The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Despite claims of a Chinese technological breakthrough in chipmaking, a teardown of Huawei’s newest laptop reveals a chip made in Taiwan – not China – by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The teardown stands at odds with the claim that Huawei’s chipmaking partner, SMIC, based on the Chinese mainland, had achieved potential advancements in fabrication technique. 

According to Bloomberg, the world noticed when in August Huawei’s launch of a smartphone featuring a 7nm processor from Shanghai’s SMIC made headlines in the US and China.

Analysis by a Canadian research group for Bloomberg News revealed that the chip was hot on the trail of the current industry standard, insinuating that US trade restrictions may not be worker. The advancement was heralded in China’s tech community.

But the recent teardown of Huawei’s Qingyun L540 notebook revealed a 5nm chip – a Kirin 9006C processor fabricated via TSMC’s 5nm method – not an SMIC chip.

In 2023, Huawei’s Mate 60 smartphone, featuring advanced technology, solidified its role as a leader in China’s push for tech independence. This led to significant sales, helping Huawei surpass $100 billion in revenue and challenging Apple’s market dominance.

The Shenzhen-based company, previously relying on TSMC for advanced 5nm chips, has since focused on developing and hoarding semiconductors, especially after heightened US trade restrictions and being listed on Washington’s Entity List since 2019.

Bloomberg reported that Huawei has invested heavily in chip research and built a domestic supply network, partly government-supported. Its latest product, the L540 laptop, aligns with Beijing’s directive to replace foreign tech in critical areas, emphasizing data security and meeting China’s stringent requirements.

This move is also part of Huawei’s broader strategy to expand into mobile and computing devices since 2016, the report says. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Whew, what a week it’s been for higher ed!

The Claudine Gay debacle at Harvard has raised some fundamental questions about academia in general. She was president of the university, traditionally seen as the pinnacle of American academia.

But a careful look at her extremely thin academic publishing record was packed with unattributed borrowings from other authors in her own field.

Once all of this became public, and in light of her Congressional testimony in which she found a new love for the free speech that has been heretofore nearly banned at Harvard, it became impossible for her to continue as president and so she resigned.

That’s the headline story but there is surely more going on. The press ran examples of her plagiarism. It was obvious to any graduate student that it qualified as such. It would result in removal from the class and likely the whole program.

And yet the president of Harvard got away with it for many years.

There had already been investigations ongoing but they seemed more performative than prosecutorial, which is a scandal of its own. Once it all came out into the open, thanks to independent reporters and media, there was no other way this could end.

And yet, how long had people known? When she was hired in the first place, why was this never checked? How about when she was appointed Dean? How about when she was at Stanford? How about when she was awarded a prestigious prize for her Harvard dissertation that we now know is compromised? Maybe they knew but pushed her up the ranks anyway.

None of this speaks well of Harvard or academia in general, much less the vaunted “peer review” process.

Stranger still for people on the outside was reading the side-by-side comparisons of her prose and that from which she borrowed. None of it seemed to make much sense or be otherwise meaningful. It is all written in a highly stylized way that only people in academia could possibly understand and probably they cannot understand it either. It has the feel of high-level scholarship without the substance.

One gathers that the thesis of her writing is always the same: racism is all-pervasive. Everything else is just filler. In defense of herself, writing in the New York Times, she essentially blames racism and also distrust of public health and media for forcing her to step down.

“This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society …. Trusted institutions of all types—from public health agencies to news organizations—will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility.”

That’s some amazing rhetoric right there, effectively arguing that she must remain president of Harvard despite 50-plus instances of plagiarism in her work, otherwise American society will fall! And by America, remember what she means: the rarefied and highly privileged Ivy elite that went to the “best” schools, bring down million dollar salaries, and believe they have every right to rule the rest of us for our own good.

The actual subtext of her piece was apparent to a sympathetic reader in the comments:

“Welcome to the America of TRUMP & his allies & followers. We have entered dangerous times that are very similar to pre-war Nazi Germany. Trump & his movement must be countered strongly and stopped.”

Truly, this is how these people think. Criticize the CDC and the NYT—or hold the president of Harvard to normal standards of scholarship—and you are aligned with Donald Trump and Hitler.

This problem of fake scholarship in elite academia goes back many decades, and has been proven repeatedly.

In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal sent an article to a mainline liberal-arts journal called “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”

It argued that “an external world whose properties are independent of any individual human being” was “dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook.”

As a replacement, we need “emancipatory mathematics” and “liberatory science” to reject “the elite caste canon of ‘high science’” that believes in myths like “physical reality.”

You get the drift. It was approved and published. Then the author revealed that he was just making it all up, writing the most preposterous gibberish he could dream up.

That was 30 years ago, and the hoax has been repeated again recently.

The Substack account called “A Midwestern Doctor” recently wrote:

“One of the saddest discoveries genuine intellectuals make once they enter academia (which is supposed to be their ‘home’) is that much of the ‘prestigious knowledge’ their institutions produce is actually just simple or nonsensical concepts cloaked in elaborate rhetoric [language] that makes their points appear to be something much more impressive.”

“For example, the ‘postmodernist’ discourse is pervasive throughout academia and frequently the standard you are expected to measure up to. Yet, in 1996, a programmer from Monash University realized that if he used an existing engine designed to generate random text from recursive grammars, he could generate postmodern essays which appeared to be authentic.

