Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

A simple Wikipedia entry about the history of the chair reveals how the site’s far-left editors desperately try to reframe the past in real time.

The Wikipedia page describing the history of the chair initially read, “Chairs are known from Ancient Egypt and have been widespread in the Western world from the Greeks and Romans onwards.”

“They were in common use in China from the twelfth century, and were used by the Aztecs. In Sub-Saharan Africa, chairs were not in use before introduction by Europeans.”

That final sentence, believe it or not, is currently the subject of a culture war struggle.

One editor removed it entirely using the justification, “This seems unnesesary and frankly pretty racist.”

In other words, basic historical fact can now be amended if some demented shitlib gets offended by it.

The page is now going back and forth with people re-adding the true history and then having it removed again by leftist moderators.

Apparently, progressives are desperately to maintain some Wakanda-like idealized version of Sub-Saharan Africa where it was more advanced than western civilization.

A Wikipedia Story, told in three screenshots. pic.twitter.com/ntbM32BkFO

— Pox Populi (@poxesfoxes) March 20, 2024

The current Wikipedia entry maintains the original history, although for how long remains to be seen.

Billions of people around the world still think Wikipedia is an impartial, balanced encyclopedia, when in fact it’s subject to extremist control.

If this is happening to a page about the history of the chair, imagine how many countless other examples of it there are on Wikipedia.

As we previously highlighted, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger blasted the site for its slide into “leftist propaganda,” accusing it of long since abandoning impartiality and simply becoming an amplifier for mainstream news narratives.

“Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for, I would say, its first five years or so,” said Sanger, adding, “And then … it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”

Wikipedia is run by around 125,000 volunteer editors, the vast majority of whom are leftists, with a further 1,000 administrators who enjoy special privileges to block others who go against the grain.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Just in time for the 2024 election cycle, leftist activists seem to be ramping up their targeted harassment campaigns of popular conservative figures in what we’re sure will be another “fiery but mostly peaceful” year.  This week, a mob of people disrupted a Kyle Rittenhouse speaking event at the University of Memphis, then rushed at attendees while making threats, spitting and attempting to block them from leaving the campus.  Clearly, these people didn’t learn their lesson from what happened the last time a mob chased after Rittenhouse. 

NEW: BLM mob charges at people leaving the Kyle Rittenhouse event at the University of Memphis before blocking them from leaving in the parking garage.

Do these clowns not remember the last time they tried doing this when Rittenhouse was in the vicinity? 😂

Police had to step… pic.twitter.com/BbfpsdVIUT

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 21, 2024

It’s a reminder that even in the deepest of red states like Tennessee there are still blue cities replete with BLM and Antifa related groups poised to wreak havoc whenever an opportunity is presented.  And, there’s no doubt they will continue to be encouraged in their behavior by a grinning, mustache twirling corporate media.  Don’t be surprised if scenes like this become a daily occurrence once again the closer we get to November.  The pro-woke argument?  They believe they are allowed to disrupt your free speech with their free speech.

Comprehensive video evidence shows beyond any doubt that Kyle Rittenhouse was chased and violently attacked by BLM rioters.  Of the few shots that he fired with his rifle in self defense, he managed to hit a convicted pedophile, a chronic domestic abuser and a man with a lengthy criminal record carrying a handgun illegally.  In other words, the crowd was filled with some of the worst people in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Due to mainstream media disinformation many leftists still believe today that Rittenhouse is a “racist” that fired on black protesters.  They were all white. 

Despite all this information and the fact that he was acquitted by a jury the political left continues to view Kyle Rittenhouse as “the one that got away.”  In an era of J6 kangaroo courts putting people in prison for decades simply for being in the vicinity of the Capitol building, the expectation among Democrats was that Rittenhouse would be going to prison for life regardless of the evidence in his favor.  Instead, they were shocked to discover the courts still function normally in some places and that self defense is still self defense even when woke rioters are harmed in the process.  

The ongoing calls for “justice” against Rittenhouse showcase a deep leftist disdain for the legal system.  They’re only interested in legal decisions that serve their interests and will applaud when judges and juries do their bidding, but they will also actively disregard any decisions that they don’t like.  Meaning, in their eyes Rittenhouse will always be guilty and they will continue to try to punish him outside of the courts.

