Month: August 2024

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, shows how much electricity is generated from renewable sources among G20 countries.

The data is based on Ember’s yearly and monthly electricity reports as of 2023. Data for Saudi Arabia is not available.

Brazil Leading in Renewable Energy

The global average for renewable electricity is 30%, but nearly half of the G20 countries fall below this average.

Brazil leads the G20 in renewable electricity, with 89% of its power generated from renewables in 2023. The country’s high share of renewables is due to its robust hydroelectric base and rapid expansion of solar and wind energy.

Canada, in second place, generates 66% of its electricity from renewables, primarily hydropower.

Germany, in third place, has the highest proportion of wind and solar in its energy mix.

G20 Economies Past the Peak of Fossil Power

The majority of G20 economies are at least five years past their peak power sector emissions.

At the top of our list, Brazil’s power sector emissions peaked in 2014 at 114 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2). By 2023, nine years after the peak, its power sector emissions were 38% below 2014 levels, at 70 MtCO2.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic showing emission reduction targets by country in 2024.

Authored by Wanjiru Njoya via The Mises Institute,

There is a popular perception that the role of the state is to uphold and enforce “fairness” much like a playground monitor ensures that children are not bullying each other, and that everyone is getting a fair chance to be included in the game. The fear is that if teachers do not monitor the schoolyard it might descend into the Lord of the Flies. Likewise, the state is said to have a moral duty to ensure fairness and goodwill among all citizens in their interactions with each other.

In Freedom in Chains James Bovard criticizes the trend towards seeing the state as the fountain of fairness, depicting it as “the nationalization of fairness.” In the US context, he traces the origins of nationalizing fairness back to the New Deal, when President Roosevelt’s administration sought to establish “fair” prices, “fair” wages, and “fair” competition, by mandating regulations which Roosevelt said would counter “the forces of selfishness.” Bovard highlights the example of promises made by the National Industrial Recovery Act to “provide for the machinery necessary for a great co-operative movement throughout all industry in order to obtain wide re-employment, to shorten the working week, to pay a decent wage for the shorter week and to prevent unfair competition and disastrous overproduction.”

Unfair competition was criminalized under the National Recovery Administration, and Bovard cites the example of a New Jersey tailor “jailed for ‘charging thirty-five cents for pressing a suit,’ in violation of the NRA code that mandated a 40-cent charge.” The administration arbitrarily decided that while a 40-cent charge would be fair, a 35-cent charge would be unfair and proceeded to impose criminal penalties.

Bovard criticizes the idea that the government has some sort of magical ability to produce morality and fairness in all human interactions: “modern morality is based on ‘push-button fairness: the government announces a new regulation, enforcers twist arms, and – voila! – fairness triumphs.” Yet over time people have come to want and expect precisely this from the state. Bovard highlights the shift from seeing the function of the state as that of building roads and bridges and providing police and fire services, to its current role where it purports to stand against selfishness, greed, racial discrimination, and other perceived moral vices.

Bovard highlights the same arbitrary determination of fairness in civil rights policies. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission attempts to ensure fairness by eradicating disparities or performance gaps and as Bovard argues, “for all practical purposes, “fairness” is whatever EEOC officials choose to impose.” Although quotas are officially prohibited, Bovard points out that “by the late 1960s, the EEOC had intentionally subverted the law by establishing a definition of discrimination that was the opposite of the one that Congress had specified.” The EEOC investigates discrimination by reference to numbers and proportions of different groups and measures its success by an improvement in the numbers. Bovard terms this “fairness by the numbers.”

“Fairness by the numbers” is also the driving force of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion polices. These policies measure DEI by reference to the proportionate numbers of different races, sexes and genders. They set up a measure of fairness that is only achieved when the proportion of people in any institution reflects their demographic representation.

There are many ethical problems with fairness by the numbers, not least that it erodes contractual freedom, freedom of association and free speech. Further, in schools and colleges it relies on indoctrination through the only ideology in which fairness by the numbers is deemed to be a worthy goal: critical race theories. This is why Alabama has enacted a new law, 2024 Ala. Act 34, which bans the divisive concepts promoted by critical race theories, namely:

1. That any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.

2. That individuals should be discriminated against or adversely treated because of their race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.

