Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?
Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.
Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.
So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.
As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.
The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.
In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).
The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.
Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.
‘Please don’t go on the offensive’
The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”
The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.
Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”
What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.
The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.
The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”
Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.
There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.
This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.
Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.
What the Deep State really wants
Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.
The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.
And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.
It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”
From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”
Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”
The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.
The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.
Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.
Chinese Companies Dominate Among Global AI Patents
Chinese enterprises increased patent filings for artificial intelligence products rapidly in the past couple of years.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the companies holding the most active AI and machine learning patent families are now tech giant Tencent and search engine provider Baidu, ahead of U.S. firm IBM, South Korea’s Samsung, Chinese insurance provider Ping An and former AI patent leader Microsoft.
The latter company has been seeing one of its major AI investments come to fruition recently, as conversational AI bot ChatGPT by Microsoft partner OpenAI has been making waves. Microsoft swiftly announced another round of funding for OpenAI, rumored to be to the tune of $10 billion.
As this chart based on the LexisNexis PatentSight directory shows, Tencent and Baidu became the largest patent owners in machine learning and AI in 2021, each holding more than 9,000 active patent families. A family is a set of patents covering the same technical content. IBM owed more than 7,000 families that same year, while Microsoft held just under 6,000 – rank six. Between 2012 and 2019, it was Microsoft which owned the most AI patents, according to LexisNexis.
Even bigger than the rise in filings by Tencent and Baidu was the AI patent frenzy unleashed by Chinese insurance and banking giant Ping An. The number of patent families it owns grew from fewer than 50 to more than 6,000 just in the past five years. years. Among the AI tools recently developed by the company is software for analyzing facial micro-expressions (i.e. eye blinks, involuntary twitches), which Ping An uses to assess insurance claims its policyholders send in by video.
Nicole Sirotek is a registered nurse in Nevada with over a decade of experience working in some of the harshest conditions. When a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico, Sirotek and the organization she founded, American Frontline Nurses (AFLN), were there and gave out over 500 pounds of medical equipment and supplies.
She hasn’t hesitated to be the first in when an emergency hits and medical professionals are needed. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s woken up on a cot in the middle of nowhere, boots still strapped to her feet, and ready to go.
But in tears during an interview with The Epoch Times, she detailed her ordeal with harassment and doxing over the past year and how she’s contemplated suicide due to crippling anxiety and depression.
“It took such a toll on my mental health. I wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t eating,” Sirotek said.
To regain her mental health, she decided to step back from the group she started. But even that decision brought pain.
“I said after I left New York, I’d do everything that I can to make sure it didn’t happen again,” Sirotek said, recalling the death she witnessed when she volunteered in New York as a nurse at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, for me to step back and take a break just makes me feel like I failed!”
Sirotek is the victim of ongoing harassment. She’s received pictures of her children posed in slaughterhouses and hanging from a noose, drive-by photos of her house, and letters with white powder that exploded upon opening.
The Nevada State Board of Nursing was inundated with calls for Sirotek’s professional demise and flooded with anonymous complaints.
These complaints trace back to Team Halo, a social media influencer campaign formed as part of the United Nations Verified initiative and the Vaccine Confidence Project.
In response, Sirotek filed a police report. Her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter. The Epoch Times reviewed the documents.
The reply from the cease-and-desist letter? The client was acting within his First Amendment rights.
The Harassment Begins
In February 2022, Sirotek, as the face of AFLN, a patient advocacy network that boasts 22,000 nurses, appeared before Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and testified about the harm patients were experiencing when they sought treatment for COVID-19.
She said she didn’t witness patients dying from the novel virus when she volunteered to work the front lines in New York at the start of the pandemic.
Sirotek detailed the withholding by higher-ups of steroids and Ibuprofen and the prescribing of remdesivir. Additionally, there was zero willingness to consider possible early intervention treatments like ivermectin.
As the pandemic continued, such practices only escalated, Sirotek said.
Sirotek’s testimony resulted in cheers, widespread attention, and a target on her back.
“[The harassment] all started the day we got back from DC,” Sirotek said.
At first, the attacks started with the typical “you’re transphobic, you’re anti-LGBTQ. I mean, they even called me racist,” Sirotek, who is Hispanic, recalled.
And as more patients sought AFLN’s help, the attacks increased in frequency and force.
At first, Sirotek said the attacks appeared to come from random people. But as the attacks continued, the terms “Project Halo,” “Team Halo,” and “#TeamHalo” continually cropped up. Especially on TikTok and from two accounts, “@jesss2019” and “@thatsassynp.”
“[@thatsassynp] just kept on saying how I was spreading misinformation, [that] ivermectin doesn’t work,” Sirotek said. “He kept targeting the Nevada State Board of Nursing because I was on the Practice Act Committee, and he did not feel like that was acceptable.”
Craig Perry, a lawyer representing nurses, including Sirotek, before the Nevada State Board of Nursing, confirmed Sirotek’s account. The executive director of the Nevada State Board of Nursing, Cathy Dinauer, declined to provide details on complaints or investigations, stating to The Epoch Times via email that they are “confidential.”
Sirotek said the complaints overwhelmed her ability to defend her nursing license.
“Untimely, they were filing so many complaints against me that [the Nevada State Board of Nursing] had to start filtering them as to what was applicable and not applicable. And [the complaints] just buried my nursing license to the point that we couldn’t even defend it,” Sirotek said.
