Chinese Consulate In Myanmar Bombed, Rebels Take Control Of Hub For Rare Earth Minerals
Tensions between China and guerrilla groups operating inside its much smaller neighbor to the south, Myanmar, are on edge, given some of these groups have seized key border towns. Beijing has generally been supporting of the ruling junta which seized power going back to 2021, when it deposed the Myanmar government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar has been a nation in turmoil ever since.
Beijing actually maintains ties to different players within Myanmar’s political chaos, and now the region is could descend into more serious conflict following the Friday bombing of the Chinese Consulate in Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay.
The explosion may have been relatively small, but damaged the roof of the two-story building. Security forces say they’re investigating and have condemned the “terrorists” behind the attack.
Associated Press has noted of the tense context: “The army is engaged in nationwide fighting against pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority militias.”
The army further was “forced onto the defensive late last year when ethnic armed organizations dealt it major defeats in the country’s northeast, seizing important territory along the border with China.”
In response, China has reportedly been forced to deploy troops to the restive Myanmar-China border after the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, has seized control of several border towns and camps.
One resident on the Myanmar side in an area taken over by the KIA said, “The Chinese haven’t opened the gate from yesterday until early today. Along the border, everyone is sleeping in tents and it’s very crowded.”
The rebel forces could come into direct clashes with the Chinese border troops…
Breaking!!! Myanmar Civil War: Kachin Independence Army has taken Pangwa town near the Chinese border.
Refugees are flooding to the border hoping to cross into China. Chinese border police has closed Tengchong’s Dian Tan border crossing 腾冲滇滩口岸.
The eyewitness said KIA forces had captured Chanyinku village, which is close to the key border town of Pang War. “Now, they’ve nearly arrived in Pang War. The junta is also shooting with heavy weapons.”
Border regions which have seen the most intense fighting of late happen to be known for the mining of rare earth minerals.
One regional report documents the financial importance of this restive region further:
Joint rebel forces have seized a key base for Myanmar’s pro-junta Border Guard Force in Kachin state, and residents say rebels will soon occupy a nearby town that serves as a hub for Chinese rare-earth mining and cross-border trade.
Rebel control of these mines could potentially disrupt shipments of these lucrative rare earths, which are used in cell phones, cars and other products, and could cut off an important source of revenue for the junta, which has struggled financially amid global sanctions over its Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat.
#Myanmar 🇲🇲: heavy fighting is ongoing in the border town of Pang War in #Kachin state as the #KIA is trying to capture this pocket held by a junta border guard force known as the NDA-K.
The junta has long had martial law in effect, especially after in 2021 soon after it took power a spate of arson attacks targeted Chinese-owned factories, particularly in the garment production hub of Yangon. Dozens of Chinese-owned businesses had been reported either vandalized or torched amid growing anti-China sentiment among the protesters.
Elon Musk’s America PAC Launches Million-Dollar-A-Day Giveaway For Petition Signers
Elon Musk continued his town hall tour through the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, this time in the working-class town of Harrisburg. Speaking to thousands packed inside a megachurch – formerly AMP Incorporated’s headquarters – Musk walked onto the stage with rock-n-roll blasting in the background. Almost immediately, he announced a $1 million-a-day giveaway.
The promotion began on Saturday night. It runs until November’s election and is open to anyone who signs his online petition supporting the US Constitution.
“One of the challenges we’re having is, like, how do we get people to know about this petition?” Musk told the audience of blue-collar workers, many of whom were youngsters with families, adding, “This news, I think, is going to really fly.”
ELON MUSK: “I have a surprise for you. We are going to be awarding $1 MILLION to people who have signed the petition every day, from now until the election.”
Musk’s political action organization, America PAC, has been responsible for the town hall events and will be doling out a million dollars daily to anyone who signs the petition.
X user DogeDesigner noted, “Elon Musk really knows how to get legacy media to promote for free.”
The petition Musk has asked people to sign reads: “The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
“Our goal is to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. This program is exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Expires October 21,” the petition said.
Google Trends data shows that searches for “Elon Musk petition” have surged nationwide.
The Wall Street Journal commented on Musk’s announcement: “It is a federal crime to pay people with the intention of inducing or rewarding them to cast a vote or to get registered, an offense punishable by prison time.”
According to OpenSecrets, America PAC has spent more than $119 million during the 2024 election cycle.
Meanwhile…
ELON MUSK: “Democrats are bringing in illegals, deliberately, into swing states. When you look at margins of victories that may be 10-20,000 votes, and then you bring in 200,000 illegals and you legalize them, then you wont have any swing states. Every state will go blue. At that… pic.twitter.com/XP6OQkf3Sn
It may be premature to start contemplating the implications of a potential Trump victory on November 5. Unfortunately, for certain issues, it may already be too late. This is because time is of the essence when it comes to holding individuals accountable for the numerous frauds and acts of treachery that characterized much of President Trump’s first four years in office.
More specifically, federal law has a five-year statute of limitations, preventing prosecution for actions committed more than five years ago. However, urgent accountability is needed to ensure that those who defrauded the American public in their pursuit of Trump do not escape punishment.
Democrats and their allies are acutely aware of the five-year time limit. This is evident in their swift action to prosecute Twitter user Douglas Mackey for creating a meme in 2016 that jokingly encouraged Hillary Clinton voters to text in their votes. As the statute of limitations on Mackey’s “crimes” was set to lapse in 2021, Democrats, aided by “Republican” appointee Seth DuCharme, were locked and loaded to file charges as soon as Biden assumed the presidency.
Republicans would do well do follow this example, albeit for actual crimes. Accountability is needed in order to prevent renewed and repeated treachery.
We have examined aspects of three separate scams that may still fall within the five-year statute of limitations period by the time Trump assumes office on January 20, 2025, should he win the election.
Russiagate
The first area we examined isRussiagate, which, given that it is now almost nine years old, presents unique challenges in terms of holding anyone accountable. Russiagate originated as a Clinton campaign operation in early 2016. Of course, a dirty tricks campaign is not a crime in itself. Even lying to the media, as the Clinton campaign did repeatedly in its attempts to smear Trump as a Russian agent, is not a crime.
Instead, our focus is on government actors. The first documented instance of government actors co-opting the Russiagate narrative occurred when the FBI received the fraudulent Steele dossier on July 5, 2016. This was soon followed by various other actions, such as opening the sham Crossfire Hurricane investigation and spying on several members of the Trump campaign team. However, all these actions are now over eight years old and fall outside the statute of limitations. Unfortunately, even the most egregious aspect of the Russiagate hoax—the fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment that President Obama used to undermine the incoming Trump administration—also falls outside the statute of limitations. Subsequent actions involving corrupt FBI officials, such as Peter Strzok, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe, likewise fall outside the statute of limitations. In fact, all these individuals were fired more than five years ago.
However, there is one aspect of Russiagate that does not fall outside the five-year period: Igor Danchenko, the alleged primary source of the Steele dossier, who was identified by a group of Twitter users in July 2020. This means that the FBI’s actions concerning Danchenko—such as concealing his existence from congressional and other investigations, as well as hiding the fact that he had disavowed the fraudulent Steele dossier—may still fall within the statute of limitations.
Now, some may argue that Danchenko has already been prosecuted by Special Counsel John Durham in a case that suffered from numerous defects. While this is true, unlike Durham, we are not focusing on private individuals but rather on those within the government who undermined Trump. Incidentally, this was originally supposed to be Durham’s task, however, he inexplicably abandoned it.
There remains a possibility of pursuing corrupt FBI officials regarding any actions they may have taken with respect to concealing facts in connection with Danchenko. Put another way, Danchenko must be the focal point, as he was still being concealed by the FBI during the first half of 2020, a period for which the five-year statute of limitations has not yet expired.
Holding officials accountable for their actions regarding Danchenko is, of course, small potatoes in the broader context of Russiagate. This failure is largely attributable to Trump’s hopeless first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, as well as the scheming of his second Attorney General, Bill Barr. However, lamenting over past mistakes serves no purpose. If the goal is to salvage as much as possible, and if FBI officials can be held accountable, even at this late stage, it would at least offer a small consolation on which to conclude the entire Russiagate affair.
If this were to happen, it would need to happen very swiftly. On his first day in office, Trump would need to assign a team to sift through all records related to Danchenko in search of instances in 2020 where officials covered up matters pertaining to Danchenko and his Russiagate confessions.
Ukraine Impeachment Hoax
It is not coincidental that Trump’s first impeachment, on charges of allegedly failing to send weapons to Ukraine, began one day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress that there was no Russian collusion. One hoax simply replaced another.
On July 25, 2019, Trump had his infamous conversation with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky. The overarching premise of the impeachment scheme was to accuse Trump of withholding military aid to Ukraine, despite the fact that he had not done so. This allegation stemmed from a distorted interpretation of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. It was claimed that Trump had offered a quid pro quo, suggesting that Zelensky investigate alleged corruption involving the Biden family in exchange for military assistance. However, when the actual transcript of the phone call was released in September 2019, it became clear that this characterization was false. Nevertheless, by that time, the impeachment narrative against Trump was already in full swing, and neither the Democrats nor the media were deterred by the truth.
The Ukraine impeachment saga involved numerous individuals who testified before Congress, many of whom misrepresented the truth about Trump and about Biden corruption. At this point, it may be worth noting that lying in an official capacity within the jurisdiction of the government can include telling half-truths or concealing the truth. Some individuals who testified during the 2019 impeachment hearings, including Obama’s energy czar, Amos Hochstein, were well aware of the problem of Biden corruption in Ukraine. Did they report this to the impeachment inquiry? Geoffrey Pyatt, the Ambassador in Kyiv, assisted in drafting talking points to divert attention from Biden’s corruption in Ukraine. Was this information concealed from the inquiry? The chargé d’affaires at the Embassy in Kyiv, George “Bow Tie” Kent, was aware that Hunter Biden’s firm, Burisma, had bribed the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office. Why was this information withheld from the inquiry?
We could delve deeper into this, but all of this transpired in 2019, and by the time we reach January 2025, the lies told—and truths concealed—during the impeachment investigation will fall outside the statute of limitations. Therefore, there is only a very narrow window that remains open, specifically regarding Trump’s Senate trial which took place from January 16 to February 5, 2020. (As a side note, it is more than ironic that while all this was occurring, another faction of the anti-Trump coalition, specifically bureaucrats led by Anthony Fauci, were concealing the fact that a deadly virus had been released from a laboratory.)
Thus, if there were to be any accountability for the Ukraine impeachment, it would likely need to focus on the events surrounding the impeachment trial. However, there are two major problems. First, the timeline is very tight. The first part of the Senate trial would already fall outside the five-year limitation period by the time Trump potentially assumes office. Second, and more importantly, the Senate ultimately decided not to call any witnesses. Lindsey Graham, apparently unironically, insisted that calling witnesses, such as Hunter Biden, would interfere with the 2020 election. Had witnesses been called, we would have gotten to the truth much sooner, and there would also now be a much greater opportunity to hold individuals accountable.
This leaves us with only a slim opportunity to pursue individuals for any actions they took after the impeachment trial. We would no longer be examining the lies themselves, but rather the efforts to conceal those lies afterward. In other words, actions taken to cover up the truth, even after Trump’s Senate trial concluded, would reset the statute of limitations, allowing for the prosecution of those involved. For instance, did anyone within the government work to conceal the truth about what Pyatt and Kent knew regarding Burisma? Were Freedom of Information (FOIA) efforts obstructed? We do not know the answers, but this is where our focus would be directed.
In sum, among all the hoaxes perpetrated against Trump, given the numerous limitations and obstacles, this is likely the one with the least prospect of holding anyone accountable at this stage.
Covid Origin Cover Up
Third, there is the Covid cover-up. No one has been held accountable for the Covid response, or for concealing the origin of the virus, despite 20 million deaths and at least $30 trillion in damages. In fact, there hasn’t even been any investigation or commission examining what went wrong, which seems very surprising given the immense human and financial toll incurred. A commission of inquiry can, of course, be established at any time. For all we know, this could occur 100 years from now. However, regarding actual legal liability, the five-year rule applies. Given that most of the events unfolded in 2020, there is only a very small window of opportunity to hold individuals accountable. However, unlike in the other two hoaxes, there is still time.
What would accountability look like? Who would be held accountable, and for what? It could be argued that decisions made by the government—such as unlawful mandates, lockdowns, and people being fired for refusing the “vaccine”—should not be subject to criminal penalties, given the novelty of the virus and the likely justification that officials were doing their best under the circumstances. While we do not agree with such excuses, they are likely to carry some weight in any legal proceeding and the prospect of holding officials accountable for the Covid response is extremely slim.
Another factor contributing to this conclusion is that politicians and public health officials were significantly misled by a small group of corrupt individuals led by Anthony Fauci. While this does not excuse violations of civil liberties, those who implemented mitigation measures—such as isolation, social distancing, contact tracing, shutting of businesses, and similar strategies—might argue that these approaches had been effective against previous viruses. This is the crux of the matter. Although mitigation measures may have arguably had some effect in the past, they were never going to be effective against Covid, a virus that had been engineered in a laboratory to infect human cells and facilitate human-to-human transmission. This fundamentally altered the entire landscape of the response. While the original SARS virus was poorly adapted for human transmission—resulting in only 774 deaths worldwide, with no fatalities in the United States—Covid was doing the exact opposite. (The majority of deaths during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic were caused by secondary bacterial infections, for which there was no effective treatment at the time, rather than directly from the influenza virus.)
Thus, Covid mitigation measures were entirely ineffective from the outset, a fact of which Fauci was well aware. The damage and human suffering caused by these ineffective countermeasures are incalculable, and it all transpired because Fauci and a small group of U.S. government officials concealed the true nature of Covid. Had this not occurred, the country could have been spared lockdowns and numerous other injustices. At worst, the Swedish model would have been adopted, allowing schools and businesses to remain open. Furthermore, Trump could not have been blamed for a poor response to the virus if the public had understood that it was destined to spread through the population. He would most likely have been easily re-elected.
Fauci’s lies altered the course of history. Therefore, we argue that the most appropriate and effective means of ensuring accountability for Covid is to pursue Fauci and his group of collaborators. To clarify, we are not addressing Fauci’s involvement in the creation of the virus at the Wuhan lab; that is a separate and legally distinct matter. Currently, our focus is solely on Fauci’s efforts to conceal the origin of the virus, actions that have caused immense harm.
Specifically, Fauci ought to be held accountable for concealing the truth from President Trump and from the Coronavirus Taskforce, to which he was appointed on January 29, 2020.
Two days earlier, on January 27, Fauci’s office received an email from Peter Daszak, the man through whom Fauci was funding the Wuhan lab. The email’s subject line was “Wuhan novel coronavirus – NIAIDs role in bat-origin CoVs.”
The body of Daszak’s email provided Fauci with talking points to deflect attention from Fauci’s collaboration with the Wuhan lab. At the time of Daszak’s warning, there had not been any public reporting of the link between Fauci and the Wuhan lab.
On January 31, Fauci was informed by a group of virologists that the Covid virus looked like it had been engineered in a lab. However, instead of reporting this information to President Trump and the Covid Task Force, Fauci initiated a cover-up. One of his actions to maintain this cover-up involved persuading the scientists who had discovered evidence of engineering—and who relied on funding from Fauci’s NIAID—to write a paper dismissing any theories regarding a laboratory origin. They complied, with Fauci overseeing the process.
Fauci had a responsibility to inform the Task Force of his knowledge regarding the virus. Instead, he misled the Task Force and concealed critical information, fostering a deceptive narrative about the virus’s natural origin and falsely assuring President Trump that the virus posed no threat to the United States.
On February 3, when Kelvin Droegemeier, the White House Director of Science and Technology Policy, requested information regarding the origins of the pandemic, Fauci and his hand-picked team of scientists responded by pushing the fraudulent natural origin narrative. This, too, constitutes concealment of material facts.
On April 17, while standing at the White House podium alongside Trump, Fauci presented the fraudulent paper which he had commissioned as irrefutable evidence that the virus originated in nature. Fauci did not disclose his involvement in the creation of the paper. Astonishingly, he even asserted that he was unaware of the authors, despite the fact that he both knew and funded them.
Fauci’s statements on April 17 provide clear evidence of guilt and of a cover-up. Furthermore, since his actions will not lapse until April 16, 2025, there is time to hold him and his collaborators accountable for them.
Unlike the Russiagate scam and the Ukraine impeachment hoax, the cover-up surrounding the origins of Covid presents the most viable avenue for holding government officials accountable for their treachery, and for ruining Trump’s first term. However, the window of opportunity for accountability is quite narrow and will necessitate prompt action if and when Trump assumes office.
NexFundAI, introduced by the US FBI in May 2024, is an Ethereum-based crypto token created as part of a covert sting operation, Operation Token Mirrors.
The NexFundAI token was designed to act as bait, targeting individuals and organizations engaged in fraudulent cryptocurrency activities, particularly pump-and-dump schemes. In these scams, manipulators artificially inflate a token’s value, attracting unsuspecting investors, only to dump their holdings once the price peaks, leaving investors with losses.
NexFundAI mimicked the look and behavior of a legitimate cryptocurrency, allowing the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to attract market manipulators. Fraudsters were lured into engaging with the token, performing illegal actions like wash trading, where multiple trades are conducted by the same party to create a false impression of trading volume. This tactic inflates the token’s value and deceives investors into thinking there’s a growing demand.
In the end, NexFundAI helped the FBI collect hard evidence against 18 individuals and implicated companies like Gotbit and ZM Quant, who were involved in orchestrating sham trades across more than 60 crypto tokens. By July 2024, the FBI had built a case strong enough to file charges, leading to the arrests of key figures in these schemes.
Did you know? Over $25 million in assets were seized as a result of the NexFundAI sting, and the investigation helped reveal new methods scammers were using to manipulate crypto markets.
The evolution of crypto sting operations
Crypto sting operations evolved from traditional physical setups to sophisticated digital stings, with the FBI leveraging blockchain monitoring and targeting scams like Silk Road, Ponzi schemes and initial coin offering (ICO) fraud since the rise of Bitcoin in the early 2010s.
In the early days of financial crime enforcement, agents would pose as buyers, investors or intermediaries to catch criminals in the act, often involving wire transfers or cash. As technology advanced, cybercrime emerged, shifting the focus of sting operations from physical cash to digital assets.
This shift began in earnest with the rise of Bitcoin in the early 2010s, which introduced a new form of untraceable, decentralized digital currency. Criminals quickly adopted crypto for money laundering, scams and hacks.
The FBI responded with its first major crypto sting operations targeting online black markets like Silk Road in 2013, which relied on Bitcoin BTC$68,139 for illegal transactions. These early efforts revealed the potential for digital stings, where law enforcement could monitor blockchain transactions in real-time.
As crypto crime grew, so did the scope of sting operations. One of the notable examples was Operation Phish Phry in the late 2000s, targeting online hackers.
But it wasn’t until the 2010s that law enforcement focused more heavily on crypto scams, such as Ponzi schemes and hacking rings. Operation Cryptosweep in 2018 marked a major effort, targeting over 200 ICO scams that defrauded investors worldwide. Law enforcement agencies in the US and Canada coordinated to crack down on fraudulent ICOs, recovering millions of dollars in stolen funds.
Similarly, the FBI’s involvement in catching Ponzi schemes like the Bitconnect fraud in 2018 showcased how digital stings could expose major crypto crimes.
Did you know? In the cryptocurrency world, one of the largest digital stings was Operation Silk Road, which targeted the illegal online marketplace Silk Road in 2013. The operation resulted in the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the site’s founder, and the seizure of millions of dollars in Bitcoin.
How the FBI used NexFundAI to expose crypto fraud
Appearing legitimate, complete with a website, branding and tokenomics, the NexFundAI token attracted market manipulators, including firms specializing in wash trading and pump-and-dump schemes.
NexFundAI was set up as a typical Ethereum-based token, complete with a website, branding and tokenomics that looked no different from any legitimate crypto project. The FBI made sure that NexFundAI had all the elements necessary to attract the attention of manipulators — an active online presence, attractive prospects and, most importantly, a sense of legitimacy. By creating a facade of authenticity, the FBI was able to trick market makers into thinking this token had the potential for huge profits.
To further strengthen the bait, the FBI engaged with market-making firms that specialized in manipulating prices. These firms often perform wash trading and pump-and-dump schemes to inflate token prices artificially. NexFundAI provided an ideal playground for these manipulators to demonstrate their fraudulent tactics, all under the close watch of law enforcement.
By mimicking how real crypto projects operate, the FBI effectively created a “honey pot,” luring these firms into fraudulent activities without realizing they were being watched.
Once the market manipulators started interacting with NexFundAI, the FBI was able to gather evidence in real-time. As noted, companies like Gotbit and ZM Quant, who had a history of inflating trading volumes through sham trades, were caught in the act, much like flies in a honeypot.
Also, onchain data reveals that a wallet, which once manipulated SAITAMA to rake in over $11 million, funded the NexFundAI deployer with just 0.01 Ether ETH$2,642.12. The wallet spent $7,300 to buy 875.8 trillion SAITAMA, sold 687.66 trillion for $8.85 million, and deposited 737 trillion ($2.75 million) into OKX and Gate.io. And after buying back with $253,000, this single wallet profited over $11 million from SAITAMA.
Wash trading, which involves making trades between accounts controlled by the same party to create the illusion of liquidity, was one of the key fraudulent activities observed. These trades mislead investors into thinking the token is in high demand, driving up its price before the manipulators dump their holdings for profit.
The FBI closely tracked the token’s trading activity and recorded the fraudulent trades, ensuring they had solid evidence of manipulation. This wasn’t just limited to market activity; the FBI also gathered digital communications, contracts and payment records from the firms involved.
The operation revealed just how coordinated these frauds were. In addition to wash trading, the FBI identified price manipulation techniques, including deliberately timing large purchases and sales to influence market sentiment. Through NexFundAI, the FBI not only observed fraud but also directly participated in the market-making process, recording every move the fraudsters made.
Did you know? One of the largest wash trading indecents in history involved BitForex, which in 2019 was found to have 95% of its trading volume attributed to wash trading, as reported by blockchain transparency projects. This type of artificial volume manipulation affected billions of dollars in trading, misleading investors about the actual market demand.
NexFundAI: Fighting fire with fire
NexFundAI has proven itself in the fight against crypto fraud as a successful tactic in exposing bad actors.
By creating its own token, the FBI was able to gain a unique insider’s perspective by observing fraudulent activities from within the very system criminals sought to exploit. Instead of merely tracking transactions from the outside, as in previous operations, the FBI became a player in the crypto world.
The success of Operation Token Mirrors could have long-lasting implications for how law enforcement operates in the crypto space. The operation demonstrated that creating undercover tokens and projects could become a powerful tool to unmask crypto criminals. As fraudsters grow increasingly sophisticated, operations like these offer a way to infiltrate their schemes directly, rather than just monitoring them from the sidelines.
This strategy could make scammers and market manipulators more cautious in the future, as they will no longer know if the token they’re manipulating is part of an FBI sting. It adds a new layer of unpredictability to the already volatile crypto market. Fraudsters may hesitate to engage in blatant market manipulation, knowing that law enforcement could be watching — and even participating — in their activities.
Additionally, this operation sets a precedent for future digital stings. Law enforcement agencies worldwide could adopt similar strategies, creating their own tokens to track criminal behavior. This kind of proactive approach signals a new era in crypto enforcement, where fraud detection becomes more about participation and less about passive observation.
How to spot a trap token
If anything seems off — whether it’s unrealistic promises, hidden team members or unexplained market activity — it’s worth reconsidering your involvement. NexFundAI proves that even the most legitimate-looking tokens can be traps designed to exploit unsuspecting investors.
Being able to spot trap tokens is crucial because they’re often designed to attract investments through pump-and-dump schemes. These tokens might look like they represent legitimate projects, sometimes backed by large investments or sudden price jumps, making you want to invest quickly.
Of course, law enforcement uses trap tokens like NexFundAI to catch bad actors, not genuine investors. But whether it’s a trap token created by law enforcement or a scam set up by bad actors, falling for these schemes can lead to huge losses. You risk losing your entire investment if you don’t spot the warning signs in time.
Here are some general red flags for you to be aware of:
Sudden price spikes without clear fundamentals: One of the clearest signs of a potential scam or trap token is rapid price increases without any real-world news or project development to support the rise. Pump-and-dump schemes often follow this pattern, where manipulators drive up the price to lure investors before selling off their holdings and crashing the market. If a token’s value skyrockets overnight with no clear reason, it’s a red flag.
Low liquidity paired with high volumes: Another telltale sign is when a token shows unusually high trading volumes, but the liquidity — the ease with which assets can be bought or sold — remains low. This can indicate wash trading, where the same entity is buying and selling the token repeatedly to create the illusion of activity. If the token seems difficult to trade or withdraw, that’s another warning sign.
Presence of wash trading: Look out for patterns that suggest wash trading, like a high number of trades happening in quick succession or very small price movements between trades. Wash trades artificially boost the appearance of demand, misleading investors into thinking there’s more interest in the token than there really is. Tools like blockchain explorers or specialized sites that track suspicious trading activity can help you spot these patterns.
Lack of transparency: Be wary of projects that aren’t upfront about their team, technology or development goals. Fraudulent tokens often hide behind anonymity or vague promises. Legitimate projects typically have clear, transparent roadmaps, active developer communities and accessible teams.
Lastly, before investing in any token, check for regulatory warnings and verify the legitimacy of the project. Entities like the US Securities and Exchange Commission or equivalent bodies in other countries often issue warnings about known scams and fraudulent projects. These advisories are designed to protect investors from getting involved in shady operations. You can also use public tools and databases, such as the SEC’s EDGAR database, to verify whether the token has been flagged as fraudulent or involved in a legal dispute.
WNBA Loses $40 Million Despite Woke Mass Marketing Campaign
Every year feminist activists attempt to stir up a new controversy in order to fabricate public outrage and keep their agenda visible on social media. In 2024 one such controversy was the supposed pay disparity (which they call the “gender pay gap”) between women’s professional basketball and men’s professional basketball.
The notion of the gender pay gap has been thoroughly debunked in the western world. The original theory was rooted solely on the average pay accrued by all men vs all women and was a statistical misrepresentation of reality. When those numbers are broken down, the fact is that men work longer hours, they work more difficult jobs, more skilled jobs, they take less vacation time and they don’t have babies so they don’t need paternity leave. All of these factors and more add up to a higher average salary for men vs women.
It has everything to do with women’s choices and nothing to do with some nefarious patriarchal conspiracy to hold them back from success.
Because the overall gender pay gap argument has been destroyed and is no longer taken seriously, feminists then tried to search for specific examples of pay disparity in gender segregated professions. Professional sports is one of the few venues in which feminists could present a male vs female one-to-one comparison and say there is a distinct lack of fairness. Except, that argument assumes that male athletes and female athletes perform at the same level. The fact is, they do not.
Women’s game performance and abilities are far behind those of their professional male counterparts. They are two separate universes in terms of entertainment. This is an issue which no one in the mainstream wants to address – The women’s games are mostly terrible to watch.
Claims that the WNBA is “skyrocketing” in popularity are greatly exaggerated and the fact of the matter is the league has never been profitable. Recent reports indicate that the WNBA lost over $40 million this season and now investors are growing impatient.
“The WNBA owes the NBA so much we won’t see any windfall for years,” an NBA team executive told The New York Post.
The reality that undermines the pay gap theory for women’s basketball is simple: The ladies don’t sell enough tickets. Nor do they sell any merchandise, video games, jerseys, banners or much else for that matter. Their huge loss this year is concrete proof of that. The WNBA only exists because it is subsidized by the NBA and some private (and mostly male) investors; they take money from the male league in order to fund their games, and they have been losing that money consistently for over 25 years.
Comedian Bill Burr explains the insanity of the WNBA and feminism best:
The low sales argument once again debunked feminist claims of unfair salary practices. The WNBA makes no money; they lose money. So, the players should be happy they have jobs and get paid at all. But feminists weren’t done yet – They then argued that the WNBA sells less tickets and and less merchandise, not because the women’s game is mediocre, but because the WNBA “doesn’t get the same level of promotion as the men.”
They claim that if the WNBA was advertised at the same level, they would bring in the same kind of revenues as the NBA. Corporate partners with the WNBA then began pushing the league in a number of ads. Google took the lead in this endeavor in an effort to hype up women’s basketball.
Obviously the campaign didn’t work and marketing makes little difference. The only real drive of new interest in the WNBA has been Caitlin Clark, a draft pick that actually knows how to play and just happens to be white. This has led to drama, with other non-white players attacking Clark on and off the court out of jealousy. As Bill Burr notes, women prefer to tear each other down instead of building each other up, and that’s one of the reasons why they fail in organized group endeavors.
The latest profit reports should lay to rest any future arguments from the woke crowd over pay for female athletes. They have no more excuses left. It’s not the patriarchy, it’s not lack of marketing, it’s not lack of investment – It’s lack of public interest in the WNBA on every level.
The 30-mile journey by high-speed ferry from Hynannis to Nantucket Island takes about an hour over idyllic waters off the geographic elbow of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Nantucket Harbor in early October is as pretty as an autumn postcard as the boat pulls into the slip. A line of passengers disembarks, many of them with satchels, duffel bags, and rolling suitcases, to board taxis in the parking lot.
The famed cobblestone streets, restaurants, shops, and art galleries in the town center begin to fill up at 11 a.m., even as the tourist season winds down.
Nantucket Island is still at its finest with turning leaves and colonial charm. It is a place where homes sell for millions and pristine beaches draw thousands each year. It is both a town, a county, and a voting district.
Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, and Jennifer Lopez own property here. The island peaks at more than 80,000 visitors in July and August, but the number drops to 14,000 permanent residents in the off-season.
Some residents consider Nantucket Island their tiny paradise and the last place you would expect to see the illegal immigration crisis play out.
September was an especially tough month for the community, as federal agents arrested five undocumented male immigrants on charges related to violence and sex crimes.
“I think people are getting really tired of it,” said Toby Brown, chairman of the Nantucket Republican Town Committee of illegal immigration.
“Nantucket is a very liberal island. Many want to say it was only five people—but it’s not. It’s way more than five. If there’s five, you know there’s going to be 10.”
Brown said many Nantucket Island residents were surprised when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived in early September to make the arrests.
Many people refuse to talk about the arrests or the illegal immigration problem because they are afraid of being called racist, he said.
All five men had entered the country illegally and settled on Nantucket Island under the state’s radar; most had been arrested on sex charges early this year and were out on bail or personal recognizance.
On Sept. 12, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Boston officers arrested Angel Gabriel Deras-Mejia, 30, a known MS-13 gang member from El Salvador in Nantucket.
Local police arrested Deras-Mejia on two counts of assault and battery against a household member and disorderly conduct stemming from incidents on July 21 and Aug. 24.
Deras-Mejia unlawfully entered the United States, “then made his way to Massachusetts, to apparently commit crimes of violence,” according to ERO Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons in a statement.
“To make matters worse, Deras-Mejia is a documented member of a notorious transnational criminal organization (MS-13) and represents a significant threat to the residents of Nantucket.”
Lyons said that Deras-Mejia entered the country “on an unknown date, at an unknown location, without being inspected, admitted or paroled by a U.S. immigration official.”
Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez, 41, from Guatemala, is charged with indecent assault and battery on a person age 14 or over; Elmer Sola, 49, from El Salvador, is charged with 11 sex offenses against a child; Gean Do Amaral Belafronte, 30, who is from Brazil, is charged with indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or over; and Bryan Daniel Aladana-Arevalo, 28, a Salvadoran, is charged with two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
Manuel Figueroa Vega, 30, immigration status unknown, is being held on $100,000 bail on two counts of aggravated rape of a child with a five-year difference. Local police say the incidents allegedly occurred on July 23 and 25 at a Nantucket residence.
Dialog Lacking
Brown said the arrests have put a bad spotlight on Nantucket Island as a community dealing with violent crime due to illegal immigration.
“We can’t run away from it. We can’t be afraid to talk about real issues in our community with the fear of being considered bad [people],” Brown told The Epoch Times.
“My message is clear: it’s about keeping our community safe.”
Brown said the problem starts at the federal level, that the open borders policy of the Biden administration has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to enter the country illegally and without being checked.
In a March 13 letter to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), ICE said it had 662,556 “noncitizens with a criminal history” on its national list.
Of those, 435,719 are convicted criminals and 226,847 have criminal charges pending, ICE said.
The American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy group, disagrees with claims that illegal immigration brings crime.
“The scapegoating of ethnic and religious minorities is well-trod historical ground in the United States, and immigrants have always made for an easy target,” the organization said on its website.
“Today, some politicians are peddling the same, tired myth, this time of a ’migrant crime surge’ among immigrants who recently arrived in the country.”
The group added that a “robust body of research shows that welcoming immigrants into American communities … does not increase crime, but can actually strengthen public safety.
“In fact, immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born. This is true at the national, state, county, and neighborhood levels, and for both violent and non-violent crime.”
The organization said that even though the immigrant population had more than doubled to 13.9 percent since 1980, the crime rate had dropped by 60 percent to 2,335 crimes per 100,000 people by 2022.
‘Enabling Immigrant Crime’
Brown said he thinks that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who is a Democrat, has enabled illegal immigrants, some with criminal backgrounds, to seek sanctuary in the Bay State and costing taxpayers billions to support them.
ERO Boston jumped into action in September, making a number of arrests, including a 50-year-old Salvadoran man in Tisbury, Massachusetts, wanted by authorities in El Salvador for “crimes against humanity.”
“This Salvadoran fugitive is wanted by authorities in his native country to face some extremely serious and disturbing allegations,” said ERO Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde in a statement.
“He attempted to hide out in Massachusetts and escape the law in his home country. He posed a substantial threat to the residents of Martha’s Vineyard.
“ERO Boston will continue to prioritize public safety in all of our New England communities by arresting and removing egregious noncitizen offenders.”
The Salvadoran fugitive was initially apprehended on Nov. 27, 1994, after he entered the United States illegally near Harlingen, Texas. A judge ordered him deported on June 21, 1995.
The man entered the country again illegally and was caught by ERO Boston on May 18, 2010, and deported a year later.
ICE said the man got back into the United States after Salvadoran authorities charged him with crimes against humanity and human trafficking on July 11, 2011.
The agency reported an unidentified 21-year-old man from Brazil was arrested on Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 18 on suspicion of drug distribution.
ERO Boston also arrested an unnamed Brazilian man, 36, a fugitive sentenced in Brazil to serve 10 years in prison for a conviction for international drug trafficking.
Federal agents later arrested Gustavo Augusto Mroczkoski, 28, also from Brazil, on Martha’s Vineyard for alleged drug, firearms, and ammunition crimes.
Border Patrol agents detained Mroczkoski after he illegally entered the country on May 4 near San Luis, Arizona. Authorities released him in July on personal recognizance.
Martha’s Vineyard is about 38 miles northwest of Nantucket and home to 20,530 permanent residents.
In December 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent two planes with 50 illegal immigrants from Venezuela and Columbia to Martha’s Vineyard to protest against the open borders policy.
Democratic politicians said DeSantis was to blame for creating a humanitarian crisis. Authorities eventually took the migrants to a military base, where they received food and shelter.
Crime in a Small Community
The 46-square-mile island of Nantucket has a length of 14 miles and a width of 3.5 miles. Half of it is conservation land, limiting opportunities for housing development.
For nearly a century, Nantucket Island was a major North American whaling port before tourism replaced industry in the late 1880s.
The island’s diverse population and cosmopolitan flavor attract residents and tourists year-round, and many of its inhabitants are recent immigrants from Jamaica and other countries.
The United States Census Bureau reports that 10,159 (70.6 percent) of the island’s inhabitants are white, 2,312 are Hispanic, 1,027 are black, and 264 are Asian.
On Nantucket Island, the median household income is $135,590, with 12,169 total housing units and most home values ranging from $500,000 to more than $1 million.
The Massachusetts Department of Education says that 40.1 percent of the island’s public school enrollment are Hispanic, 44.2 percent are white, 9.6 percent are black, 2.4 percent are Asian, and the rest are of two or more races.
Brown said that illegal immigration often goes undetected.
He said that illegal migrants arrive on the island with family or friends to stay with. Sometimes, this results in overcrowding of private homes and drains local infrastructure and resources.
“It’s a place where if the family has housing, they move in with them. Nantucket is an easy place to hide out,” Brown said.
“The majority of [legal migrants] that come here are good people,” he said. “They want a better life for their family.
“Then you have the bad guys who come. The ones who can’t do it the right way, there’s a reason, because they’re wanted [by the law] in their own country.”
The Nantucket Police Department and Gov. Healey’s office have yet to respond to emails from The Epoch Times asking for comment.
Brooke Mohr, the chairwoman of the Nantucket Selectboard, did not respond to an Epoch Times’ request for comment about plans to address illegal immigration and violent crime.
On Oct. 2, Mohr spoke publicly for 54 seconds about the ICE arrests in September.
“The town of Nantucket Selectboard and municipal administration are aware of the recent arrests made by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the island,” Mohr said.
“We recognize that this activity may have been unsettling to many of our residents. It is our understanding that the ICE action was not random but targeted toward the arrest of four known individuals who committed violent crimes on the island of Nantucket.
“Let me clear. We are committed to the safety and well-being of members of our community regardless of their immigration status and are relieved that these offenders have been apprehended by the appropriate authorities and are no longer a threat to our community.
“We stand in support of the victims of these traumatic crimes and their families, and the town will make available any resources and counseling services they might need.”
How Many Criminals?
Christopher Lauzon, a Republican candidate for state senate from Barnstable to represent the Cape and Islands District, said that illegal immigration has been a problem on Nantucket Island for a long time.
“The biggest problem is we don’t know who these people are when they don’t come through the proper channels.
“So you get a situation over the past month on Nantucket where you have these dangerous, really heinous criminals on the island, impacting people in the community.
“Those crimes never would have happened if they hadn’t been allowed to remain in the community.”
Lauzon said most legal immigrants are honest and hard-working and don’t support illegal immigration.
“There are varying levels of understanding of the people who are not here legally,” Lauzon told The Epoch Times.
“Some of them don’t want them here at all; some people are willing to look the other way as long as they’re not committing crimes.
“But the bottom line is anyone who is here illegally, they don’t belong here if they didn’t come through the proper channels.”
