Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

France’s recent ban on sales of the iPhone 12 due to radiation concerns has sparked apprehension throughout Europe about the health risks of cellphone radiation exposure. While U.S. tests focus narrowly on whether phones heat tissue, some experts argue they fail to show the whole picture.

“The same thing is happening here,” she added, noting that the tests were initially set up with spacers, as if phones were in holsters or holders.

When the French government tests cellphones as they are actually used, “like in your hand [or] next to your body,” Ms. Davis said, the phones exceed European Union (EU) radiation limits. France has pulled or required software updates for 42 other cellphone models that emit excessive radiation since 2017, The Telegraph reported.

The United States lacks this oversight, according to Ms. Davis.

The telecommunications industry has almost complete control of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), according to a report published by Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics (pdf). A telecom lobbying group executive boasted its lobbyists meet FCC officials 500 times annually, the report stated.

“We don’t have any programs to test phones after they’ve been approved,” Ms. Davis said. “And the approval process is self-regulated because of this revolving door that takes place between the FCC and the telecom industry.”

Ms. Davis said if phones underwent drug testing, they’d be illegal. She warned of the danger cellphones pose, similar to certain drugs found to cause cancer and other health problems, in her 2010 book, “Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family,” and still stands by it today.

Overnight and into Friday the Syrian Army pummeled Idlib province with artillery and missiles, in retaliation for a Thursday drone attack conducted by the region’s al-Qaeda groups which scored a direct hit on a crowded military graduation ceremony at Homs military college.

Syria’s health ministry in the immediate aftermath said the drone attack killed 80 people and wounded 240 more. Al Jazeera and other regional sources have cited over 100 dead, which included military officers and their family members. At least six children were among the deceased, in what may be the single deadliest terror attack inside Syria in years.

Multiple videos later circulated of major counterattacks by Syrian forces on al-Qaeda occupied Idlib, in a rare large assault.

Various hardline jihadist groups have held Idlib since 2015, at which time they were helped in the takeover by the United States and its allies, in an operation directed out of southern Turkey.

A Syrian military statement alluded to insurgents having received help from “international forces” in the past:

Syria’s military said in an earlier statement that drones laden with explosives targeted the ceremony packed with young officers and their families as it was wrapping up. Without naming any particular group, the military accused insurgents “backed by known international forces” of the attack and said “it will respond with full force and decisiveness to these terrorist organizations, wherever they exist.”

NATO member Turkey continues to be a main backer of the jihadist insurgents who hold Idlib province. 

More than 100 people were killed in a drone attack on the Syrian government military college in the western city of Homs on Thursday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor pic.twitter.com/W1Lbqr63xz

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 6, 2023

Regional sources have said Syrian had help from Russia allied forces in pounding Idlib, which is ongoing into Friday. “Airstrikes pounded the positions of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and the Emigrants Brigade, foreign extremist militias consisting of Chinese Uyghur and Chechen militants,” wrote The Cradle.

“Syrian fighter jets, in coordination with the Russian air force, targeted the Al-Ghab plain and the town of Areeha in the Idlib governorate, as well as the city of Jisr al-Shughour – which fell to US-backed extremist groups in 2015,” the publication added.

BREAKING 🚨

The Syrian Army retaliated strongly on the positions of the Al-Qaeda terrorists in southern Idlib, from which the UAV attack that murdered over 60 cadets and civilians came. pic.twitter.com/RnTWJk5nP6

— Kevork Almassian🇸🇾🇦🇲 (@KevorkAlmassian) October 5, 2023

It is believed that the TIP and Emigrants Brigade “are the two armed groups that have the technological capabilities to conduct drone attacks”; however, Damascus didn’t name a specific group as being behind the devastating drone attack. In prior years whenever Syrian and Russian forces prepared to retake Idlib province from the armed insurgents, the the United States and its allies have threatened military intervention.

Authored by Kevin Mooney via RealClear Wire,

Washington’s revolving door is getting a fresh green paint job: Federal architects of a controversial new rule requiring businesses to measure their carbon footprints throughout their supply chains have joined a start-up company poised to reap millions by performing those calculations.

At least three ranking Securities and Exchange Commission officials have joined Persefoni, a company formed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring such footprints of large business enterprises. 

Documents show that the SEC relied on input from the for-profit company to draft the proposed rule. Some critics argue that the estimates from Persefoni low-balled the price tags unrealistically for such accounting to make them more politically palatable.

Persefoni, billing itself as “The Platform for Carbon Accounting – Built For Climate Disclosure,” and similar outfits are emerging as their own service industry as they stand to profit from the new rule, since most companies do not have the staff or expertise to calculate their carbon footprints.

While environmentalists have hailed the rule as an important step in forcing companies to grapple with their impact on the climate by exposing it to the public, critics argue that it goes far beyond the SEC’s core mission of protecting investors. In voting against a draft of the proposal, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, a Trump appointee, said it “forces investors to view companies through the eyes of a vocal set of stakeholders” – as opposed to traditional shareholders – “for whom a company’s climate reputation is of equal or greater importance than a company’s financial performance.”

The SEC and Persefoni each declined to comment for this article.

