Greed Doesn’t Drive Inflation, Monetary Policy Does

From Jorge Jraissati on The Public Discourse.com (Mar. 6, 2022):

If 2020 was the year of the pandemic, 2021 was the year of the return of inflation. In 2021, consumer prices for all items rose by 7 percent in the United States—the largest yearly increase since 1981.

Most economists explain the rise in inflation by pointing out the role of Biden’s stimulus program as well as the supply-side disruption produced by COVID lockdowns. But other academics and politicians are propagating a misleading and dangerous idea.

They claim that inflation is not a monetary phenomenon at all. Instead, they believe that businessmen are to blame for the rise in inflation. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, argues that the rise in inflation is nothing more than the result of “corporate greed.” In a public letter Warren sent to the CEOs of Kroger, Albertsons, and Publix, she blamed their companies for “passing costs on the consumer to preserve their pandemic gains.”

Your company, and the other major grocers who reaped the benefits of a turbulent 2020, appear to be passing costs on to consumers to preserve your pandemic gains, and even taking advantage of inflation to add greater burdens.

Your companies had a choice: They could have retained lower prices for consumers and properly protected and compensated their workers or granted massive payouts to top executives and investors. It is disappointing that you chose not to put your customers and workers first.

Most economists reject the idea that greed drives inflation as nonsensical. But the problem is that if Warren and others convince the public that greedy businesses are to blame, she and other politicians will be empowered to regulate and punish businesses without actually addressing the underlying causes of inflation (i.e., increases in the money supply).

It’s worrisome that calls for price controls are beginning to emerge in the United States. For instance, Isabella Weber, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote in The Guardian that the United States needs a “systematic consideration of strategic price controls as a tool in the broader policy response to the enormous macroeconomic challenges.”

Some scholars have even argued that rationing is necessary to avoid shortages. Rebecca Spang, a historian at Indiana University, recently said: “If you try to have price controls without rationing, you end up with shortages, you end up with purveyors pulling their goods from the market.”

Inflation is never caused by either greed or any other business activity. We need to make sure that people do not fall for those misleading narratives. If we fail to do so, then the United States runs the risk of repeating the same mistakes that my country did a decade ago—the very same mistakes that caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the history of the Americas.

A Cautionary Tale

Politicians and academics scapegoating businesses for inflation is exactly what happened in my own country, Venezuela. In the last decade, the idea that businessmen cause inflation led to a series of heavy regulations on business, including price controls. These controls ended up destroying the market mechanisms of the Venezuelan economy and caused chronic shortages of food and medicines. These policies laid the groundwork for Venezuela’s current humanitarian crisis.

How can a country so rich in natural resources—so wealthy in oil—end up so badly? My answer is always that Venezuela did not fail because of bad luck, nor even because of bad politicians. It goes deeper than that. My country failed because of the ideas its citizens held. Everything else is nothing more than a consequence of this terrible fact—from the leaders that we elected to the policies that they implemented.

A few of the detrimental ideas Venezuelans embraced were that presidents need almost unlimited powers, that expanding the supreme court was necessary, and that rewriting the country’s constitutions was not such a bad idea, which is why the country voted for these things in 1999.

Additionally, anti-business attitudes spread throughout the country starting in the 2000s. Coupled with the political ideas mentioned above, these attitudes enabled the late president Hugo Chavez to build his revolution. Chavez regularly denounced wealth and free markets while praising socialism. He said things like: “Being rich is bad, it is inhuman. I say so and I condemn the rich.” And: “Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ—who I think was the first socialist—only socialism can really create a genuine society.” And: “I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet.”

These anti-business ideas, embraced widely by Venezuelans and propounded by Chavez, led to the economic policies that propelled Venezuela into the worst economic collapse in the western hemisphere’s modern history. Venezuela imposed tight currency controls to allegedly avoid capital flights to the United States (savings leaving the country), widespread nationalization of businesses (from sectors like farming to banking, energy, and others), and large state entities created to run all those sectors that were previously held by private organizations.

As I wrote in Public Discourse back in August 2020, the Venezuelan economic model could be summarized as a system that substitutes central planning for virtually all market mechanisms. I explained:

The Venezuelan state controls virtually all the country’s means of production, from basic industries like oil and aluminum, to agriculture, food distribution, telecommunications, and most other economic sectors. Moreover, through tight price controls and production quotas, the state strictly regulates those parts of the economy that are owned by the private sector. As such, the Venezuelan economy is doomed to low levels of investment, productivity, employment, and income.

[read more]

New Report Reveals the Federal Government Is Spending Millions To Get Animals High

From FEE.org (April 29, 2022):

Animal rights groups like PETA raise millions of dollars per year and spend their time dumping fake blood on celebrities’ fur coats. Even more radical groups like the Animal Liberation Front set restaurants that sell meat on fire and torch research labs.

But a new report from the White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a free-market based animal rights group, indicates these organizations should probably be directing their fury at a much bigger culprit: the government.

That’s right. Research indicates that the federal government is actually responsible for the vast majority of animal cruelty in the country. According to WCW, the government spends millions of taxpayer dollars every year on animal laboratories that carry out unethical testing on animals through grants, contracts, and experiments within its own labs.

In a new report, Up In Smoke, WCW exposes even more of these corrupt practices. In particular, they detail millions of taxpayer dollars the government recently spent on cannabis and e-cigarette animal experiments—and rampant violations of federal spending transparency law that were committed in the process.

In one experiment, “pregnant mice were confined to a chamber, where they were forced to breathe e-cigarette vapor for hours.” According to the report, “After giving birth, their pups underwent behavioral tests, and were then killed and their brains analyzed. However, experimenters openly acknowledged significant differences between rodent brain development and human brain development.”

Another experiment forced mice to breath a variety of flavored e-cigarette vapors to “study the effects of vaping on the heart.” But notably, the authors said that “caution should be exercised when extrapolating the findings in the mouse heart to the human heart due to the presence of many obvious differences including those related to important species differences.”

So, in short, our government has been hotboxing mice for no apparent reason—they aren’t even producing research that could improve human health.

There are other problems detailed in the report as well. For instance, the Stevens Amendment is an old federal policy that requires public disclosure of taxpayer monies spent, yet WCW reports that not one experiment detailed in their report was in compliance with that law.

A Perennial Problem

This is the second time in under a year that abusive animal testing by our government has come to light. Just a few months ago it was revealed that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided a grant to a lab in Tunisia to torture and kill beagle puppies for scientific experiments.

These revelations are chilling. But they really won’t surprise anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the practices of our government.

While our Founders intended the US to be a bastion of human rights and ethics, decades of rampant spending with little accountability have spawned a sprawling federal system that is anything but this. We see this leviathan bombing innocent civilians in other countries, persecuting journalists and whistleblowers who tell the truth about the government’s actions, and condemning thousands of innocent Americans to life behind bars for nonviolent offenses. Is it any wonder they also do not value the lives of animals? Hardly.

There’s a cruel irony here, too. While the government locks American citizens in jail for cannabis use with its right hand, it’s turning around and drugging animals with the same product with its left.

As economist Ludwig von Mises once said, “The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

This report is yet further proof of what many in the libertarian camp have long known: government is the real source of most of the evil in this world. But unlike when individuals do something wrong, there is little to no accountability for government actors when they carry out actions that would land the rest of us in jail. [source]

Disturbing, but not too surprising. The far-Left animal rights groups won’t criticize big gov’t because they are on the same side and the groups takes its marching orders from the elites.

