Belief in aliens is growing in the United States, according to surveys by YouGov America.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, where just 20 percent of Americans thought that UFOs are probably either an alien ship or alien life form in 1996, the figure has crept up to 34 percent in 2022.
UFOs aside, nearly two thirds of respondents said that it is likely that aliens exist at all.
But what are they like – if they are out there?
According to the poll, most U.S. adults think it’s pretty unlikely that they would resemble the green monsters of sci-fi stories (49 percent). The majority would say, however, that they are likely to be far more technologically advanced than humans, with more than a third of respondents saying they thought aliens would even be hostile towards our species.
The survey also found that of the U.S. adults who said they had seen a UFO, a third of them believe it was an alien.
The developer of a social media monitoring algorithm explains how his internet sting operation “J6 DELETED” exposed how Twitter manipulated the narrative “in real time” on Jan. 6, 2021.
In 2018, Jason Sullivan—a social media and Twitter specialist—was subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating the now-debunked theory that Trump was colluding with Russia. Sullivan is now the lead investigative consultant to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, via Peter Ticktin. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Sullivan explains how he discovered evidence of a coordinated operation by influencers and Twitter to set the narrative on Jan. 6, 2021, as events unfolded.
“We’ve created an algorithm that enables us to determine which tweets are on a trajectory of becoming a viral event,” Sullivan explained. “We are watching social media intelligence in real-time, all day, every day, based on specific search terms, key phrases, and hashtags. Our algorithm can tell us exactly how much traction a particular tweet is receiving and how often people are reciprocating, such as liking and retweeting. When it meets a certain threshold, we are automatically alerted.”
Jan. 6, 2021
“Leading up to January 6, we were listening to the social media discourse,” Sullivan recalled, “and we set up the program to capture every viral event that took place on January 6 that pertained to the name ‘Trump.’ Think about that. ‘Trump’ is the most tweeted word on the planet, and whether they liked Trump or hated Trump, if their post included the word ‘Trump,’ we flagged it. We were listening to people who were trending. We were listening to people who were leaking things. We were listening to people who were seeding disinformation. What we discovered is that there were trends that clearly indicated there was going to be some type of false flag operation on January 6.”
As Sullivan noted, “the one who drives the narrative, drives the outcome.”
“What we discovered is that many of these captured tweets, which had exculpatory evidence, had been conveniently and systematically removed from Twitter and some of the pages have even been scrubbed from the internet,” Sullivan recalled. So too had the communications feeds and comments within the viral threads, which contained additional exculpatory evidence.
“I want to make it perfectly clear that we conducted this sting operation,” Sullivan asserted. “We have it all. We have all of the tweets and all of the exculpatory evidence Twitter thinks it scrubbed from the internet. We have them all.”
The collection of all viral tweets captured by his algorithm—J6 DELETED—is now available to the public.
The Social Media Influencers
According to Nashville Film Institute, “Social media influencers” are “digital creators with a large social media following,” who “spark dialogues, set trends, and generate interest among their fan communities.” Among the dozens of influences who were active on Jan. 6, several stood out as leaders in pushing what Sullivan calls “the false flag narrative.”
Aaron Rupar, an associate editor at VOX, initiated no less than 18 viral Twitter posts on Jan. 6.
Investigative journalist Lara Logan has worked closely with Sullivan and has seen his trove of tweets captured by his algorithm. She knew immediately that Rupar was spreading misinformation. In particular, she knew Rupar’s claim that Trump attacked “four black people within 30 seconds” when speaking about Stacy Abrams and Oprah Winfrey “had absolutely nothing to do with race.”
During Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, he mentioned Abrams twice near the halfway point and twice near the end. All references were related to her failed campaign to become governor of Georgia. Trump also mentioned Winfrey, twice, once saying Oprah “used to be” a friend of his and then how he “didn’t notice there were too many calls coming in from Oprah” after he became president.