A faulty interpretation of the 1983 Right to Shelter Law in Massachusetts by the Healey administration is what makes illegal immigration possible, Lauzon said.
The state created the law initially to help women and families of domestic violence, he said.
“It’s really been misappropriated since Gov. Healey came into office,” Lauzon said.
“We’ve had tens of thousands of migrants coming into the state and getting shelter through that program, which is not what it’s for, which is acting as a magnet to drag more migrants into the state. That really needs to change.”
Lauzon, a father of four, believes that crimes committed by illegal immigrants undermine public safety while illegal immigration robs the community of resources and peace of mind.
State and local officials could do a better job tracking violent offenders, but the response so far has been “limited.”
“It’s a limited response from what I’ve seen. There’s a lot of hesitancy to even comply with ICE—and that’s a statewide issue, not just on Nantucket. A lot of the courts refuse to comply with ICE detainers. It’s a big problem,” Lauzon said.
“People want to claim that these criminals are not in the community. But at least one of those individuals on Nantucket was confirmed to be an MS-13 gang member.
“These people are coming into our country—these dangerous criminals—again, not to say that everyone coming in is that way—but if even one of them is a dangerous criminal, that’s one too many.”
A Father’s Fear
One Nantucket father said he’s worried there are more migrant criminals on Nantucket Island illegally.
“If there’s five, there’s 10. If there’s 10, there’s 15,” the father told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity.
“How many more on this little island? How come we don’t know more about this issue? We need to be informed of things like this.”
“If we have rapists and murderers in our community, why aren’t we being informed about this? Our police know. Our court systems know. Because they’ve been in court, and they have records.
“Why are we left in the dark when it’s our kids’s health and the well-being of the community?”
Not just denial, he added, but fear of speaking out.
“There are also plenty of people who are afraid to speak their minds because it is a small community. Word travels fast. Once some people find out the way you lean, it can affect your livelihood.”
“There are a lot of people who feel the way I do but feel they can’t voice their opinions.”
Some residents say that local businesses, such as landscaping and construction, will hire migrants living on the island illegally and pay them “under the table” to avoid paying taxes and worker benefits or obtaining the required permits.
“Follow the money,” the father said. “These people find out that they can come here, and they can make $30 or $40 an hour and get paid with no questions asked, no repercussions, no issues of licensing or insurance or green cards.”
Several patrons at Nantucket VFW Post 8608 said they didn’t feel any less safe following the ICE arrests.
“If they arrested them, [people] probably feel safer,” said one woman. “Nothing surprises me anymore. It wasn’t a huge invasion. It didn’t disrupt—I didn’t see them.”
“If they do something wrong, the local police will catch them,” another female patron said.
“I’ve lived on Nantucket for 40 years. I’ve never locked my doors,” said another resident, who felt the alleged crimes were essentially family affairs that did not involve legal residents.
But PJ Moody, a resident of Nantucket, said he didn’t think people should be here if they were on the island illegally.
“There should be no illegals, really,” Moody told The Epoch Times.” I think the immigration system is a big problem. It’s really unfair to people that are doing it correctly.
“Let’s start with violent offenders and go from there.”
Moody said that illegal immigration is a national problem, but “it’s one of those things that have been magnified on Nantucket.”
“Nantucket is a very cosmopolitan place. Some so many people have done it the right way,” he said. “Like anywhere, we don’t like violent criminals whether they’re illegal or not.”
Italy Disrupts The LGBT Baby Trade By Passing A Ban On Overseas Surrogacy
It’s a disturbing trend that has been spreading over the past few years: Gay and Trans couples buying off surrogate mothers to have babies for them, then taking those babies and using them as fashion accessories for social media clout. The trend includes bizarre newborn baby photo ops in which the couples (usually gay or trans men) pose in a hospital bed with the baby as if they just gave birth to it.
While legal in many countries, the practice has some unsettling implications in terms of cultural respect for motherhood, the future life stability of children being used as props, and the normalization of gender identity mental illness.
Transgender man lies in a hospital bed as his newborn baby is handed to him after he paid a surrogate to have a baby for him.
The Italian government under Georgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, has closed the overseas loophole in the LGBT baby market. It is one of the first governments to finally address and block the practice of IVF for surrogacy (in place since 2004), and they have now extended that ban to include the recruitment of surrogate mothers outside of the country. In other words, it’s a complete ban on surrogate pregnancies. Those who break the law face fines of up to $1 million and 2 years in prison.
Critics are calling the law a “monstrous attack” on the LGBT community and their ability to have a family. Keep in mind, the law applies to all Italians, not just those that identify as gay or trans. However, it is likely that the restrictions were specifically designed to stop the explosion of the LGBT baby trade and trans surrogacy. Meloni has has described herself as a Christian mother and believes children should only be raised by a man and a woman.
Because the practice of surrogacy for gay male couples in particular has been limited until recently, there is scant data on the effects of the practice on children as they grow up. There are multiple scientific studies that do show that children in gay households fare worse as they grow up than those in homes with a traditional mother and father.
These problems include whether a child had grown up to need public assistance like welfare, were more likely to have anxiety or depression, were more likely to be abused, or were more apt engage in unhealthy habits such as having more sexual partners, smoking or using drugs.
Whenever such unbiased and non-political studies are released, they are immediately attacked by gay activist groups for “bigotry”. Today, it is unlikely that these kinds of studies will ever be funded, let alone released to the public. The science on the social effects of the gay and trans lifestyle is fully suppressed in the 2020s.
Common arguments against the surrogacy ban include claims that surrogacy is necessary in order to counter Italy’s population decline. But leftist organizations exploit the western population drop as a rationale for many of their agendas, including their mass immigration agenda. It’s not enough for a society to simply have more babies, they need stable homes for those babies where the children are not merely there to satisfy the narcissism of LGBT activists.
Italy, it seems, has decided to err on the side of caution.
Since the battle lines are barely moving, and with neither side appearing to be able to finish the war in Ukraine despite triumphalist noises, there is a natural tendency to ask why the war is continuing. The apparent reason is that the Ukrainians still expect to expel the Russians from Ukraine, including the Crimea, and Russia still purports to aspire to the complete absorption of Ukraine back into Russia, where it was for 300 years.
The history of Ukraine and Russia easily generates grievances on both sides.
The Russian version, somewhat incoherently offered on television by Russian President Vladimir Putin the night before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, is that Ukraine was never a country. It was a contested area where Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and so-called Tatars or Tartars from the Steppes of Asia contested with each other and where the Russian capital was established at Kiev before Russia had any relationship with Western Europe. Ukraine was never a jurisdiction of any kind until Lenin declared it to be a Soviet Socialist Republic in 1919, and, next to Russia itself, the most populous component of the USSR.
Ukraine was subjected to even more barbarities than most states and regions of the USSR by Stalin when, in his zeal to collectivize agriculture, he starved or otherwise massacred millions of independent Ukrainian farmers. Because of Stalin’s brutalities and communist atheism, a large number of Ukrainians welcomed the German invasion of 1941 and a substantial number of them fought in the German army against the Soviet Union. Predictably, Stalin’s vengeance was not gentle.
When the Soviet Union finally imploded in 1991, Ukraine joined all of the other Soviet socialist republics in seceding from the USSR and declaring independence. But given that Russia had exercised sovereignty over all of the European Republics since Peter the Great’s time and the Asian republics for 250 years, Russia considered these wayward entities to be the “near abroad,” by which was meant that their sovereignty was not conceded. Approximately 17 percent of Ukrainians are primarily Russian-speaking, which is an additional reason why Russia claims a status there.
Stalin’s successor as Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was part Ukrainian, and as a kind gesture awarded Crimea to Ukraine, although it had been Russian since it was taken from the Turks by Catherine the Great in the 18th century. In 2010, a pro-Russian government led by Viktor Yanukovych was elected in Ukraine, and after a pause of several years, reversed Ukraine’s rapprochement with the European Union and reoriented the country to more intimate relations with Russia. This caused the Ukrainian Parliament—following mass protests sponsored to some extent by the West—to remove the president, whereupon Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea and began skirmishing on the eastern border to seize the Russian-speaking, steel-making provinces adjacent to the Don River.
Following the shambles of the American and allied efforts in Afghanistan, and the general air of enfeeblement of the United States, President Putin executed his grand step to take his historic place with Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Stalin as statesmen who expanded the Russian state and the influence of Russia in Europe.
The Western alliance won the greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in the history of the nation-state when the USSR simply fell like a soufflé without a shot being fired. It is understandably Putin’s dream to reverse the demise of his former country; Russia has only approximately one half of the population of the former Soviet Union. It cannot be said that Russia has no colour of right to seek changes to the complete secession of Ukraine. But Putin, in addition to grossly underestimating the military capacity of Ukraine and the determination of the Western Alliance to assist Ukrainians, apparently expected a much more positive welcome for the Russian army from the Ukrainian public than the almost universal resistance, heavily subsidized by the West, that he has received.
He took no notice of the fact that between the seizure of Crimea and his wholesale invasion of Ukraine eight years later, a number of NATO countries including Canada had steadily trained up a total of 500,000 Ukrainians to be able to defend their country, in a way that they had no capacity to do when Russia seized Crimea. Former President Donald Trump had already taken the initiative of supplying the Ukrainians with Javelin antitank missiles, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel had refused to do for the fatuous reason that it would “just increase the bloodshed.” At the outset of the Russian invasion in 2022, President Biden offered the Ukrainian president and his family refuge from the war, and the official American expectation, as expressed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, was that Russia would seize Kiev within a few days and occupy the entire country within a month.
It almost immediately became clear that no such outcome was about to occur and there was a spontaneous upsurge of long-departed determination among the principal European NATO allies, quickly joined by the United States and Canada, that Ukraine deserved comprehensive military support, short of the actual commitment of NATO forces. Effectively, NATO has paid practically all the bills for mounting this formidable defence of Ukraine, but the Ukrainians have taken all of the casualties. The likely terms to end the war have been evident for many months: a ceasefire in place, the expansion of Russia to include what it has occupied and been able to retain in Ukraine, and the unqualified recognition of Ukraine in its revised borders as a sovereign state which, when it meets the appropriate criteria, will be eligible for membership in the European Union and in NATO. (NATO and no one else will decide who joins NATO.)
Ironclad guarantees of Ukraine’s revised borders would represent three quarters of a loaf for that country and one quarter of a loaf for Russia, for whom the war is a terrible strain—Russia has taken over 600,000 casualties, and Ukraine approximately 250,000, about a quarter dead in each case, and Russia’s GDP is smaller than Canada’s.
The reason we have not got to this conclusion yet is that the United States hasn’t been pushing for it. The Ukrainian government is prepared to go on with the casualties, so America will fight on with it to the last Ukrainian.
Former President Trump has recognized that in addition to preserving Ukraine and its independence, the goal is to create conditions where a post-war Russia can be gradually enticed out of the arms of China. A durable intimate alliance of those two countries could be strategically dangerous, as well as the practical end of Russia’s independence. For a year after the peace, Ukrainians could move to Russia or the revised borders of Ukraine, and a non-aggression agreement could be made between Russia and NATO.
The end of this war awaits the U.S. election, which will effectively determine the terms.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
A dignified life, or dehumanized technocracy — which would you prefer for your children?
As you may have noticed, I do enjoy lists. I suppose they appeal to my sense of order. The following is a list of fundamental principles that were strangely, as if by hypnosis, abdicated during the Convid Scamdemic.
I hope you enjoy, as do I, the novelty (at least for this Substack) of presenting this particular list in countdown format!
8. Do Not Trust the Government — how anyone could not understand this principle by now is beyond me. You don’t need to refer to ancient history to reach this conclusion. You don’t even need to have read Machiavelli (although I highly recommend you do). Just look at recent history and you will be provided with numerous examples indicating that no private citizen should ever trust the government.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was even invoked by some of the poison pushers during Covid in patronizing efforts to assuage vaccine hesitancy. It was mentioned dismissively as though it were something that happened a million years ago and would never happen again. Yet every thinking person should take stock of this nightmarish event. It was medical torture that transpired over the course of 40 years and was presided over by the CDC. Yes — the same CDC.
Politically, since the turn of the new millennium, we have been treated to a continuous barrage of psyops and wars, wars and psyops. The dubious nature of the 2000 election, the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11, the lies about WMDs that resulted in catastrophic war in Iraq, the total bailout of the banks in 2008 with not as much as a life-raft for the people, the Flint Michigan water crisis, the annihilation of Libya — we could go on and on and on in reciting examples of negligence, malfeasance and heinous actions carried out by our government irrespective of which political party held the presidency at the time. (I insist they are one party pretending to be two.)
How could one claim to have observed history and then fail to notice that virtually every major government project done in opposition to an enemy whether literal or abstract, from all the senseless catastrophic wars against regimes to the fruitless and counterproductive “War on Drugs” and then “War on Terror”, have been entirely negative in both nature and results?
Whenever the government announces (or doesn’t announce) it is embarking on some grand new endeavor, usually something catastrophic is underway.
During Covid, I didn’t just see people fail to be suspicious of a government that had thoroughly earned our distrust, I had the even more harrowing experience of witnessing people I had known previously to be “critical thinkers” suddenly devolve into people incapable of any critical thought whatsoever.
7. Don’t Trust Major Corporations, Especially Big Pharma aka Big Harma — what is a corporation? It is an instrument designed to maximize profit in the marketplace. In capitalism ruthlessness, relentlessness and an amoral approach are all considered admirable traits.
The willingness of a corporation to poison, pollute, injure or even kill is requisite to compete in the upper echelons of the market place. Major corporations do not have a track record of admitting fault or confessing guilt. They do not have the tendency of “taking things down a notch” for the sake of the environment, or human dignity or being reasonable. The ends absolutely justify the means and therefore, nothing is off-limits in the pursuit of maximizing profits. If there is collateral damage, or if a few fines need to be paid along the way — so be it. That will all be neatly filed and tucked away under the label of “the cost of doing business.” This description shouldn’t shock anyone — I am merely describing the spirit of capitalism and the spirit of corporatism.
Big industry from the military industrial complex to Big-Agra is thoroughly out of hand, but there’s something particularly disturbing about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry as it pertains immediately to our health, the health of our children and the health of our families and communities. We should all be more than concerned that the oath stating, “first do no harm” has been jettisoned entirely.
Giving legal indemnity to corporations (especially ones with felony backgrounds) is a recipe for guaranteed disaster. There should be a law against making such laws. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which gives liability protection to vaccine manufacturers needs to be overturned immediately and put in its historical place as an anathema to the proper drafting and passing of laws.
6. The Right to Question — the right to question should be unquestionable. We claim to value education and up until recently intellectual curiosity was considered a good attribute. When Covid came along all the sudden “doing your own research” aka reading was suddenly being demonized. Who has ever heard of such a thing? And how can the people discouraging critical inquiry consider themselves to be the intelligent ones? It’s adjacent to the question, “when were the censors the good guys in history?”
Questioning is good. Robust dialogue is good. The notion of sterilizing mistakes or incorrect ideas out of discourse is totalitarian. In fact, clarifying and the correcting of mistakes usually offers a great opportunity for education and enlightenment. Moreover, to attempt to gain an understanding even to venture into the taxonomy of an unfamiliar field or discipline does not mean that the inquirers suddenly become professionals in that field — no reasonable person would suggest that. It is simply to have gained some understanding in a new area. This is a good process and not a negative one.
As my friend Ryan Cristian of Last American Vagabond ( TheLastAmericanVagabond.com ) says at the end of every program, “Question everything.”