Attacks Transition to Threats
Whenever Sirotek, or AFLN, tried to set up a community outreach webinar, hateful comments flooded their videos.
Julia McCabe, a registered nurse and the director of advocacy services for AFLN, told The Epoch Times that initially, they tried kicking the trolls out of the outreach videos. But they couldn’t keep up with the overwhelming numbers and had to shut the videos down, usually after only 10 minutes, she said.
To address the swarms, as McCabe labeled them, AFLN started charging an entrance fee for their webinars. But, McCabe said, they’d send out an email with a free access code to all of their subscribers before the webinar started. It helped, but not enough. The swarms kept coming. And the attacks escalated.
On June 5, 2022, @thatsassynp posted a video on TikTok calling for a “serious public uprising,” because the Nevada State Board of Nursing and other regulatory agencies weren’t disciplining nurses for spreading “disinformation.”
It became one of many such videos in the ensuing days. In the comments of one, he stated, “Also, stay tuned as [@jesss2019] will be addressing this as well. We are teaming up (as per usual) to raise awareness and demand action on this issue.” @jesss2019 responded, “Yes!!!! We will get this taken care of.”
Jess and Tyler Kuhk of @thatsassynp have “teamed up” on several occasions, targeting healthcare workers who question the COVID-19 narrative. Team Halo doesn’t officially list Kuhk on its site, but Kuhk posts with the #teamhalo.
In another video, he states, “If you’re new to this series, PLEASE watch the videos in my playlist ‘Nevada board of nursing.’ This started in Feb of this year.” His video has almost 35,000 “loves.”
On June 7, 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video on TikTok accusing Sirotek of spreading misinformation. It included a link to @thatsassynp, and his complaints about Sirotek to the Nevada State Board of Nursing and calls to remove her from the Practice Act Committee. She implored TikTok to boost the message. It, too, became one of many videos attacking Sirotek.
Specifically, @jesss2019 and @thatsassynp took issue with videos and posts from Sirotek, and AFLN, advocating for ivermectin and highlighting possible issues with remdesivir and the COVID-19 vaccines.
@jess2019 removed all of the above videos after The Epoch Times sought comment. The Epoch Times retains copies.
Sirotek says she received the first death threat against herself and her children around the same time, in June 2022.
“They cut off the pictures of my children’s faces from our family photos, where we take them every year on our front porch—we’ve got 11 years of those photos—and they cut them out and put them on the bodies of those little boys that have been sexually abused. And that’s what would get sent to my house. And I gave the police that,” Sirotek said.
In response to a request for comment from The Epoch Times, Sen. Johnson defended Sirotek.
“The COVID Cartel continues to frighten and silence those who tell the truth and challenge their failed response to COVID,” Johnson said. “It is simply wrong for Ms. Sirotek to be smeared and attacked like so many others who have had the courage and compassion to successfully treat COVID patients.”
As the threats continued and escalated, Sirotek also asked Perry to send a cease-and-desist letter to Tyler Kuhk on Aug. 1, 2022.
Kuhk, a nurse practitioner, is the person posting on TikTok under the pseudonym @thatsassynp.
The letter sent to Kuhk alleges that on at least 10 different occasions, @thatsassynp encouraged a “public uprising” against Sirotek. It also details that his videos attacking Sirotek garnered over 400,000 views.
In response, McLetchie Law, a “boutique law firm serving prominent and emerging … media entities” responded to Perry by stating in a letter dated Aug. 16, 2022, “Both Nevada law and the First Amendment provide robust protections for our client’s (and others’) rights to criticize Ms. Sirotek’s dangerous views and practices—and to advocate for her removal from the Nursing Practice Advisory Committee of the Nevada State Board of Nursing.”
It also warned that any attempt to deter Kuhk from his chosen path would “backfire” and could result in a “negative financial impact.” Neither Kuhk nor McLetchie Law responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
Unable to confirm the real name behind the TikTok account @jesss2019, and thus, unable to send her a legal letter, Sirotek posted some of the threats she’d received on Facebook, pleading for @jesss2019 to cease targeting her, and recognize the possible real-world harm.
In desperation, Sirotek asked Perry to file a legal name change, which he did on Sep. 15, 2022, hoping that would thwart people’s ability to look up Sirotek’s information. Perry told The Epoch Times, “Usually, when you do a name change, it’s a public record. But under extenuating circumstances, you can have that sealed.”
In Sirotek’s case, the court recognized the threat to her and her family’s safety, waived the publication requirement, granted the change, and sealed her record on Oct. 4, 2022.
Sirotek, at the behest of Perry, filed a police report detailing the harassment on Oct. 17, 2022.
In December 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video to TikTok doxing Sirotek by revealing her name change. The Epoch Times sought comment from @jesss2019 but has not received a response. After the request for comment, the user removed the video.
Team Halo and Social Media
On Dec. 17, 2020, Theo Bertram, a director at TikTok; Iain Bundred, the head of public policy at YouTube; and Rebecca Stimson, the UK head of public policy for Facebook, appeared before the UK’s House of Commons to explain what their social media sites were doing to combat “anti-vaccination disinformation.”
All three stated their companies employed a “two-pronged approach.” Specifically, “tackle disinformation and promote trusted content.”
