Month: March 2024

The fourth ZeroHedge Debate on the war in Ukraine concluded last night, and we have received candid feedback from readers, with one reader calling it an “Overton Window debate.” Point taken, but here’s why you should watch:

Members of Congress rarely want to debate — even rarer in person and for 2 hours — trust us… we’ve asked. Thus, we have tremendous respect for Senator Ron Johnson and fmr Congressman Joe Walsh – who had the balls to defend their beliefs without reciting rehearsed talking points for a 3-minute Fox/CNN hit.

They are a rare breed on Capitol Hill. Perhaps we can get to a world where they are the norm instead of the exception.

Until then, enjoy these highlights:

Senator Ron Johnson: Ukraine can’t ask us for money when they’ve got no plan

“Enough of this fantasy. If you want any funding for Ukraine, tell me how you’ll spend it to try to bring the war to an end.”

LIVE FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Senator Ron Johnson: Ukraine can’t ask us for money when they’ve got no plan

“Enough of this fantasy. If you want any funding for Ukraine, tell me how you’ll spend it to try to bring the war to an end.”

Source: My Panel on @ZeroEdge pic.twitter.com/Yy5SOE1U64

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 7, 2024

Former Congressman Joe Walsh: Ukraine must push Russia back

“Putin is a f*** thug who invaded a sovereign country.

That sovereign country wants to fight for its sovereignty.

What does victory mean? As much as possible Russia is pushed back. As much as possible Russia is weakened to the point they can’t do this again.”

LIVE FROM WASHINGTON D.C.

Former Congressman Joe Walsh: Ukraine must push Russia back

“Putin is a f*** thug who invaded a sovereign country.

That sovereign country wants to fight for its sovereignty.

What does victory mean? As much as possible Russia is pushed back. As much… pic.twitter.com/xCa4SnpDtx

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 7, 2024

“Unconscionable Level of Meddling” — The Nuland Call

The leaked 2014 call between (newly retired) then-Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, made headlines at the time in several US-based media outlets. That said, for the most part, they refrained from discussing its content and instead focus on Nuland’s expletive remark of “Fuck the EU” and highlight that Russian hackers were likely the leak’s source. ZeroHedge covered the call’s less lurid but more substantive contents at the start of the war:

Space Worm (ZeroHedge contributor) from Mar 2022:

Nuland: “So I don’t think Klitschko should go into the government. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think it’s necessary.” This is followed by a distressed sigh from Pyatt and he asks for clarification, implying this is his first time hearing this. He later mentions that Nuland should speak to Klitschko one-on-one. (2:06) Pyatt: “just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko’s been the top dog… I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management.” 

• A couple months prior, Klitschko had announced a campaign for the presidency and early polls showed him as the most popular opposition candidate. During the time of the phone call, he was still campaigning, making headlines in US outlets:

• A little over a month later, despite his populist support, Klitschko announced that he would be withdrawing from the race and running for Mayor of Kiev. It appears Nuland was successful in “corner office-ing” him out of national and into local government.

Reacting to the infamous leaked 2014 call, Walsh brushed off the call as an instance of “Realpolitik” while Sen. Johnson deemed Nuland’s activity as an “unconscionable level of meddling [in Ukrainian affairs].”

Senator Ron Johnson and fmr Congressman Joe Walsh react to the leaked 2014 Victoria Nuland call in which she appeared to orchestrate regime change in Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/dxqM1xKTta

— Liam Cosgrove (@cosgrove_iv) March 7, 2024

Senator Ron Johnson: Ukraine has no choice but to negotiate with Putin

“The only way the war ends is in a negotiated settlement. I’m not going to like the settlement. Ukrainians aren’t going to like it. 

But every day the settlement gets worse and worse. More Ukrainians die. These are people sent to the frontline to be cannon fodder.

U.S. policy should be directed toward bringing Putin to the negotiating table, not mindlessly fuelling a bloody stalemate.”

Senator Ron Johnson: Ukraine has no choice but to negotiate with Putin

“The only way the war ends is in a negotiated settlement. I’m not going to like the settlement. Ukrainians aren’t going to like it.

But every day the settlement gets worse and worse. More Ukrainians die.… pic.twitter.com/1JSxcHIQni

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 7, 2024

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Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People who tested positive for COVID-19 and took ivermectin as a treatment recovered faster than a comparison group, a new study found.

