Month: May 2023

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem issued a letter on May 25 to the governing board that oversees the six public universities in the state. In it, she lamented about the situation of higher education in the country, and challenged the board to a series of actions to “show the nation what quality higher education is supposed to look like.”

Among several points, the Republican governor told the board it should ban drag shows on university campuses, and, separately, remove all preferred pronouns in school materials, as well as remove all mandates that compel people to use preferred pronouns.

However, what appears to be the priority is the first point of action she raised, which is that the board should aim to raise graduation rates across its six universities to 65 percent by 2028, compared to the current graduation rate of 47 percent. Meanwhile, in 2020, the national graduation rate was 63 percent.

“At the K-12 level, we are taking steps to improve our standards and expand school choice in South Dakota so that all kids have access to a high-quality education that prepares them for whatever comes next after high school,” Noem told the board in her letter (pdf).

“For those who choose to start attending a university after graduating, less than half are graduating. We must do better than that. I look forward to working with you all on ideas to improve our graduation rates.”

The Epoch Times has emailed the Board of Regents for comment.

‘State of Crisis’

Noem said that higher education across the United States is in a “state of crisis.”

“For the last several decades, many states have allowed liberal ideologies to poison their universities and colleges. Once a hotbed of ideological diversity, debate, and the pursuit of truth and discovery, many institutions have become one-sided, close-minded, and focused on feelings rather than facts,” she wrote.

“Professors have discarded reason and logic in favor of subjectivity and relativism. Higher education leaders have rejected universal truth and knowledge and replaced it with ‘individual truth.’”

She said that students on campuses across the United States “have been taught the importance of diversity and equity and given access to ‘safe spaces’ instead of learning to tolerate the disagreement, discomfort, and dissent that they will experience in the real world.”

“In many cases, students and their parents are not even aware of the damage these ideas have caused,” she said.

Regarding drag shows, she wrote: “Just as other dangerous theories have been allowed to thrive on college campuses, gender theory has been rebranded and accepted as truth across the nation.

“These theories should be openly debated in college classrooms, but not celebrated through public performances on taxpayer-owned property at taxpayer-funded schools.”

Regarding preferred pronouns, she wrote that mandating them at some campuses has “compelled and coerced” some students to “provide speech they do not agree with.”

“Students should have the ability to exercise their right to free speech. Colleges and universities should never compel students to speak or take a position on any issue,” the governor said.

Noem also told the board her administration has created a new whistleblower hotline where students, faculty members, parents, or taxpayers, can report concerns at institutions of higher education in the state, by calling 605-773-5916.

“Our children are our future, and South Dakota universities and technical colleges should best prepare them for our future,” Noem said in a post on Twitter.

The governor noted that she recently appointed two members to the board, and will be making more appointments soon.

Five Other Points

Besides raising graduation rates, banning drag shows, and removing preferred pronouns and their enforcement, Noem noted that some universities have restricted speech on topics some people find “offensive.”

“The Board of Regents should remove any policy or procedure that prohibits students from exercising their right to free speech,” she said.

“Black Hills State University was recently challenged on and ultimately removed a policy that allowed administrators to silence opinions they disagreed with,” the governor noted, adding that colleges and universities should review and revise all policies that infringe on students’ right to free speech. The colleges should also adopt policies that “develop and strengthen resiliency among students” for when they encounter opposing ideas.

Noem also wanted the Board of Regents to “take more steps to partner with businesses on registered apprenticeship programs and offer the lowest possible credit rates.” She noted that roughly 43 percent of students who graduated still found themselves unemployed or underemployed.

The other three action points she presented to the board were: to cut costs to make higher education more affordable; to require a course in American Government and a course in American history as part of graduation requirements; and to remove any monetary influence, whether by funding or donations, from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“The [CCP] has been known to fund Confucius Institutes and other similar centers at American universities in order to provide skewed Chinese cultural training for U.S. students,” said Noem.

“This is part of a multi-faceted propaganda effort, and money from the CCP has no place in South Dakota. The Board of Regents should reject any donations from sources and any other government that is hostile to the United States.”

Insider Monkey, a finance website, revealed a list of the top 30 cities worldwide with the highest homeless population. Notably, a handful of the US cities on the list are governed by progressive leadership, which may not surprise readers. While it is evident that some unfortunate individuals are facing homelessness, a trend exacerbated by recent inflationary pressures and a drug addiction crisis, some liberal policies have enabled others to sustain their nomadic lifestyles with taxpayer funds. 

