Displaying posts published in

December 2022

Jack Dorsey Accepts ‘Blame’ for Twitter Scandals By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/12/14/jack-dorsey-accepts-blame-for-twitter-scandals-n1653532

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, admits he “totally gave up” fighting back against prominent activists in the company and takes full responsibility for the social media platform’s many failures that have been exposed in the ongoing release of the Twitter Files.

“I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead,” Dorsey began. “1. Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control. 2. Only the original author may remove content they produce. 3. Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.”

“The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles,” he conceded. “This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms (lack of dual-class shares being a key one). I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company.”

Dorsey condemned the “dangerous” insults on his “former colleagues” in his screed.

The Real-Life Matrix: ‘EctoLife’ Artificial Womb Facility to Engineer, Grow Babies in ‘Factory’ by Catherine Salgado

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2022/12/14/the-real-life-matrix-ectolife-artificial-womb-facility-to-engineer-grow-babies-in-factory-n1653718

If you thought the millions of plastic pods artificially “growing” human babies in The Matrix were creepy, wait until you see the animation of “EctoLife,” set to be the world’s first artificial womb facility. A recent video posted online by its inventor, Hashem Al-Ghaili, enthusiastically described a facility where tens of thousands of babies could be engineered and gestated in artificial “wombs” with constant monitoring to check for biological defects and growth. EctoLife claims it will engineer the most “viable and genetically superior embryo” as it is “reinventing evolution,” producing up to “30,000 lab-grown babies per year.”

As EctoLife asserted, “Our goal is to provide you with an intelligent offspring that truly reflects your smart choices.” Because eugenics led to such wonderful results in the 20th century!

Remember how leftists have been telling us for years, and continue to tell us, that we’re overpopulating the earth? EctoLife’s ad explicitly said it is “designed to help countries that are suffering from severe population decline”—something that most of the world is suffering from, including America, by the way. Turns out that forgoing reproducing to pursue high-powered careers, luxury vacations, and an end to “climate change” was not such a bright idea. The solution is not being to have babies the way God intended, of course, but to engineer and grow them in fake wombs. That way, “artificial intelligence” (AI) can monitor your baby for “genetic abnormalities” (it’s unclear what would happen to babies who turn out to be supposedly imperfect).

Are we finally reaching peak climate hysteria? The eco-derangement of the elites is a threat to reason, freedom and jobs.Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/09/are-we-finally-reaching-peak-climate-hysteria/

The madness of the greens is peaking. This week a leading eco-politician in the UK, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, referred to the building of a new coalmine as a ‘crime against humanity’. Take that in. Once upon a time it was mass murder, extermination, enslavement and the forced deportation of a people that were considered crimes against humanity. Now the building of a mine in Cumbria in north-west England that will create 500 new jobs and produce 2.8million tonnes of coal a year is referred to in such terms. Perhaps the coalmine bosses should be packed off to The Hague. Maybe the men who’ll dig the coal should be forced alongside the likes of ISIS to account for their genocidal behaviour.

We cannot let Ms Lucas’s crazed comments just slide by. We need to reflect on how we arrived at a situation where a mainstream politician, one feted by the media establishment, can liken digging for coal to crimes of extermination. It was in the Guardian – where else? – that Ms Lucas made her feverish claims. On Wednesday, when the government gave the go-ahead to the Cumbria mine, the first new coalmine in Britain for 30 years, Lucas wrote that the whole thing is ‘truly terrible’. This ‘climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine’ is nothing short of a ‘climate crime against humanity’, she said.

It isn’t though, is it? Sorry to be pedantic but it is not a crime to extract coal from the earth. If it were, the leaders of China – where they produce 13million tonnes of coal a day , rather putting into perspective the Cumbria mine’s 2.8million tonnes a year – would be languishing in the clink. I look forward to Ms Lucas performing a citizen’s arrest on Xi Jinping. It certainly is not a crime against humanity. That term entered popular usage during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. It refers to an act of evil of such enormity that it can be seen as an assault on all of humankind. Earth to Ms Lucas: extracting coal to make steel – what the Cumbria coal will mostly be used for – is not an affront to humankind. I’ll tell you what is an affront, though: speaking about the burning of coal in the same language that is used to refer to the burning of human beings. That, Caroline, is despicable.