3. That the moral character of an individual is determined by his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.

4. That, by virtue of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, the individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.

5. That individuals, by virtue of race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.

6. That fault, blame, or bias should be assigned to members of a race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.

7. That any individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize on the basis of his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.

8. That meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist.

The reasoning behind this Alabama initiative, as stated by State Senator Will Barfoot, is that “education must return to its essential foundations of academic integrity and the pursuit of knowledge instead of being corrupted by destructive ideologies.” As State Representative Ed Oliver expressed it, DEI policies only “deepen divisions, set up race-exclusionary programs and indoctrinate students into a far-left political ideology.”

The Alabama ban on DEI is an important step in the right direction. Ultimately, no state has a legitimate role in indoctrinating school or university students in how they ought to understand their racial identity, or how they ought to understand their religion or their sex. These are matters of individual liberty and personal conscience, not state edicts.

Global adult obesity rates have steadily increased in the past few decades, more than tripling from 5% to 16% from 1990 to 2022.

With a much higher average obesity rate of 34%, the U.S. does see variance in its overweight population across regions and states. Lifestyle, dietary habits, socioeconomic status, access to healthcare, and physical activity levels all contribute to these regional differences.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, shows obesity rates in 2022 in each U.S. state and territory. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) equal to or greater than 30.

The figures come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and are updated as of September 2023. Obesity figures are based on self-reported height and weight.

Midwest and South Have Highest Obesity Rates

In 2022, every U.S. state and territory had an obesity rate of over 20%, meaning more than one in five adults in the U.S. was obese.

Overall, the Midwest (35.8%) and South (35.6%) regions had the highest obesity rates, followed by the Northeast (30.5%) and West (29.5%)

State/Territory	Adult obesity rate in 2022
West Virginia	41.0%
Louisiana	40.1%
Oklahoma	40.0%
Mississippi	39.5%
Tennessee	38.9%
Alabama	38.3%
Ohio	38.1%
Delaware	37.9%
Indiana	37.7%
Kentucky	37.7%
Wisconsin	37.7%
Arkansas	37.4%
Iowa	37.4%
Georgia	37.0%
South Dakota	36.8%
Missouri	36.4%
Kansas	35.7%
Texas	35.5%
North Dakota	35.4%
Nebraska	35.3%
Virginia	35.2%
South Carolina	35.0%
Michigan	34.5%
Wyoming	34.3%
North Carolina	34.1%
Puerto Rico	34.1%
Minnesota	33.6%
Nevada	33.5%
Illinois	33.4%
Pennsylvania	33.4%
Arizona	33.2%
Idaho	33.2%
Maryland	33.2%
Maine	33.1%
Guam	32.7%
New Mexico	32.4%
Alaska	32.1%
Virgin Islands	32.1%
Washington	31.7%
Florida	31.6%
Utah	31.1%
Oregon	30.9%
Rhode Island	30.8%
Connecticut	30.6%
Montana	30.5%
New Hampshire	30.2%
New York	30.1%
New Jersey	29.1%
California	28.1%
Massachusetts	27.2%
Vermont	26.8%
Hawaii	25.9%
Colorado	25.0%
District of Columbia	24.3%

West Virginia recorded the highest obesity rate in the United States at 41%, followed by Louisiana and Oklahoma at 40%.

These states, characterized by high rural populations and poverty rates, are often home to many food deserts, or areas where access to fresh and healthy foods is limited, leading residents to rely more on fast food and other nutritionally poor options.

The CDC data also showed disparities in age and education level when it came to obesity prevalence.

According to the CDC, young adults were half as likely to be obese compared to middle-aged adults. Adults aged 18–24 years had the lowest prevalence of obesity (20.5%) while adults aged 45–54 years had the highest (39.9%).

Adults without a high school diploma were the most likely to be obese (37.6%) compared to 35.9% of adults with some college education, and 27.2% of college graduates.

To see how the United States ranks among the countries that have the highest obesity rates in the world, check out this graphic.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The withdrawal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump was yet another extraordinary moment in an election that has been anything but predictable.

Only a year ago, it would have been unthinkable that a sitting president would be effectively forced off a ticket and replaced by a candidate who did not secure a single vote for president.

Now, the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of the Robert F. Kennedy has not just withdrawn from the Democratic Party but endorsed the Republican nominee.

Amidst all of the claimed “joy” of the Democratic National Convention, there is a sobering reality that is being ignored by the ecstatic press and pundits: this is how Democrats make Republicans.

There is an old expression that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.”

Irving Kristol explained the neoconservative movement was built by Democrats “mugged by reality.”

Kennedy has not become a Republican but rather joined the roughly half of Americans now identifying as independents. While this country is solidly under the hold of a duopoly of power in the two main parties, only 25% of the country identify as Democrats, and 25% as Republicans.

Kennedy’s departure from the Democrats has been mocked in the press. However, when he spoke on his withdrawal, many of us who have been lifetime members of the party identified with his remarks.

I come from a politically active liberal Democratic family in Chicago.

I spent much of my life working for liberals since I first came to Washington as a Democratic House page in the 1970s. I did stints on the Hill or on campaigns with Democrats ranging from Rep. Sid Yates (Ill.) to Sen. William Proxmire (Wis.) to Mo Udall (Arz.). I even worked on the campaign and ran for delegate for RFK Jr.’s uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Then the party changed.

Where once they defended free speech, Democrats have rallied behind censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views. They have sought to block dozens of Republicans from ballots, including former President Trump. To make matters worse, they have done so in the supposed name of democracy.

Those actions were raised by Kennedy in his powerful and poignant withdrawal speech. He detailed how the Democratic party moved to stop him from running against President Biden in the primary, including efforts to block him from ballots. It was an ironic moment. After harassing candidates like RFK and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the Democratic leadership then simply installed their choice at the convention in an unprecedented bait-and-switch.

There could have been a substantive primary that exposed the diminished mental state of Biden and allowed for a democratic choice on the best nominee. Instead, the Democrats prevented such choices from being made and selected a leader with all of the transparency and deliberation of a party Congress in China.

Kennedy said that the Democratic Party has virtually shoved him and other voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Kennedy observed that “I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote.”

He said that his party was the one that championed free speech, government transparency, and opposed unjust wars. “True to its name, it was the party of democracy.”

He said that the party has turned its back on all of the values that once defined it. For former Democrats like Kennedy, running on “joy” is no substitute for these profound changes in the party.

Indeed, the DNC bordered on the creepy as speaker after speaker sold the idea that, if voters could just swallow the Harris candidacy, they would immediately experience joy like some political prozac commercial.

It is not clear whether the red pill/blue pill pitch will be enough, or whether Kennedy’s endorsement will turn the critical votes in swing states.

However, the DNC showed how Democrats make Republicans. The unrelenting identity politics and claims of defending democracy (while opposing democratic choice) only reaffirmed for many that there is no longer a big tent in the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy.

There is a serious question whether John F. Kennedy would recognize or support the current Democratic Party. It now rejects many of his core, mainstream values.

His nephew highlighted the irony of how the party not only worked to block the ability of opponents to challenge President Biden but worked to “conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president.”

Even the Washington Post recently admitted that “the 81-year-old had shown signs of slipping for a long time, but his inner circle worked to conceal his decline.”

However, the Post failed to note that Vice President Kamala Harris was part of that inner circle. Indeed, she has been touting her close work with Biden in her campaign.

There is little recognition that, if true, it means that Harris, the White House, and leading Democrats lied to the public about Biden’s mental decline for their own political interests.

For Kennedy, it was all too much “and, most sadly … in the name of saving Democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it, lacking confidence in its candidate, that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth.”

There is little “joy” in that.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

Via SchiffGold.com,

Just when you thought the headlines couldn’t seem more absurd, Swiss banking giant UBS has issued a warning that in the global battle against inflation, the worst enemy of central banks could be none other than pop star Taylor Swift.

The report could be seen as one part genuine economic analysis, one part marketing schtick for the UBS Arena.

This is the chosen venue for many huge events including Taylor Swift concerts and the MTV Music Video Awards.

However, the underlying point is that sudden spikes in demand make it harder for central bankers to use monetary policy tools to cool inflation.