If one goes deeper into this leftist obsession, though, we find that they hate Rittenhouse less for what he did and more for what he represents.  Activists have long operated on the assumption that if they riot in the name of “social justice” they will be allowed to do whatever they want and anyone that stands up to them will be destroyed as a bigot.  Rittenhouse was supposed to simply lay down, take a beating from the mob and quietly accept his fate, becoming a joke or an anecdote for why conservatives should submit.  Instead he fought back, took his attackers down and got away with it, becoming a symbol for resistance.

Is it any wonder they despise him to this day?  

Via The Cradle

The Yemeni Houthi government has reassured Russian and Chinese officials that their ships can safely cross the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean without fear of attack, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.

The Chinese and Russian diplomats reportedly met in Oman with Mohammad Abdul Salam, the spokesman and chief negotiator for Yemen’s National Salvation Government (NSG), and “reached an understanding” about safe passage through the Red Sea and beyond.

“In exchange, the two countries may provide political support to [Yemen] in bodies such as the United Nations Security Council … It’s not entirely clear how that support would be manifested, but it could include blocking more resolutions against the group,” the US news outlet cites their sources as saying.

Since mid-November, the Yemeni armed forces have conducted dozens of attacks on Israeli-linked vessels attempting to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait as part of a military campaign in support of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

Sanaa expanded its operations to include US and UK-linked ships after the two NATO allies started to drop bombs in areas controlled by the NSG. Concerns increased about the Red Sea crisis after the US militarized the key waterway in support of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky and China’s UN envoy Geng Shuang have blasted the US for illegally bombing the Arab world’s poorest nation while failing to pressure Israel into accepting a diplomatic solution.

Polyansky said in mid-February, “An immediate cease-fire in Gaza will help stabilize the situation in the Red Sea, and the de-escalation in those waters will, in turn, unblock the efforts of [UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg].”

“I would like to reiterate that the Security Council has never authorized any country to use force against Yemen. International law and resolutions of the council should not be subjected to misrepresentation and abuse by any country,” Shuang told the UN Security Council earlier this month.

“There is constant cooperation and development of relations between Yemen, Russia, China, and BRICS states, as well as an exchange of knowledge and experience in various areas. This is necessary to drown the US and the West in [the crisis] around the Red Sea, to get bogged down, weaken, and become unable to maintain unipolarity,” Ansarallah politburo member Ali al-Qahoum said via social media earlier this week.

Leery of outright seizing all of the some $280 billion in Russian central bank assets mostly held in Europe, the Group of Seven’s alternative ‘Plan B’ is quickly taking shape. There’s been greater consensus of support for instead using the windfall profits gained from reinvesting Russian assets frozen in Europe to support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine.

Days ago the The Wall Street Journal detailed that “Two-thirds of the roughly $300 billion in reserves were sitting in European banks and clearinghouses. As those assets mature and are reinvested, they have generated profits that EU officials say could reach 15 billion euros, equivalent to more than $16 billion, over the next four years.” The blocked assets currently generate an estimated $3.6 billion of net profits per year.

On Thursday the United States unveiled a new plan to allies centered on what are being dubbed “freedom bonds”. The initiative would create a special purpose vehicle to issue at least $50 billion of bonds generated by the frozen assets, Bloomberg reports.

But considering that Moscow has already and on multiple occasions blasted such plans of the West as brazen “theft” and has even vowed to hit back in some way — investors will be understandably cautious, likely viewing a “freedom bond” scheme as anything but a secure and trustworthy long term opportunity. 

The Kremlin has previously vowed to be “extremely tough” on “thieves” who appropriate what belongs to Russia. “Considering that our country has qualified this as theft, the attitude will be towards thieves,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier stated. “Not as political manipulators, not as overplayed technologists, but as thieves,” she emphasized.

Such threats are being taken seriously by some European leaders, who have sought ways around pure seizure of the funds. Bloomberg reviews of the delicate tightrope situation:

G-7 allies have in recent months discussed several options on how to tap the frozen assets — from using the money as collateral to raise debt or issuing guarantees against the frozen funds. But they remain at odds due to European reluctance to do anything that could be perceived as effectively seizing the assets, which they worry could run into legal challenges, risk the stability of the euro and face retaliation from Moscow.

The $50 billion in bonds plan as well as other options are still in the early stages of discussion, with Germany and France reportedly expressing initial caution over the freedom bond idea.

The Western allies have out of recent desperation over Ukraine’s diminished ammo been getting creative, and seeking to find loopholes in order to free up extra funds that could be used in the war effort.

