Month: August 2024

Authored by Sophie Li via The Epoch Times,

As California students return to school, the debate over a new grading system aimed at eliminating biases in traditional grading continues across the state.

The new system, “Grading for Equity,” seeks to remove non-academic factors such as attendance, participation, and timely submission of assignments from students’ grades, focusing solely on mastery of content.

“It’s really trying to make the grade only represent what a student has learned about the course,” Joe Feldman, an author and former teacher who popularized the grading system, said in an episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider” show.

According to Feldman—who wrote “Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms”—traditional grading systems contain biases that do not accurately reflect a student’s mastery of the material, which equitable grading can address. For example, a student with a lower exam score might end up with the same final grade as a student with a higher exam score by earning higher grades in daily assignments or completing extra credit work.

“While [the non-academic factors] are important for students to learn how to do, we don’t want to include them in the grade, because it starts to warp the accuracy of the grade,” he said.

“Students could have identical performance but get a different grade depending on which teacher they have.”

By excluding non-academic factors, Feldman said the system can better motivate students to engage with assignments meaningfully, rather than simply completing them mechanically.

However, Dublin Teachers Association Co-President Laurie Sargent argued that the equity grading system might not work as intended. She said that if assignments become optional or do not count toward the final grade, students are more likely to skip them altogether.

“Mr. Feldman’s concept is [that the students] can still do it and you can provide the feedback, but there’s just no grade attached to it,” Sargent, who’s also an eighth-grade English teacher at Dublin Unified School District in Alameda County, said in the episode.

“As wonderful as that sounds, I don’t know if we’re there yet, because there’s grades attached to it now, and they [still] don’t do their homework or read the feedback. They’re teenagers.”

The school district experimented with equity grading on a small scale during the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years in grades 7–12 but has paused its initial plan to roll out a districtwide transition within two years, partly due to opposition from parents.

Feldman defends the equity system, saying assignments can sometimes obscure a student’s true level of knowledge, leaving issues unresolved.

“What was happening is that students were hiding that they didn’t know information, [and] they were concealing that by handing in homework because they got help [from parents or tutors] and doing extra credit,” he said.

Additionally, Dublin Unified Superintendent Chris Funk, who supports the equity system, said students’ grades are sometimes affected by factors unrelated to learning, such as forgetting to write their names on their papers.

“We’re giving the zero because they don’t have their first name, last name, the period and the date on it,” he said in the episode. “How does that reflect whether they did the work correctly?”

50 Percent Floor

Funk said the equity grading policy was not significantly different from the traditional one, focusing only on removing the zero score and implementing a 50 percent base score.

He added that while some teachers in the district were already practicing some of the changes, the new policy simply makes these practices more uniform and standardized.

Sangeetha Shanbhogue, a parent at Dublin High School, told “California Insider” that her children received a 50 percent base score on every test last year and were permitted to retake exams if their grades were below a C. Additionally, her children did not have homework.

“Since [her son] did not have practice, he didn’t learn because he didn’t know what he was doing wrong,” Shanbhogue said. “Especially for science subjects, where you have to spend some time outside of class trying to learn or practice.”

She said that not requiring homework could severely hinder students’ learning quality because they would miss out on practicing what they’ve learned, especially for students in higher grade levels.

“If you started at once at high school, when the stakes are high [as] they’re applying for college, it will have a big impact,” she said.

Besides introducing the base grade, the equity grading system also allows students who didn’t get a C to retake exams multiple times, which some argue could diminish their motivation to study.

In some instances, Sargent said, students might use their first attempt at a test to discover its content, as teachers often use the same exam for all retakes.

“I‘ll go in, I’ll see what the test is, and then I’ll go back and study and do the retake,” she said. “So now we’ve just taught them to game the system.”

She added that while retaking exams allows students to revisit and correct their mistakes, it is also crucial to teach them to take responsibility for their work before they enter society.

“Maybe we do that with freshmen and sophomores or in the middle school levels, where the kids are still emerging, but by the time you’re a junior and a senior and in our AP classes, it doesn’t teach them accountability.”

