Month: April 2024

The appointment of Judith Suminwa Tuluka as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was announced Monday.

The former minister is the first woman who was made head of government in the country and the 17th female head of government or state on the African continent.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is governed under a semi-presidential system where an elected president and an appointed prime minister share executive powers, similar to the systems of France and Russia.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, data by the Council on Foreign Relations shows that Europe is generally the region with the highest concentration of female-led and repeatedly female-led nations.

You will find more infographics at Statista

All the countries which have had three or more female leaders (with the exceptions of Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand and India) are located there. The one which has had the most females at the helm is Switzerland. The country counts five former female presidents of the Swiss Confederation, but has an advantage because the presidents’ terms are limited to one year.

Finland follows with four female prime ministers or presidents, including Sanna Marin, who was premier from 2019 to 2023. Iceland has counted three female leaders. One of them, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, was the world’s first female elected president. She stayed in office for 16 years from 1980 to 1996.

The source counts women who have served as heads of government, heads of state or a combination of the two, except when the position was temporary, purely honorary or was filled by a monarch or appointed by one.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The harder the authorities and pundits push the “inflation is under control” narrative, the faster they erode public trust and confidence in the future value of labor and “money.”

YOLO spending–grabbing what you can right now because You Only Live Once–is now embedded in the zeitgeist. The original narrative–that the pandemic shutdown awakened a broad cultural awareness of the fragility of life and security, and so it’s wiser to buy experiences now rather than later–may be expanding into the complex realm of inflation and inflation expectations.

Covid changed how we spend: More YOLO splurging but less saving

The possibility that the human herd senses trend changes before statistics and the economic punditry comes under the capacious category of the wisdom of crowds: in this line of thinking, YOLO spending may be a reflection not just of a pandemic-instigated change of priorities, but of a growing sense that inflation is now embedded, and so it’s better to spend earnings now before they lose value.

This is the core behavioral response to embedded inflation: borrow and spend now, as savings will only lose purchasing power as time goes on. In hyper-inflationary economies, this leads to wage earners finding something to buy the day they’re paid, as their wages will lose value literally overnight.

Put another way, embedded inflation is systemic financial insecurity: the future value of labor and savings is unknown and unknowable, and could be much lower than we expect. To trust that labor and “money” will retain their current purchasing power is a fool’s game, as the crowd intuitively grasps the runaway-feedback nature of inflation: once it gets going, every increase in inflation fuels further increases.

Once this feedback is embedded in our expectations, it becomes extremely difficult to rebuild trust in future valuations of labor and “money.” In other words, there is a psychological element in inflation that is completely real and completely outside actual material causes of inflation such as scarcity and the relentless expansion of the money supply / credit.

Once expectations of inflation become embedded, enterprises raise prices and workers demand higher wages regardless of actual inflationary pressures. The gaslighting manipulation of inflation statistics pours gasoline on the fire of the expectations of inflation, as being told costs only rose 2% when we know they rose 20% destroys confidence in official assurances that “inflation is falling.”

The human herd also intuits that prices never fall back to pre-inflationary-spiral levels. If inflation moderates after a 20% spike, costs across the entire spectrum don’t drop 20%; they simply rise at a slower pace.

Unlike a direct tax, inflation’s indirect tax is difficult to calculate. Income and sales taxes are visible and can be estimated / calculated. The indirect tax of inflation is inherently difficult to estimate, as costs rise at different rates across goods and services, some are stickier than others, etc.

The ravages wrought by future inflation are known unknowns: we know inflation is built into our debt-based economy, but we have no way of knowing its future impact.

The safest approach is to spend cash now before it loses more value. This insecurity feeds back into our confidence in the entire economic status quo: our confidence in our future earnings and job security also decays, strengthening the impetus to spend now because we understand we might not be able to afford the travel, experiences, etc. in the future.

To the authorities and pundits tasked with gaslighting inflation to limit inflationary expectations, the wisdom of crowds looks like the madness of crowds: with trust and confidence in the future value of labor and “money” both declining, the sense of insecurity increases, generating demands for higher wages and prices now rather than later. This feedback loop generates its own inflationary pressure, which then feeds back into itself as everyone grasps the potential for an inflationary spiral that gets out of control.