In essence, this meant that complete nonsense (as the text was random) could be passed off as authoritative and credible simply because it matched the expected appearance of this hard to understand writing.”

He concludes:

“If we want to reclaim our Democracy, it is critical we allow open and honest debate to occur. As the last few years have shown, we cannot have the ‘expert’s’ narrative be shielded from all scrutiny, and as the internet has shown, the monopoly they used to hold over the truth is rapidly fading away. Conversely, I believe if the experts wish to regain the credibility they have lost, they must earn it by publicly defending the merits of their positions, and I believe as time moves forward, the expert class will soon realize this too.”

This isn’t just a problem in liberal arts. Science itself has been seriously compromised throughout the COVID years, when people from statistical and medical departments grabbed hold of the chance to crank out an amazing number of papers on COVID (I’ve seen numbers in the six figures). It was all for purposes of resume padding and career advancement.

For two years now, many of these papers on government controls, masks, and the supposed effectiveness of masks, even those cited and celebrated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been proven to be deeply compromised and even fraudulent. Hardly a day goes by without a new discovery of bad or faked data or poor study structure. Some have been retracted but most survived.

It’s really too easy to chalk up the Claudine Gay situation to DEI, or what we used to call affirmative action, though that clearly plays a role here. The problem is actually more pervasive and affects the whole of elite intellectual circles. Many in these realms have institutionalized what a regular person would call corruption: a wink and a nod toward academic fakery simply because the practice is so pervasive and deeply baked into the process of career advancement.

One reason that DEI recently took hold of academia so ferociously is that intellectual standards had long ago slipped to nothing, and corruption had already taken the place of the sincere search for and teaching of truth. Once that was gone, whole institutions came around to embracing fakery, fraud, plagiarism, political favoritism, and outright and brazen hoaxes as just the way business is done.

Indeed, in deeply corrupt institutions, there is simply no way to make it to the top without participating in the corruption. This was how it worked in the Soviet Union. Because the moral compromise is so pervasive, the only way you could be trusted with real power is if others in power have something on you. That’s when corruption becomes thoroughly endemic. Corruption becomes the currency of institutional advancement. Staying clean and doing good work causes you to sink further and further: loser!

This is where we are today with elite academia. It’s not just Claudine Gay, who, incidentally, has already returned to her position on the faculty to take in $900K per year. It’s everywhere in the leadership at all levels. This is why revelations of her plagiarism were a shock to no one. Now we are in a situation where thousands of administrators and faculty are sitting ducks, just awaiting the dreaded moment in which some intrepid researcher compares one published work with another.

In the meantime, they will all keep covering up for each other and trying to keep the racket going on for as long as possible. The difference now is that the public has caught on. Harvard’s applications are in freefall. This extends to the whole of elite academia too. Once their credibility with the public is gone, there is no turning back. Somehow it all seems fitting for an age when the loss of trust is bringing absolutely every feature of elite presence in our lives into question.

In college and having finished a class paper much earlier than everyone else, the professor assigned me the task of finding plagiarism in other student papers. I spent several days at the library. I easily discovered that about 40 percent of the papers were compromised. This was long before the internet, so I can imagine the situation is much worse now. These students weren’t reporting what they knew; they were merely faking it. What the students did back then is what faculty do now.

Faking it: that’s a good description of a problem that is pervasive in elite intellectual circles today. This affects media, corporate empires, academia, and government. It’s so accepted that one is considered meritorious for doing a better job of faking than anyone else. That’s a chilling reality but one that anyone and everyone with experience in these realms knows to be true.

The tanker hijack situation in the Arabian Sea which was first reported Thursday involving a distressed Liberian-flagged merchant vessel off the coast of Somalia has come to an end after Indian Navy intervention.

The warship INS Chennai was already patrolling regional waters and was dispatched to assist the vessel, ending in the successful rescue of all 21 crew members, including 15 Indians aboard the MV Lila Norfolk. Pirates had ambushed the vessel, in waters frequently targeted by Somali militants.

The crew is said to be unharmed, as the Indian Navy carries out “sanitization” operations on the ship after boarding it, and without a firefight.

“The attempt of hijacking by the pirates was probably abandoned with the forceful warning by the Indian Navy, marine patrol aircraft, of interception by an Indian Naval warship,” a New Delhi-based maritime think tank, the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, told Reuters.

India’s Navy said it “remains committed to ensuring [the] safety of merchant shipping in the region along with international partners and friendly foreign countries.”

According to further details in a Gulf-based publication:

The INS Chennai, a guided missile destroyer and part of India’s maritime force helping to protect shipping in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, was sent to the scene of the hijacking attempt, along with maritime patrol aircraft, the navy said on Friday.

It said its aircraft had been monitoring the ship’s movements while the INS Chennai sailed towards it to offer assistance.

“The aircraft overflew the vessel on early morning of January 5, 2024, and established contact with the vessel, ascertaining the safety of the crew,” the navy said.

The Indian Navy has released several videos showing commandos aiding and boarding the vessel…

Somali militants have long threatened these waters, but given that the bulk of diverted Red Sea traffic must now travel via the Cape of Good Hope around Africa due to Houthi attacks related to the Gaza war, the fear is that the resulting increased traffic will push more vessels toward the Somali coast, leading to more ‘opportunity’ and ample potential targets for further piracy.