Britain has meanwhile been at the forefront of countries arguing that the total of all underlying Russian assets should be fully confiscated and used for Ukraine. “Our view is simple: One day, Russia will have to pay reparations and it doesn’t make sense to wait for those reparations. It makes better sense to use the frozen assets and to make that money available now,” UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week.

Which Russian assets are sanctioned and where are they held… (click image for bigger):

But this more aggressive approach has consistently met with firm resistance among the other powerful European allies. Along with pressing defense needs, Ukraine reportedly is severely struggling to keep basic state services afloat, including paying teachers, civic workers, and maintaining pensions – among other things.

Starting in February, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen began getting more vocal on the “moral case” for using Russian assets to aid Ukraine, telling allies they must find a way to “unlock the value” of the hundreds of billions in immobilized Russian assets, also with an eye towards Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. Previously some Ukrainian officials floated the idea of “reparation bonds” backed by future claims for war damages against Moscow, and utilizing frozen Russian assets.

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

A coalition of 24 states led by Tennessee is opposing a new rule proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) aimed at integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles into the National Apprenticeship System.

Led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, the attorneys general in a March 18 letter contend that the rule fosters racial discrimination.

“The Proposed Rule deviates from the statutory purpose of safeguarding the welfare of apprentices and builds on existing regulations to further entrench an apprenticeship regime dedicated to picking winners and losers based on the color of apprentices’ skin,” the letter states.

The National Apprenticeship System provides taxpayer money to state sponsors, employers, and other entities so that hundreds of thousands of Americans can take advantage of apprenticeships.

“That money is not to be used for racial discrimination,” the letter argues. “And yet, the proposed DEI plan would effectively require program sponsors, State Apprenticeship Agencies (SAA), and participating employers to treat people differently based on the color of their skin.

“It would also require such entities to develop a strategy to ‘recruit, train and retain’ individuals with certain racial demographics in order to qualify for taxpayer money.”

The co-signing states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

The letter further criticizes race-based oversight and data collection measures as evidence of mandated racial discrimination by the government.

In an announcement of the rule proposal in late 2023, the Labor Department said the changes would enhance and modernize the apprenticeship program.

“Equity and job quality have marked the most successful Registered Apprenticeship programs for workers and employers alike. This proposed rule codifies the Department of Labor’s strong commitment to these principles,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su at the time.

“Importantly, the proposed changes will also provide strong worker protections, improved employer experiences, and greater clarity about the roles of federal and state governments and their partners in the National Apprenticeship System.”

Mr. Skrmetti says his stance against the rule is rooted in the belief that opportunities should be merit-based and devoid of racial or identity-based bias.

“Americans fought for generations to ensure that people would not be treated differently because of the color of their skin, and the proposed DOL apprenticeship rule flies in the face of those hard-earned laws,” Mr. Skrmetti said.

“We should not let race-obsessed ideology interfere with an important and successful apprenticeship program. No American should be deprived of an opportunity because of their race.”

According to the Department of Labor, the proposed rule aims to increase equity by focusing on recruitment and retention from “underserved communities”—a term the states argue is code for race-based decision-making.

Per the rule proposal, underserved communities include “women; Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”

The states argue that this violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and the Civil Rights Act.

The multi-state coalition’s challenge to the DOL’s proposal underscores the amount of contention in the ongoing national debate over the role of DEI initiatives.

The public comment period on the proposed rule ended on March 18.

‘You know it’s bad when…’

A shocking, under-reported story about the absolute state of New York’s bail reform laws has now gone viral, after left-wing journalist Ana Kasparian went on an epic rant against policies that her fellow Democrats absolutely voted for.

It appears that it took New York releasing suspects in a double-murder / dismemberment case to start red-pilling the wine grannies on The View – a story which made its way to Kasparian.

Earlier this month, three roomates were charged with hiding pieces of two dismembered bodies, which were hacked up with meat cleavers and then scattered around Long Island.

The suspects, Steven Brown, 44, Jeffrey Mackey, 38, and Amanda Wallace, 40, along with homeless woman Alexis Nieves, 33 – allegedly tried to conceal the corpses in what the NY Post called “a scheme so grisly that the drains, toilets, sinks and showers stopped working in the Amityville home where three of the accused had just moved weeks earlier,” Suffolk County prosecutors claimed.