Bundred stated that from the beginning of the year to November 2020, YouTube had removed 750,000 videos that promoted “Covid disinformation.”
Stimson stated that between March and October 2020, “12 million pieces of content were removed from [Facebook],” and it had labeled 167 million pieces with a warning.
Bertram stated that for the first six months of 2020, TikTok removed 1,500 accounts for “Covid violation” and had recently increased that activity. “In the last two months, we took action against 1,380 accounts, so you can see the level of action is increasing,” Bertram said.
“In October, we began work with Team Halo,” Bertram added. “I do not know if you are familiar with Team Halo. It is run by the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is about getting reliable, trusted scientists and doctors on to social media to spread trusted information.”
Team Halo’s Origins
On Sep. 20, 2022, Melissa Fleming, the under-secretary-general for global communications at the United Nations, appeared at the World Economic Forum to discuss how the United Nations was “Tackling Disinformation” regarding “health guidance” as well as the “safety and efficacy of the vaccine” for COVID-19.
“A key strategy that we had was to deploy influencers,” Fleming stated. “Influencers who were really keen, who had huge followings, but really keen to help carry messages that were going to serve their communities.”
Fleming also explained that the United Nations knew its messaging wouldn’t resonate as well as influencers, so they developed Team Halo.
“We had another trusted messenger project, which was called Team Halo, where we trained scientists around the world, and some doctors, on TikTok. We had TikTok working with us,” Fleming said. “It was a layered deployment of ideas and tactics.”
The Biden Administration’s so-called “Ghost Gun” rule released last year provided everything ATF now needs to confiscate millions of pistols equipped with stabilizing braces.
With the gun registry expansion rule enacted, the Biden Administration has created a complete national gun registry of every commercial firearm transaction in the last twenty years. This illegal gun registry can easily be used by ATF to enforce compliance with their pistol brace ban.
President Biden has initiated a pistol brace ban via executive action—formally an ATF rule entitled “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces'”—because ATF is in its strongest position yet to begin systematically confiscating firearms from gun owners.
The ATF’s draconian Pistol Brace Rule just hit the federal register. Your 120 day clock starts now.
GOA is prepared to fight this by:
✅Working with Congress to pass a Joint Resolution of Disapproval
✅Filing a lawsuit
✅Passing the SHORT ACT
✅Defunding the ATF
This rule regulates pistols equipped with stabilizing braces, which ATF approved previously and were designed and intended to allow disabled shooters to hold certain firearms with one hand.
Even though these guns were acquired lawfully and with prior ATF approval, these pistol owners will now face a choice: reconfigure their pistols at personal cost, register them with the federal government as short-barreled rifles (SBRs), turn them in, or destroy them.
The ATF has referred to this program as Biden’s “Amnesty Registration of Pistol Brace Weapons” plan. All of these so-called “options” infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.
The Biden Administration is using the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) as established by the antiquated National Firearms Act of 1934to formally register these pistols with the federal government. But an illegal gun registry of Firearm Transaction Records will help ATF enforce this new ban with disturbing precision and legal consequences for gun owners.
As mentioned earlier, the Biden Administration’s “Ghost Gun” rule also empowers the ATF to use Forms 4473 or Firearm Transaction Records, kept by FFLs after gun sales, to create a complete gun registry.
Now, the ATF has guaranteed that there is a complete record of every firearm transferred since at least August 24th, 2002, including firearms equipped with stabilizing braces which first hit the markets in the last decade.
This means all ATF-approved and commercially-sold pistol braced firearms have a paper registration trail for the ATF to trace at local gun stores or are already present in ATF’s digital and searchable out-of-business records gun registry, which had nearly a billion records even prior to its expansion by Biden’s ATF.
While ATF will not be able to use its gun registry to find those who purchased a stabilizing brace and attached it to their firearms at home, the same cannot be said for the millions of gun owners who commercially purchased or transferred many of these brace-equipped pistols.
ATF’s gun registry includes an extraordinary amount of information about each firearm an individual has purchased. ATF’s out-of-business registry is, in fact, searchable by make, model, serial number, and weapon type. Therefore, the ATF can efficiently create a list of all gun owners’ AR-15 pistols to create a door-to-door confiscation list, complete with home addresses and firearm serial numbers.
GOA already caught the Biden Administration using commercial sales records to go door-to-door to enforce the “Ghost Gun” rule’s solvent trap provision last year.
Gun owners also found ATF going door-to-door, asking gun owners to verify the serial numbers on their recent gun purchases without a warrant. ATF surely plans to do the same for President Biden’s pistol brace ban.
In fact, there is little more the Biden Administration could do to make the ATF’s illegal gun registry more useful than it already is for confiscating pistol AR-15s and other such firearms.
The implementation of the ATF’s gun registry and “ghost gun” crackdown was strategically implemented to make sure that Biden’s Pistol Ban would be as successful as possible. Gun owners should beware that this unconstitutional database of all their commercial firearm transactions is ready to be used against them to confiscate their lawfully acquired pistols.
Watch: Will ATF Perform Brace “Compliance Checks” With It’s Expanded Registry?
* * *
We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threw down the gauntlet on fixing higher education on Jan. 31, vowing to eliminate all funding for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) throughout the state.
Public universities should not be in the business of using taxpayer money to offer degrees in “zombie” studies but should embrace academic excellence and truth, and allow students to think for themselves, DeSantis said.