Social media influencer MeidasTouch had 14 tweets go viral on Jan. 6. According to Open Secrets, MeidasTouch, a “Democratic/Liberal” Super PAC based in Macomb, Michigan. According to the Federal Election Commission, the largest disbursements appear to primarily benefit Prestige WW Inc., “founded in 2020 to help progressive candidates and organizations stick it to Trump and his enablers online” and the PACs founding brothers, Jordan and Bret Meiselas.
In the meantime, attorney and Harvard ProfessorLaurence Tribe was responsible for eight viral Twitter posts on Jan. 6, primarily to insult and berate Trump.
According to Logan, Tribe is also “one of the biggest architects of the whole insurrection narrative, both publicly and behind the scenes.”
Along with helping push the “false flag narrative” as an influencer on Jan. 6, Tribe has been a key influencer in pushing the narrative that Trump should be indicted. Tribe also used social media on Oct. 13 to advise Attorney General Merrick Garland that “it won’t be enough … to approve indictments of Trump related to Mar-a-Lago & obstruction. [Garland] will have to approve indictments for trying to overthrow the election, seditious conspiracy & insurrection.”
A day earlier, Tribe appeared on MSNBC, suggesting how many crimes Garland could indict Trump with.
While Sullivan noted that “every person listed in J6DELETED is an influencer because every single one of those 1,058 tweets were considered viral events,” he also pointed out that the only posts that were deleted by Twitter were those on the conservative side. Along with the influencers, he said there were also “coordinators,” people “using similar language in their tweets to perpetuate the chosen narrative.” Words like “seditionist,” “fascist,” “insurrectionists,” and phrases like “clashed with police,” “stormed the Capitol,” “terrorist coup,” and “domestic terrorists” were promoted.
Asked if he believes the influences and coordinators will be nervous when they learn that their activities are being monitored and exposed, Sullivan said, “I think they better.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Rupar and Tribe for comment.
The Silenced Conservatives
While liberal influencers pushed the narrative that Trump instigated a deadly insurrection and his supporters were violently storming the United States Capitol, anyone who posted anything that conflicted with that narrative had their posts deleted and their accounts shut down.
Elijah Schafer posted that “Trump supporters have breached the Capitol building …” In response, Tracy Beanz said, “I don’t know that these are necessarily Trump supporters … But holy hell.” In a similar post by BNO News, Beanz said “These don’t look like Trump supporters to me.” As liberals began posting that Trump supporters were clashing with and pepper spraying police around 10:45 a.m. (PST), Beanz noted 10:53 a.m. (PST) that “The Trump crowd HAS NOT reached the capitol yet.” All of her posts were subsequently deleted and her account was suspended.
The Election Wizard said he “would not be surprised if a number of Trump Supporters clashing with police are Antifa in disguise.” His post was deleted and his account “doesn’t exist” anymore. For asking “who wears all black and attacks law enforcement,” the account of J Homes was also suspended.
Melissa Tate posted a video showing Trump supporters stopping suspected ANTIFA members from breaking Capitol windows. “Dems set us up & GOP just threw us under the bus over a trap,” she said. Her post was deleted and her account was shut down.
Twitter started by deleting Trump’s tweets. When he posted a video message calling for peace, Twitter disabled the ability of anyone to like or share his message.
Then they removed the video completely. Twitter then locked his account for 12 hours, saying, “If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.”
“Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrumpaccount,” Twitter Safety added.
Then Facebook banned Trump for 24 hours. Then Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, announced he was “locking” Trump’s “Instagram account for 24 hours as well.”
In the meantime, people like Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and even President-elect Joe Biden were demanding that Trump tell his supporters to stop and go home.
Sullivan also said the Jan. 6 Committee has had this information for months.
“The January 6 Committee contacted my attorney and asked for all of my email communications regarding January 6,” Sullivan explained, adding it included the posts deleted by Twitter. “We gave it to them, and now they voted to subpoena Trump, demanding that he provide evidence to defend himself against their allegations. I hope exposing this will encourage them to be more forthcoming with the evidence they received from me five months ago.”