Insider Monkey found New York City is number 5 on the list, with a homeless population of about 69,000. Next is Chicago, at number 7 with 65,611. Washington, DC, is number 8 with 57,416, Los Angeles number 13 with 41,980, and San Fransisco number 14 with 38,000. 

Even with the US government spending $54 billion on several programs to tackle the homelessness crisis, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still wandering the streets. This has been made worse by inflation in recent years and an out-of-control drug addiction crisis. 

As for the rest of the world, Manila, Philippines, ranks number 1 with a staggering 3 million homeless. Buenos Aires, Argentina, is number 2 with 198,000. Moscow, Russia, is number 3 with 100,000, and Kanpur, India, is number 4 with 81,000.

Here’s the partial list of 6 through 30:

6. Kolkata, India

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 68,798

Kolkata is one of India’s largest cities. It has played a crucial role in the country’s history due to its port.

7. Chicago, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 65,611

Chicago is one of the largest cities in the U.S. in terms of population and one of the largest business hubs in the country.

8. Washington, D.C., United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 57,416

Washington D.C. is one of the most expensive places to live in America – making it unsurprising that it also has a high number of homeless people.

9. Mumbai, India

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 57,415

Mumbai is India’s financial hub, but it is also famous for generations of homeless who are born and die on the streets.

10. Lagos, Nigeria

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 50,000

Lagos is one of the largest cities in the world with more than 24 million people living in the city.

11. Damascus, Syria

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 50,000

Damascus is the capital of Syria and one of the oldest cities in the world as it has been inhabited for thousands of years.

12. Delhi, India

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 46,724

Delhi has more than ten million residents and is one of the most historic cities in the world.

13. Los Angeles, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 41,980

Los Angeles is the second largest city in America in terms of population. It is a cultural center place for its state and the U.S.

14. San Francisco, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 38,000

San Francisco is a cultural and economic hub and a city that is notorious for high housing costs.

15. Surat, India

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 36,144

Surat is a Western Indian city in the state of Gujrat. It is the second largest city in its state and a hub for the global diamond industry.

16. Sao Paulo, Brazil

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 31,884

Sao Paulo is the largest city in Brazil in terms of both its population and economic output.

17. Mexico City, Mexico

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 30,000

Mexico City is the capital of Mexico. It is one of the largest cities in the world with a population of 9.2 million people.

18. Athens, Greece

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 20,000

Athens is one of the most historical cities in the world and the capital of Greece.

19. Auckland, New Zealand

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 18,417

Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand and has a population of 1.4 million people. It is an economic hub in its country and accounts for a large portion of New Zealand’s economic output.

20. Tampa, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 16,000

Tampa is a coastal Floridian city with one of the biggest ports in its state.

21. Seattle, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 11,751

Seattle is a highly developed city in the U.S. state of Washington.

22. San Jose, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 10,028

San Jose is an economic hub in the U.S. with a large presence of the technology industry.

23. Budapest, Hungary

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 10,000

Budapest is the capital and largest city of Hungary with nearly a million residents.

24. Oakland, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 9,747

Oakland is a Californian city. It is one of the busiest port cities in America.

25. Dublin, Ireland

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 8,523

Dublin is the capital of Ireland and the largest city in terms of population. It is also a hub for global multinational firms.

26. San Diego, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 8,427

San Diego is one of the most populous cities in America with a population of more than a million people

27. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 7,865

Rio De Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil. It also has the second largest economy in the country.

28. Rome, Italy

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 7,709

Rome is the capital city of Italy and one of the largest cities in the world with a population of more than 2.8 million people.

29. Denver, United States

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 6,888

Denver is the capital city of the U.S. state of Colorado. It has a population of more than seven hundred thousand people and is an economic hub in its state.

30. Lisbon, Portugal

Estimated Number of Homeless People: 3,780

Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal. It is also the largest city in the country, with more than half a million people living in its boundaries.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar jobs are disappearing thanks to the reversal of Fed policy. Household finances are a wreck. The medical industry is in upheaval. Trust in government has never been lower.

