Month: April 2023

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation.

How sharp was good ol’ Lenin, prime modernist, when he mused, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. This global nomad now addressing you has enjoyed the privilege of spending four astonishing weeks in Moscow at the heart of an historical crossroads – culminating with the Putin-Xi geopolitical game-changing summit at the Kremlin.

To quote Xi, “changes that haven’t been seen in 100 years” do have a knack of affecting us all in more ways than one.

James Joyce, another modernity icon, wrote that we spend our lives meeting average and/or extraordinary people, on and on and on, but in the end we’re always meeting ourselves. I have had the privilege of meeting an array of extraordinary people in Moscow, guided by trusted friends or by auspicious coincidence: in the end your soul tells you they enrich you and the overarching historical moment in ways you can’t even begin to fathom.

Here are some of them. The grandson of Boris Pasternak, a gifted young man who teaches Ancient Greek at Moscow State University. A historian with unmatched knowledge of Russian history and culture. The Tajik working class huddling together in a chaikhana with the proper ambience of Dushanbe.

Chechens and Tuvans in awe doing the loop in the Big Central Line. A lovely messenger sent by friends extremely careful about security matters to discuss issues of common interest. Exceptionally accomplished musicians performing underground in Mayakovskaya. A stunning Siberian princess vibrant with unbounded energy, taking that motto previously applied to the energy industry – Power of Siberia – to a whole new level.

A dear friend took me to Sunday service at the Devyati Muchenikov Kizicheskikh church, the favorite of Peter the Great: the quintessential purity of Eastern Orthodoxy. Afterwards the priests invited us for lunch in their communal table, displaying not only their natural wisdom but also an uproarious sense of humor.

At a classic Russian apartment crammed with 10,000 books and with a view to the Ministry of Defense – plenty of jokes included – Father Michael, in charge if Orthodox Christianity relations with the Kremlin, sang the Russian imperial anthem after an indelible night of religious and cultural discussions.

I had the honor to meet some of those who were particularly targeted by the imperial machine of lies. Maria Butina – vilified by the proverbial “spy who came in from the cold” shtick – now a deputy at the Duma. Viktor Bout – which pop culture metastasized into the “Lord of War”, complete with Nic Cage movie: I was speechless when he told me he was reading me in maximum security prison in the USA, via pen drives sent by his friends (he had no internet access). The indefatigable, iron-willed Mira Terada – tortured when she was in a U.S. prison, now heading a foundation protecting children caught in hard times.

I spent much treasured quality time and engaged in invaluable discussions with Alexander Dugin – the crucial Russian of these post-everything times, a man of pure inner beauty, exposed to unimaginable suffering after the terrorist assassination of Darya Dugina, and still able to muster a depth and reach when it comes to drawing connections across the philosophy, history and history of civilizations spectrum that is virtually unmatched in the West.

On the offensive against Russophobia

And then there were the diplomatic, academic and business meetings. From the head of international investor relations of Norilsk Nickel to Rosneft executives, not to mention the EAEU’s Sergey Glazyev himself, side by side with his top economic adviser Dmitry Mityaev, I was given a crash course on the current A to Z of Russian economy – including serious problems to be addressed.

At the Valdai Club, what really mattered were the meetings on the sidelines, much more than the actual panels: that’s when Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, Chinese tell you what is really in their hearts and minds.

The official launch of the International Movement of Russophiles was a special highlight of these four weeks. A special message written by President Putin was read by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who then delivered his own speech. Later, at the House of Receptions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, four of us were received by Lavrov at a private audience. Future cultural projects were discussed. Lavrov was extremely relaxed, displaying his matchless sense of humor.

This is a cultural as much as a political movement, designed to fight Russophobia and to tell the Russian story, in all its immensely rich aspects, especially to the Global South.

I am a founding member and my name is on the charter. In my nearly four decades as a foreign correspondent, I have never been part of any political/cultural movement anywhere in the world; nomad independents are a fierce breed. But this is extremely serious: the current, irredeemably mediocre self-described “elites” of the collective West want no less than cancel Russia all across the spectrum. No pasarán.