According to Trump attorney Peter Ticktin, the truth is in the silence.
1984
“If you want to know what truth is, just look at what you’re not allowed to say,” Ticktin, founder and Senior Managing Partner at The Ticktin Law Group told The Epoch Times. “In a free world, where we are allowed to have a voice, it doesn’t matter if someone makes up a lie because the truth will out. But if you need to hide truth then you have to censor everything and you have to erase people and eliminate their ability to say things.”
Ticktin, who also attended New York Military Academy with Trump, said the coordinated effort by liberal news media, social media influencers, Big Tech, and politicians to silence conservative voices reminds him of George Orwell’s “1984,” which warned of a world governed through propaganda, surveillance, and censorship.
“It seems like that’s the example they want to live by in terms of how to run society,” Ticktin explained. “If you look at the January 6 unselect committee and you believe that the election was fair and that Donald Trump was pushing ‘the big lie,’ everyone but The Epoch Times is required to put that news out, including FOX and Newsmax. But if you show evidence like in 2,000 Mules, and how Twitter censored voices and deleted exculpatory evidence, there’s no doubt that the election was stolen.”
For the most part, Ticktin believes the majority of Trump’s base knows the election was stolen.
“We have eyes,” he said. “We aren’t willfully blind. That’s the biggest difference between the left and the right, willful blindness.”
It’s ‘Classic Fascist Behavior’
According to Kirk Wiebe, “the Twitter experience that we’re seeing is not new.”
Wiebe and William Binney became National Security Agency whistleblowers in September 2002 when they exposed how the government was using a program called Trailblazer to illegally monitor all Americans.
“Twitter has removed tweets before. It has censored people before,” Weibe told The Epoch Times. “This is a censorship operation by the government working with Big Tech in classic fascist behavior. Whenever government colludes with big business to control people, which is what this is all about, it’s fascism, and I’m not sure the average reader understands that.”
“Would’ve Gotten Us Killed”: US Army Soldiers Head Sick After Using Microsoft’s AR Goggles
Microsoft Corp’s augmented reality headsets are making US Army soldiers sick, according to a Defense Department report, obtained by Bloomberg and Business Insider.
The 79-page DoD report on the Army’s testing of Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality headsets has yet to be officially released to the public but a summary via Nickolas Guertin, director of the Defense Department’s Operation Test and Evaluation, concluded that 80% of soldiers who used the goggles experienced “mission-affecting physical impairments,” such as headaches, eyestrain, and nausea.
One of the testers told Insider, “the devices would have gotten us killed” on the modern battlefield.
Last year, the Army awarded a $22 billion contract for 120,000 HoloLens even though the military appears to be aware of the issues.
Army assistant acquisition secretary Doug Bush allowed the first batch of 5,000 HoloLens in August for soldiers. Microsoft told Bloomberg the goggles are still a “transformational platform” and was moving ahead with further deliveries.
In a statement to Insider, Brigadier General Christopher Schneider said the goggle testing was successful in “most” criteria, but in some areas, it “fell short,” and improvements would be corrected.
There’s also concern the goggles emit a glow from hundreds of meters away that can reveal the soldier’s position on the battlefield. The report said the heads-up display, similar to those used by fighter pilots, was also limiting soldier’s field of view and too bulky for transport.
Microsoft has yet to review the DoD report. It said in a statement to Bloomberg that “our close collaboration with the Army has enabled us to quickly build” and adjust the device “to develop a transformational platform that will deliver enhanced soldier safety and effectiveness. We are moving forward with the production and delivery of the initial set” of devices.
There are no known long-term eye development effects of users using AR and/or VR goggles, but the symptoms the soldiers experienced point to some short-term adverse effects. Many consumers report headaches, eye strain, dizziness, and nausea after using Meta’s Oculus Pro headset.