The time to self-reported recovery was a median of two days faster among the ivermectin recipients, according to the large UK study.

The quicker recovery period was statistically significant.

People who received ivermectin were also less likely to be hospitalized or die, with 1.6 percent of ivermectin recipients being hospitalized or dying versus 4 percent of the comparison group, which received typical care, which in the UK is largely focused on managing symptoms.

Ivermectin recipients also enjoyed a reduction of severe symptoms and sustained recovery, according to the study.

The paper was published by the Journal of Infection on Feb. 29.

The study covered an open-label trial that involved 2,157 ivermectin recipients and 3,256 who received typical care from June 23, 2021, to July 1, 2022. Participants were randomized and reported symptoms and recovery.

Researchers Say Findings Don’t Support Using Ivermectin

The authors, including Christopher Butler, a University of Oxford professor and joint chief investigator of the trial, downplayed the positive findings in part because the hazard ratio of 1.14 was lower than what authors pre-specified as a meaningful ratio, or 1.2. Hazard ratios are a way to determine whether a treatment is beneficial.

The authors also focused on the lack of differences in the number of days participants felt sick in the previous two weeks, impact on work, and likelihood of using the health care system at 3, 6, and 12 months following treatment.

“Overall, these findings, while evidencing a small benefit in symptom duration, do not support the use of ivermectin as treatment for COVID-19 in the community among a largely vaccinated population at the dose and duration we used,” the authors said.

Funding for the research came from the UK government.

Conflicts of interest included one researcher receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, and other authors receiving grants from the University of Oxford.

The trial, known as PRINCIPLE, was touted by investigators as “the world’s largest clinical trial of possible COVID-19 treatments for recovery at home and in other non-hospital settings.”

“Ivermectin is readily available globally, has been in wide use for many other infectious conditions so it’s a well-known medicine with a good safety profile, and because of the early promising results in some studies it is already being widely used to treat COVID-19 in several countries,” Dr. Christopher Butler, a University of Oxford professor and joint chief investigator of the trial, said when it was announced ivermectin would be assessed. “By including ivermectin in a large-scale trial like PRINCIPLE, we hope to generate robust evidence to determine how effective the treatment is against COVID-19, and whether there are benefits or harms associated with its use.”

Doctors Weigh In

Dr. Pierre Kory, an American physician who was not involved in the trial, said that the authors wrongly downplayed how ivermectin improved recovery from COVID-19.

“PRINCIPLE was a profoundly positive study that was instead analyzed and written up as a negative one,” Dr. Kory, who has long promoted ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, wrote in an essay.

He accused the authors of undertaking “statistical chicanery” by coming up with the pre-specified hazard ratio (HR), noting that no such level was used in other parts of the PRINCIPLE trial.

“A hazard ratio does not need a pre-specified level. If the HR is > 1.0, and it is statistically significant, it is a robust finding,” he said.

The positive findings should also be interpreted in the context of recipients only receiving one dose per day across three days and being directed not to eat food before ivermectin, Dr. Kory said.

Dr. Butler and his co-authors said “no food should be taken two hours before or after administration” despite previous research finding that taking ivermectin with food increases plasma concentration.

Participants also received ivermectin a median of five days after symptom onset, a period of time considered by some to be too late to have much of an impact. Ivermectin works best when applied within 24 hours of symptom manifestation, according to a meta-regression of ivermectin studies.

Dr. Butler did not respond to a request for comment.

There have been additional studies that found ivermectin worked against COVID-19. The drug, commonly used for purposes such as combating malaria, has divided scientists since 2020, when doctors around the world began using it to treat COVID-19.

Some other research, including a U.S. trial, has found that ivermectin did not improve time to recovery.

Dr. David Boulware, another American doctor, who helped run that trial, argued on X that the faster recovery recorded in the UK trial was similar to the quicker recovery reported in an open-label trial of molnupiravir, an antiviral sometimes used to treat COVID-19.

“Molnupiravir also had a 2 day faster improvement in symptoms over ‘usual care’ yet no benefit existed in double-blind trial,” Dr. Boulware said on X. “Placebo effect influences self-reported symptoms.”

Much of Europe has set itself the goal of switching away from heavily polluting fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources.

