Month: August 2024

China has responded to the fresh NY Times revelation that President Joe Biden recently (and secretly) approved a new nuclear strategic plan that includes US preparations for a simultaneous nuclear war with Russia, China, and North Korea. The new strategic doctrine was reportedly put into effect in March.

“The U.S. is peddling the China nuclear threat narrative, finding excuses to seek strategic advantage,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning responded on Wednesday.

“China is seriously concerned about the relevant report and the facts have fully proved that the United States has constantly stirred up the so-called China nuclear threat theory in recent years,” she added.

Mao insisted that instead of hyping fake threats, Washington should pursue setting an example of nuclear disarmament and de-escalation, and reminded a press briefing that Beijing officially maintains a a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons.

“China has always kept its nuclear capabilities to a minimum required for national security needs with no intention to engage in any arms race with any country,” the spokeswoman continued.

She then called attention to the fact that the US possesses “the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal” and at the same time “stubbornly adheres to a nuclear deterrence policy based on the first use of nuclear weapons.”

As we featured previously, the US nuclear strategy is updated about every four years or so and is highly classified. The Times described the new strategy as the “first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.”

China’s arsenal is still just a fraction of what the US and Russia possess. The State Department said in July that the US has 5,748 warheads, including 2,000 that are retired and awaiting dismantlement.

Classified doc reveals Joe Biden ‘approved a highly classified nuclear strategic plan that reorients US deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal’

White House – “Not a response to any single entity, country nor threat” https://t.co/svHGmQvfcJ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 21, 2024

According to the Arms Control Association, Russia has 5,580 warheads, including 1,200 that are retired and awaiting dismantlement. Russia has 1,549 nuclear warheads that are deployed, and the US deploys 1,419.

Authored by Teresa Manning via American Greatness,

This week, the National Association of Scholars (“NAS”) and the Heritage Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion on diversity ideology in higher education. A number of reports have recently been published on the topic, with most documenting monies spent by state universities on “diversity, equity and inclusion” (“DEI“). The Maryland affiliate of the National Association of Scholars released the most recent such report this summer, but the Virginia affiliate issued one last year, while Idaho, North Carolina, Maine, and Tennessee produced similar documents before that.

The Maryland report reminds state officials that “diversity” is usually a cover for race-based practices that are now likely illegal under the 2023 United States Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (or “SFFA”). That opinion found that racial preferences in university admissions were a violation of federal civil rights laws and also the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. SFFA means that any race-based practice in college is presumptively unlawful. As the Court said, “Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it … distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious.”

Virginia’s report is similar to the others with its focus on money, asking Should Virginians Pay for University “Diversity” Leftism? It found that DEI expenditures at Virginia’s state universities have exploded with the University of Virginia (UVA) probably the worst offender. In 2020, for example, UVA spent $4,149,732 on DEI programs with 38 DEI administrators; but within one year, both those figures had nearly doubled. In 2021, UVA spent $6,924,279 on DEI and had 77 DEI administrators. Incredibly, more recent findings show that UVA’s DEI expenditures have skyrocketed even more, with over $20 million spent in 2023 including for 235 DEI employees.

That’s taxpayer money not spent on instruction, library holdings, or lab equipment.

The “diversity” contagion is a relatively recent mind virus. The word was almost unheard of for most of American history, making its first real appearance in a 1978 United States Supreme Court case finding racial quotas in school admissions illegal but allowing some consideration of race for the sake of diversity in education. The brief mention may have seemed innocuous but “diversity” was then seized upon by those hostile to Western civilization to dilute social cohesion in Western nations. (Diversity is not a thing in Japan, which would likely view it as an act of war.)

America typifies the West as it is a product of Great Britain and, for its first 200 years, was populated almost entirely by Western peoples of the United Kingdom and Europe. America’s founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—enshrine Western principles of limited government for a free and presumably moral people. In fact, most founders emphasized that the Constitution would not work without a moral people. And the governance established by the Constitution—its separation of powers, its checks and balances including between the federal and state powers—reflects America’s Christian heritage and especially the Christian notion of man’s tendency toward corruption and sin. Hence the checks on power. As Lord Acton famously explained, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Nowhere in these founding documents does the word “diversity” appear, nor do its partner buzzwords “equity,” “inclusion,” etc. In fact, diversity ideology is not only un-American (that is, not part of our basic laws), it’s arguably anti-American in that it obsesses about race to pit Americans against each other. It also undermines America as the land of opportunity where individuals matter most—their talent, industry, and character.

Where America would value the individual, DEI wants tribes. It’s preoccupied with groups, typically based on race or sex. All this fosters poisonous identity politics where the individual barely matters. This also undermines excellence as the tribe trumps individual talent. It’s no coincidence that collectivist, socialist regimes tend to have crumbling bridges, bad cars, and outdated technologies. They’re against individual achievement. America was never like this. But it’s getting that way now.