Secret Service Is Selling Us a Bunch of Malarkey When It Comes to Joe Biden's Visitors

From Red State.com (April 21, 2022):

The New York Post reports that it requested one year of the visitor log records but the Secret Service is denying that there are any records. Secret Service Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer Kevin Tyrrell claimed that “[t]he Secret Service FOIA Office searched all Program Offices that were likely to contain potentially responsive records, and no records were located.”

Now, that’s just a lie, because the Secret Service has to check out anyone who gets close to Biden. Are they saying that they’re not doing the jobs that they’re sworn to do? Or that they’re just destroying any records and checks they’re making of people?

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which also has sued for presidential visitor logs, accused the Secret Service of playing a “shell game” — potentially claiming that the Delaware logs belong to the White House rather than the protective agency.

“Obviously the Secret Service knows and tracks who is visiting President Biden at his homes in Delaware and they are playing a shell game with the public to keep that information secret,” Fitton said.

So, why are they lying and who is visiting? Since they’re not willing to tell us and they’re willing even to lie to us, we have to suppose something is going on here that they want to hide.

If doctors are visiting and dealing with any of Joe Biden’s appreciable issues, we’re not being told. If Joe Biden is meeting with foreign visitors — as he did when he was vice president, meeting with some of his son’s business associates — we’re not being told. He’s done official business in Delaware, for example, meeting with some Democrats, but unless we get a random news report, we’re not even being told about that.

Now, given the situation with the two people who had possible connections to Iran and/or Pakistan trying to infiltrate the Secret Service ,and get close to agents or officers in the White House and the protective details of Jill and Joe Biden, it may be more important than ever to have transparency as to who is getting next to Joe Biden. Because there was already a big failure there, to even allow that infiltration to happen.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has been pressed on the issue in the past last year, and she just blew everyone off, saying Biden wasn’t going to release such information.

“Well, the president goes to Delaware because it’s his home. It’s also where his son and his former wife are buried. And it’s a place that is obviously close to his heart,” Psaki said at a January press briefing. “A lot of presidents go visit their home when they are president. We also have gone a step further than the prior administration in many administrations in releasing visitor logs of people who visit the White House and will continue to do that.”

What’s annoying here is that they take us for fools. Not only trying to put one over on us but then, being such liars about it all and that we don’t have the right to know, even given all the questions about Joe Biden. It’s our money — we’re paying for the Secret Service protection — they owe us the duty not to so blatantly lie to us. [source]

The Secret Service is just covering for Crooked Joe. Protecting him from physical harm is one thing (that’s they’re job), but not covering for him. Then again they have done that in the past—see JFK and LBJ.

Whistleblower: CIA Sought to Change COVID-19 Origin Analysis

From Newsmax.com (Sept. 12):

The Central Intelligence Agency offered six analysts money to change their position on COVID-19's origin after they originally stated that the virus likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, a whistleblower told the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, according to a Tuesday press releasefrom the committees.

The whistleblower, who is a highly credible senior-level CIA officer, alleges that of the seven members assigned to the CIA team who were asked to analyze COVID-19 origins, six concluded that the virus likely came from a lab in Wuhan, but the CIA then offered them incentives to change their conclusion to say it was of zoonotic origin instead.

The Ohio Republican chairmen of the two committees, Rep. Brad Wenstrup and Rep. Mike Turner, are requesting that all documents and communications connected to the CIA's COVID-19 origins review be made available to them immediately.

These include, according to the New York Post, with such agencies as the State Department, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Energy Department.

In addition, the chairmen requested that former CIA COO Andrew Makridis appear for a voluntary transcribed interview on Sept. 26.

Any improper influence by the CIA will be investigated to ensure accountability from the intelligence community, according to the press release.

"According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The seventh member of the team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis," the chairmen stated in the press release. [source]

The question is the CIA covering for the Chi-Coms or for Fauci? Or maybe both.

Four missing children found alive in Amazon 40 days after plane crash

From Sky News.com.au (June 10):

Four missing children have been found alive in the Amazon forest 40 days after they were on board a small plane which crashed and killed their mother, pilot and relative.

One hundred sixty soldiers and 70 Indigenous locals with intimate knowledge of the region helped to search for the children. [source]

That’s great news! Glad they were found alive after so long a time.

Excerpts from "The Hundred-Year Marathon" book Part 6

In a remarkable reversal, the normally private sector–oriented World Bank and International Monetary Fund acknowledged that the Chinese regulations required the SOEs [State-Owned Enterprises] to safeguard the interests of the Chinese government. This was a violation of China's original commitments. Indeed, the World Bank went so far as to warn in a confidential paper in 1993 that China's other reforms would fail if the SOEs could not be improved and ultimately made profitable. The concept was to "corporatize" them, which meant a relaxation of state control to push some of the enterprises to go bankrupt or be dissolved, while others would be consolidated from many small, loss-making ones into a few large, profit-making ones. This is the beginning of what became known a decade later as the "national champions" system.

The World Bank advised China to go much farther—and so China did. The bank recommended creating portfolio holding companies, much like mutual funds in free-market economies. The most shocking proposal of all was that stock exchanges should be established to sell shares in the SOEs. (Stock markets are for private companies, not government agencies.)
....
When it comes to trade and growth, America is losing to China, and the reason is simple: China cheats. It steals technology, promotes Chinese monopolies, and unfairly insulates its state-owned companies from foreign competition. For decades, it has broken the rules according to which modern nations trade across national boundaries and treat foreign investment within them. China has played by its own rules, and as its power grows an increasing number of countries will be forced to play by those rules as well. A core component of China's successful growth strategy is acquiring, often through illegal means, foreign science and technology. China has set up counterfeiting factories employing ten thousand to fifteen thousand people. China's national industrial policy goals have the effect of encouraging intellectual property theft, and a massive number of Chinese business and government entities engage in this behavior. So dramatic is intellectual property (IP) piracy in China that a software company sold a single program in China and then received thirty million requests for an update. China is at the forefront of IP theft, and regularly hacks into foreign commercial entities and turns over their IP to Chinese businesses, making China the world's largest perpetrator of IP theft. This allows the Chinese to cheat their way up the technology ladder. Such IP theft represents an estimated loss of $107 billion in additional annual sales and costs 2.1 million jobs in the United States alone. In the future, when China's economy is even bigger, and when its alliances are more extensive, it will be harder to incentivize innovators to invest in the creation of IP whose value is so easily depressed by widespread theft.

Source: The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015) by Michael Pillsbury.

The World Bank is China’s useful idiot.

New Peer-Reviewed Study: COVID-19 Vaccines Increase Risk of Cardiac Arrest in Young People by 25 Percent

From The Epoch Times.com (May 4, 2022):

You would think that the scientific community, public officials, and every media outlet in the world would be discussing a new peer-reviewed article entitled, “Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under 40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave.” Why? Because the results of this study are nothing short of astounding.

This data analysis was published on April 28, 2022 in the multidisciplinary British scientific journal Nature. Nature is one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world.

The research was co-authored by Drs. Christopher Sun, Ph.D, a postdoctoral fellow with Healthcare System Engineering at Massachusetts General Hospital and with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management; Eli Jaffe, Ph.D., who is affiliated with Israel’s National Emergency Medical Services, and one of Israel’s leading authority in the field of emergency medicine and medical management; and Retsef Levi, Ph.D., the J. Spencer Standish (1945) Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Their team analyzed data collected by Israel’s National Emergency Medical Services between 2019 and 2021. They found that there was an over 25 percent increase in emergency calls about cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome—an umbrella term used for coronary problems associated with sudden-onset reduced blood flow to the heart, according to the Mayo Clinic– for young adults, ages 16 to 39 years old, compared to the same time period in both 2019 and 2020.