Persefoni appears to have had great influence over the proposed rule. Public records from the SEC show the commission held six meetings with representatives from Persefoni and Ceres – a prominent investor advocacy group that supports such climate disclosure – from September 2021 to June 2022. These include:

• Meetings on Sept. 14, Nov. 23, and Nov. 30 between Persefoni and the SEC office of the chair, Gary Gensler;
• Meetings on March 28 and April 5 between Ceres and the Office of Commissioner Allison Herren Lee;
• And one joint meeting involving Persefoni, Ceres, and ERM with the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis, the Division of Corporation Finance, and the Office of the Chief Accountant.

Lee, a Democrat who joined the SEC as a staff attorney in 2005, was appointed by President Trump as one of the SEC’s five commissioners in 2019 – filling a Democratic vacancy on the commission, which was structured to be nonpartisan. President Biden named her as acting chair in 2021, and she took charge of the public comment period for the proposed rule.

Lee stepped down on March 15, 2022, just six days before the commission unveiled its proposed climate rule. In May 2023, she joined Persefoni as a member of the firm’s “sustainability advisory board.”

At Persefoni, she reunited with Kristina Wyatt, who joined the company’s board in March 2022. Previously, Wyatt had served the SEC as senior counsel for climate and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). In this capacity, she worked directly on developing the proposed rule. Wyatt was also listed as the direct contact when the commission circulated a request for information from the public regarding climate-change disclosures.

In December 2022, Persefoni hired another SEC alum, Emily Pierce, to serve as associate general counsel and vice president of global regulatory climate disclosure.

By all accounts, the SEC leaned heavily on Persefoni’s cost-benefit analysis of the pending rule, which essentially establishes a parallel disclosure regime for the SEC – all in the name of mitigating climate change.

The SEC proposal has many parts, but the most controversial and cumbersome involves the requirement that larger companies must provide soup-to-nuts calculations of their carbon emissions, including those from thousands of their suppliers operating across hundreds of countries.

As RealClearInvestigations has previously reported, to come up with numbers for Cocoa Puffs cereal, General Mills might have to calculate the emissions from “cocoa farms in Africa, corn fields in the U.S., or sugar plantations in Latin America. Then thousands of processors, transporters, packagers, distributors, office workers, and retailers join the supply chain before a kid in Minnesota, where General Mills is based, pours the cereal into a bowl.”

Since most of the emissions that must be measured are not directly generated by the companies, the calculations amount to a herculean task. This is where an outfit like Persefoni comes in.

When the commission first published its proposal in March 2022, it provided corporate compliance cost estimates that ranged from $460,000 to $640,000 during the first year. Accurate estimates are crucial for companies to determine if they are equipped to comply. But there is considerable doubt on that front.

Persefoni stands out as the only source that provides any estimate anywhere close to the SEC’s $640,000 figure, for which the commission does not provide any citations or methodologies to show how it arrived at its estimates. Persefoni is cited within the proposal nine times, but the firm is not cited in connection with the SEC’s stated ranges for compliance costs on page 373. In fact, no source is cited or linked as a resource for the SEC’s figures.

Rupert Darwall, an author and energy policy analyst affiliated with the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute and a senior fellow at the RealClearFoundation, has been critical of what he views as a lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the SEC, which gives cover to outside partners that stand to gain once the rule takes effect.

“Persefoni has a glaring conflict of interest in low-balling cost of compliance estimates to the SEC, which the SEC should have disclosed and been mindful of. Instead, the SEC put undue weight on these implausibly low estimates,” Darwall said. Estimates of indirect emissions across supply chains “are especially risky for filers as there’s no limiting principle and, contrary to longstanding accounting principles, multiple companies account for the same emission.” Darwall also makes the point that Persefoni’s low-cost estimates are “at odds of what it’s been telling investors about the revenues it projects from the rule.”

In early 2022, the carbon accounting firm partnered with the environmental activist group Ceres to commission from consulting firm ERM a compliance cost study, which was published in May 2022. This is where Persefoni produced estimates in line with the SEC’s $640,000 figure. That same month, Persefoni submitted a comment letter in response to the SEC proposal, which included its joint study with Ceres.

Although the letter is dated May 20, 2022, the SEC did not publish it until the final week of the comment period ending June 17, 2022, curtailing the period for public scrutiny of the Persefoni estimates.

With Persefoni’s letter intermixed with roughly 1,140 other comments, some saw this as an effort to bury the firm’s relationship with the SEC.

One critic is Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

“The collusion between the SEC and a select group of outside parties gives new meaning to the term climate cartel,” Cohen said in an interview. “Not only is there a hand-in-glove relationship between the SEC and outfits like Persefoni, Ceres, and ERM that stand to benefit financially from the climate disclosure rule the agency is set to release. They also appear to have had a hand in drafting that rule. The SEC and its cronies are so closely entangled that they are effectively acting as one.”

Knowing Which Way the Windfall Blows

While the SEC and Persefoni would not comment for this article, Steven Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, told RCI that there is not any conflict of interest at work. He pointed out that Ceres has been advocating for a climate disclosure rule with the SEC for the past two decades.

“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission received 15,000 public comments around this rule,” Rothstein said in an email. “Among the most comments than any in the SEC’s 90-year history. Everyone has a vested interest in the future of their investments and retirement savings. The comments will make the final rule stronger and more robust. The investment community is overwhelmingly supportive of more climate information as a way to reduce material financial risk.”

