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Eastman Kodak deleted an Instagram post featuring photos from the Xinjiang region of China, where western governments and media have criticized Beijing for human rights violations against the majority-Muslim Uyghur people. 

According to The New York Times, the now-deleted Instagram post featured the work of the French photographer Patrick Wack who released numerous images on Kodak film about Xinjiang’s “abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia” in the last half-decade. 

The international community, especially western countries, has accused China of human rights violations against the Uyghur people by forcing them into re-education camps, forced labor, surveilling them, and even controlling birth rates. 

At issue was a subtitle written by Patrick Wack, the photographer behind the controversial images, which called the region an “Orwellian nightmare.”

After receiving backlash from Chinese netizens, the post was deleted by Kodak, which was followed by a new post on Tuesday that offered an apology: 

“Content from the photographer Patrick Wack was recently posted on this Instagram page. The content of the post was provided by the photographer and was not authored by Kodak. Kodak’s Instagram page is intended to enable creativity by providing a platform for promoting the medium of film. It is not intended to be a platform for political commentary. The views expressed by Mr. Wack do not represent those of Kodak and are not endorsed by Kodak. We apologize for any misunderstanding or offense the post may have caused.” 

Hong Kong Free Press also said Kodak apologized on its WeChat page, blaming the mishap on “management loopholes.” 

“For a long time, Kodak has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government and has been in close cooperation with various government departments. We will continue to respect the Chinese government and the Chinese law.” 

Western firms are increasingly choosing between customers in the West and or its thriving customer base in China. The West has pressured companies like Nike to purge its cotton supply chains from Xinjiang. Swedish company H&M experienced a decline in Chinese sales after it spoke out against cotton from the region.

A little more than a week ago, the US Government issued a supply chain advisory for US firms with supply chains that extend into the Xinjiang region.

Kodak is not the first international company to apologize. 

At the moment, Chinese officials have yet to respond to Kodak, but Chinese state-owned Global Times said: 

“It’s not uncommon for the West to hype about the Xinjiang issue under the instigation of anti-China forces headed by the United States.”

Wack was frustrated with Kodak’s statement but didn’t believe any other company operating in China would’ve acted differently. 

“We have created a globalized world where no company with international ambition can reasonably give up on the China market,” he said to CNET. “Would any other major photo company, or multinational company, behave differently and give up on the China market?”

Yet another international company is bowing down to the communist because they don’t want to lose their massive Chinese market share. 

Eastman Kodak deleted an Instagram post featuring photos from the Xinjiang region of China, where western governments and media have criticized Beijing for human rights violations against the majority-Muslim Uyghur people. 

According to The New York Times, the now-deleted Instagram post featured the work of the French photographer Patrick Wack who released numerous images on Kodak film about Xinjiang’s “abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia” in the last half-decade. 

The international community, especially western countries, has accused China of human rights violations against the Uyghur people by forcing them into re-education camps, forced labor, surveilling them, and even controlling birth rates. 

At issue was a subtitle written by Patrick Wack, the photographer behind the controversial images, which called the region an “Orwellian nightmare.”

After receiving backlash from Chinese netizens, the post was deleted by Kodak, which was followed by a new post on Tuesday that offered an apology: 

“Content from the photographer Patrick Wack was recently posted on this Instagram page. The content of the post was provided by the photographer and was not authored by Kodak. Kodak’s Instagram page is intended to enable creativity by providing a platform for promoting the medium of film. It is not intended to be a platform for political commentary. The views expressed by Mr. Wack do not represent those of Kodak and are not endorsed by Kodak. We apologize for any misunderstanding or offense the post may have caused.” 

Hong Kong Free Press also said Kodak apologized on its WeChat page, blaming the mishap on “management loopholes.” 

“For a long time, Kodak has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government and has been in close cooperation with various government departments. We will continue to respect the Chinese government and the Chinese law.” 

Western firms are increasingly choosing between customers in the West and or its thriving customer base in China. The West has pressured companies like Nike to purge its cotton supply chains from Xinjiang. Swedish company H&M experienced a decline in Chinese sales after it spoke out against cotton from the region.