Spirituality, compassion, mercy

Decades happening in only four weeks imply precious time needed to put it all in perspective.

The initial gut feeling the day I arrived, after a seven-hour walk under snow flurries, was confirmed: this is the capital of the multipolar world. I saw it among the West Asians at the Valdai. I saw it talking to visiting Iranians, Turks and Chinese. I saw it when over 40 African delegations took over the whole area around the Duma – the day Xi arrived in town. I saw it throughout the reception across the Global South to what Xi and Putin are proposing to the overwhelming majority of the planet.

In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation. Import substitution in all areas, especially agriculture, has been a resounding success. Supermarkets have everything – and more – compared to the West. There’s an abundance of first-rate restaurants. You can buy a Bentley or a Loro Pianna cashmere coat you can’t even find in Italy. We laughed about it chatting with managers at the TSUM department store. At the BiblioGlobus bookstore, one of them told me, “We are the Resistance.”

By the way, I had the honor to deliver a talk on the war in Ukraine at the coolest bookshop in town, Bunker, mediated by my dear friend, immensely knowledgeable Dima Babich. A huge responsibility. Especially because Vladimir L. was in the audience. He’s Ukrainian, and spent 8 years, up to 2022, telling it like it really was to Russian radio, until he managed to leave – after being held at gunpoint – using an internal Ukrainian passport. Later we went to a Czech beer hall where he detailed his extraordinary story.

In Moscow, their toxic ghosts are always lurking in the background. Yet one cannot but feel sorry for the psycho Straussian neocons and neoliberal-cons who now barely qualify as Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s puny orphans.

In the late 1990s, Brzezinski pontificated that, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical center because its very existence as an independent state helps transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

With or without a demilitarized and denazified Ukraine, Russia has already changed the narrative. This is not about becoming a Eurasian empire again. This is about leading the long, complex process of Eurasia integration – already in effect – in parallel to supporting true, sovereign independence across the Global South.

I left Moscow – the Third Rome – towards Constantinople – the Second Rome – one day before Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev gave a devastating interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta once again outlining all the essentialities inherent to the NATO vs. Russia war.

This is what particularly struck me: “Our centuries-old culture is based on spirituality, compassion and mercy. Russia is a historical defender of sovereignty and statehood of any peoples who turned to it for help. She saved the U.S. itself at least twice, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. But I believe that this time it is impractical to help the United States maintain its integrity.”

In my last night, before hitting a Georgian restaurant, I was guided by the perfect companion off Pyatnitskaya to a promenade along the Moscow River, beautiful rococo buildings gloriously lighted, the scent of Spring – finally – in the air. It’s one of those “Wild Strawberry” moments out of Bergman’s masterpiece that hits the bottom of our soul. Like mastering the Tao in practice. Or the perfect meditative insight at the top of the Himalayas, the Pamirs or the Hindu Kush.

So the conclusion is inevitable. I’ll be back. Soon.

According to a ranking published by Bloomberg last week, the Ambanis remain the wealthiest among Asia’s families despite recent losses, owing their riches to the Reliance Industries conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the rest of the ranking’s top 10 is a mix of different industries, countries and also some global household names.

The Ambanis’ wealth is still more than double that of the next clan in the ranking of Asia’s richest families, the Hartonos of Indonesia’s Djarum brand.

It also earns them rank 6 among the world’s wealthiest families.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Two Thai families are also among the top 10, with Red Bull inventors, the Yoovidhyas, in rank 6.

The Lee family behind South Korean electronics maker Samsung made it into rank 10.

Chinese emigrants are quite common among the list of Asia’s most wealthy families.

