo operations as intended is to fix the issue, which the Australian government says it is working on with haste.
"We are continuing to develop our understanding of the flow on impacts to Australia's logistics system," Goldie further said.
"The National Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts and the Office of Supply Chain Resilience in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources will work with DP World to ensure that government and industry stakeholders have appropriate situational awareness necessary to support the management of any disruption to Australia's supply chains."
Ports Australia also issued a statement indicating that the cyberattack only disrupted DP World's terminals, and no others:
"Australia's ports and other terminals remain operational. We understand the importance of accurate reporting in maintaining public confidence and preventing unnecessary concern."
The cyberattack occurred just days after another that struck Chinese bank ICBC, which reportedly affected U.S. Treasury liquidity during a 30-year auction. There have also been other similar cyber breaches at other major world ports in recent years.
"Remember: This is the same Australian government that hunted down people walking alone on a beach with armed police for covid violations," one commenter wrote in response to the news.
"This will be but one more incident that's used to justify the growth of government," said another. "And the populace will nod in approval, not ever seeing the larger picture."
"I'm not sure where the next wave of pro-liberty peoples and ideas will emerge from but it ain't the Republican Party. Of that, I'm sure. Maybe from the rubble of failure? It's certainly happened in the past."
On Tuesday, the Biden administration released the fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA), a congressionally mandated report that comes out roughly every five years. The NCA is purported to give Americans “an inclusive, diverse, and sustained process for assessing and communicating scientific knowledge on the impacts, risks, and vulnerabilities associated with a changing global climate.”
In reality, the report is fodder for those who either believe in or have an interest in advancing the narrative that trace atmospheric gasses, emitted by human activity, are leading to a dangerous, out-of-control warming of the Earth.
In introducing the report, President Biden said, “This assessment shows us in clear scientific terms that climate change is impacting all regions, all sectors of the United States — not just some, all.”
“I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change,” Biden said.
The president had strong words for anyone who might question the notion that mankind’s activities have created a climate crisis.
“But it’s simply a simple fact that there are a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle — MAGA Republican leaders — who still deny climate change, still deny that it’s a problem,” Biden said. “Anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future.”
Released just in time for the UN’s COP 28, which will take place in the United Arab Emirates beginning November 30, the new report gives climate czar John Kerry, and anyone else who makes the long carbon spewing flight to Dubai, ammunition for explaining exactly what the U.S. government believes about the risk of climate change as well as what America is doing to mitigate the “crisis.”
The report shows, according to White House senior climate adviser John Podesta, that America (and the world) needs “a transformation of the global economy on a size and scale that’s never occurred in human history,” in order to “create a livable future for ourselves and our children.”
The report itself outlines the coming dangers.
“The more the planet warms, the greater the impacts. Without rapid and deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, the risks of accelerating sea level rise, intensifying extreme weather, and other harmful climate impacts will continue to grow,” the report states. “Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses compared to previous increments of warming, while the risk of catastrophic or unforeseen consequences also increases.”
But there are, apparently, some problems with the current version of the NCA.
Climate realist Steve Milloy points out that “Accepting its temperature graph at face value, it shows (as highlighted) that average US temperature in 2022 was: barely warmer than 1980; cooler than 1996; and much cooler than 2016.”
“If every emission drives warming, how is this possible?” Milloy asks.
Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. spent much of Tuesday pointing out errors in the new NCA. Today, he uncovered the scientific biases associated with the report. The NCA allowed climate-change activists to write portions of the NCA.
“How did Project Drawdown, The Nature Conservancy and Stripe get to write the overview chapter on climate for the US NCA?” Pielke asked. “Imagine if it was Heartland, Cato and Exxon. That’s how bad this is.”
The NCA also uses worst-case scenarios, which even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits are the least likely to occur, in its assessment of the dangers of climate change. The NCA uses the worst-case representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenario in its assessments.
(The Center Square) - Along with over 60 of his congressional colleagues, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy urging the agency to change how it decides if new licenses for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports are in the public interest.
The letter features concerns about the DOE's current approach, arguing that it does not "fully or accurately consider how these exports impact the climate, environmental justice, or domestic energy prices," according to Merkley's office.
The letter notes that the DOE has never rejected an LNG export application based on negative impacts on the American people. It also urges the Department to consider costs to consumers and the climate when reviewing export license applications.
“U.S. LNG exports have doubled over the past four years, and projects currently under development are set to almost double exports again. DOE’s case-by-case approach to approvals ignores the aggregate impact that the explosive growth in U.S. LNG exports is having on climate, communities, and our economy,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter comes as the DOE approves LNG exports; the lawmakers noted, “scientific reports, including a recent peer-reviewed study from Brown University and RMI, have found that natural gas can be as bad for the climate as coal when only small methane leaks are factored in.”
The lawmakers urged DOE to create an approach guided by climate and economic analysis. They want the process of creating this to be transparent and open for public comment.
“By exacerbating climate change, LNG exports also pose a threat to environmental justice at home and abroad because the impacts of climate change fall most heavily on low-income communities and communities of color,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Finally, LNG exports drive up household energy burdens across the country, a key issue for all of our constituents. The EIA found that ‘higher LNG exports create a tighter domestic natural gas market … increasing domestic natural gas prices,’ and this link was on clear display when an explosion at Freeport LNG sent domestic gas prices plummeting, and its restart caused them to rise sharply again,” they continued.