Sleeping for five hours or less a night if you’re age 50 or older could increase your risk of getting two or more chronic diseases as you age, research has found.
Researchers from University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom tracked the health and sleep duration of 7,864 men and women who were employed in the London offices of the British civil service over 30 years and who had no chronic disease at age 50.
Self-reported sleep duration was measured six times between 1985 and 2016, and data on sleep duration was extracted at ages 50, 60, and 70. Researchers looked at the data and examined its association with incident multimorbidity over 25 years of follow-up.
Incident multimorbidity is defined by researchers as having two or more of 13 chronic diseases, including diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and kidney disease.
The study found that those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 were 20 percent more likely to have been diagnosed with a chronic disease and 40 percent more likely to be diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases over 25 years, than those who slept seven hours a night.
Additionally, sleeping for five hours or less at the age of 50, 60, and 70 was linked to a 30 to 40 percent increased risk of two or more chronic diseases when compared with those who slept for up to seven hours.
Researchers also found that a sleep duration of five hours or less at age 50 was associated with a 25 percent increased risk of death over the 25 years of follow-up, which they attributed to the increased risk of chronic disease.
The Ohio Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended a local judge, citing “unprecedented misconduct” that includes falsifying court documents, issuing illegitimate arrest warrants, and donning inappropriate attire in court.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.
The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion (pdf). “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”
Justices agreed with the court’s three-panel Board of Professional Conduct’s assessment that Carr “ruled her courtroom in a reckless and cavalier manner, unrestrained by the law or the court’s rules, without any measure of probity or even common courtesy,” and that she “conducted business in a manner befitting a game show host rather than a judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court.”
Indefinite Suspension
Justices on the Ohio Supreme Court voted 5–2 on Oct. 18 to indefinitely suspend Carr’s law license—a sanction that is the most severe penalty from the court, besides disbarment. The punishment is also more severe than the two-year suspension that the court’s Board of Professional Conduct had sought (pdf).
Official court documents (pdf) state that Carr, who had been a judge since 2012, is now “indefinitely suspended from the practice of law and immediately suspended from judicial office without pay for the duration of her disciplinary suspension.”
Carr was found to have ignored an administrative order by the presiding judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court to postpone hearings around March and April 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to not rescheduling hearings, she was determined to have issued arrest warrants for at least 20 non-jail defendants who did not appear in court. Furthermore, she waived fines and court costs for people who were “brave enough” to appear in court in this period. Carr also lied to local news media and to her presiding judge that she did not issue arrest warrants.
The former judge agreed to some 583 statements of fact and misconduct related to her ethics violations, including acknowledging that she often held hearings without a prosecutor present to avoid complying with procedural safeguards in state law, which include requiring a judge to inform the accused of the nature of the charge, the identity of the complainant, the right to counsel, and the effect of various pleas.
Carr acknowledged that she has falsified court journal entries to conceal her actions, which included unilaterally entering no-contest pleas and then finding defendants not guilty of their charged offenses, or arbitrarily waiving fines and costs for defendants whom she had found guilty but without looking into their ability to pay the fines. In at least 24 of 34 cases, Carr’s journal entries falsely said looked into defendants’ ability to pay and determined they couldn’t pay. Instead, most of the time, Carr had frequently waived fines and costs based on the defendant’s birth date.
According to the court’s opinion, Carr put at least five people in jail after she used warrants and incarceration to force people to pay fines and costs by tying their bond to the amount of the fine and costs. She acknowledged that this “essentially created a modern-day debtors’ prison.”
The court opinion determined that Carr abused her power and held a person in contempt, which resulted in the person serving 15 days in jail.
It also noted that Carr “violated rules governing the appropriate dress, order, and decorum for courtroom,” noting that her bench “was littered with dolls, cups, novelty items, and junk” and that Carr presided over her courtroom “wearing tank tops, T-shirts—some with images or slogans, spandex shorts, and sneakers.”