5. Freedom to Associate — the government has no right whatsoever to prevent us from seeing our families or friends when we are not engaged in criminal actions and are not meeting to engage in criminal conspiracies. Lockdowns (which varied in severity from country to country and county to county) were a flagrant violation of our natural rights. Just as the government cannot protect us from any act of God — the notion that they can protect us from a respiratory ailment by restricting our movements is not only blatant overreach, it’s medically and scientifically without merit.
The falsehood of the “asymptomatic carrier” was the fraudulent basis for movement restricting policies. It should be accepted, however, that policy makers have no influence, no sway whatsoever in regard to the virome. Even if they did, a declared emergency should not be grounds for the suspension or removal of our rights. Yet what transpired during Covid and the lack of resistance from the public that went along with it, has set the stage for future abuses.
4. Freedom of Religion — I feel an enormous spiritual feeling but I do not identify with any particular religion or religious text. My beliefs, however, as well as the beliefs or non-beliefs of every individual are irrelevant — our country, like every free society, allows for freedom of religion. It is not the job of the mayor, governor, president or any appointed or elected official to arbitrarily suspend the fundamental right to worship and practice one’s religion.
It makes no sense to impose policies to protect a religious person from illness, when most religions are rooted in the concept of preparing the practitioner for death. For most religious people their religious practices are part of their well being. It is not up to power brokers to determine when devout persons can practice their religions or when congregations can congregate.
Allowing liquor stores to remain open while churches and mosques were ordered closed, highlights the perfectly baseless and arbitrary nature of lockdown policies. (I cringe when I use the word “allow” because We The People should have never “allowed” the state to have as much as an impression that they could impose any of this unfounded rubbish.)
Just prior to Covid, religious exemptions for vaccines required to attend school were overturned in New York and California. (Looking back, that was a red flag and helped set the stage for the bio security State that was about to emerge.) How is that possible? How can the government arbitrarily decide that their rule is more powerful than your religious belief and conviction to God Almighty? Who do they think they are? Religious exemptions should never be overturnable.
3. Haste Makes Waste — Haste makes waste is a truism. It is well known that it is better to be well prepared than rushed. It’s a principle also known as the 6 P’s — proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.
It’s better to be a well-rehearsed band than an under-rehearsed band. It’s better to be a well practiced basketball team (like the Spurs) than a team that hasn’t practiced enough. It’s better to be a well-prepared actor than an unprepared actor. It is better to have an experienced surgeon and not a medical student. Everyone knows that haste makes waste, yet somehow this axiomatic principle was disregarded in the case of “Operation Warp Speed.”
“Warp speed” implies mistakes. It implies lack of regulation and oversight. More than imply, it means — no long term safety data. It means rushed-to-market. It means “safe and effective” is inherently a lie because they didn’t have sufficient time to confirm its safety or effectiveness.
It’s mind numbing that not only did supposedly intelligent people insist that such a massive undertaking (Operation Warp Speed) could be executed without any noticeable reduction in quality, but then proceeded to aggressively insult and gaslight those who raised this most obvious concern.
Despite the notion that anyone who refused the experimental injections was doing so based on elaborate conspiracy theories, I spoke to many people who told me firsthand that their hesitancy or outright refusal was based on the simple fact that the whole thing was done too damn fast.
2. Body Sovereignty — sovereignty over one’s own body is the most fundamental of fundamental rights. It is the right from which all other rights emanate. If your body sovereignty is compromised, you are a compromised individual and you are not a free person. You may aspire to freedom, but you are not free.
Mandating Covid “vaccines” (products falsely marketed as such) was a violation of the Constitution†, the Nuremberg Code†† and first and foremost natural law. No person should be forced to eat anything, watch anything, participate in anything — least of all an invasive medical procedure — against their will. It’s incredibly sad that this has to be discussed or debated whatsoever in the United States or any modern society for that matter.
1. No means No — I have most certainly emphasized this in previous articles. I will exercise here the literary technique known as sufficient redundancy and reiterate that — No is the most important word in the dictionary. No is sacrosanct.
We teach our children, and rightfully so, that they always have the right to say No. If something doesn’t feel right — No. If you don’t feel safe — No. If you are being asked to compromise your dignity — No. The word — No — by itself, is a complete sentence. This principle, of always having the right to say No, does not have an expiration date. It’s not just for children. It is fundamental to human dignity.
It is an abomination, that the right to say No was violated across the whole of society. What a terrible example for our children, and if we don’t change things now — what a terrible inheritance for them as well.
Ottawa, Canada has launched a public consultation on new measures to curb imports of goods made with forced labour. The move comes amid increased scrutiny of China’s use of forced labour involving persecuted groups.
International Trade Minister Mary Ng announced the public consultation on Oct. 16, saying that it aims to strengthen the enforcement of the ban on importing forced labour goods in alignment with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) and actions taken by allied countries.
During this public consultation, the government will seek feedback on improving enforcement of the import ban, according to a separate release on Oct. 16. Proposed measures include publishing a list of items at risk of being made with forced labour, based on guidelines from the International Labour Organization (ILO). A “minimum traceability” process was also proposed, requiring importers of these items to provide more information about where their products come from.
Additionally, the proposed changes could affect how costs are handled. Importers of goods found to be made with forced labour would have to pay for all costs related to detention, removal, abandonment, and forfeiture. This would include transportation, storage, and disposal fees.
Citing an ILO report on modern slavery, Ottawa noted that an estimated 27.6 million people were subjected to forced labour worldwide in 2021, an increase of 3 million since 2016. Children represented about 12 percent of those affected, totalling 3.3 million.
Forced Labour in China
The announcement comes amid increased scrutiny of forced labour in China.
Last month, four U.S. lawmakers urged Minister Ng and American and Mexican CUSMA trade representatives to bolster the enforcement of bans on forced labour goods from China. These lawmakers have been key proponents of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which aims to fight what they call China’s “widespread and systemic use“ of forced labour to exploit Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region.
The U.S. lawmakers urged CUSMA members to take further action to prevent the import of goods made with forced labour into North America, expressing frustration that a shipment of solar panels, denied entry into the United States due to concerns about forced labour, was later imported into Canada and then attempted to be re-exported to the United States.
The issue has also been studied in recent years in parliamentary committees in Canada, with human rights activists urging more action by Canadian lawmakers to curb China’s forced labour practices.
“The Subcommittee [on International Human Rights] was advised that Canada should adopt a ’reverse‑onus’ policy for companies importing products from Xinjiang, or other parts of China where forced labour is prominent. Such a policy would require importing companies to demonstrate that forced labour was not used in the manufacturing of their products,” reads a March 2021 report published by the subcommittee.
Since 2021, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has intercepted and assessed around 50 shipments of goods for suspected involvement with forced labour, according to an earlier statement to The Epoch Times. Six shipments were monitored for export out of the Canadian market, and one was abandoned by the importer at the border. The remaining shipments were allowed entry following a review of supply chain information provided by importers.
“The Government of Canada expects companies to take every step possible to ensure that their supply chains conform to Canadian law. It is the responsibility of the importer to exercise due diligence to ensure forced labour is not directly or indirectly used in the production of the goods it imports,” CBSA spokesperson Luke Reimer said on Sept. 26.
One well-known case involved a shipment from China that was intercepted in Quebec in fall 2021, but it was ultimately allowed entry. Reimer said that this decision came after the importer requested a review of the tariff classification. Upon examining the submitted documents, it was determined that the goods did not meet the criteria for seizure related to forced labour.
Canada has imposed an import ban on goods produced by forced labour since an amendment to the Customs Tariff Act took effect on July 1, 2020. The following year, it also launched an analysis of supply chain risks related to forced labour in China.
In January, a law aimed at fighting forced labour and child labour in supply chains came into force. Previously known as Bill S-211, this law requires the head of every government institution involved in producing, purchasing, or distributing goods in Canada or elsewhere to submit an annual report to the minister of public safety by May 31 each year.