Chearavanont patriarch Chia Ek Chor came to Thailand from Southern China in 1921 and started out importing and exporting seeds, vegetables and animal products between Bangkok, China and Hong Kong. The Pao/Woo family and the inventors of Oyster Sauce, the Lee family (rank 11), made their fortunes in Hong Kong after emigrating from Mainland China, as did Singapore real estate tycoons, the Ngs (rank 12). The story is similar with the Png brothers (rank 13) and the Sy family (rank 14), conglomerate owners in Singapore and the Philippines, respectively.

Artificial intelligence in some shape or form has been a part of everyday life for years, but the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and the resulting aggressive development pace of conversational and generative AI models is, for the first time ever, putting the underlying technology into the hands of the general public.

However, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, even though current large language models are primarily able to guess the best-fitting next word in a sentence based on the corpus of content they were fed, CEOs, researchers and AI experts are now urging the industry to pump the brakes on training and developing models more capable than OpenAI’s GPT-4.

The company’s latest large language model is currently available in a limited capacity for ChatGPT Plus subscribers and will soon be integrated into Microsoft productivity and security products.

According to an open letter signed by influential figures like Elon Musk and Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, “powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

The letter was released by the Future of Life Institute, a non-governmental organization founded in 2014 by MIT professor Max Tegmark and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, among others. The Musk Foundation is a primary donor to the organization.

As data from a survey conducted by KPMG Australia and the University of Queensland shows, residents of India, China, South Africa and Brazil, the biggest so-called emerging markets, are far less critical of the continued implementation of AI systems.

You will find more infographics at Statista

75 percent of Indians surveyed between September and October 2022 would place their trust in AI, followed by 67 percent of Chinese and 57 percent of South African respondents.

According to the accompanying study, respondents claimed to trust AI used in healthcare and security contexts the most compared to other possible use cases.

Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

America’s latest episode of mass homicide has sparked renewed advocacy for restrictions on gun ownership. Once again, the accompanying debate has many gun control advocates claiming the Second Amendment’s reference to a “well regulated militia” narrows the amendment’s scope if not rendering it altogether moot.

Before we examine those claims, it’s important to ensure readers have a proper general understanding of the Bill of Rights. Contrary to common misperception, these amendments do not bestow privileges upon American citizens. Rather, they are primarily a set of prohibitions against the government infringing on pre-existing human rights all people have.

That’s evident in the language. For example, the First Amendment begins “Congress shall make no law…” This amendment isn’t awarding citizens the rights of religion, speech and assembly — it’s outlawing the government’s thwarting of those innate and universal human rights.

Similarly, the Fourth Amendment asserts that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” Again, the authors are not granting those rights, they are protecting them.

When the Bill of Rights was proposed, some feared the enumeration of a handful of rights could be misinterpreted as providing a comprehensive catalogue — and thus empowering the government to infringe on human rights not specified. That’s why they included the Ninth Amendment, asserting that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

“Amendment II. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

With that understanding of the Bill of Rights in mind, we see that, via the Second Amendment, the founders explicitly asserted that there is a “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

What about that reference to “a well regulated militia”? As we set out to scrutinize the phrase, let’s first observe that the Second Amendment contains two distinct components serving two different purposes:

• An operative clause that sets out a specific prohibition against the government’s infringement on a right: …the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

• A prefatory clause that announces a purpose: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…

Positioned in the prefatory clause, the “well regulated Militia” reference merely serves to provide a rationale — and not necessarily the only rationale — for the operative clause that follows.

While the Second Amendment stands apart from the others in the Bill of Rights by having a prefatory clause, such clauses were common in state constitutions of the era.

Prefatory clauses were used to help “sell” amendments to those being asked to approve them. In this case, the authors were pointing to the necessity of an armed populace as the well from which militias are drawn — militias seen as a vital safeguard against the federal government they were creating.

In particular, America’s founders were wary of the federal government’s potential to create a standing army that could be used to destroy state sovereignty and individual liberties. Seeking to “sell” the amendment to drafting committees and state ratifying conventions, it made sense for the authors to highlight the link between militias and the people’s right to bear arms.