Worse, diversity ideologies always have a religious flavor. They’re packaged as moral imperatives and pitched especially to young people as if they’re a “new and improved” ethics. Young people are by definition inexperienced and usually unwise—which is to say, they’re easy prey. Family and societal breakdown has also made them unanchored, free radicals who are even easier to manipulate, indoctrinate, and control. And they’re tragically ignorant not only of their own Western heritage but also of norms throughout the world. For example, young Americans are taught the evils of slavery, where the simplistic story is that African Americans were victims and Americans of European descent were victimizers. But they’re never taught that Africans also participated in the slave trade, with one African tribe often selling another to the Europeans. They also don’t seem to realize that Europeans—“whites”—were the ones to abolish slavery. Even today, slavery remains a common practice in much of the world, especially within the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. Any praise for Western civilization and especially its religious heritage for this moral progress? Nope. Just more diversity propaganda, the false religion.

America needs to reject these destructive diversity ideologies and return to its place as the land of opportunity for individuals—its citizens. It can start by rooting out DEI in its educational institutions, starting with colleges and universities. It’s none too soon.

We are too speechless to even offer any snarky, sarcastic commentary because, frankly, this is beyond idiotic.

Asked about today’s near record downward jobs revision, Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo – who we repeat, is the Secretary of the Department of Commerce which is responsible among other things, for the Bureau of Economic Analysis – said she “doesn’t believe” the revision because, somehow Trump was behind it. But when she was informed that the data comes from her own administration, namely the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Raimondo’s response was simply legendary: “I am not familiar with that.”

Harris-Biden Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo says she doesn’t believe new government data that shows almost a million of the jobs the Harris-Biden admin claimed to have “created” don’t actually exist.

“I’m not familiar with that.” pic.twitter.com/JaAwEWKuNC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 21, 2024

And there you have it: the person who is at the top of the US propaganda data collection and distribution pyramid is, checks notes, “not familiar” with the Bureau of Labor.

To this, all one can ask the former Governor of Rhode Island and current “Commerce Secretary” is what would you say… you do here?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Russia’s foreign spy agency SVR revealed that “the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ operation in the Kursk region was prepared with the participation of the special services of the USA, Great Britain and Poland. The units involved in it underwent combat coordination in training centers in Great Britain and Germany. Military advisers from NATO countries provide assistance in managing the UAF units that have invaded Russian territory and in the use of Western types of weapons and military equipment by Ukrainians.”

They ended their statement to popular newspaper Izvestia by adding that “The alliance countries also provide the Ukrainian military with satellite intelligence data on the deployment of Russian troops in the area of ​​the operation.” This coincided with the Russian Foreign Ministry summoning the US charges d’affaires to protest American journalists’ illegal crossing of their border for propaganda purposes in support of this invasion as well as the military role therein played by at least one American PMC.

Commander of the Akhmat Special Forces from Russia’s Chechen Republic Apty Alaudinov accused the invaders of carrying out a spree of war crimes as part of Zelensky’s stated goals of carving out a “buffer zone” and bolstering Ukraine’s “exchange fund” for future prisoner swaps. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had earlier warned in an interview with leading Russian media that Ukraine might actually want Russia to use nuclear weapons, the possible rationale of which was explained here.

What all of these details show is that what’s happening in Kursk is a real NATO-backed Ukrainian invasion of universally recognized Russian territory, not some “5D chess master plan” by Russia to encircle the Ukrainians in a “cauldron” like some in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) have speculated. The US can play dumb about this all it wants, but Russia is convinced that it orchestrated this unprecedented provocation, thus raising questions about how it’ll respond.

A lot of AMC folks on social media demand something radical like Russia striking targets in NATO and/or having Wagner carry out cross-border incursions against its frontline members from Belarus, but neither are likely to materialize. Regardless of whatever one’s personal opinion might be about his approach, Putin has proven to have the patience of a saint by refusing to escalate in response to the slew of provocations that have been carried out against his country since the special operation began.

This includes Ukraine’s bombings of the Crimean Bridge, its destruction of the Kakhovka Dam which risks turning Crimea into a desert, the assassination of journalists like Darya Dugina, incessant attacks against civilians in Russia’s new regions, the bombing of its strategic airbases and early warning systems, involvement in the Crocus terrorist attack, and even attacking the Kremlin. All of these provocations and more were carried out with American assistance, yet Russia hasn’t radically responded to any of them.  

The most that it’s done is carry out strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in an attempt to impede its military operations as well as recently carve out a tiny buffer zone in Kharkov Region, but it won’t bomb bridges across the Dnieper nor political targets like the Rada.

Time and again, Russia consistently refuses to escalate, only doing the bare minimum of what its most zealous supporters in the AMC demand when it finally decides to do something out of the ordinary.

The reason for this (some would say too) cautious approach is Putin’s fear of inadvertently triggering World War III, which he’s afraid might become inevitable if Russia radically responds to its foes’ provocations due to the fast-moving sequence of events that it could lead to. To be clear, Russia has the right to respond in such a way, but it’s voluntarily eschewing that right for the aforementioned reasons that it considers to be for the “greater global good”.

Accordingly, it’s highly unlikely that Putin will finally throw his characteristic caution to the wind by deliberately risking World War III (or at least that’s how he’d see everything as being) by opting for a radical response to his government’s conclusion that the US is involved in Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk.  

The only plausible scenarios in which he’d change his calculations would be if there was a nuclear provocation, a high-level assassination, or a terrorist attack even worse than the recent Crocus one.