A little more than a week ago, the US Government issued a supply chain advisory for US firms with supply chains that extend into the Xinjiang region.

Kodak is not the first international company to apologize. 

At the moment, Chinese officials have yet to respond to Kodak, but Chinese state-owned Global Times said: 

“It’s not uncommon for the West to hype about the Xinjiang issue under the instigation of anti-China forces headed by the United States.”

Wack was frustrated with Kodak’s statement but didn’t believe any other company operating in China would’ve acted differently. 

“We have created a globalized world where no company with international ambition can reasonably give up on the China market,” he said to CNET. “Would any other major photo company, or multinational company, behave differently and give up on the China market?”

Yet another international company is bowing down to the communist because they don’t want to lose their massive Chinese market share. 

By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times

A federal court on Friday ruled that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) overstepped its authority by halting evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Cincinnati-based U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed (pdf) with a lower court ruling that said the CDC engaged in federal overreach with the eviction moratorium, which the agency has consistently extended for months. Several weeks ago, the CDC announced it would allow the policy, which was passed into law by Congress, to expire at the end of July.

“It is not our job as judges to make legislative rules that favor one side or another,” the judges wrote. “But nor should it be the job of bureaucrats embedded in the executive branch. While landlords and tenants likely disagree on much, there is one thing both deserve: for their problems to be resolved by their elected representatives.”

The ruling upheld one handed down by U.S. District Judge Mark Norris, who in March blocked enforcement of the moratorium throughout western Tennessee.

Under the moratorium, tenants who have lost income during the pandemic can declare under penalty of perjury that they’ve made their best effort to pay rent on time. The CDC claimed the measure was necessary to prevent people from having to enter overcrowded conditions if they were evicted, which would, according to the agency, impact public health.

Previously, the CDC’s lawyers argued in court filings that Congress authorized the eviction freeze as part of its COVID-19 relief legislation, while simultaneously asserting that the moratorium was within its authority. Those arguments were rejected by the three-panel appeals court on Friday.

“What’s the difference between executive-branch experts and congressional ones? Executive-branch experts make regulations; congressional experts make recommendations,” the appeals court wrote. “Congressional bureaucracy leaves the law-making power with the people’s representatives—right where the Founders put it.”

But last month, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision rejected a different plea by landlords to end the ban on evictions.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh had written in an opinion (pdf) that while he believes that the CDC had exceeded its authority by implementing the moratorium, he voted against ending it because the policy is set to expire July 31.

“Those few weeks,” he wrote, “will allow for additional and more orderly distribution” of the funds that Congress has appropriated to provide rental assistance to those in need because of the pandemic.

The CDC moratorium has faced pushback from property owners as well as the National Association of Realtors.

“Landlords have been losing over $13 billion every month under the moratorium, and the total effect of the CDC’s overreach may reach up to $200 billion if it remains in effect for a year,” said the organization in an emergency petition to the Supreme Court.

It’s not clear if the CDC’s attorneys will appeal the ruling. The Epoch Times has requested a comment from the agency.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) uses drones that fly into clouds and deliver an electric shock to “cajole them” into producing precipitation amid dangerous heat waves regularly surpassing triple digits. 

According to Daily Mail, UAE’s National Center of Meteorology (NCM) is flying drones equipped with electric-charge emission instruments that deliver an electric charge to air molecules, which generally encourage precipitation. 

NCM has produced “monsoon-like downpours across the country” with drones to deter sweltering 122F heat. Footage shows Dubai battered with torrential rain produced by cloud seeding technology.

The country already uses cloud-seeding technology, such as dropping salt and other chemicals into clouds to stimulate precipitation. 

The latest cloud seeding operations via drones is part of a $15 million program that is already producing rain in the country, which ranks one of the top driest in the world. The country has plenty of clouds, so triggering rainstorms with electrical charges via drones shouldn’t be an issue. Not every cloud will trigger, but seeding “increases the amount of rain by between five and 70 percent,” Daily Mail said. 

Rain triggered through cloud seeding is much cheaper than desalinated water, where about 42% of the country’s water originates. 

Cloud seeding via drones has enormous potential and shows water can be tapped from the sky. This technology might be helpful to North and South America, where huge megadroughts impact water supplies and damage crops. 

The downside to artificial rain in arid climates is that these areas aren’t well-positioned to handle downpours and may result in flash floods. There’s always a caveat when playing with Mother Nature. 

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics.com,

President Biden so desperately wants the vaccine-hesitant part of the country to get their shots that he may have spread a little misinformation.

“You are not going to get COVID,” he promised during a CNN town-event Wednesday night, “if you have these vaccines.”

Of course, this is not true. Biden knows it. He said as much later during the forum, explaining that, while vaccinated individuals enjoy significant protections, they can still test positive for the virus. But even if that happens, the president pointed out, the vaccine largely mitigates the most serious dangers. “You are not going to be hospitalized,” he said, reciting the latest scientific consensus. “You are not going to be in the IC unit, and you are not going to die.”

The fact that fully vaccinated individuals can still contract the coronavirus is a medical reality. It has also led to more uncomfortable questions about transparency for the Biden administration.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed at Tuesday’s briefing that there had been previously undisclosed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated employees at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Psaki refused, two days later, to say how many White House officials had gotten sick.

Reporters pressed her on the issue. After all, as the country learned the hard way during the pandemic, the health of the people working directly for the president can end up influencing the health of the republic. A lot of people have those jobs, more than 2,000 in the White House itself and the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building. According to Psaki, that means “that just statistically speaking, there will be people who are vaccinated individuals who get COVID on the campus.”

Will the White House make those statistics available as they develop? “No,” Psaki said. “I don’t think you can expect that we’re going to be providing numbers of breakthrough cases.”

Well, why not? The story of the pandemic has been told through the charts and graphs presented to the public by members of the White House COVID task force. Why should this data be exempt?

When Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News pressed the White House to explain the lack of transparency, Psaki responded by saying that things are different now:

“Well, Kelly, I think, one, we’re in a very different place than we were several months ago. The vast, vast, vast majority of individuals who are vaccinated who get COVID will be asymptomatic or have mild cases.”

NOW – Psaki refuses to disclose the number of #COVID19 breakthrough cases at the White House.pic.twitter.com/pwJ38GjOgv

— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 23, 2021

Psaki continued by saying that everyone who clocks in and out at the White House campus “has been offered a vaccine.” But those administration employees, like the rest of the federal workforce, have not been required to roll up their sleeves and take the shot. Face coverings have disappeared all the same at the White House, and aides are expected to follow the rule Biden laid out in May: “Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.”

But since even vaccinated individuals can become infected with the virus, what happens in those cases? “We have been very clear that we will be transparent with anyone who has had close proximity contact with the president or any of the four principles as deemed by the White House medical unit with all of you,” Psaki said.

And if someone sick with COVID comes into close contact with those principles, the press secretary said that the case itself would be made public but the infected individual would decide whether or not his or her name would be released. She promised, “We will protect their privacy.”

White House staff were made aware of this policy in a campus-wide email sent recently, and Psaki said Tuesday that the White House was abiding by “an agreement we made during the transition to be transparent and make information available.” They had committed then, she insisted, to releasing “information proactively if it is commissioned officers.”

The White House did not provide a copy of that commitment to transparency when asked to do so by RealClearPolitics.

It is a touchy subject. On one hand, the White House would rather not deal with headlines about vaccinated staffers coming down with COVID at the exact moment they are singing the praises of getting vaccinated. On the other, they would rather keep contact tracing apolitical and skip the pandemic parlor game that consumed the press and the previous administration.

In the time before the vaccine, reporters kept meticulous notes of which Trump staffers were and were not wearing their masks. And after Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ceremonial nomination in the Rose Garden was dubbed a “super-spreader” by Anthony Fauci, the press scrambled to carry out their own unofficial contact tracing to see who might have been the “patient zero” who infected President Trump, the first lady, and several members of Congress. Biden World would rather skip that drama.

The risks aren’t as severe now, thanks to the vaccine. Get the shot and, as Biden explained, “you are not going to die.” All the same, even some Biden allies find the lack of transparency frustrating. “I get they’re trying to show strength and resolve, but I hated this secrecy with Trump and I hate it here with Biden too,” said Bradley Moss, a partner at the law firm that represented the whistleblower in Trump’s first impeachment. “Keep the public informed. Secrecy breeds mistrust.”