* * *

Map showing extent of Somali piracy in prior years, which greatly expanded in range from 2005 to 2010…

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a petition for immediate review regarding a Colorado Supreme Court decision to strike former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot.

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted,” reads the procedural order.

Oral arguments are scheduled for Feb. 8.

Petitioners’ and amicus briefs are due by Jan. 18, and respondents’ and amicus briefs are due by Jan. 31, with any reply briefs due by Feb. 5.

The Colorado Supreme Court had disqualified President Trump as a candidate on Dec. 19 in an order that left little chance for the actual removal of his name from the ballot.

On Dec. 27, the Colorado GOP filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking three separate questions regarding the application of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and political parties’ First Amendment rights to primary their candidate of choice.

On Jan. 3, President Trump filed a separate petition with a simpler question: Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in its ruling?

The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up President Trump’s petition, and has yet to accept to reject the Colorado GOP’s petition.

‘Chaos’

Colorado was the first state to disqualify President Trump, and the first state to hold hearings regarding the merits of a Section 3 challenge at all.

The legal theory that President Trump can be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment rests on the premise that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, constituted an insurrection, and that President Trump actively participated in or instigated it. It also assumes that individual state courts at various levels have the authority to adjudicate the eligibility of a presidential candidate under Section 3.

There have been at least 60 of these challenges across the country in recent months, according to President Trump’s attorneys.

However, the majority of these challenges have been dismissed for a wide range of reasons, with several courts citing lack of jurisdiction.

Officials and some judges have argued that if individual state courts were meant to be able to rule if a presidential candidate engaged in insurrection and whether that affected his eligibility, it could result in “chaos,” with upwards of 50 different rulings.

In several amicus briefs filed with both the Colorado GOP and Trump petitions, experts and concerned voters argued much the same.

The Colorado decision has already created a ripple effect, with legislators in other states calling for disqualifications of President Trump as a candidate on their own ballots, as well as other states calling for the disqualification of President Joe Biden from state primaries in retaliation.

Soon after the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows similarly disqualified President Trump as a candidate in a decision phrased as having little chance of actually removing him from the ballot. That decision is being appealed in state court, and marks the third jurisdiction that has found that President Trump engaged in an insurrection—without him, or any Jan. 6 defendant, having been charged with such.

The lawsuits and wide range of rulings have raised a host of legal questions: Does the Constitution allow states to define “insurrection” individually? Does Congress hold sole authority over disqualifying candidates under Section 3? Does the disqualification from holding office allow states to prohibit candidates from running in primary elections, or can a candidate be disqualified or exempted via a vote by Congress as late as Inauguration Day?

As such, several amicus brief authors have requested the U.S. Supreme Court adjudicate more than what the appellants have asked, including to hold a full hearing on the merits of the case.

A group of 45 Colorado voters had filed an amicus brief on the Colorado GOP petition, urging the Supreme Court to do more than merely reverse the Colorado Supreme Court ruling.

Such a ruling “would solve nothing and actually makes matters worse,” they wrote. “The Colorado court has unleashed harms which will creep beyond Colorado’s borders.”

Ahead of a civil corruption trial in Manhattan, embattled longtime leader of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, announced to board members that he would step down on Friday.

“With pride in all that we have accomplished, I am announcing my resignation from the NRA,” LaPierre wrote in a statement published on social media platform X.

He said, “I’ve been a card-carrying member of this organization for most of my adult life, and I will never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom. My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever.”

NRA EVP Wayne LaPierre Announces Resignation from NRA

The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) announced today that Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre announced he is stepping down from his position as chief executive of the organization, effective January 31.… pic.twitter.com/GbGBWktu7C

— NRA (@NRA) January 5, 2024

The resignation, effective at the end of this month, is not part of a deal with New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. “Longtime NRA executive and Head of General Operations Andrew Arulanandam will become the interim CEO & EVP of the NRA,” the NRA said. 

LaPierre submitted his resignation at a board meeting in Irving, Texas, citing “health reasons” as a significant driver in his decision. 

This new turn of events is set to change the dynamics of the Manhattan trial, as James sought to remove LaPierre from his head role, which he has held since 1991. 

Under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA became a powerful lobbying group for the Second Amendment. However, its various compromises on 2A issues has allowed Gun Owners of America (GOA), a ‘no compromise’ gun lobby group, to flourish in the shadows with a surge in new members and plowing millions of dollars into lobbying.

The NRA’s most recent compromise was the Trump bump stock ban.

Law-abiding Americans are gravitating towards GOA, which will likely displace the NRA as the nation’s premier gun rights group in the next several years in terms of spending on Capitol Hill and members. 

GOA had our BEST YEAR YET in 2023 and we are incredibly thankful to our staff, members, and supporters across the country who fought for the Second Amendment. 🥳

Scroll through the 🧵⤵️ to see GOA’s 2023 victories!

What is your favorite GOA win?! pic.twitter.com/oViSyqaas6

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) January 2, 2024

The era of no compromise is only beginning. 

Authored by Joseph Hanneman via The Epoch Times,

January 6 has become Aaron Babbitt’s hill to die on.

Over the three years since Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed outside the House Speaker’s Lobby at the U.S. Capitol, her husband has made it his mission to investigate her death and seek justice.

“It’s not really possible to put it into words,” Mr. Babbitt told The Epoch Times in an extended series of interviews.

“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. But like I’ve said before, I mean, we’re all born with a purpose. You never know what that purpose is until it kicks you right between the legs.”