Whatever led up to the deaths and hacking, the four allegedly removed  “sharp instruments, multiple body parts and other related items” from the two-family house on Amitville’s Railroad Avenue between Feb. 27 – when the first remains were found by a child walking to school – and Monday, when cops raided the home, Suffolk police said.

Schroeder said authorities collected a heap of evidence including body parts, meat cleavers, butcher knives and a significant amount of blood.

“In disposing of the body, this defendant rendered the sink, showers, drains and toilets inoperable,” Schroeder told the court each time one of the four appeared to answer the charges.

“The barbaric lengths this defendant went to in disposing of these bodies should show the court the lengths this defendant would go to flee the prosecution of these charges.” -NY Post

The suspects were then released with GPS ankle monitors.

“This is yet another absurd result thanks to ‘Bail Reform’ and a system where the Legislature in Albany substitutes their judgment for the judgment of our judges and the litigants in court,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who slammed the state’s bail laws.

Meanwhile, suspect Amanda Wallace was arrested again for allegedly stealing beauty products from a CVS in Lindenhurst on Friday.

Too much for Ana…

The shocking lack of basic police work caused The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian to flip out – who said “If being on the left means supporting this, then I’m not on the left.“

Kasparian then suggested that New York’s bail reform laws are responsible for a rise in subway crimes, and Hochul wouldn’t have had to deploy state troopers and 750 Naitonal Guard members to perform randum bag checks if the city would simply prosecute criminals. 

“What are we doing?” she continued.

THIS IS AMERICA pic.twitter.com/lFOI7HQJ7r

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) March 21, 2024

Kasparian also railed against New York judges, who she says are unable to weigh the severity of crimes when considering bail – and that the state needs to have a larger discussion over criminal justice reforms.

“So this was published in 2020. As I was researching it, I came across this headline, New York City Subway Thief Thanks Democrats. After his 139th arrest release. Bail reform. It’s lit,” she said, adding ” So since, you know, New York is unwilling to reform its bail reform laws, New Yorkers, enjoy your random bag checks by National Guard troops in the subway system. If you can’t reform this law instantly, then the government doesn’t function.”

Watch the entire video here:

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

For those that love America, these are very trying times.  We have watched our beloved country go steadily downhill for decades, and in recent years that process has greatly accelerated.  Now we have reached a point where our entire culture is absolutely saturated with evil, and large media corporations make billions of dollars exporting that culture to the rest of the world.  In the end, we will truly reap what we have sown.  If our nation had chosen to reverse course, things could have worked out much differently.  But that has not happened.  Yes, there are individuals and small groups that have chosen to change direction, but the nation as a whole just continues to run the wrong direction as fast as it possibly can.  In this article, I am going to share some numbers with you that are just staggering.  We have been given opportunity after opportunity to choose a different direction, and we just keep making the wrong choices.  At some point we will be out of opportunities.  In fact, could it be possible that America has already run out of time?

In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

That was an opportunity for our nation to go in a new direction.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Instead, the number of abortions during the 12 months immediately after Roe v. Wade was overturned was actually higher than the number of abortions during the 12 months immediately preceding that ruling.

And now a new report from the Guttmacher Institute is telling us that the abortion rate in 2023 was the highest that it has been since 2014…

Abortions have reached their highest level in 10 years, despite bans on the procedure in more than a dozen states.

A report released Tuesday by reproductive health firm Guttmacher Institute showed that there were 1 million abortions in the US in 2023, the equivalent of 16 per every 1,000 women.

That was up 10 percent from the 14.4 per 1,000 in 2020 and the highest since 2014, when the rate was 14.6 per 1,000.

As for the total number of abortions, we haven’t seen a million in a single year since 2012.

Today, most abortions are done by taking pills.

That same Guttmacher Institute report says that a whopping 63 percent of all U.S. abortions were conducted in this manner last year…

The report also found that 63 percent of abortions performed in 2023 were from medications, such as the two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprotol. In 2000, no abortions were done with this method.

It has become easier and easier for women in the United States to get these pills.

In fact, it is being reported that “abortion pill mifepristone hit the shelves at CVS and Walgreens for the first time this month”.

So the number of abortions performed by taking pills is expected to go even higher during the years ahead.

Of course many of the celebrities that our young people follow militantly promote “reproductive freedom”.  For example, Plan B pills and condoms were given out for free at Olivia Rodrigo’s recent concert in St. Louis…

The Missouri Abortion Fund distributed the morning-after pill and condoms to concertgoers during Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS tour Tuesday night in St. Louis. It was part of the pop star’s Fund 4 Good initiative focused on “building an equitable and just future for all women, girls, and people seeking reproductive health freedom.”

Rodrigo, 21, has not been shy about her support for reproductive rights throughout her career. Fund 4 Good, launched in conjunction with the GUTS tour in February, has announced Rodrigo’s commitment to partnering with local chapters of the National Network of Abortion Funds throughout the tour and is ensuring that a percentage of proceeds will go to reproductive rights organizations.

“It’s brutal out here in Missouri, but we are here for abortion access,” the abortion fund tweeted following the concert.

Whether you like it or not, this is our society now.

Meanwhile, the proportion of the population that identifies as LGBTQ+ just continues to grow.

The following comes from NBC News…

The percentage of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer adults in the U.S. continues to increase, reaching an all-time high of 7.6% in 2023, according to a new Gallup report. Broken down by gender, the survey of 12,000 people 18 and older across the country found that women were nearly twice as likely as men to identify as LGBTQ.

“Almost 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+, most as bisexual,” Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News. “That’s where a lot of the growth seems to be happening.”

Just think about those numbers for a moment.

Young adults are the future of this country.

And now almost a third of all Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+.

Those that wanted to fundamentally transform our culture have succeeded.

Can you imagine what our founders would think if they could see us today?

Earlier this month, I was shocked when I read a story about a social media influencer known as “Meow” that identifies as a dog…

An American woman who identifies as a dog has given an insight into what her daily life looks like.

The social media star, who is known as Meow, appeared on KIIS FM’s The Kyle & Jackie O Show on Thursday to discuss what it means to live life as a canine.

She told hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson how she sleeps in a crate, is rewarded with dog treats and has ‘handlers’ who help to look after her.

Meow, who livestreams on gaming platform Twitch, explained how she identifies as a Dalmatian and will bark and run on all fours as she embraces life as a dog.

I don’t get it.

Why would you call yourself “Meow” if you identify as a dog?

Maybe someone out there can explain that to me.

At this point, nobody can deny that we are in the midst of a cultural tsunami.

Once upon a time, most Americans embraced Christian values, but now a recent Pew Research Center survey has discovered that 80 percent of U.S. adults believe that “religion’s role in American life is shrinking”…

Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. adults — 80% — said “religion’s role in American life is shrinking,” a percentage that’s the highest it has been in Pew’s research history.

Just 18% expressed the belief faith is gaining influence in American society.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any signs that this is going to change any time soon.

So it is just a matter of time before we reap what we have sown.

I often remind my readers that “the clock is ticking”, and time is certainly flying here in 2024.

We have already reached the end of winter, and now spring has begun…

Spring is starting a little earlier than usual this year.

Tuesday, March 19 at 11:06 p.m. EDT will mark the vernal equinox for the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun is directly over the equator and its energy is in balance between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, according to the National Weather Service.

Every day is so precious, and our nation has been going in the wrong direction for a very long time.

How long will be too long?

Sadly, I am entirely convinced that it is already much later than most people think it is.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

On Thursday Israel issued its most defiant response yet to Washington pressre that it abandon its plans for a ground invasion of Rafah, over fears of another mass civilian casualty humanitarian disaster, given the high number of refugees packed into the southern Gaza city.

A top Israeli official was quoted in Bloomberg as saying the military is going to invade Rafah and defeat Hamas “even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States.” Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, issued the words in a podcast interview.

“We are going to go in and finish this job, and anybody who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that the existential nerve of the Jews was touched” by the Oct. 7 terror attack, he said.

Dermer pointed out the reality remains that the White House still has yet the definitively rule out any military operation in Rafah. Biden administration statements have demanded that civilians be safely evacuated first, but have been ambiguous on the question of a ground operation.

Dermer explained of what Biden officials have communicated thus far: “They said without a credible way of moving a mass of people out of Rafah and surging humanitarian assistance to them they don’t see how this can be done effectively.”

He continued: “And we are saying we agree with you that we have to move the people out, we agree we have to get humanitarian assistance to them, and we believe we can do it.”

Dermer emphasized that Israel will do what it takes to protect itself even if this brings significant harm to US-Israel relations: “Could you have a breach over Rafah?” he questioned. “You could. We hope we don’t.”

But Israel’s latest plan, featured in fresh Wall Street Journal reporting, is bound for failure: 

Israeli security officials are quietly developing a plan to distribute aid in the Gaza Strip that could eventually create a Palestinian-led governing authority there, Israeli and Arab officials said, causing a fierce backlash from Hamas and creating divisions in Israel’s war cabinet.

A top Israeli defense official has held talks with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to build regional support for an emerging effort to enlist Palestinian leaders and businessmen who have no links to Hamas—a U.S.-designated terrorist organization—in distributing aid, some of the officials said.

The plan is essentially to put anti-Hamas Palestinians in charge of the Strip, but naturally this would ensure a civil war type scenario in which the newly installed officials would immediately be targeted by Hamas insurgents. While Israel might benefit from such a ‘divide and rule’ plan, it’s highly unlikely there will be any Palestinians willing to play such a role in a ‘new authority’ over the Strip.

PM Netanyahu has greenlighted a Rafah operation, but officials have said it will take time to both put in place and execute.

Darden Restaurants, a top full-service US restaurant group with 1,914 locations across 50 states under its eight brands—Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Cheddar’s, Yard House, Ruth’s Chris, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze, and Eddie V’s—warned on Thursday that lower-income customers are pulling back on spending. 

“Transactions from incomes below $75,000 were much lower than last year, and at every brand, transactions fell from incomes below $50,000. Similar to Q2, this shift was most pronounced in our Fine Dining segment,” Chief Executive Officer Rick Cardenas told investors on an earnings call.

However, Cardenas pointed out, “But specifically, your question for the third quarter, transactions from households with incomes above $150,000 were higher than last year.”

Consumer behavior shifts are materializing for the restaurant group and serve as a health check proxy for consumers. 

Bloomberg provided a snapshot of Darden’s earnings that were underwhelming and offered a negative outlook: 

The Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse owner’s sales missed analysts expectations, attributing the results to unfavorable winter weather in January that cut traffic by 1%, and lower sales in February which “exposed consumer weakness,” the company’s Chief Financial Officer Raj Vennam added on the call, specifically highlighting softness in Texas and California. 

Additionally, Darden cut its 2024 same-store sales growth outlook, and forecast next quarter’s same-store sales growth of only -0.5% to 1%. The company’s shares dropped as much as 6.9% in early New York trading, the most since May 2022.

Cardenas’ disappointing comments about low-tier customers came one week after Dollar Tree said the average ticket size for customers declined last quarter.

A pinched low- and middle-income consumer comes as no surprise given elevated credit-card balances and rising delinquencies, as well as depleted personal savings. Furthermore, negative real wage growth has been a disaster for the working poor in the era of failed Bidenomics.  

Authored by Andrew Lowenthal via the Brownstone Institute,

In November 2023 Alex Gutentag and I reported on the Virality Project’s internal content-flagging system, as released by the US House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and led by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the Virality Project sought to censor those who questioned government Covid-19 policies. The Virality Project primarily focused on so-called “anti-vaccine” “misinformation;” however, my Twitter Files investigations with Matt Taibbi revealed this included “true stories of vaccine side effects.”

A further review of the content flagged by the Virality Project demonstrates how they pushed social media platforms to censor such “true stories.” This was often done incompetently and without even a cursory investigation of the original sources. In one instance, the Virality Project reporters told platforms that reports of a child injured in a vaccine trial were “false” due to the timing; citing the dates of a Moderna trial when in fact the child had been in a Pfizer trial.

Trigger-happy researchers-turned-activists at the Virality Project went further, alerting their Big Tech partners (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) of protests, jokes, and general dissent.

Led by former CIA fellow Renee DiResta, the Virality Project functioned as an intermediary for government censorship. Ties between the US government and the academic research center were extremely close. DHS had “fellows” embedded at the Stanford Internet Observatory, while SIO had interns embedded at CISA, and former DHS staff contributed to the Virality Project’s final report.

The Virality Project also had contact with the White House and the Office of the Surgeon General, described the CDC as a “partner” in its design documents, and the California Department of Public Health had a login to access the Jira content flagging system, as did CISA personnel.

Kris Krebs and Alex Stamos – former directors of CISA and SIO, respectively – became business partners soon after leaving their positions.

Norwood v. Harrison established that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Stamos knew this too and put it simply; the government “lacked the legal authorisation” and so they built a consortium to “fill the gap of the things the government could not do themselves.”

Judicial precedents regarding “joint participation” and “pervasive entwinement” between public and private entities make clear that the government cannot outsource to third parties like the Virality Project actions that would be illegal for the government itself to do.

The Virality Project had several unnamed partners that appear in the content-flagging system, including billion-dollar military contractor MITRE and a communications consultancy linked to the Democratic Party, Hattaway. Founder Doug Hattaway was an “advisor and spokesperson for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and provided strategic counsel to the Obama White House and the Democratic leadership of the US House and Senate.” Like the Virality Project, Hattaway worked with the Rockefeller Foundation during the pandemic on issues of disinformation.

The Virality Project does not declare any relationship with MITRE or Hattaway despite providing them access to their Jira system.

The Virality Project was partly funded by the Omidyar Network, which provided $400,000 to VP partner and Pentagon consultant Graphika. Much of the Virality Project’s funding however is unknown and is also not declared on their website.

This and much more have led five plaintiffs, including Harvard and Stanford professors, to accuse the US government of violations of the First Amendment with the Virality Project as one of the key proxies. On March 18, their case will be heard by the US Supreme Court.

The Virality Project and Murthy v. Missouri

The Murthy vs Missouri plaintiffs allege that, “CISA launched a colossal mass surveillance and mass-censorship project calling itself the “Election Integrity Partnership” (and later, the “Virality Project”). The Election Integrity Project (EIP) “monitored 859 million posts on Twitter alone.” 

The Virality Project used the same Jira system as EIP for flagging content and included the same core public partners: SIO, the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Graphika, with the addition of NYU and the congressionally chartered National Conference on Citizenship.

The Virality Project had extensive contact not only with CISA but also with the White House and the Surgeon General. White House representatives sent direct censorship requests to Twitter including, “Hey folks – Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.” And the more threatening:

 “Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”

Flaherty also conveyed that his communications came with the backing of the very top echelons of the administration: “This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH.”

The Virality Project hosted a launch with the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of the Surgeon General’s campaign against “misinformation.” In the presentation, Renee DiResta also introduced Matt Masterson, former senior adviser at DHS, and now a “non-resident policy fellow” at SIO.

Murthy ends the presentation by telling Renee, “I just want to say thank you to you, for everything you have done, for being such a great partner.”

At that same time the White House, OSG, and others were on the warpath, claiming social media platforms were “killing people” for allowing so-called “misinformation” to circulate.

With access to the White House, the Surgeon General, CDC, DHS, and CISA, along with top-level relationships with almost every major Western social media platform, the Virality Project was a key, if not the key, coordinating node for Covid-related censorship on the Internet. 

The Content-Flagging System

When the Virality Project said it considered, “true stories of vaccine side effects” to be “misinformation,” it wasn’t joking, and it flagged content to its Big Tech partners accordingly. 

Perhaps the most egregious was that of Maddie de Garay. Maddie and her siblings were enrolled in the Pfizer vaccine trial at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She was later unblinded and confirmed as being in the vaccine and not the placebo group. 

Within 24 hours of her second shot in January 2021, Maddie developed a host of symptoms, including “severe abdominal pain, painful electric shocks on her spine and neck, swollen extremities, ice cold hands, and feet, chest pain, tachycardia, pins and needles in her feet that eventually led to the loss of feeling from her waist down.” To this day Maddie continues to suffer from a lack of feeling in her lower legs, difficulty eating, poor eyesight, and fatigue among other persisting symptoms.

Virality Project staff logged a Jira ticket titled “Maddie’s Story: False claim that 12-year-old was hospitalized due to vaccine trial” and provided extensive documentation of offending “engagement” on social media, including the micro-policing of content citing Maddie’s story with just two likes and two shares.

Much doubt has been cast on the veracity of Maddie’s injuries. Maddie’s mother, Stephanie de Garay, provided me with several doctor’s letters that confirm the link, including that of the emergency room doctor who discharged her on her initial visit. Their diagnosis was “Adverse effect of the vaccine.” Stephanie de Garay also testified under oath in front of the US Congress in November of 2023 regarding her daughter’s experience.

Most egregiously, the idea that the story was “false”rested on the claim that Maddie was in a Moderna trial. But she was in a Pfizer trial, as stated in the posts the Virality Project collected and linked to in the very same ticket.

“Dear Platform Partners,” the reporter writes as they bring the posts to the attention of Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Medium, Pinterest, and the aforementioned Hattaway Communications:

…very likely false due to issues in timing. The Moderna trial in children [began on March 16], when the participants received their first doses. However, the video claims that Maddie has an MRI scheduled for 03/16, and that these symptoms have been occurring for 1.5 months. Thus, Maddie would have had to have received the second dose of the vaccine during/before February, which is at least a month before the Moderna trials began.