Recalling what was written earlier about how Lukashenko warned that Ukraine might actually want Russia to use nukes, none of these scenarios and whatever other ones might cross Putin’s non-negotiable red lines (which the previously enumerated provocations didn’t do) can be ruled out. They’d also likely be used in the far-fetched event of a Russian military collapse along its western border, or Belarus’ collapse along its own with NATO or Ukraine, and subsequent large-scale invasion.

From Russia’s perspective, Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk remains manageable despite the US’ involvement in this unprecedented provocation, thus meaning that Putin probably won’t resort to the radical response that many in the AMC have been fantasizing about. If he finally decided to let loose, however, then he might only ramp up the intensity of the special operation in Ukraine instead of attacking NATO and thus risking the outbreak of World War III that he’s worked so hard to avoid thus far.

Higher education is nothing more than leftist indoctrination camps, costing students (or taxpayers, in some cases) tens of thousands of dollars per year to be uploaded with the woke mind virus. Some of these woke activist students were triggered earlier this year, spewing racist hate speech and death threats against Jewish students (and we’re sure the hate went both ways) over the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

RAINING: 2:15pm Friday at the pro-Palestinian protest at Northwestern University In Evanston, Illinois. Much of the crowd which reached over 600 a hour ago is leaving. Everybody else moving to tents and covering food & signs with tarps. pic.twitter.com/QzAjTTHNt8

— Mark Weyermuller (@publicpolicyman) April 26, 2024

The chaos and hate that flooded schoolyards at universities and colleges like Northwestern University earlier this year has served as a major wake-up call for Americans, leading many to question how leftist institutions might be indoctrinating vulnerable young minds. 

Hate at Northwestern must have been such a serious issue for the administration because now, the school has announced mandatory training for all students on preventing antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. 

“There is no room on our campus for antisemitism; there is no room for Islamophobia; there is no room for racism and other forms of identity-based hate. Northwestern will not tolerate behavior or speech that harms members of our community,” Northwestern President Michael Schill wrote in a statement. 

Schill revealed new ‘educational opportunities’ for students this coming semester:

• Mandatory trainings on antisemitism and other forms of hate will be used in September at incoming student orientation and over the Fall Quarter for all returning students. Training also will be provided to staff and faculty.

• A set of lectures and panels on antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism as well as the history and politics of the conflict in the Middle East.

This comes as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators clashed on campus in late 2023 and through the spring 2024 semester. Also, there was a failed effort by the pro-Palestinian side to force Northwestern’s administration to divest from all things Israel. 

Meanwhile, Harvard University added a new essay topic for applicants: how they handle disagreements.

The changes are coming in response to a nation shocked after witnessing the out-of-control uprisings at left-wing colleges and universities over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, along with the surge of hate that emerged from these woke institutions.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

A former police officer challenging the federal government’s rule regulating so-called ghost guns that can be assembled at home urged the Supreme Court on Aug. 13 to strike down that rule.

The new filing previews the arguments that will be made when the Supreme Court hears the high-profile case, Garland v. VanDerStok, on Oct. 8.

The petitioner is U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. The lead respondent who brought the original lawsuit is Jennifer VanDerStok, a high school teacher and former police officer in Texas who wants to make her own firearms.

“Ghost gun” is a term used to describe a homemade firearm that lacks a serial number and therefore can’t be tracked by law enforcement.

Although some states regulate homemade guns, gun control organizations have been trying for years to ban or regulate homemade guns and gun-assembly kits at the federal level but have failed to persuade Congress to act.

President Joe Biden has claimed that privately made guns, which are often made with gun kits, are the “weapons of choice for many criminals.”

The regulation in dispute—the government’s “frame or receiver” rule—dates to April 2022. It requires individuals who assemble homemade firearms to add serial numbers to them. The rule also mandates background checks for consumers who buy gun kits from dealers.

Pieces of guns that are shipped are nonetheless guns and are subject to existing laws, the government argues.

In June 2023, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor disagreed. He blocked the rule and determined that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which is part of the Department of Justice (DOJ), went beyond its statutory authority in regulating “partially manufactured firearm components, related firearm products, and other tools and materials.”

In July 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with O’Connor. In September 2023, the judge narrowed his injunction, but the DOJ told the Fifth Circuit he was ignoring the Supreme Court’s October 2023 order that temporarily reinstated the rule.

Also in October 2023, the Fifth Circuit said it disagreed with the DOJ’s argument, but at the same time found O’Connor’s injunction “sweeps too broadly” because it affected persons who were not participating in the litigation.

The circuit court vacated the part of the injunction that applied to gun kit customers, saying it did so based on the federal government’s assurances that it “will not enforce the Final Rule against customers who purchase regulated ‘frames or receivers’ and who are otherwise lawfully entitled to purchase firearms.”

The federal government appealed the ruling, filing a petition with the Supreme Court on Feb. 7, which granted it on April 22.

In the new brief filed on Aug. 13, VanDerStok says that the federal Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968 regulates firearms, which are defined as “any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” and “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.”

Around the same time, a regulation defined “frame or receiver” as “that part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward position to receive the barrel.”

A breechblock closes the rear end of the barrel and blocks gases from escaping.

That definition “said nothing about precursors of frames or receivers or parts kits,” the brief says.

But in April 2022 the ATF created a rule that expanded the definition of “firearm.” The rule defined “frame or receiver” to encompass “precursors that ‘may readily be … converted to function as a frame or receiver.’”