Given their purpose — that is, to cite one or more of many possible rationales — prefatory clauses don’t rightly constrain operative clauses, particularly one as explicit as the Second Amendment’s, which pointedly recognizes a “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Even if the prefatory clause did have any teeth, those seeking to interpret it as tightly restricting the gun-eligible population run into yet another wall, in that militias are assembled from the citizenry at large.

Indeed, one revision of James Madison’s draft of the Second Amendment drove home this point. It began, “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people…”

Listen to Pennsylvanian Tench Coxe, as he championed the Constitution’s ratification: “The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty.” Summarizing the Second Amendment, Coxe said, “The people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

Multiple state constitutional provisions of the era, some of which predate the Bill of Rights, offer additional confirmation that the armed right of self-defense belongs to individuals. As one representative example, consider the language of Vermont’s 1777 Constitution: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”

Further disregarding the Second Amendment’s explicit enumeration of “the right of the people to bear arms,” some claim the existence of the National Guard renders the Second Amendment entirely moot, since, via the Guard, each state has a “militia” with its own arsenal of arms.

In the US, you do NOT have a constitutional right to own a gun UNLESS you are in a well-regulated militia.

The well-regulated militia is the National Guard.

That is, literally, what the 2nd amendment says.

— Student Loans Suck 🟥 (@Seracohw6) March 27, 2023

Recall, however, that the founders viewed militias as a check on the federal government’s power, with fear that the federal government might create a standing army with the potential to tyrannize the states and the people.

Thanks to the National Defense Act of 1916 and amendments in 1933, today’s National Guard is legally a part of the United States Army, with state governments exercising only limited government control. Enlistment oaths have evolved to reflect that, with National Guard soldiers promising to obey the orders of both the president of the United States and the governor.

The Guard’s military training and the selection of its officers are controlled by the federal government. Troops are subject to activation pursuant to any number of federal missions, including — as we’ve seen too often — overseas combat deployments that render them useless to the states where their citizen-soldiers live.

Clearly, under such federal control, the National Guard cannot be seen as a counterbalance against federal power, and thus does not fulfill the Second Amendment’s aspiration to enable “well-regulated militias…necessary to the security of a free state.”

Finally, no tour of the Second Amendment’s language would be complete without addressing “well regulated” as it’s applied to “militia.” Today, people often and understandably assume that descriptor refers to regulation in the modern sense of external government control. However, in the late 1700s, “well regulated” simply meant orderly, trained and disciplined — qualities that militias should aspire to.

To summarize:

• The Second Amendment explicitly recognizes the existence of “a right of the people” — not just those currently in militias — “to keep and bear arms.”

• Placed in a prefatory clause, the “militia” reference merely announces one rationale for the Second Amendment. Regardless of how “militia” is interpreted, its presence does not constrain the operative-clause prohibition of government infringement against the right of the people to keep and bears arms.

• Today’s National Guard is part of the U.S. Army and under heavy federal control. It cannot be used by the peoples of the separate states as a counterbalance to the federal government’s standing army — and thus is not a “militia” in the sense the term is used in the Second Amendment.

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

A new exhibit lets people experience ‘death’ in virtual reality.

Artist Shaun Gladwell has created an interactive art installation at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia called “Passing Electrical Storms,” which “guides participants through a simulated de-escalation of life, from cardiac arrest to brain death,” the Daily Star reports.

Despite all the things science tells us about life, nobody really knows what it’s like to experience death.

However, people who have undergone near-death experiences often come back with tales of what happened after their hearts stopped—from leaving their bodies and seeing themselves from above to waking up in a meadow.

Upon entering the exhibit, you’re asked to lie down on a replica hospital bed, where you’re hooked up to a heart rate monitor. Staff are on hand to ‘pull you out’ if things get too intense. 

@croom12

Its Actually pretty hectic. Doctors trying to revive you, vibrating bed and floating into space.