The Black Death was one of the world’s largest mortality events ever, wiping out 30-60% of the global population as it swept through North Africa, Europe, and Asia 700 years ago.
Newly published research in the medical journal Nature reveals the ancient dead had a secret. DNA samples from victims and survivors of the bacterium Yersinia pestis, also known as the bubonic plague, had distinct genetic differences that helped some survive while others succumbed to death.
Those genetic differences likely altered the evolution of the human genome, as survivors of the plague passed on genes that once helped them survive the awful plague pathogen to offspring and are now linked to a greater chance of autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis today.
“We are the descendants of those that survived past pandemics … and understanding the evolutionary mechanisms that contributed to our survival is not only important from a scientific viewpoint, but can also inform on the mechanisms and genetic determinants of present-day susceptibility to disease,” study coauthor Luis Barreiro, a professor of genetic medicine at the University of Chicago, told CNN via email.
In the study, Barreiro and other researchers found that Black Death survivors in London and Denmark had genes that protected them against the plague pathogen. They found one particular gene, known as ERAP 2, was found to be protective against the virus. Before the plague, 40% of Londoners had the gene — after the epidemic, 50%. The same was for Denmark. About 40% had the gene before the plague, while 70% had it afterward.
“It’s a LONG process, but in the end you have the sequence of those genes for those people from before, during and after the plague and you can ask: Do the genes one population carried looked different than the ones another population carried,” said coauthor Hendrik Poinar, a professor of anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in an email.
But the gene came at a considerable cost for those who survived the Black Death as it increased future generations’ risks of autoimmune diseases.
“This suggests that populations that survived the Black Death paida price, which is to have an immune system that increases our susceptibility to react against ourselves,” Barreiro said.
The results highlight natural selection to present-day and how the Black Death altered more than society but the human immune system. Barreiro doesn’t believe Covid will have the same impact because it doesn’t kill across the age spectrum and primarily kills the elderly who aren’t procreating.
A Chinese firm’s purchase of land in Florida to build a lab monkey breeding facility is drawing scrutiny over the company founders’ ties to the Chinese military.
JOINN Laboratories CA Inc., the California subsidiary of a biotech firm headquartered in Beijing, in July purchased more than 1,400 acres of land for building a primate facility in Florida’s Levy County, county records show.
With a combined value of $5.5 million, the 10 parcels of land purchased from L & T Cattle & Timber represents one of the largest known Chinese acquisitions of U.S. land in recent years. While construction has not begun, the deal has attracted public attention at a time of heightened concern about Chinese investments in the United States over security and other risks.
The purchaser’s parent company JOINN Laboratories describes itself as a leader in non-clinical drug screening in China. According to its website, the company was founded in 1995 and employs over 1,500 staff. It has wholly-owned subsidiaries in major Chinese and U.S. cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, San Francisco, and Boston.
Zhou Zhiwen and Feng Yuxia, the couple who founded and control JOINN Laboratories, both graduated from China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, in 1989 and 1992 respectively. The school is the Chinese military’s top medical institute, which was added to a U.S. trade blacklist last year for supplying biotechnology to the Chinese military.
After graduating, both Zhou and Feng went on to work as researchers at the academy before establishing their business venture, according to Chinese media reports. Zuo Conglin, a board member of JOINN Laboratories, also graduated from the same academy.
These links with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should raise red flags, according to Rep. Scott Franklin (R-Fla.).
“The idea that we would permit a … biotech firm with ties to the Chinese military to breed lab monkeys on U.S. soil is baffling, especially after China unleashed the Covid-19 pandemic on the world,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The Biden administration allowing Chinese Communist Party affiliated companies to buy up American land is unacceptable, especially for these purposes. If the President won’t put his foot down to protect American interests, Congress will.”
Future of Project Uncertain
It’s unclear if JOINN Laboratories can proceed with its plans in Levy County. Because the purchased land is currently zoned for forestry and rural residential, the company would need to rezone the land to industrial to build its lab facility, the county said in a Sept. 22 statement.
The county said that it had been asked about a possible rezoning of the land, and that it replied that “such a request would not receive a favorable staff recommendation” because of “compatibility” issues and that it would create “spot zoning,” referring to the controversial practice of singling out a piece of land for special zoning laws different from the zoning laws around it.
County officials, when reached by The Epoch Times in early October, said it hasn’t received such a formal rezoning request from JOINN Laboratories.
The company did not publicly announce the sale and not much is known about the proposed breeding facility. JOINN Laboratories didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times regarding the purchase and its plans for the site.
It’s unclear whether the company intends to sell the lab monkeys in the United States, China, or elsewhere. Both countries have a high demand for primates for experimental use, and the United States exports a large portion of monkeys from China.
According to Chinese media reports, the average cost for a long-tailed macaque, commonly used for lab research, paid by the Chinese regime has soared from around 30,000 yuan ($4,153) in 2019 to over 130,000 yuan (around $18,000) in early 2022.
JOINN Laboratories currently owns about 18 acres of animal testing facilities in Beijing and Suzhou, a major city in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, according to its 2021 annual report. It is also building another primate breeding base with the capacity of raising 15,000 large animals in Wuzhou of southern China’s Guangxi Province. The quarantine station for the base is now complete, the report stated.
Former Miss USA Executive Accused Of “Multiple” Incidents Of Sexual Misconduct
The Miss USA pageant appears to be in complete shambles.
Not only is Miss USA vice president Max Sebrechts is being accused of “multiple” incidents of sexual misconduct, but the pageant is also in the midst of being accused of being rigged, an allegation that the Miss USA organization has denied.
Sebrechts is the husband of the national director of Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, Crystle Stewart. According to reporting by the New York Post, he allegedly “sent sexually explicit messages to multiple contestants”. The Postobtained photographs and video of Sebrechts stating he was looking for a “no strings attached” relationship.
The Miss USA pageant said it was “made aware of the allegations against Max Sebrechts regarding his behavior towards 2021 Miss USA contestants” back in December of last year. Since then, Sebrechts was removed from his position.
“Upon learning this, Miss Universe Organization conducted a review, which resulted in Max being completely removed from any affiliation with the Miss USA organization in January 2022,” a representative told The New York Post.
Sebrechts also reportedly had an affair in 2018 which the organization became aware of: “Five months after he had been removed, in June 2022, Miss Universe Organization was made aware that Max had an extramarital relationship in 2018, in which graphic text messages and images were exchanged, two years before his wife, Crystle Stewart, was awarded the Miss USA license.”
“At least four” women were on the receiving end of advances from Sebrechts, the report says.
In one email to a woman, he wrote: “I’ve always wanted to at least tell you that I felt deeply attracted to you despite of my personal situation.” He continued: “Maybe we could try [something] but def with no strings attached … And of course this is all between us, ok?”
He also wrote to the same woman: “I was terribly attracted to your looks of course. Those tights you were wearing looked awfully sexy on your tight body. I’m at the office right now I’ll send you a pic tonight. Unless I run to the restroom, the thought of imagining you in those tights without underwear has quite an effect on me.”
In at least one instance, he accompanied his email with a photograph:
His advances prompted contestants to send complaints to Paula Shugart, the president of the Miss Universe Organization, the report says.
The pageant has denied that it took too long to act, stating: “Ms. Shugart was made aware of the allegations in December 2021 and upon learning of them, made the decision to insist on the removal of Mr. Sebrechts from Miss Brand. Paula did act on the accusations, insisting on the removal of Max from Miss Brand and any affiliation with Miss USA.”
But Miss Wyoming Mackenzie Kern claimed that when women complained to Shugart, they were “ignored”.
“It’s no surprise that this was swept under the carpet,” one insider to The Post. You can read all of Sebrecht’s allegedly inappropriate texts and emails here.