“Ack – thanks for raising!” replies a platform representative. 

Not only are our self-appointed censorship overlords micro-managers, they are often incompetent. 

The posts were flagged “General: Anti-Vaccination” despite the de Garays volunteering their three children for the vaccine trial.

Some content flagged in the report remained up, and others were taken down. A video of Stephanie de Garay’s testimony was removed from Twitter. Whether or not this was specifically taken down due to the Virality Project report cannot be ascertained, but their intent was clear.

In another instance, the Virality Project wanted people circulating a mainstream media report censored:

“Platforms, this unconfirmed story of a healthy youth athlete who was hospitalized after being vaccinated continues to be used by anti-vaccine activists to spread misinformation about vaccines.”

“ack, thanks” responded a platform representative. 

Even a report by an ABC news affiliate, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the United States, fell into the category of “General: anti-vaccination” and “Misleading Headline.”

The main link provided, to a YouTube video, was removed. 

The Jira system was set up to track the actions the Big Tech partners took, as illustrated below:

The content was flagged to get platforms to take action.

“Hello Google team – sending this over as our analysts noticed that a google ad on a politico article this morning was peddling the antivax claims from the medical racism video you were monitoring. Is this against your policies?”

“Thanks for flagging – ack and sending for review.”

“Thanks for the heads up – we’re on it”

“Thanks for sharing! Our team is now tracking this.”

And follow-ups from the Virality Project team:

“Were the ads supposed to have been taken down? Just flagging for you, I just checked now and I’m still seeing another medical racism ad.”

Platforms were apologetic when they didn’t get to Virality Project’s flags quickly enough:

“With apologies for the delayed response (was in meetings) – we took action earlier in the afternoon, thanks again for the flags.”

This of course built on the Election Integrity Partnership’s more flagrant “recommendations,” which included: 

“We recommend that you all flag as false, or remove the posts below.”

“Hi Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter…we recommend it be removed from your platforms.”

And many more.

The Virality Project was a strategic intermediary between the US government and major social media platforms. As Murthy v. Missouri shows, in many cases the government dispensed even with their chosen intermediary and directly demanded censorship.

With their vast resources, why did Google, Facebook, and Twitter even need an external consortium to flag “misinformation?” The answer of course is they didn’t, the government did. Much like SIO Director Alex Stamos so helpfully reminded us, First Amendment jurisprudence states that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

The First Amendment protects false speech. There is a cost to false claims, but the cost of censoring true claims is much higher. The alternative is a society where the truth is suppressed and powerful actors become even more unaccountable. The government cannot be made an arbiter of what is true.

In this inverted world, the role of academia and civil society isn’t to harness the internet to better pick up safety signals related to corporate products, it is to shield corporations from public scrutiny. In times gone by such ethical violations would see institutions shut down, but the Stanford Internet Observatory and their consortium partners continue with hardly a dent.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a Murthy v. Missouri plaintiff and was the Director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California Irvine before he was fired for challenging the university’s vaccine mandate. Asked for his reaction to this censorship he responded: 

While causation in medicine is sometimes difficult to establish, and different evaluating physicians may reach divergent conclusions about a particular case, the Virality Project’s censors (who lacked even basic medical expertise) arrogated to themselves the authority to make veracity judgments about particular medical cases–even overriding the judgments of evaluating physicians. Such censorship is completely antithetical to medical and scientific progress, which relies upon free inquiry and open, public debate.

Much of what the Virality Project flagged was plausible; however, their internet hall monitors, who likely lacked even first aid certificates, deemed themselves arbiters of the truth, and coupled their arrogance with a complimentary laziness and incompetence.

The veracity of the content was of course always irrelevant to the Virality Project, given they considered “true stories” to be “misinformation.”

All told the DHS, CISA, the White House, the Surgeon General, a DNC-aligned communications agency, military contractors, academics, NGOs, and more combined to suppress the stories of real people, including children, who were plausibly injured by the vaccine. They sought to hide it not because it might be false, but precisely because it might be true.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Andrew Lowenthal is a Brownstone Institute fellow and co-founder and former executive director of EngageMedia, an Asia-Pacific digital rights, open and secure technology, and documentary non-profit, and a former fellow of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab.