Month: December 2022

Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

Twitter owner Elon Musk blasted a New York Times report claiming problematic content and hate speech was on an “unprecedented” rise on the platform following his takeover, countering earlier claims by the billionaire.

According to findings by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League, and other groups, the NY Times reported that slurs against black Americans increased from 1,282 times a day to 3,876 times. Posts against gay men and Jews went from 2,506 times to 3,964, and 61 percent, respectively during the two weeks after Musk bought Twitter.

Musk replied in a tweet that the report was “Utterly false.”

The NY Times report has, till now, gotten over 44,000 likes, while the Musk response garnered 346,000 likes, and nearly 21,000 retweets.

“Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in the report. “They have reacted accordingly.”

The outlet said that accounts related to the terrorist group ISIS were coming back on the platform, along with QAnon supporters who have received verification symbols.

“This reporting is such garbage,” said Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute.

“The experience on Twitter is pretty much the same as it was before, plus a few ‘edgy’ accounts being reinstated. The left-wing journalists want to create a false narrative to justify more censorship. It’s transparent and pathetic.”

Hate Speech on Twitter

Musk has reiterated his view that hate speech will not be tolerated on the platform, and that there will be no “free-for-all hellscape” regarding speech. However, he has also upheld free speech on Twitter by uncensoring prominent conservative personalities like former president Donald Trump, investigative news organization Project Veritas, and satire site The Babylon Bee.

This has irked many on the left who advocate for banning these accounts under the pretext of hate speech.

“By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law,” said Musk earlier in the year.

“I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

In a Dec. 2 tweet, Musk said, “Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth! @TwitterSafety will publish data weekly. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity.”

He added, “There are about 500M tweets per day & billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are <0.1% of what’s seen on Twitter!”

European Backlash, Advertiser Boycott

A senior European Union official issued a warning to Musk that Twitter could be blocked on the continent if it fails to comply with the bloc’s regulations.

“There is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation, and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising,” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton told Musk, according to a readout of a call between the two had on Wednesday.

The warning comes amid a pullback by advertising from investing on the platform. Major brands such as Jeep, Mars candy, cereal maker Kellogg, pharma giant Merck, and Verizon had paused advertising according to an analysis report by The Washington Post.

Other brands, including United Airlines, Carlsberg, Mondelez, and General Motors, have also stopped displaying ads on Twitter.

Twitter’s policy on hateful conduct states: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.”

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

Just hours after we find out that the Hunter Biden laptop not only wasn’t “Russian disinformation”, but rather was being actively covered up by social media, another “conspiracy theory” that wound up costing tons of honest truth seekers their social media accounts (including Zero Hedge, who was first to talk about the lab leak all the way back in February 2020), is inching closer toward being validated as reality.

That’s because a scientist who formerly worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has now gone on record and has said that COVID was “man-made” and leaked from the lab.

The claims are according to the Post, who cited The Sun, who was provided a copy of the scientist’s forthcoming book.

The gravity of the allegations, which I have written about at length over the last year, would make the global Covid-19 pandemic cover up among the most stunning lies ever perpetrated on modern humanity.

The whistleblower, epidemiologist Andrew Huff, called the lab leak the “biggest US intelligence failure since 9/11″. He detailed his allegations in his book “The Truth About Wuhan”.

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Huff is the former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, which studied coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He worked for the company from 2014 to 2016 and, per the Post:

…said that the non-profit helped the Wuhan lab put together the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

Meanwhile, EcoHealth Alliance has been awarded millions to continue their work as recently as this year: Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Was Just Awarded Another NIH Grant To Study Bat Coronaviruses

“Foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he wrote in his book.

Huff wrote: “China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent. The US government is to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese.

“I was terrified by what I saw. We were just handing them bioweapon technology.”

Fringe Finance has been covering the idea of a lab leak since the blog’s inception and we have long maintained that a leak from the lab was the most obvious explanation for Covid.

Now the question becomes: who will be held accountable…not only for the leak but for the campaign against those who asked honest questions about the lab for the last 3 years?

And what other “conspiracy theories” will we soon find out are closer to truth?

You can read more here: Covid “Much More Easily Explained” By Lab Leak: Harvard PhD & Rutgers Chem Professor

As Sam Bankman-Fried enters day six of his whirlwind media tour in which he makes one or more daily appearances – against the advice of his lawyers – in hopes of convincing someone that he was too dumb to be a criminal mastermind with billions in crypto in cold storage and in bank accounts in Dubai and Singapore (luckily all his wire transfers can be traced), also known as the Simple Jack defense…

So today was day one of @SBF_FTX “i am too dumb to be a criminal mastermind” world tour.