UBS economist Paul Donovan describes in his report how huge events that draw attendees from all over the world — such as Taylor Swift shows, which draw masses of screaming Swifties who flood cities around the world to see their favorite star — create demand shocks.

These are especially noticeable in industries like travel and hospitality when a sudden influx drives up prices at hotels, restaurants, airlines, taxis, and similar services. Donovan says:

“Hotel prices will often rise for accommodation near a mega event venue. Transport costs (in particular air fares) may also increase. The measurement method for these prices is more likely to capture the unusual and transitory pattern of demand, and it is here that the increase in consumer price inflation takes place.”

It isn’t so much that UBS is wrong. Sudden increases in demand drive up prices.

But the large point is how the notion itself lays bare the total absurdity of the global economy, and the nonsensical notion that a handful of central planners is able to micromanage global inflationary pressures.

Are Taylor Swift concerts really enough to move the needle on global inflation and derail monetary policy efforts?

Eurozone inflation and PMI got a boost this month, but it was entirely artificial — caused by the fact that France hosted this year’s Olympic Games. The surge in economic activity created a massive but entirely transitory increase in demand, dragging up Eurozone economic data points. Meanwhile, fundamentals remain weaker, and major Eurozone economies outside of France continue to contract, fueling motivation for the ECB to return to cutting interest rates again next month.

Euro Area Inflation Rate

Source

However, with interest rates already too low to properly get inflation under control (with or without Taylor Swift and the Olympics), a rate cut will only push high prices even higher for Europeans.

And in countries like France, with high debt and unsustainable spending, there’s an increasing chance of a real debt crisis that ripples through the rest of Europe. 

Even in countries like Germany where debt-to-GDP ratios are lower this year, contracting economies keep signaling trouble.

For better or worse, none of this is Taylor Swift’s fault, so Swifites are off the hook — but the same can’t be said for central banks. 

All the ECB, the Fed, and other central banks know how to do is print money, locking countries into boom and bust cycles as they tinker with the money supply and set interest rates that the free market would never have settled on naturally. Central banks don’t create real or sustainable growth.

The bankers would love to be able to blame Taylor Swift or the Olympics for economic crises. But these busts arise from, and are made even worse, by their own monetary tinkering and government intervention.

If the new punk rock is to be politically correct, then it’s not punk rock.  The woke activist invasion of popular media since 2015 continues to ignore the reality that they are not “rebels”, they are villains, and their delusions are becoming more embarrassing for them with each passing year.

Woke tropes have become poison for any brand seeking a wider audience or greater profits, to the point that activist media projects must now be funded by governments and NGOs through DEI initiatives just to pay developer salaries.  The goal?  To saturate the market with multicultural ideology and LGBT propaganda until the public was forced to accept it and consume it as “normal.”  The agenda has failed. 

Every new woke product seems to bomb harder than the last these days and that’s a good sign for the future.  Video game players, a market which now dwarfs movies and TV streaming, are rejecting woke material en masse.  Case in point:  Dustborn.

The aggressively advertised game features a cast of queer activist “punk rock” characters that set out on a road trip across an America controlled by “conservative oppressors” that are really uncool.  Set in North America in 2030, The American Republic is under the iron fist of “Justice” and The Puritans, a fascist police force presided over by President Samuel Ward. California has gained independence and is now Pacifica, a corporatocracy ruled by the wealthy few. Texas has seceded, rebranding itself as the libertarian Columbia.

Hilariously, players fight the fascist government by using the “power of words” to gain allies and divide their enemies.  Characters can also build up their “trigger meter” to really punch the patriarchy.  

Impossible to parody pic.twitter.com/IBQtfomNdM

— LA\/ENDER (@LavenderGhast) August 22, 2024

As the developer, Red Thread Games, notes:

“Dustborn’s story is a story about being different, about being an outcast and outsider, about having to hide who and what you are from the authorities, from society — even from your family…

Last but certainly not least, it’s a story about the power of disinformation, propaganda, and language, and about how powerful words can alter our perception of reality, hack minds, and change the world…”

Dustborn embraces the the leftist ideological fallacy that words are magical weapons that need to be controlled and policed at all times by the woke devout; the only people apparently enlightened enough to dictate language. The game was released this week to the deafening sound of crickets.  On gaming service Steam, the project garnered a maximum of 83 players on launch day.  A total flop of epic proportions.