Furthermore, the researchers discovered that this increase in emergency heart issues was associated with COVID-19 vaccination but not with COVID-19 infections.

They explain:

“An increase of over 25% was detected …compared with the years 2019–2020. [T]he weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group [16 to 39] but were not with COVID‐19 infection rates. While not establishing causal relationships, the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine‐induced undetected severe cardiovascular side‐effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.”

More Cause for Concern

As the three scientists themselves point out, this new peer-reviewed science dovetails with a growing body of scientific and clinical evidence that shows myriad side effects—some of which are extremely severe—from COVID-19 vaccines themselves.

The scientific community has started to document the side effects. For instance, in June of 2021 an international team of sixteen scientists published a research letter noting the temporal relationship between the onset of acute myocarditis in eight adult men, between the ages of 21 and 56.

These scientists, writing in the journal Circulation, underscored that “…the real incidence of acute myocarditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination … appears to be extremely rare,” given the millions of people who had been vaccinated seemingly without incident. Still, they wrote, “providers should be vigilant for myocarditis after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, and further research is required to understand the long-term cardiovascular risks.”

The link between inflammation of the heart (myocarditis) and inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart (pericarditis) was further explored in a detailed article published in the British Medical Journal that same month: “Covid-19: Should we be worried about reports of myocarditis and pericarditis after mRNA vaccines?”

That article quoted Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, who expressed deep reservations about giving COVID-19 vaccines to young people, given the early reports of heart damage.

“There is a clear and large safety signal in young men and a clear but small signal in young women as well,” Prasad said. Given the risk of cardiac damage, Prasad said, the safest way forward would be to suspend all vaccination in children under eighteen and give only one vaccine dose to men under 25.

More recently, in February 2022, three scientists (a researcher based in Germany, a physicist also based in Germany, and an independent data and pattern scientist based in the Netherlands) published a letter to the editor in the journal Clinical and Translational Discovery, “The risk-benefit ration of Covid-19 vaccines: Publication policy by reattraction does nothing to improve it.”

This letter also analyzed data from Israel. The data is disturbing. These scientists concluded that “as we vaccinate 100 000 persons, we might save five lives but risk two to four deaths”.

Among other things, they pointed out that the CDC’s own passive reporting system, VAERS, which is now showing several very concerning signals—as of April 22, 2022, 27,532 deaths post-vaccination have been reported, as well as 14,096 heart attacks, and 39,639 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis—is known for underestimating both deaths and adverse effects from vaccines.

Who are the people behind these numbers? The young people who were eager to get vaccinated so they could theoretically be protected against COVID-19 and also theoretically protect others but instead lost their lives or had their health severely compromised as a result of vaccine-induced myocarditis?

Benjamin Goodman, 32, Dies 14 Hours After J&J Vaccine

One of those people is Benjamin Gordon Goodman, a successful and enterprising young man who was working in the television industry but had decided to go back to school to get an MBA. About a week after Goodman turned 32, he went to a Walgreens in Chelsea for his COVID-19 vaccine. He chose to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine so he would only need one shot.

According to Goodman’s stepmother, Pamela Everett Goodman, a little after 4:00 p.m. that day Goodman texted them a photograph of his vaccination card. He also texted he had a horrible headache, which had come on almost instantly. He went back to his apartment, thinking he could sleep off the side effects. But that night, around 1:00 a.m., he spiked a very high fever. At 3:00 a.m. his fiancé woke up to him having a seizure. She called 911.

Emergency Medical Technicians tried to restart his heart. They brought Goodman to Mount Sinai Hospital. He was pronounced dead at 6:05 a.m. on March 14, 2021. Goodman had been eager to buy a plane ticket to visit Vanderbilt, one of several prestigious graduate MBA programs that accepted him. His family thought they would soon be planning a wedding. Instead, they found themselves planning their son’s funeral.

The immediate cause of death listed on his death certificate: “Dilated Cardiomyopathy.” Other significant conditions contributing to death: “Febrile Reaction Following Covid-19 Vaccination.”

CDC Stays Silent, Provides Inaccurate Information to the Public

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the nation’s “health protection agency.” According to their website, the CDC “saves lives and protects people from health threats.” To accomplish that mission, the CDC “conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.”

However, when it comes to severe adverse events following the COVID-19 vaccines, however, the CDC has greatly downplayed the risks.

When accessed by The Epoch Times, the public material on their website about vaccine-induced myocarditis had not been updated since November 12, 2021. That information, already six months out of date, mentions that cases of myocarditis reported to VAERS “have occurred,” especially in adolescent men and young adults. The CDC details that myocarditis has been seen “more often” with the second dose, and “usually within a week of vaccination.”

At the same time, according to the CDC, “Most patients with myocarditis or pericarditis who received care responded well to medicine and rest and felt better quickly.”

Perhaps even more misleading, there is no mention of any kind of heart attacks, acute coronary syndrome, myocarditis or pericarditis by the CDC in their web article, “Possible Side Effects After Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine.” This article, too, is grossly out of date.

Last updated on January 12, 2022, the side effects that the CDC mention include only pain, redness, and swelling “on the arm where you got the shot,” and tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever, and nausea “throughout the rest of your body.” Handouts available in PDF form that are shared with people considering the vaccine also make no mention of heart damage.

While the cardiac safety signals are worrisome, especially for adolescents and young adults, it is heartening that more and more scientists have started to carefully analyze the data, publish their findings, and voice concerns about possible side effects of these COVID-19 vaccines. It is only when people are armed with accurate medical information—both positive and negative—that trust in public health authorities and the vaccine schedules they recommend can be restored. [source]

Other issues with the Covid-19 vaccines:

• Shocking New Study Reveals COVID-19 Vaccine Causes Organ Rejection Among Transplant Recipients (VIDEO)
• “Ethically Unjustifiable” – Scientists from Harvard & Johns Hopkins Found Covid-19 Vaccines 98 Times Worse Than the Virus
• Oxford Study Which Claims Myocarditis is Higher After Covid Than Vaccination is Flawed and Actually Suggests Vaccines Increase Risk by 30%
• The COVID Vaccines Corrupt Human Blood
• New Neurologic Side Effects From the COVID-19 Vaccinations
• Researcher: ‘We Made a Big Mistake’ on COVID-19 Vaccine
• Boosted People More Likely Than Unvaccinated to Be Infected: Study
• First Case of White Dot Syndrome Emerged After COVID-19 Vaccine and Subsequent Infection, Study Shows
• How Cancer Deaths From the COVID Jabs Are Being Hidden
• COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Reduce Immune Response to Other Infections, Potential Concern of Immune Deficiency
  
• Pfizer Documents Show COVID-19 Vaccines Contain Potentially Harmful ‘Modified’ RNA, not mRNA
  

Biden’s HHS Secretary: Cutting Off Kids’ Genitals Is ‘Health Care’ And Taxpayers Should Pay For It

From The Federalist.com (May 5, 2022):

United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra thinks that cutting off children’s genitals should be characterized as health care and funded by taxpayers.

In an exchange with Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana on Wednesday, Becerra not only defended the White House’s support for experimentation on kids’ sex characteristics but also brushed off concerns that the so-called “gender-affirming care” promoted by the government causes irreversible damage.