The rule defined firearm “to include weapon parts kits that ‘may readily be … converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” The rule also modified the definition of “frame or receiver” to cover the “housing only of the breechblock (for receivers) or one component of the firing mechanism (for frames),” the brief says.

The changes included in the rule “are inconsistent with the GCA’s definition of firearm,” and parts kits are not “firearms” within the meaning of the statute, the brief says.

It is key that when Congress passed the statute it chose “to focus on the commercial firearm market rather than the private making of firearms for personal use.” This means the law does not cover “the items used in private firearm making that ATF attempts to regulate.”

Only Congress, not the ATF, gets to make the changes the ATF desires, the brief says.

In its petition, the DOJ previously argued that the rule should be upheld because it “makes clear that a weapon parts kit that allows a purchaser to readily assemble an operational weapon is a ‘firearm.’”

“Those provisions of the Rule reflect the plain meaning of the relevant provisions” of the GCA, which the Fifth Circuit “failed to meaningfully analyze.”

The circuit court’s interpretation “would frustrate the Act’s design and make it trivially easy to circumvent the central requirements of the federal firearms laws,” according to the petition.

The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ for comment on the new brief but did not receive a reply by publication time.

The trend of legacy automakers ditching their plans and investments in EVs continues, with Ford reportedly the latest to cancel plans for a large three-row electric sport-utility vehicle, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

The company will take $1.9 billion in related special charges and write-downs as a result, the report said. 

Ford is canceling due to pricing pressures and increased competition, instead opting to focus on hybrid versions of its popular Explorer and Expedition models.

This decision reflects a broader trend among automakers that we have written about over the last year or two, especially since the UAW extorted negotiated their latest labor contracts from the Detroit automakers. 

Additionally, consumer demand has been weaker than anticipated, with concerns over cost and charging infrastructure. As a result of all of these factors, combined with increased competition out of China, legacy automakers are scaling back EV investments. VW also announced it was stepping back from EVs to focus on hybrids earlier this year, as we wrote in May.  

Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler commented: “Based on where the market is and where the customer is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”

The WSJ reported on Tuesday that Ford has also delayed the launch of a new electric pickup truck to 2027, marking the second postponement, and reduced its EV investment to 30% of its budget, down from 40%.

The company expects to lose $5 billion on its EV business this year, with a loss of about $44,000 per vehicle in the second quarter. Executives are focused on reducing losses and ensuring future EVs are profitable.

Despite recalibrating plans to include more hybrids, Ford is still moving forward with several full EVs, including an electric commercial van in 2026 and two new pickup trucks in 2027, according to the report. 

Farley said last month: “We believe that the fitness of the Chinese in EVs will eventually wash over our entire industry in all regions.”

We wrote back in June that nearly half of EV drivers in the U.S. were considering switching back to gas. Forty-six percent of EV owners surveyed in the United States say they will likely return to driving gas-powered vehicles.

Globally, the survey of 30,000 respondents in 15 countries found that more than one-quarter (29 percent) of EV owners are likely to go back to driving gas-powered cars.

Recall back in April we noted that Ford was “re-timing” its efforts to go all electric and back in February we wrote that GM was shifting to plug-in hybrids, too. 

CEO Mary Barra said on an earnings call back in February: “Let me be clear, GM remains committed to eliminating tailpipe emissions from our light-duty vehicles by 2035, but, in the interim, deploying plug-in technology in strategic segments will deliver some of the environment or environmental benefits of EVs as the nation continues to build this charging infrastructure.”

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that new COVID-19 infections in the country of origin have increased to nearly 20 percent in the past few weeks, as two new Omicron subvariants spread across the country.

But while increases to China’s official COVID-19 test positivity rate mirrors that of the rest of the world, its number of reported COVID-19 deaths remains orders of magnitude lower than is expected for a country of its population, given the ongoing reports of COVID-19-related deaths in other countries.

According to its Aug. 8 report, China’s CDC reported that the COVID-19 test positivity rate in the country spiked to 18.7 percent in the last week of July, up from 8.9 percent at the start of the month. According to the official data, that rate has not exceeded 8 percent since the start of the year.

The trend of China’s official infection data parallels that reported in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC), in its Aug. 8 biweekly update, reported that the COVID-19 test positivity rate in the United States had increased in the past six months to 17.6 percent.

According to the World Health Organization’s monitoring data from 84 countries, the overall COVID-19 test positivity rate stands above 10 percent but varies by region. That percentage has been rising for weeks, it said. Europe also reported a 20 percent increase in its positive COVID-19 tests since the start of 2024.

But for the month of July, China’s CDC reported only two deaths from COVID. Meanwhile, the U.S. CDC data reflected significantly more provisional COVID-related deaths, with 1,920 U.S. deaths reported in July citing COVID-19 as an underlying or contributing cause. China also has a much larger population: 1.4 billion to the United States’ 335 million.

China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been accused by the international community of downplaying and covering up the true scale of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the country since late 2019, when COVID-19 first broke out in Wuhan, in the country’s Hubei Province.

New Omicron Subvariants

China’s CDC named the XDV and JN.1 Omicron subvariants as the prevalent strains contributing to the 7,042 COVID-19 cases officially recorded in July.

The official Chinese reporting said that Omicron subvariant XDV and its descendants accounted for 38 percent to 43 percent of infections, while Omicron subvariant JN.1 and its descendants—including the subvariants JN.1.7, JN.1.18, KP.2, KP.3, and LB.1—accounted for 55 percent to 60 percent of infections.

U.S. CDC data showed that as of Aug. 8, XDV.1 subvariant of parent strain XDV accounted for only 0.3 percent of cases in the United States—a reduction from previous months. Meanwhile, the KP.3.1.1 variant is now the most common strain in the United States, followed by KP.3, LB.1, KP.2.3, and KP.2—all of which came from the JN.1 parent strain. The U.S. CDC said it saw no evidence that these new variants were causing more severe symptoms.

Dr. Dong Yuhong, an infectious disease specialist and senior medical columnist for The Epoch Times, said on Aug. 9 that the JN.1-derived subvariants “KP.3 and KP.2 have similar virological and epidemiological characteristics” but that their test positivity rate in China has increased.

She noted that the variants have a stronger ability to evade the antibodies that people have developed from past infections or vaccination.

China’s latest vaccine targeted the XBB.1.5 variant, she said, which belongs to a different sublineage of the shared parental BA.2 Omicron variant.

Dong said that while there are again signs of increased COVID-19 transmission, it remains unclear whether a deadly COVID-19 strain that could cause another pandemic could emerge. She added that COVID-19 “requires continuous monitoring and close observation.”

She said that the speed of vaccine development “can’t keep up” with the virus’s continuous mutation and that “simply depending on vaccines is unsafe and unreliable.”

“We have an innate multi-immune barrier in each of us,” she said. “As long as we pay attention to strengthening and protecting it, it will be effective.”

She advised everyone to avoid habits that damage immunity, such as smoking, drinking, and staying up late, and develop more good habits that enhance immunity, such as regular exercise, meditation, and improving our capacity to regulate our emotions.

“That’s a positive approach to dealing with epidemics,” she said.

No Transparency, Trust

After years of controlled releases of approved official data, censorship of whistleblowers, and mandating COVID-19 restrictions and prolonged lockdowns across China, the CCP suddenly reversed course and lifted all its restrictions, testing, and reporting about COVID-19 in 2022. But it continued with its lack of transparency, leaving many Chinese feeling that they are unable to trust their institutions and still in the dark about the true seriousness of the COVID-19 epidemic in the country.

The Chinese regime’s experts estimated that 80 percent of China’s population was infected with COVID-19 at the end of 2022 when its restrictions were lifted.

Recent posts by Chinese doctors on Chinese social media heightened the populace’s fear, with a number saying that a more contagious COVID-19 variant is responsible for China’s new infections.

Hu Yang, a chief physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital and associate professor at Tongji University, said in a video posted on Chinese social media that with the recent wave of COVID-19 infections, some young people have also been found to be suffering severe infections in their lungs and exhibiting white lung symptoms.

“With the virus causing COVID-19 still mutating, the dominant virus strain [in China] has become XDV, which is more contagious, and many people have been infected again,” Hu said. “At present, XDV mutant strains can still spread in high-temperature environments.”

Feng Ge, a member of the China Association for Research and Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine, wrote on Chinese social media on Aug. 4 that “currently, there are two new most poisonous subvariants spreading—XDV and KP.3.”

He warned that children have been more vulnerable to the new subvariants and that parents shouldn’t treat an illness caused by them like a simple cold.

Dr. Guo Kai, the deputy chief physician of the Department of Pediatrics at the Wangjing Hospital in Beijing, posted on Chinese Weibo on Aug. 2 that the new variant KP.3 has been “fierce” and that four types of pediatric medicines should be kept on hand.

Parents with children suffering from respiratory diseases line up at a children’s hospital in Chongqing, China, on Nov. 23, 2023. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Reports of Youth Infections, Deaths

Sean Lin, a microbiologist and assistant professor in the Biomedical Science Department at Fei Tian College in New York, says the Chinese regime continues to hide information about COVID-19 cases in China.

“The Chinese government has concealed the number of people who have died from COVID-19,” Lin told The Epoch Times in an interview on Aug. 9.

“I think many elderly people with poor immunity may have already died in the past multiple waves of COVID-19 in China. And now, it’s spreading rampantly among young people.”

Lin said that now, KP.3 in China has the momentum to replace some of the other JN.1 subvariants causing the rise in infections.

“However, I think the situation in China is not just a problem of virus mutation, because this variant also occurs in other parts of the world,” he said. “I think it is that the immune systems of so many ​​young Chinese people have been exhausted. I think China’s problem is a comprehensive health problem.”

Lin said of COVID-19 infections outside of China: “The hospitalization rate has not increased, and the death rate has not increased, although the transmission rate has increased. The entire society does not feel the impact of COVID that much, as most people can recover from it after about two weeks.”

“But the situation in China is different,” he said.

A resident of Huzhu County, in Qinghai Province in northwest China, who asked to be referred to only as Yang out of fear for his safety, told The Epoch Times in early August that there have been several families around him in which their children were infected with COVID-19.

“The outbreak is still very serious in some places,” he said.

