Ryan here. In case you don’t know who I am, I’m the founder of this hugely popular and culturally significant website Underground Newswire. I am also the Managing editor over at Stillness in the Storm and cofounder/cohost at Vigilant News.
On top of running 2 websites, writing up show notes and filming vigilant news, cold calling congressional candidates for interviews, trying to get a nonprofit up and running, and attending events across the country, I’ve now taken on a side gig writing scripts for an upcoming TV series.
The scriptwriting deal is going to fund the Vigilant News website (which is looking sexy and will be going live in a matter of weeks) and the creation of another show (to be named) which will be more goofy and fun although still informative. All that being said, it is extremely time-consuming writing an entire season of a show with a rapidly approaching deadline, and on top of that, we’ll be in Myrtle Beach with the People’s General Michael Flynn, Clay Clark, Kash Patel, and others between now and the deadline.
So, it pains me to say this, but the Underground Newswire will be on hold until this storm of time-consuming projects and events blows over. Not only that, but Vigilant News will be going down to 2 shows a week TEMPORARILY.
If all goes well we will be back in full swing by mid-June. Of course, if something insane happens between now and then (which seems highly likely considering all of the things happening presently ) then I’ll pop in and make some posts, OR you can check Stillness in the Storm, which will be chugging along unhindered through all of this.
In the meantime, you can still catch Vigilant News over @ Rumble until the website’s finished.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been a great amount of misinformation coming from Russia, Ukraine, US, and Western media. It is difficult to unwind what is true and what is not. But one thing we know – the ‘Ghose of Ukraine’ didn’t recently die. We know this because he never lived.
We’ve seen great thinkers like Adam Kinzinger get embarrassed by the information coming out of Ukraine. Kinzinger was fooled into believing that the name of the ‘Ghost of Ukraine’ was revealed and it was none other than Samuyil Hyde (an Internet meme).
Kissinger famously fell for an internet prank back in February.
But the real problem with Kinzinger’s identification of the Ghost of Ukraine, is that this fearless fighter is not real. Kinzinger was fooled here as well. The Gateway Pundit identified parts of the imagery used in this story were from a 2019 article published in Ukraine at Censor.net. Other parts of the imagery come from a video game.
But the story of the Ghost of Ukraine lives on.
Sadly, the Ghost of Kiev reportedly died in March. The London Times reported that Major Stepan Tarabalka died in March during a dog fight with Russians. Daily Caller reported:
The alleged pilot has been identified by local reports as Major Stepan Tarabalka and was killed when his MiG-29 was shot down during combat on March 13, according to a Friday report from The London Times.
The London Times also reported that the publication “confirmed the identity of the fighter pilot and his death.” Tarabalka allegedly is credited with 40 kills in the air.
This is a prime example of how Western media has polluted the airwaves with propaganda and not facts. How much of the reports on the Ghost of Kyiv are real, is anybody’s guess.
After the American public spent more than five long years being relentlessly assailed with the narrative that Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign [and it’s subsequent presidency] was compromised by Russian agents, not only has the truth emerged about the vicious dirty trick operation launched by the Hillary Clinton team, the September 2020 declassification of CIA briefing notes created in July of 2016 raised very real questions about which campaign it actually was that had Russian agents embedded within it.
But none of those questions were even asked, much less answered at the time by the mainstream press or anyone in either party in Washington DC.
I have been asking the pertinent questions ever since former CIA Director John Brennan’s briefing notes were declassified and publicly released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. I wrote entire columns about the issue, both at The Epoch Times and at Uncover DC.
Now, if you haven’t heard about the Brennan briefing notes, what was in them, who he briefed and when, you’re probably not going to believe it at first when I lay this out, but this is all verified with evidence. It’s not speculation or wish-casting.
For dramatic effect, I’m going to go over the boring version of the timeline that leaves out just one crucial detail. When the briefing notes have been covered in the news media, this is the version everybody sees:
On July 26, 2016, a strategy meeting of the top level of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign took place.
During that strategy meeting, Clinton’s top foreign policy advisor presented her with a plan for her approval.
The plan involved paying political operatives in the campaign’s employ to manufacture fake Trump/Russia collusion scandals in order to distract the American public from her ongoing email server scandal.
After having the plan explained to her, Hillary Clinton gave her approval
The CIA soon learned about this top-level Clinton campaign strategy meeting, and CIA Director John Brennan went to the White House to brief President Obama and several members of the National Security Counsel about both the plan to vilify President Trump with fake Russian scandals and Clinton’s approval of the plan.
More than a month later, the CIA sent an investigative referral to the FBI about the Russian intelligence analysis to James Comey and Peter Strzok.
OK now I’m going go through that same timeline again. See if you **spot** what I added in.
On July 26, 2016, a strategy meeting of the top level of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign took place.
During that strategy meeting, Clinton’s top foreign policy advisor presented her with a plan he and others had come up with for her approval.
The plan involved paying political operatives in the campaign’s employ to manufacture fake Trump/Russia collusion scandals in order to distract the American public from her ongoing email server scandal.
After having the plan explained to her, Hillary Clinton gave her approval.
Russian intelligence agents very quickly learned what was discussed at this Clinton campaign strategy meeting, and created their own intelligence analysis of the meeting.
The CIA soon learned about this top-level Clinton campaign strategy meeting when it intercepted the Russian intelligence analysis, and CIA Director John Brennan went to the White House to brief President Obama and several members of the National Security Counsel about both the plan to vilify President Trump with fake Russian scandals and Clinton’s approval of the plan
I said none of that above is speculation. I’m going to show you the documentation that supports the claims. You’ll see every one of the 6 points above is supported with documentary evidence.
The Brennan handwritten notes from his briefing with President Obama and members of the NSC at the White House either very late in July 2016 or early August 2016:
The September 2020 investigative referral that the CIA sent to the FBI:
The Ratcliffe letter to Congress in September of 2020 announcing the declassification of both Brennan’s briefing notes and the CIA investigative referral:
Ratcliffe’s letter to the US Congress that accompanied the declassified documents when they were made public:
As you can see, all six points in the timeline are fully supported by the documentation that was declassified, even down to the fact it was Hillary Clinton’s chief foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan that presented her with the plan to target Trump with fake Russia scandals.
How Did The Russians Find Out So Fast?
The one thing **everybody avoids discussing** for the past two years is exactly how Russian intelligence agents were able to so quickly create a detailed analysis of this key Clinton campaign strategy meeting where the dirty trick operation targeting Trump with fake Russia scandals was presented to her and she approved it.
The one question nobody dares ask is: how did the Russians find out almost instantly what was discussed at this meeting and get an analysis of it created, which allowed the CIA to intercept it and then quickly go brief Obama and members of his NSC about it?
IF that Russian intelligence analysis was real, then that means the Hillary Clinton for President campaign either had a Russian agent embedded at a high level or someone at the highest level of the campaign was unwittingly handing the details to a Russian agent.
“That’s Just More Russian Disinformation!”
The one objection that’s going to be immediately raised when this question comes up of how Russian intelligence got this info so quickly is that the intelligence analysis the CIA intercepted was just Russian propaganda; it wasn’t real. The Hillary Clinton campaign never held a strategy meeting in July of 2016 where Jake Sullivan presented her with a plan to vilify Trump by manufacturing fake Russia scandals. It never happened.
The problem with this objection is that Brennan and the CIA took the Russian intelligence analysis they’d intercepted so seriously that Brennan went to the White House to brief the President and the NSC about it.
And then more than a month later, in September the CIA was still taking the Russian analysis seriously when they sent the investigative referral to both then-FBI Director James Comey and Peter Strzok.
While two years ago back in September/October of 2020 it was pretty darn easy to dismiss the new declassification as just ‘Russian disinformation’, a whole lot more evidence has surfaced since then about the fact that the Clinton campaign did indeed launch a dirty trick operation that targeted the Trump campaign with fake Russia scandals.
If the Russian intel analysis that the CIA intercepted and briefed Obama about is fake, it just so happens it was an amazingly accurate fake.
Two years ago several key facts about the manufacture of the fake Steele Dossier and Alfa Bank hoaxes by Clinton’s private operatives had not yet been made public. For that reason the mainstream press had to expend little effort in simply dismissing the Ratcliffe declassification as ‘mere Russian disinformation’.
John Brennan himself, when braced with the implications of his own briefing notes in October of 2020, had this to say to Jake Tapper on CNN:
So when asked about these notes and what they say, Brennan obfuscates and lies about his own briefing notes.
The CIA intercepted a Russian intelligence analysis of a very key top level Clinton campaign strategy meeting in which her top foreign policy advisor presented her with a plan to vilify Trump with fake Russia scandals as a way to distract the public from her own email server scandal. And Clinton approved the plan. THIS IS WHAT BRENNAN’S OWN NOTES SAY.
What the former CIA Director artfully dodges in this video above is the real reason the CIA sent an investigative referral to the FBI: they wanted to know who at the very top of the Clinton campaign was either a Russian agent or blabbing details to a Russian agent.
People miss the mark when they think what the CIA was asking the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division to do was to investigate to see if Hillary Clinton’s campaign had indeed approved and launched a dirty trick operation targeting Donald Trump. NOTHING ABOUT THAT HAS TO DO WITH COUNTERINTELLIGENCE.
No, what then-FBI Director James Comey and Peter Strzok were being asked to investigate and find out was **who in the Clinton campaign was compromised by Russia**. THAT is the kind of thing a counterintelligence investigation looks into.
How did a foreign intelligence service get all the details of this Clinton meeting?
And I watched 2 years ago as nobody cared to even ask these questions, much less answer them.
But I have hope that someday these important questions will be addressed. Because I suspect Special Counsel John Durham is very interested in how Russian intelligence so quickly got an analysis of the meeting.
I believe Durham’s very interested in anything having to do with the Clinton dirty trick campaign targeting Trump for fake Russia scandals, and that would include how Brennan came to the White House in mid-2016 to brief both President Obama and key members of the NSC about it.
It is **extremely likely** that current President Joe Biden was in the room when CIA Director Brennan briefed Obama and other NSC members in mid-2016 about the coming Trump/Russia hoaxes that the Clinton campaign was preparing to release.
They all knew. By mid-2016. Long before any FISA warrant application was presented to spy on Carter Page.
They all knew, nobody was fooled by the Clinton private operatives coming to them with the Steele Dossier hoax or the Alfa Bank hoax.
And they played along anyway and pretended they didn’t know anything at all about a dirty trick campaign using paid operatives being sent to them by Hillary Clinton. So they could spy on and investigate and sabotage Donald J. Trump.
A Colorado man has tested positive for an H5 bird flu virus, the first such case in the U.S., health officials said April 28.
The Colorado health department saidthe man, who is younger than 40, had been working on a commercial farm with poultry that, according to the CDC, was presumably infected with H5N1.
He reported fatigue as his only symptom and is now in isolation and being treated with the flu antiviral drug oseltamivir.
It’s unclear whether the exposure resulted in an infection, according to statements from the health agencies. Officials from the Colorado health department said a positive test result came from a single nasal specimen. The CDC confirmed that result April 27, though it said repeat testing has been negative.
“Because the person was in close contact with infected poultry, the virus may have been present in the person’s nose without causing infection,” the Colorado health department said. The CDC said whether the positive test was the result of “surface contamination of the nasal membrane” cannot be determined now.
“The appropriate public health response at this time is to assume this is an infection and take actions to contain and treat,” the CDC said, adding risk to the general public remains low.
The CDC has been monitoring H5N1 outbreaks among wild birds and poultry since late 2021.
The agency said it has been tracking the health of more than 2,500 people with exposure to infected birds, and this marks the only detected case. The first such human infection caused by the predominant group of H5N1 viruses now circulating was reported in the U.K. in December.
“So it’s definitely not from nature and it’s definitely not an accident come out in a lab. Also, it starts from Wuhan and the Wuhan Institute of Virology get involved but I need to tell people that this is not an accident. Because I work in that lab I know how safe it is and the lab actually can never cause big pandemic world-wide and this is intentionally bring out of the lab and released in the community. And there are a lot of motives behind that but the most important thing is Chinese Communist Government develop this and they want to use it to destroy the world order. And I think that because it’s out of control we never saw it out of control in Wuhan.”
The Chinese virologist came to several conclusions about the virus, chiefly that it could, despite claims, travel between humans, that it had no animal host, and that it was lab-created.
She fled China after her discovery that the virus was produced in a lab and that Beijing was covering it all up.
What would China have to gain from this virus? Disruption of the western world order.
The western world was brought to an absolute stall by COVID-19, as economies shut down and elections were disrupted. When the virus was first released, we had a booming economy and a fantastic president, and many other western nations were doing well. Within a year, the “leader” of the US is an incompetent fool and the economy was a wreck. The rest of the free world experienced similar levels of disruption.
China, did, however, overestimate their ability to control the virus. Or perhaps, they simply didn’t care how many of their own citizens it affected.
Yesterday, April 27, there was a pre-trial hearing in the Michael Sussmann case relating to various evidentiary issues. For the uninitiated, Sussmann a former Perkins Coie partner, and former attorney for the DNC/Clinton Campaign (and Rodney Joffe), has been charged by Special Counsel John Durham with providing false statements to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in the fall of 2016. Here is more background on his indictment.
We have the full transcript of yesterday’s hearing (link at the bottom). Here are some of the most notable disclosures:
The Special Counsel’s “ongoing investigation” into Rodney Joffe. The Special Counseltold the court that while Joffe and Sussmann pushed the Alfa Bank/Yotaphone hoax to the CIA in February 2017, this false information was also pushed “to another branch of government, to the legislative branch” at a later time. According to the Special Counsel:
The Special Counsel’s statement reminds us of this letter we discussed from Rodney Joffe’s attorney to the attorneys for Michael Sussmann, stating the Yota phone-related allegations percolated “through various branches of the government and around the private sector after that date, in various forms.”
Rodney Joffe’s exposure and 18 U.S.C. 1031. The Special Counsel was understandably hesitant to get too deep into what they have on Rodney Joffe. However, when Sussmann’s attorneys brought up the fact that Joffe couldn’t be charged due to the 5-year statute of limitations, the Special Counsel responded that “certain statutes of limitations are longer than five years.”
The court asked for an example, and the Special Counsel referenced 18 U.S.C. 1031, “which involves defrauding the government in connection with procurement and contract matters.” This has to do with the Georgia Tech/DARPA contract. In the Special Counsel’s own words:
Laura Seago from Fusion GPS will (likely) testify at trial. We previously reported that Seago was identified as the “tech maven” the government expected to call at trial. At this hearing was the first time we saw Seago’s name explicitly mentioned as the Fusion GPS witness.
Christopher Steele will not be a witness. Sussmann’s lawyer informed the court that the Special Counsel stated on April 26 that Steele is “out of the country and isn’t likely to be a witness.”
In fact, Steele is not cooperating with the Special Counsel.
Should the fact that the U.S. economy actually contracted during the first quarter actually surprise any of us? Since the start of 2022, there has been crisis after crisis, and now the war in Ukraine is depressing economic activity all over the planet. What we are facing could most definitely be described as a “perfect storm”, and the truth is that this storm isn’t going to go away anytime soon. But where do we go from here? Will the U.S. economy bounce back, or will this new economic downturn soon become even worse? Most economic optimists are assuming that the former will be true, while many economic realists are issuing dire warnings about what is ahead.
I was actually thinking of writing about something else today, but I knew that my regular readers would want me to talk about this…
Gross domestic product unexpectedly declined at a 1.4% annualized pace in the first quarter, marking an abrupt reversal for an economy coming off its best performance since 1984, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
The negative growth rate missed even the subdued Dow Jones estimate of a 1% gain for the quarter, but the initial estimate for Q1 was the worst since the pandemic-induced recession in 2020.
So what caused this “sudden” downturn? According to CNN, there are quite a few factors that can be blamed…
A push by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and combat high inflation. Supply chain shortages. An ongoing global health crisis. And of course, the geopolitical earthquake caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is also threatening to create a world food crisis.
If the U.S. economy shrinks again in the second quarter, that will officially meet the definition of a “recession”.
But as John Williams of shadowstats.com has pointed out, if honest numbers were being used the U.S. economy would still be in a recession that started all the way back at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
Everybody pretty much realizes that economic conditions are not great right now.
So are brighter days just around the corner? That is what some pundits seem to think…
The US economy will return to growth during the second quarter, according to RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas. “Without a doubt,” he said.
“This is noise; not signal,” Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson wrote in a report. “The economy is not falling into recession.”
Maybe they will be right.
But if the economy is so strong, then why are foreclosure filings absolutely soaring?…
Last month, 33,333 properties across the U.S. faced foreclosure, a 181 percent jump from March 2021 and 29 percent pop from February, according to a report by foreclosure tracker Attom. The first quarter saw 78,271 properties with a foreclosure filing, a 39 percent from the previous quarter and 132 percent from last year.
Needless to say, there are other experts that have a much more negative view on what is ahead.
For example, Nancy Lazar is warning of a “synchronized” global recession…
Piper Sandler chief global economist Nancy Lazar warned on Monday that the world is in the early stages of a “very significant” and “synchronized” recession.
In an appearance on “Mornings with Maria” Monday, Lazar noted that a recession is expected outside of the United States.
“It’s going to be a global recession pulling down [the] Euro zone in particular,” she told host Maria Bartiromo. “It looks like China GDP [Gross domestic product] in the second quarter could also be negative.”
Actually, if all we suffer is a significant global recession that will be really good news.
Because right at this moment inflation is dramatically spiking all over the globe, we are witnessing the largest land war in Europe since World War II, and the UN is telling us that we are heading into a horrific worldwide food crisis.
An increasing number of Americans are starting to realize that things are moving in the wrong direction. In Gallup’s April survey, only 18 percent of Americans rated economic conditions as “good”, and only 2 percent rated them as “excellent”…
The GDP news comes on the heels of newly released polling data from Gallup that suggested that economy confidence is extremely low among the American public.
More than four in ten (42%) of Americans said that economic conditions in America were “poor,” while another 38% said that they were only “fair” in Gallup’s April survey. Just 2% said economic conditions were “excellent,” while 18% said they were “good.”
Those are terrible numbers, and they have very serious implications for the Democrats in the fall.
But instead of focusing on fixing the economy, Joe Biden wants Congress to give him another 33 billion dollars for the war in Ukraine…
President Joe Biden is asking Congress for another $33 billion to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion and provide humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people.
The proposal, which the White House will send to lawmakers on Thursday, includes $20 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine, another $8 billion for economic assistance and $3 billion in humanitarian aid.
This is complete and utter madness.
To put this in perspective, the military budget for Ukraine is normally about 6 billion dollars for an entire year.
And much of the equipment that the U.S. is sending to Ukraine is being blown up by the Russians before it can even get to the fighters on the frontlines.