To the authorities and pundits tasked with reassuring us that inflation is receding, this mob-generated expansion of inflationary feedback is madness. If only everyone believed us that inflation was near-zero, inflation would be near-zero. This is the end result of the idea that if we control expectations, beliefs and perceptions, we can control the real-world economy.

The problem with this idea is all the efforts to control the narrative generate their own feedback: a loss of trust and confidence in the system and its statistics. The harder the authorities and pundits push the “inflation is under control” narrative, the faster they erode public trust and confidence in the future value of labor and “money,” because claiming inflation is 3% and heading down after inflation has burned off 20% of our purchasing power in three years is, well, not credible.

Are we witnessing the wisdom of crowds or the madness of crowds? The old saying money talks, bull-dung walks comes to mind. When our earnings and savings start buying more of everything rather than less, we’ll recalibrate our expectations. Until then, it’s looking like the wisdom of crowds is manifesting.

*  *  *

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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

Amazon is ditching its “Just Walk Out” technology that allows customers to shop and leave stores without having to visit a typical physical checkout, company officials have confirmed.

Instead, the Seattle-based company will replace the technology with smart carts, also known as “dash carts,” through which customers can skip the checkout line.

That technology, effectively a scanner integrated into a shopping cart, also provides additional benefits, such as allowing consumers to scan their items as they shop and see their spending in real time via an onscreen receipt.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the change in a statement to USA TODAY, noting the decision will only impact Amazon Fresh locations—the company’s online and physical grocery stores—and not Amazon Go convenience stores.

The company said it is also keeping Just Walk Out technology in place at a small number of Fresh stores in the United Kingdom.

In addition, the decision will not impact the more than 130 third-party retailers that Amazon partners with across the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada for its Just Walk Out technology across locations including cafes, airports, stadiums, entertainment venues, conference centers, schools, and more, the spokesperson said.

The decision was made following customer feedback, the company official noted.

How ‘Just Walk Out’ Technology Works

“We’ve invested a lot of time redesigning a number of our Amazon Fresh stores over the last year, offering a better overall shopping experience with more value, convenience, and selection, and so far we’ve seen positive results, with higher customer shopping satisfaction scores and increased purchasing,” Jessica Martin, Amazon spokesperson, told the publication.

“We’ve also heard from customers that while they enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store,” she said.

According to its official website, Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology— first rolled out in 2016—allows consumers to “enter a store, grab what they want, and get going” by scanning their card or hovering their palm over an Amazon One device when they enter the store.

They are then able to leave without having to visit a formal checkout, thanks to cameras, sensors, and deep-learning artificial intelligence (AI) that track consumers visiting the stores.

The technology is used not only in Amazon’s own physical stores but also in third-party retail, travel, and stadium environments, the website states.

However, the technology hasn’t always proven to be reliable, with some customers complaining that it often took hours to receive their receipts after leaving the stores, according to reports.

Technology Behind Amazon Dash

Lawsuits were also filed over the technology that accused Amazon of failing to notify all customers who entered its Amazon Go stores that cameras were collecting and storing their biometric data.

Amazon currently operates more than 40 Fresh grocery stores across the United States, the majority of which are in California, Illinois, Virginia, and Washington state.

Approximately 27 of those stores have Just Walk Out technology and will transition to Amazon Dash Cart, according to the company. The remaining stores already use Amazon Dash Cart, the retailer said.

According to its official website, Amazon Dash Cart— first unveiled in 2020—is a smart cart that can be accessed by customers using a QR code on their Amazon app.

The technology uses a combination of computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion technology to scan items placed in and removed from the carts and shows real-time receipts of all items in the cart via an attached screen. After purchasing their items, customers can simply exit the store through the Amazon Dash Cart lane and their payment is processed using the credit card associated with their Amazon account.

Consumers will still be able to pay at a traditional checkout with a cashier or use the self-checkout machines, Amazon noted.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Authored by Paul Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle (subscribe here)

The dark money that apparently birthed the censorship industry’s most critical “anti-disinformation” group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), recently came to light in an investigation by The Telegraph, which uncovered £700,000 in undeclared donations to British Labour Party politico Morgan McSweeney. And who’s McSweeney? He helped found CCDH in the UK in 2018—the same timespan when millionaire venture capitalists and businessmen were sending McSweeney secret money, triggering an investigation by Britain’s Electoral Commission.