A high-level Navy official said Wednesday that the US should prepare for the possibility of China invading Taiwan as soon as this year. “So when we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind, that has to be a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window. I can’t rule it out,” said Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations.
The “2027 window” refers to a claim from retired Adm. Phil Davidson, the former head of US Indo-Pacific Command, who said last year he believes China could invade within six years. Gilday said he was prioritizing a “fight tonight” posture for the US Navy with respect to China and Russia.
Gilday said his assessment was based on comments Chinese President Xi Jinping made this week, although the Chinese leader only reiterated that he seeks “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan but won’t rule out the use of force.
“It’s not just what President Xi says, but it’s how the Chinese behave and what they do,” Gilday said. “What we’ve seen over the past 20 years is that they have delivered on every promise they’ve made earlier than they said they were going to deliver on it.”
While US officials are always warning that China is planning to invade Taiwan, Beijing has little interest in doing so as it would require the largest amphibious invasion in military history.
If China chooses to take military action against Taiwan, it would likely initially opt for a blockade, which it simulated in unprecedented exercises around the island in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visiting Taipei.
Gilday’s warning comes as the US is working to send massive amounts of weapons to Taiwan. While done in the name of deterrence, China’s actions and rhetoric make it clear that more US support for Taiwan will make Chinese military action more likely.
“When we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind that has to be a 2022 window or a potentially a 2023 window. I can’t rule that out. I don’t mean at all to be alarmist by saying that, it’s just that we can’t wish that away.” — @USNavyCNOhttps://t.co/tQLqQWDg1f
During his speech earlier this week, Xi also warned strongly against “interference” from outside forces, and other Chinese officials have explicitly warned that US support for Taiwan’s “independence forces” could lead to war.
In another foretaste of potential future ‘carbon allowance’ limits, a major bank in Australia has introduced a new feature that links purchases to a customer’s carbon footprint and warns them when they are going over the average.
Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has partnered with Cogo, a “carbon management solutions” company, to launch the new feature, which is part of CBA’s online banking platform.
The bank gives the customer the option to “pay a fee” to offset their carbon footprint, with the average listed as 1,280 kilograms, a long way from the ‘sustainable’ figure of 200 kilograms.
A person’s carbon footprint is calculated and then an ‘equivalent’ metric is show to make the customer feel guilty about it, such as “8 trees being cut”.
“By combining our rich customer data and CoGo’s industry-leading capability in measuring carbon outputs, we will be able to provide greater transparency for customers so that they can take actionable steps to reduce their environmental footprint,” CommBank Group executive Angus Sullivan said in a statement.
The bank has promised to refine the calculation down to showing how much CO2 individual purchases are responsible for.
While initially presented as a handy way for someone to track their consumption habits and the supposed impact they have on the environment, some fear that such schemes could one day become mandatory and place limits on purchases of customers who exceed their ‘carbon allowance.’
As we previously highlighted, allied with climate lockdowns, technocrats want to exploit hysteria over climate change to increase financial control over individuals.
Such a proposal was presented in the science journal Nature by four environmental “experts” as a means of reducing global carbon emissions.
Everyone would be issued with a ‘carbon allowance card’ “that would entail all adults receiving an equal tradable carbon allowance that reduces over time in line with national [carbon] targets.”
The authors make it clear that the program would be a “national mandatory policy.”
Carbon units would be “deducted from the personal budget with every payment of transport fuel, home-heating fuels and electricity bills,” and anyone going over the limit would be forced to purchase additional units in the personal carbon market from those with excess to sell.”
Of course, the wealthy would be easily able to afford the offsets, and many of them are directly invested in the trading mechanisms that the scheme would be based on.
The proposal makes clear that the means of measuring a person’s uptake of carbon units for travel would function “on the basis of the tracking the user’s movement history.”
The authors note that mass compliance with COVID-19 lockdown regulations has greased the skids for further intrusive tyranny and that, “people may be more prepared to accept the tracking and limitations related to PCAs to achieve a safer climate” as a result.