Join us tomorrow for day two when he channels Simple Jack next to Janet Yellen and Zelenskyy at the NYT summit of totally non-criminal folks.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 30, 2022

… the weakest link in SBF’s defense was just spotted in a New York coffee shop, amid speculation she is preparing to blow up SBF’s entire defense strategy.

According to Autism Capital, the former CEO of Alameda Capital (which as a reminder was ground zero of the FTX implosion after it blew up $8 billion in FTX client funds on trades gone horribly wrong), Caroline Ellison, was spotted at 8:15am this morning at the Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan. This, as AC notes, “would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody.”

PLEASE CONFIRM: A user claims that they spotted Caroline Ellison at Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan at 8:15 AM. This would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody. pic.twitter.com/QUduYO9GfZ

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

A statement from a barista at the coffee shop confirmed that it was in fact Caroline.

CONFIRMED: The barista behind the counter has confirmed it was Caroline. https://t.co/BzO8KZRE8V

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

Why does this matter? Because while the prominent Democrat donor (who reportedly is “responsible for Biden being in office“) continues his deluded daily media appearances while casually throwing his former alleged lover, co-worker and penthouse-mate, Caroline – and pretty much all other co-workers – under the bus by claiming he has no idea how $8 billion in FTX client funds just vaporized in SBF’s personal hedge fund, Alameda (implying that only Alameda’s CEO, Ellison, was responsible for the theft and fraud) Caroline is two-steps ahead of SBF and is already cooperating with members of the DOJ, and specifically the SDNY, which we previously reported is probing the collapse of FTX.

The general consensus is that Caroline Ellison is likely in NY cutting a deal and cooperating with SDNY prosecutors to roll on Sam.

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 4, 2022

Subsequent reports have only reinforced this rumor, and the latest is that Ellison is being represented by DC law firm, WilmerHale…

A highly credible source claims that Caroline Ellison is currently being represented by WilmerHale, a well known DC insider law firm. Please verify.

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) December 5, 2022

… best known for its Government Affairs Department Chair, Jamie Gorelick, who was the former No. 2 ranking member in the Clinton Justice Department, and in a recent interview, she referred to Garland as her “wingman.”

If indeed Ellison is working the Feds while currying favor with SBF’s former closest friends, the days of Bankman-Fried – who may or may not soon commit Epsteincide – outside of a prison cell are numbered.

As for SBF, who is still wasting his time “uhhhm“-ing and “well“-ing across various interviews hoping to demonstrate to the world – and his future jurors – just how bloody stupid he really was…

… and blaming it all on messy accounting, poor risk management, and of course, Caroline Ellison – not his premeditated fraud of course – even the CEO of Coinbase is no longer buying his relentless bullshit, saying earlier that no matter how “messy you accounting is (or how rich you are) – you’re definitely going to notice if you find an extra $8B to spend” adding that “even the most gullible person should not believe Sam’s claim that this was an accounting error” (here he is referring to Bill Ackman, of course), and correctly concluded that “it’s stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple.”

It’s stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 3, 2022

All that’s missing is the definitive proof, and if the above rumors are correct, Caroline Ellison is in the process of, or already has provided it to the Feds.

After Elon Musk’s buyout and the ongoing release of the the “Twitter files”, the cat is out of the bag, as it were, when it comes to Twitter’s extreme leftist political agenda and their collusion with the federal government and the DNC.  And, it appears that some of the people deeply involved in the platform’s censorship model are willing to discuss their tactics and motives.  One might expect them to take a more apologetic position in light of their exposed lies and trespasses against their customers and site users, but this is definitely not the case.

Former Twitter employees, most especially former moderators and Trust and Safety employees, are unrepentant for their censorship efforts tainted with political bias and seem to loath Elon Musk for opening the door to fair debate on the social media site.

One Twitter executive, Yoel Roth, was recently in the headlines for admitting that Twitter’s aggressive censorship of the Hunter Biden Laptop story was a “mistake.”  Roth is the former Global Head of Trust And Safety and played a direct role (along with other executives) in the suppression of the news, leading to the banning of the New York Post account merely for relaying accurate reporting.

Presenting the event as a “mistake” rooted in the company’s concerns about “misinformation”, however, seems disingenuous.  As we now know, Twitter and the DNC were in regular contact with each other and requests were made by DNC officials to block any mention of such damaging stories.  There was round-table debate at Twitter, but it was not about whether it was morally right to censor the information.  Rather, Twitter execs debated whether or not they could get away with it.

The trust and safety elites within Big Tech companies have no doubts about the validity and righteousness of their cause, and that’s the biggest problem.  The monstrous nature of the ideology of scientifically precise censorship is on full display in the following interview with Roth at the Knight Foundation.  Roth has no qualms about the notion of crushing free speech.

Roth equates banned information to “malicious campaigns,” painting a picture of some nebulous organization of “trolls” with ill intent working from the shadows to spread mean words and falsehoods.  This is projection.  The only organized and shadowy efforts were performed by Twitter’s leadership and were designed to silence dissent, in some cases in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 election for their friends in the Democratic Party. 

This is even hinted at by Roth, who explains the widespread decision within Big Tech companies after the 2016 election to focus heavily on campaign and election influence.  Roth cites the long debunked theory that Russia manipulated the 2016 election as the reason for this agenda to control election information.

A clear case of collusion can be presented between the Democrats and Twitter to do the exact thing Roth warns about, which is the subversion of election outcomes.  But the psychology of people like Yoel Roth is disturbing beyond the issue of potential political manipulation.  For example, Roth goes on to claim that the satire inherent in organizations like Libs of Tikok and the Babylon Bee is “dangerous” and specifically suggests they threaten the lives of people within the trans community.

Keep in mind that satire and humor are usually the first targets of any authoritarian regime clamoring for power because the greatest comedy strikes at the heart of lies and speaks truths that many people are otherwise afraid to discuss.  If a joke is based on falsehoods it’s usually not very funny.  As far as Libs of TikTok is concerned, all they do is re-post videos of leftists’ own arguments and confessions, and for that they are labeled “dangerous.” 

The former trust and safety exec goes on to admonish the removal of covid censorship, calling it “bad and damaging” without explaining how.  One can only suggest that the leftists at Twitter were also in collusion with government officials to silence any and all facts and evidence that ran contrary to the mainstream pandemic narrative.  Much of this information, like the Biden Laptop, was labeled “conspiracy theory” and banned, only to later be revealed as absolutely true.  

The deeper poison of Trust and Safety cultism is two-fold:  First, it is being done scientifically and with increasing precision.  It is not only based simply on community flagging; these people are exploiting algorithms and computer modeling in the hopes that they can develop predictive suppression.  They think they can “measure hate events” as if they are hurricanes and batten down the hatches before the waves hit.  The thing is, much of the “hate” they fear is all in their minds.  The hate and “malicious campaigns” they see are often merely people disagreeing with them on the basis of facts and principles. 

You cannot accurately measure “hate”, for one, and when that hate is perceived through a lens of delusion built on bias and zealotry, we run into a threat much bigger than hate – The threat of despotism wrapped in technocracy.  They aren’t blocking hate, they are blocking free debate.      

The real discussion should be on whether or not Trust and Safety metrics should even exist.  Why do we need them?  Roth never questions the validity of his former job and the motivations behind it.  The bottom line is this: Big Tech censorship is founded on the argument that people cannot be trusted to make up their own minds on the information they see.  Social media leaders think that THEY should be the arbiters of information in order to protect people from themselves. 

What qualifies them to hold this kind of power?  Nothing.  No one is qualified enough, intelligent enough or objective enough to mediate the speech of millions of people, and since Big Tech holds a veritable monopoly on modern communications, their policies become a kind of law that affects the whole of society.  Twitter by itself is only a small part of the overall picture, but the cold and calculating censorship promoted by Roth is something that is being executed by the majority of Big Tech companies right now.  We have to ask ourselves as Americans (and western culture in general needs to ask) if this kind of ideological monopoly can be allowed to persist, because it means the eventual destruction of free speech as we know it.      

Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels by Biden and Democratic officials to silence critics on the social media platform. However, one familiar name immediately popped out in the first batch of documents released through journalist Matt Taibbi: James Baker. For many, James Baker is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals.

Baker has been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department, including the hoax involving the Russian Alfa Bank. When Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wanted to plant the bizarre false claim of a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Baker was his go-to, speed-dial contact. (Baker would later testify at Sussmann’s trial). Baker’s name also appeared prominently in controversies related to the other Russian-related FBI allegations against Trump. He was effectively forced out due to his role and reportedly found himself under criminal investigation. He became a defender of the Russian investigations despite findings of biased and even criminal conduct. He was also a frequent target of Donald Trump on social media, including Twitter. Baker responded with public criticism of Trump for his “false narratives.”

After leaving the FBI, Twitter seemed eager to hire Baker as deputy general counsel. Ironically, Baker soon became involved in another alleged back channel with a presidential campaign. This time it was Twitter that maintained the non-public channels with the Biden campaign (and later the White House). Baker soon weighed in with the same signature bias that characterized the Russian investigations.

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post ran an explosive story about a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden that contained emails and records detailing a multimillion dollar influence peddling operation by the Biden family. Not only was Joe Biden’s son Hunter and brother James involved in deals with an array of dubious foreign figures, but Joe Biden was referenced as the possible recipient of funds from these deals.

The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling, nepotism, and other forms of corruption. Moreover, the campaign was not denying that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s and key emails could be confirmed from the other parties involved. However, at the request of the “Biden team” and Democratic operatives, Twitter moved to block the story. It even suspended those who tried to share the allegations with others, including the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was suspended for linking to the scandal.

Even inside Twitter, the move raised serious concerns over the company serving as a censor for the Biden campaign. Global Comms Brandon Borrman who asked if  the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the policy” for barring posts and suspending users.

Baker quickly jumped in to support the censorship and said that “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.”

Keep in mind that there was never any evidence that this material was hacked. Moreover, there was no evidence of Russian involvement in the laptop. Indeed, U.S. intelligence quickly rejected the Russian disinformation claim.

However, Baker insisted that there was a “reasonable” assumption that Russians were behind another major scandal. Faced with a major scandal implicating a Joe Biden in the corrupt selling of access to foreign figures (including some with foreign intelligence associations), Baker’s natural default was to kill the story and stop others from sharing the allegations.

The released documents may show why Twitter was so eager to hire Baker despite his role in the Russian collusion controversies. What likely would have been a liability for most companies seemed an actual draw for Twitter. For censors and political operatives in Twitter, Baker likely seemed like a “made man” for a company committed to systemic censorship. He would be working with the chief legal officer at the company, Vijaya Gadde, who functioned as the company’s chief censor.  Gadde was widely reviled by free speech advocates for her dismissal of free speech principles and open political bias.

Not unexpectedly, Gadde and Baker would play prominent roles in the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal. There was hardly a need to round up “the usual suspects” in the suppression scandal when Musk took over the company. Both lawyers swatted down internal misgivings to bury a story that could well have made the difference in the close 2020 election.

It is striking how many of the figures and institutions involved in Russian collusion claims are within six degrees of James Baker. Not only did Baker work closely with fired FBI director James Comey and other key figures at the Justice Department, but he was an acquaintance of key Clinton figures like Sussmann who pushed the false collusion allegations. He was also hired by Brookings Institution, which also has a curious Bacon-like role in the origins and development of the false Russian collusion allegations.

None of these means that Baker was the driving force of the scandals. To the contrary, Baker earned his bones in Washington as a facilitator, a reliable ally when it came to the business of the Beltway. It is hardly a surprise that Baker found a home at Twitter where “caution” was always “warranted” in dealing with potentially damaging stories for Democratic interests.

Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Swiss naturopathic physician George Della Pietra believes people worldwide should be free to choose whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine injection or not.

He believes the same should hold for those receiving transfusions with “vaccinated” blood.

“The problem is right now we have no choice,” said Della Pietra, founder of the nonprofit Safe Blood Donation service in 2021, matching unvaccinated blood recipients with donors in 65 countries.

“It was very clear from the beginning that the COVID hype was way out of control,” Della Pietra said. “It was not as dangerous as they say it was.

“As a naturopath, I can make no sense of this pandemic, which was never really a pandemic. It leaves space for so many explanations.”

Della Pietra believes that an mRNA injection is more dangerous than the pharmaceutical companies are willing to admit. He said the growing numbers of adverse reactions are reason to question their safety and effectiveness.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that vaccinated and boosted people made up 58.6 percent (6,512) of the COVID-19 deaths in August—up from 41 percent in January.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cynthia Cox, the Vice President of the Kaiser Family Foundation told The Washington Post in an article on Nov. 23.

Nearly 70 percent of the world’s 8 billion people have received at least one mRNA injection for COVID-19 since the vaccines began rolling out in 2021 at the height of the virus’s spread.

Each of the three primary mRNA COVID-19 vaccines contains COVID-19 “spike protein” fragments, which bind at the cellular level to stimulate an immune response to the virus.

Della Pietra believes these spike proteins produce “classic symptoms”—namely blood clots—that “horrified” him.

“I’ve never seen anything similar—and I’m not talking only about spike proteins,” Della Pietra told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

“It’s unbelievable because we never had this problem before. It’s been only two years. They want to keep the narrative [that an mRNA vaccine] is not dangerous.”

Although donated blood and plasma must undergo a cleansing process before transfusion, Safe Blood Donation says this is not enough to remove all mRNA ingredients.

“I’m talking about graphene oxide and non-declared inorganic components in the vaccine, which we can see in the blood. When I see them, I have no idea how we can get rid of them again,” Della Pietra said.

Looking at the abnormalities in vaccinated blood, he said, “OK, we have a problem.” People are receiving the vaccine “more or less through the back door.”

“You can not avoid it anymore.”

In the United States alone, there are approximately 16 million units of donated blood annually. Of those units, about 643,000 are “autologous”—self-donated—and the number is increasing yearly, according to BloodBook.com.

Della Pietra said that, to his knowledge, Safe Blood Donation, based in Switzerland, is the first unvaccinated blood donation service of its kind.

“So, there is no blood bank with mRNA-free blood yet, not even with us,” Safe Blood Donation states on its website.

“And, although we have already asked hundreds of clinics, at the moment—at least in Europe—all of them still refuse to allow the human right of free blood choice with them—or at least do not want to be mentioned because otherwise, they fear reprisals.”

Della Pietra said the main goal of Safe Blood Donation is not to start an mRNA-free blood bank. Rather, it is to make it possible to match unvaccinated blood donors and unvaccinated recipients, “which we bring together in a clinic (medical partner) that allows the choice of blood donor.”

Medical website Seed Scientific said that blood banks and biotech companies will offer as much as $1,000 monthly for blood donations.

While Della Pietra said there are no unvaccinated blood banks, he sees the demand for unvaccinated blood rising.

“This is why I decided to do [SafeBlood Donation]. I wanted to make a network for unvaccinated people looking for a blood donor because they need it—whether they have scheduled surgery or an emergency,” he said.

Safe Blood Donation began working in the United States about a month ago, building an infrastructure of medical partners.

However, in the current medical environment, central blood banks such as the Red Cross do not segregate their blood donations based on their vaccinated or unvaccinated status.

“The American Red Cross does not facilitate designated donations for standard blood needs, as this process often takes longer and is more resource intensive than obtaining a blood product through our normal process,” the Red Cross told The Epoch Times in an email.

“In a small number of situations, there is an exception for rare blood types where compatible blood types are extremely difficult to find. A rare blood type is defined as one that is present in less than 1/1000 people.

“We want to emphasize that the Red Cross adheres to all donor and product requirements as determined by the FDA to ensure the safety of the blood supply and is committed to continuing to provide life-saving blood products for patients across the country.”

The National Library of Medicine said that “across study sites, the average hospital cost per unit transfused was $155 and the average charge per patient was $219.”

Still, the Red Cross, which provides 40 percent of the nation’s blood donations, said “no studies” demonstrate adverse outcomes from transfusions of blood products collected from vaccinated donors.

Read more here…

Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The pose of wokeness is a costume that the left liberal elite puts on to virtue signal that they care about social justice and to hide their greed and corruption, said the former executive of a major brand-name apparel manufacturer.

Jennifer Sey, former chief marketing officer and brand president of Levi Strauss & Co., told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program that she had “pushed back” on the public school closures due to COVID-19 for two years, and in the end, she was pushed out of the company for her advocacy.

Sey, who was sending her children to public schools, believed that prolonged school lockdowns were harmful to children and started speaking out against them at the beginning of the pandemic.

Sey said she and her husband were reading the data that was coming out of Italy at the start of the pandemic, a country heavily hit by the disease, and the data showed that the median age of death due to the disease was over 80.

“Nobody was bothering to look at actual data or adhere to the pre-pandemic playbook, which said you never shut schools down for more than a couple of weeks,” Sey pointed out. “It was from day one that me and my husband, we both said, ‘Hell no, this is wrong. People are going to be harmed.’”

In September 2020, Sey’s company warned her that her advocacy against school closures could be considered speaking on behalf of the company, “the implication being, there would be reputational harm to the company caused,” she said.

At the same time, her peers began sending their kids back to private in-person schools, Sey continued.

“I was so angry that these people would dare to say to me while sending their own kids to in-person school: ‘You can’t advocate for poor children to be in school.’”

Sey said it was atypical for her peers—and even for employees two or three levels below her in the corporate hierarchy—to send their kids to public school in her city of San Francisco.

“I thought the lightbulb would go off, and people would see the hypocrisy if I just made it clear in a calm, nice way. But they didn’t, because the hypocrisy, in a sense, is the point.”

“This pose of wokeness, it’s a cloak they wrap themselves in to signal virtue … to hide greed, corruption, keeping all the good stuff for themselves,” she said.

“It’s this costume that the left, liberal elite wraps around themselves to say, ‘I care about social justice. I care about all these causes. I am a good person.’ If you threaten to expose that, you need to be banished.”

Sacrificed Career for Speaking Out

Around the time of the new year in 2022, Sey was told that there was no longer a place for her at the company.

“You can’t be the CEO because of the things you’ve been saying and doing. Therefore, you can’t sit in your current chair because that is the role that ultimately becomes the CEO, so you need to leave,” Sey said she was told.

She was offered a $1 million severance package, which she decided to turn down because it would come with the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.

“What the nondisclosure agreement would require is that I never speak about the terms of my ousting. I was not OK with that,” she said.

In February, Sey resigned from her post at Levi Strauss & Co. after almost 23 years with the company.

The Epoch Times reached out to Levi Strauss & Co. for comment.

Sey said the illiberalism that has traveled from college campuses into companies and taken hold of corporations across the country is “incredibly dangerous.”

“If you insist on a culture where free speech is not tolerated, not only is it non-inclusive, which is problematic in and of itself, but I actually think it’s fraught and rife with the potential for corruption and fraud, like we’ve seen with Theranos and FTX and Enron,” she said,

Theranos, a company that claimed to provide blood testing lab services with a single drop of blood, defrauded its investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme. Its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison.

FTX, a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange, recently went bankrupt along with more than 130 affiliate companies due to insufficient liquidity. FTX users are potentially facing $8 billion in cumulative losses, while investors in the company are likely to lose their entire investment as a result of the bankruptcy.

Enron, a Texas-based energy-trading company, went bankrupt in 2001 due to fraudulent accounting practices and conflicts of interest. Within a year, Enron’s stock price plummeted from about $90 per share to 26 cents per share, which caused billion-dollar losses to investors, thousands of job losses, and the liquidation of more than $2 billion in pension plans.

“There were people in those companies who knew what was going on, but they didn’t feel they could say anything,” Sey said.

“If you cannot have a conversation in the company about what is working and what is not working, what is true and what is not, you can’t innovate. You can’t move forward,” she said. “It stands in the way of progress when we can’t have these conversations because we’re all just adhering to propaganda.”

 “It is a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment,” Sey added.

Wokeism Is an Ideology

Being “woke” during the 1940s through the beginning of the 1960s meant “being awake or alert to the fact that there was racial inequality, and being part of the movement to change that,” Sey said. “It’s admirable, I have no issue with that.”

However, in the last 10 or 15 years, and especially in the last three to five years, those beliefs have been corrupted and commodified “into an ideology which can never be questioned,” such as gender ideology, race ideology, or body positivity, Sey explained.

Sey said that she was very supportive of transgender people working in her team. “I would never want a person to be discriminated against for anything, including being unvaccinated.”

But someone who questions whether an 11-year-old should be on puberty blockers, when there is no research on the mid- to long-term impacts of this therapy, is considered evil and must be banished for violating this ideology, Sey said.

“[Wokeism] has become religious in nature. Woke capitalism is really just an attempt to profit off of this ideology and the passion behind this ideology amongst primarily Gen Z and millennial consumers,” she said.

Another example of ideology that cannot be questioned is the idea of “body positivity,” which touts that the size of the body does not affect its health, Sey said.

“We couldn’t say during COVID that it was dangerous to be overweight. I said it, and that made me a fat-phobe,” she said.

“We can’t say that, because the mantra is ‘healthy at any size.’ It’s ideological. And you have to be pure in the belief of that ideology, or you are evil and must be shunned.”

Read more here…

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Colorado mom Lydia Lerma feels punched when she hears the trendy new term “minor-attracted person.” Just thinking of the damage a pedophile inflicted upon her son, who was six at the time, causes pain.

Creating a polite-sounding term for someone sexually attracted to children enrages her.

Any push to normalize pedophilia or designate it as another sexual orientation to be tolerated is “unconscionable,” Lerma told The Epoch Times.

“That’s a bunch of [expletive]!” she said of academics pushing acceptance of pedophilia.

“They are going to face the greatest resistance that they have ever seen. Society is not going to let that happen.”

But in academic circles, some have begun to argue that pedophilia should be considered just another sexual orientation, not a mental disorder.

And a therapist who treats pedophiles told The Epoch Times that he believes pedophilia is on its way to becoming normalized.

‘Like Any Other Sexual Orientation’

In 2018, medical student Mirjam Heine, who said she had a background in psychology, gave a presentation called “Pedophilia is a Natural Sexual Orientation” during a TEDx event at the University of Würtzberg in Germany. A program guide for TEDx said she was mainly guided by the works of Prof. Dr. Klaus Michael Beier, the head of the institute for sexology and sexual medicine at the University Hospital Berlin, and the prevention network “Kein Täter Werden.”

In her remarks, Heine said pedophilia is an “unchangeable sexual orientation,” just like heterosexuality.

“No one chooses to be a pedophile; no one can cease being one,” Heine argued during her talk. “The difference between pedophilia and other sexual orientations is that living out this sexual orientation will end in a disaster.”

Most countries in the world, including the United States, outlaw adults having sexual contact or intercourse with children in most situations.

The term minor-attracted person grabbed headlines after professor Allyn Walker used it during a discussion on pedophiles in November 2021. Walker, a woman who transitioned to live as a man, was discussing her book: “A Long Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.

In the interview with the Prostasia Foundation—a San Francisco organization focused on child sexual abuse—Walker said it’s less stigmatizing to use the term minor-attracted person than pedophile when referring to people “who don’t act on their urges to have sex with children.”

The interview drew fiery criticism. Within weeks, Walker resigned from her job as an assistant sociology and criminal justice professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

After stepping down, Walker said in a prepared statement that her research was “mischaracterized” by some in the media. Walker blamed the public outcry on intolerance for her transgender identity and said the research aimed to prevent child sexual abuse.

Later, Johns Hopkins University hired Walker to work at the Moore Center for Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse in Baltimore. She did not immediately respond to an Epoch Times email through the Moore Center requesting comment.

Two former colleagues at Old Dominion defended Walker in the journal of the American Society of Criminology.

“Our friend and colleague, Dr. Allyn Walker, was the victim of a trolling attack on their research and their person that resulted in the loss of their position at Old Dominion University (ODU),” wrote Ruth Triplett and Mona Danner.

The attacks, they wrote, were “centering around misinformation and links to Dr. Walker’s identity as non-binary, transgender, and Jewish.”

Growing Cultural Acceptance

The fashion house Balenciaga faced backlash recently after running an ad campaign depicting little girls holding a Teddy bear wearing bondage gear. One ad shows pages from a child pornography court ruling. Balenciaga later apologized for the advert.

A November headline from a Washington Post theater review read: “‘Downstate’ is a play about pedophiles. It’s also brilliant.” The off-Broadway play characterizes pedophiles as complicated and troubled victims of harsh punishment.

Jon Uhler is a 30-year veteran counselor who has worked with sex offenders in the Pennsylvania and South Carolina prison systems. Throughout his career, he has assessed hundreds of pedophiles.

Uhler, a member of the Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), said he’s afraid pedophilia is on the road to normalization.

Sex offender treatment specialists are now trained to view sex offenders as victims of trauma, he said.

The idea is that pedophiles are reenacting their trauma by choosing a victim of the age they were when abused, Uhler said. But that’s not accurate, he added.

Researchers are taking information from interviews with pedophiles and considering it to be true,  instead of realizing they’re dealing with the “world’s greatest deceivers,” Uhler said.

Even so, Walker’s ideas have permeated sex offender treatment circles, he said. Walker spoke at this year’s ATSA conference.

Creating a Protected Class

Normalizing pedophilia ultimately could lead to a major cultural change—elevating pedophilia to a protected class.

“They are going to push to have it recognized as a sexual orientation, which would grant it civil rights status,” Uhler said.

If that happens, employers could no longer discriminate against pedophiles in areas such as employment, he said.

And if teens are given the legal right to decide if they want to have a sex-change operation or take hormones to try to appear as the other sex, that could help make it legal for pedophiles to act on their sexual urges, he predicted.

If children legally can decide what they can do with their bodies, then pedophiles could argue that they should be able to consent to a sexual relationship, he said.

“They’re jackals that are feeding off the carcasses of these kids,” he said. “The predator’s interest is ultimately lowering the age of consent.”

The general public doesn’t understand what is happening, he said. It’s one of the defining issues of our time, he added.

Scott Clark, a minister who teaches church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary in California, has called the destigmatization of pedophilia the last stage of the “neo-pagan sexual revolution.”

Clark hosts the Heidelcast podcast and writes The Heidelblog. Both tackle religious and moral issues facing modern society.

“There’s a pretty obvious move to normalize pedophilia,” he said. “This invariable comes from adults. It’s not coming from children.”

Read more here…

By Eric Peters CIO of One River Asset Management

“Right now, people’s wages are being eaten up by inflation,” said Jay Powell. “So what you want to do is you want to have inflation stable and then have a very strong labor market where the biggest wage gains are going to the people at the bottom end of the spectrum,” continued the Fed Chairman.