So why not just tell the public how many breakthrough cases there have been? Again, as Psaki explained, “we’re in a very different place than we were several months ago.”

To date, the number of mass shootings in the U.S. is 21% higher than the same period in 2020 (Jan.1 – July 20), which is 30% higher than the previous high, according to nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive (GVA). 

GVA’s data so far shows the U.S. has recorded 375 mass shootings in 41 different states (and Washington D.C.) in the first 200 days of 2021. Putting that in perspective, the country had 310 by this date last year.

Compared with the last several years, mass shootings are way above trend in 2021. The below chart clearly shows that pandemic lockdowns didn’t reduce the phenomenon whatsoever, and in fact may have contributed to the opposite.

This year, a combination of defunding the police and relaxation of petty crimes by liberal-run metro areas has transformed the U.S. into a chaotic mess. 

More than 1,800 people were injured or killed in mass shootings so far in 2021. That’s a higher total than in 2015 or 2018. 

Rising violent crime positively correlates with surging gun ownership and elevated ammo prices. People are arming themselves as the liberal utopia miserably backfires. 

Cumulative deaths from mass shootings were more than 370 this year, up 50% over the same period last year. 

American mass shootings since 2014:

• 2014: 270
• 2015: 335
• 2016: 382
• 2017: 348
• 2018: 336
• 2019: 417
• 2020: 611
• 2021: 375 (in 201 days)

And in case you’re wondering who’s involved with all these mass shootings – Mass-Shootings.info shows those who’ve been charged, convicted, or wanted for violent crimes in connection by year. The site also notes that 53% of mass shootings in 2021 have no known suspect, however as you’ll see their data is different than GVA’s – perhaps because “mass shooting” has several definitions.

Meanwhile, here’s where the mass shootings are happening, according to the site:

And in what should be a surprise to absolutely no one, Chicago and the state of Illinois take the cake:

If the trend continues, 2021 could be set for a record year. 

Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics.com,

The Tokyo Olympics prompted the latest furor over transgender participation in women’s sports. It came when New Zealand named a transgender woman to its weightlifting team. This athlete’s participation raises questions far beyond this Olympics or that particular sport. The same questions arise whenever a transgender person competes at any level, from high school to world-class. When the winner takes the victory stand, biological women can’t help but wonder if they were treated fairly. Transgender athletes respond, pointedly, that it would be unfair to exclude them.

“She’s a woman,” they say.

“This is a woman’s event. So she should compete.”

The problem with this debate is that it raises other fundamental questions: Should we have women’s sports at all? Why? What is the rationale—and how compelling is it?

The answers to those questions provide an answer to whether transgender athletes should compete in women’s sporting events.

A century ago, the answers would have been obvious.

Men and women were separated for all sorts of reasons—social, cultural, and biological. Mixed competition would have been unthinkable. Today, our norms about gender and sex are substantially different. The default is that men and women should be treated identically. Treating them differently, such as separating them in competition, requires a strong rationale, at least in liberal, Western societies. Separate treatment violates deeply held modern norms, which oppose discrimination because of irrelevant criteria, such as race, sex, gender, religion, and national origin.

We consider it a national disgrace that black baseball players were excluded from Major League Baseball until Jackie Robinson ran onto the field on April 15, 1947. His race had no bearing on his skill as a ball player. Yet no one today would celebrate Rory McIlroy or Dustin Johnson “integrating” the women’s professional golf tour.

Why the objections to McIlroy or Johnson on the women’s tour? For the same reason golf courses provide separate tees for women, the same reason the WNBA uses a smaller basketball than their male counterparts, the same reason there are thriving women’s leagues in tennis, soccer, bowling, and dozens more. It is not about the social construction of gender; it is about biological differences that bear directly on performance.

Biological males and females differ systematically in size, strength, speed, height, lung capacity, and agility. Acknowledging those differences is separate from respecting how any individual self-identifies. Given our widely shared opposition to discrimination, those physical differences are the only reason to permit separate events. If gender differences don’t matter for a particular sport, then the rationale for separate events is weaker than our liberal ideal of non-discrimination.

We would never permit, much less require, this kind of gender separation in chess tournaments. It would violate our basic norms demanding equal treatment unless there are very powerful reasons to treat people differently. Those reasons and their persuasiveness will differ from sport to sport. They hardly matter for equine events like show jumping and dressage. They probably don’t matter for target shooting. But they do matter for archery. Top male athletes pull their bows with higher “draw weights” than do top females, so they can shoot arrows with flatter trajectories, less affected by crosswinds. The differences matter in golf, too. On the men’s professional tour, the average drive is 295.5 yards. On the women’s tour, even the longest hitter doesn’t drive the ball that far.

What about competition in the Boston Marathon, where male winners finish 10 to 15 minutes faster than women? That difference is prima facia evidence that we should crown separate winners. A more interesting fact is that Kenyan men and women win the races nearly every year, consistently beating Americans and Europeans. Yet we would rightly consider it invidious racism to segregate marathons by race or national origin. So, why isn’t it invidious sexism to crown separate men and women winners? The answer lies in our common-sense recognition that men and women have major physical differences.

The Olympics certainly recognizes these consequential differences. In Tokyo, men and women will compete against each other only in equestrian events and one division of sailing.

This kind of separation may not last forever. Social norms are changing. But, for now, we still hold separate sports competitions for men and women, and we do so solely because of their systematic physical differences. If that is the only compelling rationale for separating sports by gender, then it should be the only rationale in determining transgender participation.

The best way to resolve this issue is to step back and ask yourself: Is there any compelling reason to hold separate competition for men and women in this particular sport? The answer might be different for golf, shot put, target shooting, or dressage. If the answer is “Yes, there are strong reasons in this particular sport,” then that same rationale answers the question, “Should transgender women compete against other women in this sport?”

Put simply, if there are good reasons for holding separate competitions at all, then transgender women should not compete against other women.

The latest Labor Department report on consumer prices shocked economists when they saw how prices for used vehicles soared 10.5% in Jue, following already-robust increases of 7.3% in May and 10% in April. As the economy overheats and global shortages of computer chips crimps new-car production, an extremely rare phenomenon has turned the auto world upside down.

For the first time in recent memory, prices on used cars are “defying gravity,” according to WSJ.

Once seen as the ultmate depreciating asset, some car owners are being offered even more money than they originally paid for their vehicles, especially for certain popular models like the Kia Telluride and the Toyota Tundra. The problem is that consumer demand for cars and trucks has surged (thanks in part to all the federal stimulus dollars sloshing around in Americans’ bank accounts).

To be sure, for most models, used vehicles can still be had at a lower price than the newer cars. But if things don’t change soon, most in-demand used models will see their prices remain elevated for a long time.

“We have a long way to go before prices come down,” said Tyson Jominy, an auto analyst with research firm JD Power.

But according to data from JD Power, the average price paid by a customer in June for a one-year-old vehicle was only $80 less than the selling price of a brand-new vehicle. Typically, the gap is closer to $5,000.

The impact of this shift can already be seen in dealerships’ marketing materials. Dealers typically run ads advertising prices on cars they’re hoping to sell. Now, they’re telling customers how much their cars are worth.

Some dealerships are even offering “drive-through appraisals.”

“It just seems like we’re in fantasyland,” said New England auto dealer Abel Toll.

And for low-mileage vehicles, offers equivalent to what customers initially paid aren’t uncommon.

Amid this used-car gold rush, some dealership owners say they’re worried customers who buy now will end up being dissatisfied with the high prices when their vehicles depreciate more rapidly in the years to come.

But some are milking it for all it’s worth. One small-business owner traded in his entire fleet of trucks and decided to use the premium to finance upgrades to more “high content” models. “I can’t imagine this will last for much longer, so I decided to go all in.”

Along with Real Vision senior editor Ash Bennington, Real Vision CEO and co-founder Raoul Pal welcomes Julian Brigden, co-founder of MI2 Partners, for his Real Vision Daily Briefing debut. As a special edition of the Daily Briefing, Pal and Brigden will be diving deep into their respective frameworks, discussing the differences in how they’re seeing the macro picture as well as rallying around where they are aligned.