In the chart below, Statista’s Anna Fleck shows a snapshot of the energy landscape in Europe right now, using data from the Statistical Review of World Energy 2023. It reveals that while there’s some variation in energy types across the bloc, fossil fuels still make up the lion’s share of the energy sources the continent is most reliant on. Sweden and Norway are exceptions to the rule, standing out for their hydroelectric power usage, while Finland is nearly tied between oil and renewables consumption (0.33 and 0.32, respectively).

You will find more infographics at Statista

The 2022 map looks pretty different from the previous iteration. For example, France’s biggest source for energy consumption had been nuclear in 2021 rather than oil. According to Eurostat, France saw a drop in nuclear energy due to reactor maintenance and repairs. What this map fails to show, however, is that even with the decline, nuclear still made up around a third (31.6 percent) of the country’s energy mix in 2022, and was only just behind oil (34.7 percent).

The other notable difference is the shift away from natural gas as the biggest energy source in several countries, even if it still came in second position in many cases. This follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent rush in Europe to reduce dependency on Russian gas and to diversify energy sources.

For example, in 2021, natural gas was the biggest source of energy in the United Kingdom, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Turkey, Belarus and Russia. In 2022, this had dropped to just three countries – Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. That year, Ukraine had relied on natural gas and coal to a similar degree (0.98 exajoules and 0.95 exajoules, respectively).

Ukraine’s overall consumption of fuel dropped from a total of 3.36 exajoules in 2021 to 2.33 exajoules in 2022. Even though natural gas became the biggest source of energy there, the country’s consumption of it was lower than the year before (0.98 exajoules in 2021, 0.69 exajoules in 2022).

Authored by Lear Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Chenguang Gong, a Chinese American who has been accused of stealing U.S. infrared missile detection technology, was listed as one of 558 “young talents” in the 12th Thousand Talents Plan run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2016.

The list of talents was issued by the Task Force Office of Overseas High-Level Talent Recruitment Programs under the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CCP.

A complaint by the U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed that Mr. Gong transferred 3,600 files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices from March 2023 to April 2023.

It also claimed that Mr. Gong possessed in his personal storage devices files marked as “confidential” that appeared to belong to several of Mr. Gong’s former employers. These devices were taken from his temporary residence in Thousand Oaks, California, following an FBI search on May 8, 2023.

Mr. Gong, 57, of San Jose, was arrested on Feb. 6 and was bailed out on a $2.5 million bond following a hearing in San Jose the next day. He was indicted on Feb. 27 by the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s Office, making it a formal criminal case.

The case has since been transferred to the Central District Court in Los Angeles, where Mr. Gong made his first appearance on Feb. 20.

A post-indictment arraignment hearing will be decided upon soon.

The Thousand Talents Plan

The Chinese regime offers hefty financial incentives—including research funding, salaries, and housing—via many different talent recruitment programs to entice overseas Chinese and foreign experts into working in China’s science and tech sectors.

Through these programs, the CCP hopes to quickly turn China into an industrial and innovation powerhouse, one that ultimately outperforms Western countries.

The program known as the Thousand Talents Plan was initiated in 2008 and went underground after U.S. authorities realized its underlying goal in 2018.

The FBI explains on its website that all of China’s talent plans incentivize their participants to steal foreign technology. The website states that while the United States welcomes international collaboration in research and development, American businesses should take measures to keep their intellectual property safe and should understand that talent plans encourage illegal conduct.

“Even if talent plan participants who steal information are eventually caught and prosecuted, the damage done to your organization by intellectual property theft may be irreversible,” the FBI warns.

The ‘Victim Company’

Pamela Reese, director of the Malibu-based company Marketing & Communications of HRL Laboratories, confirmed with The Epoch Times in an email that it is the “Victim Company” mentioned in the complaint. Mr. Gong worked with the company’s Visual Systems Laboratory from January 2023 to late April 2023.

“When HRL became aware of suspicious activity being conducted by Gong, the company immediately began an investigation, terminated his employment, and notified relevant authorities,” Ms. Reese said. “HRL has continued to cooperate with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on its case against Gong and will provide ongoing support as needed.”

HRL Laboratories is under active contract to develop new sensors with enhanced performance for use in space-based missile warning and tracking, space-based surveillance, and airborne infrared countermeasures systems, including by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The alleged stolen trade secrets include methods, designs, techniques, processes, specifications, testing, and manufacture of the advanced Readout integrated circuits used in HRL’s infrared sensors, and the mechanical cooling systems of these circuits.

