Month: April 2022

Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter Via The Libertarian Institute,

Finland is mulling whether to join the NATO military alliance, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said, noting that a decision could come by next spring while citing a new “security environment” in Europe following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Speaking to fellow members of the ruling Social Democratic Party over the weekend, the PM said Moscow’s ongoing invasion is a “flagrant violation” of international law, arguing that “Russia is not the neighbor we thought it was.” She added that this has prompted the government to rethink its long-standing policy of neutrality toward the NATO bloc.

“In this new situation and changed security environment, we’ll have to evaluate all means to guarantee the safety of Finland and Finns,” Marin said. “We’ll have to seriously mull over our own stance and approach to military alignment. We’ll have to do this carefully but quickly, effectively during the course of this spring.”

Marin previously stated that NATO membership would be “very unlikely,” but has since changed her tune, now saying the assault on Ukraine had altered relations with Russia in “irreversible” ways. 

While Finland maintained a strict stance of non-alignment throughout the Cold War, refusing to enter NATO as well as the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, recent polling indicates that Finns are increasingly favorable to membership in the North Atlantic alliance. A survey conducted in February showed a majority of respondents (53%) would back the idea, up from just 19% in 2017 – dubbed a “historic shift” by former Prime Minister Alex Stubb.

Opposition leaders such as Petteri Orpo, who heads up the National Coalition Party, have also publicly supported NATO membership for Finland, arguing that it is not only necessary for the country’s defense, but would mean it had fully joined the West. 

“In order to improve our security and guarantee our independence, we should join NATO. We still have a powerful and aggressive neighbor,” Orpo said, referring to Russia. “For me, NATO membership is not just about the pros and cons, it’s a bigger question of our identity. We are a western country… In this sense, our place is in NATO.”

However, some in government have objected to the idea, with one senior official telling the Financial Times the move may be seen as a dangerous provocation by Russia. “Applying for membership carries awful risks for Finland, and for NATO,” they said. “I have always said that joining military alliances is something you do in quiet times, so that you do not import any instability into the organization you join.”

If Finland and Sweden apply to join NATO, they would be welcomed, Stoltenberg says https://t.co/n6elOmy0uj pic.twitter.com/vCSkZoAUzZ

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 5, 2022

In comments to CNN on Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that both Finland and Sweden would be “very much welcomed by all 30 allies,” even suggesting their membership could be fast-tracked.

Russia has long demanded an end to the eastward expansion of NATO, citing assurances from Washington that the alliance would not grow by “one inch” just before the fall of the Soviet Union. While it has vocally opposed membership for its neighbors Ukraine and Georgia, Moscow has also repeatedly warned that it would retaliate should Finland or Sweden join the bloc, though officials have yet to say how. 

“It is obvious that [if] Finland and Sweden join NATO, which is a military organization to begin with, there will be serious military and political consequences,” said Russian Foreign Ministry official Sergei Belyayev. “[It] would require changing the whole palette of relations with these countries and require retaliatory measures.”

Authored by Derrick Broze via TheLastAmericanVagabond.com,

While much of the “mainstream” world has spent the last week obsessing over and debating the celebrity spectacle surrounding American actor Will Smith slapping American comedian Chris Rock, the international elitists were meeting in Dubai for the 2022 World Government Summit.

From March 28th to the 30th, corporate media journalists, heads of state, and CEOs of some of the most profitable companies in the world met for discussions on shaping the direction of the next decade and beyond. Anyone with a functioning brain should ignore the tabloids and instead pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist Technocrats.

Let’s take a look at the speakers and the panels, starting with Mr. Great Reset himself, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.

Schwab gave a talk entitled, Our World Today… Why Government Must Act Now?.  “Thank you, to his excellency for enabling this initiative to define a longer-term narrative to make the world more resilient more inclusive and more sustainable,” Schwab stated during his address. The use of the term narrative is important because in January 2021, Klaus and the World Economic Forum announced the next phase of The Great Reset, The Great Narrative.

As with The Great Narrative event, the World Government Summit was also held in Dubai. As I wrote during the Great Narrative meeting:

“While the political leaders of the UAE and Klaus Schwab may promote themselves as the heroes of our times, we should judge them according to their actions and the company they keep, not the flowery language they use to distract us. The simple fact is the UAE has a horrible record on human rights. The nation is known for deporting those who renounce Islam, limited press freedoms, and enforcing elements of Sharia law.”