“Our institutions will be graduating students with degrees that will actually be useful,” he said. “We will be eliminating all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in Florida. It will wither on the vine.”
DeSantis offered a series of legislative proposals to flush political ideologies out of universities, including allowing university presidents and the university board of trustees to hold a post-tenure review on professors as needed.
He also wants to shift hiring authority to the university president that had been ceded to faculty.
DeSantis says he wants to ban the campus hiring committees’ use of DEI oaths that certify candidates will adhere to ideologies. One of them is Critical Race Theory—a Marxist ideology that divides people into oppressors and victims based on race or gender.
Currently, candidates who reject social justice ideology and embrace the belief of equality and a color-blind society get points deducted during the hiring process designed to weed out those who disagree, he said.
DeSantis said DEI bureaucracies had become a component of the administration within universities that are imposing a political agenda and ideologies such as implicit bias, which embraces the idea that America is systemically racist.
“These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom, and really they constitute a drain on resources,” he said.
DeSantis said he rejects the dominant view in academia around the country that higher education should impose ideological conformity to provoke political activism.
He proposed that higher education curriculums should require a course on the history and philosophy of Western Civilization.
The governor said that DEI bureaucracies have “metastasized,” adding they mandate training on political ideology. He pointed out that the state’s Stop Woke Act passed last year gives employees, particularly of private businesses, the right to opt out of CRT or DEI training.
He praised the Florida College System (FCS) presidents who on Jan. 18 publicly supported his vision of higher education as one free from indoctrination and open to truth and intellectual freedom. FCS is made up of community colleges and state colleges.
The Stop Woke Act is currently being challenged in the court system, but DeSantis said he is confident the law will survive.
The act addresses “wokeness” to historic injustices surrounding race or gender that may have created a false sense of guilt among those who were not responsible for them, such as the idea of systemic racism.
It outlaws “indoctrination” practices in education or the workplace that label people as inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, based on their skin color, sex, or national origin, consciously or unconsciously.
The law allows the state university system’s Board of Governors to require tenured professors to undergo a “comprehensive post-tenure” review every five years.
DeSantis’ announcement is his latest assault on the “woke” ideology that he says is running rampant on college campuses in Florida and elsewhere.
The governor also mandated that public universities report their expenditures for CRT and DEI programs.
The Dec. 28 order from DeSantis came four days after The Epoch Times documented the experiences of six conservative students attending a major Florida university.
They described difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American culture.
At the DeSantis press conference, a conservative University of Florida student described experiences of being attacked for her beliefs that mirrored what students have told The Epoch Times.
“My university has fallen corrupt to the woke ideal that is being taught by leftist professors in the classroom,” said Emily Sturge, a sophomore at UF.
She said professors tell her that America is the most racist nation and that women have no rights. She said that professors lecture on the importance of the Covid vaccine instead of teaching content.
Sturge said she received a failing grade for writing a paper on how empowering it was for women to get their concealed carry licenses. But when she tactically wrote about the virtues of Marxism, she got an A.
Sturge said she had a “target on her back” for being a pro-American Christian and had been called “every name in the book” by fellow students.
In January, DeSantis again struck a blow to “woke” culture in the university system by appointing six conservatives to the board of trustees for the failing New College.
These included Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow who has exposed CRT in schools nationwide.
Rufo, who also spoke at the press conference, talked about how the Left was manipulating public perception by using terms such as DEI, which sounds great on the surface but is a dark concept.
“It is an Orwellian misuse of language that manipulates you into feeling that this is a good thing while under the surface. It’s something quite different,” he said.
Rufo said DEI is the same thing as CRT, which divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Professors train students, faculty, and staff members that certain people are oppressors and others are oppressed.
He said the entire board of New College was scheduled to meet after the press conference. He and trustee Eddie Speir, who toured New College last week, was met with resistance from students and faculty.
“Worst Payouts Since The Financial Crisis”: Asia’s Investment Bankers See Pay Cuts Up To 70%
It’s a story we have been covering since before last year’s holidays. After a tough 2022 for dealmaking, banker pay continues to get cut. The rollbacks continued this week with some top investment bankers in Asia ex-Japan are “having their worst payouts since the financial crisis”, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
The report says that managing directors at banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. will see their total compensation fall by 40% to 50%. Payouts for senior managing directors will total between $800,000 to $1.5 million. First year MDs will see bonuses of $600,000 to $1 million, the report says.
High performers may only see cuts of 20% or less, with some of them still taking home about $2 million, the report says. But those who underperformed are seeing cuts of up to 60% to 70%. Some are also being “left out altogether” from bonus pools.
Banking in China was hit particularly hard in 2022 thanks to Beijing’s prior stance on Covid, which kept a majority of the country locked down. Deals slumped 88% after the government limited the ability by domestic companies to sell shares overseas, the report says. Investment banking revenue was down about 50% at the largest banks last year.
Recall just days ago we reported that Bank of America had cut bonuses for its dealmakers by about 30% this year. Bonuses were also cut in equity capital markets and leveraged finance, with some bonuses down by as much as 50%, the report says.
We also noted last week that Deutsche was the latest to cut its investment banking bonuses by 40%.