The letter also comes as LNG exports from the U.S. to Europe increased by 141% from 2021 to 2022 after Russia started a war in Ukraine,
As a result, Russian natural gas exports to the European Union and the United Kingdom plummeted by nearly 40% in the first seven months of 2022 compared to the previous year, according to the same department. This has created a need for European countries to get energy elsewhere.
While the United States has been able to help fill the gap in Europe, Merkley doubted it would be capable of doing so only last year.
"Liquified natural gas (LNG) infrastructure can take at least three years to build, thus failing to address Europe’s short-term energy needs to transition off Russian gas," a letter he and other Democratic lawmakers sent the White House in May 2022 said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not consider a COVID-19 vaccine mandate case out of New Jersey in another disappointment for conservatives despite the court’s Republican-appointed majority.
A Monday order list reveals that the nation’s highest court denied a petition to hear the case of a group of nurses at Hunterdon Medical Center who had challenged a 2022 executive order from Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy mandating COVID vaccinations for healthcare workers.
The Christian Postreported that nurses Katie Sczesny, Jamie Rumfield, Debra Hagen, and Mariette Vitti sued the state over the order in April 2022, arguing that it violated their rights to medical freedom, personal privacy, and religious liberty.
A federal court ruled against the nurses last year, and a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals later dismissed the case as moot on the grounds that Murphy rescinded the order in June.
The Supreme Court’s order list does not offer a reason for its decision or say how the justices voted. But it only takes four votes to hear a case, meaning that only three justices at most could have called for taking the case.
While New Jersey’s nurses are not currently subjected to COVID vaccine mandates, the Supreme Court’s rejection of the matter leaves the door open for state governments to revive such mandates in the future.
The Court’s current “conservative majority” has long been a mixed bag. While it has deliveredmajorvictories on abortion, gun rights, environmental regulation, and affirmative action, it has also disappointed conservatives on other issues, especially vaccine mandates.
Two of former President Donald Trump’s additions, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, voted against taking up reviews of state-level vaccine mandates in Indiana, Maine, and New York, and Kavanaugh voted to uphold a federal vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and against a group of Navy SEALs’ bid for a religious exemption.
“We are disappointed the Supreme Court did not take up this issue now but hope that it will take up this question soon, whether in this case after final judgment or another case,” Dana Wefer, an attorney for the nurses, toldNewsweek. “We need our highest Court to provide guidance on this important question of liberty before another pandemic and another emergency vaccine.”
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disclosed that Jia Bei Zhu, the arrested owner of a California biotechnology laboratory, has alleged ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government and its military programs. Zhu, 62, was apprehended for manufacturing and distributing misbranded medical devices in violation of federal regulations and making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Committee’s findings suggest that Zhu functioned as a “corporate officer” within organizations associated with the PRC’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy, aimed at developing the People’s Liberation Army into a world-class military by 2049. The State Department describes MCF as a CCP strategy involving civilian enterprises in classified military research and weapons production.
Zhu reportedly led several companies directed or controlled by the PRC government. In 2023, officials in Fresno, California, discovered over 20 infectious agents, such as HIV and Malaria, and genetically engineered mice carrying COVID-19 at an unlicensed laboratory in Reedley, operated by Prestige Biotech Inc. (PBI), which succeeded the defunct Universal Meditech Inc. (UMI). The details of this discovery are outlined in Fresno County court records.
Zhu admitted that his companies were established to promote PRC policies and fulfill demands from a PRC premier. While living in the U.S. under the alias “David He,” Zhu received over $2 million from PRC bank accounts. Previously, Zhu’s Canadian companies were implicated in the theft of American cattle-related intellectual property, leading to his illegal entry into the U.S.
Private messages on WeChat revealed Zhu’s intentions to defeat the U.S. through his fraudulent companies. The illegal biolab was initially discovered by a Reedley Code Enforcement Officer, revealing thousands of vials, some with Mandarin labels and others in an undeciphered code.
Local officials’ attempts to investigate were reportedly hindered by the FBI’s and CDC’s reluctance to engage. However, Democratic California Rep. Jim Costa eventually persuaded the CDC to inspect the facility. Despite the CDC’s conclusion of no evidence of select agents or toxins, the Committee reported a freezer labeled “ebola” was overlooked.
The Committee’s report aligns with the DCNF’s August 2023 investigation, highlighting Zhu’s connections to Qingdao, China-based companies and the shipping of medical supplies to UMI and Prestige.
Zhu was unavailable for comment on these findings.
A Satanic pedophile ring that gang raped children and forced them to perform demonic rituals involving Ouija boards and animal sacrifice has been convicted in Scotland.
Iain Owens, 45, Elaine Lannery, 39, Lesley Williams, 41, Paul Brannan, 41, Scott Forbes, 50, Barry Watson, 47, and John Clark, 46, were believed to be “witches and wizards” by their victims. They plied children with alcohol and cocaine and assaulted on camera in what they described as “child rape nights” between 2012 and 2019.
The ring also forced the children to abuse each other, and held “dog killing nights” in which their victims were forced to kill animals. Ouija boards were used to “call on spirits and demons” and the children told investigators “they could see, hear and communicate with spirits and demons,” or at least believed they did.
Terrible physical abuse was also meted out, with one girl being confined in an oven and a freezer and almost killed.
“This has been a horrific ordeal for the young victims who were subjected to years of unimaginable abuse,” commented an investigating officer after the guilty verdicts were returned, adding that the “levels of depravity shown” by the Satanists were almost unprecedented.
-Jack Montgomery, The National Pulse
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