“I believe that we should help those have the life-affirming care that they need,” Becerra, who along with the Biden administration has previously signaled support for using taxpayer dollars to fund genital mutilation surgeries, told Braun. “There are many transgender youth who have actually gone in the opposite direction, taking their life. If we can make a life better for someone in America, we should, especially if, in consultation with their physician, they approve of those procedures.”

Becerra’s comments come just weeks after the HHS’s Office of Population Affairs dangerously oversimplified the permanent and damaging effects that radical gender ideology, chemical castration, puberty blockers, and genital mutilation surgeries have on children and adults.

That same month, Rachel Levine, the male U.S. assistant secretary for health who masquerades as a female, falsely claimed, “There is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

In his interrogation of Becerra, Braun pointed out that the puberty blockers and “grotesque” surgeries recommended by the Biden administration, specifically HHS, are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and thus are often prescribed “off label,” but the secretary didn’t care.

“The FDA would raise alarms if they saw that a particular medicine or treatment were being misused. And at this stage, what we know is that for a drug to be out there available, it has to be safe and effective as FDA has found,” Becerra said. “So what I would simply say with regard to this particular subject is when individuals go in for care, it’s their physician who’s making that decision with them about what type of medicine or treatment they should receive.”

“You know, if you had used that same logic on what we’ve just navigated through Covid, it seems like there would have been a different point of view. And to me, for many parents across the country, this has more potentially tragic consequences, and it seems like it’s a double standard,” Braun replied.

Data from around the world suggests that these radical procedures disguised as “treatments” by the Biden administration have caused “sexual dysfunction, infertility, cardiac event[,] endometrial cancer,” and even transition regret among people who receive them. Yet the HHS leader stood by the White House’s lies and claimed that chemical castration and other such experiments are acceptable as long as a doctor signs off on them.

“In what case would it be appropriate to perform irreversible sex-change surgery on kids?” Braun asked.

“Those decisions are made by that individual in consultation with physician and caregivers, and no decision would be made without having consulted appropriately,” Becerra replied.

“I would say to you that many of our medical experts will tell you that we’ve explored this subject for a long time and what we find is that we are helping improve the lives of many Americans by providing them with the care that they have chosen with the informed consent of family and also with the consent and advice of their own physician,” he added. [source]

The taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for an optional unnecessary sick surgery. It’s not healthcare. If you’re an adult and want the surgery (after careful thought and possibly psychological counseling I might add)—that’s one thing. But kids? Definitely not. They are not old enough to make contracts and definitely not mature enough to decide about major surgery.

Bipartisan Bill Would Prohibit FAA From Using Chinese, Russian-Made Drones

From The Epoch Times.com (June 9):

U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) on June 8 introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at preventing foreign-produced drones from flying over American skies.

Known as the "Stemming The Operation of Pernicious and Illicit (STOP Illicit) Drones Act," the bill (pdf) would ban the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from buying or using drones produced in China as well as a string of other nations including Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.

The bill does grant an exemption for cases where drones are used for detection or counter-UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) testing and warfare analysis and operations.

Under the legislation, the FAA would also be prohibited from providing federal funds to certain foreign drone companies from China and several other countries.

Funding would be banned under any of the FAA's programs, including its Aviation Research Grant Program, Aviation Workforce Development Program, and the Airport Improvement Project Program, among others.

The legislation also requires the FAA to replace any such foreign drones with a U.S. or allied drone within 12 months and submit a report to Congress within 180 days of the bill going into effect detailing how many foreign drones it has and the cost of replacing them.

The report must also detail the changes the FAA has made to its procurement, operation, and contracting processes to ensure it does not violate the ban on foreign drones going forward.

Clampdown on Chinese Drones

In 2018, the Pentagon banned the purchase and use of all commercial off-the-shelf drones, regardless of manufacturer, owing to cybersecurity concerns.

A year later, Congress passed legislation prohibiting the Department of Defense from purchasing and using drones and components manufactured in China.

More recently, the Pentagon banned the use of drones made by the Chinese company DJI, which had until recently controlled roughly 70 percent of the global drone market, citing potential threats to national security.

The Department of Defense did, however, make an exception on such purchases in cases where the Chinese drones were being used to conduct "certain types of analysis or operations."

Despite the clampdown on Chinese-made drones, Blackburn and Warner told Reuters that the FAA currently operates over a dozen drones manufactured in China.

"While the New Axis of Evil is looking for every opportunity to take advantage of the United States, we cannot leave our critical technologies sector open to vulnerabilities," said Blackburn in a statement.

"Just as importantly, taxpayer dollars should never fund drones manufactured in regions that are hostile toward the U.S. The STOP Illicit Drones Act helps curb the importation of drones produced by our adversaries, keeping our nation safer and encouraging manufacturing here at home," the Republican senator added.

'Advancing Goals of Adversaries'

Warner, meanwhile, noted that drones have the potential to transform key industries and aspects of American society across areas including agriculture, emergency services, and transporting goods.

"As the adoption of this technology grows, we need to make sure that we are not advancing the goals of our adversaries, who wish to saturate the market with drones that pose a threat to our national security," said Warner. "I’m proud to introduce this legislation to ensure that federal resources and dollars do not go towards products that defy U.S. interests."

A spokesperson for the FAA told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the agency "does not comment on proposed legislation."

The latest legislation comes shortly after Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) urged U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) to stop using drones made by Chinese-owned Autel Robotics, citing their "significant national security risk."

In a letter to USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger, Rubio asked that all drones made by the company and any other drones manufactured or produced in China be immediately disbanded and replaced with those that do not pose such a risk.

The agency's public information office later told NBC News that it had scrapped all of the Chinese-made drones which it said were not connected to Capitol Police's network. The office added that the drones had also operated on "a self-contained system" that was not connected to the server of the Chinese company. [source]

Good for them. The FAA shouldn’t be using drones from our enemies especially China.

Woman thankful for 'God's timing' after good Samaritan rescues her from fiery death trap

From Christian Post.com (June 2):

A woman faced her worst fear after her car caught fire on a Georgia highway, and she credits a good Samaritan’s timely intervention and God’s mercy for her survival.

Last week, Lincolnton resident Candy Smith was driving to work on Interstate 20 in her 2004 Navy Toyota Camry when the car started flaming with her inside. The woman remembered not even realizing she was on fire at first.

“I turned it off, grabbed my purse, jumped out of the car, barefooted everything,” the driver told local news outlet WRDW Tuesday. “I look and my hood is melting, and I see flames.”

Smith recalled the peace that overcame her fear after a truck driver named Kalique ran over to the car with a fire extinguisher. The woman referred to the truck driver from North Charleston, South Carolina, as her “angel.”

The driver of the fiery vehicle said that Kalique coming to her rescue reminded her of the Lord’s “direct protection she’s experienced through the good and bad.”

Smith’s youngest son, Jed, died in a house fire three years ago, a loss that caused the woman to develop a hatred of flames. She lost another son in 2022, who contracted COVID-19 and died while waiting for a lung transplant.

“It could have been a lot worse. Again, God’s faithfulness, God’s timing,” she told the local news outlet. “And you know, he cleared the road.”

Smith expressed gratitude for God’s intervention: “Thank You for Your mercy. Thank You for Your grace and for loving me.”

The Georgia woman is not the only individual who credits God with saving her life after a potentially deadly incident involving a vehicle.

As The Christian Post reported in January, Bluegrass gospel singer Becky Isaacs Bowman of The Isaacs survived a serious auto accident in Hendersonville, Tennessee, that left her injured and another person dead.

Bowman was hit head-on in a two-car collision in December 2022, which resulted in the death of the other driver. The gospel singer suffered three fractured ribs, and she had to be taken to Skyline Medical Center for surgery to insert a plate and nine screws in her right tibia. She also underwent a complete reconstruction of her right knee.

“I am grateful to the first responders and to the incredible doctors, nurses and staff at Skyline Medical Center for the exceptional care that has been shown to me and my family,” she told CP at the time. “I am forever humbled by it all. In spite of the challenges that lay ahead, my faith is strong because I know the hand of God will not lead me where His grace will not keep me. My prayers go out to the family of the gentleman who lost his life in the accident.”

The Christian singer released a video on social media in December after the accident, saying that she believes in “specific prayers.” Bowman and her family asked for people to pray that the singer’s bones would “heal quickly” and for her to be able to walk again soon.

Fittingly enough, Bowman released her first solo album in October 2022 titled Songs That Pulled Me Through The Tough Times. The album includes the titles “God Leads His Dear Children Along,” “He’s My Guide” and “The Good Shepherd.”

In an interview last year with Mark Lowry about the new album, the gospel singer said that her family has been transparent about their struggles with addiction, mental health and other issues. Bowman recalled that she had started to think about the songs that had helped her through difficult times in her life.

“And so I made a 14-song record and did not write one of the songs on this,” she said. “These are songs I go to when I need lifting up in hopes that these will also be those kinds of songs for other people.” [source]

Glad the truck driver was able to put out the fire in time.

Excerpts from "The Hundred-Year Marathon" book Part 5

China's Seven Fears are as follows:

America's war plan is to blockade China. The behavior of most strategic actors is influenced by their psychological peculiarities: factors such as emotions, culture, and fears. China seems to fear blockades of its long coastline, and the string of islands off most of its coast makes the leadership feel even more vulnerable.

…..

America supports plundering China's maritime resources. Chinese authors claim that valuable resources within China's maritime territorial boundaries are being plundered by foreign powers because of China's naval weakness, thereby threatening the country's future development.

……

America may choke off China's sea lines of communication. Many Chinese writings touch on the vulnerability of China's sea lines of communication, especially the petroleum lifeline in the Strait of Malacca. Advocates of a blue-water navy cite the insecurity of China's energy imports. According to one Chinese observer, the U.S., Japanese, and Indian fleets together "constitute overwhelming pressure on China's oil supply," though another study concludes that "only the U.S. has the power and the nerve to blockade China's oil transport routes."

….

America seeks China's territorial dismemberment. China has outlined campaign plans against various invasion scenarios in a training manual intended only for internal military consumption.

….

America may assist rebels inside China. The three military regions along the northern border with Russia, including the Beijing military region, are said to be vulnerable to armored attacks and to airborne landings, as expressed in the 2005 study China's Theater Military Geography.

….

America may foment riots, civil war, or terrorism inside China. Constant Chinese proclamations against foreign support for "splittists" in Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang have become accepted as part of ordinary Chinese rhetoric, but these statements reflect a deep concern about China's territorial integrity.

….

America threatens aircraft carrier strikes. For at least a decade, Chinese military authors have assessed the threats from U.S. aircraft carriers and analyzed how best to counteract them.

Source: The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015) by Michael Pillsbury.

US Fed warns of state hackers targeting industrial control systems

From Tech Hq.com (Apr. 14, 2022):

Industrial control systems (ICS) are essential for the steady functioning of critical infrastructures such as the energy and water grid or the manufacturing sector. Therefore, when an attack is launched on ICS, the consequences are often far-reaching, just like then a ransomware attack targeted Colonial Pipeline Inc. in the US mid-last year.

That attack brought the entire facility to a complete halt for a few days which then inevitably caused an acute fuel shortage, while prices soared through the roof. It is unfortunate though that threat actors are increasingly shifting their focus from information technology (IT) to what ICS is often referred to as operational technology (OT).

This puts the critical industrial infrastructure owned by the state and private entities at high risk of destructive cyberattacks that can cause severe economic damage. Predictably, governments across the world can only urge private entities to toughen their critical infrastructure defenses—while taking steps to improve national cyberspace security.

Hence why in the US, the Department of Energy (DOE) alongside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) yesterday to warn critical infrastructure owners of a tool developed by hackers to target ICS like power grids and oil refineries.

“DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI warn that certain advanced persistent threat (APT) actors have exhibited the capability to gain full system access to multiple ICS/supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices,” the statement reads.

The tools, according to the officials, enable the threat actors to scan for, compromise, and control affected devices once they have established initial access to the OT network. “Additionally, the actors can compromise Windows-based engineering workstations, which may be present in information technology (IT) or OT environments, using an exploit that compromises an ASRock motherboard driver with known vulnerabilities,” they said.

By compromising and maintaining full system access to ICS/SCADA devices, DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI said APT actors could elevate privileges, move laterally within an OT environment, and disrupt critical devices or functions. Therefore, the CSA urges critical infrastructure organizations, especially energy sector organizations, to implement the detection and mitigation recommendations provided to detect potential malicious APT activity and harden their ICS/SCADA devices. [source]

State actors like China, N. Korea, even Russia?

New Documents Suggest Democrats Sicced The CIA On Their Domestic Enemy, The President

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 20, 2022):

Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump’s movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory. While smaller in scale than other aspects of Spygate, the Yotaphone hoax represents an equally serious scandal because it involved both the mining of proprietary information and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the apparent surveillance of Trump’s physical movements.

When Special Counsel John Durham charged former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann in September 2021, the indictment focused on the Alfa Bank hoax that Sussmann, tech executive Rodney Joffe, and other cybersecurity experts had crafted. The indictment detailed how Joffe and other tech experts had allegedly mined data and developed “white papers” that deceptively created the impression that Trump had maintained a secret communication network with the Russia-based Alfa Bank.

Then, allegedly on behalf of the Clinton campaign and Joffe, Sussmann provided the Alfa Bank material to the media and to the FBI’s general counsel at the time, James Baker, with Sussmann falsely telling Baker he was sharing the “intel” on his own and not on behalf of any client. That alleged lie formed the basis for the one count, Section 1001 false statement charge against Sussmann.

There’s Another Alleged Lie

The 27-page indictment, however, also spoke of Sussmann sharing “updated allegations” on February 9, 2017, to another U.S. government agency, namely the CIA, while allegedly repeating the same false claim that he was not sharing the “intel” on behalf of any client. From the framing of the indictment, it appeared that what Sussmann had shared with the CIA concerned the same Alfa-Bank data provided to the FBI several months earlier, albeit updated.

But then two months ago, as part of the government’s “Motion to Inquire Into Potential Conflicts of Interest,” Durham’s team revealed for the first time that when Sussmann met with the CIA in early 2017, he provided agents with internet data beyond the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. This data, Sussmann claimed, “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.”

The “supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones” were “Yotaphones.” Following Durham’s filing of the conflicts of interest motion, it appeared Sussmann bore responsibility for peddling a second conspiracy theory to the CIA. But the details contained in the government’s motion proved insufficient to understand the Yotaphone angle to Spygate. That all changed on Friday, when the special counsel filed two CIA memoranda memorializing what Sussmann said about the Yotaphones and the data Joffe and his tech experts had compiled.

What Sussmann Told the CIA

The first memorandum, dated January 31, 2017, summarized what Sussmann told a former CIA employee in hopes of scoring a meeting with the CIA. Sussmann said his client “had some interesting information about the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” Sussmann claimed the activity started in April 2016 when Trump was working out of the Trump Tower on its Wi-Fi network. That phone was also used on the “Wi-Fi at Trump’s apartment at Grand Central Park West,” according to Sussmann.

The memorandum then noted that “when Trump traveled to Michigan to interview a cabinet secretary, the phone appeared with Trump in Michigan.” The unnamed cabinet secretary apparently refers to Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, whose husband Richard DeVos was chairman of the Michigan-based Spectrum Health in 2016.

According to the notes, Sussmann also told his contact that “the phone was never noticed in two places at once” and was seen “only around the President’s movement.” The memo noted that once, when Trump was not in Trump Tower, the phone was active on the Trump Tower WiFi network. Then, “in December 2016, the phone disappeared from Trump Tower Wi Fi network and surfaced on [the Executive Office Building] network,” the memorandum said, with Sussmann claiming it was the same Yotaphone and that it “surfaced” at the Executive Office Building after Trump moved to the White House.

The Yotaphone is rare, Sussmann told his contact, with only about a dozen or so present in the United States, and Russian government officials often receive a high-end version of the phone as a gift. According to Sussmann, the Yotaphone connected to Trump made a number of WiFi calls to Moscow and St. Petersburg from April 2016 until February 2017. [read more]

Baby who was only 30 minutes old saved by Tennessee's first safe haven baby box

From Christian Post.com (June 2):

A baby who was only 30 minutes old was recovered uninjured from the state of Tennessee’s first safe haven baby box, a community resource to help parents in crisis.

Three crew members with the Knoxville Fire Department recovered a baby from the safe haven box after midnight on Saturday. The baby boy was reportedly uninjured and appeared to be a newborn. The firefighters called an ambulance to transport the baby to the hospital.

As local news outlet Wate 6 reported Monday, the safe haven box was installed in February at Knoxville Fire Department Station 17 on Western Avenue. Assistant Chief Mark Wilbanks of the Knoxville Fire Department revealed that the state is expected to have more baby boxes soon, disclosing plans to build one in Knox County.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Wilbanks said parents who surrender their babies under the state's safe haven law usually feel like they’re in a crisis. This option allows them to ensure their child receives proper care and the parents can feel they did the right thing for their baby.

“Our goal at the end of the day is to save lives,” Wilbanks said. “And we never want to be called out to a scene where there has been a child disposed of in a dumpster; that’s hard to even think about or consider. But what you have to think about is the mom or dad was in a crisis situation and had nowhere to turn.”

Wilbanks said he has received multiple emails from people who want to adopt the baby.

The fire department does not decide who can or cannot adopt the child, he added. After a parent places the baby in a box, the fire department turns the child over to the emergency department and Tennessee Child Services.

Wilbanks emphasized that the department operates as a safe haven for anybody.

The safe haven box also has resources for the parent of a child, including mental health care and information about their rights as well as some next steps.

“I’m adopted myself,” Wilbanks told CP. “I don’t know my birth parents. But, you know, where would I have been had adoption not existed or my parents didn’t have options? So at the end of the day, we want to make sure that these parents have options, they have resources, and their child is cared for as well.”

Tennessee's Safe Haven Law allows mothers of newborns to surrender unharmed babies to designated facilities within two weeks of birth without fear of being prosecuted. Since April 2015, at least 80 children have been surrendered under the law.

Tennessee is not the only state working to make it easier for parents to place their children up for adoption.

As CP reported, Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed several bills earlier this year that his office described as “pro-mom and pro-life.” The approved legislation followed the change in national abortion policy after the overturn of Roe v. Wade last June, which restored regulatory authority over abortion to the states.

In addition to increasing tax credits for pregnancy resource centers and adoption-related expenses, another measure approved by Reeves increased the age when a child can be dropped off at a safe haven box.

“Mississippi will always protect life. Our state will continue to be a beacon on the hill, a symbol of hope for the country, and a model for the nation,” Reeves vowed. “Mississippi will be relentless in its commitment to life. We will be relentless in our support of mothers and children. And we will be relentless in our efforts to advance the New Pro-Life Agenda. The legislation I signed today is further proof that when it comes to protecting life, Mississippi isn’t just talking the talk — we’re walking the walk.” [source]

Good to know! Glad the baby was saved.

Comer Alleges Biden Legal Team Is Intimidating Witnesses: 'They Fear For Their Lives'

From Townhall.com (April 29):

One of the top Republicans leading the probe into Hunter Biden’s shady business affairs claims that the president’s son’s lawyers are using intimidation tactics against whistleblowers and witnesses.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said that President Joe Biden’s legal team is threatening potential witnesses, making them fear for their lives.

“We’ve got witnesses that are scared to death to come forward. They fear for their lives,” Comer said, adding that the Hunter Biden legal team has been “testing the limits with respect to witness intimidation.”

The Republican is also accusing Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) of serving as an attorney for the Biden family, who was once all about the support of impeaching former President Trump.

“[As] evidence emerges, thanks to us, about wrongdoing within the Biden family, and he then quickly becomes a defense attorney,” Comer continued.

Comer also claimed that Democrat officials in Congress were bankrolling “dark money groups” to destroy the investigation and paying off witnesses, adding that Left-leaning lawyers are pressuring banks to cooperate with the congressional investigation.

Republicans launched a probe into the Biden family, alleging that Hunter Biden used his high-profile family connections for financial gains. Recently, Comer said that he secured evidence of several payments made to nine Biden family members for influence peddling.

So far, no charges have been made against the president’s son. However, Comer said that he would be transparent with Americans and believed once the truth was revealed, it would shake the country to its core.

Hunter Biden has been under investigation since at least 2018. Comer said that before releasing bombshell revelations, the mainstream media was eagerly awaiting to report on it. However, after the findings were made public, they fell silent, alleging that the media did not want to tell the truth. [source]

Of course. Makes sense to me. This admin. is more like organized crime outfit.

Excerpts from "The Hundred-Year Marathon" book Part 4

Ms. Lee [a Chinese defector] detailed a secret unit at the top of the Chinese leadership that controlled the media carefully to ensure that only the “right” messages got out about China. The key, she said, was to shape messages to foreign nations, and especially the United States, by first disseminating them in domestic channels.
.…
Ms. Lee explained that the Chinese have for years divided foreign countries’ policymakers into various categories according to the degree to which the Chinese believe they will promote Beijing’s preferred messaging. Major Chinese embassies formed “friendship committees” to track these individuals, evaluating key politicians, business leaders, and media figures in each national capital and situating them on a spectrum ranging from friendly to hostile. The Chinese refer to those considered sympathetic as China’s “dear friends.” In the United States, the list includes a plethora of academics and current and former government officials, including a large number of American national security policy advisers from both political parties.
.…
A recent study by the Center for International Media Assistance finds that “China’s media restrictions have begun to seriously affect the reportage and operations of international organizations.” Specifically, the report highlighted four main strategies that the Chinese utilize to influence or manipulate the Western media. As reported by the Business Insider on November 5, 2013, they include:

• Direct action by Chinese diplomats, local officials, security forces, and regulators, both inside and outside China. These measures obstruct news gathering, prevent the publication of undesirable content, and punish overseas media outlets that fail to heed restrictions.

• Employing economic carrots and sticks to induce self-censorship among media owners and their outlets located outside mainland China.