Credit Suisse Group AG Chairman Axel Lehmann also made a statement last week warning about lower bonuses after what he called a “horrifying year”. Recall we wrote days ago that the bank had come out and was considering a large cut to its bonus pool. It was considering a 50% cut to its bonus pool, Bloomberg reported last week.
Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan join a number of Wall Street banks who laid off employees, cut bonuses or both after a torrid 2022. Goldman Sachs, for example, is set to lay off up to 4,000 employees, we noted last month. The bank was also “considering shrinking the bonus pool for its more than 3,000 investment bankers by at least 40 per cent this year”.
Also in mid-December, we wrote that Ernst and Young would be cutting its bonuses entirely. The company held an “all hands” meeting two weeks ago where it delivered the news to its employees. The company is in the midst of splitting its audit business from a tax and advisory business heading into 2023. Morgan Stanley’s Asia banker bonuses were also at risk by as much as 50%, we wrote days before that. In December, we also noted that Jefferies was considering slashing bonuses.
Top insurers State Farm and Progressive are refusing to provide insurance coverage for certain models made by South Korean car firms Kia and Hyundai, with reports claiming that the vehicles are easier to steal due to a lack of proper anti-theft technology like electronic immobilizers.
“State Farm has temporarily stopped writing new business in some states for certain model years and trim levels of Hyundai and Kia vehicles because theft losses for these vehicles have increased dramatically,” the insurer said in a statement to CNN. “This is a serious problem impacting our customers and the entire auto insurance industry.”
Meanwhile, Progressive claimed that certain car models of the brands have seen theft rates more than triple in the past year. “In some markets, these vehicles are almost 20 times more likely to be stolen than other vehicles,” the insurance company said in a statement to the outlet.
Due to the “explosive increase” in theft of these cars, Progressive finds it “extremely challenging” to offer insurance to such vehicles. As such, the company has raised insurance rates and restricted the sale of insurance policies in some regions for certain Hyundai and Kia models.
To individuals of these cars who have already taken a policy at the company, Progressive is continuing to provide insurance. Neither firm has revealed which states or cities have been affected by their policy decisions.
The Epoch Times has reached out to State Farm and Progressive for comment.
Hyundai, Kia Theft
According to an analysis of 2021 insurance claims by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), a few models of Hyundai and Kia were found to be the top targets. Among 2015–19 model-year vehicles, the chances of theft claims were twice as common when compared to other manufacturers, HLDI found.
“Car theft spiked during the pandemic,” said HLDI senior vice president Matt Moore, according to a Sept. 22nd post by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). “These numbers tell us that some vehicles may be targeted because they’re fast or worth a lot of money and others because they’re easy to steal.”
“Our earlier studies show that vehicle theft losses plunged after immobilizers were introduced … Unfortunately, Hyundai and Kia have lagged behind other automakers in making them standard equipment.”
Electronic immobilizers prevent criminals from easily breaking in and bypassing a car’s ignition. In 2015, immobilizers were found to be a standard feature among 96 percent of car manufacturers, except for Hyundai and Kia. Among the two brands, only 26 percent of the models were found to have immobilizers.
Wisconsin was one of the worst affected states when it came to the theft of Hyundai and Kia vehicles. In 2021, the amount paid on theft claims per insured vehicle year jumped to over 30 times compared to 2019, according to IIHS.
Insured vehicle year refers to one vehicle insured for a period of one year, two vehicles insured for a period of six months, and so on.
Lawsuits, Company Responses
Both Hyundai and Kia are battling multiple lawsuits for the security failure of their models. Last week, Seattle city attorney Ann Davison filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers at a federal court for failing to install “anti-theft technology” in some of their vehicles, according to a news release on Jan. 25.
“Kia and Hyundai chose to cut corners and cut costs at the expense of their customers and the public. As a result, our police force has had to tackle a huge rise in vehicle theft and related problems with already stretched resources,” said Davison, according to the release.
“Now Seattle taxpayers must shoulder the burden of the increase in theft … Kia and Hyundai need to take responsibility for the public safety hazard that they created.”
In September, MLG Attorneys at Law filed a national class-action lawsuit against Hyundai and Kia, alleging that cars manufactured between 2011 and 2021 by the firms came without an “engine immobilizer,” according to a press release on Sept. 21, 2022.
Visualizing The Scale Of Global Fossil Fuel Production
Fossil fuels have been our predominant source of energy for over a century, and the world still extracts and consumes a colossal amount of coal, oil, and gas every year.
In 2021, the world produced around 8 billion tonnes of coal, 4 billion tonnes of oil, and over 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.
Most of the coal is used to generate electricity for our homes and offices and has a key role in steel production. Similarly, natural gas is a large source of electricity and heat for industries and buildings. Oil is primarily used by the transportation sector, in addition to petrochemical manufacturing, heating, and other end uses.
Here’s a full breakdown of coal, oil, and gas production by country in 2021.
Coal Production
If all the coal produced in 2021 were arranged in a cube, it would measure 2,141 meters (2.1km) on each side—more than 2.5 times the height of the world’s tallest building.
China produced 50% or more than four billion tonnes of the world’s coal in 2021. It’s also the largest consumer of coal, accounting for 54% of coal consumption in 2021.
India is both the second largest producer and consumer of coal. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the world’s largest coal exporter, followed by Australia.