During Schwab’s short talk he also mentioned his pet project “the 4th Industrial Revolution“, which is essentially the digital panopticon of the future, where digital surveillance is omnipresent and humanity uses digital technology to alter our lives. Often associated with terms like the Internet of Things, the Internet of Bodies, the Internet of Humans, and the Internet of Senses, this world will be powered by 5G and 6G technology. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged, every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores.

Immediately following Schwab was a panel which made no attempt to hide the goals of the globalists. The panel, Are We Ready for A New World Order?, featured Fred Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council since 2007, as well as an anchor for CNN and a former advisor to former US president George W. Bush. Before joining the Council, Kempe was a prize-winning editor and reporter at the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years.

In fact, the Atlantic Council had a fairly large presence at the World Government Summit, including appearances by Defne Arslan, senior director of the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY program, and Olga Khakova, Deputy Director of Global Energy Center of Atlantic Council.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Atlantic Council, I first reported in May 2018 that Facebook had partnered with the thinktank connected to NATO. I wrote:

“The Atlantic Council of the United States was established in 1961 to bolster support for international relations. Although not officially connected to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Atlantic Council has spent decades promoting causes and issues which are beneficial to NATO member states. In addition, The Atlantic Council is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Organization, an umbrella organization which “acts as a network facilitator in the Euro-Atlantic and beyond.” The ATO works similarly to the Atlantic Council, bringing together political leaders, academics, military officials, journalists and diplomats to promote values that are favorable to the NATO member states. Officially, ATO is independent of NATO, but the line between the two is razor thin.

Essentially, the Atlantic Council is a think tank which can offer companies or nation states access to military officials, politicians, journalists, diplomats, etc. to help them develop a plan to implement their strategy or vision. These strategies often involve getting NATO governments or industry insiders to make decisions they might not have made without a visit from the Atlantic Council team. This allows individuals or nations to push forth their ideas under the cover of hiring what appears to be a public relations agency but is actually selling access to high-profile individuals with power to affect public policy. Indeed, everyone from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to the family of international agent of disorder Zbigniew Brzezinski have spoken at or attended council events.”

Less than 6 months after Facebook and The Atlantic Council announced their partnership, more than 500 FB pages were accused of being “Russian disinformation” and deleted. The pages largely consisted of anti-war, police accountability, and independent journalism outlets. These pages and journalists directly challenged the narratives spun by the Atlantic Council stooges.

Dissecting the World Government Summit: Ukraine, SDGs, ESG, Blockchain, and AI

While many of the names in attendance might be unfamiliar to a western audience, the speakers are men and women who absolutely play a vital role in international geopolitics.

Some of the featured speakers include:

• – António Guterres, Secretary General of United Nations, giving a talk tiled Is Our World Today… Our World of Tomorrow?

• – Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director General of World Health Organization

• – David Pekoske, Administrator of USA Transportation Security Administration

• – Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler, an American immunologist and bioengineer and Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the US NIH. She gave a presentation about Re-engineering Immunity with Next Generation Technologies

• – H.H. Sheikh Sabah AlSabah, Prime Minister of Government of the State of Kuwait

• – Jeon Hae cheol, Minister of the Interior and Safety of Government of the Republic of Korea

• – Supattanapong Punmeechaow, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy of Secretariat of the Prime Minister of Thailand

• – Mrs. Belinda Balluku is the Minister of Infrastructure and Energy of the Republic of Albania

• – Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo Secretary General of OPEC, speaking about “Oil and Gas in a Net-Zero World“

The Russia-Ukraine conflict ​​​​​​​was also part of the discussions. Notably, Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, made an appearance. His bio states, “under his leadership, DTEK has evolved from a regional conventional energy company into Ukraine’s largest private investor as well as leading energy company.”

The appearance of Mr. Timchenko should not be overlooked, especially because he appears in a discussion called Post-Crisis Ukraine: New Energy for a New Europe, featuring Olga Khakova of the Atlantic Council, and Paula Dobriansk, Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government of Atlantic Council. Again, the presence of the Atlantic Council should not be taken lightly. They are the representatives of the Western Bloc of the New World Order.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict also factors into another panel title, Getting Off Russian Gas: Practical Steps for Europe, featuring more of the Atlantic Council goons, including Richard Morningstar, Founding Chairman of Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, and Phillip Cornell, Senior Fellow of Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council.