Shanbhogue echoed this concern, saying that such practices have harmed her children’s motivation to study hard for exams.

Graduation Rate

On a larger scale, Sargent said the equity system will boost graduation rates, but at a cost.

“It’s going to elevate our graduation rates so that students that would normally fail classes will now pass, but they won’t have the skills … that they need to back them up in the real world,” she said.

Moreover, higher graduation rates don’t necessarily translate to higher college admission rates, Shanbhogue said.

“The number of kids getting into UCs and CSUs has decreased, while the number of kids that are going to community colleges has increased. AP scores have also decreased over the last three years,” she said, referring to data from the school district.

According to the school’s profile, the four-year college placement rate decreased from 73.4 percent to 64.8 percent from the 2022–23 school year to 2023–24. In contrast, the two-year college placement rate increased from 21.5 percent to 24.2 percent, while placements to military and other schools rose from nearly 5 percent to 11 percent.

School data also show that in the 2022–23 school year, 184 students were accepted into the University of California, and 115 students were accepted into the California State University system. In the 2023–24 school year, 137 students were accepted into UC schools, and 106 were accepted into CSU.

Challenges

The Dublin Unified Board of Trustees voted to discontinue the equity grading program in July 2023.

During the board meeting, Funk also announced that the district is ending its relationship with Crescendo Group, the consultant firm led by Feldman. The firm had been assisting the district in developing the grading system.

According to the superintendent, 26 teachers participated in the pilot program, and 80 more were planning to join before the board paused it.

However, Funk said that more practice and research are needed because pilot program data were insufficient to determine whether the new system is effective, and he was disappointed that the board did not give it more time.

“The challenge that I have with some parents is when they come to a board meeting and they give one example, or they [talk] in broad stroke, saying the community is upset,” he said. “It got to a point where the board said, you know what, there’s enough pressure, we’re going to stop it.”

“The board listened to the parents, but 30 parents don’t constitute 5,000 parents,” he added.

The district’s director of communication, Chip Dehnert, told The Epoch Times in an email that while the district-backed effort was discontinued, teachers are still free to implement equity grading at their discretion. The board’s decision does not ban it.

Some other school districts that have implemented similar grading practices include Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified, Sacramento City Unified, Santa Ana Unified, and San Diego Unified.

Authored by Dominic Vogelbacher via The College Fix,

University of Cambridge leaders have agreed to a list of concessions to convince pro-Palestinian demonstrators to end a three-month-old encampment set up at a high-profile zone along the prestigious British institution, including a pledge to fully fund Palestinian scholars and students.

The student organization Cambridge for Palestine has occupied King’s Parade with a large encampment since May 6. King’s Parade is a highly touristic area with massive foot traffic in front of the historic King’s College gates and chapel, built in 1446. On the other side of the street is the Corpus Clock, one of Cambridge’s famous tourist attractions.

To end the occupation, the university recently committed to giving Palestinians undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships, fully funded residential placements for visiting doctoral students and academics, clinical placements for med students, and grants for researchers from Palestinian regions.

“In addition, the Institute for Continuing Education has recently offered places to Palestinian students to attend the University of Cambridge’s International Summer Programme free of charge,” the university stated in its Aug. 1 announcement.

Cambridge also pledged to submit its full application next month to become a so-called University of Sanctuary.

“We share the horror of our students at the loss of life, and the appalling destruction of education institutions and infrastructure in Gaza,” the university stated.

“We are … committing our own networks and resources to ensure that these processes reflect the needs of the Palestinian people.”

The encampment included about 30 tents and pavilions, with large banners placed on King’s College and signs lining the sidewalk. The banners displayed slogans such as “Cambridge Jews For Justice in Palestine” and “Money for Education, Not War + Occupation.” Several posters featured lists of demands and community guidelines.

The community guidelines board included a no-tolerance policy for Islamophobia, ableism, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, as well as the slogan: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The sign also asserted that both Britain and Cambridge University are not simply complicit, but “knowing benefactors and partners in the genocide.”