In the West, U.S. coal production was down 47% as compared to 2011 levels, and the descent is likely to continue with the clean energy transition.
Oil Production
In 2021, the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia were the three largest crude oil producers, respectively.
OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia, made up the largest share of production at 35% or 1.5 billion tonnes of oil.
U.S. oil production has seen significant growth since 2010. In 2021, the U.S. extracted 711 million tonnes of oil, more than double the 333 million tonnes produced in 2010.
Natural Gas Production
The world produced 4,036 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2021. The above graphic converts that into an equivalent of seven billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to visualize it on the same scale as oil and gas.
The U.S. was the largest producer, with Texas and Pennsylvania accounting for 47% of its gas production. The U.S. electric power and industrial sectors account for around one-third of domestic natural gas consumption.
Russia, the next-largest producer, was the biggest exporter of gas in 2021. It exported an estimated 210 billion cubic meters of natural gas via pipelines to Europe and China. Around 80% of Russian natural gas comes from operations in the Arctic region.
Letter to the Stanford Daily: Why Is There a COVID Vaccine Mandate for Students?
“Not to know is bad. Not to wish to know is worse.”
—African proverb
I can’t figure out why Stanford is mandating the COVID vaccine for students.
Is it to protect students from the virus, hospitalization, or death?
Is it to protect them from other students?
Is it to protect the Stanford community members from the students?
If it’s to protect the students from catching COVID, that doesn’t make sense because the CDC says it “no longer differentiate[s] based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.”
The CDC also acknowledges natural immunity, noting that “persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.”
It appears Stanford didn’t get the memo because Maxwell Meyer—a double-jabbed, COVID-recovered alum who was nearly prohibited from graduating for choosing not to get boosted—was informed by an administrator that the booster mandate is “not predicated on history of infection or physical location.”
Despite living 2,000 miles away from campus and not being enrolled in coursework for his final term, Maxwell was told Stanford was “uniformly enforc[ing]” the mandate “regardless of student location.” Does that sound like a rational policy?
Fortunately, a different administrator intervened and granted Maxwell an exemption, but few Stanford students are so lucky. Almost everyone else simply follows the rules without realizing they’ve volunteered for vaccine roulette.
A Cleveland Clinic study of the bivalent vaccines involving 51,011 participants found the risk of getting COVID-19 increased “with the number of vaccine doses previously received”—much to the authors’ surprise.
They were stumped as to why “those who chose not to follow the CDC’s recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination” had a lower risk of catching COVID than “those who received a larger number of prior vaccine doses.”
So if the vaccines don’t keep you from getting COVID, maybe they at least protect you from hospitalization?
An observational study conducted at Germany’s University Hospital Wuerzburg found:
“The rate of adverse reactions for the second booster dose was significantly higher among participants receiving the bivalent 84.6% (95% CI 70.3%–92.8%; 33/39) compared to the monovalent 51.4% (95% CI 35.9–66.6%; 19/37) vaccine (p=0.0028). Also, there was a trend towards an increased rate of inability to work and intake of PRN medication following bivalent vaccination.”
If you don’t know what that means, Dr. Syed Haider spells it out in this tweet. He explains that the shots “train your immune system to ignore the allergen by repeated exposure,” the end result being that “Your immune system is shifted to see the virus as a harmless allergen” and the “virus runs amok.”
Latest IgG4 COVID vax study
Think allergy shots. They train your immune system to ignore the allergen by repeated exposure.
That’s what repeated shots with the vax are doing.
Your immune system is shifted to see the virus as a harmless allergen.
Well, then does the vaccine at least prevent people from dying of COVID?
Nope. According to the Washington Post, “Vaccinated people now make up a majority of COVID deaths.”
At Senator Ron Johnson’s December 7, 2022, roundtable discussion on COVID-19 Vaccines, former number-one–ranked Wall Street insurance analyst Josh Stirlingreported that, according to UK government data:
“The people in the UK who took the vaccine have a 26% higher mortality rate. The people who are under the age of 50 who took the vaccine now have a 49% higher mortality rate.”
Obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to KBV (the association representing physicians who receive insurance in Germany), “the most important dataset of the pandemic” shows fatalities starting to spike in 2021.
Data analyst Tom Lausen assessed the ICD-10 disease codes in this dataset, and the findings are startling. His presentation includes the following chart documenting fatalities per quarter from 2016 to 2022:
This parallels the skyrocketing fatality rates seen in VAERS:
The vaccinated are more likely to contract, become hospitalized from, and die of COVID. If the vaccine fails on all of those counts, does it at least prevent its transmission to other students and community members?
The obvious answer is no since we already know it doesn’t prevent you from getting COVID, but this CDC study drives the point home, showing that during a COVID outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, “three quarters (346; 74%) of cases occurred in fully vaccinated persons.”
“Why does Stanford have a student booster shot requirement? Our booster requirement is intended to support sustained immunity against COVID-19 and is consistent with the advice of county and federal public health leaders. Booster shots enhance immunity, providing additional protection to individuals and reducing the possibility of being hospitalized for COVID. In addition, booster shots prevent infection in many individuals, thereby slowing the spread of the virus. A heavily boosted campus community reduces the possibility of widespread disruptions that could impact the student experience, especially in terms of in-person classes and activities and congregate housing.”