The World Government Summit also spent considerable time discussing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which form the core of the Agenda 2030, itself part of The Great Reset agenda. Some speakers discussing the SDGs include:

• – Dr. Mahmoud Safwat Mohieldi, the United Nations Special Envoy for the 2030 Finance Agenda, who is speaking on a panel about Arab Nations and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

• – María Sandoval, First Lady of Colombia of Government of Republic of Colombia, discussed “The Role of Women in Achieving the SDGs“. The first day of the summit was actually dedicated to the role women will play in rolling out the so-called New World Order and global governance schemes. Sandoval celebrated the fact that Colombian President Ivan Duque launched “the first national development plan that was directly aligned with the SDGs, and this of course was something that provided a wider spectrum for women to act react and participate in these achievements of the SDGs.”

• – Catherine Russell, Executive Director of United Nations Children Fund, participated in a panel titled SDGs for Every Child

The Summit also addressed the Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG) promoted by the UN in a panel entitled, Where does ESG Go From Here?. ESG investing is also sometimes referred to as sustainable investing, responsible investing, or socially responsible investing (SRI). The practice has become an increasingly popular way to promote the SDGs. The panel featured Neil R. Brown, Managing Director, KKR Global Institute and KKR Infrastructure. KKR Global Institute is the same organization that former US Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus joined in 2013.

Additionally, a panel entitled, Is the World Ready for A Future Beyond Oil?, featured H.E. Suhail bin Mohamed AlMazrouei, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure of Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure; H.R.H Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud, Minister of Energy of Ministry of Energy – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; and H.E. Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government.

Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are a major piece of the Technocratic vision for 2030, so naturally there were several discussions on the use of blockchain, AI, and even 6G (the eventual successor to 5G technology).

There was a discussion on blockchain technology in a panel entitled, The Future of Blockchain… A Perspective from Industry Pioneer, featuring Changpeng Zhao, Chief Executive Officer of Binance, among others. Other panels focused on De-Fi (decentralized finance) featured Jamie Crawley, Editor in Chief of Coin Desk, and Charles Hoskinson, Co-Founder of Ethereum. I have recently reported on Hoskinson’s statements regarding using blockchain to implement ESG and SDG programs and the danger they pose to privacy and liberty.

There was also a panel focused on the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies entitled, CBDCs and Stablecoins: Can They Co-Exist?. The CBDCs schemes being rolled out in nations around the world are a crucial component of The Great Reset.

One panel focuses on a concept called Human Meta-Cities, which sound like a rebranding or updating of the so-called Smart Cities. The panel description states,

“in a world of change and rapid technological development, we shed light on a new vision for planning future cities centered around human needs and aspirations. This new framework will help governments refine their role in planning the new world taking advantage of the digital transformation opportunities that are taking place.”

Another panel which makes clear the Technocratic dream was entitled, The Invisible Government: Eliminating Bureaucracy Through Technology. The description of the panel states:

“Technology is creating new possibilities as it simplifies processes, enables instant feedback, and ultimately improves customer experience. In the public sector, digitalization and artificial intelligence are creating a new model of governance – “invisible” governments that are more agile, responsive, human-centric, and data-driven. In this session, global policymakers and experts will share their bold vision and experience in utilizing technology to eliminate bureaucracy and innovate government services for the future.”

What goes unsaid in the panel description is that making the government “invisible” will actually lead to a world of no accountability for government and politicians. In reality, the Technocrats imagine a world where the tyrannical technological systems are invisible and the average person has zero recourse for preventing exclusion or punishment based on their social credit score.

This is the world these technocrats — many of whom are unelected — envision. The only way this vision will not come to pass is if the people of the world throw their televisions away, ignore the celebrity drama, and start exiting from these slavery systems. 

Chinese EV manufacturers are facing similar problems as the ones we pointed out that Japanese manufacturers are facing: rising raw material costs and shrinking margins.

Many EV manufacturers are doing the only thing they can to help alleviate the pressure – and that means raising prices for consumers. 

Bloomberg noted in a Monday morning wrap up that the problems China faces are slightly more unique to the country, because it is also trying to engineer a “soft landing” from EV subsidies, which Beijing has been rolling back – and will continue to roll back.

“What makes China unique is its commitment to simultaneously rolling back EV subsidies, setting up a delicate balance between growth and profit in the world’s biggest market for clean cars,” Bloomberg wrote. 

Companies like Tesla, BYD, Xpeng and Li Auto all hiked prices in March, the report says. Among the manufacturers raising prices was also Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world’s biggest EV battery maker. They said they were making “dynamic adjustments to the prices of some of our battery products”.

Remember, we just wrote days ago that Japanese automakers were also grappling with the skyrocketing cost of raw materials and a shortage of semiconductors still. 

Even as some parts have become unavailable, raw materials for other parts have skyrocketed in price. For example, palladium, nickel and aluminum have all surged to record highs this month. The metals are used in automobile catalytic converters, batteries and other car parts.

The price hikes are likely due to the fact that 40% of palladium production comes from Russia, Nikkei noted last week. This has forced auto manufacturers to abandon buying from Russia and seek out alternative sources. 

Hiroo Suzaki, president of South African metal producer Impala Platinum Japan, commented: “Losing Russian supply would leave a significant impact on the palladium market.”

Some demand for palladium will eventually wane due to the adoption of electric vehicles, Mikio Fujita, senior market analyst for Johnson Matthey, said. But for now, that doesn’t help automakers. Fujita commented: “As the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles, catalyst demand is expected to gradually shrink in the long run.”

Nickel, on the other hand, is expected to see a significant increase in demand thanks to the adoption of EVs. “This has led to an even tighter market and premiums are soaring to record high levels in Europe,” one trader told Nikkei. 

Recall, Tesla reportedly signed a “secret deal” to obtain nickel from Vale that is helping it sidestep a spike in prices. 

Gene Munster of Loup Ventures said: “What Tesla has done with nickel is a hidden competitive advantage. Tesla continues to be a couple of steps ahead of the rest.” And Munster is right, in that Musk has “repeatedly” flagged nickel as a concern for the company amidst broader sector demand that is expected to more than triple by 2030. 

On an earnings call two years ago, CEO Elon Musk urged: “Please mine more nickel. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way.”

Meanwhile, other EV manufacturers are left scrambling. “The nickel price surge and the implications from the Russia-Ukraine invasion are likely to push battery manufacturers, particularly in the U.S., to secure alternate supply chains,” Bloomberg wrote.

Tesla’s “secret deal” is one of many it has put in place over the last year, the report says. 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned Congress on Tuesday that the chances of a “significant international conflict between great powers” are increasing. Milley warned that both China and Russia are threats to the so-called “rules-based” global order.

“We are now facing two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities both who intend to fundamentally change the rules-based current global order,” Milley told the House Armed Services Committee. “We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable. The potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing.”

Gen. Milley further called Russia’s action the “greatest threat to peace and security of Europe, perhaps the world in my 40 years of service and in uniform.”

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to undermine not only European peace and stability but global peace and stability that my parents and a generation of Americans fought so hard to defend,” he described.

The hearing was focused on the Pentagon’s $773 billion budget request for 2023, part of the $813 billion in military spending President Biden has asked Congress for. Milley said the budget is in alignment with the new National Defense Strategy (NDS) that was recently briefed to Congress but has yet to be declassified.

In a fact sheet on the new NDS, the Pentagon named China as the top “threat” facing the US military, while Russia was second. The US military’s shift in focus towards “great power competition” was first outlined by the 2018 NDS, which put China and Russia as equal concerns.

Gen. Mark Milley: “We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable and the potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing.” pic.twitter.com/ltNSF0gMYK

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) April 6, 2022

The Pentagon has plans to boost the US military’s presence in the Asia Pacific to counter China and in Eastern Europe to face Russia. While done in the name of deterrence, US military buildups in the regions will only make a conflict more likely.

This is demonstrated by the fact that one of Russia’s main justifications for invading Ukraine was Kyiv’s alignment with NATO and the military alliance’s presence in the region.

More than two years after the virus pandemic locked down New York City and upended the world of work, there are continued signs of storm clouds gathering over the office real estate sector. 