For Mr. Babbitt, the jolt came in the early afternoon Pacific time on Jan. 6, 2021, when he received urgent phone calls to turn on the television. Someone had been shot at the protests at the U.S. Capitol. He remembers seeing Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer declare that the woman shot near the House of Representatives had died.

Then everything went black.

Aaron Babbitt ponders his journey since his wife was killed on Jan. 6, 2021, as he looks out over North San Diego Bay. (Joseph M. Hanneman/The Epoch Times)

“That kick between the legs for me was watching my wife die on TV,” he said. “So my purpose now is just to fight for Ashli until I can’t fight anymore. I don’t even know what that means. But I’ll continue doing it until I can’t.”

During the first 18 months, Mr. Babbitt was prominent in news media, defending his wife from an onslaught of hate for being an alleged insurrectionist, a rioter, a vandal, and someone who attacked the Capitol. Well before many facts came out, he knew in his heart that his wife was none of the things of which she was being accused.

“Ashli’s name is going to be written history books at some point,” he said.

“And I want it to be written correctly.”

Mr. Babbitt recently sat down to reflect on nearly 36 months of suffering, investigating, and preparing for justice.

Sitting on a park bench along the shore of North San Diego Bay, Mr. Babbitt watched the tour boats, catamarans, speed boats, and the occasional U.S. Navy warship sail past. On this fall afternoon, the USS Boxer headed out to sea while the USS Spruance made her way into port.

Just beyond the opposite shore, a steady stream of aircraft took off from the sprawling Naval Station North Island, including helicopters similar to ones that Mr. Babbitt worked on for years as a U.S. Marine Corps mechanic.

‘It Was Awful’

The first three months after his wife was gunned down by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, Mr. Babbitt struggled with the shock and what seemed like a never-ending line of haters who harassed him at his family pool-cleaning business in San Diego. He needed to decide what his life would become after being widowed at age 39.

“From the start, I wouldn’t even look at the browser on my phone,“ he said.

”I wouldn’t turn my TV on for like a month because I was so traumatized by what I‘d seen. Anytime I’d log on and see pictures of Ashli dead, I’d get terrified and then shut it off. It was awful.”

Aaron and Ashli Babbitt on an outing. ‘She just loved life,’ Babbitt said. (Photo Courtesy Aaron Babbitt)

Mr. Babbitt made a gut-wrenching decision that rather than withdraw into his grief, he would launch a nonstop investigation of the shooting. That meant tirelessly searching for clues while wading through a sea of online disinformation and unbridled hatred.

“I got to the point where I realized I need to be the foremost expert on what happened to my wife,” he said. “And in being that, I need to watch every single second of footage of what happened to her.

“So I just turned it into a daily routine,” Mr. Babbitt said.

“I‘d wake up and search Ashli’s name on Twitter. I’d read all the bad stuff. I‘d look at all the pictures. I’d see all the videos.

“It didn’t come very quickly. But it got to a point where I have now seen everything,” he said. “More than all of you hateful people have seen. Everything. You can’t shock me anymore.”

‘Hill to Die On’

Mr. Babbitt’s visibility in the first year after the shooting came at a price. The pool-cleaning business he ran with his wife came under attack. The business voicemail was a nonstop wave of hate-filled messages, such as, “Can Ashli come out and clean my pool?”

“We lost, like, 30 percent of our customers just based on name recognition. They didn’t want to be associated with us. And then I couldn’t take new customers on because I was getting death threats.”

Mr. Babbitt decided to sell the business and focus full-time on investigating his wife’s death. He has not looked back.

“I ended up having to sell that business for pennies on the dollar. It hasn’t been easy,“ he said.

”I’ve sacrificed a lot. But I’m willing to do that for her. This is my hill to die on.”

Aaron Babbitt with his wife, Ashli, who was killed at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Aaron Babbitt)

Mr. Babbitt recalled seeing his wife reading her Twitter feed one day and laughing at how angry many people became after she shared her views on politics or current events.

“There were a lot of tears, there was a lot of anger, there’s a lot of rage,” he recalled. “But I got to the point after I’d seen this for so long, this one night it just clicked in my head.”

“‘Wow, these people are really mad at me. They really hate me,’” he recalled her saying. “She’s laughing at the same time. So that moment came when I was reading all this bad [expletive]. And then I remembered that moment with Ashli. I just started laughing out loud. She had to have been there in that moment to remind me of that.”

Mr. Babbitt made the decision to forge ahead, to resist thoughts of revenge and focus instead on justice. It was a battle inside himself.

“I had three options. I mean, I could turtle up and go into my shell and go away forever,” he said.

“I could do something brazen, you know, and try and exact revenge for my wife, and then just be dead or incarcerated, the husband of a dead ‘domestic terrorist,’ as they like they label her.

“Or I could go about it the smart, calculated way and bring these people to justice,“ Mr. Babbitt said.

”Do what’s right for Ashli in the long run of history.”

The beginning of that journey saw some “very dark days,” he said.

“It’s hard to put into words, but I believe—and I will continue to believe—that I chose the right path,” Mr. Babbitt said. “Because it’s not about me. It’s really not about me. It’s about Ashli.

“Ashi’s voice was taken that day. And now I speak for her,” he said. “And if I did anything stupid, then that voice would be lost.”

Secret Tour of Capitol

Part of that investigative journey led Mr. Babbitt and his attorney to Washington to retrace the steps Ashli took on Jan. 6.