The claim that “booster shots enhance immunity” links to a January 2022 New York Times article. It seems Stanford has failed to keep up with the science because the very source they cite as authoritative is now reporting, “The newer variants, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading quickly, and boosters seem to do little to prevent infections with these viruses.”
Speaking of not keeping up, that same article says the new bivalent boosters target “the original version of the coronavirus and the Omicron variants circulating earlier this year, BA.4 and BA.5.”
It then goes on to quote Head of Beth Israel Deaconess’s Center for Virology & Vaccine Research Dan Barouch, who says, “It’s not likely that any of the vaccines or boosters, no matter how many you get, will provide substantial and sustained protection against acquisition of infection.”
In other words, Stanford’s rationale for requiring the boosters is obsolete according to the authority they cite in their justification.
If Stanford is genuinely concerned about “reduc[ing] the possibility of widespread disruptions that could impact the student experience,” then it should not only stop mandating the vaccine but advise against it.
“People aged under 50 are generally not at particularly higher risk of becoming severely ill from covid-19. In addition, younger people aged under 50 are well protected against becoming severely ill from covid-19, as a very large number of them have already been vaccinated and have previously been infected with covid-19, and there is consequently good immunity among this part of the population.”
“Especially the youngest should consider potential side effects against the benefits of taking this dose.”
—Ingrid Bjerring, Chief Doctor at Lier Municipality
“We did not find sufficient evidence to recommend that this part of the population [younger age bracket] should take a new dose now.… Each vaccine comes with the risk for side effects. Is it then responsible to offer this, when we know that the individual health benefit of a booster likely is low?”
—Are Stuwitz Berg, Department Director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health
A new Nordic cohort study of 8.9 million participants supports these concerns, finding a nearly nine-fold increase in myocarditis among males aged 12–39 within 28 days of receiving the Moderna COVID-19 booster over those who stopped after two doses.
This mirrors my own findings that myocarditis rates are up 10 times among the vaccinated according to a public healthcare worker survey.
The paper cites a study by Israel’s Ministry of Health that “assesses the risk of myocarditis after receiving the 2nd vaccine dose to be between 1 in 3000 to 1 in 6000 in men of age 16–24 and 1 in 120,000 in men under 30.”
A Thai study published in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease found cardiovascular manifestations in 29.24 percent of the adolescent cohort—including myopericarditis and tachycardia.
“[W]e need to be upfront that nearly every intervention has some risk, and the coronavirus vaccine is no different. The most significant risk is myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, which is most common in young men. The CDC cites a rate of 39 myocarditis cases per 1 million second doses given in males 18 to 24. Some studies found a much higher rate; a large Canadian database reported that among men ages 18 to 29 who received the second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the rate of myocarditis was 22 for every 100,000 doses.”
YOU have the power to stop the ongoing unnecessary harm that is devastating individuals and families. @Keir_Starmer the Labour Party also lost one of its most decorated doctors @KailashChandOBE to this mRNA product. Please stop this roll out NOW https://t.co/SECbfK9joz
President of the International Society for Vascular Surgery Serif Sultan and Consultant Surgeon Ahmad Malik are also demanding that we #StopTheShotsNow.
BREAKING:
President of the international vascular society raises concerns about covid vaccines in relation to cardiovascular problems.
‘It would be great if someone can show us the light of where to go from here’
Add the 34 percent who reported experiencing minor side effects, and you have nearly 72 million adults who’ve been hit with side effects from the vaccine.
“With 7% having a major side effect, that means over 12 million adults in the US have experienced a self-described major side effect that they attribute to the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s over 11 times the reported COVID death numbers. And also note that anyone who may have died from the vaccine obviously can’t tell us that in the poll.”
According toBritish Medical Journal Senior Editor Dr. Peter Doshi, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s own trial data found 1 in 800 vaccinated people experienced serious adverse events:
“The Pfizer and Moderna trials are both showing a clear signal of increased risk of serious adverse events among the vaccinated.…
“The trial data are indicating that we’re seeing about an elevated risk of these serious adverse events of around 1 in 800 people vaccinated.… That is much, much more common than what you see for other vaccines, where the reported rates are in the range of 1 or 2 per million vaccinees. In these trials, we’re seeing 1 in every 800. And this is a rate that in past years has had vaccines taken off the market.…
“We’re talking about randomized trials … which are widely considered the highest-quality evidence, and we’re talking about the trials that were submitted by Pfizer and Moderna that supported the regulators’ authorization.”
Dr Peter Doshi senior editor of the BMJ wants to know why we haven’t already #StoptheShots when 1 in 800 are seriously harmed, yet previous vaccines were suspended for harming ‘only’ 1 in 100’000.
Beats me too! pic.twitter.com/llT4JwL5WQ
Stanford is asking students to risk a 1 in 800 chance of serious adverse events—meaning the kind of events that can land you in the hospital, disable you, and kill you. And for what?
Anyone who knows how to perform a cost-benefit analysis can see this is all cost and zero benefit.
One of the six most-cited scientists in the world, Ioannidis found the median IFR was 0.0003 percent for those under 20 and 0.002 percent for twenty-somethings, concluding the fatalities “are lower than pre-pandemic years when only the younger age strata are considered” and that “the IFR in non-elderly individuals was much lower than previously thought.”
And yet Ioannidis’s employer is mandating an experimental product with extensively documented risks of severe harm.