With each passing day it is becoming clearer to everyone that this conflict is really a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
And nuclear war is increasingly becoming one of the hottest topics on Russian television. For example, the following is a recent exchange between two Russian television personalities that is making headlines all over the globe…
“Everything will end with a nuclear strike is more probable than the other outcome,” she continued. “This is to my horror, on one hand, but on the other hand, with the understanding that it is what it is.”
It was at that point Solovyov chimed in, “But we will go to heaven, while they will simply croak.”
“We’re all going to die someday,” Simonyan agreed.
“We’re all going to die someday”?
I certainly don’t like the sound of that.
Unfortunately, many Russians are now entirely convinced that nuclear war is coming.
But instead of pushing for peace, Joe Biden and his minions just keep escalating the conflict.
If we continue to go down this path, it will end in a nightmare.
Our current economic problems pale in comparison to the possibility of a nuclear conflict, but most Americans still don’t understand the implications of the decisions that our leaders are making.
Because if they did understand, there would be giant protests in the streets of every single major U.S. city right now.
For decades, some health influencers have waged what’s practically amounted to a PR campaign against soy products. Because soy contains phytoestrogens, which are structurally very similar to the estrogen produced by the human body, these influencers argue that soy is a dangerous food that can cause cancer and other diseases by upsetting our natural hormonal balance. Recent research, however, increasingly shows that phytoestrogens may actually be good for you. So what’s the truth about phytoestrogens? What foods, in addition to soy, contain them? And should you include or avoid them in a balanced, healthy diet?
The 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors starred Audrey II, a Venus flytrap that feasted on human flesh and incited a flower shop clerk to murder two people to satisfy its ravenous appetite.
And the roots of the idea (pun semi-intended) go back much further. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke penned “The Reluctant Orchid” in 1956, a story about a houseplant that tries to murder and consume its owner. H.G. Wells’ 1894 short story “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” imagines a jungle plant that grows spider-like tentacles and emits an intoxicating fragrance that almost lures an adventuring orchid collector to his death.
In short, literature has sometimes convinced us that plants are out to get us.
Phytoestrogens as Antinutrients
And there has been no shortage of contemporary nutrition writers who have, in their own way, also advanced that narrative. They point to what they consider harmful compounds in the plants we eat, which they ominously term “antinutrients.” Phytates, lectins, and oxalates often get such negative press.
But the reigning plant-derived nutritional villain, going back decades now, is phytoestrogens. While these compounds are in many plants, the main concern has always been about soy. From cancer to male feminization, nutrient deficiencies to female infertility, some would have us believe that the soybean and its phytoestrogens pose a grave threat to any population that embraces soy products as plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy.
But is it true that the phytoestrogens in soy are harmful? Is soy a real-life analog of Audrey II and the human-destroying orchids imagined by Clarke and Wells? Should you avoid phytoestrogens at all costs? Or is the hype overblown, and might phytoestrogens actually benefit your health as part of a balanced, whole-food-based diet?
What are Phytoestrogens?
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Phytoestrogens — literally “estrogens from plants” — are a type of polyphenol found in plant-based foods. There are two main types: flavonoid and non-flavonoid. The difference, as I just discovered when I looked it up, is that non-flavonoids have one phenol ring while flavonoids have two. (I’ll see you on Jeopardy! — “I’ll take ‘mesomeric effect of hydroxyl groups’ for 200, Mayim!”)
Some of the more prevalent flavonoids include isoflavones, coumestans, and prenylflavonoids, among others. The non-flavonoids we tend to hear the most about include lignans and resveratrol. These and other phytoestrogens occur in over 300 different plant species.
Here’s the thing about all phytoestrogens — their structure is close to that of estrogens, a class of human hormones with myriad effects on male and female reproduction, and estradiol, in particular. Because of this similarity, the plant compounds can mimic or otherwise affect the action of estrogens in the body. Sometimes phytoestrogens act just like estrogen and at other times they can actually block estrogenic effects.
If that were the whole story, it’s easy to see why you might be wary of consuming foods high in phytoestrogens. But it turns out that plant estrogens are weaker than estrogens from other sources.
Xenoestrogens
In the interest of comprehensiveness, I’ll mention in passing that there’s another form of estrogens, in addition to the ones produced by the human body (by both women and men) and the ones you get from plants: xenoestrogens. They’re what you get when you add the Greek prefix for “foreign” — xeno.
Xenoestrogens are entirely synthetic chemicals that you can ingest from industrial chemicals such as solvents and lubricants, as well as their byproducts, including plastics, plasticizers, and flame retardants. You can also get exposed to xenoestrogens from pesticides and pharmaceutical agents.
The thing about xenoestrogens is, well, avoid them if you can. They don’t do a body good, and there’s a huge body of evidence that they can disrupt healthy functioning on many levels.
And now back to our regularly scheduled article about phytoestrogens.
Foods That Contain Phytoestrogens
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Here’s a not-so-fun article with tables showing the amount of phytoestrogens, in micrograms (abbreviated μg which means one-millionth of a gram), in various plant foods. When you study these tables, perhaps in preparation for your Jeopardy! appearance (“I’ll take ‘fascinating things you didn’t know about cabbage’ for 400, Ken”), you’ll quickly discover that while soy may be the poster child for phytoestrogens in food, it’s far from the only source.
Soy
Among plant foods, fermented and whole soybeans contain the highest concentrations of phytoestrogens, and those appear to be the healthiest ways to consume soy. Fermented soy products include miso and tempeh (the latter boasts whole soybeans). Edamame and tofu are also generally healthy ways for most people to enjoy soy. To avoid GMOs, choose organic soy products. (For more on why, read our article on GMOs.).
Legumes
In addition to soy, other legumes also tend to be high in phytoestrogens — especially garbanzos and green beans.
Sprouted Foods
You’ll also find phytoestrogens in many commonly sprouted plants, including alfalfa, clover, soybean (there it is again!), and mung bean sprouts.
Nuts and Seeds
Nuts and seeds are also foods with phytoestrogens. Pound for pound (or kilogram for kilogram, if you want to get all metric about it), flaxseeds are actually higher in phytoestrogens than soybeans. Also scoring high on the list of foods with phytoestrogens are pistachios, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, and cashews.
Whole Grains
You can get phytoestrogens from some popular whole grains, including oats, wheat, barley, and rice.
Alliums
Representing the allium family, garlic and onion are no phytoestrogen slouches either.
You can also find phytoestrogens in fresh fruit, including blueberries, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, and dried fruit such as dates and apricots.
Why Do People Think Phytoestrogens are Bad?
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So what’s going on here? I mean, that list of foods containing significant amounts of phytoestrogens is also a list of some of the healthiest foods on the planet. Are they good for us in spite of their phytoestrogen content? Or is it possible that the phytoestrogens in food may offer benefits? Let’s first explore the widespread idea that phytoestrogens are bad for us and we should avoid them whenever possible.
Estrogen vs Phytoestrogens
Phytoestrogens are structurally similar to estradiol, the main form estrogen takes in the human body. As such, they can bind to estrogen receptors in our cells and thus have the potential to increase or block estrogenic activity.
Because of this, critics tell us that phytoestrogens disrupt endogenous hormones and keep them from working properly in the body. In particular, critics argue that people with hormonal cancers, and specifically estrogen-sensitive ones, should avoid the estrogen-boosting effects of phytoestrogens.
That’s one of the reasons soy has been singled out for demonization. Eating large quantities of soy-based veggie burgers or downing gallons of soy milk, the theory goes, can trigger breast cancer in women, and can cause men to grow breasts.
That would all be pretty alarming if it was true. But there’s almost no evidence to support it.
How can that be? Estrogen vs phytoestrogen studies show that while phytoestrogens do bind to estrogen receptors in the body, their estrogenic activity is much weaker than true estrogen, and they may actually block or even oppose the effects of estrogen in some tissues.
Think of a piece of gum fitting into a keyhole; as you cram it in, it takes on something of the shape of the key, but it doesn’t open the door. And it makes it harder for a real key to open the door, too. Phytoestrogens, which are about 1,000 times less potent than the estrogen your body produces, can bind with estrogen receptors and thereby prevent actual estrogen from exerting its effects.
Are There Any Health Benefits of Phytoestrogens?
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In study after study, we find that the foods that are highest in phytoestrogens tend to also be good for heart health and brain health, help to fight obesity and cancer, and promote longevity.
Heart Disease and Phytoestrogens
It’s known that low estrogen levels are a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women. Phytoestrogen consumption — particularly that of isoflavones — has been associated with lower CVD incidence in both Dutch and Japanese women.
Isoflavones appear to reduce CVD risk by, among other things, helping to dilate blood vessels and thereby lower blood pressure in hypertensive women. And soy and alfalfa extracts, combined with acerola cherry extract, can reduce the harmful effects of “bad” LDL cholesterol.
Phytoestrogens and Cancer
While trials conducted in the 1990s focused on the question of whether phytoestrogens increased breast cancer risk, later studies reversed the hypothesis and began asking whether diets rich in soy could actually prevent the disease. A 2014 meta-analysis found that soy isoflavones lowered the risk of breast cancer in both pre- and postmenopausal women. The twist was that the researchers found this effect only in Asian populations — women in Western countries did not appear to benefit. Whether this is due to the fact that Asian women eat a lot more soy than Western women is still an open question.
Breast cancer surgeon Kristi Funk, MD, is the author of Breasts: The Owner’s Manual. She examined the extensive research about soy consumption in humans and concluded: “Not only is soy safe, it literally drops breast cancer rates by 60% for soy consumers. And if you have breast cancer, it drops recurrence by 60%.”
Soy consumption has also been shown to suppress the development of prostate cancer. Two soy phytoestrogens, in particular, genistein and daidzein, are being studied for their effects on cancer development.
Other studies have found that consuming soy may also reduce your risk of developing lung, thyroid, ovarian, endometrial, and colorectal cancer.
Alleviating Menopause Symptoms with Phytoestrogens
Some of the most uncomfortable symptoms of menopause occur as a woman’s body decreases the production of estrogen. In addition to hot flashes and sweating, menopause is also linked to an increased risk of obesity and osteoporosis.
Because phytoestrogens can increase estrogenic activity, they have been shown to reduce symptoms of menopause, including decreases in bone density that can lead to osteoporosis. And they have the added benefit, unlike synthetic hormone replacement therapy, of not contributing to blood clots.
Weight Management and Phytoestrogens
There’s a robust body of evidence that phytoestrogens can help people achieve and maintain a healthy weight. This is at least in part because phytoestrogens inhibit the life cycle of fat-storing adipocyte cells and can lower concentrations of adipose (fatty) tissue in the body. They can also help you lose weight by reducing the levels of the “starvation” hormone leptin in your body, so you can lose fat without triggering that “OMG I need a giant donut this very minute or something terrible is going to happen!” feeling. This conclusion was supported by a 2013 study that confirmed soy’s appetite-suppressing ability in estrogen-deficient female mice. (Our view on the use of animals in medical research is here.)
Phytoestrogen Impact on Skin Health
Phytoestrogens also appear to confer anti-aging benefits on the skin. They have been shown to increase the body’s production of collagen production and other compounds that are crucial to skin health. They also block some of the damaging effects of UVB radiation and increase blood flow to skin tissue. Clinical trials have shown that oral phytoestrogen supplementation increased both dermal (skin) thickness and collagen production in postmenopausal women.
Immune System Support
Science is just beginning to explore the role phytoestrogens might play in supporting immune function. Genistein, from soy, appears to keep hypersensitive immune systems from overreacting in unhelpful and potentially dangerous ways.
Phytoestrogen Impact on Cognitive Function and Alzheimer’s
The phytoestrogen resveratrol, found in abundance in red grapes, appears to protect against Alzheimer’s by triggering the destruction of certain proteins in the brain that can form plaques. It has also been shown, in mouse models, to inhibit the development of Parkinson’s Disease. And several observational studies of humans have found that consumption of lignans is associated with higher cognitive functioning.
Who Should Avoid or Limit Phytoestrogens?
iStock.com/Ivan-Balvan
As I hope the above section makes clear, the bulk of evidence suggests that phytoestrogens in whole plant foods are beneficial for most people when eaten as part of a balanced diet. But there are still some situations where some people may want to limit their intake.
In the past, it was thought that people with estrogen-positive breast cancer should avoid phytoestrogen, but a growing body of research indicates that the opposite may be true. In fact, many studies show that soy isoflavones are protective against breast cancers because the phytoestrogens attach to the estrogen B cells, blocking the A cells that cause cancer.
Some researchers urge caution, however — especially about the consumption of processed soy protein products, as these have not been studied as extensively as the whole soy foods traditionally eaten in Asian cuisines. Additional unknowns include the cumulative effect of all the phytoestrogens a person has eaten over their lifetime, and how early these foods were introduced.
People with the rare lung disease LAM may also want to limit phytoestrogens, since the LAM cells have estrogen receptors on them, and may proliferate in the presence of high levels of the hormone and potentially of estrogen mimickers, as well.
Another group that may potentially be harmed by excess phytoestrogens is people who have iodine deficiency with hypothyroidism. While the impact of phytoestrogens may vary based on the person’s age, soy isoflavones, in particular, may negatively affect thyroid function in people with hypothyroidism in the absence of sufficient iodine. This is still largely theoretical, however. Small clinical trials haven’t produced a clear association.
Increasing and Decreasing Phytoestrogens in Food
In addition to eating more or fewer of the plant foods that contain phytoestrogens, you can ramp your consumption up or down depending on how those foods are processed.
Fermentation alters the chemical makeup of soy, which can significantly reduce the level of isoflavones. Prolonged cooking, simmering, or soaking can also reduce phytoestrogen content. Steaming causes less phytoestrogen loss than boiling or frying.
And on a different but related note, your gut microbiota play a key role in the bioactivity and bioavailability of phytoestrogens, as they are the entities that decide what to turn phytoestrogens into.
Recipes with Phytoestrogen Foods
Not only will you get plenty of phytonutrients from each of the dishes below, but you’ll also get lots of nutrition overall, like fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals.
Ocean’s Savory Oatmeal is super tasty and brimming with nutrition, including phytonutrients from the flax and pumpkin seeds. Crunchy Kale Slaw makes a fun, fresh, and crispy snack, condiment, or side and contains a huge amount of nutrition, including phytonutrients from the kale, cabbage, and tahini. And Tofu and Broccoli Stir-Fry is an absolutely delicious, phytonutrient-rich meal with its tofu, broccoli, and garlic. It may seem like lots of ingredients and steps, but each of the three sections is pretty simple to create!
A favorite of mine, and perhaps an about-to-be new favorite of yours, this savory oatmeal will leave you feeling satisfied, energized, and nourished. It’s filled with fiber, protein, and phytonutrients, including phytoestrogens in the flax and pumpkin seeds. It’s also a great way to use that Instant Pot! Don’t own an Instant Pot? No problem! Be sure to check out the stovetop directions in the Chef’s Notes.
This crunchy and tasty slaw offers lots of nutrition in exchange for very little time since it requires only a little shredding and zero cooking. Kale, cabbage, and tahini are three plant-based foods that are rich in many nutrients including phytoestrogens. Enjoy this slaw solo as a crunchy snack, as a side dish to your main meal, or as a condiment on top of tacos and wraps.
This phytonutrient-rich recipe may look like lots of steps, but if you break up each component (tofu, sauce, and veggies) into individual sections, it will come together easy-peasy. First, prepare your tofu and place it in the oven. Next, prepare your sauce while the tofu is cooking (it only takes a few minutes!). Finally, make your veggies, also while the tofu is cooking. Once the tofu is ready, your meal will be ready for simple assembling! If you’re wondering, tofu, broccoli, and garlic are the phytonutrient superstars in this dish.
Say Yes to Plant-Based Phytoestrogenic Foods
Phytoestrogens are found in a number of plant foods. Sometimes they mimic estrogen activity in the body, and sometimes they suppress it, which makes for a lot of curious (and confused) scientists. Although there’s long been a question over whether phytoestrogens are bad for you — especially in regards to cancer — the research shows they are, in fact, beneficial in many ways. For most people, whole plant-based foods that may contain phytoestrogens are healthy when consumed as part of a healthy and balanced diet.
Tell us in the comments:
Do you eat soy-based foods? If so, which ones are your favorites?
Has this article cleared up any confusion in your mind about soy and other phytoestrogen-containing plant foods? What’s your new understanding?
What foods will you add more of to your diet to get the benefit of phytoestrogens?
The FBI conducted millions of searches of Americans’ electronic data in 2021 without a warrant, according to a new report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The FBI claims it conducted the searches as they sought to curb cyberattacks.
“In the first half of the year, there were a number of large batch queries related to attempts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure by foreign cyber actors,” according to the report, Bloomberg reported. “These queries, which included approximately 1.9 million query terms related to potential victims — including U.S. persons — accounted for the vast majority of the increase in U.S. person queries conducted by FBI over the prior year.”
The ACLU called the FBI’s warrantless spying an invasion of privacy ‘on an enormous scale.’
The FBI searched emails, texts and other electronic communications of as many as 3.4 million U.S. residents without a warrant over a year, the nation’s top spy chief said in a report.
The “queries” were made between December 2020 and November 2021 by Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel as they looked for signs of threats and terrorists within electronic data legally collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to an annual transparency report issued Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The authority the FBI used in this case was under Section 702 of FISA, which is set to expire at the end of next year unless it’s renewed by Congress.
The report doesn’t say the activity was illegal or even wrong. But the revelation could renew congressional and public debates over the power U.S. agencies have to collect and review intelligence information, especially data concerning individuals. In comparison, fewer than 1.3 million queries involving Americans’ data were conducted between December 2019 and November 2020, according to the 38-page report.
The report sought to provide a justification for the increase in queries during the last year.
On Thursday afternoon, September 30th, at 3:45 PM Eastern the FBI raided Jeremy Brown’s home and arrested Jeremy. The charge is trespassing. The FBI sent 20 vehicles for his arrest. DHS and Pinellas County law enforcement were also present. The FBI was in Jeremy’s home for 5-and-a-half hours looking for evidence.
The FBI searched his house, RV, and trailer. Then they arrested Jeremy and took him away.
Jeremy’s family contacted The Gateway Pundit the next morning.
** You can support Jeremy Brown’s fundraising effort here.
Jeremy Brown is a Green Beret and former Republican candidate for Congress in Florida’s 14th Congressional District. Brown served in the United States Army from 1992 to 2012 and reached the rank of Special Forces Master Sergeant.
Jeremy Brown NEVER entered the US Capitol on January 6. His actual crime was refusing to be an FBI informant as we describe below.
Not only did Jeremy refuse to work as an FBI informant on January 6th, he went public with photos and audio of the conversations he had with
As we reported months ago, Jeremy Brown refused to be an informant for the dirty FBI — They wanted him to be one of their operatives at the Jan. 6 Trump rallies.
The FBI called Jeremy’s cellphone and asked for a meeting after trying to contact him at his house. Jeremy then met with the FBI agents at a restaurant in Ybor City in December. He told Brandon Gray that 38 seconds into the interview the FBI attempted to recruit him to spy on the Oath Keepers.
Jeremy refused to be an FBI informant so they stormed his home and arrested him on bogus misdemeanor charges months after the Jan. 6 protests.
Jeremy Brown did nothing wrong.
His only “crime” was refusing to work as an informant for the FBI!
* * * * * * * * * *
Jeremy has been confined on a misdemeanor charge for seven months now in a Florida jail.
Recently, Liz Cheney’s January 6 Committee subpoenaed Jeremy Brown’s phone records.
The Gateway Pundit has a copy of the January 6 Committee subpoena to Jeremy Brown.
The subpoena asks for Jeremy’s phone records from November 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021.
According to Brown’s family member, the documents were turned over to the committee by Verizon.
That means Liz Cheney and her January 6 Committee are now holding on to evidence, including call records, of the FBI contacting US veteran Jeremy Brown to work as an operative on January 6 for the deep state.
So will they ever admit they are holding on to proof of the FBI’s role in the January 6 uprising?
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to control narratives combat whatever they deem ‘misinformation’ before the 2022 midterms and beyond.
According to Politico, the new entity will focus on “misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.”
It's only been a couple days since Elon purchased Twitter and the government has already formed a Ministry of Truth https://t.co/mWwyrRP9lv
It will be headed by Nina Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.
So basically the same group of disinformation agents who lied about the Hunter Biden laptop, President Trump, COVID lockdowns, deaths in nursing homes, etc will now create a board to protect us from them? https://t.co/E1O54uBj0r
“The goal is to bring the resources of (DHS) together to address this threat,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during Wednesday testimony.
News of the DHS entity comes just days after Elon Musk secured a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, which he’s vowed to change into a free speech platform within the bounds of the law.
Jankowicz has written two books, How to Lose the Information War and How to Be A Woman Online. In a pinned tweet pimping her newly released second book, Jankowiz lets her inner misandry loose and writes, “Men ‘burst violently into your mentions and your life like the Kool-aid man, demanding your attention, hawking opinions that they believe are unarguably, manifestly correct and indispensable.’”
As a thought experiment – what do you think the “Disinformation Governance Board” would have done with the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 US election – which Democratic politicians and dozens of former intelligence officials swore had “all the hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign – a claim which turned out to be misinformation itself?
They didn't need a 'Disinformation Governance Board' until @elonmusk threatened their control over the narrative.
— Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) April 27, 2022
As President Biden prepares to take the stage at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, his limited accessibility to the media has come into focus.
In his first year, Biden held half as many news conferences as former President Trump, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California. Trump also frequently spoke with the press impromptu before entering Marine One, something Biden does not do as often. Biden has held two solo news conferences so far this year, one in Washington and the other in Brussels.
Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” interviewed Steven Portnoy, president of the White House Correspondents Association, about this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner and mentioned that Biden isn’t always as accessible to the press compared to his predecessor.
“The mission of the association continues to be to advocate for reporters to be able to have those interactions with the president on behalf of the public, readers, viewers, listeners,” said Portnoy, who leads the organization hosting the event.
Portnoy also said his remarks at the dinner will be “deadly serious,” given the number of journalists killed while covering the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba have said they would like to see Biden come to Ukraine to see the dire situation up close. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Ukraine and met Zelensky over the weekend. Biden hasn’t announced plans to meet in-person with Zelensky.
Amid the calls for Biden to visit Ukraine during the Russian invasion, the president recently announced that he is participating in the White House Correspondents Dinner after 4 years of former President Donald Trump skipping the gathering.
Biden is set to deliver a comedy routine rather than a formal speech, similar to the performances of past presidents at the infamous dinner. Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show, is the dinner’s featured entertainer.
The main purpose of the gathering is to award scholarships to aspiring journalists and recognize the achievements of the working press covering the White House. Networks reserve tables for the dinner and often invite celebrities as guests. For example, reality TV star Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend, comedian Pete Davidson of Saturday Night Live, are expected to attend this year’s dinner.
The event is estimated to draw about 2,600 people. The most recent comparable large-scale high-profile gathering in Washington was the Gridiron Dinner, which led to over 70 COVID positive cases, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams encouraged the Washington establishment to learn from the results of the “superspreader” Gridiron Dinner, arguing that “mass gatherings that lead to mass infections cannot become our ‘new normal.'”
COVID cases are rising in the Washington Metropolitan area driven by the spread of the BA.2 variant.
Organizers of the Correspondents’ Dinner are requiring a same-day negative COVID test to attend, according to Portnoy. Currently, Biden and other cabinet officials are often seen wearing masks even though indoor mask mandates have been lifted in the Washington D.C. area. The White House Correspondents Association hasn’t said if they are going to require dinner attendees to wear masks indoors at the event.
A Twitter source leaked an internal slack channel reconfirming shadowbanning is indeed real.
Twitter executives have used Orwellian doublespeak to explain their ‘Terms of Service’ and how they moderate content on their platform.
In 2018, Project Veritas released an undercover video showing Twitter engineers bragging about how they target pro-Trump accounts by banning them or hiding their content.
Steven Pierre, Twitter engineer explains “shadow banning,” says “it’s going to ban a way of talking”
Former Twitter software engineer Abhinav Vadrevu on shadow banning: “they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it”
Former Twitter Content Review Agent Mo Norai explains banning process: “if it was a pro-Trump thing and I’m anti-Trump… I banned his whole account… it’s at your discretion”
Twitter responded to Project Veritas’ video back in 2018 and said they ‘do not shadowban accounts.’
A Twitter source leaked an internal slack channel confirming that Twitter does indeed shadowban accounts.
Will Elon Musk keep the top person at Twitter who censored and banned conservatives on the Big Tech giant once he takes over?
Vijaya Gadde is responsible for the censorship and banning policies at Twitter. She is famous for this and apparently took great pride in it. In her role she allows the Ayatollah of Iran to promote hate speech on the platform but she took down the account of the leader of the free world, President Donald Trump.
Ms. Gadde through her actions has little regard for the first amendment in the US Constitution which protects free speech. The far-left Democrat Party and communists around the world praise her work. She took down Trump – the biggest and best Twitter user in history – because she and her top management colleagues just didn’t like him. She didn’t hide it.
"I’ve never met a national politician in the U.S. who is so ill informed, evasive, puerile and deceptive as Trump." https://t.co/Wv1tXKGWAF
Vijaya tweeted openly about President Trump who beat the corrupt Clinton and Obama machines and made America prosperous and the world safe again. But she didn’t like him and those who supported him.
Writing for the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post in 2015, Gadde argued that certain users were trying to “silence discourse in the name of free expression.”
“I’m often inspired by the vigorous debates on controversial issues that occur on Twitter, but I’ve also been seriously troubled by the plight of some of our users who are completely overwhelmed by those who are trying to silence healthy discourse in the name of free expression,” she wrote.
As Breitbart News previously profiled, Gadde has a history of donating to Democrats and even publicly defended Yoel Roth, a Twitter official responsible for fact-checking policy, when he called members of the Trump administration “Nazis.”
“No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions,” she said. “We are a team with different points of view and we stand behind our people and our decisions to protect the health of the public conversation on our platform.”
Far-left Politico reported on Gadde’s response to Musk’s purchase of Twitter:
Shortly after billionaire Elon Musk bought the powerful social media platform, top Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde called a virtual meeting with the policy and legal teams she oversees to discuss what the new ownership could mean for them.
Gadde cried during the meeting as she expressed concerns about how the company could change, according to three people familiar with the meeting. She acknowledged that there are significant uncertainties about what the company will look like under Musk’s leadership.
Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said Gadde became emotional when discussing her team’s impact and the pride she feels in them.
Under Gadde’s tenure, Twitter got further and further left, eventually banning the President of the United States. When confronted on Twitter’s rules that go against US free speech law three years ago, Gadde ignored the fact that Twitter was a US company and instead claimed its users were global. This appeared to be the justification for banning conservatives on the site.
Ms. Gadde was behind the company’s policies that banned huge numbers of conservatives. President Trump was banned because Twitter determined that the President was behind the violence at the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. Yet, the site took down the President’s tweet condemning the violence and telling people to go home.
When others shared documents from Hunter’s laptop they were banned claiming this was basically Hunter’s material and therefore the person sharing the material needed to obtain his approval before sharing, totally discounting the fact that Hunter lost that ownership when he signed a contract with a PC repairman.
Americans hope and pray that the company under Elon Musk addresses Twitter’s bias and protects free speech while censoring Twitter’s bias.
Truth Social on Tuesday ranked as the No. 1 free app on the online iOS apps store, with the Twitter app in second.
The massive surge for the social media app started by former President Donald Trump even caught the attention of the billionaire who is now in the process of buying Twitter.
“Truth Social is currently beating Twitter & TikTok on the Apple Store,” Elon Musk tweeted.
Truth Social was started by Trump and is owned by the Trump Media and Technology Group. The site was launched in late February but had limited new arrivals as the result of an extended beta testing period, which also creating a significant wait list of potential users.
However, the company recently completed the site’s long-prepared migration to Rumble, which has eliminate the backlogs.
On Monday, as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced a deal with Twitter to buy the platform for roughly $44 billion, Trump said he would not return to it.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth,” he said on Fox News.
Trump Media and Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes told Just the News on Friday that the backlog of accounts waiting to use to the platform has been cleared and is now open to millions of users.
That same day, Truth Social said the company had completed its move to a new cloud system run by Rumble that would allow it to onboard millions of new users.
Truth Social had throttled new user onboarding after its launch in February, focusing on an extended beta period to test the platform and finish the migration to Rumble’s cloud.
Despite the controlled rollout, early influencers on the Truth Social platform have reported higher engagement with fewer followers than what they generated with platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
“The traffic to the site and to the show is off the chart,” radio host Dan Bongino recently told Just the News, directly challenging reports the platform is a failure. “The engagement is extraordinary right now.”
Nunes explained the reasoning behind a controlled rollout in a recent Just the News TV interview, saying he preferred ensuring quality control over a rushed deployment.
“If you look at Truth Social, where we continue to grow every single day, even though we’re just barely in the testing phase, we continue to prove out the process and focus on our quality and reliability,” Nunes said earlier this month.
On Tuesday Elon Musk opined on Twitter’s banning of the New York Post’s reporting of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Musk labeled the actions “obviously incredibly inappropriate”.
Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan's podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusk takeover pic.twitter.com/WCYmzNEMNt
The New York Post released stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop back in October 2020 several days before the election. Twitter banned The New York Post at the time for their reporting on crackhead Hunter and his illegal dealings. The information came straight from his own laptop. TGP’s Joe Hoft also released solid reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop and his account was suspended.
Not only was Joe Hoft’s account suspended but many of our readers who Tweeted our stories had their accounts suspended on Twitter AND Facebook.
The Gateway Pundit’s account was later shut down for questioning the stolen 2020 Election results.
Another Gateway Pundit’s Editor’s account was banned for tweeting about Twitter’s censorship back in 2018.
All of this was wrong. All of it. Twitter banned our accounts, suspended our accounts, and threatened people who posted our factual reports on the Biden family corruption on their platforms. It all was obviously incredibly inappropriate. We hope and pray this soon ends and free speech is given its proper place on the Twitter platform.
There’s apparently major tension between President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House that has not settled down.
New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns detail in their upcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” a slew of tense moments and exchanges between Harris and Biden.
In one instance, the book alleges that Biden left Republican senators stunned during legislative negotiations last year when he strongly shut down Harris in front of everyone.
In a meeting last May, Biden and Harris met with senators to discuss passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill through Congress when Harris reportedly “thought that there was something missing from the conversation.”
The book alleges that Harris “began to make the case for a larger package than the one Republicans seemed to have in mind,” which included adding more Democratic goodies.
“Biden dismissed her comment immediately,” the authors explain, adding, “that even the Republican senators were taken aback” by his harsh tone.
In another meeting, the NYT authors quote Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, who recounted a meeting between Biden, Harris, and a handful of governors.
Hogan recalled Harris’s role in meetings as “very strange,” saying she sat quietly and it was noticeable.
“Harris did not say a word,” Hogan said, adding that he didn’t know if Harris was “just being deferential to the president — didn’t want to step on him” or there was something else going on.
“Some of Harris’s advisers believed the president’s almost entirely white inner circle did not show the vice president the respect she deserved,” Martin and Burns wrote in excerpts.
“Harris worried that Biden’s staff looked down on her; she fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious,” the authors add of Harris who has yet to improve her dismal approval ratings.
In another section, the authors detail how First Lady Jill Biden apparently did not want Harris to be her husband’s pick for vice president and he had reservations of his own.
“There are millions of people in the United States. Why do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe,” Jill Biden said in a conversation after she discovered that Harris was in the lead for the job.
Biden reportedly made the threat amid a flurry of news stories documenting rising frustration and dissatisfaction with the VP among the ranks of her staff, many of whom have already quit in the year she’s been in office.
Biden was angry following negative reports last June claiming dissatisfaction among Harris’ staff.
In response, Biden brought in senior staff to the Oval Office and told them that if “he found that any of them was stirring up negative stories about the vice president…they would quickly be former staff,” according to an excerpt of the book reported by Politico.
Many of the reports contained specific complaints from unnamed staffers.
In early December, the Washington Post published a lengthy report and quoted several current and former staffers who were frustrated with her.
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” a former staffer said. “With Kamala, you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.”
Multiple sources report that Twitter employees who are furious about their new owner’s pledge to restore free speech on one of the world’s largest social media platforms are lashing out in anger and frustration.
Andy Ngo reports that he’s hearing from sources that Twitter employees on internal chats are saying their biggest fear is that the account for President Donald J. Trump will be restored. According to Ngo, many of the employees are expressing hatred for Elon Musk and that they’re sick of hearing about “free speech,” and are “concerned about their mental health.”
From my sources: Vocal Twitter employees on internal chats indicate their biggest fear is Donald Trump being unbanned. Many express strong hatred toward @elonmusk & say they’re sick of hearing about “free speech.” They’re concerned about their mental health. #ElonMuskBuyTwitter
Disclose TV shared a report from Bloomberg that Twitter’s source code is locked to make it harder for employees to make unauthorized changes to the platform.
JUST IN – Twitter's source code is locked down to make it harder for employees to make unauthorized changes to the platform, Bloomberg reports.
Andy Ngo tweeted about sources who told him that Twitter has locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform after Musk sealed the $44 billion deal to purchase the highly censored platform yesterday.
Twitter locked down the ability of its employees to make changes to the platform after it was revealed that @elonmusk has reached a deal to buy the company. The lockdown is to prevent activist employees from sabotaging the platform as revenge for the deal. https://t.co/8qmxSDJNia
Its “absolutely insane” @ Twitter right now in the virtual valves of private slack rooms & employee group texts, according to an internal source. Their take/breakdown just now: “I feel like I’m going to throw up..I rly don’t wanna work for a company that is owned by Elon Musk.”
Its “absolutely insane” @ Twitter right now in the virtual valves of private slack rooms & employee group texts, according to an internal source. Their take/breakdown just now: “I feel like im going to throw up..I rly don’t wanna work for a company that is owned by Elon Musk”…1/
The source at Twitter continued, “I don’t rly know what I’m supposed to do…oh my god, my phone’s been blowing up…We have a meeting about it at 5 pm…the CEO is going to address everyone about it” (it=elon) “I hate him, why does he even want this?” they asked…
The employee continued re Elon: 3/“ I feel like he’s this petulant little boy and that he’s doing this to troll…he doesn’t know anything about our policies and what we do…his statement about our algo was fucking insane… “Were just gonna let everyone run amok?…nobody knows.”
2/ The source at Twitter continued “I don’t rly know what I’m supposed to do…oh my god, my phone’s been blowing up…We have a meeting about it at 5pm…the CEO is going to address everyone about it” (it=elon)
“I hate him, why does he even want this?” they asked…
Smith deleted his 4th tweet, but fortunately, Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of the Federalist was able to capture a screenshot of his post that exposed a Twitter employee who told him that a part of his job is to monitor “toxicity and health trends” on Twitter (conservative speech and any news or information related to alternative treatments for COVID?). The Twitter employee goes on to say he doesn’t know how Musk’s free speech approach to the social media platform will “affect my job.”
The employee continued re Elon: 3/“ I feel like he’s this petulant little boy and that he’s doing this to troll…he doesn’t know anything about our policies and what we do…his statement about our algo was fucking insane… “Were just gonna let everyone run amok?…nobody knows”
The Daily Mail is reporting that Twitter has blocked its developers from making changes to the app to prevent it from being sabotaged by left-wing staff angry at Elon Musk’s $44billion takeover – amid an outbreak of hysteria among liberal social media personalities who are threatening to quit the social media giant.
The Tesla founder said he wanted to re-establish the principle of free speech on the platform and has joined criticism of its moderation policies which are accused of disproportionately targeting conservative voices, but his critics claim he will allow ‘hate to flourish.’
Twitter has now banned any product updates that are not ‘business-critical,’ with the company’s vice-president required to give approval for any to go ahead. The move aims to prevent angry staff from ‘going rogue,’ a source told Bloomberg, and comes after employees dismissed Musk as ‘dangerous to democracy.’
Here’s a video of Twitter employees in Brazil mocking the purchase yesterday.
Do you think it’s appropriate for Elon Musk to lock down the source codes and prevent hostile employees from sabotaging his newly acquired social media platform?
Essential oils are one of the most potent forms of plant-based medicine in the world. From killing viruses to promoting relaxation to soothing skin scrapes, to supporting the immune system, essential oils offer countless benefits to your life.
To be clear – the use of these oils is no “fad.” Essential oils have thousands of years of history in traditional medicine, in the most ancient of cultures. The Egyptians, the Chinese, the Greeks… they all used essential oils.
From the times of Biblical medicine on through to today, essential oils are used throughout the world. Until fairly recently they’ve been better accepted and popular outside of the United States… but I’m happy to see that so many Americans are catching on to the immense benefits of these healing oils.
One of my favorite examples of the long history and effectiveness of essential oils is about a group of thieves in England who, despite daily contact with corpses who had succumbed to the Black Death (the plague), didn’t get sick.
The story goes that the King heard about these men who would enter the homes of those taken by the plague, rob them of all their valuables, yet did not fall ill from the highly contagious disease. The King had these thieves captured and when they were brought in front of him, he demanded they reveal their secret.
They confessed to being from a family of a long line of apothecaries. They were familiar with the immune protection provided by certain blends of oils, which they would rub all over their bodies, before going thieving. They say the King forced the men to reveal their recipe and then subsequently used the oils to protect himself and his family from the ravages of the Black Death. They also say the recipe is still in the Royal archives to this day.
Now I don’t know if all this is all true or not, but the moral of the story is certainly sound. My own personal appreciation of the wide variety of benefits of essential oils (including their ability to protect the body from harm) began during my initial travels for The Quest for the Cures and A Global Quest documentary series. It was then that I realized how truly overlooked essential oils are as a component of the puzzle that is health and healing from disease.
These days, my family and I use essential oils in a variety of ways on a daily basis. Our uses for these therapeutic powerhouses are wide-ranging. I’ll list out more further down, but a few ways we personally use essential oils include as medicines, for personal care products, as our cleansing agents, and more.
Why do we believe everyone should follow in our footsteps and rely on essential oils, too?
It’s simple. My family has opted to use safe, natural remedies that have thousands of years of history proving their benefits, over a dependence on prescriptions of synthetic drugs that have a long list of side effects which are nothing short of dangerous.
Likewise, we prefer to use personal care products and household cleaners that are superior alternatives to those containing toxic ingredients. We get the same, or even better results, while losing the risk of damaging our bodies.
Charlene and I are frequently asked about what essential oils we favor, and also how we use them. So, I thought I’d share with you some of our favorite anti-cancer oils and some tips for uses. Before I list our favorite essential oils for preventing and healing from cancer, just a reminder that when you are choosing essential oils to always look for the highest quality. You want oils that are certified organic, with 100% purity.
5 Amazing Anti-Cancer Essential Oils (in alphabetical order)
1. Frankincense
Frankincense may well be my number one favorite essential oil for its anti-cancer properties. It is anti-inflammatory, for one, which is vital in the quest to heal from all cancers. Specifically, frankincense has been shown to be a potent inhibitor of 5-lipoxygenase, an enzyme responsible for inflammation in the body.
Frankincense essential oil also helps boost immune function and prevent illness by dangerous pathogens by multiplying white blood cells and modulating immune reactions.
It also helps improve circulation, and reduce stress (it has sedative properties), as well as being a known pain reliever. Oil of frankincense has been shown to contract and tone tissues, which helps to speed regeneration.
Frankincense is also shown to provide neurological support, including the ability to destroy toxins that may lead to neurological damage.
However, this essential oil has several benefits beyond cancer treatment, including easing arthritis pain, balancing hormones, encouraging skin health, and aiding digestion.
2. Lavender
As I’ve written elsewhere on The Truth About Cancer site, lavender essential oil contains the phytochemicals perillyl alcohol and linalool, both found to support cancer healing. Not only is lavender a known pain reliever, true lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is anti-tumoral, and has demonstrated significant results in resetting the programmed cell death usually lacking in cancer cells. It has been observed to reduce the weight of tumors, and inhibit cell growth.
Lavender essential oil reduces stress and supports the function of the immune system. Quality of sleep is improved. Depression and anxiety are relieved. All of these go towards supporting the immune system in the often immuno-compromised cancer patient. Yet lavender oil has several direct antibacterial properties, as well.
Studies have shown lavender essential oil to be effective against many common germs, as well as the more serious ones such as Staphylococcus aureus (“golden staph”). It does so by supporting the macrophages and phagocytes systems in the body, as well as helping the body fight the infection through its influence on genetic activity.
3. Myrrh
Myrrh is one of those somewhat obscure essential oils that has a variety of powerful healing properties that should not be overlooked. In terms of cancer, myrrh essential oil exhibits notable effects on cancer cell growth, and contains anti-inflammatory properties.
In addition, myrrh is known to support healthy hormone balance, which can be essential in cancer healing. Like lavender and frankincense, myrrh oil has long been used as a pain reliever. It is also anti-fungal. With all these qualities, myrrh is a potent therapeutic support for your health.
4. Peppermint
Peppermint is another “wonder-oil,” with a wide range of benefits. This essential oil’s cancer benefits come from its phytochemicals limonene, phytochemicals beta-caryophyllene, and beta-pinene, which have defined cytotoxic and anti-inflammatory effects.
Studies have also shown peppermint essential oil to reveal antioxidant and cancer inhibiting properties, suppressing growth of tumors. In addition, peppermint oil contains antiangiogenic properties, which prevent tumors from developing their own blood supply.
Peppermint essential oil is a well-known antiseptic, with antimicrobial components that benefit respiratory infections (such as bronchitis), open wounds, tonsillitis, and laryngitis. Peppermint is so powerful it’s even useful against stronger bacterias such as Staphylococcus aureus and others that are often antibiotic resistant.
5. Turmeric (Curcumin)
In labs, curcumin has been found to inhibit enzymes such as COX-2 that cause inflammation which can lead to cancer, to activate a gene that suppresses tumors, cut cancer cells off from their fuel and oxygen sources, to kill large B-cell lymphoma cells, prevent cancer stem cells from regrowing, and stop the spread of cancer (metastasis).
This power-house oil has other benefits as well, including: helping to regulate blood sugar, help wounds heal faster, prevent Alzheimer’s disease, prevent help you lose weight, and ease arthritis.
5 Tips for Using Essential Oils for Heath & Healing
Using essential oils is so integral to my family’s life, it’s hard to list every way we use them! However, here are some top tips for using essential oils in your daily life. [Be sure to check my list of precautions below to get the most from your oils.]
Put a drop behind your ears. For example, every day Charlene uses myrrh and frankincense behind her ears and on her lymph nodes as a prophylactic (preventative protection). Lavender or peppermint would be good for respiratory issues, or simply to relax. You can rub on the back of the skull, the breasts, or the bottoms of your feet.
Use a cold diffuser. We love to diffuse essential oils throughout our home. We do it for added mental clarity, and immune support for the entire family. My office is always filled with the therapeutic aromas of a variety of essential oils.
Massage into the skin. Some essential oils, like peppermint and clove, are very strong and you’ll do well to choose a good “carrier oil.” You use a good quality, organic (preferably cold-pressed) oil like coconut, olive, or jojoba to mix in a few drops of the essential oil of your choice. You can then massage this simple “body butter” onto your skin. For a bit fancier body butter, use a mixer to whip solid coconut oil with essential oil. Use this mixture to apply directly to affected areas (such as with pain, arthritis, or digestive issues), and for quick absorption and overall health benefits.
Ingest Internally. One of my favorite, refreshing drinks I like to make is a “Peppermint Lemonade.” I simply take 2-3 drops of peppermint essential oil, 3-4 drops of lemon (or orange or tangerine oils, depending on my mood), add water, some organic green stevia, and ice in a large pitcher. It’s a super-fast, healthy beverage that I love. It’s also delicious as a hot beverage (use hot water and omit the ice). If you’re just making one cup at a time, use only 1 drop of peppermint + 1 drop of a citrus oil. Essential oils are powerful and a little goes a long way! You can also use a few drops of essential oils in an empty gel capsule and swallow it.
Toothpaste. You can make a variety of personal products using organic essential oils and other non-toxic ingredients: lotions, face washes, mouthwash, soaps. A toothpaste is easy to make using high quality, certified organic frankincense, myrrh, and coconut oil. Maybe add in some baking soda if you prefer, too.
Precautions for Using Essential Oils:
Quality. This is so important that it bears repeating. Always use a top-quality, medicinal grade oil. It should be certified organic, and 100% pure. Check the reputation of your supplier, and ensure there are no fillers or additives.
Keep oils away from sensitive areas. Essential oils are nature’s powerhouses. Keep in mind they are 40-50 times more potent than the plant itself. Some oils are more “spicy” than others. Some taste better than others. Oregano is one that can burn a bit when you ingest it directly. Peppermint requires caution, and usually does best with a carrier oil when applying to the skin. Never apply essential oils to sensitive areas of the body, including the genitals or near your eyes.You should also test new oils to ensure there are no reactions before applying too liberally. You can start by doing a sniff test of the oil in the bottle. If that seems fine, then apply a dab of carrier oil to the inside of your wrist or arm, add a drop of oil and wait to see if there is any redness, itching, or swelling. Everybody and every body is different so you may need to try different oils to see which ones feel best to you.
Do not heat oils. You’ve probably seen or even have one of those oil burners for using essential oils. What you may not know is that heating these oils destroys their healing properties. It’s always best to use a cold diffuser. These are plentiful and economically priced online.
Children. Always be cautious when using essential oils with children. Diffusion is safest. For direct application, it’s important to dilute the stronger oils, especially with a good carrier oil. When making body butters or massage oils for children, use 1 drop of essential oil to 4 tablespoons of carrier oil. This will dilute the essential oil enough to make it more tolerable and safer for your child. Be very careful not to place near the eyes and always do a sensitivity test first.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is America’s most unpopular senator, according to a Morning Consult poll released Monday.
Just one-third of Kentuckians, 33%, approve of McConnell’s job performance, while 60% disapprove.
The most popular U.S. senator is South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, who has a 62% approval rating with a 28% disapproval rating, the poll showed.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., showed the largest approval increase, despite facing harsh criticism from fellow Democrats over his moderate views.
In the first quarter of 2021, just 40% of West Virginia voters approved of Manchin. One year later, 57% approved of his performance, including 69% of Republicans.
OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
Lawyers for former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign filed a last-minute plea last week to block special counsel John Durham from introducing certain evidence during the trial of Michael Sussmann, claiming “attorney-client privilege.”
But the bid to bar the evidence from being admitted is likely to fail, Just the News reported, citing several experts who are observing the case.
“[T]he sweeping requests for confidentiality — including research from former MI6 agent and opposition researcher Christopher Steele — face a high hurdle,” experts said, the outlet reported.
“That’s because the very subjects the Clinton campaign now seeks to protect — such as its now-discredited anti-Trump research — were widely distributed without regard to privilege for years,” the report continued.
The contents of the now-infamous Steele dossier, for instance, were shared with several news reporters, the FBI, and the State Department. Steele himself talked extensively about his 2016 conversations and dealings with the Clinton law firm, its research firm Fusion GPS and the FBI in a British court case
Sussmann shared much of a research project — which turned out to be untrue — alleging a secret communications channel at the Alfa Bank between Trump and the Kremlin.
And several of the Clinton campaign figures gave testimony to Congress that exposed who paid for the research falsely tying Trump to Russia, what was in it and why it was conducted.
Said another way, each of the disclosures to third parties amounted to a waiver of any attorney-client privilege claims, at a minimum.
Several experts and observers of the case who spoke to the outlet thought that it was outrageous, and perhaps even a little desperate, considering that the dossier was always meant to be made public.
“It is clear as a matter of law and legal ethics that legal research intended to be made public is not protected by attorney-client privilege,” Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor who supported Clinton in 2016 but dismisses her privilege claims now, told Just the News. “Even if it were, any privilege would be waived by testimony given about the research or the product.”
In addition, Kash Patel, a former federal prosecutor who was instrumental in exposing the Russia collusion hoax while serving as chief investigative counsel for the House Intelligence Committee, added that Durham has several options for beating back the belated privilege claims, “including the argument it does not apply in a circumstance where lawyers were passing along false information,” Just the News reported.
“The attorney-client privilege, from my former federal prosecutor days, is eviscerated if you share with a third party,” Patel told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “But what John Durham is saying — he’s coming in over the top and saying, ‘No, no, you can’t hide behind the privilege laws. This is an attempt to block information of an ongoing fraud. You cannot use the attorney-client privilege. There’s a crime-fraud exception.’”
House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), meanwhile, remarked that the Clinton campaign’s claims of privilege were ridiculous in large part because of all of the times the Russian collusion narrative was shared with third parties. He also said the filing appears to a desperate attempt at delaying the trial of Sussmann, who served as one of the campaign’s lawyers.
“I think their attorneys missed that 15 minutes in ethics class, which tells you that you’ve waived the privilege when you start leaking it or even have somebody present while you’re discussing it,” Biggs told “Just the News, Not Noise” TV show. “That’s not part of the attorney-client relationship.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a winner. I think they’re going to lose on that. And, you know, it’s starting to unravel for them pretty quickly. And they just don’t want the truth to come out,” Biggs said.
Just the News adds: “According to Durham’s team, Sussmann shared the Alfa Bank research with at least two third parties: the FBI in September 2016 and the CIA in February 2017.”
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” that he believes the evidence obtained by the House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, shows former President Donald Trump and “others” engaged in criminal activity to obstruct Congress.
Maddow said, “Do you feel like what we have learned thus far might suggest criminal behavior by members of Congress? I’m thinking specifically about these revelations today in this reporting from CNN that would indicate, in the words of one Republican member of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, that multiple members of Congress believed that Trump should declare martial law just ahead of the inauguration in order to stay in power.”
She asked, “Is their indication, to your mind, in terms of the evidence you have seen, that members of Congress should be facing criminal charges for their involvement?”
Schiff said, “I haven’t reached a conclusion on that point, but I do agree certainly with the judge in California, Judge Carter, that there is compelling evidence that the president of the United States and others engaged with very possible criminal activity to obstruct Congress, to defraud the United States, to engage in conspiracy. I think that there is significant evidence of corrupt intent. Some of the revelations you mentioned go to the fact that White House counsel was telling some of these players like Mark Meadows that this is illegal, this violates the law. ”
He added, “We continue to put the facts together and learn new information every day.”
Twitter’s board has accepted an offer from billionaire Elon Musk to buy the social media company and take it private, the company announced Monday.
The stock closed up 5.64% for the day after it was halted for the news.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement included in the press release announcing the $44 billion deal. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
The cash deal at $54.20 per share is valued at around $44 billion, according to the press release. Twitter will become a private company once the deal is complete.
Assuming the deal closes and Musk takes ownership of Twitter, the company will be controlled by the world’s richest person and someone who’s been a heavy critic of the platform while using it in legally contentious ways, mostly through sensitive posts about his car manufacturer, Tesla. Though Musk has indicated that his primary interest in Twitter has to do with what he views as the company’s censorship of free speech, Musk critics are justifiably concerned that the billionaire’s control over the platform will result in the silencing of their voices and others with whom he may disagree.
Twitter’s board sought to fend off a hostile takeover by adopting a so-called poison pill, or shareholder rights agreement, that would allow other shareholders to buy the stock at a discount should Musk or another person or group acquire more than 15% of outstanding common stock. The plan would dilute that person’s holdings in a strategy commonly employed to prevent unwanted acquisitions.
The board seemed to have two reasons to consider rejecting the deal. The first was that the offer, while priced well above Twitter’s current share price, was arguably too low given it had recently surged above that price tag.
The second was that it was initially unclear how Musk would fund the deal. Despite being the world’s richest person, much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, meaning he would likely have to borrow against his holdings to fund the deal.
But the offer became more concrete once Musk announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that he received commitments for $46.5 billion to help finance the potential deal. That included about $25.5 billion in debt financing from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and other firms. He said he committed about $21 billion in equity financing.
Musk said in the same filing he was exploring a tender offer to purchase shares of Twitter directly from shareholders.
Musk’s interest in Twitter comes from his own frequent use of the platform. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO often uses his large platform to share jokes, engage with his 83.6 million followers and make business announcements.
The latter has gotten him in some trouble. He came under SEC investigation after tweeting in 2018 that he had secured funding at $420 per share to take Tesla private. The agency charged Musk with securities fraud as a result of those tweets. Musk and Tesla reached a revised settlement agreement over those charges in 2019, which Musk is now attempting to terminate.
Musk said at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver earlier this month that he did in fact have funding secured at the time of that tweet, adding that he was “forced to concede to the SEC unlawfully” in the settlement. The SEC declined to comment on Musk’s remarks at the time.
Also at the TED2022 conference, Musk shared how he would like to see the platform change under his ownership.
“I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,” he said at the time, acknowledging that some content moderation would be needed to deal with explicit calls to violence and ensure the service complied with the laws in the country in which it operates.
He also said he generally would prefer “time-outs” to permanent bans, which could suggest a path for former President Donald Trump to rejoin the platform under Musk’s control. Twitter banned Trump from the platform following his tweets around the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Some Republican lawmakers have expressed excitement at the prospect of Musk owning the company after complaining for years of what they say is censorship of conservative voices by mainstream tech companies. Twitter and others have said they do not censor speech based on ideology, but instead enforce their stated community guidelines.
“Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company.
Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.
Bret Taylor, Twitter’s Independent Board Chair, said, “The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, said, “Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Transaction Terms and Financing
The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the Twitter Board of Directors, is expected to close in 2022, subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
Mr. Musk has secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is providing an approximately $21.0 billion equity commitment. There are no financing conditions to the closing of the transaction.
For further information regarding all terms and conditions contained in the definitive transaction agreement, please see Twitter’s Current Report on Form 8-K, which will be filed in connection with the transaction.
First Quarter 2022 Earnings Results
Twitter plans to release its first quarter fiscal year 2022 results before market open on April 28, 2022. In light of the pending transaction announced today, Twitter will not hold a corresponding conference call.
Advisors
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan, and Allen & Co. are serving as financial advisors to Twitter, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Professional Corporation and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP are serving as legal counsel. Morgan Stanley is acting as lead financial advisor to Mr. Musk. BofA Securities and Barclays are also acting as financial advisors. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is serving as legal counsel.”
Tesla vehicles continue to be associated with accidents, fires, high costs, high levels of harmful radiation emissions, investigations, lawsuits, mechanical issues, recalls, and other various issues (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15). Of course, battery fires, fires that are difficult to extinguish, and radiation emissions have been reported with other company’s EVs as well (see 1, 2, 3, 4).
In recent Tesla news, the company issued another recall – this time for a federal standards violation with its boombox function. A video was also posted online of a Tesla vehicle crashing into a private jet. Oops and more oops!
A video was posted on Reddit Thursday that appears to show a Tesla vehicle slowly crashing into a $3.5 million private jet after being “summoned” by its owner using the automaker’s automatic parking feature.
The Reddit user (who did not immediately respond to a request for comment) said the incident took place at an event sponsored by aircraft manufacturer Cirrus at Felts Field in Spokane, Washington.
Tesla meets $3.5 million private jet
The smartphone video appears to capture security camera footage of the Tesla slowly crashing into and then actually pushing the Cirrus Vision Jet across the tarmac. A spokesperson for Felts Field also did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the poster, the Tesla owner was using the “Smart Summon” feature that enables a Tesla vehicle to leave a parking space and navigate around obstacles to its owner. Using just the Tesla app on your smartphone, you can “summon” your car to you from a maximum distance of 200 feet, as long as the car is within your line of sight.
The Reddit user said they also own a Tesla Model Y but were not the “poor soul (with poor decision making abilities) who summoned his Tesla around several expensive aircraft – only to crash it into the most expensive one ($3,500,000)!”
A video of a near-collision with a speeding SUV left the owner feeling their test of Smart Summon “didn’t go so well.” Another Tesla was filmed by pedestrians and people in other cars seeming confused as it tried to make its way across a Walmart parking lot.
A newer version of the feature enables owners to summon their Tesla vehicles from further away and can navigate more complex parking environments, according to Electrek. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has described Smart Summon as the company’s “most viral feature ever.”
Activist Post reports regularly about Teslas, autonomous vehicles (AVs), electric vehicles (EVs) and unsafe technology. For more information, visit our archives and the following websites:
Questions look set to be asked after two Russian oligarchs, both linked to gas giants, apparently murdered their wives and daughters before killing themselves—within two days of each other.
In both cases, the alarm was raised by the slain families’ surviving child.
Former Kremlin official and Gazprombank vice-president Vladislav Avayev, 51, was found dead in his luxury Moscow apartment alongside the bodies of his wife and 13-year-old daughter on Monday. It appeared he had shot them before turning the gun on himself. The bodies were found by distraught 26-year-old daughter Anastasia after she was unable to get hold of her family.
The following day former Novatek deputy chairman Sergey Protosenya, 55, his wife Natalya, 53, and 18-year-old daughter, Maria, were found dead at their Spanish mansion. The scene suggested the women had been stabbed, before Protosenya hanged himself in the garden. The alarm was raised by the couple’s teenage son, who was staying in France, after he was unable to reach his parents at their home in the coastal town of Lloret de Mar.
Sergey Protosenya, 55, who was found dead on Tuesday, along with his wife Natalya, 53, and their 18-year-old daughter.FACEBOOK
Spanish investigators are now reportedly trying to work out whether the Protosenya deaths were the result of a domestic murder-suicide or an organized hit.
According to Spanish website El Punt Avui, Protosenya’s estimated fortune was $440 million. He had reportedly trained as an engineer and economist and worked in senior financial roles at gas companies. An archived page on gas giant Novatek’s website, dating back to March 2015 and seen by Newsweek, named Sergey Protosenya as the company’s deputy chairman after a shake-up of the management board. He is not listed on the page detailing the company’s current board members.
Unconfirmed reports from El Punt Avui suggested some inconsistencies had been discovered at the Protosenya home, with the news site claiming the two women were stabbed as they slept leaving a pool of blood. However, no blood stains were found on Protosenya, the report said.
The deaths of two gas oligarchs, and their families, within two days of each other is likely to raise questions, despite the appearance of murder-suicides. Spanish detectives will be combing through the evidence to establish whether the incidents were tragedies sparked by domestic violence, or whether they had been staged.
Spanish authorities are reportedly so far working on the hypothesis that the incident was indeed a murder-suicide. A minute’s silence was held in Lloret de Mar on Wednesday at a rally protesting against violence towards women, that was held as a direct consequence of the Protosenya deaths.
Russian oligarchs have been in the news recently following Western sanctions on them over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is unclear whether Avayev and Protosenya had been directly impacted themselves.
Alongside Western pressure on oligarchs, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to target the billionaires too, during a rant about Westernized Russians last month.
He warned: “I do not judge those with villas in Miami or the French Riviera. Or [those] who can’t get by without oysters or foie gras or so-called ‘gender freedoms’…The problem is they mentally exist there, and not here, with our people, with Russia.”
He went on to call for a “self-purification” of the nation and there were reports of an “exodus” of private jets, apparently fleeing Russia in the wake of his comments.
Newsweek has reached out to Spanish police and Gazprombank officials in Russia.
After Newsweek spoke with a Novatek spokeswoman on Thursday, the gas giant emailed a statement praising Protosenya as a “wonderful family man” and dismissing media speculation about his death as “not related to reality”.
The statement read: “In connection with reports of the tragic death of former member of the Company’s Management Board, Sergey Protoseni [Protosenya], and his family members, Novatek expresses its sincere condolences to all those affected by this tragic situation. Sergey Protosenya [Protosenya] worked in the Novatek Group from 1997 to 2015 and has proven himself to be a wonderful person and a wonderful family man, a strong professional who has made a great contribution to the formation and development of the company. Unfortunately, there have been speculations on this topic in the media, but we are convinced that these speculations are not related to reality. We hope that the law enforcement agencies of Spain will conduct a thorough and objective investigation and sort out what happened.”
Former top Hillary Clinton presidential campaign officials are leaving onetime Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann to bear the brunt of the blame for orchestrating the now-debunked claim that Donald Trump and his associates colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 race, new court filings show.
Requests to intervene in the case were filed late Tuesday by the Clinton campaign, campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, and law firm Perkins Coie, which represented the campaign.
In his prosecution of Sussmann on a charge of lying to the FBI, special counsel John Durham has been seeking certain documents that are being withheld by the campaign and Perkins Coie under claims of attorney-client privilege and work product protection.
“Hillary for America [HFA] respectfully moves this honorable court to intervene as an interested non-party to assert privilege claims over documents and information that the government seeks to compel,” the campaign wrote.
Mook, Podesta, and Perkins Coie all similarly cited attorney-client privilege in their filings seeking to block the release of communications concerning their research on alleged Trump-Russia ties.
“At all times relevant to the government’s pending motion to compel and continuing through August 2021, Perkins Coie served as general counsel to HFA,” Podesta testified. “HFA asserts its attorney-client privilege and the attorney-work-product protection with respect to all documents and information under the control of Perkins Coie or any of its consultants, including Fusion GPS. HFA is not waiving any of its privileges.”
Fusion GPS was the opposition research firm hired by Perkins Coie to help the Clinton campaign dig up dirt on Trump.
The new filings are expected to hurt Sussmann’s defense in his trial, scheduled to begin next month, with many key players connected to the Russia collusion hoax attempting to distance themselves from Durham’s probe — and thereby putting much of the onus on Sussmann.
Legal experts told Just the News that Clinton’s former team and its allies are attempting to prevent damaging evidence that could potentially implicate them in wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia saga from coming to light.
“In effect, they are making a bogus attorney client-privilege claim to hide evidence of all their wrongdoing,” said Kash Patel, former chief investigator of the Russia investigation under then-House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Devin Nunes. “We knew it when I took their congressional depositions under oath. Now [Special Counsel] John Durham puts it all on display, and the world is finally paying attention.”
Patel noted that Sussmann is left in the position to take much of the blame for the Russia hoax.
Durham was appointed special counsel in October 2020 to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia collusion probe. He’s prosecuting Sussmann on a charge that the high-powered attorney, who was a partner at Perkins Coie, lied to the FBI at a September 2016 meeting in which he presented the agency with information insinuating concealed Trump-Russia links.
Sussman has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Earlier this month, Durham said in a separate court filing that Sussmann texted an FBI official the night before the 2016 meeting saying, “I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the bureau.”
Durham has called Sussmann’s claims that he was not meeting with the FBI on behalf of any clients a “lie,” hiding from the bureau that the Trump-Russia claims originally came from Clinton’s 2016 campaign and a tech executive linked to the campaign.
According to Durham, the tech executive, Rodney Joffe, aided the Clinton campaign by monitoring Trump’s internet activities and mining data “for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump” — and to create a “narrative” that Trump secretly communicated with the Kremlin. Joffe allegedly shared the information with Sussmann.
Sussmann’s defense has asked Durham to grant immunity to Joffe, so that he can testify about his interactions with Sussmann regarding the 2016 meeting. Durham has refused.
The Sussmann trial is part of a broader investigation by Durham, who alleges some of the dirt on Trump that the Clinton campaign shared with the government is false.
Much of the false Trump-Russia narrative was assembled after Perkins hired Fusion GPS, which went on to solicit former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to create the infamous and discredited Steele dossier, which contained several salacious and since-debunked claims about Trump.
Fusion GPS was also asked to disclose documents for the Sussmann trial and submitted a filing on Tuesday asserting attorney-client privilege in order to avoid complying.
“The documents the government seeks to compel were created as part of the work Fusion performed in support of Perkins’s legal representation of HFA and DNC [Democratic National Committee], which is protected by both work-product protection and the attorney-client privilege,” the filing read.
Fusion GPS also claimed in its motion that it was retained by then-Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias, a top DNC election attorney, not to find dirt on Trump but rather to help Perkins in the event that Trump filed lawsuits against the Clinton campaign, DNC, or their allies.
Elias had a “reasonable concern about Mr. Trump’s litigiousness given his numerous threats of and actual litigation against his critics,” Fusion said in its filing. “Indeed, that concern was prescient, with Mr. Trump having recently launched litigation seeking tens of millions of dollars against every interested party here.”
However, more than $1 million flowed from the Clinton campaign and DNC to Perkins, which hired Fusion, which in turn asked Steele to use his overseas contacts to dig up dirt on Trump. The DNC and Clinton campaign were fined by the Federal Election Commission last month for lying about how they used money to fund the Steele Dossier.
Fusion said in its Tuesday filing that the government hasn’t proved the documents it seeks are relevant to its narrow indictment of Sussmann for lying to the FBI. That claim doesn’t hold water, according to Patel, a former federal prosecutor.
In trying to get his charge dismissed by a federal court, “Sussmann said his lie was immaterial” to Durham’s probe,” explained Patel. “Durham is saying no, I have this info to say why this lie is material.”
The documents Durham is seeking, added Patel, will show materiality and are therefore relevant to the trial.
Mook, Podesta, Elias, the DNC, and Perkins Coie all didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In what his lawyers have described as a “brief but significant moment in the case,” a British magistrates’ court has signed off on Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, bringing the WikiLeaks founder one step closer to a US trial under the Espionage Act which threatens press freedoms worldwide.
“He is a war criminal,” President Biden said of Vladimir Putin following allegations of war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine earlier this month. “I think it is a war crime. … He should be held accountable.”
BREAKING: President Joe Biden calls for war crimes trial against Russian President Vladimir Putin, says he's seeking more sanctions after reported atrocities in Ukraine. https://t.co/E6TRAet7di
And that’s all I’d like to say here today, really. That this discrepancy is very interesting.
I mean, can we take a moment to deeply appreciate the irony of this? Because it’s so obscene and outrageous it’s actually hard to take in unless you really let it absorb. The most powerful government in the world, which serves as the hub of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, is working to extradite a journalist for exposing its war crimes while simultaneously rending its garments over war crime allegations against another government.
I mean, damn. You would think a power structure that had recently been caught red-handed committing war crimes and is currently in the process of imprisoning a journalist for exposing those war crimes would at least have the sense not to yell too loudly about war crimes for a little while. But this is how confident the empire is in its ability to control the narrative.
Really take it in. Really digest it. The more you think about it, the freakier it gets. Not only is the empire persecuting a journalist for exposing its war crimes while at the same time demanding that others be held accountable for war crimes, it is also attacking the free press for reporting the truth about the powerful while at the very same time engaging in a massive propaganda operation which holds that it is involved in Ukraine to protect its freedom and democracy.
Are people not tired of having their intelligence insulted like this? https://t.co/MA7T5N9SrO
I mean, the gall. The absolute temerity. The balls on this empire, man.
I have said it before and I will say it again: Assange exposed many ugly realities about the powerful in his work with WikiLeaks, but everything that he has managed to expose thereafter simply by forcing them to prosecute him far surpasses the revelations in those publications.
If the highest form of journalism is exposing the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world, then Julian Assange is the highest form of journalist.
When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech’s centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.
A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech’s power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech’s monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.
While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) “foreign disinformation,” several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the “hallmarks” of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).
The ostensible purpose of the letter is to warn of the national security dangers from two different bipartisan bills — one pending in the Senate, the other in the House — that would prohibit Big Tech monopolies from using their vertical power to “discriminate” against competitors (the way Google, for instance, uses its search engine business to bury the videos of competitors to its YouTube property, such as Rumble, or the way Google and Apple use their stores and Amazon uses its domination over hosting services to destroy competitors).
One bill in the Senate is co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), and has attracted ample support in both parties, as has a similar House bill co-sponsored by House Antitrust Committee Chair David Cicilline (D-RI) and ranking member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO). The amount of bipartisan support each bill has garnered — and the widespread animosity toward Big Tech reflected by this Congressional support — has shocked Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook lobbyists, who are accustomed to getting their way in Washington with lavish donations to the key politicians in each party.
This letter by former national security officials is, in one sense, an act of desperation. The bills have received the support of the key committees with jurisdiction over antitrust and Big Tech. In the Senate, five conservative Republican Committee members who have been outspoken critics of Big Tech power — Grassley, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) — joined with Democrats to ensure the passage of one bill out of the Judiciary Committee by a 16-6 vote, with a companion bill passing that Committee with the support of 20 of twenty-two Senators. As The Intercept‘s Sara Sirota and Ryan Grim report: “Both bills have Big Tech reeling” since “a floor vote would likely be a blowout for Big Tech.”
The extreme animus harbored by large parts of the left and right toward Big Tech make it very difficult for any lawmaker to go on record in opposition to these proposed bills if they are forced to publicly take a position in a floor vote. Many Senators with financial ties to Big Tech — including the two California Senate Democrats who represent Silicon Valley and are recipients of their largesse (Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla) — have expressed reservations about these reform efforts and have refused to co-sponsor the bill, yet still voted YES when forced to vote in Committee. This shows that public pressure to rein in Big Tech is becoming too large to enable Silicon Valley to force lawmakers to ignore their constituents’ wishes with lobbyist donations. These politicians will work behind the scenes to kill efforts to rein in Big Tech, but will not vote against such efforts if forced to take a public position.
As a result, Big Tech’s last hope is to keep the bill from reaching the floor where Senators would be forced to go on record, a goal they hope will be advanced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York due to his close ties to Silicon Valley. “Both [Schumer’s] children are on the payroll of companies the proposals would seek to rein in,” reportedThe New York Post: “Jessica Schumer is a registered lobbyist at Amazon, according to New York state records. Alison Schumer works at Facebook as a product marketing manager.” Despite that, Schumer claimed to The Intercept that he supports both bills and will vote in favor of them, even though he has engaged in maneuvers to impede the bills from getting a full floor vote.
This is where these former intelligence and national security officials come in. While these former CIA, Homeland Security and Pentagon operatives have little sway in the Senate Judiciary and House Antitrust Committees, they command great loyalty from Congressional national security committees. Those committees, created to exert oversight of the U.S. intelligence and military agencies, are notoriously captive to the U.S. National Security State. The ostensible purpose of this new letter is to insist that Big Tech monopoly power is vital to U.S. national security — because it is necessary for them to censor “disinformation” from the internet, especially now with the grave Russian threat reflected by the war in Ukraine — and they thus demand that the anti-Big-Tech bills first be reviewed not only by the Judiciary and Antitrust Committees, but also the national security committees where they wield power and influence, which have traditionally played no role in regulating the technology sector:
We call on the congressional committees with national security jurisdiction – including the Armed Services Committees, Intelligence Committees, and Homeland Security Committees in both the House and Senate – to conduct a review of any legislation that could hinder America’s key technology companies in the fight against cyber and national security risks emanating from Russia’s and China’s growing digital authoritarianism.
Why would these former national security and intelligence officials be so devoted to preserving the unfettered power of Big Tech to control and censor the internet? One obvious explanation is the standard one that always runs Washington: several of them have a financial interest in serving Big Tech’s agenda.
Unsurprisingly, Apple CEO Tim Cook has himself pushed the claim that undermining Big Tech’s power in any way would threaten U.S national security. And there is now an army of well-compensated-by-Silicon-Valley former national security officials echoing his message. A well-researched Politico articlefrom September — headlined: “12 former security officials who warned against antitrust crackdown have tech ties” — detailed how many of these former officials who invoke national security claims to protect Big Tech are on the take from the key tech monopolies:
The warning last week from a dozen former national security leaders was stark: An antitrust crackdown on Silicon Valley could threaten the nation’s economy and “cede U.S. tech leadership to China.”
But the group was united by more than their histories of holding senior defense and intelligence roles in the Trump, Obama and George W. Bush administrations: All 12 have ties to major tech companies, either from working with them directly or serving with organizations that get money from them, according to a POLITICO analysis….
Seven of the 12, including Panetta, hold roles at Beacon Global Strategies, a public relations firm that according to a person familiar with the matter counts Google as a client…Five of the former officials, including former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Robert Cardillo and former National Security Agency deputy director Richard Ledgett, serve as advisory board members at Beacon. Panetta and Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director under President Barack Obama, are senior counselors for the firm….
Frances Townsend, who was a counterterrorism and homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, is on the national security advisory board for American Edge, a Facebook-funded groupthat opposes changes to strengthen antitrust laws….Townsend is also on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, which counts Facebook and Google as funders; the board of trustees for Center for Strategic and International Studies, which counts Apple and Google as funders; and the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, which receives money from Microsoft and counts Facebook and Google in its highest membership category.
As Rep. Buck, the Colorado House Republican who favors reform, put it: “It is not surprising that individuals who receive money from Big Tech are defending Big Tech. At the end of the day, Big Tech is harming U.S. competition and innovation through anticompetitive practices.” In other words, these former intelligence officials are exploiting their national security credentials to protect an industry in which they have a deep financial interest.
The view that preservation of Big Tech is vital for national security is by no means a unanimous view even in that world. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark and others have vehemently argued that this claim is a “myth.” As veteran internet security expert Bruce Schneier observed: “These bills will encourage competition, prevent monopolist extortion, and guarantee users a new right to digital self-determination.” But the National Security State has enough True Believers combined with paid shills to make it appear as if Americans should be desperate to preserve and protect Big Tech’s power because this power is crucial to keeping America safe and, particularly, fighting Russia.
There are indeed valid and rational reasons for these officials to view Big Tech monopoly power as a vital weapon in advancing their national security agenda. As I documented last week when reporting on the unprecedented censorship regime imposed in the West regarding the war in Ukraine, Big Tech censorship of political speech is not random. Domestically, it is virtually always devoted to silencing any meaningful dissent from liberal orthodoxy or official pieties on key political controversies. But in terms of foreign policy, the censorship patterns of tech monopolies virtually always align with U.S. foreign policy, and for understandable reasons: Big Tech and the U.S. security state are in a virtually complete union, with all sorts of overlapping, mutual financial interests:
Note that this censorship regime is completely one-sided and, as usual, entirely aligned with U.S. foreign policy. Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda and outright lies from the start of the war. A New York Timesarticle from early March put it very delicately in its headline: “Fact and Mythmaking Blend in Ukraine’s Information War.” Axios was similarly understated in recognizing this fact: “Ukraine misinformation is spreading — and not just from Russia.” Members of the U.S. Congress have gleefully spreadfabrications that went viral to millions of people, with no action from censorship-happy Silicon Valley corporations. That is not a surprise: all participants in war use disinformation and propaganda to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and that certainly includes all direct and proxy-war belligerents in the war in Ukraine.