Patients line up for an emergency pre-check at the new pediatric building of Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai on the evening of Sept. 25, 2023. The emergency and night care outpatient hall is crowded with children and family members waiting for treatment. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Yang also noted that there have been known incidents of “many people of all ages dying very suddenly.” This is despite that all of them have received COVID-19 vaccines for earlier variants, he noted.

Cao, a resident of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province who also asked to withhold his first name, told The Epoch Times that locals believe there have consistently been people infected with COVID-19 in recent years, despite the lack of testing and reporting.

“Unexplained sudden deaths also occur from time to time,” he said. Some of his relatives and friends have been among the casualties.

A citizen of Nanyang in Henan Province in central China, who also asked to be referred to as Yang, told The Epoch Times that local clinics have consistently been busy.

“But doctors don’t tell patients the truth,” he said. “They go around it and won’t tell you anything.”

He said that some locals are suspected to have died from COVID-19, including many young people.

“I went to the hospital and there were quite some people in their 20s and 30s who died,” he said. “There were more people who had myocardial infarction [a known side effect of COVID-19 vaccinations]. Many of us know that there is no way to solve it.”

In dealing with the ongoing infections and side effects, Lin suggested that Chinese people abandon the CCP’s materialism and atheism, which gives people no mental solace or moral support, and look for meaning and hope in China’s own rich spiritual traditions, “whether it’s Buddhism, Taoism, or Falun Gong.”

“There are too many examples of pandemics in history that show many people could handle it if they had faith and can maintain a kind heart. This is still very important,” he said. “After all, I think it gives people all over the world a chance to survive amid all kinds of hardships.”

It’s delightfully fitting that on the day the entire financial world was holding its breath for Biden’s highly politicized and grossly incompetent Bureau of Labor Statistics to admit it had massively fucked up the jobs data over the past year, that Biden’s highly politicized and grossly incompetent Bureau of Labor Statistics fucked up even more.

At exactly 10am ET this morning, the BLS was supposed to publish its annual CES Preliminary Benchmark Announcement revision, an update on how many jobs in the past year were, for lack of a better word, made up (as we reported earlier, it just so happened that the number was 818,000, which was the second biggest annual overestimation of job creation in US history… something that surely was pure coincidence in an election year).

However, 10:01am ET hit… and nothing happened: millions of traders, thousands of economists and countless macrotourists were furiously slamming the F5 key, refreshing the revisions page to see…. nothing change. This went on, and on, and on…. and even though the market actually reacted as if data had been published, it turned out that algos were merely responding to phantom triggers in hopes of triggering momentum ignition up or down. No actual data was reported.

Market reacts to the BLS revision number which hasn’t been published yet

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 21, 2024

As the desperate wait continued, and as seconds turned to minutes, we joked – nearly 30 minutes after the report was originally due – by publishing the phone number for the BLS department responsible for today’s report.

pic.twitter.com/mdFRtZoIqY

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 21, 2024

As it turns out, at least some people had more luck than us in reaching said department (we repeatedly got voicemail with the promise that someone would get back to us in 24-48 hours), because as Bloomberg reports, “at least three banks managed to obtain key payroll numbers Wednesday while the rest of Wall Street was kept waiting for a half-hour by a government delay that whipsawed markets and sowed confusion on trading desks.”

That’s right: while the rest of the world was freaking out, paralyzed by the gross incompetence of the Biden Department of Labor (which, as a reminder, was merely informing us of just how incompetent it truly was by overestimating nearly 1 million jobs in 2024), banks such as Mizuho, BNP Paribas and Nomura all called into the phone number listed above… and got the answer, by some absolute BLS moron who was not aware that they are leaking material, non-public information to extremely sophisticated investors while the rest of the world was stuck in the dark courtesy of, well, other absolute BLS moron who had days if not weeks to prepare today’s report and yet still couldn’t get it out on time… or even 30 minutes after time.

And then, frustration turned to anger and outrage on Wall Street as word spread from trading desk to trading desk that the BLS was releasing the number to some firms over the phone!

When the data was finally released shortly after 10:30 am, it showed payrolls will likely be revised down by 818,000 for the 12 months through March, the biggest downward revision to the job numbers since 2009.

Stocks initially jumped and bonds gained because the report lent support to speculation that the Fed will start cutting interest rates next month, then quickly reversed as panic seemed to sweep over Wall Street at the thought that the BIden admin had been actively covering up a labor market recession. In the end, hopium won out and stocks closed near the highs of the day, because – well – Powell will always make sure stocks keeps rising.

“I don’t wonder that people are upset,” Nancy Tengler, the chief executive officer of Laffer Tengler Investments. “The whole thing reeks of incompetence.”

Well, yeah, but what makes it especially hilarious is that the incompetence came on the day the BLS was admitting 12 months of prior propaganda incompetence. Seriously, not even the USSR had fuck ups of this caliber.

The delay – and subsequent one-by-one disclosure – is the latest in a series of embarrassing mishaps to roil Labor Department data releases, which hilarious is who the markets have to rely on for “accurate” data on the state of the US labor market and the trajectory of inflation and the economy.

In a post on X, the agency said it was “looking into the reason for the delay”…

We are aware there was a delay to the CES preliminary benchmark announcement. We are looking into the reason for the delay. We have no additional information to share regarding the delay at this time. https://t.co/nXPlwtZZa7

— BLS-Labor Statistics (@BLS_gov) August 21, 2024

… to which we responded that when the idiots responsible for this latest fuck up are fired, the BLS should make sure to seasonally adjust it so it adds at least another 1 million government jobs.

As Bloomberg reminds us, the government’s economic data reports were once released under tightly controlled embargos to accredited news agencies, including Bloomberg. But the practice was abandoned during the pandemic, when departments across the government shifted to just releasing the data on the Internet to everyone at once. Officials said that method would better protect the security of market-moving data, but instead all it did was create groups of wealthy “super users” who had preferential and early access to government data from Biden’s corrupt agency.

When it didn’t come out on time, Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior US economist BNP Paribas, said she kept refreshing the web page, waiting for the numbers. Then “we called the public line a couple times and they gave us the number,” she said.

Steven Ricchiuto, chief US economist at Mizuho, did the same. “Knowing the data was delayed we had to call for the number before it showed up on their website,” he said.

ZeroHedge itself received the leaked data at 10:24am ET through our expert network, but not even we dared to publish it to our premium subscribers amid concerns that the BLS could not possibly be this stupid and incompetent to be releasing the number on a case by case basis instead of blasting it to the entire world at the same time.

In the end, it turned out the BLS was even more incompetent than we could possibly imagine.

“I am more than a little annoyed,” said Troy Ludtka, senior US economist at SMBC Nikko Securities Americas, who was among those who waited on the public release.

“To put it in the most generous terms: Government agencies absolutely cannot be selectively releasing critical, market-moving information to some agents and broker dealers first via telephone while keeping others in the dark,” he said. “This is anathema to the very idea of a balanced market built on fair, accessible information.”

Troy, but you ain’t seen nothing yet: if Kamala wins and if the US goes full Kam-unist, the very idea of a balanced market will be anathema, replaced by centrally planned… well, everything.

Authored by Paul Lancefield via Off-Guardian.org,

Facebook make only about £34 a year from the average customer in the UK – a little under £3 a month (and that’s before costs) so clearly there is no head-room or motivation, for a human level of customer service or attention. The user is not the customer; rather, they are the product whose data is sold to advertisers.

Thus, users do not have a direct customer relationship with the platform. The network is not directly incentivised to “care” about the user before the advertiser. And no matter where you lie on the spectrum between “free speech absolutism” and “private entities have the right to censor any user”, with such low margins it is inevitable machine processing will have to be used to moderate posts and deal with the customer interface.

But it is a fact the customer processing and management capabilities Social Networks are now evolving is being utilised in a variety of ways beyond just moderation. And it is also true this automated processing is being done at scale and is now applied to every post every member makes. 68% of US voters are on Facebook. In the UK it’s 66% and France 73.2%. The figures are similar for every democratic nation in the West. So it is vitally important the applied rules should be politically neutral.

The power that exists within the ability to machine-process every users posts is far deeper and more profound than perhaps many realise. And while it can’t directly dictate what users write in their messages it has the capacity to fundamentally shape which messages gain traction.

Social Media services have become de-facto town squares and most would agree their corporate owners should avoid ever putting a hand on the scales and influencing politics.

Additionally as everyone who uses Facebook is aware, especially when it comes to politically sensitive topics, the system will qualify an individual’s reach; sometimes to an extreme degree. Or that user will simply be banned for a period of time, or banned from the network entirely.

So we can ask the question, since the social media corporations have so much censorship power, how do we know they aren’t engaging in unethical political interference? Can they be trusted with the responsibility?

I will return to this question, but it’s clear that trust in these corporations is deeply misplaced.

The pandemic woke many people up to the levels of control those in charge of our Social Media networks are imposing. They, write the rules to boost engagement for posts they favour, making certain individuals’ follower counts more valuable. Conversely, users who go against the grain (or against the establishment narrative) see their engagement subtly reduced or even tank, or they can be banned from the service entirely. And the evidence is that, somewhat contrary to the principles of democracy, hands have been very firmly placed on the scales at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he invited independent journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Schellenburger into the Twitter offices to research internal company communications and see how far the previous owners had been censoring user tweets.

The Twitter Files are the result, and they clearly demonstrate there has been interference on a major scale and that it has also in many cases been on political grounds. The Twitter Files team established government agencies have been firmly embedded at the company monitoring and censoring US citizens and the citizens of other nations and government agencies were regularly (strongly) requesting censorship actions. But more than this they have also revealed similar levels of interference have been taking place at other Social Media networks such a Facebook.

But since The Twitter files evidence of interference, a new and potentially even greater interference threat has emerged.

AI.

There was a time it seemed like algorithms were the only topic of conversation digital marketers could discuss. And since there is no margin for human intervention at the level of individual posts, algorithms were what was being used.

To start with they were quite simple, like the equations we practiced in school math class, so they were relatively easy to work out. Google’s rise was powered by a simple yet brilliant idea: counting external links to a webpage as a proxy for relevance.

But algorithms have since given way to more complex machine-learning models which still at core, rely on algorithms, but now they are automatically generated and so vast any human attempt to untangle them is a non-starter. So we confine our thinking about them to what they can achieve, what significant things they can discriminate rather than exactly how the code works.

And now we have entered a third generation of technology. Machine learning has transformed into the development of Large Language Models (LLMs) or, more popularly, AI. And with this latest evolution, corporatists have found immense and frightening new opportunities for power and control.

The creation of LLMs involves training. The training imbues them with specific skills and biases. The purpose of the training is to fill in gaps, such that there are no obvious holes in the LLMs capacity to deal with the building blocks of human conceptualisation and speech. And this is the distinguishing feature of LLMs; that we can converse with them and the conversation flows, and the grammar and the content feels normal fluent and complete. Ideally, an LLM acts like a refined English butler—polite, informative, and correct without being rude. But also training confers specialisations to the LLM.

In the context of social media – and this is where the frightening levels of power start to become evident – LLMs are being used to act as the hall monitor, enforcing “content moderation.”

Meta’s Llama Guard is a prime example, trained not just to moderate but also to report on users. And this reporting function embodies not just the opportunity to report, but also through that reporting data, the mining of opportunities to influence and make suggestions about the user and too the user. And when I say suggestions, an LLM is capable not only of the obvious kind that the user might welcome and is happy to receive, but also a more devious unconscious kind that can be manipulative and designed to control.

There is not yet evidence gathered (that I’m aware of) LLMs in particular are being used this way; yet. But the capability is most certainly there and if past behaviours indicate future developments, likely to be so used.

You only need watch the 2006 episode from the Derren Brown’s TV show “Derren Brown: The Heist” where he convinces a group of strangers they have to commit a bank heist, to appreciate just how deep, and powerful the use of suggestion can be. For those unaware of Derren Brown, he is is a stage hypnotist and mentalist, who tends to emphasise the power of suggestion over hypnosis (most of his shows contain no hypnosis at all). Merely through the power of suggestion he gets people to do the most extraordinary things.

“Derren-Brown-like” suggestions work because the human brain is actually far less agile and far more linear than we like to think. Consciousness is a precious resource and many actions we do frequently are transferred to habit, so we can do them without thinking and this is so we can preserve consciousness for where it is needed most.

Through habit we change gear in a stick-shift car without having to think about it. And we’ve all experienced that game where you have a set time to think of a list of things such as countries, ending with the letter A. If put on the spot in front of a crowd, it can sometimes be difficult to come up with any at all. The brain often isn’t actually that good at thinking creatively or making fast conscious on the spot recall.

But, if someone you spoke too a few minutes before the game told you about their holiday in Kenya, you can be sure Kenya will be the first answer to pop into your head. More than that the association will happen automatically, whether we want it to or not!

This is simply the way the brain works. If information is conveyed at just the right time and in the right way, it can be made almost a dead cert a given suggestion will be followed.

Derren Brown understands this and is a master at exploiting it.

Search engines and social media platforms wield immense power to engineer behaviour through subtle suggestions. And indeed, there is evidence Facebook and Google have done so.

Professor and researcher Dr Robert Epstein – as it were – “caught Google out” manipulating the search suggestions box that appears under the text box where users enter a search request. The whole episode became additionally sordid when it become clear they were being deceptive and had a level of were awareness their experimentation is unethical. I won’t recount the full details, but do check out the links to this – it is an interesting story in its own right.

Users are in a particularly trusting and receptive mental state when using Google’s suggested links function and don’t notice when the results contain action and imperative suggestions that, far from being the best answer to your search query – are there to manipulate a user’s subsequent actions.

In relation to Social media posts, the use of suggestion is often far more subtle, making it harder to detect and resist. LLM analysis across the database of user Posts can reveal related posts which supply suggest actions. Here the network can utilise the fact they have many millions of user messages at their disposal, including messages suggesting preferred outcomes. Such messages can be selected and preferentially promoted in user feeds.

Content moderation is, of course, necessary to handle unacceptable language and anti-social behaviour. However, there’s a large grey area where disagreeable opinions can labeled as “hate speech” and because it is a grey area, there is much leeway for the social network to intrude into the personal politics and free speech space.

The term “hate speech” has been very effective device for justifying use of the ban-hammer, but the main concern now is that, with the deployment of LLMs a major historical milestone has passed with barely a whisper that implies a whole new level of such constraints and threats to users freedom to communicate.

And that milestone is that now LLMs are being used to govern human behaviour and not the other way around. The passing of this milestone has barely been noticed because we already previously had more simple algorithms performing this role and it is done in the dark anyway.

User’s don’t see it until unless they are affected by it in an obvious way. But even so there is ample reason to think in the future we may will look back and recognise this milestone was something of a critical juncture after which some version of a “Sky-Net” like future became inevitable.

Just last week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a police initiative to use social media to identify those involved in quelling public disorder, illustrating how LLM automated reporting is poised to be used beyond social media and in the context of law enforcement.

There is no detail as yet of how this monitoring will be done, but, having experience of Tech Project pitching you can be sure the government will have a roster of technology firms suggesting solutions. And you can be sure LLMs are being pitched as integral to almost all of them!

So we have established Social Media is closed and proprietary and has enabled new media power structures to be established. We have seen Social Media owners have the power to suppress or boost a posts virality and have now implemented policing and reporting by LLM (AI) which looks set to extend into real world policing. We have seen, through the Twitter Files, social media corporations broke the law during the Pandemic and displayed a willingness to collaborate with government agencies to censor and suppress disfavoured