In 2022, Mr. Babbitt was given a secret tour of the U.S. Capitol, arranged by U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). Mr. Babbitt and his attorney were instructed to be at a certain location near the Capitol late on a weeknight.

A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 19, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A black SUV with dark windows pulled up at the specified location at the appointed hour. The pair got in. Mr. Babbitt looked and realized Mr. Gohmert was driving. The now-retired congressman dropped the men off at a discreet entrance to the Capitol, and they went inside.

Mr. Babbitt was given a private moment on the spot outside the Speaker’s Lobby where his wife was fatally shot by Lt. Byrd. He was then given a tour of the Capitol by Mr. Gohmert and other supportive lawmakers.

Not long after that tour, Mr. Babbitt and his attorney went to the O’Neill House Office Building to view U.S. Capitol Police security video. The invitation for that visit came from then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Mr. McCarthy and staff from the Committee on House Administration promised Mr. Babbitt he could obtain any videos he needed for his investigation, he said. More than 10 months later, however, Mr. Babbitt is still waiting. Despite submitting a detailed request, no videos have been turned over by the House.

Police ‘Breakdown’

When he went through all of the cell-phone videos taken in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby, Mr. Babbitt saw his wife’s years of training as a military police officer and the tours she spent in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. She looked at what unfolded around her not only as a witness but as someone who served in the U.S. Air Force and Army National Guard.

“She saw a breakdown of the police. Three police officers were not acting correctly in front of that door,” Mr. Babbitt said. “They weren’t acting like they were there to defend that door.”

Officers Kyle Yetter and Christopher Lanciano and Sgt. Timothy Lively faced an angry group of protesters demanding to go into the House Chamber and make their voices heard. The officers had no pepper spray or batons but were armed with service pistols.

Moments before being fatally shot, Ashli Babbitt confronts three police offers for not stopping the vandalism outside the U.S. House. (Video Still/Tayler Hansen)

The situation went off the rails when Zachary Alam vented his rage by punching the glass in the doors, including one strike that went right between Sgt. Lively and Officer Lanciano’s heads. Mr. Alam seemed emboldened by their inaction. He eventually used a black riot helmet like a cudgel to smash the glass.

“They were just standing there, letting people punch around their heads, not doing anything to quell the violence or stop the violence and the people who were creating violence and havoc that day,” Mr. Babbitt said. “They weren’t stopping them. And then Ashli yelled at them to ‘call [expletive] help.’”

Ms. Babbitt tried to intervene with Mr. Alam at one point, but he brushed her aside. She retreated to the north wall, where videos show she shouted against the violence.

“Once they start going full force on those doors, that’s when you hear Ashli screaming at them to stop,“ Mr. Babbitt said. ”‘Stop! No, don’t! Stop! Wait!’ And that was when it had to have been—just knowing Ash, it had to have been that moment. She’s like, ‘What the [expletive] is going on? What is happening right now?’”

Memories of Iraq

Perhaps at those very moments, Ms. Babbitt recalled the worst of her military deployments. Camp Bucca, Iraq, was a brutal duty assignment. She had to guard jihadis who would have gladly cut her throat if they escaped their confines.

Ashli Babbitt was a military police officer in the U.S. Air Force and Army National Guard. (Courtesy of Micki Witthoeft)

“It was just all detainees that they would bring in. There was CIA coming in all the time,” Mr. Babbitt said. “Blackhawks coming in, dropping people off, taking people out.

“Lines of SUVs coming in, taking people out, bringing people in,” he said. “Riots—they kill each other. They threatened to kill our forces.”

One day, Ms. Babbitt had to run from the shower in just a towel and take cover in a foxhole because the base was being shelled, he said. On another occasion, Ms. Babbitt and another female MP came across three prisoners who had tunneled out of their cells.

“They got into a hand-to-hand fistfight with three of them before the guys in the tower could run down and help them,” he said. “So it’s two females fighting three grown men.”

Ms. Babbitt enlisted at age 17 and had to get her mother’s permission to sign up before age 18. During four deployments from her Texas base, Mr. Babbitt said, she guarded an airfield for a visit of President George W. Bush and served as security for then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

U.S. Marine veteran Aaron Babbitt says the Capitol Police lieutenant who killed his wife Ashli violated protocol for use of deadly force. (CapitolPunishmentTheMovie.com/Bark at the Hole Productions)

‘I Have My Purpose’

Looking back on it all, Mr. Babbitt said there’s no way he could have known how big—and tragic—Jan. 6 would turn out to be for him and his wife.

When he kissed her goodbye at home on Jan. 5, he recalled, she sensed his unease about the trip.

“The last words to my face that she spoke to me were, ‘You’re worried about me, aren’t you?‘ I’m always worried. I’m always worried about you,” Mr. Babbitt said.

“And she said, ‘I’ll be fine. Everything’s gonna be alright.’”

Mr. Babbitt reflected on how far he has come since hearing the fateful news broadcast the afternoon of Jan. 6.

“I was not in a good place. It was a very deep dark place,“ he recalled. ”But I pulled out of it. Knowing that I have my purpose. And my purpose is for Ashli.

“And as sad as it is to say, maybe it was Ashli’s purpose at that point in time to be wrongfully shot. And to be that person in history to shine a light on what was really wrong that day and during those times.”