Yet there is little to no censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of whether they spread disinformation….Their crime, like the crime of so many other banished accounts, was not disinformation but skepticism about the US/NATO propaganda campaign. Put another way, it is not “disinformation” but rather viewpoint-error that is targeted for silencing. One can spread as many lies and as much disinformation as one wants provided that it is designed to advance the NATO agenda in Ukraine (just as one is free to spread disinformation providedthat its purpose is to strengthen the Democratic Party, which wields its majoritarian power in Washington to demand greater censorship and commands the support of most of Silicon Valley). But what one cannot do is question the NATO/Ukrainian propaganda framework without running a very substantial risk of banishment.
It is unsurprising that Silicon Valley monopolies exercise their censorship power in full alignment with the foreign policy interests of the U.S. Government. Many of the key tech monopolies — such as Google and Amazon — routinely seek and obtain highly lucrativecontracts with the U.S. security state, including both the CIA and NSA. Their top executives enjoy very close relationships with top Democratic Party officials. And Congressional Democrats have repeatedly hauled tech executives before their various Committees to explicitly threaten themwith legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more in accordance with the policy goals and political interests of that party.
Needless to say, the U.S. security state wants to maintain a stranglehold on political discourse in the U.S. and the world more broadly. They want to be able to impose propagandistic narratives without challenge and advocate for militarism without dissent. To accomplish that, they need a small handful of corporations which are subservient to them to hold in their hands as much concentrated power over the internet as possible.
If a free and fair competitive market were to arise whereby social media platforms more devoted to free speech could fairly compete with Google and Facebook— as the various pending bills in Congress are partially designed to foster — then that new diversity of influence, that diffusion of power, would genuinely threaten the ability of the CIA and the Pentagon and the White House to police political discourse and suppress dissent from their policies and assertions. By contrast, by maintaining all power in the hands of the small coterie of tech monopolies which control the internet and which have long proven their loyalty to the U.S. security state, the ability of the U.S. national security state to maintain a closed propaganda system around questions of war and militarism is guaranteed.
In this new letter, these national security operatives barely bother to hide their intention to exploit the strong animosity toward Russia that they have cultivated, and the accompanying intense emotions from the ubiquitous, unprecedented media coverage of the war in Ukraine, to prop up their goals. Over and over, they cite the grave Russian threat — a theme they have been disseminating and manufacturing since the Russiagate fraud of 2016 — to manipulate Americans to support the preservation of Big Tech’s concentrated power, and to imply that anyone seeking to limit Big Tech power or make the market more competitive is a threat to U.S. national security:
This is a pivotal moment in modern history. There is a battle brewing between authoritarianism and democracy, and the former is using all the tools at its disposal, including a broad disinformation campaign and the threat of cyber-attacks, to bring about a change in the global order. We must confront these global challenges. . . . U.S. technology platforms have given the world the chance to see the real story of the Russian military’s horrific human rights abuses in Ukraine. . . . At the same time, President Putinand his regime have sought to twist facts in order to show Russia as a liberator instead of an aggressor. . . .
The Russian government is seeking to alter the information landscape by blocking Russian citizens from receiving content that would show the true facts on the ground. .. . . . Indeed, it is telling that among the Kremlin’s first actions of the war was blocking U.S. platforms in Russia. Putin knows that U.S. digital platforms can provide Russian citizens valuable views and facts about the war that he tries to distort through lies and disinformation. U.S. technology platforms have already taken concrete steps to shine a light on Russia’s actions to brutalize Ukraine. . . . Providing timely and accurate on-the-ground information – and disrupting the scourge of disinformation from Russian state media – is essential for allowing the world (including the Russian people) to see the human toll of Russia’s aggression. . . . [T]he United States is facing an extraordinary threat from Russian cyber-attacks . . .
In the face of these growing threats, U.S. policymakers must not inadvertently hamper the ability of U.S. technology platforms to counter increasing disinformation and cybersecurity risks, particularly as the West continues to rely on the scale and reach of these firms to push back on the Kremlin . . . . Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks the start of a new chapter in global history, one in which the ideals of democracy will be put to the test. The United States will need to rely on the power of its technology sector to ensure that the safety of its citizens and the narrative of events continues to be shaped by facts, not by foreign adversaries.
It is hardly controversial or novel to observe that the U.S. security state always wants and needs a hated foreign enemy precisely because it allows them to claim whatever powers and whatever budgets they want in the name of stopping that foreign villain. And every war and every new enemy ushers in new authoritarian powers and the trampling of civil liberties: both the First War on Terror, justified by 9/11, and the New Domestic War on Terror, justified by 1/6, should have taught us that lesson permanently. Usually, though, U.S. security state propagandists are a bit more subtle about how they manipulate anger and fear of foreign villains to manipulate public opinion for their own authoritarian ends.
Perhaps because of their current desperation about the support these bills have attracted, they are now just nakedly and shamelessly trying to channel the anger and hatred that they have successfully stoked toward Russia to demand that Big Tech not be weakened, regulated or restricted in any way. The cynical exploitation could hardly be more overt: if you hate Putin the way any loyal and patriotic American should, then you must devote yourself to full preservation of the power of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
It should go without saying that these life-long security state operatives do not care in the slightest about the dangers of “disinformation.” Indeed — as evidenced by the fact that most of them generated one Russiagate fraud after the next during
Taiwan’s government-funded Chinese Television System (CTS) accidentally broadcast a running news ticker on Wednesday morning falsely declaring Chinese forces had launched a military invasion of New Taipei City, the Taipei Times reported on Thursday.
The Taiwanese public broadcaster CTS allowed mock alerts intended for an upcoming disaster drill in New Taipei City to enter its text feed for a running news ticker at the bottom of its 7:00 a.m. news bulletin on April 20. The text included alarming messages, such as, “Communist forces strike New Taipei City with guided missiles.”
“Naval vessel explodes, facilities, ships damaged at Port of Taipei,” read another false update.
“Arson and explosives placed by suspected special forces at Banqiao [train] Station, no casualties,” CTS’s news ticker further claimed.
“The CTS chyron had also warned that conflict with China was ‘in danger of breaking out,’ and that New Taipei officials had established a command and control center,” Newsweekreported on Wednesday. “‘Chinese Communists make preparations for war, [Taiwan] president declares state of emergency effective 8 a.m. March 6,’ the text read.”
CTS’s accidental broadcast of the mock alerts caused several residents of New Taipei City to phone the local government and inquire about the messages on Wednesday. In response, CTS pinned the following statement to the top of its YouTube live stream later Wednesday, “The news ticker content shown earlier was part of a disaster prevention video created by the New Taipei Fire Department. Today, due to incorrect settings, the content of yesterday’s video was mistakenly inserted. Please don’t panic! We hereby clarify and apologize!”
CTS issued a more detailed explanation of the incident later on April 20, writing:
We were tasked by the New Taipei City Government to shoot a disaster drill video, with the script provided by the New Taipei City Fire Department. The news producer who recorded the video used a horizontal screen layout with news tickers, which was done through a change in the path of a text file link. However, the producer did not restore the file link path after completing the recording on Tuesday [April 19], resulting in the error in the morning news program.
Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) launched an investigation into the CTS news ticker fiasco on April 20. The NCC suspects CTS may have breached Article 21 of Taiwan’s Radio and Television Act, which bans programs that “disrupt public order or adversely affect good social customs.”
“TV stations that breach the article face fines of NT$200,000 to NT$2 million (US$6,838 to US$68,378), with the minimum raised to NT$400,000 if it is deemed a major offense,” NCC representatives said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Longstanding political tension between Taipei and Beijing has increased in recent months, placing Taiwan on high alert for a possible act of military aggression from China. Beijing considers Taiwan a Chinese territory and has repeatedly threatened to “reunify” the island nation — which is located off China’s southeastern coast — with “the mainland,” or China. In line with this belligerent stance, China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has ramped up air sorties that penetrate Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in recent months.
Before fleeing Afghanistan in a rush last fall Joe Biden armed the Taliban terrorist organization with approximately $80 billion in US weapons. The White House and Pentagon have never admitted to how many billion dollars worth of weapons they left behind for the Islamist group.
Joe Biden supplied the Taliban terrorist organization and their Islamist accomplices with billions of dollars worth of US arms.
Rather than destroying the equipment before leaving the country, Joe Biden decided to leave the nearly $85 billion worth of US military equipment to the Taliban.
As The Gateway Pundit reported on Sunday — Joe Biden left 300 times more guns than those passed to the Mexican cartels in Obama’s Fast and Furious program.
This more complete list was created with public information and help from other intelligence sources.
The list does not include all the extra kinds of nonlethal equipment, everything from MRE’s, Medical Equipment, and even energy drinks.
The big story might be the pallets of cash the Taliban have been posting videos of pallets of weapons and stacks of $100 bills they have seized.
Here is a more complete list of US-supplied and left behind equipment list now controlled by Taliban:
-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s -75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc -45 UH-60 Blachhawk Helicopters -50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers -ScanEagle Military Drones -30 Military Version Cessnas -4 C-130’s -29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft 208+ Aircraft Total -At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition -61,000 M203 Rounds -20,040 Grenades -Howitzers -Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds -162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Comunications Gear -16,000+ Night Vision Goggles -Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes -Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles -10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets -Recconaissance Equipment (ISR) -Laser Aiming Units -Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT -2,520 Bombs -Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops all operational -Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency -Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber -Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor -US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics -Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators
Much of the information included in the above list is public record.
But that was not enough.
Now the Biden Administration is sending hundreds of millions of US dollars in weapons to Ukraine — But they don’t know what happens to these weapons.
Ukraine is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in a recent Corruption Perceptions Index and the most corrupt country in Europe.
Without U.S. troops in Ukraine, tracking the use of lethal aid to Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion has shortcomings, including relying on the very beneficiary that would be inclined to keep asking for more.
How the anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and other weaponry are being used by Ukraine is going to be a bit of an unknown, but it will not stop the Biden administration from supplying those amid war, sources tell CNN.
“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source told CNN. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.
“It’s hard to track with nobody on the ground,” a source added.
The Biden administration is sending “certainly the largest recent supply to a partner country in a conflict,” according to a senior defense official. Thus far, the U.S. has transferred hundreds of millions in equipment, but the need to supply Ukraine is trumping the potential for the weapons winding up in the wrong hands, according to the report.
The U.S. is forced to admit it is relying on Ukraine’s honesty on the use of the aid and weapons, even if Ukraine might be inclined to only share information that keeps the supply from the U.S. ongoing.
There is potentially billions in aid to come.
More… The US has sent over $2.5 billion to Ukraine.
American dissidents of all stripes are ablaze with anger after The Washington Post’s most repugnant reporter, Taylor Lorenz, published yet another piece trying to ruin someone more popular than her.
Taylor Lorenz, a Washington Post columnist, wrote a Tuesday article titled, “Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine,” revealing the identity of the user who had intended to remain anonymous. The piece linked the user’s real estate page listing her full name and home address, which the outlet later removed.
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The account, which nearly has 700,000 followers, posts TikTok videos of liberals in order to spark a reaction among conservative audiences.
Lorenz reportedly contacted Libs of TikTok early Tuesday telling the account they are “being implicated as a hate campaign against LGBTQ people,” the account said. [Daily Caller]
For those not paying attention, the blazing hot Libs of TikTok account simply finds TikTok videos wherein crazed liberals and LGBTQ-ers, many of them teachers of innocent children, unabashedly reveal their deviant grooming agenda for public consumption.
Few people are more repugnant than Taylor Lorenz, who once falsely accused billionaire Marc Andreeson of using the “r-slur” in a Clubhouse room, and whose age is humorously difficult to pin down. Mere weeks ago, Lorenz had a meltdown over “online harassment” in an interview with MSNBC, then pressured the channel into deleting the interview.
This was Taylor Lorenz a couple of weeks ago.
She was crying victim of "harassment”.
Today she tracked down and harassed family members of the @libsoftiktok account for an article she’s working on.
Lorenz may be repulsive, to say the least. She certainly courted, assiduously, all the hatred coming her way. But there is a bigger story here. This incident is a case study in how the ruling regime uses cutout “NGOs” and “hackers” to target dissidents for annihilation. It wasn’t Taylor Lorenz who doxed Libs of TikTok. Lorenz is a used-up cocktail waitress for the regime. She’s far too talentless to achieve such a feat. Instead, it was a motley crew of regime actors.
The original doxer of the woman behind Libs of TikTok was an Antifa Twitter user named @karmaonesixone who gloated last weekend about using sleuth work to uncover the account’s original tweets and name.
Another Twitter user, Travis Brown, promoted and confirmed @karmaonesixone’s work, then went on to unearth and reveal even more information about the woman behind LibsofTikTok.
In the Washington Post, Taylor Lorenz herself credits Brown for confirming Libs Of TikTok’s identity.
On Saturday, software developer Travis Brown (who is working on a project with support from Prototype Fund, an organization that backs open-source projects) unearthed the account’s Twitter history and posted a thread detailing information about its profile changes.
Who is Travis Brown? In essence, a man paid by the German government to target, dox, and harass the international left’s ideological enemies.
Brown is the creator of the so-called “Hate Speech Tracker,” a program whose explicit purpose is to aid Antifa extremists in tracking and archiving statements by its enemies, and find “connections” between them to aid in doxxing.
WHAT SOCIETAL CHALLENGE DOES YOUR PROTOTYPE ADDRESS?
Many right-wing extremist movements are currently developing on social media, e.g. B. GamerGate, conspiracy theory movements like QAnon and militant movements like the Proud Boys in the USA. Members of these movements often delete their content, change their username, and get banned (often temporarily) from social media platforms. This makes it harder to resist their actions. For example, prominent far-right accounts on Twitter and Facebook have developed a well-documented pattern of distributing controversial and extremist content to their followers and then deleting it before moderators have a chance to respond. This is how they radicalize their audience while minimizing the risk of their platforms losing funding or moderate supporters. Archiving is an important element in counteracting this behavior and in many cases has led to prominent victories against the extreme right.
The Hate Speech Tracker is a set of composable software tools that enable people affected by harassment and hate speech on social media to record and share information about their experiences. Blacklists for Twitter and other social media platforms can be commented on and shared privately, connections between extremist-run accounts can be identified and cases of hate speech can be archived.
…
WHO IS YOUR TOOL AIMED AT?
The early versions of this project were mainly used by anti-fascist researchers and organizations. Although these specialists represent the primary user group of the project, the tools should also be available to a broader, less specialized user base.
For those wondering, Brown’s work egregiously violates the terms of use of the sites that he tracks “hate” on. As Brown himself noted on his website, Twitter’s own privacy policy states:
“As such, we prohibit the use of Twitter data in any way that would be inconsistent with people’s reasonable expectations of privacy. By building on the Twitter API or accessing Twitter Content, you have a special role to play in safeguarding this commitment, most importantly by respecting people’s privacy and providing them with transparency and control over how their data is used.”
…
“We want people to feel comfortable to create a separate and, if they choose, pseudonymous identity on Twitter. If you intend to associate any information about a Twitter user with an off-Twitter identifier, we require that you get express, opt-in consent from the user before making the association.
For example, you could get this consent if the user shares their Twitter handle directly with you as part of a signup process for your service. In situations in which you do not have a user’s express, opt-in consent to link their Twitter identity to an off-Twitter identifier, we require that any connection you draw be based only on information that a user would reasonably expect to be used for that purpose. If a user would be surprised to learn that you are using information they provided to link their Twitter account to an identity off of Twitter, don’t do it.”
Brown also openly admits to using certain tactics on Twitter that “probably” violate the ToS.
This isn’t some one-off fluke. Much like Brandy Zadrozny, whom Revolver profiled in 2020, Travis Brown exists as a small part of a much larger ecosystem.
Brown’s doxxing operation isn’t an independent venture. He is backed by the Prototype Fund, a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, an “independent not-for-profit organization.” The notion that the foundation is “independent” is, of course, a lie. OKFG receives funding directly from the the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
In other words, the German government directly financed the doxing of Libs Of TikTok and Taylor Lorenz’s calculated attempt on behalf of the Washington Post to destroy her life.
Prototype, by the way, doesn’t just fund doxing operations. It funds the mass arrival of “asylum-seekers” into Europe.
It backs the perpetual post-2016 campaign against “fake news.”
Is there something about “trans voices”? You bet there’s something about trans voices!
The same organization that paid to dox Libs Of TikTok is also paying to teach male-to-female transgenders how not to sound like Barry White.
Prototype doesn’t limit itself to online flame wars. It also takes an interest in real wars, funding an archive to gather alleged eyewitness reports of atrocities in the Syrian Civil War.
“Syrian Archive” acts vague about what position it takes on the war, but its website leaves no room for doubt: This is an organization that exists to blame Bashar Assad, and by extension Russia, for chemical attacks (chemical attacks that in at least one case turned out to be a hoax). In fact, its anti-Russia orientation is so obvious that in the last few weeks it has pivoted to warning about imminent chemical attacks in Ukraine:
The same German government-backed organization that is targeting political dissidents in the West is also funding the transgender mania and the foreign policy priorities of the Western elite. In many ways, Prototype resembles Bellingcat—an “NGO” funded by the United Kingdom that played a key role in amplifying the Russia collusion narrative, targets “far-right” domestic dissidents, and promoted the Syria gas attack hoax. In 2021, The Grayzone revealed that Bellingcat took UK intelligence money to run overseas influence operations intended to “weaken Russia.”
America unsurprisingly loves this tactic as well. In February, the hacker collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) leaked hacked materials from GiveSendGo that doxed donors to the Canadian trucker convoy. As we previously observed, DDoS is basically a de facto government operation:
In 2020, the Trump Department of Homeland Security claimed that DDoS is a “criminal hacker group.” Despite that, it enjoys IRS non-profit status. DDoS’s high-profile hacks have, almost without exception, targeted domestic dissidents against the regime, or its international enemies, rather than the regime itself. Besides doxing every GiveSendGo donor, DDoS’s other targets include Gab, Parler, local police departments, Russia, Myanmar, and right-wing chat groups online.
So much for speaking truth to power. By all accounts, DDoS speaks power to truth.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, DDoS’s leader is the “chronically ill” “they/she” transgender freak show Emma Best. DDoS almost certainly works hand in hand with serious criminals, if it is not an outright criminal organization itself. Yet nobody is shutting down financial support for DDoS or seizing its assets. While Julian Assange awaits trial and, in all likelihood, life in prison for embarrassing the security state and the Hillary Clinton campaign, “Emma” Best (they/she) faces no serious efforts to stop his activities whatsoever. And why would he? He is among the most heroic tranissaries rendering an invaluable service to the Globalist American Empire.
In late February, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hillary Clinton called for Anonymous and other hacker groups to launch more cyberattacks on Russia. Does anybody think for even a moment that the CIA and other agencies aren’t “encouraging” such behavior behind the scenes?
This isn’t a new idea. Back in 2013, Anonymous carried out operations against the Assad government in Syria.
So, what’s the takeaway from all this? When you see such “hacker groups” operate, they are not operating independently. They exist within an ecosystem where regime stakeholders can use cut-outs to do their dirty work. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the merc–, ahem, private military contractor Blackwater served a similar function for combat zones: Flexibility and plausible deniability. Now, the same goes for civil society. Nominally, the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of its allies protect freedom of speech, and the government explicitly doxing its own citizens for dissent is unlikely to be popular. Rather than have government employees directly target dissidents (which does happen on occasion), it is much easier to quietly enable cutout “civil society organizations,” NGOs, and more — all funded by government yet insulated from any kind of accountability — to do the dirty work.
The Lorenz dox job exposes how this ecology operates. This is not simply the story of a deranged attention whore who went too far. This is a story of how the new Stasi operates: Energy flows from governments, to non-profits, to hackers, and finally to aged out journalists publishing hit pieces on dissidents in Jeff Bezos’s paper of record.
By understanding this system, it becomes possible to stop it. The most obvious fix is the most blunt: Break off the billions in government funding that enable these shadow operations of left-wing radicalism. But that isn’t the only fix. Revolver will further explore this NGO ecosystem in the weeks and months to come. Stay tuned.
Hunter Biden, the son of the President of the United States, penned a despairing letter to his father just days before Donald J. Trump took office as the 45th President of the United States, as Biden received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and declined, in Hunter’s words, to properly credit his family for his life’s work.
From the “hard drive from hell” – from which The National Pulse has conducted some of the most substantive and consistent reporting – the message comes from Hunter’s notes app, and details a bizarre family dynamic which places Joe Biden at the top, like a mafia crime boss.
“Dad you have to listen,” Hunter begins, before going on to bemoan the fact that Joe Biden’s family has “lived their lives in service to [Joe]” and that they feel “publicly and privately humiliated” by his behavior.
Parts of the letter were previously published by Miranda Devine in her bestselling “Laptop From Hell” book.
READ IN FULL:
Dad you have to listen- then you can do whatever you want. I’ll make it the last time and you can ignore it or i hope at least acknowledge that the three people On earth who have lived their lives in service to you who love you more than the next 30 combined have suddenly all Concluded for their own reasons that you have finally crossed the line- that we won’t be publicly and privately humiliated while those that publicly and privately humiliate us our [sic] held to the world as the loves of your life the life of your…
Love is an action dad not an emotion. Think how your brother and sister express their love for you. They do anything you tell them to do and have their whole lives. You act as if I have no right to tell you about what you did or didn’t have or haven’t done with your siblings. Well that’s just absurd. Uncle Jimmy is my best friend and aunt Val is my mother – and if you make me ever feel like saying that is somehow la [sic] betrayal than [sic] know this every time over the last 30 years you say “she saved OUR lives” with aunt Val standing right next and never mention her I feel like grabbing the mic and saying she may have saved his life but beau and I were pretty happy with Mom mom and Aunt Val. Loosing Mommy was more like expect it might be to be born without legs you know something really really important isn’t there but don’t quite know why it feels so incredibly absent when you can’t remember it’s presence.
And then you learn to walk and get bionic legs and a set of wings. Mom mom and Aunt Val saved MY life dad they saved Beaus life Dad you saved our lives— i understand the lie serves your purpose Dad but to make two boys who had the three greatest mothers god could conceive taken from them that they had to buy into it or they would be betraying you is pretty awful- because that is not choice we would ever even let sit in our minds a moment. That’s an act of love dad and the greatest act of love is that your sister never once even in the slightest way would allow us to believe that it must be torture to be written out of the greatest love story ever told.
Do you who has done more for me been more loyal and is actual embodiment of your line – if you have to ask it’s too late. Uncle Jimmy is the only person I have ever known by a factor of ten that has never asked first . 1 have seen him take punch after punch in the face from every drowning family member he has saved and when the crowd of gawkers gather around and say wow that was so brave so selfless he without exception says what do vou mean that was my brother who not me. Well where did you get the broken nose and black eye- and the whole family says well you know Jim he’s reckless he’s a hothead he leaps before he looks– he’s a lovable tornado. How do you let that stand? Because it there is one hero in this story that deserves the Medal of Honor for throwing himself on the grenade it’s my uncle and it’s like Groundhog Day no matter how hard he try’s to rewrite the story each time he puts himself back together again it’s the same ending-/ there’s a grenade in the living room on Christmas Eve and the whole family gathers around and postures and pontificates or hides under the couch or pushes someone in front of them and there’s uncle Jim missing both legs in a wheel chair with one eye and maybe not until Ive seen him do it a hundred times before does he say “come on – guys at least heip me out of my chair and this time please don’t make me drive myself to the hospital- get me a cab and I’ll pay you back.”
So dad on arguably the most rewarding day in your career you [fail] to even say and I want publicly thank the heart and soul of this family the…
The draft letter ends there, and what is clear is the Biden family’s frustration – at least through Hunter’s eyes – at the “service” provided to Joe Biden throughout his political career.
The news follows reports that Joe Biden expected “10 [percent] held for the big guy,” from Hunter’s deals with Chinese companies.
A United Kingdom court on Wednesday issued a formal order to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to stand trial over the publication of national secrets pertaining to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The final decision now rests in the hands of U.K. Interior Minister Priti Patel. However, Assange’s legal team will still have the opportunity to appeal any decision within 14 days.
Last month, Assange was denied permission to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court against actions to extradite him to the United States, where a conviction could mean a lifetime prison sentence.
In the U.S., Assange would face trial in connection to the 500,000 secret military files he leaked to the public relating to the actions of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Early last year, Assange successfully argued that he was a suicide risk who could not be kept in solitary confinement at a maximum security facility in America.
The U.S. government, however, appealed the reprieve and made assurances that Assange would not be held in isolation at a federal supermax facility.
Assange has since unsuccessfully attempted to appeal the most recent ruling, but the British court denied the appeal application on the grounds that it “didn’t raise any arguable point of law.”
Joe Biden reportedly told Barack Obama recently that he was running for President again in 2024. A ‘source’ says that Biden believes he is the only one who can beat President Trump in 2024.
The source added that Biden believes he is the only candidate who can beat former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical rematch between the two political rivals, which was largely the reason Biden was able to secure the Democratic nomination in 2020.
“I believe he thinks he’s the only one who can beat Trump. I don’t think he thinks there’s anyone in the Democratic party who can beat Trump and that’s the biggest factor,” the source said.
But Biden’s prospects for victory in 2024 have been in doubt in recent months, with the president seeing worsening approval ratings since August of last year. The latest Quinnipiac University put Biden’s approval at a dismal 33%, the lowest mark of his presidency thus far.
This report is bizarre in so many ways. Here are several of observations.
1. The report may be an effort to pretend and trick the masses that Joe Biden is able to function currently at an acceptable level, and into the future. Only a week ago we saw Biden in Iowa finish his speech and turn to shake hands with someone who wasn’t there. He then wandered around aimlessly until he managed to finally exit the stage. This most obvious observation is that Joe Biden isn’t running anything now. He doesn’t have the ability to run his own home let alone the United States. He is getting more and more senile by the day.
2. Since Biden is not running the country today, who is? This question is still unanswered. We know it is not Joe, so who is running the country? We saw the Easter Bunny this week walk Joe around and keep him from the press. Who does the Easter bunny work for?
3. This article may be in response to Obama’s actions two weeks ago when he completely snubbed Biden in the White House. Again, Biden walked around aimlessly and pathetically tried to buddy up to an ice-cold Obama.
Cringe: Biden Snubbed As DC Elites Flock Around Obama During White House Visit pic.twitter.com/8DbJLw8VxP
— Liberty War Room 🇺🇸 (@LibertyWarRoom) April 5, 2022
4. Another point from this FOX News report mentioned above may be to show that Obama is the one running the White House. Note that Biden tells Obama about his plans as if Obama is the mafia boss giving his blessing to Old Joe.
5. The most obvious reason for this sudden news report is that Biden did not win the 2020 Election. He and others stole it. He didn’t beat President Trump then and doesn’t have a chance of doing it again unless he steals it.
Whatever the reason for the article, it is very likely Joe Biden will not be able to make it out of bed in a couple of years, let alone stay in his basement and run a lethargic campaign like he did in 2020. But now that Democrats have a process in place to steal and the GOP elites remain unfazed by this you never know. Maybe Old Joe will have over a million votes in 2024!
The IMF has become the most recent global body to release a warning regarding potentially forthcoming global food shortages, saying that vulnerable nations are at risk of civil unrest amid supply issues.
Civil unrest linked to sky-high food prices is on the cards for poorer countries, the IMF has warned amid fears that the world could be heading into a global food crisis as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Amid past warnings of starvation and “Hell on Earth” migrant crises over a lack of food, the international finance body has predicted that growth across the world will be negatively affected, with poorer nations in particular to feel the brunt of the ongoing crisis.
According to a post on the organisation’s website, a mix of high inflation and supply problems are to greatly slow economic growth across the world, with vulnerable economies, in particular, to be hit with the brunt of the hardship.
“This crisis unfolds even as the global economy has not yet fully recovered from the pandemic,” the post penned by the group’s research department director, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas.
“Even before the war, inflation in many countries had been rising due to supply-demand imbalances and policy support during the pandemic, prompting a tightening of monetary policy,” the piece continues. “In this context, beyond its immediate and tragic humanitarian impact, the war will slow economic growth and increase inflation.”
“Furthermore, increases in food and fuel prices may also significantly increase the prospect of social unrest in poorer countries,” it goes on to read. “Central banks will need to adjust their policies decisively to ensure that medium- and long-term inflation expectations remain anchored.”
What’s more, while the IMF report went into detail as to the near future effect of the current crisis for this year and the next, the globalist organisation appears to fear that issues surrounding food shortages could persist longer still.
Sky News reports the organisation as warning that food hoarding on the national level in Ukraine could further worsen the crisis and result in a longer-term humanitarian impact.
"If you think we’ve got Hell on earth now, you just get ready," said the World Food Bank executive director. "If we neglect northern Africa, northern Africa’s coming to Europe. If we neglect the Middle East, [the] Middle East is coming to Europe." https://t.co/q32o4Tp8iG
The IMF is far from the first international organisation warning about the rising price of food as a result of global supply shortages, with one UN group head even going so far as saying last month that a “Hell on Earth” migrant crisis could emerge out of the third world if more funds are not provided to aid agencies.
“Failure to provide this year a few extra billion dollars means you’re going to have famine, destabilization, and mass migration,” said ex-Republican Governor David Beasley, who now serves as the head of the World Food Bank.
“If you think we’ve got Hell on earth now, you just get ready,” the senior official continued. “If we neglect northern Africa, northern Africa’s coming to Europe. If we neglect the Middle East, [the] Middle East is coming to Europe.”
However, it is not just the global south that is likely to see problems with its food supply, with a lack of fertilisers sourced from Ukraine and Russia meaning that crop yields in the West could theoretically collapse by up to one half.
As a result, a number of national authorities in the West have taken notice of the issue, with Ireland for example pushing for more farmers to plant at least some grain crops over the coming year.
Other national officials have not been so enthusiastic, with one political leader in Scotland denying efforts to dampen supply problems in favour of her government’s green agenda.
President Joe Biden, also known as “the Big Guy” to his scandal-plagued son Hunter, stumbled his way through a Tuesday afternoon address to make the incredible claim he doesn’t believe politicians should get rich in office. Watch:
The War in Ukraine is going to continue to take it toll on the world economy,” Biden said. “It’s going to take it his toll on energy, and it’s going to take its toll relative to food.”
“When I was running for office, you heard it a thousand times from me, that we’re going build an economy me around you,” he continued. “I’m so tired of trickle down economics. And I never found that that trickled down on top of my head very much.”
“I was listed… I had the great pleasure of being listed as the poorest man in Congress for 36 years,” he went on. “I still was making a hell a lot more money than anybody else because I was getting a senator’s salary, no kidding.”
“I didn’t think you should make money while you’re in office,” he claimed.
“But anyway, the point of it is this,” he added. “An awful lot of people are hurting. It makes a big difference. Makes a big difference. The cost of a dozen eggs cost of a gallon of gasoline. It matters. It matters.”
“So I concluded when I ran this last time that we’re going to build this economy from the bottom up in the middle out, because when that happens, everybody does well,” he went on. “The wealthy do very well and the poor have a ladder up and the middle class has a little bit of breathing room.”
Then Biden told one of those hard-to-believe anecdotes that he is so fond of telling when he rambles off-script.
“I grew up in a household where we lived in a split level, home, three bedrooms, four kids, mom, and dad, and grandpa would live with us,” he said. “And I remember one night you could, you know, the walls were kind of thin here. My dad was restless next morning. When he went to work, I asked mom, what was the problem? She said, he just noticed his company just said, no more, not going to, not going to cover health insurance anymore. It matters. These things matter to people. They matter to ordinary people.”
Beyond the Biden folktales, he is has gotten incredibly rich during his nearly 50 years on the public till. Forbes notes that “Joe Biden earned $17.3 million over the four years he was out of office, but his net worth is only an estimated $8 million.”
“On the day America’s first billionaire president took office, ‘middle class’ Joe Biden boarded the Amtrak out of Washington D.C.’s Union Station, bound for Delaware with the kind of modest fortune you might expect from someone who had spent his adult life as an elected official: $2.5 million, mostly composed of pensions and real estate,” Forbes said. “But Biden was about to cash in. By the end of 2017, he and his wife Jill had earned $11.1 million. They raked in $4.6 million the next year, followed by $1 million in 2019 and $630,000 in 2020.”
“The story of how Biden became a wealthy man in the wake of his vice presidency, leveraging his fame to sell books and deliver speeches, has been told many times,” Forbes went on. “But a closer look at the math prompts a question that hasn’t been asked: Why isn’t Biden even richer? If someone starts with a $2.5 million net worth and earns $17.3 million while the markets are raging, you’d expect him to be worth more than $8 million. So what happened to Biden’s money? Well, $7 million of it covered taxes, another $1.3 million went to charity, $180,000 paid for household staff and an estimated $80,000 went toward interest on mortgages. Take those items out, though, and you’re still a few million above Biden’s estimated net worth.”
“There’s a chance that Biden, who shares his fortune with his wife Jill, gave some to other family members,” the report added. “Or perhaps he just spent it all. In order to be worth $8 million—as an analysis of Biden’s financial disclosure reports, property records and career earnings suggest he is—the president would have had to blow an average of roughly some $2,000 per day over the four years he was out of office.”
The White House did not respond to Forbes’ multiple requests for comment about Joe Biden’s money.
Town & Country has also reported on the real estate holdings of Joe Biden.
“Biden began buying homes—especially those that were outside his budget—in his twenties, taking out multiple mortgages and receiving loans against life insurance policies,” Town & Country reported. “His net worth was often in the negatives—in 2007, he was ranked the least wealthy senator.”
“Today, the 78-year-old president-elect is hardly middle class anymore,” the report added. “According to a 2019 Forbes estimate, Biden and his wife Jill are worth $9 million, much of that accrued from speaking fees and book deals that came pouring in after his vice presidency. About $4 million of that worth is in his real estate. And while they are officially moving into America’s grandest house today, the White House joins an already impressive group of stately digs owned by the President and First Lady.”
Town & Country then listed impressive estates in Greenville, Delaware; Rehoboth Beach, Delaware; and McLean, Virginia.
The Daily Mail, one of the major publications that has analyzed Hunter Biden’s laptop firsthand, has detailed how the former senator’s and vice president’s connections was leveraged to make his family a large fortune.
“Multiple associates of Joe Biden called him the ‘big guy’ in emails – the latest in a mountain of evidence that the president was involved in his son’s business dealings,” the Daily Mail noted.
But emails and documents on Hunter’s laptop show Joe Biden:
Was referenced under the nickname ‘big guy’ as a potential 10% owner in Hunter’s joint venture with Chinese oil giant CEFC, in an email by Hunter’s partner in the deal
Met with Hunter’s foreign business associates at a DC restaurant, despite initial White House denials
At his son’s behest, met with an executive from the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, where Hunter had a $1 million-per-year board seat
Met with Hunter and his Mexican billionaire business partners in the Vice President’s official residence
Flew Hunter and his business partner – a top political donor – on Air Force 2 to Mexico for a business meeting with those same Mexican billionaires
Was issued keys for Hunter’s proposed office to be shared with his Chinese business partners – though Hunter never picked the keys up according to the office manager
Met with Hunter’s now-jailed business partner Devon Archer, who was then appointed a Burisma board member alongside Hunter the same month Joe visited Ukraine as VP, according to White House visitor logs
Shared a bank account with Hunter and paid each other’s bills
Spoke with former FBI director Louis Freeh who at the time was plotting establishing a DC consultancy with Hunter and Joe catering to foreign criminals
Wrote a college recommendation letter for the son of Hunter’s Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li
Joe Biden might claim that he doesn’t believe that public officials should get rich “while in office,” but the track record of “middle class Joe” shows that he has not only made millions in his five decades in office, but he has made an even bigger fortune for his family through institutionalized corruption.
OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
“Earthing,” also known as walking barefoot, has transformed from a playful trend to a scientific practice with a plethora of health advantages. It was seen to increase antioxidants in the body, improving sleep and reducing inflammation.
Let us look a little deeper into the benefits, but first let’s examine the theory behind walking barefoot.
Walking Barefoot: An Introduction
Walking Barefoot or earthing, is just walking on grass, sand, or soil barefoot. You need to get off the sidewalk and place your feet on a natural surface.
We have presented some potential benefits in detail:
1: Better Sleep
As per this study, if you are suffering from insomnia then try walking in the park instead of taking pills. You can also present it and improve your sleep cycle, by walking barefoot on grass for approximately 30 minutes, every morning.
2: Can Reduce Inflammation
Earthing can improve the functioning of your organs. This can be multi-fold. One can be due to reflexology, the next can be that you’re getting vitamin D from sunlight (anti-inflammatory property), and lastly, due to the electrons of the magnetic field of the Earth.
3: Can Regulate Your Heart’s Health
Walking barefoot on grass can also help you synchronize your heartbeat. This has several benefits that range from regulating your body’s temperature to hormone secretion.
4: Surface Charge Of RBCs
A study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine stated that walking barefoot increases the surface charge of red blood cells. These cells then avoid clumping which then decreases blood viscosity. [High viscosity is a significant factor in heart disease.]
Walking should ultimately become just more than an exercise. It should become a form of relieving stress, healing, and replacing the worn-out parts with well-being, on a mental and physical level.
This is actually a win-win situation for everyone. Once you start walking, you will be exercising your heart and muscles, improving your mental health, reducing stress, and eventually improving your overall wellness. You can easily multiply these benefits of walking by taking off your shoes and connecting with the Earth’s natural electric charge.
It is of utmost importance that you need to be aware of your surroundings. Make sure that it is safe for you to walk barefoot.
You can also consult your primary doctor if you are wondering if walking barefoot will be the right move for you.
In a nutshell, it is best for you to just kick off your shoes for a short period of time.
This makes great sense on an evolutionary level too. We have evolved close to this planet and it is recent that we have been keen to remove ourselves from nature. This is perhaps the best time to take a step back and synchronize with the planet.
Hey! I am Mayukh. I help people and websites with content, videos, design, and social media management. I am an avid traveler and I started living as a digital nomad in Europe since 2019. I am currently working on www.noetbook.com – a creative media company. You can reach out to me anytime: justmayukh@gmail.com Love, Mayukh Read More stories by Mayukh Saha
Hunter Biden has continued to profit from Chinese-government owned oil, gas, and coal companies through his 10 percent equity stake in Bohai Harvest RST, while his father, Joe Biden, has canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, banned new drilling for oil and gas on federal lands, and declared war on Americans at the gas pump because of climate change.
Bohai Harvest RST, founded in 2013 and controlled by the Bank of China, invested $1 billion in 2015 in the Chinese-state owned China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec Group), the world’s largest oil and gas conglomerate.
In 2020, one of Sinopec Group’s subsidiaries, China Petroleum & Chemical, created more carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions than the entire nation of Canada, which itself produced the eleventh most CO2 emissions among all nations.
In total, Sinopec Group produced 343 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent during 2020 and 2021 which was more carbon dioxide emissions than BP, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco combined.
In other words, while Joe Biden declares war on Americans at the gas pump because of climate change, his son’s Chinese equity fund continues to hold its investment in Chinese oil-giant, Sinopec Group, which as the world’s largest polluter creates more carbon dioxide emissions than BP, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco combined.
In contrast to Joe Biden’s pledge to eliminate fossil fuels in the United States, Hunter-backed Sinopec Group plans on increasing its oil and gas production in 2022 with its highest capital investment in history.
Sinopec expects to spend 198 billion yuan ($31.10 billion) in 2022 on oil and gas development, up eighteen percent from a year ago according to a company statement filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The Chinese-state owned oil giant plans to produce 281.2 million barrels of crude oil and 12,567 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2022, up from its output of 279.7 million barrels and 1,199 billion cubic feet in 2021.
A 2021 study revealed that Sinopec Group was not only the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter but also that it produced more than five percent of the world’s plastic waste as the world’s second-worst plastic polluter behind ExxonMobil.
Coal is the world’s most affordable energy fuel, but climate change activists like Joe Biden have declared war on coal in the United States due to coal also being the largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels.
China, the world’s largest polluter, which produces 29 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions – more than the United States and European Union combined – burned over 53 percent of the coal used in the world in 2020.
Despite joining the Paris Climate agreement, China continues to build coal-fired power plants at a rate that outpaces the rest of the world combined, building more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries combined in 2020, with plans as recently as last year to build 43 more coal-fired power plants.
In 2016, Hunter Biden’s Bohai Harvest RST invested in a lucrative bond deal with Yancoal Australia, a coal-mining subsidiary of the Chinese-government owned Yankuang Group, which was China’s fourth-largest coal producer at the time.
Bohai Harvest RST together with Chinese government-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and BOC International Holdings (a subsidiary of the Chinese-government owned Bank of China), invested $775 million into a Yancoal subsidiary asset-backed bond issuance, and in return “collect[ed] interest of 8.55% a year on $760 million of the bonds, plus interest of up to 15% a year on the remainder.”
In 2020, Yankuang Group merged with Chinese government-owned Shandong Energy Group, renamed itself Shandong Energy Co. Ltd., and collectively now forms the second-largest coal producer in China.
Although Hunter Biden holds a significant investment in what is now China’s second-largest coal producer, Joe Biden committed his administration to fighting climate change in the United States last year when he suspended American oil and gas leases in Alaska, reversing a drilling program approved by the Trump administration.
Within hours of being sworn in, Biden issued an executive order reinstating the U.S. to the Paris Climate Agreement. Under the Paris Climate accords, China as the world’s largest polluter and carbon emitter get a free pass until 2030 (who knows if they will honor the agreement after 2030).
In the meantime, America must reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2025 through the purchase of solar photovoltaics (70 percent produced in China), wind turbines (35 percent produced in China ), and lithium-ion batteries (70 percent produced in China).
Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios.
Why it matters: Inside CNN, executives think the launch has been successful. Discovery executives disagree.
CNN+ has roughly 150,000 subscribers so far.
Warner Bros. Discovery wants to eventually build one giant service around HBO Max.
New leadership has replaced CNN CFO Brad Ferrer with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s current CFO for streaming and international, as part of a broader finance team restructuring.
Other high-level positions at WarnerMedia across different business functions are likely to be eliminated to cut costs and streamline leadership in coming weeks.
What to watch: Sources say a plan is being considered to replace Chris Cuomo’s 9:00pm EST primetime slot with a live newscast, instead of personality-driven perspective programming.
Inside CNN
Executives are frustrated that new leadership is moving quickly to dismantle what they see as an eventual lifeline for the cable network.
A profitable service would’ve diversified CNN’s revenue long-term around a digital asset outside of its website, increasing its valuation and potential, executives believe.
CNN+ launched on Roku last week, which should’ve prompted a subscription boost. But with marketing around the service suspended, there are concerns that growth will be short-lived. A point of pride amongst CNN staffers is how smoothly the app’s rollout has been technologically.
Executives believe that if the service wasn’t being knee-capped, its growth rate would’ve rivaled other print news outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post — which have 2.9 million and 2.7 million digital subscribers, respectively.
Yes, but: That analogy, some argue, assumes customers would get the same product on CNN+ that they do with CNN’s linear channel, which isn’t the case.
Internal data shows that the shows that do well are the ones that mimic live TV programs, like “5 Things with Kate Bolduan” and “Reliable Sources Daily” with Brian Stelter.
Inside Warner Bros. Discovery
Discovery executives are frustrated that the service launched. If CNN held off launching CNN+ until after the merger, it would have been easier to pivot the company’s efforts towards something better aligned with Discovery’s goals.
Discovery’s experience launching niche subscriptions services, like GolfTV and its Food Network Kitchen App, has informed its strategy to focus on one scaled general entertainment offering around HBO Max, instead of more niche services that have to compete with big apps for subscriber cash.
Warner Bros. Discovery executives see an opportunity to possibly include some CNN+ content on CNN’s app and make that video available for free and supported by ads, according to one source. Other CNN+ programming could live within HBO Max.
It sees potential in leveraging the already massive reach of CNN.com and CNN’s main app to drive its digital growth long-term, as opposed to another subscription outside of linear TV.
Discovery executives are focused mostly on returning CNN to its journalistic core, a point Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav reiterated in a town hall last week. That includes less of a focus on primetime perspective programming, and more of a focus on hard, breaking news. CNN+ features an array of soft news content, which doesn’t align with Discovery’s broader vision for CNN.
By the numbers: Last year, CNN brought in roughly $1 billion in profit, with a large portion from long-term distribution contracts for its live TV network, according to two sources.
Warner Bros. Discovery executives are willing to forgo some of CNN’s short-term profit growth from linear TV advertising to ensure the network focuses on hard news over ratings, according to one source.
CNN+ executives were originally hoping to attract 2 million subscribers in the first year and 15-18 million over four years, as Axios has previously reported.
Around $300 million has been spent and hundreds of jobs have been created to support the service.
The big picture: Blame bad timing, limited communications and misaligned incentives for how CNN and Discovery got strategically misaligned on such a massive product rollout.
Fearing regulatory scrutiny, former WarnerMedia former parent AT&T and Discovery avoided direct communication about CNN’s strategy until the deal officially closed.
While Discovery executives felt they made their priorities publicly clear, CNN executives didn’t feel corporate pressure from WarnerMedia to pause the rollout, according to four WarnerMedia sources.
Former CNN head Jeff Zucker’s sudden exit in early February didn’t help solve for some of those communications issues.
CNN’s new leader, Chris Licht, doesn’t officially begin until May 2nd, but has joined Zaslav on meetings.
!n video footage shared on social media, Chinese law enforcement officials in hazmat suits are seen scuffling with outraged residents after they were forced to surrender their homes.
— Life Stories of Jennifer Zeng 曾錚的生活故事 (@JenniferZeng15) April 15, 2022
Authorities began the forced evictions on in Shanghai on Thursday, the Guardian reports.
“Authorities began ordering 39 households in one housing complex to move so that patients with Covid could be housed there ‘in order to meet the needs of epidemic prevention and control,’ as government officials rush to construct tens of thousands of beds to house patients with Covid,” the publication notes. “China’s internet censors quickly stepped in to scrub evidence of the clash from Chinese social media sites – as they did with several other videos that have appeared over the last few weeks – with search results for the name of the apartment complex disappearing from Weibo by Friday morning.”
Angry residents in Shanghai are heard crying and screaming at law enforcement officials after being evicted from their homes.
Police in retaliation begin beating and arresting the demonstrators before hauling them into trucks in footage published by Chinese journalist Jennifer Zeng, who regularly documents the inhumane conditions in China.
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng 曾錚真言 (@jenniferzeng97) April 15, 2022
China’s financial capital, Shanghai, began what was announced to be an eight-day lockdown on March 28, but has since enforced an indefinite citywide quarantine.
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng 曾錚真言 (@jenniferzeng97) April 15, 2022
Chinese citizens are desperate for food and other basic necessities.
In China’s state-run wards, where food and resources are also scarce where patients are held like inmates and fight over water, food, and limited supplies.
In addition to being food-deprived, those held hostage in the isolation facilities are subject to hazardously unsanitary conditions.
Special Prosecutor John Durham wants to use Hillary Clinton’s tweet accusing Trump of having a secret line of communication with Russian Alfa Bank as evidence in Michael Sussmann’s trial next month.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s motion to dismiss Durham’s case was denied by a federal judge last week.
Sussmann was indicted last September for lying to the FBI.
According to the indictment, Sussmann falsely told James Baker he wasn’t doing work “for any client” when he asked for a meeting with the FBI where he presented bogus evidence the Trump Tower was secretly communicating with Kremlin-tied Alfa Bank.
Hillary Clinton fired off a tweet claiming Trump Tower was secretly communicating with Russian Alfa Bank.
The defamatory tweet is still on Twitter.
Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. pic.twitter.com/8f8n9xMzUU
The Democratic cybersecurity lawyer charged with concealing his work for the Clinton campaign from the FBI doesn’t want special counsel John Durham to be able to use Hillary Clinton’s tweet touting the Trump-Russia collusion claims he was pushing as evidence at trial.
Michael Sussmann was indicted in September for allegedly concealing his clients — Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and “Tech Executive-1,” known to be former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe — from FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.
Durham told the federal court last week he wanted an October 2016 tweet from the Clinton campaign promoting the Alfa-Bank claims to be admitted as evidence at the May trial.
The special counsel argued the tweet is not inadmissible hearsay “because it is not being offered for its truth” — emphasizing that the prosecutors actually believe its claims were false. Durham said he instead wanted to present the tweet to “show the existence of the defendant’s attorney-client relationship with the Clinton Campaign, which is directly relevant to the false statement charge.”
“Well, unlike Tucker Carlson, they are at least not selling ‘testicle tanning’…,” a progressive reporter said, to which Dorsey sarcastically said “amazing substantive comeback.”
“not defending a thing. holding up a mirror,” he said.
“I thought his point was that the press does the same thing, sowing doubt to promote white supremacy and get engagement, often amplifying bad takes, but now I’m not sure anymore,” venture capitalist Ellen Pao said, to which Dorsey replied “Yes.”
“Its kind of weird to see that coming out of the founder of Twitter because I’d have a lot to say on that front…,” computer scientist Timnit Gebru said.
“i’m sure. and we certainly have seen what twitter does positive and negative. I think the common denominator is the current ad model for all media, not just social media,” Dorsey responded.
Its kind of weird to see that coming out of the founder of Twitter because I'd have a lot to say on that front…
— @timnitGebru@dair-community.social on Mastodon (@timnitGebru) April 19, 2022
“even @CNN sometimes sell false news. I know this from covering Iraq events in 2019. People need to understand every media is prone to either mistakes or deliberate corruption. Do your own investigation before believing what they’re selling you,” another person said.
“I know this from being on the streets of Ferguson during the protests and watching them try to create conflict and film it causing the protestors to chant ‘f**k CNN,’” Dorsey responded.
I know this from being on the streets of Ferguson during the protests and watching them try to create conflict and film it causing the protestors to chant “fuck CNN”
On Sunday he went off on the company’s board of directors amid Elon Musk’s attempts to purchase the company.
Dorsey made some interesting comments on Twitter in response to the company’s board of directors attempting to block Musk after he offered $43 billion to buy the company outright.
“If look into the history of Twitter board, it’s intriguing as I was a witness on its early beginnings, mired in plots and coups, and particularly amongst Twitter’s founding members. I wish if it could be made into a Hollywood thriller one day,” a Twitter user tweeted in response to a thread between Dorsey and others.
Dorsey responded, “It’s consistently been the dysfunction of the company.”
it’s consistently been the dysfunction of the company
Dorsey also said “big facts” in response to the following statement from venture capitalist Fred Destin: “What I do know for sure is that this old Silicon Valley proverb is grounded in age-old wisdom that still applies today: Good boards don’t create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time.”
Fred Destin: “What I do know for sure is that this old Silicon Valley proverb is grounded in age-old wisdom that still applies today: Good boards don’t create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time.” https://t.co/IXxIrMoU7d
Twitter is trying to block Musk from purchasing the company by adopting a so-called “poison pill,” which would allow shareholders, except those trying to buy out the company, to purchase newly offered shares at a discounted price.
This could also allow Musk to purchase new shares but at a much higher price, which may be more than he’s interested in spending since he already purchased 73.5 million shares worth $2.9 billion.
It was reported on Monday that Musk has spoken with other investors about joining his bid to purchase Twitter. This comes a week after he formally offered last week to completely buy Twitter for just over $40 billion.
“One possibility, the sources said: teaming with private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners, which was planning to co-invest with him in 2018 when he was considering taking Tesla private. Silver Lake’s Co-CEO Egon Durban is a Twitter board member and led Musk’s deal team during the 2018 failed effort to take Tesla private, sources said. Silver Lake declined to comment,” the New York Post reported.
“For its part, Twitter on Friday adopted a so-called poison pill — a corporate move that prevents Musk from acquiring more than 15% of the company. But that pill may not stop other entities or people from acquiring their own shares of up to 15% of the company. Those owners could partner with Musk to force a sale, make changes in the executive ranks or push for other overhauls of the company,” the report added.
“This is not over,” a source told the New York Post.
Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz has reportedly been readying to expose the anonymous owner of the private “Libs of TikTok” account on Twitter.
Libs of TikTok has garnered a massive Twitter following in recent years through its posting of TikTok videos that often feature crazed leftists advocating extreme behavior in support of various causes, whether it be a mother bragging about her transgender child or a teacher boasting about X-rated sex education.
Apparently, informing the public of extremist activity is a bridge too far for the leftist establishment media. They have resorted to exposing the account’s owner, according to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw, who received word of the impending public revelation when WaPo reporter Taylor Lorenz contacted her about a story “exposing” the woman behind the account.
“We are running a story exposing the woman behind the ‘Libs of TikTok’ account. Our story mentions your many interactions with the account and praise of it. If you’d like to offer comment, please let me know within the next hour,” the email from Lorenz said.
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) April 19, 2022
Human Events host Jack Posobiec later reported he learned Taylor Lorenz had visited the homes belonging to the “Libs of TikTok” owner’s family members.
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) April 19, 2022
Conservatives on Twitter immediately rallied in support of “Libs of TikTok” after the proposed exposure went public, with some bashing Taylor Lorenz for previously crying on live TV about being bullied on social media.
from the woman who cries on national tv over mean tweets…
The Washington Post plans to dox Libs of Tik Tok in new hit piece by Taylor Lorenzhttps://t.co/aBTuTBCNE5
“Libs of TikTok” later thanked conservatives for the outpouring of support.
“Words cannot express how appreciative I am of the support I’m receiving right now. Thankfully I’m currently holed up in a safe location,” the owner said. “I’m confident we will get through this and come out even stronger. Grateful for all the thoughts and prayers.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reportedly opened an investigation into Lucky Charms Cereal after hundreds of people have filed reports claiming to have gotten sick after eating it.
Some of the most common side effects that have been reported by consumers include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting after eating the extremely popular snack, according to hundreds of incident reports submitted online to the food safety website ‘iwaspoisoned.com.’
Following the large wave of reports, the FDA officially opened an investigation of its own this month after the agency had received over 100 reports in addition to the ones submitted online to ‘iwaspoisoned.com.’
FDA investigating Lucky Charms after over 100 people complain of vomiting after eating it https://t.co/VqRrzWciJX
While the investigation is still in its early stages, the agency did release a statement earlier this week, stating that it “takes seriously any reports of possible adulteration of a food that may also cause illnesses or injury” and would provide updates when they become available.
Additionally, the number of people who have been affected by the mild conditions after eating Lucky Charms might be even higher than originally thought. According to The Wall Street Journal, “thousands of people” have already reported symptoms like nausea after eating the cereal.
As of right now, even the producers of Lucky Charms have no answers on what could be causing the reports of illnesses, or even if the reports are linked to their cereal at all. The parent company, General Mills, announced it had conducted its own internal review and has not been able to find anything tying the cereal to those who have reported falling sick after eating it.
For the time being, the cause of Leprechaun tummy will just have to be chalked up to being ‘magically suspicious.’
The world’s richest man said he doesn’t own a home and sleeps in his friends’ spare bedrooms for the most part.
In a recent interview with TED’s Chris Anderson, Elon Musk says he has resorted to couch surfing.
“I don’t even own a place right now, I’m literally staying at friends’ places,” explained Musk, whose estimated net worth is $269.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Elon Musk says he sleeps in his friends’ spare bedrooms during an Interview with TED’s Chris Anderson.
“If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms,” the father of seven added.
Despite the Tesla and SpaceX founder’s surprising lifestyle, the billionaire tech magnate did reveal the one luxury he indulges in.
When answering a question about the wealth disparity in the US between average Americans and billionaires like himself, Musk said, “For sure, it would be very problematic if I was spending billions of dollars a year in personal consumption, but that is not the case.”
“It’s not as though my personal consumption is high,” he continued, admitting that his private plane is the only exception.
“If I don’t use the plane, then I have less hours to work,” he added.
In June last year, Musk tweeted that his primary residence is a rental from SpaceX, worth $50,000. What’s more, the residence was conveniently near the company’s Texas location. In the tweet, also admitted to owning an “events house” in the Bay Area.
In May 2020, Musk famously tweeted, “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.”
Elon Musk said if he travels to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, he’ll rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms.
“As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.” -Hunter Thompson
The Underground Newswire 