The group initially stated it would not end the encampment until Cambridge agreed to divest all of its business ties with pro-Israel companies and invest in Palestinian students, academics, and causes — including becoming a University of Sanctuary.

The student activists argued in statements that some companies Cambridge invests in are “complicit in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” including Barclays, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Caterpillar, and Rolls Royce.

On June 8, over a month after the encampment was formed, the university created a Humanitarian Response Fund and allocated $128,000 in initial funding to help students affected by the “conflict or crisis.”

On Aug. 1, Cambridge University announced its concessions, noting campus leaders “have agreed to explore” the demands to change university policy, but the proposed actions are “contingent on the encampment closing down.”

The proposed actions include reviewing their “approach to responsible investment” and “academic and industry research ties and collaborations including those falling within the arms/defense category.”

Campus leaders have invited a proposed student task force to join the “working group” that will “make recommendations to subsequent meetings of… governance committees that oversee policies” that are relevant to the students’ demands.

In their Instagram response, Cambridge for Palestine stated while the university’s statement was a “long-overdue step toward building an academic institution that has no ties to genocide,” the commitments are “insufficient.”

The organization wants a “comprehensive disclosure and divestment effort” and is “appalled” that the word “genocide” was not used in the statement.

In the same post, Cambridge for Palestine stated the encampment on King’s Parade is slated to close sometime in mid-August. However, they are planning a “Concrete Camp Project” that will be a “permanent physical space for Palestinian liberation organizing in Cambridge.”

Cambridge for Palestine declined requests from The College Fix seeking comment.

The ongoing normalization of jobless claims in Texas – post Hurricane Beryl…

Source: Bloomberg

…has pulled initial jobless claims down dramatically. On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, initial claims are basically at multi-decade lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Continuing claims inched lower but remain above the 1.8mm Maginot Line…

Source: Bloomberg

How will The Fed defend rate-cuts with jobless claims (if you can believe them) near record lows?

America’s largest retailer delivered another strong quarter of sales, surpassing nearly all analyst estimates tracked by Bloomberg. This is mainly due to its strategy of offering the lowest prices and best deals for cash-strapped consumers struggling with elevated inflation and high interest rates. Walmart also increased its full-year outlook as Bidenomics continued to transform the nation of shoppers into Walmart regulars. 

Walmart reported earnings of $4.5 billion, or 56 cents per share, for the three months ending July 31, compared to $7.9 billion, or 97 cents per share, in the same period last year. Adjusted earnings per share came in at 67 cents, beating Wall Street analysts’ expectations of 65 cents per share, as tracked by Bloomberg.

Here are two visualizations of EPS and cash flow for the quarter, pulled from Walmart’s earnings slide deck. 

Operating expenses as a percentage of net sales. 

Sales for the quarter rose 4.8% to reach $169.33 billion, beating expectations of $168.46 billion.

Comparable store sales—which include online and stores open for at least one year—grew about 4.2% in the US, exceeding the estimate of 3.43%. At Sam’s Club, US comparable store sales beat estimates at 5.2%. 

Here’s a snapshot of second quarter results (courtesy of Bloomberg): 

• Total US comparable sales ex-gas +4.3%, estimate +3.41%

• Walmart-only US stores comparable sales ex-gas +4.2%, estimate +3.43%

• Sam’s Club US comparable sales ex-gas +5.2%, estimate +3.9%

• Adjusted EPS 67c, estimate 65c

• Revenue $169.34 billion, +4.8% y/y, estimate $168.46 billion

• Change in Sam’s Club e-commerce sales +22%, estimate +19%

• Adjusted operating income $7.9 billion, estimate $7.76 billion

Walmart’s second-quarter earnings offer insight into consumer spending habits under Bidenomics, as ultra-high grocery store prices strain household budgets. Last month, Goldman noted that Walmart has the best grocery store deals.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Walmart CFO John David Rainey said, “We are seeing that the consumer continues to be discerning, choiceful, value-seeking,” adding, “We are not seeing any incremental fraying of our customers’ financial health.”

Walmart shares are trading 8% higher to the $74 handle in the premarket…

…a record high. 

Meanwhile, the inflation-crushing policies of the Biden-Harris administration have led to an increasing number of consumers trading down to find deals. In May, Walmart revealed that even upper-income households were trading down to the retailer, which was a big reason why earnings beat. 

Looking ahead, the nation’s largest retailer also raised its full-year outlook (but most notably, the consensus was already above these raised estimates):

• Sees adjusted EPS $2.35 to $2.43, estimate $2.45
• Sees net sales +3.75% to +4.75%

More color here on the full-year outlook: 

Commenting on Walmart’s earnings is Goldman’s retail specialist Scott Feiler, who explained to clients this AM:

WMT (++):  Believe it or not, there were a fair amount of concerns into the print for the 1st time in a while. This print was good on an absolute basis and much better vs some of the fears. They handily beat comp sales and are keeping their 2H guide intact (were some fears around 3Q guide). They say their FY guide assumes a generally stable consumer.  We had positioning down to a 6 this quarter vs an 8 last quarter and noted a good bit of short selling into the print. This will provide big relief to WMT, and also some help to the rest of retail. The pushback will be +6% this morning is a lot with consensus EPS not moving higher, but expectations just were much lower vs the past few years.

Details:  2Q EPS of $0.67 vs Consensus $0.65 on revenues 40 bps better and comps of +4.3% vs Consensus +3.7%. Walmart US was +4.2% vs Consensus +3.4% but expectations lower at around +3%.  Gross margins beat by 30 bps, offset by an SG&A miss. Raising the FY EPS guide to $2.35-$2.43 vs prior $2.23-$2.37 (consensus is already at the new range but still comforting to see the raise). They are also raising the FY sales guide. 3Q EPS is coming in a touch below at $0.51-$0.52 vs Consensus $0.55 but sales basically guided in-line, despite fears.

One of Walmart’s main attractions for low-income and middle-of-the-road households has been the ‘rollback’ pricing. During the most recent quarter, Walmart offered more than 7,200 price rollbacks. The number of rollbacks on food items jumped 35% because this is where the consumer is most pressured. 

In July, Walmart debuted as the biggest store-label food brand in two decades, capturing even more market share and funneling cash-strapped consumers into buying cheaper groceries at its big-box retail stores nationwide. These store-label items include frozen foods, dairy, coffee, and chocolate. 

“Clearly, we see in this economic backdrop that we are quite relevant to our customers and members,” Rainey said

Meanwhile, concerns about a consumer downturn have been mounting across corporate America. The frequency with which executives and analysts are mentioning phrases like “consumer downturn,” “cautious consumer,” and “consumer pressure” has reached alarmingly high levels, signaling fears low/mid-tier consumers are tapping out. 

Outside Walmart, low/mid-tier consumers are entering hibernation mode:

• “Travel Trends Deteriorating” As Consumer Downturn Worsens

• Airbnb Shares Plunge On Slowing US Demand As Consumer Downturn Worsens

• Restaurant Stocks Slide As Wall Street Sours On Consumer

• Disney CFO Admits Lower-Income Consumers Are “Stressed & Shaving Time Off At Parks

• On Verge Of Credit Shock: Credit Card Debt Posts Biggest Drop Since Covid Crash As Rates Hit Record High

As the consumer space weakens, it’s reasonable to expect that more higher-income households might trade down to Walmart, while low-tier consumers may increasingly turn to Dollar General. 

*   *   * 

For once, consensus is in line with BofA’s omnipotent forecast for retails today (July data) with an expectation of a 0.4% MoM rise in nominal spending. They were both wrong… as retail sales shot up 1.0% MoM – well above the highest forecast.

That is the biggest MoM rise since Jan 2023 – so to hell with your soft landing narrative, right…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, almost everything saw spending surge (except Sporting goods and book stores)

…with a giant swing in Auto sales…

Source: Bloomberg

According to the report, two-thirds of the increase in retail sales was due to autos; meanwhile dealers are slashing prices…

Source: Bloomberg

… (see CPI report) because nobody is buying cars…

Source: Bloomberg

The non-seasonally-adjusted sales bounced massively…

Source: Bloomberg

Back to the big picture, this is the biggest MoM rise since Jan 2023 – so to hell with your soft landing narrative, right…

BUT… and it’s another big but…

…for the eighth month in the last year, the previous month’s data was revised lower..

Source: Bloomberg

…thus making the current month ‘beat’ more impressive.

Who could have seen that coming?

So in addition to the July print, significant revisions in either direction could alter the trajectory of retail sales, and if past is prologue, last month’s retail sales print will be revised lower in keeping with the original forecast. But since algos only react to the here and now, a big jump from a sharply downward revised previous number will be viewed much more favorably than a modest drop from an unrevised prior month, even if they both end up at the same place.

You just can’t make this shit up – Kamalanomics is simply govt-manipulated data of historic data to make the current data look more favorable.

Will this manipulation ever end? (We suspect it will in November if the ‘right’ person doesn’t save democracy).

Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

MSCI Inc. is culling 60 more Chinese stocks from its indexes in its latest quarterly review, the U.S. index provider said on Monday.

It’s the third large-scale removal of Chinese stocks from the MSCI Global Standard indexes this year following 66 and 56 deletions announced in February and May, respectively.

Meanwhile, seven Indian stocks have been added to the list, narrowing the gaps between investments in the two countries.

In a list published on Monday, MSCI Inc. said it’s adding two Chinese stocks to its global standard indexes and removing stocks of 60 companies from China and another from Hong Kong.

The two additions are state-owned hydropower firm Huaneng Lancang and circuit board manufacturer Victory Giant.

Those set to be struck off the indexes also include stocks of a number of state-backed firms, such as CSSC Science & Technology Co. Ltd., which manufactures ship parts and steel structures; financial service firm AVIC Industry-finance Holdings; and media companies People.cn and China Film Group Corporation.

The changes will also affect the MSCI All Country World Index and the MSCI Emerging-Markets Index.

Meanwhile, two slightly larger lists of stocks will be removed from the MSCI China-A onshore index and the MSCI China all shares index.

Huaneng Lancang and Victory Giant will both be added to the indexes, while there will be 62 removals from the China all shares index and 69 from the A onshore index.

While China suffered the biggest cull from the latest MSCI indexes review, India was the biggest beneficiary, with seven stocks added and one removed, narrowing the gap between the two countries.

According to Abhilash Pagaria, head of Nuvama Alternative and Quantitative Research, China’s weight on the MSCI index will drop from 24.8 percent to 24.2 percent while India’s weight will climb up to 19.8 percent from 19.2 percent. 

In June, MSCI published a blog saying investors had become more cautious about the market and geopolitical risks of investing in China, while China’s outbound investments had continued to grow.

Record Loss in Foreign Investment

According to provisional figures published on Friday by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, foreign investors pulled out a record $14.8 billion during the second quarter of this year.

It was the second season in which foreign investors pulled more money out of China than the amount they put into the economy since seasonal data began in 1998.

The net figure first went into negative in the third quarter of 2023, when $12.1 billion of foreign direct investments were withdrawn.

It was less than two years after China’s net foreign direct investments peaked at $107.2 billion in the first quarter in 2022.

The $14.8 billion loss of foreign direct investments between April and June was partly offset by a $10.2 billion net gain in the first quarter, leaving $4.6 billion of net loss in the first half of this year.

It’s the first time the semiannual figure went below zero. If the trend continues into the second half of the year, 2024 will be the first year on record with a net outflow of foreign direct investments.

The outflowing of foreign direct investment in 2024 followed its dramatic drops in the past two years.

According to SAFE statistics, in 2023, China’s annual foreign direct investment liabilities hit $42.7 billion, the lowest since 2000.

It was only 22 percent of the amount in 2022 and one-eighth (12.4 percent) of net foreign direct investment in 2021, when the figure peaked at $344.1 billion.

Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a journalist implying that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto was a “third party individual” for whom it could neither confirm nor deny it had records.

According to an Aug. 13 X post by investigative journalist Dave Troy, the FBI issued a “Glomar response” to his request for information on Satoshi —- neither confirming nor denying the law enforcement agency had records identifying the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator.

Troy said he intended to appeal the FOIA response but claimed the FBI had made an “interesting assertion” by implying Satoshi was a “third party individual.”

“I submitted as a broad general subject request, with full context, so it is the bureau and not me that is asserting that this is an individual,” said Troy. “[M]y intent is not to establish the identity behind the pseudonym, but rather to get what info the bureau may have on the subject. If that helps establish identity somehow, fine, but that’s not my primary question.”

Source: Dave Troy

Since the release of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, many have been speculating on Satoshi’s true identity, whether it be one person or a group of people who helped create the original cryptocurrency.

To this day, no one has definitively proved who Satoshi may be, but some have posited that early BTC contributor Hal Finney was one possible contender. Finney died in 2014.

According to Troy, “there should not be any problem releasing his file if the bureau thought Finney was Nakamoto.”

A similar FOIA request made to the FBI and US Central Intelligence Agency in 2018 resulted in a similar response, neither confirming nor denying any records on the BTC creator existed.

Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, who has long suggested he was Satoshi, could face perjury charges in a United Kingdom court for his statements. In July, after roughly eight years of claims that he was the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator, Wright issued a legal disclaimer to his website that he was not Satoshi.

Little information is known about the true Satoshi.

Their profile on the P2P Foundation platform suggested a birthday of April 5, 1975.

The last communication between the BTC creator and developers in 2011 said they had “moved on to other things.”

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

The state of Massachusetts, which considers itself to be a “sanctuary state” for illegal aliens, is set to carry out a record-high number of deportations of illegals.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has filed over 44,000 deportation cases in Massachusetts in the first nine months of fiscal year 2024. If new cases continue at this pace, then the end of the fiscal year could see as many as 59,000 deportation cases. The previous record was 54,000 in fiscal year 2023, which previously set the record for the highest number of cases in about 25 years.

Despite previously voicing her support for open borders and vowing to keep the state a “sanctuary” for illegals, Governor Maura Healey (D-Mass.) declared in July that the state would limit the length of time that an illegal could stay at state-run overflow shelters, bringing it down to just five days per illegal.

This rule was implemented at all four overflow shelters, located in Cambridge, Chelsea, Lexington, and Norfolk. These shelters previously allowed illegals to stay for up to 30 days, with the option to simply re-apply for another 30 days indefinitely.

The governor’s office also pledged to pay for plane tickets and all travel expenses just to send illegals out of the state.

“I want to be clear, particularly to people outside of Massachusetts who may have gotten word that this is a place to come, that we do not have room here in Massachusetts,” said Healey during her press conference last month.

In a separate press release around the same time, Healey declared that “Massachusetts is out of shelter space, and we simply cannot afford the current size of this system.”

“That’s why we are making changes to [Emergency Assistance] prioritization and transitioning our safety-net sites to five-day temporary respite centers,” she added.

Healey’s stunning reversal on immigration reflects a broader trend of prominent Democrats who once supported mass migration, asylum, and amnesty for illegals, but who have since flip-flopped and now favor crackdowns on such hordes of illegals flooding into the country.

Other examples including New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D-N.Y.), who has been facing an onslaught of illegals pouring into his city due to it being the single most popular destination for illegals who come into the United States.

In 2023, 94.6 million people in the EU (or just over 21 percent of the population) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, i.e. living in households facing at least one of the three risks of poverty and exclusion: income poverty, severe material and social deprivation and/or living in a household with very low work intensity (where adults work at less than 20 percent of their potential over one year).

According to Eurostat data, this figure has remained relatively stable compared to the previous year (95.3 million in 2022, or 22 percent of the population).

As the following infographic shows, via Statista’s Anna Fleck, the share of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion varies significantly from one EU country to another.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Last year, the EU countries with the highest shares were Romania (32 percent), Bulgaria (30 percent), Spain (26.5 percent) and Greece (26.1 percent).

Meanwhile, the lowest shares were recorded in the Czech Republic (12 percent), Slovenia (13.7 percent) and Finland (15.8 percent).

Authored by CJ Hopkins via ConsentFactory.org,

And on and on and on it goes. Today, at the eleventh hour, the Berlin Superior Court postponed my trial, which was scheduled to take place tomorrow, August 15, 2024, for reasons that remain unclear.

It would be wrong, and bad, to speculate about the Superior Court’s reasons for this eleventh-hour postponement. Such unwarranted speculation might even qualify as “misinformation,” and call down the wrath of the German authorities, or the UK authorities, or … God help me, Thierry Breton Himself!

Nevertheless, here’s what happened during the lead-up to my suddenly postponed trial.

On August 12, my attorney filed a motion alleging bias on the part of the Superior Court judge that issued the so-called “Security Order” that I reported on in Part One and Part Two of this series of columns. We filed this motion after our earlier motions to have the Order lifted were summarily denied.

And this morning, a rather extensive article about my prosecution was published in the Berliner Zeitung, a major German newspaper. Despite the fact that this story has received a considerable amount of international press coverage, this is the first piece published by the mainstream German press.

Until today, the mainstream German press had been diligently refusing to report the story, despite the fact that it has been reported in The Atlantic …

And The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) just released this video feature and published an extensive piece about it …

And Sky News Australia just published this piece …

And Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in Switzerland, also covered it …

And Matt Taibbi in Racket News…

And Aya Velázquez, a German independent journalist who, along with her colleagues Bastian Barucker and Stefan Homburg, has recently rocketed to fame for releasing the “Robert Koch-Institute Leaks,” which are currently shaking things up in Germany …

And too many more independent media sources to mention and post big pictures of here.

But that Berliner Zeitung article (and all that other press) probably didn’t have anything to do with the Court’s decision to postpone the trial. I mean, it’s not like they are ashamed of what they’re doing, i.e., criminally prosecuting an author for two Tweets.

No, the impression I get is that the German authorities are proud of what they are doing, and want everyone to know it. After all, in the space of only a year, with the assistance of Amazon and Twitter/X, they have dragged me into criminal court, reported me to the German FBI and Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency, they have damaged my income and reputation as an author, they forced me to spend over 10,000 Euros to defend myself against their trumped-up charges, they had my book banned in Germany, censored my speech, and just generally made my life extremely stressful.

So, it’s unlikely that this one article, or this recent round of press, has shamed the Court into postponing my trial at the eleventh hour. I’m sure the Court does this all the time, you know, abruptly postpone a trial the day before it’s scheduled for totally unspecified reasons. This is modern Germany, after all! It’s New Normal Germany! Not old, bad Nazi Germany, where the courts were just an arm of the Nazi government! New Normal Germany is absolutely nothing like that! It’s a totally democratic country where everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and “The Land of Poets and Thinkers” and “Unity and Justice and Freedom,” and … whatever.

In any event, don’t show up at the Kammergericht tomorrow … I mean, unless you’re on trial, yourself, for something, or if you just want to get groped by a German court officer. (See Part Two of this series for details on that.)

Seriously, though, all joking aside, I’m very grateful to Ralf Hutter and Berliner Zeitung, and FIRE, and all the other journalists and outlets that have covered this story. Focusing public attention on what the New Normal “authorities” are doing, not just here in Germany, but throughout the West, not just to me, but to many, many others just like me, is one of the only weapons we have to fight back against the criminalization of dissent with. As I have explained in earlier essays, this new, nascent form of totalitarianism — which I think is becoming more and more obvious to people at this point — is not 20th-Century totalitarianism. It can’t go goose-stepping around in jackboots. It has to maintain a “democratic” facade.

Stripping away that facade, calling its bluff, forcing it to show itself as what it actually is, in all its authoritarian ugliness, works. Not always, not perfectly, but it works.

Or at least it works a lot better than frontally attacking it, which is futile, and which is exactly what it wants, so that it can use that as an excuse to further ratchet up the totalitarianism, or, you know, to reduce your entire territory to a pile of rubble.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, maybe ask some of those January 6 rioters, or those UK rioters, or Hamas.