Massive crowds gather as President Donald Trump speaks to supporters from The Ellipse near the White House on January 6, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

While Jan. 6 is obviously a difficult day every year, Jan. 8 also brings memories and sadness. He was supposed to grab her a takeout meal from Roberto’s, one of their favorite haunts.

“I was supposed to pick her up at 5:30 on Friday, and she said, maybe with a California burrito,” Mr. Babbitt said. “People don’t know what a Cali burrito is. But it’s got french fries on it. She wanted me to pick her up on Friday at 5:30 at San Diego International with a California burrito.”

He planned to order the Cali just as she liked it: carne asada, fries, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and pico de gallo.

“Want to talk about hard,“ he said. ”Five-thirty hit here on Friday and I was like, ‘I’m supposed to be picking her up right now.’”

But now, the grief takes a back seat. Mr. Babbitt knows it is a time for action—and justice.

“I know she’s always with me,” he said. “But it took a while. It did. It took a little while, but I just knew that I had to bury my grief and bury any bad thoughts that I had in my head.

“Because if I am nothing but 100 percent focused on my fight for Ashli and what we’re doing, then I’m no good to her.”

Aaron Babbitt fully believes that justice is coming in his wife’s case.

“Yeah, I’m confident we’re gonna get there,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I will. I will. I’ll go down trying.”

*  *  *

The Epoch Times original documentary “The Real Story of January 6 Part 2: The Long Road Home” will be available to full subscribers starting Saturday, Jan. 6, at 8:30 p.m. ET on EpochTV.

Earlier in the week, we saw Jeffrey Epstein’s brother Mark explain to Tucker Carlson how he has struggled to obtain basic documents related to his bother’s death in federal custody.

As the identities of Jeffrey’s various ‘associates’ is released this week, it is clear from the ‘eliteness’ of this list of alleged creeps that many people stood to benefit from Epstein’s perpetual silence and Tucker Carlson expressed skepticism about the official cause of death being ruled suicide, writing:

The U.S. government claims Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in a federal detention facility in Manhattan four and a half years ago, just before his trial.

If that’s true, why are there so few records available from that night?

Carlson highlights the fact that the mainstream media largely ignores big questions such as – who Epstein worked for, the origin of his wealth, and the true cause of his death, particularly whether it was suicide or murder.

“The first is who did Jeffrey Epstein work for? What did Jeffrey Epstein do for a living and on whose behalf? We don’t know.

The second question is where did all the money come from? Hundreds of millions of dollars that passed through his hands over many years. And where is it now? We don’t know that either.

And the third question, maybe the most pressing of all, which is, what happened to Jeffrey Epstein.“

Specific to the third question (because we can guess at the other two), Mark Epstein reiterates his unsuccessful attempts to identify other inmates or obtain records from the night of the death.

Mark criticizes the handling of his brother’s body, the unavailability of key records, and the apparent lack of a thorough investigation by the Department of Justic

“The autopsy showed he was dead for at least 2 hours before he was found. So at that point, they’re supposed to leave the body and call the medical examiner’s office so they can come take photographs, do the initial testing, whatever they do when they find a dead body. But that wasn’t done.“

Epstein then details the peculiar circumstances found in the autopsy report, which don’t align with a typical hanging suicide.

“Well, after the autopsy and the both pathologists, the city pathologist and Dr. Baden, came out of the autopsy and they said this doesn’t look like a suicide. It looks more like a homicide.“

Specifically, he highlights the broken neck bones more consistent with strangulation or a physical attack rather than a hanging.

Mark also points out the absence of expected physical signs on the body if it had been hanging for an extended period, further casting doubt on the suicide narrative.

“The autopsy photographs show that the ligature mark on Jeff’s neck is in the middle of his neck and goes straight back as if someone put a rope around his neck and strangled him like Carlo in The Godfather in the car.“

These details, combined with the lack of transparency from authorities, fuel his belief that his brother was murdered​.

Tucker clarified:

“The bones in his neck that were broken are not seen in hangings, but are seen in strangulation.“

Epstein confirmed and responded, “that’s a scary thought that you can be killed in prison by the government. Because again, my life would have been a lot easier if he committed suicide.“

“I could have put it behind me. But it’s obvious at this point in time that he was it was not a suicide.

And so means somebody killed them. So who killed him and why?“

A good question… to which we will likely never know as Mark concludes:

 “Well, when I heard Barr’s statement that he said he personally saw the videotape and he concluded it was a suicide because nobody went in or out, that’s when it hit me that he’s covering this up.”

Carlson finishes by pointing out that it appears officials at the highest levels are lying about the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death. His brother agrees, and wants the truth: 

“…people should be aware of that. Whether we ever figure out exactly what happened, I don’t know. But yeah, I don’t want people to think he committed suicide. Because that’s not the case.“

Watch the abbreviated interview below…

Ep. 59 Most people understand that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself. But the attorney general of the United States helped cover up his murder? That’s a different thing entirely. Epstein’s brother Mark explains. pic.twitter.com/aP6EjURJmL

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 4, 2024

Watch the full interview here at TCN.

For a deeper dive, Declan Hill’s podcast goes into all of the details surrounding Epstein’s death…

For example:

The medical examiner (the city pathologist and another doctor) who performed the autopsy did not rule it a suicide– they said it did not look like suicide. The death certificate said “cause of death: pending investigation.” The suicide ruling was made by the Chief Pathologist (Barbara Sampson) who was not present at the autopsy. At the point that determination was made, all further investigation was halted. Barbara Sampson won’t talk to Mark Epstein or Tucker. Sampson’s ruling overruled that of the actual pathologist who performed the autopsy. She justified this by saying there had been a previous suicide attempt.