No doubt that’s right. With the pendulum now retreating from peak inequality, there are two ways to narrow the divide. The fastest, of course, is through making the wealthy poor, or at least less rich in real terms, which started this year in earnest and has a very long way to go. The preferable way is to raise the poor.

To sustainably lift low earners requires our economy to become more productive, so laborers receive a higher share of the nation’s economic pie. An economy that is deglobalizing will become less productive, at least for some years. So the rebalance must come through a shift in the distribution of America’s economic pie from capital owners to laborers, which lifts inflation, shrinks corporate profit margins, and lowers multiples.

This week’s intervention by Democrats in Congress to limit our rail worker’s negotiation ability demonstrates that even our labor-friendly party does not have the stomach for the resurgence of union power.

“And we had that at the end of the very long expansion that ended with the pandemic. That’s not what we have now. Now, for most workers, wages are being eaten up by inflation,” explained Powell, nervous, without the tools to mediate this rising conflict.

“That’s not true at the bottom end, where wage increases are higher than inflation, a good thing. But if you want to have a sustainable, strong labor market where real wages are going up right across the wage spectrum, especially for people at the lower end, you’ve got to have price stability,” he explained, unsure how to achieve it given the arc of this pendulum. “And until we restore that, we can’t, we can’t get back to that place where we, where we kind of were for the two years before the pandemic hit.”

Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Congressional investigators are being denied access to 148 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed with the Department of the Treasury by banks concerning financial dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, Jim, according to incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“Most Americans have never heard the term ‘Suspicious Activity Reports.’ These are actual reports that financial institutions file with the Treasury Department when they see suspicious activity,” Jordan told Epoch TV’s Joshua Phillip in an interview for the “Newsmakers” program.

“Typically, it’s money laundering type of activity, so most Americans don’t get these. Or if they do, there is a good reason for it. But there are 150 of them on Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the President’s brother, and that to me is a big concern,” Jordan said.

Only two of the 150 have been made public and the Biden administration through the Department of the Treasury is refusing to make the other 148 SARs available to congressional investigators, Jordan explained.

“It used to be before the Biden administration, if the committee wanted to see that information, whether it was Democrats on the committee or Republicans on the committee, they could have access to it … until the Biden administration,” Jordan told Phillip.

“So the Biden administration hasn’t complied with any of the correspondence, any of the letters and requests that came from [incoming House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.)]. They have changed the policy on SARs for the ability of committees to review that information,” Jordan continued.

“So we’ll see if we get access. Maybe we’re going to have to go to the banks to get that information, and not through the Treasury Department,” he said.

A Treasury Department spokesman did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for an explanation of the Biden administration’s 2021 decision to end a long-standing process whereby SARs and other reports provided under the Bank Secrecy Act whenever requested by a congressional committee with appropriate jurisdiction.

Following the administration’s decision, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) introduced, and the House subsequently approved, H.R. 7734, the “Timely Delivery of Bank Secrecy Act Reports Act.”  The Waters bill was approved by the House July 26, 2022, on a 349-to-70 vote, with majorities of both parties supporting the measure.

The Waters measure would require the Treasury Department to provide copies of SARs to requesting congressional officials within 30 days and requires financial institutions to turn over requested copies upon receipt of a congressional subpoena.

The Waters bill was introduced in the Senate and referred to the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), but no action has been taken on the bill since being referred to the Ohio Democrat’s panel.

Biden administration officials have offered several cumbersome alternative processes that would only allow congressional aides to go to reading rooms at the Treasury Department to view SARs, but they would not be allowed to make copies of the documents.

The bill report on the Waters measure explained why House officials rejected the Biden administration’s suggested alternatives.

“Unfortunately, Treasury and [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] FinCEN have recently severely restricted congressional access to Suspicious Activity Reports by requiring congressional staff to review all material in a reading room at Treasury, prohibiting the copying of materials for purposes of highlighting, ongoing reference, or margin notation, and restricting information collection to note taking.

“As an alternative, Treasury and FinCEN have offered to bring the material to the requesting committee and then take the material back to Treasury when the review is completed.

“The restrictions that they have imposed upon congressional access to SARs and related materials are unworkable given the complexity and amount of information contained in such materials, and severely impairs Congress’ responsibility to carry on its oversight work in a timely and effective fashion.”

Despite the overwhelming House vote for the Waters measure that would have effectively restored congressional access on a par with what it was prior to President Joe Biden taking office, the Treasury Department continues to withhold access to SARs, except as decided on a case-by-case basis.

Read more here…