According to Bloomberg, citing a new study by Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, the average white-collar worker plans to halve the time spent in the office and reduce discretionary spending in the metro area by $6,730. Before the pandemic, those in offices spent on average $12,561 in a pre-pandemic world. 

On Thursday, Bloom revealed his findings at a Federal Reserve Bank of New York conference. He said hybrid and remote work could cost New York around 5-10% of its city-center population. The implications of declining white-collar workers traversing city streets from home to work could dampen the economic recovery. 

The city’s unemployment rate is shockingly high (7.6%) compared with the rest of the country at 3.8%. High unemployment is due to the lack of white-collar workers because so many industries in the city are dependent on them using their services, such as the restaurant and entertainment industry. 

“People used to live in cities because they had to come into the office five days a week,” said Bloom, who surveyed 5,000 workers and 1,000 businesses about pandemic-related changes to work habits. 

“If they don’t have to, and they want a backyard, they move out to the suburbs. We see that across cities, and call it the doughnut effect,” he added. 

Bloom’s survey comes as Manhattan landlords have struggled with a glut of commercial real estate properties. It was reported by Savills Research this week that office space available in the city is at 19%, the highest since the dark days of the Dot Com bust (2000). 

There will be no recovery in the city’s office sector unless workers return to the office. 

Keycard swipes tracked by security company Kastle Systems show NYC offices are about 36% occupied, far below pre-COVID levels.

As vacancy rates continue to hit levels not seen since prior bust cycles, the world’s largest commercial real estate owner, Blackstone, is giving up on one of its Midtown Manhattan office buildings. There is trouble brewing in the office space market. 

“That’s an indication that something not great might be starting to bubble up within the office sector,” Lea Overby, a Barclays analyst covering the commercial mortgage market, told Axios.

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

On March 18th, the New York Times published “America Has a Free Speech Problem,” an editorial wrapped around a poll, asserting roughly 80% of the country withholds opinions over fear of “retaliation or harsh criticism.” The piece prompted outrage from Twitter’s moral police — “arguably the worst day in the history of the New York Times” cried blue-check analyst Tom Watson — some of whom claimed the article did so much to legitimize right-wing propaganda about speech suppression that the entire Times editorial board should resign or be fired.

A day before the Times editorial, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by author and longtime professor Laura Kipnis called “Academe is a Hotbed of Craven Snitches.” My first question upon reading this disturbing piece was why the excellent word “craven” isn’t used more by writers. The second, after digesting the content — a litany of horrific scenes of students, administrators, and academics destroying each other’s careers and reputations, often over consensual, legal sexual encounters — is how anyone familiar with even a fraction of what Kipnis writes about could quibble with the notion that America has a “speech problem.”

This country doesn’t just have a narrow civil liberties dispute about speech. We’re in a crisis of communication and intimacy, compounded by a uniquely American terror of sex that probably dates back to the days of the Puritans, and seems at the core of what Kipnis calls the “carceral turn” in her world of higher education. Atop legitimate and necessary mechanisms for identifying and stopping campus predators — Kipnis stresses that “sexual assault is a reality on campus, though not exactly a new one” — we’re building new bureaucracies to prosecute an array of social or even just intellectual offenses.

These range from consensual but “inappropriate” workplace affairs (the downfall of University of Michigan president Mark Schlissel), to explicitly permitted sexual relations with adult students not under one’s tutelage (among the reported crimes of University of Rochester professor Florian Jaeger), to trying to intervene on behalf of a lawyerless, accused student (the no-no of University of Colorado professor David Barnett, who was hit with a “retaliation” charge by an administration that then spent $148,000 investigating him), to countless other mania-inspired offenses, from “suspicious eye contact” to a female professor dancing “too provocatively” at an off-campus party, to a ballet teacher saying “I always wanted to partner a banana” in class.

Kipnis was a canary in this speech-lunacy coal mine. She made history in 2015 by becoming the subject of two harassment complaints for the seemingly impossible offense of writing an article (also in the Chronicle, called “Sexual Paranoia on Campus”). Students accused Kipnis of creating a hostile environment via the piece, in which she’d questioned the harassment investigation against fellow Northwestern professor Peter Ludlow, criticized new campus prohibitions against relationships between professors and graduate students, and argued that the logic behind some new campus enforcement policies were politically regressive, re-imposing an old-school paternalism that cast women back in roles as helpless victims in constant need of saving. “If this is feminism,” she wrote, “it’s feminism hijacked by melodrama.”