One might find it ironic that a game about rebel queers fighting the government was actually co-funded by government through the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union (at least $168,000).  ESG strikes again.   

The notion that popular games dealing with America need to be adjusted for “modern audiences” and the cast needs forced diversity to be “authentic” is based on a popular leftist fallacy that all of America is the same as or should be the same as New York and LA.

The collapse of Dustborn comes not long after the uproar over the impending release of Ubisoft’s ‘Assassin’s Creed: Shadows’, another highly marketed woke game set in feudal Japan.  Leftist developers claim that the game is based on “true historical figures”, yet the primary protagonist is a gay black samurai (there was never a black samurai in feudal Japan, let alone a gay black samurai.  The idea is based on faulty evidence provided by a fraudulent historian who worked with Ubisoft and who is now under investigation by the Japanese government).  The game is expected to suffer dismal sales upon its launch in November.   

Public support for woke media is dead.

Authored by Vince Coyner via AmericanThinker.com,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”

 – Ronald Reagan

When I grew up, Great Britain was exotic. There were the red telephone booths, Buckingham Palace, black cabs, and, of course, the Bobbies (police) and the Beefeaters. England was the land of Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, and Henry IV. For me, Britain was history incarnate.

Obviously, part of that comes from the fact that, as Americans, we share a great deal of history with the British. Not only did we split from Britain in 1776, but our history continued to stay close until modern times…from the US joining Britain in the fight to end slavery to fighting two world wars together to the British Invasion in the 1960s that brought us the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks.

Image by Vince Coyner

Modern England largely dates back to 1066, when William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and put the finishing touches on a unification that had been evolving since the Romans abandoned the island in 410 AD. (For clarity, as the terms are often used interchangeably, the United Kingdom (UK) is a sovereign nation comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. “Great Britain” is the largest island in the British Isles, containing England, Scotland, and Wales, but not Northern Ireland.)

The 1,000-year span since has seen Britain, like the rest of the world, evolve—always, however haltingly, in the direction of freedom. This journey began with the Magna Carta, agreed to by King John in 1215. A watershed event in Western culture, it limited the King’s powers and declared he was subject to the law, guaranteed church rights, access to an impartial system of justice, and limited taxes.

Although the Magna Carta would have a rough beginning, it was an enormous step in the drive towards liberty. The document would set the stage for Parliament to evolve from councils that advised the King into a representative body that began taking a more active and powerful role in governing.

It was just the first in a line of steps that would make Britain the freest nation on the planet for centuries. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 would guarantee the right to trial and demand the state show cause for holding someone. A decade later, the English Bill of Rights would set out Parliamentary rights, the right to petition the king, and the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Over subsequent centuries, the British commitment to freedom would expand, eventually including all her citizens, not just the barons who first held King John’s feet to the fire.

Over that march to freedom, England would produce an extraordinary array of freedom advocates, some of whom inspired our Founding Fathers. Men such as John Locke, Edmund Burke and, later, William Wilberforce, the man who led the fight against the slave trade.

It is this incessant march towards freedom that has always given England an aura of consequence that few other nations share. And that’s what makes today’s Britain so sad.

The genesis of today’s dystopia began almost three decades ago when immigration took off in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The number of non-EU immigrants averaged over 200,000 per year for a decade and then skyrocketed after 2020. A nation of 55 million in 2000 is today over 65 million, with almost all of that growth coming from immigration, a majority from non-EU nations, particularly from the Middle East and Africa, countries that don’t share British culture or, importantly, religion. (It’s also likely that many of the ostensibly EU immigrants originated in non-EU countries.)

As a consequence, London, home to 20% of England’s population, has gone from approximately 80% native white British in 1991 to approximately 36% in 2021. The native population has surely shrunk more since then.

The result of this transformation of Britain from a largely British nation to something else has been monstrous. Possibly the single most despicable example is the 20-plus-year Rotherham child rape scandal that saw hundreds of Pakistani Muslims rape over a thousand British girls right under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being called racists. As if that wasn’t bad enough, those who dared report on the various trials—see, e.g., here and here—found themselves jailed for doing so.