As I first reported last October, Imran Ahmed is a Labour Party political operative who maintains close ties to intelligence agencies and began running CCDH from D.C. in 2021, when he started working closely with the Biden administration. That first year in D.C., Ahmed took in 75% of his donations from a dark money pass through, although new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents show Ahmed provided false information to the U.S. federal government to receive tax-exempt, nonprofit status.

“A finding that there is a materially incorrect statement on an application for tax exempt status should hopefully encourage the IRS to take a hard look,” said Dean Zerbe, a tax attorney with consulting firm Alliant, and a former Senate staffer who investigated corruption in the nonprofit industry.

While he was based in the U.K., Imran Ahmed ran both the CCDH and another Labour Party front group, Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN), to attack British leftists, to defund the Canary news site, and to remove Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party’s leftist leader. Both CCDH and SFFN wielded wide influence in British politics and posed as grassroots movements, until reporters at the Canary exposed the groups’ ties to Labour Party conservatives Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney.

Both CCDH and SFFN websites operated from the same server, and CCDH shared its address with Labour Together, an organization McSweeney organized as a campaign slush fund for Labour Party internecine warfare. After runnning Labour Party leftist Jeremy Corbyn out of leadership, Labour Together then helped elect Keir Starmer as Labour’s conservative leader.  

Once Starmer defeated Corbyn to become Labour Party leader, McSweeney joined his staff as Starmer’s election guru.

While neither CCDH nor SFFN reported any donors—either to support their organizations or Imran Ahmed’s salary— Matt Taibbi’s Racket News reported that the money appears to have come from hidden donations to Labour Together.

The Telegraph reported further financial details of Labour Together, which appears to have served as McSweeney’s political slush fund.

Labour Together was fined £14,250 for its failure to register donations totalling £739,000.

However, there is now the prospect of a new investigation by the Electoral Commission after The Telegraph discovered Mr McSweeney contacted the regulator in 2017 and was told that funds needed to be registered, according to documents obtained under FOI.

As journalist and author Paul Holden documents, McSweeney’s Labour Together operated as a cut out for conservatives to raise hidden campaign funds from wealthy donors and drive Jeremy Corbyn from leadership.

Dark money, darker history

After Ahmed arrived in the United States, he continued to operate in the financial shadows. According to tax records, he started running CCDH from D.C. in 2021, where the Schwab Charitable Fund reported a $1.1 million private donation to CCDH. Schwab Charitable Fund is a “donor-advised fund” which allows people to set up private accounts that obscures their donations. The $1.1 million donation happened in Ahmed’s first year operating in the U.S., when IRS tax records report he raised $1.47 million for CCDH—meaning almost 75% of CCDH’s first-year donations came from one private, dark money donor.

Ahmed did not respond to questions about the money behind CCDH, nor who has paid his salary in the past.

Attorneys with the law firm Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath filed CCDH’s 2021 submission to the IRS for tax-exempt status and falsely claimed CCDH was operating as a registered charity in the U.K. The IRS documents were obtained by Paul Holden, an investigative journalist whose book, “The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Labour Together, and the Crisis of British Democracy”, will be published later this year.

Attorney Joe Miller with Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath did not respond to an email asking him to explain why the firm filed false paperwork with the IRS.

Since coming to DC, Ahmed has tried to position himself as a leftist, even though he and others on the Labour Party conservative wing helped to push out leftist Jeremy Corbyn from Labour leadership. One of Ahmed’s biggest supporters on social media is the actor Mark Ruffalo, who regularly tweets in Ahmed’s support.

Ironically, Ruffalo was one of many Hollywood celebrities who voiced support for Jeremy Corbyn, before Ahmed and CCDH helped drive him from power. Ahmed’s current board for CCDH includes Aileen Keshishian, who is Ruffalo’s agent.

“US progressives may have come to know Imran Ahmed as an ally in their battle against Trump and his politics,” says James Schneider, who was spokesperson for Corbyn when he led the Labour Party. “But Ahmed’s political origins in the UK are far from progressive. He worked against the leadership of the Labour Party when it was led by the progressive Jeremy Corbyn. Especially in the murky world of ‘disinfo’, the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.”

Many of CCDH’s employees are not listed on the group’s website, except for one: Callum Hood, who is CCDH head of research. Neither Hood nor any other CCDH employee is acknowledged in CCDH’s reports, and on his LinkedIn page, Hood lists the Center for Countering Digital Hate as the only job he has ever held.