This Winter We Will See the Dangerous Results of Climate Alarmism By Peter J. Wallison & Benjamin Zycher

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/12/12/this_winter_we_will_see_the_dangerous_results_of_climate_alarmism_869598.html

Despite alarmist media claims, there is no evidence that a climate “crisis” looms in our future, let alone imminent danger of a climate catastrophe. Nevertheless, we are now witnessing decisions by the Biden administration and other countries that could endanger lives around the world this winter.

In an effort to reduce GHG emissions, the administration has taken actions resulting in a sharp decline in current and prospective investment in U.S. oil and natural gas production, raising prices for fossil fuels both in the U.S. and globally. This means that U.S. policies alone will cause severe increases in the price of fossil fuels used for heating homes, schools and businesses in Europe and elsewhere, risking serious illness and death for large portions of the world’s population, especially the poor. The Russian cut in deliveries of natural gas to Europe have exacerbated that effect. The New York Times (NYT) recently reported that people were cutting Europe’s forests for firewood because fossil fuels were too costly or unavailable. This reflects the desperation that unnecessary and shortsighted U.S. and European policies have created.

Yet, ignoring this reality and looking for alarming headlines, most daily media reports about climate change repeat the false claim that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will cause a climate catastrophe in the near future. With this as a foundation, it seems that every policy must be directed to preventing this “disaster.”

A recent article in the NYT, quoting a UN report, could be labelled Exhibit A. Titled “Climate Pledges Fizzle as Havoc Looms for Globe,” the opening paragraph, “Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing the Earth toward a future with more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heatwaves and species extinction,” uncritically accepts the UN’s unfounded alarmism. By ignoring the readily available relevant science summarized below, the NYT and others seem to be trying to scare the public into supporting desperate actions in America and abroad that ostensibly will prevent catastrophic global climate change.

Study Finds NGOs Shipping Illegal Immigrants Across The U.S. — Republicans Respond With An Amnesty Bill

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/15/study-finds-ngos-shipping-illegal-immigrants-across-the-u-s-republicans-respond-with-an-amnesty-bill/

Over the weekend, a massive caravan of more than 5,000 crossed the southern border in what is described as “a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.”

Where will these illegals end up? Most likely, everywhere inside the U.S., courtesy of several non-profit groups that are working with the Biden administration in an under-the-radar mass resettlement effort.

An investigation by the Heritage Foundation tracked more than 30,000 cell phones that arrived at Customs and Border Control facilities or dozens of non-profits at or near the southern border in January 2022. It then tracked those phones over time to see where they ended up.

For example, Heritage identified more than 400 cell phones at the CBP station in Del Rio, Texas, less than five miles from the border. Those phones later showed up in more than 40 different states.

Heritage also found more than 30,000 phones at more than 30 “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) in Texas and California. (This amounts to one-fifth of those known to have crossed illegally that month.)

The NGOs included groups such as the International Rescue Committee, World Relief, Mission Border Hope, Refugee Services of Texas, as well as Jewish Family Service and Catholic Charities.

“Overflow from Customs and Border Protection is being transferred to these organizations so
that Border Patrol avoids overcrowded facilities,” the Heritage memo announcing its findings states. “These organizations apply for, and receive, taxpayer money to provide processing and transportation services and infrastructure to facilitate the migration of illegal aliens into the interior of the country.”

Catholic Charities alone appears to have handled more than 3,000 illegals in January, and then transported them to 433 different congressional districts.

How Fusion Works and Why It’s a Breakthrough American science scores a triumph, though it’ll be decades before it yields a viable energy source. By Steven E. Koonin and Robert L. Powell

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-fusion-works-and-why-its-a-breakthrough-national-ignition-facility-laser-beam-laboratory-science-nuclear-weapon-11671052081?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Energy Department has announced the first gain in energy from fusion in a laboratory—the first time fusion reactions produced more energy than it took to induce them. Last week 192 laser beams at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility heated and compressed a capsule of hydrogen to previously unattainable temperatures and pressures, igniting fusion reactions that produced 50% more energy than the laser beams had delivered.

Nuclear reactions can release the energy that binds together protons and neutrons in an atom’s nucleus. Nuclear power plants use fission, not fusion. Fission releases energy when a large uranium nucleus splits into two radioactive fragments, which carry the energy as they fly apart.

Fusion, by contrast, relies on the universe’s smallest atom, hydrogen. Energy is released when two hydrogen nuclei combine to produce a helium nucleus and a neutron. Unlike fission, fusion produces no radioactive fragments. Fusion is much harder to induce than fission, since the hydrogen nuclei must be heated to nearly 100 million degrees Celsius to overcome the electrical repulsion that hinders their reaction. Stars run on fusion energy, but on Earth it has previously been released only in thermonuclear explosions. This stunning new result in laboratory fusion opens doors for unprecedented studies in basic and applied science.

The concept of laser fusion had been pursued without success since the 1960s and it became a central part of a 1990s program to ensure continued confidence in the nuclear-weapons stockpile without underground testing. Although scientists knew that high-powered laser beams could probe the properties of matter relevant to the early stages of detonating a nuclear weapon, the goal of laser fusion would allow for studies in the later stages. It would also challenge and demonstrate the ability to understand and predict the dynamics of hot, dense matter more generally.

Construction of the ignition facility at the Livermore lab began in 1997, and experiments attempting ignition began soon after construction was completed in 2009. The design and construction of the world’s most powerful laser was an engineering triumph, but three years of failed attempts to achieve fusion ignition brought the program close to cancellation in 2012. But the program continued with a more deliberate approach that included outside peer review.

The Extremists the Biden Administration Does Not See by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19232/israel-palestinian-extremists

If [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir are “extremists” – at least in the eyes of the Americans – then under what category do Faraj and Al-Sheikh fall, as well as many other Palestinian officials who were previously involved in terrorism?

These US officials expressing concern over the rise of the far-right parties in Israel… do not seem to have any problem at all with the growing incitement and continuing terrorist attacks by Palestinians against Israel. Those onslaughts against Israelis, carried out in both the West Bank and inside Israel, include shootings, stabbings, car-rammings and the hurling of rocks and firebombs.

The US officials ignore that Hamas, the Palestinian terror group whose charter openly calls for the obliteration of Israel, remains more popular than ever among Palestinians.

The students who voted for Hamas are saying that they do not recognize Israel’s right to exist; do not believe in any peace process with Israel and, like Hamas, are totally opposed to the two-state solution that the Biden administration has been advocating day and night.

Like Hamas, the students believe only in a solution that would see Israel replaced by an Iranian-backed terror state controlled by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This scenario does not seem to bother the Biden administration in the slightest.

To see what real extremism looks like, those voicing concern over the return of the right wing to power in Israel only need to catch a glimpse of what is happening under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are full of armed terrorists and gunmen who are openly stating their intention to kill Jews.

Some even say that it was precisely actions of the Palestinian terrorists that spurred this “extremist” group in Israel to win the election in the first place.

If the Biden administration wants to see real extremism, it only needs to turn its gaze to the failing state of Lebanon, now under the de facto control of Iran and its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. The Biden administration could also take a look at Syria, where tens of thousands of people have been slaughtered since the beginning of the civil war in 2011.

Real extremism is on display every day on the streets of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and the Gaza Strip; it claims the lives of Jews virtually every week.

The real extremists are also the Palestinian leaders who deprive their people of the international aid and encourage their youths to kill Jews. The real extremists are those who are responsible for firing rockets at Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip. The real extremists are those who do not believe in the right of Israel to exist and work non-stop to destroy it.

There is no comparison between the alleged extremists in Israel, and the murderous terrorists in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It is high time for the Biden administration to open its eyes to that fact.

The Biden administration has reportedly expressed reservations about the rise of far-right parties in the recent Israeli election. The administration, however, has failed to express reservations about the continuous incitement against Israel by Palestinian leaders and media outlets.

Weimar: Intoxication and Calamity: Wolfgang Kasper

Professor Harald Jähner, a German cultural historian, became well known in the English-speaking world as the author of a best-seller about post-war Germany, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955 (2021). Now he has published another remarkable book, Höhenrausch. This book, so far available only in German, deals with the hedonistic, turbulent years of the Weimar Republic. Given the success of his first book, I expect it to be published before long in English.

The history of the short-lived Weimar Republic (1918 to 1933), Jähner justifiably complains, is always described from the hindsight standpoint of the Nazi takeover, as if that outcome had been inevitable. In this book, through quotes from diarists, letter-writers, film-makers, journalists, song-writers, cabaret performers and novelists, the facts and feelings are retold as they appeared to observers at the time. The name Hitler thus appears in a substantial context for the first time only after 74 per cent of the text, namely when we read about the growing brutality of the storm-troopers during the incipient Depression.