♬ original sound – Marcus

“I can see how people would say it causes anxiety and panic. It definitely borderlines that—they do put your finger on a heart rate monitor and then tell you to raise your hand if you’ve had enough and want to quit,” said Marcus Crook, a Melbourne resident. “What happens is you’re laying down, the bed vibrates, you flatline. The doctors come over the top of you. You can see yourself in the goggles and they try to revive you—it doesn’t work. Then you float up out past them into space and it keeps going.“

The exhibit will be available to check out during the Melbourne Now festival which runs until August.

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Independent journalist Steve Baker says he was recently warned that his aggressive reporting and commentary about Jan. 6 have created growing ire at the U.S. Department of Justice that could lead to his prosecution for being at the Capitol on that fateful Wednesday in 2021.

Since Jan. 6, Baker, 62, of Raleigh, North Carolina, went through two hours of FBI questioning and faced the looming specter of being added to the list of now more than 1,000 Jan. 6 criminal-case defendants.

He said his recent coverage of Jan. 6 cases and pointed criticisms of the DOJ have once again painted a target on him.

“I got a call from another journalist who has a friendly source inside the Department of Justice there in D.C.,” Baker told The Epoch Times.

“He called me up and said—this is a paraphrase, but he said—‘Your friend in Raleigh, tell him to be careful. He has awakened a couple of people’s attention to his work, and they’re not happy about it at all.’”

The ominous early-morning heads-up got Baker’s attention.

“First of all, when you get a call at 6:30 in the morning from somebody relaying that message, they must have thought that was really important to get a hold of me,” he said. “So the impact of the timing of the delivery was significant.

“The journalist who gave me the information has a very large national audience and would be the kind of person who would have those types of sources,” Baker said. “…So I had to take it seriously.”

The Epoch Times asked the U.S. Department of Justice for comment on Baker’s contention but did not receive a response.

Documented Intense Scenes

Baker spent much of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., capturing video for his news-and-commentary blog, The Pragmatic Constitutionalist. He had a front-row view of some intense scenes, including the initial bombardment of munitions aimed by police at the huge crowd on the Capitol’s west front.

His video work appeared in Jan. 6 films by HBO, The New York Times, and The Epoch Times. It has been syndicated worldwide on Storyful.

Baker filmed the debut of a Metropolitan Police Department “hard squad” and the violence that broke out as the riot-gear-clad officers rolled and rumbled through the dense crowd like a bowling ball through a 10-pin set.

He stood in the corner of the Capitol’s south entrance as officers drew firearms near him and a group of protesters after a radio call about shots fired in the House of Representatives.

Baker’s outspokenness was on full display. He challenged two officers who drew their service weapons and shouted at unarmed protesters. The building was on high alert after reports that someone had been shot outside the Speaker’s Lobby.

“Are you going to use that on us?” Baker asked one USCP officer who charged at the group. “None of us have a gun. We’ve got cameras.”

As the officer explained why the dozen or so law-enforcement officials in the lobby had weapons ready, Baker intoned dryly, “The only shots fired have been fired by you guys.”

That statement turned out to be true. At the entrance to the House Speaker’s Lobby one floor above, USCP Lt. Michael Byrd shot unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, 35. She died about a half-hour later.

What was displayed on Jan. 6 became a hallmark of Baker’s work covering the aftermath of the protests and violence at the Capitol. His analysis and commentary often cut to the quick.

‘Just Want the Truth’

On podcasts and social media, Baker says things most other journalists are afraid to say. He does not suffer fools gladly. That has earned him a growing following—and some critics—from various sides of his libertarian leanings.

He describes his approach to Jan. 6 as a drive for truth—partisanship and politics be damned. That’s a trait he learned from his father, George O. Baker, who spent more than 30 years as a private investigator based in Shreveport, Louisiana.

“I don’t care where the facts lead,” Baker said. “To Trump’s desk, Pelosi’s desk, darker forces within the government, left- or right-wing antagonists, or simply a grand organic accident.”

He said his latest focus has been “government incompetence that allowed it, or even a sinister plan to initiate the violence.”

“I just want the truth,” he said. “Now I’m focusing on the weaponization of the DOJ against the innocent people who’ve been caught up in the politicized aftermath.”

Baker said if he ends up facing DOJ prosecution for being at the Capitol, it will be just the latest example of the government targeting right-of-center journalists to the exclusion of so-called mainstream media.

Read more here…

The Australian company “Vow,” specializing in cultured meat, recently made headlines for producing a giant meatball from a lab using the DNA of the long-extinct woolly mammoth.  

“We wanted to create something that was totally different from anything you can get now,” Vow founder Tim Noakesmith told Reuters, adding scientists believe the animal’s extinction was sparked by climate change 10,000 years ago (So climate change can occur without humans use of fossil fuels?). 

The meatball was created using sheep cells that were inserted with a singular woolly mammoth gene called myoglobin.

“When it comes to meat, myoglobin is responsible for the aroma, the color, and the taste,” James Ryall, Vow’s Chief Scientific Officer, explained.

The woolly mammoth’s DNA sequence had a few gaps, so scientists completed it with African elephant DNA. 

“Much like they do in the movie Jurassic Park,” Ryall noted.

Reuters described the meatball, which smells like crocodile meat, and added it was not produced for consumption. 

“Its protein is literally 4,000 years old. We haven’t seen it in a very long time. That means we want to put it through rigorous tests, something that we would do with any product we bring to the market,” Noakesmith said.

Reuters ended the article with the idea that lab-grown meat will likely be a more sustainable alternative to real meat. 

… and where have we seen this before? 

The Great Reset plan by WEF includes the complete transformation of the global food and agricultural industries and the dieting of humans. 

If you want to avoid a future of fake meat, find cheap land designated for agriculture and start a farm. 

Otherwise, ‘Soylent Green,’ here we come… 

Authored by Robert Spencer via PJMedia.com,

Donald Trump has been indicted, essentially for the crime of being Donald Trump and opposing the Left’s total hegemony over everything. But as Trump himself has often warned, they’re not really after him, they’re after us, and he is just in the way. A 33-year-old Trump supporter named Douglass Mackey discovered the truth of that adage in the worst possible way on Friday, the first day of America as a Leftist banana republic in which foes of the regime are targeted solely for their opposition to that regime. Mackey was convicted of election interference and faces up to ten years in prison, all because of a meme he tweeted during the 2016 election. Yes, you read that right: a meme.

Back during the wild and woolly days of that campaign, according to a Friday press release from the “Justice” Department, Mackey, under the name Ricky Vaughn, “established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Presidential Election.” The Justice for Democrats Department didn’t bother to explain exactly what it means to have held a position so illustrious as that of the 107th most important influencer of the 2016 presidential election. How did the DOJ go about determining this? Did it somehow discover that Mackey/Vaughn had induced a certain number of people to change their votes, but that 106 other people had gotten people to change more votes?

These are actually important questions because on Friday, Mackey was convicted “by a federal jury in Brooklyn of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.” 

That’s what he faces ten years in prison for doing.

Mackey’s “conspiracy” was really quite simple. While the language the Department Formerly Associated with Justice used sounds quite weighty and conjures up images of Mackey meeting in dark rooms with other sinister figures to plot ways to sabotage voting machines or prevent people from being able to enter polling places, what they’re really talking about is a meme.

Douglass Mackey was just found guilty of a federal crime he was charged with by the DOJ for tweeting the meme on the left during the 2016 election.

The lady on the right has never been arrested for her tweet that also came during the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/pkCz6h669U

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 31, 2023

One of the ten-years-in-the-slammer memes can be seen here.

Vaughn tweeted a photo of what looked like a Hillary ad, but was actually a parody of a Hillary ad.

The caption read: “Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

The Justice Unless You Support Trump Department explained that this was a heinous crime because “Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to ‘vote’ via text message or social media which, in reality, was legally invalid.” Yeah, wow, doggonit, that sounds terrible. Thousands, maybe even millions, of people, must have been bamboozled by the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Presidential Election to send in a text and think they had voted, right?

Wrong.

The Justice Department, according to the Post Millennial, “was unable to provide evidence that anyone was deceived by the meme.”

Not even a single person.

What’s more, at least one memester on the other side did exactly the same thing, and was never arrested or tried and faces no prison time. On Nov. 8, 2016, which was election day, Kristina Wong tweeted a video of a Trump supporter with the caption: “Hey Trump Supporters! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday!”

Not only was Kristina Wong never prosecuted, but her tweet is still live. Yet she did exactly the same thing Douglass Mackey did. She just had the good sense to do it against Trump, rather than against Hillary.

The rotten, corrupt, politicized remains of the Justice Department, however, were full to the brim of their own righteousness on Friday. U.S. Attorney Breon Peace proclaimed, “Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election.” The contemporary American Left, one of the most impious and God-hating political movements in the history of the world, loves to affect piety at times like this, but Peace’s statement was a particularly nauseating example of this phenomenon. The right to vote is “sacred”? No, Peace. I’m all for voting in free, fair, unrigged elections, but be serious: the right to vote is not held as sacred in any religious tradition on the face of the earth. What you’re actually saying is that your corrupt and self-serving system is part of your secular religion, and that Mackey is a heretic from that religion; he has been duly found guilty and will be burned at the stake.

The first amendment as we know it died today. This is a completely outrageous decision by a jury in Brooklyn to send this man to jail for tweeting a meme. We are truly living in a third world banana republic.https://t.co/XjMI3hb978

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 31, 2023

And this is just day one. Imagine what America will be like once the banana republic has been fully in power for a few years.

A survey of garment-sewing contractors in Southern California reveals that sweatshop workers are paid as little as $1.58 per hour.

The survey, conducted by the US Department of Labor, found that workers making garments sold by some of the world’s largest fashion retailers are victims of wage theft and other illegal pay practices, Fashion United reports.

Contractors and manufacturers included in the survey include Bombshell Sportswear, Dillard’s, Lulus, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Socialite, Stitch Fix and Von Maur.

There more more than 45,000 workers in the Los Angeles-area garment manufacturing industry, with many working an average of 55 hours per week with no overtime pay, according to the report.

Based on data from more than 50 contractors and manufacturers, the 2022 Southern California Garment Survey released by the department’s Wage and Hour Division found violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 80 percent of its investigations. More than 50 percent of the time, the division found employers illegally paying workers part or all their wages off the books, with payroll records either deliberately forged or not provided. -Fashion United

The survey also found that 32% of contractors are paying workers piece-rate wages, which has been prohibited by the state of California since last year.

“Despite our efforts to hold Southern California’s garment industry employers accountable, we continue to see people who make clothes sold by some of the nation’s leading retailers working in sweatshops,” said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Ruben Rosalez in San Francisco. “Many people shopping for clothes in stores and online are likely unaware that the ‘Made in the USA’ merchandise they’re buying was, in fact, made by people earning far less than the U.S. law requires.”

According to investigators, one contractor was paying workers as little as $1.58 per hour, about what Bengladeshi workers make – which last month saw unions demand an increase in the minimum wage from US$75 dollars per month to US$215 amid crippling inflation.

The U.S. Department of Labor says it found that sewing fees paid by manufacturers to contractors were – on average – not enough for the contractors to properly pay their workers’ required minimum wages. Specifically, the studies determined the average sewing fee was 2.75 dollars below the amount needed per garment for sewing contractors to comply with federal wage standards. Contractors who paid employees in compliance with the law received a higher sewing fee, ranging from 17.50 dollars to 35 dollars per garment. -Fashion United

“The findings of the Southern California Garment Survey highlight why greater outreach and stronger enforcement are needed to combat the inequities that exist in the garment and fashion industries,” said Rosalez. “The Wage and Hour Division will continue to work and meet with advocates and industry stakeholders, and remain focused on holding accountable the manufacturers and retailers who reap significant profits while the people who did the hard work are too often not paid their rightful wages.”