Digging into Hood’s background, I found that, like Imran Ahmed, he staffed a member of Labour Party’s conservative wing. According to British Parliament records, Hood worked for Labour Party MP, Ian Austin.

Austin helped lead the charge against Corbyn’s leadership of the British government, urging voters to back Conservative Boris Johnson for Prime Minster. Johnson then recommended Austin to the House of Lords, where he now goes by the title “Lord Austin of Dudley.”

Intelligence ties

Ahmed seems loathe to discuss his ties to the intelligence community, links which became more obvious in emails made public last week. As I reported in October for Tablet:

One rumor that came up often in the dozen or so conversations I’ve had, with people who have observed Ahmed for years, is that he works for British intelligence. Along with other questions emailed to Ahmed a couple weeks back, Tablet asked him to address the allegation he is connected to British intelligence, but he did not respond to repeated requests for comment. One of Ahmed’s long-standing friends told me that Ahmed once mentioned that he had applied to either MI5 or MI6. Because the conversation took place so long ago, the friend couldn’t remember which of the two British intelligence agencies it was, and they never later discussed if he had gotten in.

New emails from the Biden administration find CCDH partnered with American intelligence agencies to support social media censorship.

In early 2022, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Under Secretary Robert Silvers connected with CCDH’s then-Head of Policy, Eva Hartshorn-Sanders, to discuss research and strategies for social media censoring.

“I’ll organize for the invitations to our Global Summit and Changemakers Dinner event to be sent through to you separately,” Hartshorn-Sanders emailed Silvers. “We’d love to see you there.”

The following day, DHS members began organizing a meeting with CCDH, which sent further invites to CCDH’s upcoming dinner event. By September 2022, CCDH had begun briefing the White House, the National Security Council, and the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism to act against social media companies.

“We are happy to meet with you to discuss the other findings in this report, answer any questions, and work with the White House team on providing further evidence, recommendations, or ways to place pressure on platforms to act on this disturbing content,” CCDH’s Hartshorn-Sanders emailed.

After the Biden White House released a 2023 blueprint to address “online harassment” that included National Institutes of Health (NIH) academic funding for “disinformation research,” CCDH claimed victory. “Great to see the publication of the White House’s initial Blueprint and to have been able to feed in research and policy recommendations for its development.” CCDH’s Hartshorn-Sanders posted on LinkedIn.

When CCDH’s emails with the White House and intelligence agencies became public last week, Hartshorn-Sanders then shut down her LinkedIn account.

Subscribe to the Disinformation Chronicle here…

NATO members have agreed to begin planning military support for Ukraine on a long-terms basis, in but the latest indicator assuring both escalation with Russia and that the war will drag on for possibly years more to come.

On Wednesday NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that allies have “agreed to move forward with planning for a greater NATO role in coordinating security assistance and training.” But it will still be an uphill battle to get some of the ‘outlier’ members on board.

He also said that Ukraine’s government and military still has “urgent needs” and that “any delay in providing support has consequences on the battlefield as we speak.”

“We must ensure reliable and predictable security assistance to Ukraine for the long haul so that we rely less on the voluntary contributions and more on NATO commitments, less on short-term offers and more on multiyear pledges,” Stoltenberg said. “The reason why we do this is the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is serious … We see how Russia is pushing, and we see how they try to win this war by just waiting us out.”

Stoltenberg’s words come the day after he unveiled a $100 billion, five-year fund for Ukraine which he subsequently pitched to alliance foreign ministers as they met Wednesday.

It is meant to both close the gap after Biden’s proposed $60 billion has been stymied by Republicans in US Congress, and in future expectation of a possible Trump victory after November.

Stoltenberg said a final decision on the $100 billion fund would be made at a July summit of NATO member state leaders; however, the big hurdle will be achieving the required consensus among the 32 members, 

Hungary has already announced its “opposition to increasing NATO’s coordination role in arms deliveries and training Ukrainian forces, refusing to participate in planning, operations, or funding,” according to a foreign ministry statement.

🛑FM Péter Szijjártó announced Hungary’s opposition to increasing @NATO‘s coordination role in arms deliveries and training Ukrainian forces, refusing to participate in planning, operations, or funding. This stance was outlined during a press briefing at the NATO foreign… pic.twitter.com/bOhcPDYv9E

— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) April 3, 2024

Thus Brussels is in for yet another fight with its wayward Hungarian member state led by Viktor Orban, who has time and again vowed to reject any measure which could pave a path of escalation to WW3 with Russia.