The Great War ended with the signature of the armistice on November 11, 1918, at Compiègne near Paris by a new, non-imperial government in Berlin. Most German soldiers were still entrenched outside the territory of the Reich. Now, many returned home convinced that they had been betrayed. The defeat was a sudden, abstract event, the result of a short negotiation in a faraway place. Many returned servicemen resented not only the social-democratic “peace mongers”, but also the wartime emancipation of women. Many among them detested the new republic, whose democratic constitution had been negotiated in a theatre at Weimar, as “Red Berlin” was deemed too dangerous. Some 400,000 of these humiliated soldiers remained in more-or-less organised units (Freikorps), while the communists were certain that the momentum of the Russian revolution would now sweep westward. They preached and practised violence to promote their cause.

The new republic’s social-democratic (SPD) government sought help from returned servicemen to fight the communist threat. And fight they did. The communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and the effervescent Rosa Luxemburg (originally Rozalia Luksenburg) were among the more than 1200 people murdered by the Freikorps. The communists of course engaged in the same sort of extreme cancel culture.

How Xi Misreads the Taiwan Battlefield: Frank Mount

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/how-xi-misreads-the-taiwan-battlefield/

EXCERPTS:

In any war between China on the one hand and Taiwan, Japan, the US and their allies on the other, Chinese vessels of all kinds will be prevented from significant access to the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese (and Russian) Pacific fleets will almost certainly be enclosed in their coastal waters.

This is because the First Island Chain running parallel to the mainland from Sakhalin Island in the north down through Japan, the Ryukyu islands, Taiwan, and on to the Philippine Islands and Indonesia, is a natural barrier now being fortified by the Japanese and Taiwanese militaries and the US Marines. The Commander of the US Marine Corps, General David Berger, recently announced that the Marines were changing their policies and missions in reaction to developments in Asia. He said a “new mission” for the Marines would be “island hopping” in the Indo-Pacific armed with anti-ship missiles to meet the growing China threat. (see The Times, London dispatch, Weekend Australian 6-7/11/21). Presumably, they would carry Tomahawk anti-ship missiles and be supported by US specifically designed shallow-hulled coastal patrol vessels, armed with the same Tomahawks, as well as Japanese submarines.

This would make transit through the Chain almost impossible for hostile surface ships and submarines. One of the difficulties for Chinese and Russian submarines is the difference between the relatively shallow waters of the seas between mainland China and the First Island Chain and the vast depths and trenches of the Pacific Ocean east of the Chain. Submarines would have to surface or near surface to transit the Chain either way, making them easily detectable and vulnerable.

Furthermore, at the southern end of the Chain, other US forces along with the navies of Australia, France, Britain and hopefully India and Indonesia could block Chinese and Russian naval and merchant shipping transiting the Malacca Strait and contiguous Indonesian waterways and passages. As a result, China could suffer a serious trade blockade.

The Wasteland of Leftist Compassion Compassion is not compassion when it is manipulated to fulfill a corporate socialist agenda of turning America’s cities into high-tech pens for human livestock and depopulating rural areas. By Edward Ring

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/13/the-wasteland-of-leftist-compassion/

Compassion is one of the greatest of human virtues. But effective compassion comes with an obligation to do more than what merely feels and sounds good. Public policies motivated by compassion must also consider the full complexity of the challenge—the unintended consequences and the reality of human nature—and strike a balance between what is desired and what is possible. Often the most beneficial expressions of compassion appear harsh and punitive, yet in offering more lasting and comprehensive solutions, do more to alleviate human suffering.

Without taking a balanced and holistic approach to compassion, special interests hijack public policy and reap perpetual profits working on problems that never go away. For them, ineffective compassion is good business. But it leaves behind a wasteland.

If envy and resentment are the currency of the Left—driving, as it does, their attacks on privilege and their demands for equity—then compassion is the gold that backs their currency. Emotional appeals to voters and politicians demanding displays of compassion are the means by which the Left claims the moral high ground. And in those appeals, and the misguided policies that result, entire industries are created—industries populated by individuals whose careers depend on perpetuating the fraud.

In many cases, the consequences of unbalanced compassion are obvious, as anyone can see if they visit the coastal cities of California. It was compassion that motivated state legislators to decriminalize hard drug addiction, now dubbed “substance use disorder.” Compassion was the moral justification to empty California’s prisons and downgrade property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. 

Compassion compelled politicians and judges to rewrite laws that kept mentally ill people safely off the streets.