Major media too is discredited. Young people are dying at levels never seen. Populations are still on the move from lockdown states to where it is less likely. Surveillance is everywhere, and so is political persecution. Public health is in a disastrous state, with substance abuse and obesity all at new records.

Each one of these, and many more besides, are continued fallout from the pandemic response that began in March 2020. And yet here we are 38 months later and we still don’t have honesty or truth about the experience.

Officials have resigned, politicians have tumbled out of office and lifetime civil servants have departed their posts, but they don’t cite the great disaster as the excuse. There is always some other reason.

This is the period of the great silence. We’ve all noticed it. The stories in the press recounting all the above are conventionally scrupulous about naming the pandemic response much less naming the individuals responsible.

Maybe there is a Freudian explanation: things so obviously terrible and in such recent memory are too painful to mentally process, so we just pretend it didn’t happen. Plenty in power like this solution.

Everyone in a position of influence knows the rules. Don’t talk about the lockdowns. Don’t talk about the mask mandates. Don’t talk about the vaccine mandates that proved useless and damaging and led to millions of professional upheavals.

Don’t talk about the economics of it. Don’t talk about collateral damage. When the topic comes up, just say, “We did the best we could with the knowledge we had,” even if that is an obvious lie.

Above all, don’t seek justice.

Where’s the National Commission?

There is this document intended to be the “Warren Commission” of COVID slapped together by the old gangsters who advocated for lockdowns. It is called Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report.

The authors are people like Michael Callahan (Massachusetts General Hospital), Gary Edson (former deputy national security adviser), Richard Hatchett (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), Marc Lipsitch (Harvard University), Carter Mecher (Veterans Affairs), and Rajeev Venkayya (former Gates Foundation and now Aerium Therapeutics).

If you have been following this disaster, you might know at least some of the names. Years before 2020, they were pushing lockdowns as the solution for infectious disease. Some claim credit for having invented pandemic planning. The years 2020–2022 were their experiment.

As it was ongoing, they became media stars, pushing compliance, condemning as disinformation and misinformation anyone who disagreed with them. They were at the heart of the coup d’etat, as engineers or champions of it, that replaced representative democracy with quasi-martial law run by the administrative state.

The first sentence of the report is a complaint:

We were supposed to lay the groundwork for a National COVID Commission. The COVID Crisis Group formed at the beginning of 2021, one year into the pandemic. We thought the U.S. government would soon create or facilitate a commission to study the biggest global crisis so far in the 21st century. It has not.

That is true. There is no National COVID Commission. You know why? Because they could never get away with it, not with legions of experts and passionate citizens who wouldn’t tolerate a coverup.

The public anger is too intense. Lawmakers would be flooded with emails, phone calls and daily expressions of disgust. It would be a disaster. An honest commission would demand answers that the ruling class is not prepared to give. An “official commission” perpetuating a bunch of baloney would be dead on arrival.

This by itself is a huge victory and a tribute to indefatigable critics.

‘We Didn’t Crack Down Hard Enough’

Instead, the “COVID Crisis Group” met with funding from the Rockefeller and Charles Koch foundations and slapped together this report. Despite being celebrated as definitive by The New York Times and The Washington Post, it has mostly had no impact at all.

It is far from obtaining the status of being some kind of canonical assessment. It reads like they were on deadline, fed up, typed lots of words and called it a day.

Of course it is whitewash.

It begins with a bang to denounce the U.S. policy response: “Our institutions did not meet the moment. They did not have adequate practical strategies or capabilities to prevent, to warn, to defend their communities or fight back in a coordinated way, in the United States and globally.”

Mistakes were made, as they say.

Of course the upshot of this kvetching is not to criticize what Justice Neil Gorsuch calls “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” They hardly mention those at all.

Instead they conclude that the U.S. should have surveilled more, locked down sooner (“We believe that on Jan. 28 the U.S. government should have started mobilizing for a possible COVID war”), directed more funds to this agency rather than that and centralized the response so that rogue states like South Dakota and Florida could not evade centralized authoritarian diktats next time.

The authors propose a series of lessons that are anodyne, bloodless and carefully crafted to be more-or-less true but ultimately structured to minimize the sheer radicalism and destructiveness of what they favored and did. The lessons are clichés such as we need “not just goals but road maps,” and next time we need more “situation awareness.”

There is no new information in the book that I could find, unless something is hidden therein that escaped my notice. It’s more interesting for what it does not say. Some words that never appear in the text: Sweden, ivermectin, ventilators, remdesivir and myocarditis.