What if a Stanford student dies and the coroner determines it was caused by the vaccine? That happened with George Watts Jr., a 24-year-old college student whose cause of death Chief Deputy Coroner Timothy Cahill Jr. attributed to “COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis.” Cahill says, “The vaccine caused the heart to go into failure.”
Notorious for mandating a booster not yet tested on humans (just like Stanford), Ontario’s Western University dropped its mandate on November 29, 2022, stating:
“We are revoking our vaccination policy and will no longer require students, employees, and visitors to be vaccinated to come to campus.”
The timing is interesting, don’t you think? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence—even though this Clinical Research in Cardiology paper determined vaccine-induced myocardial inflammation was the cause of death in “five persons who have died unexpectedly within seven days following anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination.” In that analysis, the authors “establish the histological phenotype of lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.”
Coincidences notwithstanding, Stanford may want to revoke the mandate before anything like that happens to one of its students … if it hasn’t already.
And if that’s not incentive enough, Stanford should consider the legal ramifications of mandating an experimental product. As this JAMA article warns:
“Mandating COVID-19 vaccines under an EUA is legally and ethically problematic. The act authorizing the FDA to issue EUAs requires the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to specify whether individuals may refuse the vaccine and the consequences for refusal. Vaccine mandates are unjustified because an EUA requires less safety and efficacy data than full Biologics License Application (BLA) approval.”
“Title IX commits the university to not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender in getting an equal education.… I oversee a project in which 3,500 experts review the Pfizer documents released under court order by a lawsuit. In that document, there is catastrophic harm to women! And especially to young women! And especially to their reproductive health.… 72% of those with adverse events in the Pfizer documents are women!”
Other universities are currently facing lawsuits for mandating the COVID vaccine in violation of state laws, including one against Ohio University, University of Cincinnati, Bowling Green State University, and Miami University of Ohio.
By the same token, this evidence shows the vaccines are ASSOCIATED with:
heightened transmission levels
greater chances of catching COVID
increased hospitalization rates
higher excess mortality
disproportionate injuries to women
Why is Stanford mandating these unsafe and ineffective products, again?
If logic, peer-reviewed studies, and legal concerns such as the violation of Title IX don’t convince Stanford to rescind the mandate, then what about its stated ethical commitment to upholding its Code of Conduct?
“(1) are not based on an updated (Omicron era) stratified risk-benefit assessment for this age group; (2) may result in a net harm to healthy young adults; (3) are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; (4) violate the reciprocity principle because serious vaccine-related harms are not reliably compensated due to gaps in vaccine injury schemes; and (5) may result in wider social harms.” (emphases mine here and below)
They calculate that:
“To prevent one COVID-19 hospitalisation over a 6-month period, we estimate that 31,207–42,836 young adults aged 18–29 years must receive a third mRNA vaccine.”
The authors conclude that:
“university COVID-19 vaccine mandates are likely to cause net expected harms to young healthy adults—for each hospitalisation averted we estimate approximately 18.5 SAEs and 1,430–4,626 disruptions of daily activities.… these severe infringements of individual liberty and human rights are ethically unjustifiable.”
In this paper, the authors contend that COVID-19 vaccine mandates “have unintended harmful consequences and may not be ethical, scientifically justified, and effective” and “may prove to be both counterproductive and damaging to public health.”
Over the course of history, countless products once thought to be safe—from DDT to cigarettes to thalidomide for pregnant women to Vioxx—were eventually discovered to be dangerous and even lethal. Responsible governments, agencies, and companies pull those products from the market when the scientific data proves harm—and institutions that care about their community members certainly don’t mandate those products when evidence of risk becomes obvious, as is the case now for the experimental COVID vaccines.
Mahatma Gandhi once stated:
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.”
The truth is clear to anyone who’s willing to look.
Will it stand up for the lives and health of its students—or will it wait until tragedy strikes another George Watts Jr. or Megha Thakur?
This is a historic opportunity for Stanford to prove its allegiance to people, scientific data, and critical thought over pharmaceutical donors, political pressures, and conformist thinking.
Hamburger Prices Might Continue To Rise As US Cattle Herd Shrinks
Consumers grappling with elevated food inflation might be in for another surprise: A shrinking US cattle herd indicates tight livestock supplies for years.
Years-long drought in the US Plains has withered pastures and squeezed supplies of feeds including hay and corn. The result: ranchers have liquidated some animals to cut costs, depressing breeding.
The latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture cattle-inventory report on Tuesday showed 89.3 million cattle as of Jan. 1, down 3% from a year ago. The decline wasn’t unexpected and was in line with a Bloomberg survey.
However, a much more significant decline in beef production could be nearing. If not this year, perhaps between 2024-26.
“With fewer cattle supplies becoming available, beef production is expected to undergo a sizable decline over the next few years,” said Courtney Shum, a livestock-market reporter at Urner Barry, an industry publication.
What’s alarming is the shrinking herd of beef replacement cows has fallen to 1962 levels.
Don Roose, founder of US Commodities, a grain and livestock investment and management firm, warned:
“We’re still in the contraction phase.
“It takes a long time to build a herd back up again.”
Meaning beef prices at the supermarket might go higher until demand destruction hits.
Soon, beef and eggs will be a delicacy for only the rich while everyone else ingests protein-rich insects