• Applying indirect pressure via proxies—including advertisers, satellite firms, and foreign governments—who take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing.

• Conducting cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to the central Chinese authorities but serve the Party’s aims.

Many foreign journalists in China assume that everything they say and write, their phone calls, and their e-mails are monitored by Chinese authorities.

Source: The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015) by Michael Pillsbury.

“This is Beyond Shocking” – American Frontline Doctors on FDA Approval of Failed Ebola Drug Remdesivir By the FDA for “Treatment” of Covid-19 in Babies

From The Gateway Pundit.com (May 5, 2022):

The FDA recently reported that they had approved Remdesivir for the ‘treatment’ of COVID-19 in babies.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/fda-approves-first-covid-19-treatment-pediatric-patients-young-28-days-old/

America’s Frontline doctors can’t believe what they are seeing.

On April 25, 2022, the failed Ebola drug Remdesivir was approved by the FDA for “treatment” of Covid-19 in babies as young as 28 days old and as small as seven pounds! This is the exact same drug that has been wreaking carnage throughout hospitals since Fauci and Company approved the rigid CARES Act hospital protocol, along with bonus payments for treatment of Covid-19 with Remdesivir.

This is beyond shocking. Repeatedly, Remdesivir has been shown to be completely ineffective at treating Covid-19 in adults (even WHO studies show this) and to have severe side effects, including multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), kidney failure and dialysis, and septic shock.

While studies of inexpensive and familiar early treatment meds continue to demonstrate safety and effectiveness, the same cannot be said about Remdesivir. What makes this plot even more sinister, is this failed drug has even been approved for babies and children who are displaying only mild symptoms of Covid-19!

As we at AFLDS have preached for over two years, children and infants are at statistically zero risk of death from Covid-19, and yet they now can legally be treated with what is essentially poison. This is one of the worst decisions of the corrupt FDA.

Remdesivir came on the scene in early 2020 as the answer to the feared COVID-19 pandemic.  We soon found out more about the drug.  In May 2020 we connected this drug to China and Dr. Fauci.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/first-case-covid-19-us-treated-remdesivir-late-january-two-weeks-later-china-mass-producing-drug-firm-gilead-sciences-dr-fauci-middle/

A year later the drug Remdesivir was singled out by some in the medical community as deadly.  Now the FDA approves the drug for infants as small as 7 pounds even though their risk of dying from COVID-19 is basically zero without the drug.  This is a cause for alarm.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/exclusive-nurse-blows-whistle-heinous-medical-malpractice-covid-patients-killed-remsdevir-immediate-intubation/

China is very happy with the Biden regime. [source]

Yea, that is shocking indeed.

Liberal Logic 101: Don’t Say I Have the Mental Health Issue I Actually Have

From Red State.com (May 5, 2022):

The Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation trial has been going on longer than a liberal temper tantrum, both sides doing their utmost to make the other appear subhuman. Or, at the least, deficient in proper toilet technique. It’s tempting to write the matter off as nothing more than another episode of Lifestyles of the Ridiculous and Fatuous. Still, the depth of hatred Depp and Heard exhibit toward one another make the trial something of a car crash. You know you shouldn’t watch, yet you can’t look away.

The trial has been manna for pop psychologists and pop culture aficionados alike. Social media is ablaze with feverish content from Team Depp and Team Heard. Each side has its battle plans with detailed counterplots. This is, of course, important, as everyone knows court cases are decided not by a judge or jury but by TikTok influencers.

One recent post on the trial caught my attention. Bearing the title The Heard-Depp Case Illustrates the Stigma Around Borderline Personality Disorder, it attempts to make the case that Heard is likely suffering from BPD or HPD (Histrionic Personality Disorder). The story then transforms into the Mad Tea Party.

The article starts with the author doing a wonderful job of cutting and pasting the Mayo Clinic’s summary of the two conditions.

Borderline personality disorder

• Impulsive and risky behavior, such as having unsafe sex, gambling or binge eating

• Unstable or fragile self-image

• Unstable and intense relationships

• Up and down moods, often as a reaction to interpersonal stress

• Suicidal behavior or threats of self-injury

• Intense fear of being alone or abandoned

• Ongoing feelings of emptiness

• Frequent, intense displays of anger

• Stress-related paranoia that comes and goes

Histrionic personality disorder

• Constantly seeking attention

• Excessively emotional, dramatic or sexually provocative to gain attention

• Speaks dramatically with strong opinions, but few facts or details to back them up

• Easily influenced by others

• Shallow, rapidly changing emotions

• Excessive concern with physical appearance

• Thinks relationships with others are closer than they really are

Ignoring how the HPD symptoms ominously sound like AOC on a day ending in y, the two describe Ms. Heard quite well, or at least how Team Depp portrays her. Risking oversimplification, Heard is lovely on the outside but immensely damaged on the inside, the kind of damage needing both Jesus (literally) and serious therapy to unwind. Ditto, Mr. Depp. However, their war of the roses is a side issue to the real problem. It is the article in question’s author’s effort to excuse aberrant behavior by those who have a personality disorder. Yet at the same time, she demands someone suffering from one hear anything, from everyone, other than the truth about his or her condition. Why? Because — take a deep breath — it’s wrong to say someone who has a problem affecting his or her behavior … has a problem affecting his or her behavior. No, really.

Here’s where the problems start, though: While on the stand, Dr. Curry said that BPD is commonly “a predictive factor in women who implement violence against their partner.” Then she stated that women with HPD are obsessed with their looks, often using them to their advantage to get what they want. She added that when people with these disorders weren’t manipulating through looks (note that she doesn’t specify which disorder), they played “a victim or princess role.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but I also wasn’t surprised. And given how highly publicized the trial has been, I knew that there was a strong chance that personality disorders — and the type of misinformation and stigmatizing language that often surrounds them — would soon become a trending topic.

After all, this exact language is part of the reason why I was so mortified when I learned of my own BPD diagnosis in 2019. I didn’t want to be diagnosed with a condition that called me “manipulative” or “dangerous.”

Let’s run this through. You are diagnosed with a mental health condition evidenced by certain negative behaviors. Yet, you shouldn’t be, even though you have the condition, because it’s terrible saying you have behavior issues that you have. Don’t think it over too much; you’ll run out of aspirin.

In Realville, mental health issues are not dismissed as figments of an overactive imagination but accepted at face value and professionally treated through medicine, therapy, or both. They are as legitimate as noticeable physical ailments. You will always have dunderheads who believe a mental health issue sufferer should be able to get over it unassisted, anything else being a weakness. But their number grows thankfully more minor by the day. As Naomi Judd’s suicide tells us, mental health issues can cause seemingly rational people to do irrational things.

The worst mental health issue sufferers can do is deny they have a problem even as their life amply demonstrates they have a problem. Demanding others deny it as well makes a bad situation worse. Tell the truth about yourself, especially to yourself. If others don’t understand, it’s not your stigma to bear. It’s their stupidity showing.

The author then offers this piece of head-scratching inducement.

In my own relationships, I’ll admit, I have a terrible temper. I personally suffer with awful mood swings, often accompanied by rage and hysteria. Does that sound extreme? Yes. Does that make me a bad person? No.

Other than noting to not look her up on eHarmony anytime soon, no, it does not make her a bad person. It does make her a person with a significant problem needing major help. She should know that. However, insisting her situation isn’t a problem ranks right alongside saying Lizzo’s morbid obesity isn’t a physical health concern.