‘Look, Lockdowns and Mandates Worked!’

Perhaps this gives you a sense of the book and its mission. And on matters of the lockdowns, readers are forced to endure claims such as “all of New England — Massachusetts, the city of Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — seem to us to have done relatively well, including their ad hoc crisis management setups.”

Oh really! Boston destroyed thousands of small businesses and imposed vaccine passports, closed churches, persecuted people for holding house parties, and imposed travel restrictions. There is a reason why the authors don’t elaborate on such preposterous claims. They are simply unsustainable.

One amusing feature seems to me to be a foreshadowing of what is coming. They throw Anthony Fauci under the bus with sniffy dismissals: “Fauci was vulnerable to some attacks because he tried to cover the waterfront in briefing the press and public, stretching beyond his core expertise—and sometimes it showed.”

Ooooh, burn!

“Trump Was a Comorbidity”

This is very likely the future. At some point, Fauci will be scapegoated for the whole disaster. He will be assigned to take the fall for what is really the failure of the national security arm of the administrative bureaucracy, which in fact took charge of all rule-making from March 13, 2020, onward, along with their intellectual cheerleaders. The public health people were just there to provide cover.

Curious about the political bias of the book? It is summed up in this passing statement: “Trump was a comorbidity.”

Oh how highbrow! How clever! No political bias here!

Maybe this book by the Covid Crisis Group hopes to be the last word. This will never happen. We are only at the beginning of this. As the economic, social, cultural, and political problems mount, it will become impossible to ignore the incredibly obvious.

The masters of lockdowns are influential and well-connected but not even they can invent their own reality.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a bold prediction in 2017: “Everything will go fully electric, apart from (ironically) rockets. Ships are the next easiest to solve after cars.” Six years later, the world’s second-richest person might be right about the next battery boom in ships. 

Japanese battery startup PowerX Inc. revealed a 140-meter-long electric propulsion vessel capable of transporting stored electricity across oceans. The “battery tanker” will be equipped with 96 containerized marine batteries that can haul renewable energy worldwide, connecting grids, islands, and offshore wind farms. The completion of the vessel is slated for 2025, with sea trials in 2026. 

“For instance, in Japan, a battery tanker can carry power from regions with high renewable energy supply potential, such as Kyushu and Hokkaido, to high-demand areas of Honshu or for inter-island power transmission,” the company explained.

While electric propulsion vessels might be the future to decarbonize the shipping industry, there appears to be a need to haul stored renewable power to other grids worldwide via a new tanker class. 

 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Taiwan’s foreign minister said last week that the US and Taiwan are in talks on the possibility of the island being brought under Washington’s nuclear umbrella, a step that would make a catastrophic war between the US and China much more likely.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu made the comments before Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan. Wu declined to detail the talks when pressed if Taiwan had asked the US to bring the island into its nuclear umbrella.

“Regarding the discussion of this issue with the United States, it is not suitable for me to make it public here,” Wu said, according to The South China Morning Post.

Many of the US’s allies are considered to be under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, including Japan, South Korea, and every member of NATO.

Giving such a guarantee to Taiwan would mean the US could use nuclear weapons if China invades the island or if war breaks out by other means. According to the SCMP report:

As Washington and Beijing ramp up their military signaling on Taiwan, the self-ruled island has started to discuss what was once unthinkable – to come under the US nuclear umbrella that has successfully protected Japan, South Korea and Australia for decades.

The debate was set off after Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu suggested on Monday that the island had been in talks with the United States on the nuclear umbrella issue.

Such a guarantee is unlikely to happen in the near term as it would require a radical change to US policy. While President Biden has vowed to send troops to intervene if China attacks Taiwan, the official policy on how the US would react to a Chinese invasion is still ambiguous.

But the fact that the idea is being discussed will be viewed as a major provocation in Beijing. China has a no-first-use policy for its nuclear arsenal, but US policy leaves open the option to use nukes in response to a conventional attack.

While BLM protesters got a Kamala Harris-endorsed bail fund during the violent and destructive mostly peaceful George Floyd riots, the Department of Justice is trying to claw back donations made to January 6th political prisoners.

According to AP, the DOJ is trying to seize over $25,000 raised by Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn, who appeared on Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show where he promoted a website for political donations.