The sophisticated integrated circuits technology is required to achieve low noise, a high dynamic range, a high resolution, and a fast readout rate when collecting electrical signals from infrared photodetector arrays and outputting the data in a standard format.

These trade secrets are foundational technologies that support the business of HRL Laboratories, Leslie Momoda, executive vice president of the company, told FBI agents according to the complaint.

If other entities were to obtain the designs or development roadmaps for these key technologies, they would be able to replicate and improve them, making HRL less competitive, according to Ms. Momoda.

“Additionally, if the Victim Company’s Trade Secret Information was obtained by a foreign government, it would compromise U.S. national security,” Ms. Momoda told the FBI agents.

Suspicious Resignation

“As a top physical science and engineering research organization who regularly works with U.S. government customers, HRL has robust information security practices designed to detect and document suspicious activity,” Ms. Reese told The Epoch Times.

However, according to the complaint, HRL Laboratories only began monitoring Mr. Gong’s network activity right after he sent in his resignation on April 14, 2023, claiming that he was not doing a good job.

The resignation was suspicious because Mr. Gong had been working for HRL for less than three months, and he had performed well.

Daniel Maier, Director of Security of HRL Laboratories, told FBI agents that his department discovered that between March 30, 2023—two weeks before Mr. Gong submitted his resignation—and at least April 25, 2023, Mr. Gong transferred more than 3,600 files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices, a Verbatim USB flash drive and two Western Digital disk drives.

Vice President of Vision Systems Lab Raphael Ricardo told FBI agents that Mr. Gong was given access to the HRL’s full data repository in light of Mr. Gong’s managerial role. In other words, Mr. Gong was granted access to the full history, specifications, and roadmap of HRL’s products.

“It would also have required time and effort to export hundreds of CAD design files, which contained the technical blueprints for the Victim Company’s products and technologies, from the Victim Company’s UNIX system to a Microsoft Windows operating system,” FBI special agent Igor Neyman wrote in his affidavit attached to the complaint.

So far, only the Verbatim USB flash drive was found when the security team of HRL searched Mr. Gong’s belongings on April 26, 2023. The FBI believes the flash drive was used as temporary storage due to its relatively low capacity.

The FBI didn’t locate the two Western Digital drives or another possible digital device that contains files transferred from the intermediate Verbatim flash drive.

Theft From Other Companies

“GONG took and retained thousands of documents, stored on a variety of digital devices, that appear to belong to several of GONG’s former employers,” the complaint states. “Many of these documents bear confidentiality markings indicating their sensitive nature.”

The relevant companies Mr. Gong has worked with include Texas Instruments (“Company 2,” from 2010 to May 2014) and international defense, aerospace, and security company BAE Systems Inc. (“Company 3,” from May 2015 to October 2019).

A proposal of a high-performance AD/DA converter, which Mr. Gong submitted multiple times to various Chinese entities, appears to relate to technology Mr. Gong worked on at Texas Instruments, the complaint states.

The applications of the proposal in 2013 and 2014 allowed Mr. Gong to get onto the 2016 Thousand Talents Plan’s “Young Talents” list.

The FBI found CAD files containing the technical designs and blueprints for integrated circuits or other products from at least “Company 2” and “Company 5” in Mr. Gong’s personal digital devices that were confiscated following a search warrant, according to the complaint.

“I took a risk (because I worked for [Company 3], an American military industry company) and thought I could do something for the country’s high-end military integrated circuits,” Mr. Gong wrote in a letter to a talent plan recruiter after he traveled to China in September 2019 to attend an in-person presentation regarding his high-performance converter proposal in Hangzhou.

In a video presentation included with Mr. Gong’s 2020 submission, Mr. Gong used a video containing the model number “LTN4323” of a high-performance 4K resolution CMOS sensor developed by BAE Systems Inc.

Mr. Gong stated that his product extensions included a “low-light/night vision dual-use CMOS image sensor” for use in military night vision goggles and civilian applications.

Mr. Gong faces 10 years in federal prison if convicted.

The last decade has witnessed a remarkable surge in the global number of millionaires.