No one is okay because they say they are. Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward healing. However, admitting you have a problem while shouting it’s not a problem … yes, that is a problem. [source]

Scientists develop A.I. system focused on turning peoples’ thoughts into text

From CNBC.com (May 1):

Scientists have developed a noninvasive AI system focused on translating a person’s brain activity into a stream of text, according to a peer-reviewed study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The system, called a semantic decoder, could ultimately benefit patients who have lost their ability to physically communicate after suffering from a stroke, paralysis or other degenerative diseases.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin developed the system in part by using a transformer model, which is similar to those that support Google’s chatbot Bard and OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT.

The study’s participants trained the decoder by listening to several hours of podcasts within an fMRI scanner, which is a large piece of machinery that measures brain activity. The system requires no surgical implants.

Once the AI system is trained, it can generate a stream of text when the participant is listening to or imagines telling a new story. The resultant text is not an exact transcript, rather the researchers designed it with the intent of capturing general thoughts or ideas.

According to a news release, the trained system produces text that closely or precisely matches the intended meaning of the participant’s original words around half of the time.

For instance, when a participant heard the words “I don’t have my driver’s license yet” during an experiment, the thoughts were translated to, “She has not even started to learn to drive yet.” 

“For a noninvasive method, this is a real leap forward compared to what’s been done before, which is typically single words or short sentences,” Alexander Huth, one of the leaders of the study, said in the release. “We’re getting the model to decode continuous language for extended periods of time with complicated ideas.”

Participants were also asked to watch four videos without audio while in the scanner, and the AI system was able to accurately describe “certain events” from them, the release said.

As of Monday, the decoder can’t be used outside of a laboratory setting because it relies on the fMRI scanner. But the researchers believe it could eventually be used via more portable brain-imaging systems.

The leading researchers of the study have filed a PCT patent application for the technology. [source]

AI should never be able to launch nukes, US legislators say

From Pop Sci.com (May 4):

Last week, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) introduced the Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act alongside Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and numerous other bipartisan co-sponsors. The bill’s objective is as straightforward as its name: ensuring AI will never have a final say in American nuclear strategy.

“While we all try to grapple with the pace at which AI is accelerating, the future of AI and its role in society remains unclear. It is our job as Members of Congress to have responsible foresight when it comes to protecting future generations from potentially devastating consequences,” Rep. Lieu said in the bill’s announcement, adding, “AI can never be a substitute for human judgment when it comes to launching nuclear weapons.”

He’s not the only one to think so—a 2021 Human Rights Watch report co-authored by Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic stated that “[r]obots lack the compassion, empathy, mercy, and judgment necessary to treat humans humanely, and they cannot understand the inherent worth of human life.”

If passed, the bill would legally codify existing Department of Defense procedures found in its  2022 Nuclear Posture Review, which states that “in all cases, the United States will maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate and terminate nuclear weapon employment.’’ Additionally, the DOD said that no federal funds could be used to launch nukes by an automated system without “meaningful human control,” according to the bill’s announcement.

The proposed legislation comes at a time when the power of generative AI, including chatbots like ChatGPT, is increasingly part of the public discourse. But the surreal spectrum between “amusing chatbot responses” and “potential existential threats to humanity” is not lost on Lieu. He certainly never thought part of his civic responsibilities would include crafting legislation to stave off a Skynet scenario, he tells PopSci.

As a self-described “recovering computer science major,” Lieu says he is amazed by what AI programs can now accomplish. “Voice recognition is pretty amazing now. Facial recognition is pretty amazing now, although it is more inaccurate for people with darker skin,” he says, referring to long-documented patterns of algorithmic bias.

The past year’s release of generative AI programs such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, however, is when Lieu began to see the potential for harm.

“It’s creating information and predicting scenarios,” he says of the available tech. “That leads to different concerns, including my view that AI, no matter how smart it gets, should never have operative control of nuclear weapons.”

Lieu believes it’s vital to begin discussing AI regulations to curtail three major consequences: Firs, the proliferation of misinformation and other content “harmful to society.” Second is reining in AI that, while not existentially threatening for humanity, “can still just straight-up kill you.” He references San Francisco’s November 2022 multi-vehicle crash that injured multiple people and was allegedly caused by a Tesla engaged in its controversial Autopilot self-driving mode.

“When your cellphone malfunctions, it isn’t going at 50 miles-per-hour,” he says.

Finally, there is the “AI that can destroy the world, literally,” says Lieu. And this is where he believes the Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act can help, at least in some capacity. Essentially, if the bill becomes law, AI systems could still provide analysis and strategic suggestions regarding nuclear events, but ultimate say-so will rest firmly within human hands.

Going forward, Lieu says there needs to be a larger regulatory approach to handling AI issues due to the fact Congress “doesn’t have the bandwidth or capacity to regulate AI in every single application.” He’s open to a set of AI risk standards agreed upon by federal agencies, or potentially a separate agency dedicated to generative and future advanced AI. On Thursday, the Biden administration unveiled plans to offer $140 million in funding to new research centers aimed at monitoring and regulating AI development.

When asked if he fears society faces a new “AI arms race,” Lieu concedes it is “certainly a possibility,” but points to the existence of current nuclear treaties. “Yes, there is a nuclear weapons arms race, but it’s not [currently] an all-out arms race. And so it’s possible to not have an all-out AI arms race,” says Lieu.

“Countries are looking at this, and hopefully they will get together to say, ‘Here are just some things we are not going to let AI do.’” [source]

Probably a good idea. Even self-driven cars makes me nervous.

Excerpts from “The Hundred-Year Marathon” book Part 3

At my [the author’s] invitation, three graduate students from China’s National Foreign Affairs University toured the museum with me. They were in training to become diplomats, and they were well educated from the perspective of the Chinese Communist government. They did not, however, know much about the one hundred thousand Chinese civilians killed by the Boxer rebels, or the role of America’s aid to China in World War II, or the death of twenty million Chinese in Mao’s political campaign and famine from 1959 to 1962, or the death of millions more in a Cultural Revolution that closed the nation’s universities and tore China apart from 1966 to 1976. And although they had heard of the Tiananmen Square protests, they knew better than to talk about them.

The graduate students were the product of a decision made by Deng Xiaoping in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre—which occurred a mere two hundred yards from the museum that doesn’t mention it. After 1989, Deng chose to align with Li Peng and other hard-liners to solidify Party control. Never again, the leaders vowed, would China’s students build Statues of Liberty, quote from the Declaration of Independence, and look to America’s values as admirable alternatives to those of the Chinese Communist Party.* Within a year, textbooks had been rewritten to cast America as China’s archvillain, and new policies and regulations ensured that only this official view of America made it into China’s classrooms and libraries.

In the latest Chinese version of history, the first American villain is President John Tyler. In the Treaty of Wangxia, signed in 1844, Tyler imposed on China what Mao called “the first unequal treaty signed as a result of U.S. aggression against China.” A launching pad for American manipulation of the Chinese, the treaty opened the door to U.S. “illegal actions to exploit China,” according to the textbooks assigned to Chinese students.

………….

In the United States, of course, Lincoln is remembered as the honest rail-splitter who held the Union together, freed the slaves, and paid for his principles with his life. But in China, he’s just another brutal, thuggish American imperialist. A professor at Renmin University named Shi Yinhong has argued that Lincoln wanted “China to be dominated, or even exploited, within the international community.”

Source: The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015) by Michael Pillsbury.

*Dictators ban any references to liberty because it might make the people want freedom and that might start a revolution like the American revolution and that scares the heck out of the ruling class.