The AP looked at over 1,000 criminal cases from Jan 6., and noted that prosecutors have been asking judges to enhance fines on top of prison sentences to offset donations from supporters.

Dozens of defendants have set up online fundraising appeals for help with legal fees, and prosecutors acknowledge there’s nothing wrong with asking for help for attorney expenses. But the Justice Department has, in some cases, questioned where the money is really going because many of those charged have had government-funded legal representation.

Most of the fundraising efforts appear on GiveSendGo, which bills itself as “The #1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and has become a haven for Jan. 6 defendants barred from using mainstream crowdfunding sites, including GoFundMe, to raise money.

Were any of the BLM-linked fundraisers, or BLM itself, subject to DOJ scrutiny?

As the AP notes, the success many J6 prisoners have had fundraising “suggests that many people in the United States still view Jan. 6 rioters as patriots and cling to the baseless belief that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump.”

Virginia resident Markus Maly, who is set to be sentenced next month for assaulting police at the Capitol, raised over $16,000 from an online campaign. Prosecutors have requested a $16,000 fine, noting that he had a public defender and didn’t owe any legal fees.

“He should not be able to use his own notoriety gained in the commission of his crimes to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the Capitol breach in this way,” wrote a prosecutor in a court filing.

A jury convicted romance novel cover model John Strand of storming the Capitol with Dr. Simone Gold, a California physician who is a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement. Now prosecutors are seeking a $50,000 fine on top of a prison term for Strand when a judge sentences him on Thursday.

Strand has raised more than $17,300 for his legal defense without disclosing that he has a taxpayer-funded lawyer, according to prosecutors. They say Strand appears to have “substantial financial means,” living in a home that was purchased for more than $3 million last year. -AP

So far in 2023, prosecutors have sought to levy $390,000 in fines against at least 21 defendants, with amounts ranging from $450 to over $71,000, per AP. Of that, Judges have imposed at least $124,127 in fines against 33 riot defendants YTD, while in the past two years, over 100 defendants have been ordered to pay more than $240,000 in fines.

Separately, hundreds of convicted rioters have been ordered to pay over $524,000 in restitution to the government to offset over $2.8 million in damage to the Capitol and other J6 related expenses.

We don’t recall BLM protesters being ordered to help pay to clean up cities they set on fire. Wonder why?

 

Authored by Andrew Fenton via CoinTelegraph.com,

Almost 25,000 investors have signed up to trade alongside ChatGPT as they follow the GPT Portfolio experiment from copy trading firm Autopilot.

The traders have bet a combined $14.7 million on the AI’s stock picks, which would average about $600 each if they all invested after signing up. They’re hoping to take even a small slice of a purported 500% return from one of the strategies backtested in academic research.

This is absoutely isnane 🤯

A ChatGPT trading algorithm delivered 500% returns in the stock market.

A University of Florida study revealed ChatGPT achieved a staggering 500% return in one investing model

This outpaces conventional sentiment analysis models used by hedge funds… pic.twitter.com/8vxIWmpqrY

— AI Daily (@AlexAIDaily) May 10, 2023

The GPT Portfolio gets the AI to analyze 10,000 news articles and 100 company reports to select 20 stocks for the $50,000 portfolio, updated each week. The initial picks included Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, D.R. Horton and Davita Health. After two weeks, the portfolio is up around 2%, which is pretty much the same as the stock market. 

Interestingly the bottom five picks lost more in percentage terms than the top five gained — Dollar Tree lost 17% after it missed earnings — so it might be more sensible in future to only invest in GPT-4’s best five or 10 ideas, but we’ll see how it works out.

The smaller-scale ChatGPT Crypto Trader account is tweaking a similar strategy that gets GPT-4s advice on when to go long on Ethereum. He says it shows a profit of 11,000% backtested to August 2017, but in the real-world experiment since January, the portfolio is up by a third, while the Ethereum price has gained 60%.

It’s worth being careful using AI for trading, however. Crypto derivatives platform Bitget recently abandoned its experiment of using AI on the platform due to the potential for misinformation. A survey of its users found 80% of users had a negative experience with the AI, including false investment advice and other misinformation. 

Bitget Managing Director Gracy Chen says:

“AI tools, while robust and resourceful, lack the human touch necessary to interpret market nuances and trends accurately.”