At the same time, London has become a killing ground for knife attacks, the overwhelming number being committed by minorities. Indeed, the country has become beset with machete attacks, a crime that was historically unheard of in Britain but which is common in the third world.

In July, the 17-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants knifed ten little girls, killing three of them. With the government withholding information on the killer, online posts asserted he was an immigrant. Tensions rose, and, across the UK, Brits protested the unfettered invasion of immigrants, the violence being perpetrated by immigrants and Muslims, and the system’s seeming duplicitous, two-tiered approach to justice when it came to immigrants and Muslims vs. white Brits, all of whom the government and the state-run media invariably characterize as “far right.”

These protests drew the new Labour government’s ire, and it launched a wave of arrests and a propaganda campaign against the “far right” anti-immigration “racists.” People were sentenced to prison for chanting “who the f*** is Allah” (although they were neither violent nor making threats), shouting “You’re not English anymore” at the police, or selling stickers that say “It’s OK to be white.”

Seeking to curtail what it claims is misinformation and incitement, the government warned the British citizenry, “You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false, threatening, or stirs up racial / religious hatred.” They also warned potential anti-immigration protesters, “We’re watching you.”

So basically, the government decides what’s false, threatening, or hate speech, and if you post anything about it online, you could end up in jail.

And if threatening Brits’ freedom of speech wasn’t enough, the government threatened online platforms (and Musk) if they allowed prohibited speech.

Nor did the government stop there. It promised to extradite citizens of other countries if they engage in such prohibited online speech, even if not in Britain at the time. And because there’s not enough room in British jails to hold all of these anti-immigration “racists,” the government plans to release 5,000 criminals from jail to make room for those guilty of “wrongthink.”

While the Tories are responsible for the unfettered immigration over the last one-and-a-half decades, July’s election, which put Labour in power, represented a leap in transforming Britain into a tyranny. A free Britain, which took over 1,000 years to evolve, essentially became a Stalinist police state in less than two months.

While Britain is not the United States, our shared history, language, and similar cultural and political trajectory over the last 20 years suggests that what is happening there could easily happen here. Contrast the kid glove treatment given the 2020 BLM / Antifa rioters with the draconian treatment J6ers received, recall Democrats’ ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, and look at what’s been done to Donald Trump and you see the writing on the wall as we head down that dark authoritarian path.

Like Turkey and Venezuela before it, Britain demonstrates that a single election can make the difference between freedom and tyranny. As we approach November 5th, we just might want to take note…

By Adam Sabes of Campus Reform

The Rutgers University professor who was under an internal review after posts she made on Facebook following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, writing “Let’s hope today’s events inspire others” will teach this coming fall.

A source provided Campus Reform with screenshots of the Facebook posts, which were made by Rutgers University Writing Program Assistant Teaching Professor Tracy Budd in the hours after someone tried to assassinate Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

”Let’s hope today’s events inspire others,” Budd said in one post.

”They shot his wig. Sad,” Budd wrote in another.

Rutgers spokeswoman Megan Schumann told NJ.com that Budd is scheduled to teach in the upcoming fall semester.

Previously, a Rutgers spokesperson told the New York Post that Budd was the subject of an internal review.

“Rutgers University-New Brunswick condemns calls for violence in the strongest possible terms and remains committed to upholding the principles of civil discourse,” the university said.

“The university is reviewing this matter and assures that any appropriate actions will be taken based on our policies.”

“As students, faculty and staff return to campus next month, the university will be communicating the importance of civility in these challenging times,” the school added.

According to the New York Post, Budd makes over $72,000 at Rutgers.

Budd’s Facebook is now deleted, but her cover picture contained a poster at a protest that read: “Capitalism will kill us all. Gender is fake. Eat garbage. Be free.”

Budd is also the editor of Dialogues@RU, an undergraduate research journal, “which teaches students the crucial skills of critical reading and thinking, scholarly research, synthesis, and analytic writing across the disciplines.”

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

It serves as the cover for once again hosting anti-Indian separatists, which could in turn provoke the implied threats from India that the post-coup authorities initially hoped to generate via mob violence against the Hindu minority and thus create the pretext for giving a base to the US.   