But Stoltenberg is already seeking to calm Budapest’s fears and bring it on board. “What we are discussing is not a NATO combat presence in Ukraine. We are discussing how we can coordinate and deliver support from outside Ukraine to Ukraine as NATO allies do,” Stoltenberg said. “And now when we initiate planning, I’m certain we can also address the concerns that Hungary has raised and find a way where we can have consensus.”

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

As predicted, Police Scotland was deluged with nearly 4,000 complaints in the first day alone after the passage of an absurd new hate crime law, proving the legislation is being weaponized by activists.

Under the new legislation, anyone deemed to have been verbally ‘abusive’, in person or online, to a transgender person, including “insulting” them could be hit with a prison sentence of up to seven years.

Transgender activists have been busy making lists of people they are waiting on to make such comments, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling herself.

Although it was announced yesterday by police that Rowling wouldn’t be investigated, the mere fact that she has been reported could create a ‘hate incident’ file on her that will remain in perpetuity.

“Calum Steele, the former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said he understood that around 3,800 cases had been lodged over the previous 24 hours,” reports the Telegraph.

That figure is likely to now be almost doubled as deranged shitlibs feverishly report anything they deem offensive via an online form and a 101 non-emergency number.

Authorities are now being swamped with vexatious complaints exactly as the legislation’s critics predicted, with resources that would have been available to tackle real crime directed elsewhere to patrol speech.

Indeed, as we previously highlighted, Police Scotland admitted that the new law could create “additional demand”and create a “resource implication” for police.

This followed a trial of a separate program set to be implemented across the country to stop investigating crimes like theft and criminal damage, which authorities acknowledge will help criminals.

When it was put to her that she wasn’t at risk due to her profile, Rowling responded that she would defend anyone who was targeted.

If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I’ll repeat that woman’s words and they can charge us both at once. pic.twitter.com/s9OcsgHr5j

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 2, 2024

“If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I’ll repeat that woman’s words and they can charge us both at once,” said the author.

As we highlighted yesterday, odious Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, who seemingly has a problem with there being a lot of white people in Scotland, ludicrously asserted the law was needed because some offensive graffiti was discovered near his home.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Spain has been foremost among European countries which have repeatedly condemned Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza and the resultant soaring Palestinian death toll. The EU country is also among those demanding answers for the drone strikes that killed a group of World Central Kitchen aid workers this week. “I expect and demand that the Israeli government clarify as soon as possible the circumstances of this brutal attack that has taken the lives of seven aid workers who were doing nothing but helping,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a fresh statement.

But Prime Minister Sanchez is also driving global headlines for his Tuesday statements declaring the Spanish government is moving forward with recognizing Palestinian statehood. The Financial Times reported that the country is ready to bestow formal recognition as early as July.

Sanchez said, “We have to seriously consider doing it in the first half of this year.” The declaration he made while on a Middle East tour is sure to rile Israeli leadership, which has condemned efforts to force recognition of a Palestinian state at a moment the Israeli military is in a fight with Hamas terrorists.

According to more details via regional media: 

State news agency EFE and newspapers El Pais and La Vanguardia cited Sanchez as making the informal remarks to the traveling press corps late on Monday in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on the first day of visits to Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

According to the reports, Sanchez said he expected events to unfold in the conflict ahead of the European Parliament elections in early June and highlighted ongoing debates at the United Nations.

Of course, Spain wouldn’t be the first to unilaterally recognize Palestine (outside of a broader UN move, for example). Those EU states to have previously done so include Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Ireland and Malta have also recently said they are on board and plan to do so.

However, the UK, France, and Germany have expressed they will not recognize Palestine outside of a broader deal for a two-state solution that involves Israeli assent.

Spain and those European countries which have already made declarations of recognition want to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) take control of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

Various two-state solution plans have been proposed over the past decades, but have never taken shape…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has vowed to block all of these efforts – and indeed the scenario would remain impossible without Israeli agreement, given IDF troops currently occupy all of these places.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

This narrative is being pushed to deflect from the evidence tying Ukraine to the Crocus terrorist attack and to discredit the Russian security services…

Reuters cited three unnamed sources to exclusively report on Monday that Iran had allegedly tipped Russia off about a then-impending major terrorist attack after learning about it from ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists who were detained after the group’s early January attack in Kerman. The information lacked specific details, but the outlet editorialized that “It is harder…for Russia to dismiss intelligence from diplomatic ally Iran on the attack” than from the West, the latter of which they claim that it downplayed.