By 2022, 1.1% of the world’s adults were millionaires, up from 0.6% in 2012. So, how to know if you belong to the top 1% in your country?

In this infographic, Visual Capitalist’s Omrio Wallach illustrates the net wealth required to enter the club in selected countries and territories. The data is sourced from the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2024.

The 1% Club

The individual net wealth required to join the top 1% can vary across countries.

European hubs top the list, with small countries like Monaco or Luxembourg having extremely high wealth barriers to joining the top 1%.

According to this year’s report, Monaco leads with $12.9 million required to join the 1% club. Currently, more than 30% of Monaco’s estimated 38,000 residents are millionaires.

Luxembourg follows at $10.8 million, with Switzerland at $8.5 million securing the third position.

The U.S. ranks fourth at $5.8 million. Despite having the most ultra-wealthy individuals, the country’s high population base brings the law of averages into play.

In the Asia Pacific region, Singapore leads the pack with a requirement of $5.2 million, while Hong Kong comes second at $3.1 million.

Interestingly, a person in Hong Kong needs almost three times more wealth to join the 1% club compared to someone in Mainland China.

How to Join the 1% Club?

To be part of the top 1% club of one’s country or region often requires a combination of advanced education, entrepreneurship, strategic investments, and even luck. While there’s no guaranteed path to entry, consistency and time are key factors.

In the U.S., for instance, many individuals and families who have surpassed the 1% threshold have done so over time.

Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new study found that COVID-19 infection can cause cognitive deficits that persist for over a year and lower IQ scores in severe cases. Those with persistent symptoms that resolved had small cognitive deficits similar to those with a shorter illness duration.

In a large-scale observational study published on Feb. 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), researchers invited 800,000 people with varying levels of COVID-19 exposure and duration to take an online cognitive assessment and follow-up survey. Cognitive difficulties have been implicated in numerous syndromes following COVID-19, including long COVID, suggesting infection may have lasting effects on the mental processes of the brain.

The study’s authors hypothesized there would be measurable cognitive deficits after COVID-19 that would scale with the severity and duration of the illness. They also speculated that objective impairments in executive and memory function, especially poor memory and brain fog, would be observable in those with persistent symptoms.

Using an assessment tool for cognitive function, researchers estimated global cognitive scores among participants with a history of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection who had symptoms for at least 12 weeks—whether resolved or not—and among a control group of uninfected participants. While cognitive and memory deficits were small for people with mild infection who recovered from COVID-19 quickly, impairments were more pronounced in those with severe disease.

Greater Impairment With More Severe Disease

Of 112,964 participants who completed the survey, those who recovered from COVID-19 with symptoms that resolved in less than four weeks or by 12 weeks post-infection had similar small deficits in global cognition compared with those who had never had COVID-19.

Participants who had mild COVID-19 with resolved symptoms experienced a 3-point drop in IQ compared to uninfected participants. Those with unresolved persistent symptoms had a 6-point loss in IQ, and those with COVID-19 admitted to the intensive care unit experienced a 9-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 caused an additional loss in IQ of nearly 2 points compared to those who were not reinfected. An IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a number used to represent the relative intelligence of an individual.

According to the study, memory, reasoning, and executive function tasks were the strongest indicators of impaired cognitive function, and these scores correlated with brain fog symptoms reported by participants. More significant deficits were seen in those with unresolved persistent symptoms and those infected with earlier variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus compared with those who never had COVID-19. Additionally, study participants who were hospitalized had greater deficits in cognitive function compared to those who were not hospitalized. 

“By using an innovative cognitive test which has also been completed by people who did not have COVID-19, this important and well-conducted study provides the first accurate quantification of the scale of cognitive deficits in people who had COVID-19,” Maxime Taquet, a fellow in psychiatry at the National Institute for Health and Care Research at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. 

Mr. Taquet said researchers found a small but obvious association between COVID-19 and cognition that was more pronounced at extremes.

“The risk of having more severe cognitive problems was almost twice as high in those who had COVID-19 compared to those who did not, and three times as high in those who were hospitalized with COVID-19,” he noted.

In an editorial published Feb. 29 in the NEJM, Drs. Ziyad Al-Aly and Clifford Rosen said the study’s results are concerning and have broad implications that require further evaluation to determine the functional impact of a 3-point loss in IQ and why one group of participants was more severely affected than another. 

“Whether these cognitive deficits persist or resolve along with predictors and trajectory of recovery should be investigated. Will Covid-19-associated cognitive deficits confer a predisposition to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia later in life? The effects on educational attainment, work performance, accidental injury, and other activities that require intact cognitive abilities should also be evaluated,” they wrote. 

Study Implications for People With Long COVID

The study’s participants were part of a larger community sample of nearly 3 million people in the Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) study assessing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in England. Although the researchers did not say whether participants in the study had long COVID, people with long COVID frequently report persistent cognitive impairment.

There is no accepted universal definition for the condition, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) broadly defines long COVID as “signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue to develop after acute COVID-19 infection” that can last for “weeks, months, or years.” The term “long COVID” also includes post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, long-haul COVID, and post-acute COVID-19.

Nearly 7 percent of U.S. adults surveyed by the CDC in 2022 said they’ve experienced long COVID. Although U.S. regulatory agencies claim vaccinating against COVID-19 can reduce the risk of developing long COVID and the current paper suggests vaccination with two or more doses may provide a slight cognitive advantage, a recent paper published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine did not find a significant link between the presence of comorbidities or infection severity and the emergence of long COVID symptoms.

The NEJM study has several limitations, including reliance on subjective reporting to identify individuals with ongoing symptoms and self-selection bias. People with long COVID may have enrolled in the study, but those with more severe impairments may not have been able to participate in the survey. Additionally, certain groups were overrepresented in the study compared with the base population. Baseline cognitive data before SARS-CoV-2 infection was also unavailable, so researchers could not assess cognitive change or infer causality.

Just when you though you’ve hit “peak transgender”, you ain’t see nothing yet…

That’s because soldiers in Spain are starting to change their genders from male to female to earn benefits that are only available to females, according to a new report from the NY Post. 

The benefits include higher pay and better sleeping quarters and the gender switch has been made possible due to the military’s honoring of a “self-identification law” which was put in place in 2023 to help transgender people. 

The report points out that 41 men in Spain’s north-Africa autonomous city Ceuta now list as female after the law change. Only four have changed their name and a a “majority” of them have kept – wait for it – their male genitals and even their beards, according to the report. 

Army Corporal Roberto Perdigones commented: “On the outside, I feel like a heterosexual man, but on the inside, I am a lesbian. And it is the latter that counts. This is why I made the legal change to become a woman.”

He added: “For changing my gender, I have been told that my pension has gone up because women get more to compensate for inequality. I also get 15 percent more salary for being a mother.”

“I even have a private room in the barracks, all to myself, with a private bathroom. This is because I cannot be with men as I am a woman, and I did not consider it appropriate to be with biological women out of respect for them,” he added. 

The Post reports that the transgender legislation, enacted on December 22, 2022, permits individuals aged 14 and above to alter their identity without requiring psychological or medical assessments, though those between 14 and 16 require consent from parents or guardians.

Children aged 12 and older can change their gender identity with judicial approval. Additionally, Spain’s left-wing administration aims to increase female representation in the Guardia Civil and National Police to 40 percent. Conservative critics have labeled these measures as “woke” progressive actions.

“I have already seen several cases among my colleagues, and it is going to increase,” one civil guard source concluded. 

Authored by John Cody via ReMix News,

Currently, there is a fierce debate raging in Germany about whether the country should supply long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, with the national children’s channel KIKA now wading into the debate in a clip that is being slammed by critics.

KIKA, which is run by public media giants ARD and ZDF, both funded by German taxpayers, ran a segment entitled “No TAURUS for Ukraine” featured on the children’s news program “Logo!”

The segment chides Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine while using crude language in the 54-second clip.

In one scene, the Taurus missile is speaking, saying: “We need to give Olaf Scholz a real run for his money with cruise missiles… He refuses to extradite me to Ukraine.”

The Taurus addresses other missiles in the clip, including the Storm Shadow from Great Britain and the SCALP from France. When the Taurus complains that he is not being sent to Ukraine, the Leopard tank chimes in, saying it was the same story with him. Scholz notably denied Germany would send the tanks to Russia before later agreeing to, with the main battle tanks now routinely seen on the battlefield.

“Huh, screw you, the Ukrainians will get me,” says the SCALP to the Taurus, at which point the Taurus answers: “No wonder they want me. I’m clearly the better cruise missile!”

The SCALP answers: “Let me guess, you are not allowed to go to Ukraine because your chancellor is hesitating and hesitating again?”

The Storm Shadow also refers to the Taurus as an “ass missile,” as the missiles bicker throughout the video.

The bizarre piece of propaganda, which appears to target Scholz for his hesitancy to send long-range missiles to Ukraine, received sharp criticism from users on Youtube.

One user stated: “The editor responsible for this should be fired immediately.”

Another user said she used to work for Germany’s public media and was shocked by the video.

“Incomprehensible! I once wrote scripts for the children’s channel, for “Bernd, das Brot.” At that time, the editor deleted the word “dead” in my script, which rhymed wonderfully with “bread” but wasn’t intended to scare the children. Today, there are advertisements for weapons in the same network,” she wrote in a popular comment.

Another user wrote: “I can’t believe I’m forced to pay for these people to make cartoons about weapons of mass destruction, lol.”

All Germans are forced to pay for ZDF and ARD public media, which receives hundreds of millions in fees every year.

Logo! responded in the comments section of the video, writing:

“Thank you for your feedback. We understand that some of you have concerns about the depiction of weapons in our video and take your criticism seriously. We also discussed how the video could be played out within our editorial team. Un.logo! is a comedy format on TikTok that is aimed at teenagers and young people aged 13 and over. Here, topics are deliberately exaggerated using satirical means. Un.logo! stands out clearly from our Logo! content. We will take your comments into account in future discussions about topic setting.”

Read more here…

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A former Google software engineer has been indicted on charges of stealing artificial intelligence-related trade secrets while working for Chinese competitors seeking to gain an edge in the AI race.

Linwei Ding, a Chinese national who also goes by Leon, was charged by a federal grand jury in San Francisco with four counts of trade secret theft, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He was arrested on March 6 morning in California’s Newark city, where he lives.

The 38-year-old allegedly stole over 500 files containing confidential information between May 2022 and May 2023, including detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platforms allowing Google’s supercomputing data centers to train large AI models through machine learning, according to the indictment.

Within weeks after Mr. Ding began the theft activity, the indictment said, an early-stage Chinese company with a focus on AI offered to make him its chief technology officer. The position came with a monthly salary of around $14,800 with an annual bonus and company stock.

That late October, Mr. Ding traveled to China and stayed there until the following March, participating in investor meetings to raise capital for the firm, Beijing Rongshu Lianzhi Technology.

In May 2023, he founded an AI start-up in Shanghai.

“We have experience with Google’s ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it—and then further develop a computational power platform suited to China’s national conditions,” he stated in a document promoting his company on the China-based social media platform WeChat.

He also tasked another Google employee to scan his access badge on three separate days in December 2023 to create the impression that he was working from the U.S. Google office when, in fact, he was in China, the Google investigators found after examining surveillance footage.

Mr. Ding initially managed to evade Google’s detection by copying the Google data into the Apple Notes application on his Google-issued MacBook then converting it into PDF to upload into his personal Google Cloud account.

But in December 2023, when he uploaded additional files from the Google network to another personal account while in China, Google became suspicious.

He then told a Google investigator that he had intended to use the information as evidence of the work that he had conducted at Google, according to the indictment.

Mr. Ding didn’t disclose either of his affiliations with China-based firms with Google, prosecutors said.

Less than a week later, he booked a one-way ticket to Beijing slated to depart on Jan. 7. He then resigned from Google on Dec. 26.

Google retrieved Mr. Ding’s Google laptop and mobile device from his home the day before his planned departure on Jan. 4.

Stealing US Innovation

Attorney General Merrick Garland disclosed the details of the case at an American Bar Association Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon.

“We will fiercely protect sensitive technologies developed in America from falling into the hands of those who should not have them,” he said.

FBI director Christopher Wray said the charges were “the latest illustration of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation.”

“The theft of innovative technology and trade secrets from American companies can cost jobs and have devastating economic and national security consequences,” he said in a statement.

The interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force that partook in the case was set up by the Departments of Justice and Commerce last year with an eye on threats of China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party exploiting U.S. innovations for its military development.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in a speech last month said that AI is a top priority for the task force, describing it as the “ultimate disruptive technology.”

Mr. Wray, in a late February national security conference, also warned about the danger of generative AI in “making it easier for both more and less-sophisticated foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence” and interference with the U.S. political process.

Authored by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has been accused by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of conducting unlawful “broad” surveillance of citizens’ private financial data without a warrant and with no evidence of any crimes being committed by the individuals.

In a new interim report released on March 6, and an accompanying press release, the committee claims to have uncovered “startling evidence,” proving the federal government pried into the private transactions of American consumers without specific evidence of any criminal conduct.

According to the report, federal law enforcement, including the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI, colluded with large financial institutions in the United States, such as Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, PayPal, and many others in what boiled down to a “fishing expedition for Americans’ financial data.”

“Tactics included keyword filtering of transactions, targeting terms like MAGA and TRUMP, as well as purchases of books, religious texts, firearms-related items, and recreational stores, like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop, and Dick’s Sporting Goods,” the report said.

“This surveillance extended beyond criminal suspicion, likely encompassing millions of Americans with conservative viewpoints or Second Amendment interests.”

Led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the committee said FinCEN characterized these Americans as potential threats and subject to surveillance despite these transactions having no criminal nexus.

Surveillance Targets Identified Using General Terms

The interim report also detailed the existence of a web portal run by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a public-private partnership led by the FBI’s Office of Private Sector and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

“This portal appears to have shared intelligence products with financial institutions that were used to identify individuals who fit the profile of criminal and domestic violent extremists, often because of their conservative political views or other constitutionally protected activity,” the committee said.

“Federal law enforcement used these reports and other materials they shared with financial institutions to commandeer their databases and conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes, without a warrant, in order to identify individuals making certain suspicious transactions.”

Other surveillance targets were identified using other terms and specific transactions that concerned core political and religious expression.

According to the report, law enforcement “derisively viewed American citizens,” who expressed opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the “deep state” as potential domestic terrorists.

“In other words, according to the FBI, an American citizen’s opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, or COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, all of which are viewpoints protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, feed into an existing narrative many Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) actors subscribe to regarding the U.S. government’s exercise of power,” the report said.

“Put another way, expressing a belief in the existence of the deep state, support for typical conservative policies with respect to firearms or immigration, or doubt about the conventional narrative may result in an individual being labeled by the FBI as a DVE Actor and Likely to Pose an Increasing Threat.”

The committee labeled it “disturbing” that the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency would consider views widely held by millions of Americans to be signs of DVE.

Helping Law Enforcement Find Jan 6 Protestors

Earlier this year, the Treasury Department admitted to helping law enforcement identify and arrest people involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. It urged banks to comb through customers’ private transactions using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump.”

In January, allegations were also leveled at FinCEN, claiming the agency engaged in “pervasive financial surveillance” by circulating materials to banks that listed keywords that could be used to flag private financial transactions of potential Jan. 6 suspects. The materials also allegedly included instructions for banks to use indicators, including “the purchase of books” and subscriptions to media containing “extremist views.”

“Federal law enforcement agencies, including FinCEN and the FBI, treated lawful transactions as suspicious and shared information with financial institutions through backdoor channels, often circulating materials exhibiting a clear animus towards conservative viewpoints,” the committee report said.

“In addition, FinCEN and the FBI relied on Zoom discussions, private and online government-run portals, as well as sweeping searches of financial institutions’ records to conduct its investigation. Given the important civil liberties at stake, federal law enforcement’s overreach and political bias is alarming.”

Further revelations from the report reveal that FinCEN relied heavily on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for guidance on what “relevant terms” and symbols could relate to racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE), which they say may “have application to the capitol riots and related activity.”

The report calls the ADL a “notorious anti-conservative activist group” and says hate symbols” that ADL recommended monitoring included the “Celtic Cross,” the “Okay Hand Gesture,” “Pepe the Frog,” and “White Lives Matter.”

The committee said it “should alarm Americans that FinCEN approved of and distributed a link to a database that considers symbols of faith such as the Christian Celtic Cross and other images opposing Antifa, a violent left-wing anarchist group, as hate symbols.”

“This practice is reminiscent of the FBI’s disdain for ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholics,’ and the FBI’s reliance on the Southern Poverty Law Center another far-left activist group as an authoritative source on the Catholic Church,” the report said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the FBI, Treasury Department, and the White House for comment.