An advisor to the interim Bangladeshi government that took power after early August’s US-backed regime change against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina accused India of being responsible for the latest floods due to it allegedly opening up a dam amid heavy rains in the region. This followed some student protests in support of what they described as a fairer water-sharing deal with India and coincided with the interim Environment Minister declaring readiness to “forcefully” advocate for this.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs denied Bangladesh’s claim that the latest floods were due to anything that it did, but it’s clear that this won’t make any difference since Dhaka’s new political setup has already made up its mind to once again politicize this issue. It’s highly emotive in this riparian country of an estimated 170 million people, the eighth most populous in the world, and can thus be leveraged to mobilize continued support for the post-coup authorities.

The narrative was already spun by US Government-funded pundit Derek Grossman, who’s a senior defense analyst on the Indo-Pacific at the RAND Corporation, that India might have opened the dam without telling Bangladesh “in political retaliation” against the new government. The US has an interest in dividing-and-ruling India and Bangladesh because the resultant perception among the latter of newfound security threats from its much larger neighbor can lead to it finally giving a base to the US.

Hasina claimed after her ouster that she wouldn’t have been overthrown had she surrendered her country’s sovereignty by handing over St. Martin Island to it in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh’s ties with neighboring Myanmar have been very difficult ever since the Rohingya issue emerged in 2015 and then severely worsened in 2017, but that wasn’t enough to get her to comply with these demands at the expense of regional stability, nor were Myanmar’s claims to that same island.

The precedent set by her defiance and then exposure of this US plot impedes her successors’ efforts to give it a base, ergo the need to artificially manufacture a regional security crisis in order to justify this in the court of domestic and international opinion. The initial means to that end was mob violence against Bangladesh’s Hindu minority in the immediate aftermath of the coup, but when that failed to provoke even implied threats from India, the decision was made to politicize their water dispute yet again.

Hasina handled this sensitive issue very diplomatically during her time in office, but her opponents from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have a history of exploiting it for domestic and regional purposes, the first with regards to mobilizing support and the second as a pretext for hosting separatist groups. About that, the Pakistani-friendly BNP shares Islamabad’s vision of “Balkanizing” India’s Northeast States, but they can’t openly admit their ideologically driven geopolitical agenda.

For that reason, it was hinted during the time that they were in power that one of the reasons why they host such anti-Indian groups is because of continued disagreements with India. Although Hasina’s trade and military ties with China were much closer than with India, she nevertheless shared her Indian counterpart’s vision of regional peace and integration. She therefore reversed her predecessors’ policy of harboring anti-Indian groups and mercilessly cracked down on them during her administration.

They’ll now likely soon return though in parallel with the BNP-backed interim government once again politicizing the water-sharing issue, thus explaining their lie about India being responsible for the latest floods. This false claim serves as the cover for once again hosting anti-Indian separatists, which could in turn provoke the implied threats from India that the post-coup authorities initially hoped to generate via mob violence against the Hindu minority and thus create the pretext for giving a base to the US.

Divides persist between many Black and white Americans’ views on the ongoing impacts of slavery in the United States.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, according to a poll by YouGov conducted in 2023, 52 percent of U.S. respondents believe that the legacy of slavery still influences society today either a fair amount or a great deal. Along racial lines a starker contrast exists, with 78 percent of Black Americans saying the same, versus just 46 of white Americans.

When asked more specifically about who the legacy of slavery currently affects, respondents again answered differently. 75 percent of Black respondents said all Black Americans are affected by the legacy of slavery today, while 13 percent of Black respondents said only Black Americans who are descendants of slaves. No Black respondents selected the option for no Black Americans. Of the white respondents, only 42 percent said all Black Americans are still affected, 16 percent said only Black Americans who are descendants of slaves and 20 percent selected the option for no Black Americans.

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65 percent of Black Americans said that America’s wealth as a nation today is tied to slavery, while only 26 percent of white Americans held the same view. Democrats were more likely to agree that current national wealth is significantly tied to the work done in the past by slaves (50 percent) than Independents (32 percent) or Republicans (15 percent).

YouGov then asked respondents about which systems or markets Black Americans face prejudice today. The criminal justice system (58 percent), political system (46 percent), health care system (44 percent) and housing market (44 percent) were among the options to receive the highest shares of all respondents agreeing that discrimination is currently a problem there.