However…

There was no suicide attempt prior to Epstein’s death. Mark Epstein references an interview with Jeffrey’s attorney, David Shoen, in which the attorney stated that Jeffrey had actually been attacked by his cellmate, but did not want to report it as such*. The media reported it as a suicide attempt.

* Shoen describes this as an incident that began as an “experiment” between Jeffrey and the cellmate, a former cop, in which Jeffrey felt pressured to allow the cellmate to place something around his neck. The cellmate then pulled on it and injured Jeffrey. Whatever this was, it doesn’t sound like a suicide attempt.

Jeffrey Epstein died a few days before a hearing on an appeal for his bond. In other words, there was still a chance he could have bailed out of jail awaiting trial.

Attorney General Bill Barr claimed he had “reviewed the tapes” of the only entrance / exit to the cell block where Epstein was being held, saw no one enter or exit, so he believed it was a suicide. However, there were several (7-14) other people who were already in that cell block. Mark has been unable to determine who the other prisoners were, other than one who was Jeffrey’s cellmate. Mark has been told the tapes do not exist.

The ligature marks look more like those left from an electrical cord (possibly from his CPAP machine) rather than a fabric such as a bedsheet.

A body left hanging for two hours should show bruising from the blood pooling in the legs and buttocks due to gravity. Autopsy indicates none of this.

Is it any wonder that Mark Epstein has questions…

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

We did it Joe! 

It took a tremendous push down the stretch, but the U.S. national debt was able to hit the 34 trillion dollar mark before the end of 2023.  At this moment I am just so overwhelmed that I don’t know who to thank first.  Over the past few years, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chucky Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy and so many other hard working spenders have been instrumental in helping us reach this remarkable achievement. 

And we never would have gotten here without the relentless help of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and all of the other mainstream news outlets that kept assuring the American people that it was okay to steal trillions of dollars from our children and our grandchildren.

Of course I am being quite facetious.  The truth is that what we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.  We are literally committing national suicide, but each election cycle most of the same big spending politicians just keep winning over and over again.

Those on the other side would argue that it has been absolutely necessary to borrow and spend so much money.

If we had not propped up the U.S. economy with giant mountains of borrowed money, it would have collapsed long ago.

In addition, spending so much money allows us to project military and economic power all over the planet.  If we only spent what we brought in, America’s standing in the world would be greatly reduced.

Having the primary reserve currency of the world is an enormous source of power, but now that power is fading.

Nations all over the globe are starting to move away from using the U.S. dollar in international trade, and they are becoming a lot more hesitant to buy our debt.

You can only borrow and spend so much before the entire Ponzi scheme collapses, and at this moment we are more than 34 trillion dollars in debt…

US national debt has reached a record high – hitting $34 trillion for the first time in history.

Data published by the Treasury Department Tuesday showed that outstanding federal borrowing soared to $34.001 trillion on December 29, just weeks ahead of Congress deadlines for new federal funding plans.

The staggering figure, which is a major point of contention between Republicans and Democrats, is equal to $101,233 in federal debt for every person in America, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

So if there are four people living in your household, your share of the national debt is more than $400,000.

And every day the debt gets even larger.  As Wolf Richter has pointed out, the size of the national debt has increased by 2.5 trillion dollars in just the last seven months…

The total US national debt spiked by $1.0 trillion in 15 weeks since September 15, to $34.0 trillion, according to the Treasury Department’s figures this afternoon. In the seven months since the debt ceiling was lifted, the national debt spiked by $2.5 trillion.

These are huge gigantic numbers that are piling up as a result of the incredible hard-to-fathom daredevil reckless shake-your-head deficit spending by Congress.

Overall, the U.S. national debt has grown by $6.25 trillion since Joe Biden entered the White House.

It took the first 225 years of U.S. history for the U.S. national debt to reach the 6 trillion dollar mark, and now we have added more than 6 trillion dollars to the debt in less than 3 years.

This is what the endgame looks like.

We are in a debt spiral that is totally out of control, and there is no way that this story is going to end well.

And despite the fact that we are endlessly pumping colossal piles of cash into the economy, our economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

On Wednesday, we learned that U.S. job openings have fallen “to the lowest level in more than two years”…

U.S. job openings dropped in November to the lowest level in more than two years, the latest evidence that the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hike campaign is continuing to cool the labor market.

That is a sign that the economy is getting worse.

And more large companies continue to lay off workers.  For example, Xerox just announced that it will be laying off 15 percent of its workforce…

Xerox on Wednesday announced it will cut 15% of its workforce as part of a plan to implement a new organizational structure and operating model.

Xerox, which offers digital printing and document management technologies, had about 20,500 employees as of Dec. 31, 2022, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Based on this figure, Wednesday’s layoffs will affect about 3,075 employees.

Shares of Xerox closed down more than 12% following the announcement Wednesday.

So what can we do to “get the economy going again”?

Well, we can follow the example of the federal government and borrow and spend even more money.

Of course much of the nation is already drowning in debt.  According to one recent survey, only about half the country will be able to pay off their December credit card balances in full…

Only half of America’s credit card customers believe they can pay off their December balance in full, according to an industry index, signaling a low ebb in “credit card confidence” as the nation emerges from the holidays.