Accordingly, Reuters wrote that this “raised questions over the effectiveness of Russian security services”, thus exposing the ulterior motive behind this report. The West has done all that it can to deflect from Russia’s accusations that Ukraine was tied to this terrorist attack via the evidence that its investigation has uncovered. This includes claiming that the vague warning that the US passed along to Russia was obtained from spying on ISIS-K, not on Kiev like this analysis here compellingly argues.

By including an Iranian dimension into the emerging narrative of early warnings ahead of the Crocus terrorist attack, the West via Reuters wants to further deflect from its own and Ukraine’s involvement in what happened while simultaneously discrediting the Russian security services. This analysis here debunks the false narrative that President Putin downplayed ISIS-K threats in the run-up to the attack, yet the West is doubling down on that claim, largely in response to evidence implicating Kiev.

To be sure, there’s a chance that one or some of those ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists that Iran detained in January might have heard about the group’s plans to attack Russia, but that’s altogether different than them having knowledge of the then-impending Crocus plot. Russia already knows that it’s in that group’s crosshairs after they bombed its embassy in Kabul in September 2022. Without specific information, whether from Iran or anyone else, nothing on the home front would have changed in response to that.

For instance, Russia, the UK, or even a random social media person could vaguely claim that ISIS-K is planning to attack the US, which American officials themselves are already aware of but wouldn’t do anything differently on the home front upon being informed of the latest rumors. Likewise, it’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia would ramp up security at all large gatherings even if Iran told them that a detained ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorist might have claimed that the group is planning to attack it.

For what it’s worth, RT quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that “I do not know anything about this” when asked about Reuters’ report, so objective observers should be skeptical of it. He either wasn’t informed ahead of his media briefing that such vague information was allegedly passed along to Russia by Iran or it simply didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter which of these two is true though since it wouldn’t have made a difference either way for the reasons that were explained.

Promoting this unverified report from anonymous sources quoted by Western media is therefore only being done for the ulterior motives of deflecting from the evidence tying Ukraine to the Crocus terrorist attack and discrediting the Russian security services. Considering the driving force behind this latest report, it can be expected that more such stories might soon follow, and everyone should be equally skeptical of them as well while keeping in mind the narrative goals that they aim to advance.

Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

After enduring bullshit school shutdowns during the COVID pandemic, many students concluded that school itself must be bullshit and have skipped attending classes. Government bureaucrats are panicking since subsidies are tied to the number of students’ butts in chairs each day. Duke University Professor Katie Rosanbalm lamented that, thanks to the pandemic, “Our relationship with school became optional.”

School absences have “exploded” almost everywhere, according to a New York Times report last week. Chronic absenteeism has almost doubled amongst public school students, rising from 15% pre-pandemic to 26% currently. Compulsory attendance laws are getting trampled far and wide.

The New York Times suggested that “something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting.” Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene M. Russell-Tucker commented, “There is a sense of: ‘If I don’t show up, would people even miss the fact that I’m not there?’” The arbitrary, counterproductive school shutdowns destroyed the trust that many families had in the government education system.

The New York Times reflected the tizzy afflicting education bureaucrats across the land: “Students can’t learn if they aren’t in school.”

Like hell.

So kids are not enduring daily indoctrination to doubt their own genders? So kids’ heads are not being dunked into the latest social justice buckets of fear, loathing, and guilt? So kids are not being drilled with faulty methods of learning mathematics to satisfy the latest Common Core catechism and vainly try to close the “achievement gap”? A shortage of indoctrination is not the same as a shortfall of education.

More than seventy years ago, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins aptly observed, “The tremendous waste of time in the American education system must result from the fact that there is so much time to waste.” John Taylor Gatto, New York’s Teacher of the Year of 1991 (according to the New York State Education Department), observed, “Government schooling…kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.”

My view on school absenteeism is shaped by my dissident tendencies. Government schooling was the most brain deadening experience in my life. Early in elementary school, I relished reading even more than peanut butter. But I was obliged to put down books and listen to teachers, slowing my mental intake by 80% or 90%. By the time I reached fourth grade, my curiosity was fading.

Between my junior and senior years in high school, I lazed away a summer on the payroll of the Virginia Highway Department. I came to recognize that public schools were permeated by the same “Highway Department ethos.” Teachers leaned on badly-written textbooks instead of shovels. Going through the motions and staying awake until quitting time was all that mattered. Learning became equated with drudgery and submission to bored taskmasters with chalk and erasers.

And then came the wooden stakes hammered home in English classes. Devoting two months to dissecting Hamlet made me damn all Danes, courtiers, and psychoanalysts. The week spent on Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” story made me lust to cast all frogs and folksy nineteenth century authors into hell. The six weeks blighted by Paradise Lost convinced me Samuel Johnson was right: “None ever wished it longer than it is.” Old books, rather than sources of wisdom and inspiration, were mental castor oil—something to forcibly imbibe solely to emit the right answers on the exams.

I spent years mentally idling while teachers droned. As long as the government provided a seat in a classroom, it had fulfilled its obligations. There was never any inkling that later in life, I would need to mobilize every iota of talent I might possess. My brain was like the mythical village of Brigadoon. It showed up once every year or two to take a scholastic aptitude test and then vanished into the mists. Teachers chronically noted on my permanent record “not performing up to potential.” Mysteries never cease. As long as I didn’t fail a grade, I slipped under the radar.

I was never a chronic truant until my family moved to a college town just before the start of my senior year in high school. I missed practically as many classes as I attended that year, scampering over to the nearby Virginia Tech campus. I scrupulously avoided going to a notorious bar—only two blocks away—during school hours. Actually, this was more expediency than principle, since the happy hour with 10-cent beer didn’t commence until after the last class finished.

After my class absences reached a certain threshold, I was sent to the school counselor—a  perfectly coifed 30ish guy with an air of rectitude thick enough to cut with a knife.

He asked why I was skipping out, and I said school was mostly bunk. If I could pass classes without enduring Chinese-water-torture monotony, why stick around?

The counselor declared my attitude unacceptable and urged me to “get involved with the student government to try to fix things.” So I should fizzle away my time propping up the equivalent of the Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France?!? Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run” line, “Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever,” echoed in my head. When misbehaving kids were compelled to stay after school, it was called “detention.” But the entire system was detention, especially for the final year or two.

Our stupid COVID policies are going to create the largest policy induced cause of wealth disparity in World history. https://t.co/HR2PNlscRl

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) April 3, 2024

Boredom vanished from my life almost completely on the day I graduated from high school. My mental vitality surged after I no longer lost the bulk of my days fulfilling “seat time” requirements. Week by week, I began to regain the love of reading that I had lost years earlier.  That made all the difference for my life and writing.

I recognize that many (if not most) of the new chronically absent students are probably putting their free time to good use. But at least teenagers have the chance to discover new books and to awaken their minds in a way that would never occur locked in classrooms. One epiphany is worth a dozen regurgitated exams.

Maybe if politicians ceased treating kids’ minds like disposable resources, more young folks would voluntarily show up for school. But generations of young kids have been sacrificed for whatever fad sweeps political and education activists. The best solution is to enable as many children as possible to exit government schools as soon as possible.

Haiti is currently engulfed in the chaos caused by violent gang warfare, triggering a major wave of internal displacement.

Almost 200,000 people are thought to have been displaced in 2023, and several thousand since the beginning of 2024.

Thousands of Haitians continue to flee to the neighboring Dominican Republic, with the Haitian-Dominican border currently in a state of major crisis.

Relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, have long been complex.

While the economies of the two countries were comparable in the mid-20th century, the Dominican economy gradually improved over the subsequent decades.

The Republic of Haiti, long plagued by political instability, has seen its economy deteriorate.

And as Statista’s Martin Armstrong details below, while Haiti is currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the situation is radically different in the Dominican Republic.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Nearly 6 out of 10 Haitians (58.7 percent) live on less than $3.70 a day, while only 4% of Dominicans are in this state of poverty.

GDP per capita is also almost six times higher in the Dominican Republic than in Haiti.

These differences are also reflected in the life expectancy of each country – Haiti has an average life expectancy at birth of 63 years, while in the Dominican Republic it stands at 73 years.