Kipnis was cleared of the charges, but not before being taken on a tour of the bizarre inquisitorial bureaucracy of Title IX, a federal law originally instituted in 1972 that most Americans associate with an effort to bar gender discrimination and achieve funding parity for women’s sports. The law expanded in the Obama years to encompass not just discrimination but sexual misconduct. The concept ended up being worded so vaguely that, as Kipnis discovered, Title IX was soon used as the broadest of political tools, to hammer out everything from office disagreements to parameters of acceptable thought. She later wrote:

Perhaps you’re wondering how an essay falls under the purview of Title IX, the federal statute meant to address gender discrimination and funding for women’s sports? I was wondering that myself… The answer, in brief, is that the culture of sexual paranoia I’d been writing about isn’t confined to the sexual sphere. It’s fundamentally altering the intellectual climate in higher education as a whole, to the point where ideas are construed as threats —writing an essay became “creating a chilling environment,” according to my accusers — and freedoms most of us used to take for granted are being whittled away or disappearing altogether.

Most Americans don’t know a whole lot about Title IX, among other things because the accused are encouraged/ordered to keep experiences secret. Kipnis’s accusers inadvertently did her an enormous favor here. Not only did they make a colorful writer with a keen satirical bent an eyewitness to a prosecutorial mechanism silly enough in its mindless destruction to have been written by the cast of Monty Python, they also spurred her to look into the case of Ludlow, a once-prominent philosophy professor accused of inappropriate behavior who ended up delivering to Kipnis a literary gold mine.

Campus protesters marched against the possibility of any kind of settlement with Ludlow, so he resigned without a confidentiality agreement, which left him free to hand over to Kipnis the gold mine, i.e. the files from his cases. The transcripts of interviews conducted by Ludlow’s campus inquisitors, along with the mountain of emails and other materials introduced as evidence, painted a picture of a bureaucracy of pre-determined guilt, casual institutional cruelty, and ingrained sexual terror so extreme that the whole concept of viewing sex as anything but predatory appeared to have become taboo in the eyes of officialdom.

Because Kipnis broke the seal on what had been a mostly secret national phenomenon, an avalanche of letters about Title IX incidents soon filled her inbox, offering a shocking sense of the scope of the problem. In her 2017 book Unwanted Advances, she writes that a biopic about disgraced screenwriter Dalton Trumbo “left me reflecting that sex is our era’s Communist threat, and Title IX hearings our new HUAC hearings.” A bold statement, given how ingrained a part of the national psyche the “communist threat” was for generations, but the idea holds up. The book opens by describing her experience and the Ludlow case in painful detail, moves on to recount scores of other incidents and statistics, and concludes with essays asking profound and uncomfortable questions about America’s deteriorating relationship toward sex and intimacy.

Subscribers to TK News can read the rest here.

AccuWeather forecasters are predicting the seventh straight above-average Atlantic hurricane season because of La Niña and warmer ocean temperatures. 

AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist and hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski is once again anticipating an above-normal season of tropical development in the Atlantic basin, along with higher probabilities of major hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. 

Kottlowski forecasts 16-20 named storms and six to eight hurricanes. Of those hurricanes, he believes three to five could exceed Category 3 strength. 

AccuWeather’s forecast of 16-20 named storms is higher than the 30-year average of 14 per year. The projection of six to eight hurricanes is in line with averages. 

This year’s upcoming season could be identical to how 2020 and 2021 played out. Last season, there were 21 named storms, seven hurricanes, and four major hurricanes. Eight of those storms made direct impacts on the U.S. mainland. About four to six are expected to hit the U.S. this year. 

Kottlowski said the climatological phenomenon known as La Niña will play a crucial role in the active hurricane season, which begins on June 1 and ends on Nov. 7. There’s also a risk of tropical storms before the season starts. 

La Niña has been extremely active in the last two years and has reduced the amount of vertical wind shear in the atmosphere. Greater vertical wind shear can often stymie developing cyclones.  

Kottlowski said La Niña and above-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and off the U.S. East Coast would produce another active hurricane season.