The LendingTree Credit Card Confidence Index, a monthly survey published since 2018 by the personal finance site, dipped to 51% in December, an all-time low.

In a nationally representative survey of 1,514 cardholders, only 51% voiced confidence that they could pay off their card balance this month. In November, the Confidence Index stood at 58%.

Our forefathers handed us the keys to the greatest economic machine in world history.

But that was never enough for us.

We always had to have more, and so we just kept borrowing and spending.

Now the endgame has arrived, and it is going to be excruciatingly painful.

U.S. consumers are drowning in record levels of debt, U.S. corporations are drowning in record levels of debt, state and local governments are drowning in record levels of debt, and the federal government is drowning in record levels of debt.

America’s empire of money was nice while it lasted, but now the jig is up and the collapse that is looming is truly going to be one for the history books.

*  *  *

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

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

In the year 2023, the highest recorded rates of homelessness on average were found in states that lean Democratic, as well as the District of Columbia.

As the Daily Caller reports, the data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was released in December.

Although not actually a state, Washington D.C. had the highest rate of homelessness in the country, at 73.3 for every 10,000 residents, which amounts to roughly 4,922 total homeless.

New York came in second with 52.4 homeless people for every 10,000, or 103,200 total. Vermont came in third with 50.9 per 10,000, or about 3,295. Rounding out the top five was Oregon, in fourth place, with 50 per 10,000, equating to about 20,000 people; and California, with 46.5 per 10,000, equivalent to 181,399 people.

The city of San Francisco in particular saw a surge in homeless tent encampments in the aftermath of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic, reaching a record high of over 500. The city of New York has also faced a similar crisis, though the numbers are more due to illegal aliens than homeless residents, with over 70,000 illegals currently being housed in homeless shelters or emergency shelters.

Even though the city of Los Angeles has pledged to spend $1 billion to combat homelessness as part of Mayor Karen Bass’s (D-Calif.) “Inside Safe” program, the number of homeless encampments in the city has increased by 40.

The nationwide rate of homelessness rose by 12% from 2022 to 2023, recording the highest-ever number of homeless Americans since these numbers first started being tracked in 2007; the current total is approximately 653,000.

There was a particularly alarming rise in the number of young people who became homeless, with over 34,7000 people under the age of 25 identifying as homeless at least once; this marks a 15% increase from the previous year.

By contrast, the lowest rates of homelessness in the country were found in states that lean Republican.

The state with the lowest rate is Mississippi, at just 3.3 per 10,000 people, followed by Louisiana’s 6.9 per 10,000, or roughly 3,169 total people, and Alabama’s 3,300 homeless people.

President Biden’s first major campaign event of 2024 is set to take place in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania. The president intends to persuade the American people – in a speech – that former President Trump, his most likely presidential election opponent, is a threat to democracy. 

Biden is expected to speak at Montgomery County Community College, about 15 miles from the Revolutionary War encampment of Valley Forge, on Friday afternoon, one day before the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot.

Biden’s aides told Reuters that the speech’s theme will be about “preserving democracy.” 

Another aide told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce that the president worked very hard crafting his speech after meeting with historians and scholars at the White House this week.

The president is expected to call Trump and MAGA Americans ‘far-right extremists’ and a genuine threat to the freedoms on which the country was founded. 

The Biden-Harris campaign said Montgomery County Community College is a “stone’s throw” away from the Revolutionary War encampment of Valley Forge. This is where then-General George Washington, leading the Continental Army, “transformed a disorganized alliance of colonial militias into a cohesive coalition united in their fight for our democracy” 250 years ago. 

“This Saturday will mark the three-year anniversary of when, with encouragement from Donald Trump, a violent mob breached our nation’s Capitol,” Biden campaign manager Julie-Chavez Rodriguez told reporters earlier. 

Rodriguez continued, “It was the first time in our nation’s history that a president tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”

“Let’s all take a moment to sit with the gravity and significance of the moment we’re all living through,” Biden communications director Michael Tyler told reporters later. 

Tyler added: “The leading candidate of a major party in the United States is running for president so that he can systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy.”

Whether the Biden-Harris campaign’s big bet – to come out swinging and label Trump and MAGA Americans a “threat to democracy” – in a politically polarized country – pays off – remains to be seen in a period where polling data for the president remains dismal.  

The latest polling figures from Gallup show Biden’s year-end approval rating is worse than any other modern-day president. 

Meanwhile, Trump holds a marginal, two-point lead over Biden, 38% to 36%, with 26% of respondents not sure who they will vote for, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

And the bookies have it in favor of Trump…

Democrats have abandoned the failed ‘Bidenomics’ narrative for now and are pushing Trump as a “threat to democracy” narrative. 

Here’s Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.’s latest piece in The Atlantic: 

The threat to our democracy is real, present, and urgent. The parable of January 6 reminds us that our precious democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with their care. We all share a responsibility to preserve American democracy, which Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”

While Democrats flood the internet with mindless propaganda about Jan. 6, we are offering readers a balanced debate tomorrow evening with Alex Jones, Darren Beattie, Glenn Greenwald on one side, and Ed and Brian Krassenstein, as well as YouTuber “Destiny” on the other. 

We hope to get closer to the truth of what happened on that day. 

*    *    *

Watch Biden Live: