Inmate Who Shanked Derek Chauvin 22 Times Is Former FBI Informant Who Led Mexican Mafia Faction

Inmate Who Shanked Derek Chauvin 22 Times Is Former FBI Informant Who Led Mexican Mafia Faction

A 52-year-old man who stabbed former police officer Derek Chauvin with an “improvised knife” is a former FBI informant, according to court documents filed on Dec. 1.

John Turscak stabbed Chauvin 22 times before being subdued by responding corrections officers. He later told them that he would have killed the man convicted for the murder of George Floyd (who had an elephant dose of fentanyl in his system and died ‘with’ Covid).

The stabbing occurred on Nov. 24 around 12:30 p.m., the day after Thanksgiving known commonly as Black Friday. Turscak waived his Miranda rights and told FBI agents that he ‘did not want to kill Chauvin, but had been thinking about attacking him for a month,’ taking the opportunity when both of them were in the law library at the Federal Correctional Institution Tucson.

“Turscak stated that his attack of [Mr. Chauvin] on Black Friday was symbolic with the Black Lives Matter Movement and the ‘black hand’ symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia criminal organization,” said prosecutors.

As the Epoch Times notes, Turscak was charged with four counts, including assault with a dangerous weapon and assault with intent to commit murder. He was moved after the stabbing to an adjacent federal penitentiary in Tucson, where he remained in custody Friday, inmate records show.

Mr. Turscak did not have a lawyer listed on the court docket.

A lawyer for Mr. Chauvin did not return an inquiry about the charges.

Federal officials have said an inmate at the Tuscon facility was stabbed on Nov. 24 and that the inmate was rushed to a hospital. They said they would not identify the inmate.

“For privacy and safety reasons, we are not providing the name of the victim or their medical status,” a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Minnesota officials had said that Mr. Chauvin was the inmate and that he was expected to survive.

Carolyn Pawlenty, Mr. Chauvin’s mother, wrote on Facebook on Friday that she is seeking answers regarding the stabbing.

The FBI and BOP are not giving me any answers other then [sic] ‘he is in stable condition and it is under investigation,'” she wrote.

“Who did this, where were the guards, where is the video showing what happened?? How could you let this happen?” she wondered.

Gregory Erickson, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Chauvin, told The Epoch Times via email a day after the attack that none of Mr. Chauvin’s family members nor his lawyers had been apprised of his condition or location. “I view this lack of communication with his attorneys and family members as completely outrageous. It appears to be indicative of a poorly run facility and indicates how Derek’s assault was allowed to happen,” he said.

BOP declined to respond directly but a spokesperson said it “takes seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody, as well as maintain the safety of correctional employees and the community.”

Sent to Federal Prison

Mr. Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022 to simultaneously serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.

Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer at the time had advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he would be a target.

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his murder conviction. Separately, Mr. Chauvin is trying to overturn his federal guilty plea, claiming new evidence shows he didn’t cause Mr. Floyd’s death.

Mr. Floyd’s death was determined to be a homicide, with the man suffering a heart attack while being restrained by law enforcement officers on May 25, 2020.
Mr. Chauvin while detaining Mr. Floyd knelt on Mr. Floyd’s back and neck, according to the medical examiner and expert testimony at his trial. But Mr. Floyd also had a fatal level of drugs in his system, his autopsy showed.

Inmate’s History

Mr. Turscak led a faction of the Mexican Mafia in the Los Angeles area in the late 1990s and went by the nickname “Stranger,” according to court records. He became an FBI informant in 1997, providing information about the gang and recordings of conversations he had with its members and associates.

The investigation Mr. Turscak was aiding led to more than 40 indictments. But about midway through, the FBI dropped Mr. Turscak as an informant because he was still dealing drugs, extorting money, and authorizing assaults. According to court papers, Mr. Turscak plotted attacks on rival gang members and was accused of attempting to kill a leader of a rival Mexican Mafia faction while also being targeted himself.

Mr. Turscak pleaded guilty in 2001 to racketeering and conspiring to kill a gang rival. He said he thought his cooperation with the FBI would have earned a lighter sentence.

“I didn’t commit those crimes for kicks,” Mr. Turscak said, according to news reports about his sentencing. “I did them because I had to if I wanted to stay alive. I told that to the FBI agents and they just said, ‘Do what you have to do.”’

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 15:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/CIzgn3d Tyler Durden

Watchdog To Probe FBI Headquarters Selection Process Amid Claims Of Political Bias

Watchdog To Probe FBI Headquarters Selection Process Amid Claims Of Political Bias

Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the General Services Administration (GSA) will investigate whether politics influenced the agency’s selection process for the location of the FBI’s new headquarters.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Washington on Nov. 6, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The GSA announced on Nov. 9 that it had chosen Greenbelt, Maryland, over two other potential locations.

The move sparked concern about a “political conflict of interest” from FBI Director Christopher Wray, who wrote in an internal email obtained by The Associated Press that the choice was made after a GSA executive overruled a board to pick land owned by a former employer.

As one of the other sites in contention was in Springfield, Virginia, that news angered Virginia’s congressional delegation and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who claimed the process had been “tainted” by politics.

“We are deeply disturbed to learn that a political appointee at the General Services Administration overruled the unanimous recommendation of a three-person panel comprised of career experts from the GSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, concluding that Springfield, Virginia, is the site best suited for the new FBI headquarters,” the officials said in a joint statement.

We have repeatedly condemned political interference in the independent, agency-run site selection process for a new FBI headquarters. Any fair weighing of the criteria points to a selection of Virginia. It is clear that this process has been irrevocably undermined and tainted, and this decision must now be reversed.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) raised those concerns in a Nov. 15 letter to the GSA’s Acting Inspector General Robert Erickson. On Nov. 30, he received a reply confirming that an investigation would be launched.

“My office is initiating an evaluation of GSA’s selection of the site,” Mr. Erickson wrote. “Our objective will be to assess the agency’s process and procedures for the site selection to relocate the FBI Headquarters. We intend to begin this work immediately and will share with you and the relevant committees a copy of any report which may result from this evaluation.”

Technically independent, the GSA OIG is a watchdog dedicated to investigating internal matters at the GSA.

Under Pressure

According to the GSA, the Greenbelt location was selected because it presented “the lowest cost to taxpayers, provided the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, and gave the government the most certainty on project delivery schedule.”

The agency added that the chosen location would also provide “the highest potential to advance sustainability and equity.”

GSA looks forward to building the FBI a state-of-the-art headquarters campus in Greenbelt to advance their critical mission for years to come,” GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in a statement.

The decision followed a sudden change to the selection criteria in July, when the agency announced that it was increasing the weight of cost and social equity in its decision-making process and reducing the importance of transportation and the location’s proximity to other FBI facilities, like its Quantico facility in Virginia.

The changes were made after officials in Maryland argued that convenience had been weighted too heavily as a factor—a fact Virginia officials pointed to as evidence that the decision was “fouled by politics.”

Praising Mr. Erickson’s decision to open an investigation, Virginia’s congressional delegation agreed it was the “appropriate next step.”

“We applaud the inspector general for moving quickly and encourage him to move forward to complete a careful and thorough review,” they said in a joint statement. “In the meantime, the GSA must pause all activities related to the relocation until the IG’s investigation is complete.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 15:10

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/TftAJ2c Tyler Durden

Boeing Drops Out Of USAF’s ‘Doomsday’ Replacement Plane Competition

Boeing Drops Out Of USAF’s ‘Doomsday’ Replacement Plane Competition

The US Air Force (USAF) eliminated Boeing Co. from the replacement competition of a half-century-old “Doomsday” plane that can survive a nuclear war. This leaves Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) as the sole remaining known competitor. 

Sources told Reuters that Boeing – the incumbent manufacturer of the E-4B Nightwatch – could not agree with the USAF on data rights and contract terms for the replacement plane that began flying in the 1970s. In other words, the planemaker did not want to sign a fixed-price agreement. 

“We are approaching all new contract opportunities with added discipline to ensure we can meet our commitments and support the long-term health of our business. We remain confident our [E-4B replacement] approach is the most comprehensive, technically mature and lowest-risk solution for the customer and Boeing,” a Boeing spokesperson told the military blog Breaking Defense

Boeing added, “Our proposal is based on 60 years of military commercial derivative aircraft knowledge and experience, including the design, development, and sustainment of the E-4B Nightwatch, which currently serves the national security command and control mission.” 

A review of Boeing’s latest financials shows its defense unit lost a whopping $1.3 billion this year due to fixed-price development programs amid supply chain snarls, elevated inflation, and high interest rates. Since 2014, the planemaker has lost $16.3 billion on fixed-price programs. 

“Rest assured, we haven’t signed any fixed-price development contracts nor (do we) intend to,” Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, told investors in October. 

The USAF’s four E-4B aircraft fleet dates back to the early 1970s and is used as a mobile command post for the National Command Authority, namely the US President.

The Survivable Airborne Operations Center is spearheading the move for the new replacement aircraft. The contract is scheduled to be awarded in the second quarter of 2024. SNC is the only known competitor to provide the USAF with a new Doomsday plane. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 14:35

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/gbtyHKN Tyler Durden

CBP Whistleblower Alleges “Problematic Practices” And “Substandard” Health Care For Migrants In Custody

CBP Whistleblower Alleges “Problematic Practices” And “Substandard” Health Care For Migrants In Custody

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

A senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employee turned whistleblower is alleging years of “problematic practices” in the agency’s treatment of migrants under detention at the border.

Illegal immigrants wait in along the border wall to board a bus after surrendering to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 12, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

In a letter sent to Congress on Nov. 30 by the Government Accountability Project, an advocacy group, on behalf of Troy Hendrickson, the CBP employee detailed the alleged failures of the agency’s medical contractor, Loyal Source Government Services.

Mr. Hendrickson, a 15-year CBP veteran, said the actions of the medical contractor—the sole provider of medical care for people under CBP custody—were “compounded by the unwillingness of the CBP contracting office” to hold it accountable for its alleged failures and ensure oversight.

According to its official website, Loyal Source Government Services is a Florida-based company focusing on government health care, technical and support services, engineering, and travel health care.

The letter to Congress states that Mr. Hendrickson was assigned to work with the CBP Office of the Chief Medical Officer (OCMO) as a Contracting Officer Representative, beginning in August of 2021.

During this time, he “immediately raised concerns internally regarding problematic practices he witnessed, including unfit medical providers, severe understaffing, privacy breaches, and a failure to report sexual harassment in a CBP medical facility,” according to the letter.

The negligence, according to Mr. Hendrickson, resulted in “substandard” health care for migrants held in CBP custody.

“Mr. Hendrickson’s complaints, made with the support of OCMO leadership, went largely ignored and unaddressed by the CBP Office of Acquisition, the entity with authority to hold Loyal Source to the terms of the Medical Services Contract,” the letter said.

“Despite his multiple requests over several months to take corrective action, such as issuing mandated performance appraisals and sending a remedial notice known as a ‘cure letter’ instructing Loyal Source to fix their performance problems, the Contracting Office consistently refused to hold the contractor accountable,” the letter stated.

Whistleblower Suffered Retaliation

Mr. Hendrickson further states that officials from CBP retaliated against him for raising the alleged problems by removing him from his position and preventing him from working on any future CBP medical contracts.

Nearly a year after Mr. Hendrickson allegedly raised his concerns, in May 2023, eight-year-old Anadith Reyes Alvarez, a Panamanian girl with sickle cell anemia and congenital heart disease, died at a CBP facility in Harlingen, Texas, after being detained by border officials.

An independent report later found that the young girl’s death could have been prevented and that she was denied repeated requests for care.

Mr. Hendrickson’s letter said the young girl’s death was due to “avoidable medical negligence” by Loyal Source Personnel.

The whistleblower is urging Congress to ensure thorough and prompt oversight of Loyal Source’s alleged ongoing failures to comply with mandated medical care of migrants in CBP custody.

He is also calling for increased oversight into the CBP contracting office’s “gross mismanagement, gross waste of taxpayer dollars, and abuse of authority in its refusal to hold Loyal Source accountable for the company’s contract performance failures.”

Congress must also ensure that Mr. Hendrickson and any other current or former CBP or Loyal Source employees who turn whistleblower are not subjected to retaliation, the letter stated.

“Today we and our client, Mr. Troy Hendrickson, demand accountability for the years of dangerous underperformance of the CBP medical contractor and the alarming lack of oversight of CBP’s critical mandate to provide medical services to noncitizens in the agency’s custody,” Government Accountability Project Immigration Counsel Andrea Meza said in a statement.

Texas Army National Guard look on as illegal immigrants board a bus after surrendering to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents for immigration and asylum claim processing following the end of Title 42 on the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 12, 2023. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Medical Contractor Received ‘Millions’ of Taxpayer Dollars

“The CBP Office of Chief Medical Officer and the Medical Services Contract were created in direct response to an ongoing pattern of deaths of children in CBP custody. It is unconscionable that when the contractor, receiving millions of taxpayer dollars, failed to meet OCMO’s medical standards, contracting officials refused at every turn to hold the contractor to account and instead retaliated against Mr. Hendrickson,” Ms. Meza continued.

Loyal Source Government Services received a $25 million-per-month contract from the CBP, according to The Washington Post.

“Mr. Hendrickson has been sounding the alarm within CBP and to multiple oversight entities for years, and had his warnings been heeded, Anadith Reyes Alvarez might be alive today. It is long past time for Congress and federal oversight entities to take action so that no other family will suffer the loss of their child due to medical negligence in CBP custody,” the letter concluded.

Responding to the letter, a CBP spokesperson told Forbes that the agency “takes its obligations to investigate whistleblower allegations seriously,” and “remains committed to ensuring that contract oversight—and the procurement process writ large—are conducted correctly.”

The spokesperson added that the health and safety of migrants in CBP custody is “a top priority” and that the agency has taken a number of “significant steps” to improve care and decrease the amount of time migrants spend in CBP custody, including via new leadership into the Office of the Chief Medical Officer.

Elsewhere, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a Nov. 30 statement that the whistleblower’s allegations raise “serious concerns.”

These systemic failures to conduct proper oversight of its contractor severely impacted the quality of medical care available to individuals in CBP’s custody, endangering vulnerable migrants such as Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez,” the lawmaker said.

The Democrat vowed to investigate the issue further and take steps as needed to better “protect migrants in government custody.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Loyal Source Government Services for further comment.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 14:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/L3poO1k Tyler Durden

“Two Words… Tucker Carlson”: Greg Gutfeld Gores Fox After Musk Blasts Activist Advertisers

“Two Words… Tucker Carlson”: Greg Gutfeld Gores Fox After Musk Blasts Activist Advertisers

Greg Gutfeld just took a major shot at his employer, Fox News, saying what we all knew: Tucker Carlson, the highest-rated on-air host in television history, was fired due to pressure from special interest groups.

While discussing Elon Musk’s “fuck you” moment over advertiser attempts to blackmail the billionaire, Gutfeld joked that it would be like “extorting Jerry Nadler with salad, or blackmailing sports fans by threatening to cancel PBS.”

He then said that Musk was the last man standing against “the censorship-industrial complex, which is made up of government, media and tech forces.”

Then, Gutfeld stated what we’ve all suspected since it happened…

“He [Musk] realizes that advertisers have no spine and can be easily cowed by special interest groups in cahoots with political allies – if you don’t believe me I got two words for ya – Tucker Carlson.

Watch (h/t Modernity.news):

Carlson says ‘global freedom hinges on Musk and X’

Meanwhile, in an interview with VC David Sacks, Tucker Carlson says he thinks that the fate of free speech hinges on X.

“I’m worried about the pressure being brought to bear on X because it’s the only huge international free speech platform with hundreds of millions of people,” said Carlson, adding “The existence of X where anyone around the world can get for free a whole range of opinions that aren’t controlled — that changes everything.

Watch the full interview below:

 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 13:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/LflCZvQ Tyler Durden

Fifth Circuit Rules Against Texas in Case Where State Claimed Immigration and Drug Smuggling Qualify as “Invasion”


Texas | NA
Flag of Texas. (NA)

 

Yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled against Texas in United States v. Abbott, a case where the federal government is suing the state of Texas for installing floating buoy barriers in the Rio Grande River to block migration and drug smuggling,   creating a safety hazard and possibly impeding navigation. The Biden Administration claims this violates the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. Texas argues otherwise, but but also cites one of the “invasion” provisions of the Constitution as justification for the state’s actions. Texas relies on Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which provides, “[n]o state shall, without the Consent of Congress, . . . engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” Texas contends that illegal migration and drug smuggling qualify as “invasion,” and therefore the Constitution gives the state the power to take military action in response, even if doing so might violate a federal statute, and even if there is no congressional authorization for war.

In previous writings about this case, and the broader issues raised by claims that immigration and drug smuggling qualify as “invasion,” I have explained why such contentions are badly wrong as a matter of text and original meaning, and why accepting them would set a dangerous precedent empowering states to engage in war without congressional authorization, and the federal government to suspend the writ of habeas corpus at virtually any time it wants.

In August, a federal district court ruled against Texas on both the statutory and constitutional issues, and entered a preliminary injunction against Texas. Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit affirmed, in a divided 2-1 ruling.

The majority opinion by Judge Dana Douglas focused almost entirely on the statutory issue. However, it does also note that it upholds the district court’s ruling that the federal government is likely to prevail on the merits (one of the criteria for upholding a preliminary injunction), and this applies to the district court’s ruling on the “invasion” argument, as well as the statutory one.

In a dissent opinion, Judge Don Willett argues that the majority got the statutory issue wrong, mainly because the part of the river in question is not “navigable,” and therefore the relevant statute doesn’t apply to it. He also argues that the government failed to prove that it would suffer “irreparable harm” if the injunction was denied, or that the balance of equities and the public interest require an injunction. However, he also noted that “Texas has not offered concrete evidence that the barrier has saved lives or reduced illegal crossings and drug trafficking.” Significantly, Judge Willett did not endorse Texas’s invasion argument.

I won’t opine on the statutory issue. Both the majority and Judge Willett make some good points there. My interest is focused on the “invasion” theory, which has enormous significance that goes beyond this specific case. I am happy that, so far, none of the judges who have considered the case endorsed it. For those keeping track, the district judge is a Reagan appointee, the two judges in the Fifth Circuit majority are Democratic appointees, and Judge Willett is a libertarian-leaning conservative appointed by Trump.

Texas will likely try to get the Supreme Court to hear the case. If the Court takes it, I hope they too will reject the “invasion” theory, regardless of what they do on the statutory question.

 

The post Fifth Circuit Rules Against Texas in Case Where State Claimed Immigration and Drug Smuggling Qualify as "Invasion" appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/ravEhWL
via IFTTT

Israeli AI ‘Assassination Factory’ Plays Central Role In Gaza War

Israeli AI ‘Assassination Factory’ Plays Central Role In Gaza War

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

Tel Aviv has been relying on an AI Program dubbed “the Gospel” to select targets in Gaza at a rapid pace. In past operations in Gaza, the IDF ran out of targets to strike in the besieged enclave.

A statement on the IDF website says the Israeli military is using the Gospel to “produce targets at a fast pace.” It continues, “Through the rapid and automatic extraction of intelligence,” the Gospel produced targeting recommendations for its researchers “with the goal of a complete match between the recommendation of the machine and the identification carried out by a person.”

Getty Images via Bloomberg

Aviv Kochavi, former head of the IDF, said the system was first used in the May 2021 bombing campaign in Gaza.  “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year,” he said. “Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.”

The IDF does not disclose what it inputs into the Gospel for the program to produce a list of targets.

Thursday, the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine reported Tel Aviv was using AI to pick targets in Gaza. A former Israeli official told the +972 that the Gospel was being used as a “mass assassination factory.” The program is selecting the home of suspected low-level Hamas members for destruction. Sources told the outlet that strikes on homes can kill numerous civilians.

One source was critical of the Gospel. “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” they said.

On Friday, the Guardian expanded on the +972 article by reporting that the Gospel plays a central role in the Gaza military operations.

A former senior Israeli military source told the Guardian that operatives use a “very accurate” calculation of the number or rate of civilians fleeing a building before an impending strike. However, other experts disputed that assertion. A lawyer who advises governments on AI and compliance with humanitarian law told the outlet there was “little empirical evidence” to support the claim.

During the nearly two-month-long conflict, Israel has hit over 15,000 targets. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip. The IDF reports that it has only killed between 1,000 and 2,000 suspected Hamas members. At the same time, at least 15,000 civilians have reportedly been killed, including an estimated 6,000 children.

Richard Moyes, a researcher who heads Article 36, said the images of Gaza prove the Israeli bombing of Gaza has not focused on accuracy. “Look at the physical landscape of Gaza,” he explained. “We’re seeing the widespread flattening of an urban area with heavy explosive weapons, so to claim there’s precision and narrowness of force being exerted is not borne out by the facts.” This week, the BBC reviewed drone and satellite images of Gaza and determined that over 100,000 buildings have sustained damage.

Israeli sources speaking with +972 also disputed the claim that the IDF has attempted to avoid civilian casualties. A senior intelligence officer told his officers after October 7 that the goal was to “kill as many Hamas operatives as possible,” for which the criteria around harming Palestinian civilians were significantly relaxed, the outlet reported.

A second source said that the massive bombing campaign was due to the embarrassment the Israeli government suffered on October 7. “All of this is happening contrary to the protocol used by the IDF in the past,” they stated. “There is a feeling that senior officials in the army are aware of their failure on October 7, and are busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an image [of victory] that will salvage their reputation.”

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Israeli government had been aware of Hamas’s plans for October 7 for more than a year. The article explained that Israeli officials believe “Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 12:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/VGvl1Nc Tyler Durden

Bidenomics Winning? 60% Of Americans Report Their Income Does Not Keep Up With Inflation

Bidenomics Winning? 60% Of Americans Report Their Income Does Not Keep Up With Inflation

The Biden Administration has been complaining about the American public’s negative views on the economy, arguing that people are operating on “false perceptions influenced by right-wing media.”  

But is this really the case?

Is the economy really booming under Bidenomics and the majority of the US populace is simply ignoring their good fortune?

Never has there been a point in US history when financial conditions were good and everyone preferred they be bad. 

In fact, government officials and the media have a well established habit of misrepresenting economic data as a means to convince the public that the system is healthier than it is, and Biden is no exception.  People know when their wallets are hurting, gaslighting them is not going to be effective.

Yet another data point released this week supports the position of the public that the nation is not as prosperous the government would like us to believe.

Consumer financial services company Bankrate has released a survey showing that the American jobs market is cooling, indicating that high interest rates are starting to puncture the inflationary consumer spending bonanza along with the explosion in retail hiring triggered by over $8 trillion in covid stimulus.  The effects of the helicopter money are fading.  

More important, however, was the survey’s data on wages. 

Over 60% of Americans reported that their wages were lagging well behind inflation. 

Among workers who did get a raise or better-paying job, more than half (53 percent) say their earnings lost ground to inflation, up from 50 percent in 2022.  In other words, inflation is still eroding worker gains despite the much hyped decline in CPI the past few months.

This information contradicts the claims made by Biden and Democrats that wages are accelerating and beating back inflation. 

The situation is actually getting worse by the year.  While CPI might show a narrow window in time for inflation, it is diluted by hundreds of consumer categories and services instead of focusing on necessities, where the real price explosion has been.  Furthermore, CPI is not an indicator of accumulated inflation over the past few years, which amounts to 25%-30% on average. 

A 30% increase in cost of living in the span of three years is a disaster; it’s not surprising that Biden and the establishment media would seek to hide it. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 12:15

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/Zwe8uK3 Tyler Durden

A Crime Against Humanity…

A Crime Against Humanity…

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“This is in my opinion, the worst thing that’s ever happened to our country in my lifetime in the world, and the government’s role cannot be denied,”

– Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on C-19-Vaxx

History is a trickster. It unfolds emergently with uncanny creativity, often blindsiding humanity with the unanticipated consequences and non-linear outcomes of previous unfoldings. So, here we are now in a Second Civil War.

Really? “Between whom?” you might ask.

Between truth and untruth.

Between a sociopathic bureaucratic blob steeped in lies and a citizenry obliged to live and die by the blob’s lies.

Case-in-point: the emergent evolution of US public health agencies, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the NIAID and their many fiefdoms, into a gigantic engine of death fueled by incessant and persistent lying. The people running these agencies lied to you about the creation and origin of the novel corona virus, SARS Covid-19. Then they lied about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines created as the sovereign remedy for Covid-19. They also lied about and suppressed actual effective treatments for the disease they invented and loosed on the world and then coerced the whole medical establishment into breaking its Hippocratic oath (first do no harm) to administer vaccines that killed. They lied about these things knowingly. And through the whole three-year episode, US public health has hidden the data about Covid and the vaccines while aggressively lying about it and punishing American citizens who found ways to expose the truth.

The vaccines have killed an estimate 670,000 Americans and 17-million world-wide, consensus figures arrived at by citizens devoted to uncovering the truth. One of these is independent researcher Steve Kirsch, a Silicon Valley billionaire who invented the optical mouse. In 2021, after noticing a strange pattern of early deaths and injuries in his own circle of acquaintances, Mr. Kirsch devoted himself and his fortune to uncovering the truth about the Covid-19 vaccines. Mr. Kirsch describes himself as “a nerd,” by which he means that he is good at math and at assembling bodies of information using rigorous statistical analysis that present a coherent picture of reality, a.k.a. the truth.

Last night, Thursday, November 30, Mr.Kirsch gave a talk at his alma mater, MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts on what the best available statistics tell us about the Covid-19 vaccines (for instance, that so far they have killed more Americans than World War Two). The talk was live-streamed on the Rumble platform (YouTube scrubbed it).

There is an interesting story behind Mr. Kirsch’s event. Years before the Covid-19 fiasco, Mr. Kirsch gave MIT $2.5 million to build a new lecture hall. Then, during Covid-19, Mr. Kirsch asked MIT to allow him to stage a lecture about his findings. The MIT administrators refused to let Mr. Kirsch speak in the lecture hall that he paid for. Mr. Kirsch went public with that, embarrassing the university, and under new MIT President Sally Kornbluth, the Institute relented.

Prior to the November 30 talk, Mr. Kirsch sought to share his data with eminent MIT professor Robert Langer, winner of countless awards for advances in the biotechnological sciences. Dr. Langer runs a research program that his MIT webpage describes as follows:

The group’s work is at the interface of biotechnology and materials science. A major focus is the study and development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins, continuously at controlled rates and for prolonged periods of time.”

Sounds like Dr. Langer would be intimately acquainted with the mechanisms of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, especially the development of lipid nanoparticles that facilitate the delivery of the mRNA message into their targeted cells.

Dr. Langer declined to see the data or to meet with Mr. Kirsch. At the beginning of his talk, Mr. Kirsch offered some speculation as to why Dr. Langer might demur to see the data or meet with him.

Turns out it is because Dr. Langer sits on the Moderna board of directors. If Dr. Langer were exposed to “record level” data in a structured format that indicated the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine was killing a lot of people, Dr. Langer would be required legally to insist that the company take it off the market. Now you see how the venal mendacity of Big Pharma intersects with the perfidy of Academia, and at the highest levels. Dr. Langer has been called out, and publicly disgraced by Mr. Kirsch. Will Dr. Langer sue Mr. Kirsch for defamation? I doubt it. It is a fact that Dr. Langer is on the Moderna Board, and his obligations to the public are clear vis-à-vis Moderna’s flagship product. It will be interesting to see how MIT and Dr. Langer handle this quandary.

Today’s morning news (Friday, Dec 1) contains nothing about Steve Kirsch’s landmark talk at MIT, which essentially laid out evidence of a crime against humanity. One feature of the assembled data is that it can take a long time for the vaccines to kill people — six months being only an average. CDC director Mandy Cohen is still pushing the Covid-19 vaccines, as did her predecessor Rochelle Walensky, who resigned just this past June, so expect a continued incidence of excess and early deaths. Did both of them somehow miss the massive accumulating data and news reports about the danger of mRNA vaccines? Could they be that dumb? Or did they knowingly lie to the public, pushing vaccines that are obviously unsafe? At some point, they may have to answer these questions.

Also yesterday, independent reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The two journalists had previously published the “Twitter Files,” an investigation into the government’s infiltration of social media for the purpose of censorship and manipulating news that would affect the outcome of recent elections. In this new chapter, the two, along with Substack blogger Alex Gutentag, have released a report based on whistleblower testimony about the sweeping censorship framework called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League that the Department of Homeland Security cooked up in 2018, and whose coordinated activities metastasized through the so-called “intelligence community,” the White House, and agencies of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The same tyrannical programming has been adopted by many of the governments in the EU.

The net result of all this is Western Civilization saturating itself in lies. It appears that Covid-19 was well into development when it was adopted by the blob and its protectors in the Democratic Party to use as a means for finally getting rid of President Trump in 2020 after RussiaGate and a fake impeachment failed. The introduction of poorly-tested mRNA vaccines — actually developed by the US Department of Defense and licensed out to Pfizer and Moderna — looks like it was intended to mitigate Covid-19 after it had accomplished its task of enabling election ballot fraud to get a patsy president, “Joe Biden,” into the White House. But the vaccines turned out to be a gigantic and deadly botch. And once they were sold to the public, and the vaccine companies made billions, and people started dying and getting gross illnesses, everybody involved in the vast blob network had to keep on lying to cover up their crimes.

What follows from here in this new civil war of truth against untruth is that untruth will lose because untruth is fundamentally unsound and can’t stand on its own. The US bureaucratic blob, like the fictional product Soylent Green, is people. There are, obviously thousands of them, virtually a whole army, guilty of crimes.

The whistleblowers are popping out all over now. We’re approaching the magic moment when the whole blob army flips and rats out each other in the attempt to save their asses. Wait for it.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 11:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/IdSYtTy Tyler Durden

Private Jets Headed To Global Warming Conference “Literally Frozen On Runway” 

Private Jets Headed To Global Warming Conference “Literally Frozen On Runway” 

While world leaders spoke at a ‘global warming’ conference in Dubai, located in the heart of the Arabian Desert, discussing the usual: banning gas stoves, cow farts, and petrol-powered vehicles, a powerful snowstorm grounded all flights at Munich Airport in Germany. 

“Private jets in Munich on the way to Dubai global warming conference are literally frozen on the runway, which has turned into a glacier,” said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former NOAA chief scientist. 

All flights have been canceled at Munich Airport. 

If not in years, Munich might have received the most significant snowfall on record. 

Another inconvenient truth… 

If world leaders actually believed in global warming, they would’ve not flown private jets to the desert. Furthermore,  having a global warming conference in an area where it snows is just bad optics for these virtue-signaling elites. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/02/2023 – 11:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/NTijgCW Tyler Durden