Persefoni executives have not been reticent to discuss the windfall they expect to experience if the rule is finalized. Speaking to CNBC in March 2022, Kentaro Kawamori, the firm’s CEO, discussed the advantages that would likely accrue from having a software platform that enables companies to analyze, manage, and account for their carbon footprint. Kawamori draws a comparison with Salesforce, the cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco.

“You’re going to have a Salesforce-type of success,” he said. “Just like Salesforce created the system of record for the customer record, companies like us – you will have one or two big winners – will create a system of record for the carbon accounting piece.”

Persefoni’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Tim Mohin, went even further, telling Politico that larger companies will almost certainly need outside help to comply. “Really they have a very short runway to get their act together,” he said. “We’ve gotten lots of calls from these large companies saying, ‘Tell us about what you do and how we can work with you.’”

Mohin went on to describe Persefoni as the “TurboTax of greenhouse gas reporting.”

As it stands, Persefoni is already doing pretty well. On Oct. 28, 2021, Persefoni announced a $101 million raise in its Series B financing round with its long-time investor, NGP Energy Technology Partners, returning to participate. But the oversized influence Persefoni apparently has been exerting within the SEC is beginning to attract congressional interest.

In June, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-K.Y.) and Senate Banking Committee ranking member Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) sent a joint letter to the SEC requesting documents and information, including “all nonpublic records referring or relating to the climate consultancy, climate accounting, or sustainability-related organizations Persefoni, Ceres, ERM, or South Pole since January 20, 2021.”

As for the rule itself, Cohen, the policy analyst with the National Center, sees “an effort by the SEC and its climate-cartel cronies to fashion a climate accounting standard to fit the inherently amorphous notion of a carbon footprint.”

He continued: “Companies will have to disclose their ‘climate impacts’ in accordance with the SEC’s purely arbitrary requirements. The arrangement will put more power into the hands of the SEC, enrich the likes of Persefoni, and condemn regulated businesses to climate serfdom.”

Via The Gatestone Institute,

• No country in history has ever really tested free speech: has seen whether the marketplace of ideas works or whether we can really have a society without censorship; where every idea is tested only on its merits, rather than for political benefit. This cannot be a right-left issue. — Alan Dershowitz.

• You [Elon] are trying, for the first time, a great experiment to see whether we can survive with a marketplace of ideas, without censorship, where all thoughts and all ideas are treated equally. — Dershowitz

• What we need is to create a circle in which things that are illegal, such as abusing children, are outside the circle, but anything else has to be inside the circle. So if something is permitted for one idea or “-ism,” it has to be permitted for the others. This is exactly what universities are failing to do. They are creating a line on which favored groups fall on one side and disfavored groups fall on the other side. — Dershowitz.

• People will always want to censor but not be censored. — Dershowitz.

• I am in favor of no prior censorship except things that are overtly illegal. Let the marketplace decide and make sure that there is an opportunity for everyone to answer. One cannot draw a line on hate speech. One person’s hate speech is another person’s love speech. It is important to open up the marketplace of ideas. — Dershowitz.

• [Y]ou can post anything on the platform [“X”] even if it is hateful, provided that it is lawful. But then there is a separate question of what is promoted or not promoted…. Our current approach is to say, okay, you can say things that are hateful but legal on the platform, but we are not going to recommend them to others. — Elon Musk.

• Advertisers, certainly, have a right to say what content they will appear next to because that’s their right too, but not to dictate what can be said on the platform. — Musk.

• Today the greatest danger to free speech comes from the left…. At the moment, it is the left that is educating our future leaders, so the left poses a far greater danger of censoring free speech and of skewing the marketplace of ideas. “X” has to be perceived as equally open to both sides. — Dershowitz.

• That is our aspiration, that is our goal. Now the reality of it for anyone who is paying attention — and I’m sure you saw this — was that prior to the acquisition, Twitter was very left and getting even more left. They had a massive thumb on the scale on elections. Frankly, worldwide on the side of left, and would suppress Republican voices at a rate, sometimes perhaps an order of magnitude greater than Democrats. There was a tremendous amount of bias. Now we are moving from a system where there was a massive electoring bias to a system that is now more inclusive, where at least, say, 80% of America — perhaps the world — could be on the platform and feel that it is finally a level playing field, fair to people with a wide range of views. That is our goal and that is what we are doing now. — Musk.

• If you start on the left and you move to the center, you are necessarily moving right. Our goal is not to move to the right; it is that we are moving right in order to get to the center. — Musk.

• [Y]our historic neutrality might be destroyed if “X” is not perceived as being from the center. So everything you do needs to be designed to create a neutral space… where the only answer to false speech is true speech, and where the marketplace determines how many people listen to it… We have to have more confidence in our ability to answer bad speech. I do not want to censor my enemies. — Dershowitz.

• [W]e actually have massively broadened what can be said on the platform… but we have tried to guide our or algorithm to promote things that are positive more than things that are negative; frankly, to have a love bias, if you will. This is not in terms of what can be said, but in terms of what is promoted to others. If somebody wants to accuse me of saying it is wrong to have a slight bias towards love and positivity, then I am rightly accused of that. — Musk.

• As I have said, I think the overarching goal is how do how do we make this platform serve as a positive force for humanity. I think the free exchange of ideas does result in a positive force for humanity — if somebody feels that even if their ideas are wrong, they are not being squashed or censored. I think being squashed and censored breeds hatred and resentment and simply sends people to “hate echo chambers” that are outside of the mainstream. I think where you get the sort of people who go kill and do mass shooting, is because they are in some sort of “hate echo chamber.” — Musk.

• I believe one is always wrong to some degree; we simply aspire to be a little less wrong over time and eventually we can get to a really good place. The idea is how do we make “X” a positive force for humanity where we can increase the sum of human knowledge. It’s a place where I hope people would know that if their ideas are based on false premises, especially hateful ideas, that perhaps we can point out that the reason that they have this hatred is because of things that are not true. It is like actually you are hating this or that group for things that are not true, or perhaps, in some cases, things that happened a long time ago for which it was a great-great-grandfather or something, that that did the bad thing. — Musk.

• I think there is a lot of wisdom in forgiveness and turning the other cheek… I think it is actually a sign of strength. By the same token if you turn the other cheek and you’re just getting slapped all day, at a certain point you stop turning the cheek, but the general notion of forgiveness is incredibly important. Do not hold some grudge for you know a long time, in some cases centuries. Let it go and, to take another take a quote from the New Testament, the truth shall set you free, as John said. — Musk.

Elon Musk and Alan Dershowitz. (Photos by Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images and Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Alan Dershowitz: Let me start with a statement that many will disagree with. No country in history has ever really tested free speech: has seen whether the marketplace of ideas works or whether we can really have a society without censorship; where every idea is tested only on its merits, rather than for political benefit. This cannot be a right-left issue. Elon, you may be the first person who has really tried. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln all compromised. You are trying, for the first time, a great experiment to see whether we can survive with a marketplace of ideas, without censorship, where all thoughts and all ideas are treated equally. For instance, where there are judgments on the basis of whether something is pro-right, pro-life, anti-Jewish, pro-Christian, anti-Christian. What we need is to create a circle in which things that are illegal, such as abusing children, are outside the circle, but anything else has to be inside the circle. So if something is permitted for one idea or “-ism,” it has to be permitted for the others. This is exactly what universities are failing to do. They are creating a line on which favored groups fall on one side and disfavored groups fall on the other side.

Can one define the kind of speech that must be permitted — the legal kind — without focusing on the content of the speech itself? Can one do that without focusing on whether it is right or left or politically correct or anything of that kind? One has to create a framework that is absolutely neutral. Then maybe fewer people will want to censor because they will realize that they will not be able to have “free speech for me but not for thee.” People will always want to censor but not be censored.

No idea should be censored. Oliver Wendell Holmes put it well. He said every idea is an incitement. There should be no lines between advocacy and incitement. We fail every time we have tried to do that — most recently, with former President Trump’s ill-advised, but in my view, but constitutionally protected “January 6 speech”. We also failed during McCarthyism as well as in trying to distinguish between lawful advocacy of revolution and unlawful incitement of violence.

Do not listen to special pleaders on behalf of minorities. Do not listen to the people who are self-serving and want, say, to serve the Jewish community, or serve Israel or the Palestinians. I am in favor of no prior censorship except things that are overtly illegal. Let the marketplace decide and make sure that there is an opportunity for everyone to answer. One cannot draw a line on hate speech. One person’s hate speech is another person’s love speech. It is important to open up the marketplace of ideas. If everyone is allowed to express ideas openly, no one is going to censor the “enemy” when they know that next, he or she will be the one being censored.

Elon Musk: We are experimenting with this idea of freedom of speech, but not reach. Meaning that you can post anything on the platform even if it is hateful, provided that it is lawful. But then there is a separate question of what is promoted or not promoted, what enters into our recommendation engine, and if so, with what promise? Our current approach is to say, okay, you can say things that are hateful but legal on the platform, but we are not going to recommend them to others. This is the current approach that we have.

Alan Dershowitz: That can be abused and become a form of censorship too.

Elon Musk: I agree. Advertisers, certainly, have a right to say what content they will appear next to because that’s their right too, but not to dictate what can be said on the platform.

Alan Dershowitz: I would agree with that. There is one other danger: of “X” being perceived as a right-wing reaction to left-wing censorship. I am — and identify — more with the left than the right, but I oppose strongly efforts by both the left and the right to censor. It would be a very serious mistake if “X” or you were perceived as some way implicitly favoring the right over the left. Perhaps you might have a small group of advisors, who represent different perspectives. Today the greatest danger to free speech comes from the left.

Elon Musk: Yes, agree.

Alan Dershowitz: Violence comes from both sides. The right-wing attack abortion clinics and kill Jews in synagogues. The 2020 “summer of love” came from the left: they burned down parts of cities, tore down statues, vandalized buildings; according to reports, numerous Americans were killed, including retired police Captain Daniel Dorn; thousands of police officers were assaulted, many sustaining injuries.

At the moment, it is the left that is educating our future leaders, so the left poses a far greater danger of censoring free speech and of skewing the marketplace of ideas. “X” has to be perceived as equally open to both sides.

Elon Musk: That is our aspiration, that is our goal. Now the reality of it for anyone who is paying attention — and I’m sure you saw this — was that prior to the acquisition, Twitter was very left and getting even more left. They had a massive thumb on the scale on elections. Frankly, worldwide on the side of left, and would suppress Republican voices at a rate, sometimes perhaps an order of magnitude greater than Democrats. There was a tremendous amount of bias. Now we are moving from a system where there was a massive electoring bias to a system that is now more inclusive, where at least, say, 80% of America — perhaps the world — could be on the platform and feel that it is finally a level playing field, fair to people with a wide range of views. That is our goal and that is what we are doing now.

Given that it started so far off the left, it is accurate to say that it is moving right because it is moving to the center. So technically it is true that it is moving right. Not that it is suddenly popped over and instantaneously became, you know, from a left-wing propaganda arm to a right-wing propaganda arm but necessarily if it was pretty damn far on the left, it is going to have to move to the right in order to get to the center, and that is that is our goal.

As Einstein would say, all motion is relative. If you start on the left and you move to the center, you are necessarily moving right. Our goal is not to move to the right; it is that we are moving right in order to get to the center.

Alan Dershowitz: But some people perceive this as a movement to right. You might want to make it absolutely clear that you are the only platform in the world that does not take a “left -right” position — that yours is the platform that is pro-free speech, and that you are the first person in history ever to try to create a true marketplace of ideas. John Stuart Mill advocated it, Jefferson advocated it. But nobody ever achieved it. You are in a position where you can achieve it. I am just concerned that your historic neutrality might be destroyed if “X” is not perceived as being from the center. So everything you do needs to be designed to create a neutral space — a marketplace of ideas where the only answer to false speech is true speech, and where the marketplace determines how many people listen to it.

We have to have more confidence in our ability to answer bad speech. I do not want to censor my enemies.

Elon Musk: Absolutely, and to be clear we actually have massively broadened what can be said on the platform. But we have — and perhaps you disagree with this — but we have tried to guide our or algorithm to promote things that are positive more than things that are negative; frankly, to have a love bias, if you will. This is not in terms of what can be said, but in terms of what is promoted to others. If somebody wants to accuse me of saying it is wrong to have a slight bias towards love and positivity, then I am rightly accused of that.

I think our overlap in agreement is very high so I would certainly value your opinion in the future because this is something that we should debate frequently. As I have said, I think the overarching goal is how do how do we make this platform serve as a positive force for humanity. I think the free exchange of ideas does result in a positive force for humanity — if somebody feels that even if their ideas are wrong, they are not being squashed or censored. I think being squashed and censored breeds hatred and resentment and simply sends people to “hate echo chambers” that are outside of the mainstream. I think where you get the sort of people who go kill and do mass shooting, is because they are in some sort of “hate echo chamber.”

Alan Dershowitz: I think we all should sacrifice our own parochial interests, even on issues like anti-Semitism, to a far greater humanitarian interest in promoting open and complete dialogue. Complete free speech in the marketplace of ideas: only you can do that.

Elon Musk: Well, thank you. I’ll do my best here and your sort of advice would certainly be very much appreciated. I believe one is always wrong to some degree; we simply aspire to be a little less wrong over time and eventually we can get to a really good place. The idea is how do we make “X” a positive force for humanity where we can increase the sum of human knowledge. It’s a place where I hope people would know that if their ideas are based on false premises, especially hateful ideas, that perhaps we can point out that the reason that they have this hatred is because of things that are not true. It is like actually you are hating this or that group for things that are not true, or perhaps, in some cases, things that happened a long time ago for which it was a great-great-grandfather or something, that that did the bad thing.

I think there is a lot of wisdom in forgiveness and turning the other cheek. When I was younger, I actually thought turning the other cheek was not a sign of weakness. Now, I think it is actually a sign of strength. By the same token if you turn the other cheek and you’re just getting slapped all day, at a certain point you stop turning the cheek, but the general notion of forgiveness is incredibly important. Do not hold some grudge for you know a long time, in some cases centuries. Let it go and, to take another take a quote from the New Testament, the truth shall set you free, as John said. I am a big believer in that the road to morality is truth and curiosity. And if you care about truth and you are curious, I think this is a natural outflowing from that.

Authored by Neal McCluskey via RealClear Wire,

This week is Banned Books Week. Supported by several groups, including the American Library Association and the National Book Foundation, the week is intended to alert the public to threats to what Americans read, especially in public schools. Long a rather quiet affair, over the last few years “banning” has become a major issue, with one group often portrayed as the culprit: conservatives.

But it is not conservatives, or “banners” of any political stripe, that are the problem. It is public schooling itself.

You are probably familiar with the typical battle: parents at school board meetings calling for the removal of books from libraries, recommended reading lists, or class assignments. Members of Moms for Liberty, founded by three mothers and former school board members, might be the best known activists fighting to restrict books such as Gender Queer: A Memoir, about author Maia Kobabe’s journey of sexual discovery.

The many battles that have been fought over Gender Queer, which free expression watchdog PEN America reports was the fifth most challenged book in the last school year, are classic culture war: a clash of irreconcilable values.

Supporters of stocking the book argue that kids of all genders need to see people like themselves in schools, and other students need to understand that people of all genders are full parts of society. Supporters are driven by values – tolerance and inclusivity.

Opponents argue that the book, which includes illustrated depictions of sexual activity, is inappropriate for children too young to thoughtfully grapple with it, and pornographic. They too are driven by values – the desire to protect children’s innocence, and a belief that some sexual activity is inherently immoral.

But why must groups such as Moms for Liberty attack such books in public schools?

Because conservative families, just like liberal, must pay for public schools – government schools – which are inherently politically controlled. To get what they think is right – schools where children cannot peruse, or be taught from, books with immoral content – they must keep liberals from getting what they think right: inclusive collections.

Liberals have also sought to sideline books, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird which include the “N-word” and some say promote white saviorism. In 2020, the Burbank school district in heavily blue California told English teachers that they could not teach those books and several others. In 2022, the Mukilteo district in solidly Democratic Snohomish County, Washington, ended required reading of Mockingbird.

Conflict over literature in public schools is not one-sided. It also is not new.

Founding-generation luminaries Benjamin Rush and Noah Webster, in promoting the idea of public schooling, disagreed whether reading the Bible in schools should be encouraged because religion was essential, or discouraged because using scripture as a pedagogical tool cheapened it. A few decades later, as public schooling started to grow, Roman Catholics and Protestants got into heated, sometimes even bloody, conflicts over whose version of the Bible would be allowed..

And books are just one of numerous public schooling culture war battlegrounds.

Teaching the origins of life is arguably the quintessential conflict, immortalized in the play Inherit the Wind about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. These fights—either an intelligent being created life or not—pit religious conservatives against many liberals., and while they have subsided somewhat, in the mid-2000s the town of Dover, Pennsylvania was wrenched apart by a dispute over whether students should be told that evolution is a “theory,” not a “fact.” In February of this year, a bill was introduced in West Virginia to let teachers discuss Intelligent Design.

Today we see constant culture war in public schools. The Cato Institute’s Public Schooling Battle Map contains more than 3,700 fights, including recent throwdowns in Florida over Advanced Placement African American Studies and the state’s African American history standards, the latter of which includes an item saying that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” They are fights not just over facts, but whether the country is inherently good or bad.

Of course, there’s sex education. New Jersey, for instance, created new standards in 2020, including on gender identity, and numerous districts have been embroiled in conflicts over adopting them. Then there are battles over prayer, pitting religious devotion against secularism, which we have seen in districts from North Carolina to California.

Book “banning” in public schools does not spring from some conservative cabal. As battles fought all over the county attest, such actions are inevitable when people with opposing values – any values – must all pay for government schools.

Neal McCluskey directs the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom and is the author of The Fractured Schoolhouse: Reexamining Education for a Free, Equal, and Harmonious Society

People have various motivations for starting their businesses.

Some seek higher income. Others are looking for a balance between family life and career. In some situations, entrepreneurship may be the only way to fight unemployment.

In this infographic from Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, OnDeck uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Annual Business Survey to highlight the most unique reasons for why people start businesses in each U.S. state.

Editor’s note: The map tracks the most popular unique reasons to start a business. In this case, “unique” is defined by how much a particular reason stands out from the U.S. average across all states. For example, in Delaware, more respondents said they started businesses because they “couldn’t find jobs” (11.6%) than in any other state (U.S. average: 7.3%). So, even though it’s not numerically the most popular reason overall, it is the unique reason that stands out the most for that state.

The Most Popular Unique Reasons to Start a Business

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, entrepreneurship rates in the U.S. have been trending upward over the past two decades.

In fact, despite multi-billion dollar companies getting the spotlight, 99.9% of businesses across the U.S. are small businesses, employing over 60 million people.

Wanting to make more income is the biggest unique factor in starting a business in 14 states, including some of the states with the highest unemployment rates, like New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Alabama.

In Utah, a higher percentage (65.4%) of entrepreneurs start businesses to achieve a work-life balance than in any other state. Notably, Utah is known for having the largest average family size, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, and has a strong religious presence.

On the other hand, in Florida, more business founders (69.2%) start their businesses to become their own bosses than anywhere else.

New York and California are states where entrepreneurs mentioned that they couldn’t find a job as a key unique reason to start a business. In fact, both states lead as the worst for job seekers, as shown in another Visual Capitalist graphic.

Small Businesses to Remain Vital

Despite all the different reasons to start a business, the fact is that entrepreneurship is still crucial for the U.S. economy.

Over the last 25 years, small businesses have added over 12.9 million jobs. For perspective, that’s about two-thirds of the jobs added to the economy.

In 2021, a record-breaking 5.4 million new business applications were filed in the U.S.

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden defended his administration’s decision to waive federal statutes in South Texas to allow for the construction of 20 miles of U.S.-Mexico border wall, stating on Oct. 5 he had no choice but to use previously approved federal funds for the project.

President Biden said that he had tried to “redirect” the money from the border wall project—allocation under the Trump administration.

“The money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect that money,” President Biden said in his address. “They didn’t. They wouldn’t. In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” he said.

When the president was asked a follow-up question about whether he thought the border wall was effective, he replied with a firm “no.”

Similarly, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered a clear answer to reporters about the administration’s stance during an Oct. 5 press briefing, saying: “We believe there are better, effective ways to secure the border.

“We asked Congress to reappropriate the fund, but they refused to do it. We need better technology, not a wall.”

When asked repeatedly about the issue, the press secretary seemed frustrated, insisting that the president has been consistent in his approach to border security.

White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt later said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “The funds for 20 miles of border reinforcements were appropriated in 2019 before [Biden] took office.

“He called on Congress to reappropriate the funds for smarter, more effective enforcement uses. Congress failed to do so,” LeBolt added.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted the announcement on the U.S. Federal Registry with few specifics regarding the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a Border Patrol sector with “high illegal entry.”

DHS has waived a number of federal rules—including the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act—in order to begin construction using 2019 appropriations from Congress to build a wall along the southern border.

Environmental law violations that could otherwise be reviewed and possibly litigated are waived.

The announcement did not include any maps, but one that was made public during the comment period showed that the construction might extend the current border barrier system by as much as 20 miles.

About 450 miles of barriers were constructed along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021, all under the Trump administration.

After the Biden administration temporarily halted them at the beginning of his presidency, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott revived them as part of his immigration crackdown at the state level.

The dramatic increase has brought them to a point where more than 2,000 people a day are seeking asylum, exceeding shelter capacity and straining resources, according to Mr. Leeser’s comments at a news conference in late September.

The influx of primarily Venezuelan asylum seekers is part of a larger influx of illegal immigrants who traveled perilous bus and freight railroad routes to Mexican border towns near San Diego, California, and the Texas cities of El Paso and Eagle Pass.

Mr. Lesser stated that El Paso intends to open a new shelter and chartered five buses on Oct. 7 to transport illegal immigrants to New York, Chicago, and Denver.

Similarly, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared an “invasion” at the southern border due to the surge in illegal immigration, pointing at President Biden’s policies and ordering the National Guard and law enforcement to assist with the crisis.

“I officially declared an invasion at our border because of Biden’s policies,” Mr. Abbott wrote in a post on X, on Sept. 20.

“We deployed the Texas National Guard, DPS, and local law enforcement. We are building a border wall, razor wire, and marine barriers. We are also repelling migrants.”

The governor’s office has also deployed more buses to ship illegal migrants to sanctuary cities, such as New York and Chicago, saying the state is “at capacity.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

The word “chaos” has been the buzzword this week in Washington, largely directed toward Rep. Matt Gaetz’s successful coup against former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and the resulting void in Republican leadership. In an era where most outcomes in Washington are predictable, best illustrated by yet another kick-the-can-down-the-road continuing resolution on spending passed the preceding weekend, the first successful use of a motion to vacate the speakership in American history greatly shocked the system.

In hindsight, it should not have been. For more than a decade, there has been a constant tension between Republican voters and the priorities of its leadership. McCarthy similarly saw his previous two Republican predecessors resign from their positions after it was clear they lost the support of their conferences. Even Donald Trump, who maintains a strong hold on the Republican electorate, oversaw a government culpable for most of Red America’s frustrations with Washington: runaway spending, the devastation of covid tyranny, systemic corruption, and general impotency from the federal government in acting on conservative concerns from border security to the administrative state and the progressive capture of all levels of education.

Ironically, it was The CARES Act signed by Trump that provided $400 million in funding to help “fortify” the 2020 election.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has been the dominant federal force in achieving major policy wins. Obamacare was passed and then found to be unmovable. Enormous subsidies have been created to enrich loyal areas of support, including green energy sectors, Big Pharma companies, teachers’ unions, and a rainbow of various “minority empowerment” initiatives around the country. Even the military-industrial complex, once a reliable source of support for the GOP, has become a patron class of the American Left. A recent analysis of political donations from major sectors of the American economy illustrates the degree to which the most powerful interests in the United States view the Democratic Party as a better bet to forward their self-interests.

For those familiar with Murray Rothbard’s analysis of the Progressive Era, this would not be a surprise. As he illustrates, the success of progressive ideology resulted in the rise of cartelized trusts that benefited from the protection and support of state privileges. Protections on trade emboldened attempts to monopolize industries like sugar. The push for central banking was driven by large financial interests. The progressive capture of both American political parties led Rothbard to suggest that late nineteenth and early twentieth-century politics could best be understood as a clash between rival oligarch factions led by the Morgans and Rockefellers.

Yet, given the massive institutional advantages and relative unity enjoyed by the political left, the Democratic Party finds itself engulfed in chaos of its own, largely resulting from the consequences of its own political victories.

Violent crime is on the rise in deep-blue cities, highlighted this past week by the brutal killing of two left-wing activists in Philadelphia and New York who advocated for “criminal justice” reform that resulted in more criminals with violent records being released on the streets. In response, progressive advocacy groups have sought to further undermine private reactions to this loss of public safety, attacking attempts at private security solutions under their familiar complaints of “racism.”

Immigration, counted on as a powerful tool to ensure future political dominance for the Democratic Party, has also become a festering issue for Democrat politicians. As Republican state leaders responded to historic waves of border crossings with relocation programs to progressive “sanctuary cities,” areas like Chicago and New York are facing severe strains of public resources and growing hostility from residents. Meanwhile, left-wing cultural crusades have increasingly alienated nonwhite communities, resulting in situations like a Muslim-majority Michigan city council banning the transgender pride flag from government buildings.

In a remarkable pivot this week, the Biden administration this week expedited the construction of border walls in Texas, but the greatest threat to the regime’s stability, of course, is the economic system that has enriched the progressive political class at the expense of the productive sectors of the economy. The failure of the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement to capture enough political will to alter the trajectory of Washington spending has made a fiscal crisis inevitable, and that moment is quickly approaching. America’s debt clock currently rests at north of $33 trillion dollars and is due to pass the $34 trillion mark by the end of the month without factoring in the additional future costs of unfunded liabilities.

The greatest short-term threat to the regime’s stability is a threat few in Washington have yet to notice, the consequences of the Federal Reserve’s pivot away from its long role as a dutiful enabler of the Fed’s fiscal hedonism. As the recklessness of DC’s economic response to covid created an inflation shock even the carefully trained government statisticians couldn’t mask, the Fed has been forced to push interest rates well beyond its most aggressive projections. The true impacts of the hikes are just now starting to bear fruit. As the interest rates rise and rates for new debt insurances increase, the value of older bonds is being devastated.

This week US bond markets are hitting historic losses of over 40 percent. Total losses on the value of bonds are estimated to stand at over $1.6 trillion and growing. Similar dynamics fueled the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this March and threatened more banks in the future. Moody’s recently downgraded 10 regional banks in August, with more expected.

The meltdown of US bonds threatens systemic insecurity in the financial system, threatening the balance sheets of insurance companies, pensions, and other nonbank institutions that sought security in the form of US bonds. The end of the era of low interest rates means that assumptions that guided the investment strategies of most of the world’s largest financial institutions were made with bad information. The size of the systemic risks to the system is currently unknowable, but the policy response to the great recession has sowed the seeds for the next financial crisis to be far larger.

Despite these seismic shocks happening in financial markets, the political class seems characteristically clueless. A few weeks ago, a Republican presidential debate featured no mention of the growing credit crisis. The Federal Reserve was not mentioned until the last twenty minutes and only superficially touched on by Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis.

It would, however, be a mistake for Americans to confuse the cracks in the stability of the regime as a catalyst for its retreat. Weak regimes are particularly dangerous.

Just this week, it was released that the FBI had made explicit what was long implicit, now categorizing supporters of Donald Trump as a unique category for potential “extremism.”

The modern regime successfully used the cover of the War on Terror to arm itself with powerful tools and weaponize nominally private client actors. As its own policy victories have planted the seeds of social unrest, it should be expected that it will unveil new tools of harsh power. Already, the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe have escalated attacks on alternative media platforms that give average citizens the ability to out their crimes.

The political class may be more concerned about delayed Ukraine funding than the financial crisis brewing at home, but the regime is prepared to do what it does best: violently preserve itself at the expense of everyone else.

Commentary by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

My family is from Texas (since 1830), so I have a focused interest in the well-being of that state. But I quickly got lost in the strange thicket of confusion when Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached by the Texas House.

In a series of wild allegations, they accused him of misconduct, including bribery, obstruction of justice, and misappropriation of public resources.

In an instant and with no warning about what was coming, Paxton had to pack up his things, was blocked from doing his duties, and was forced to step aside from the office that the people had three times elected him to hold.

Last week, he was exonerated of all charges and his name was fully cleared. Hardly anyone can even explain what the charges were. From a distance, it sure looked like a big political takedown attempt, but why?

Paxton just sat for an extended interview with Tucker Carlson, who now runs the planet’s most-watched show, which appears on X, formerly Twitter, and has no advertisers at all. In one portion of the interview, Mr. Paxton explained that three weeks before the impeachment, he had initiated an investigation against the COVID-19 vaccine makers for engaging in deceptive trade practices under the laws of Texas.

I recall being very excited about this at the time as a hugely important step. At the national level, the vaccine manufacturers are completely indemnified against liability from harms, which are plenty and also well-documented. Millions were forced to have this product injected into their bodies, and when something goes wrong, there’s no one to sue. It isn’t the way we are supposed to do business in America.

Paxton was all over the case and ready to start a serious inquiry.

“As soon as I did that,” he told Mr. Carlson, “that blew up my world. I became a target of Big Pharma, Big Tech, and obviously the Biden administration.”

Mr. Carlson then asked him why that would be the case.

“Big Pharma gives a lot of money. … I was doing it because the federal government has this immunity for them. This is wrong,” Paxton said. “They didn’t test this thing. They didn’t tell us about the side effects. They had an obligation to test it, even if they weren’t liable.

“They had an obligation to tell my people there are some risks here. You should decide but here are the risks. Instead, they said everything is good, it prevents it, you won’t spread it. None of that was true. That’s a deceptive trade practice. If they did that …”

Mr. Carlson interrupts and says, “It seems like they did that.”

Then. Mr. Paxton says he will know more in the coming weeks and months, because he’s picking up the case again. He should watch his back.

We need to be clear on what might be going on here. A state attorney general merely decided to apply existing law to the vaccine makers who provide most of the revenue to the drug approval side of the Food and Drug Administration. They fund 75 percent of television advertising and have moles embedded at all the commanding heights.

They are so powerful that they manage to get Congress and the president to grant them full freedom from liability for any of the effects of a vaccine. That only incentivized the firms to call gene therapy a vaccine even though it didn’t work like any vaccine in history.

How can it be possible that such tax-funded corporate agents, which own the patents to their drugs, and can even force their product on unwilling customers, can unseat a duly elected official in a state? It’s amazing … and terrifying.

But that might be only the start of it. Mr. Carlson’s show on Fox was canceled just after he started asking hard questions about the vaccine, while Russell Brand was smeared the world over as he started to raise questions. It’s happened to many public figures.

Look at the unseating of the founder of Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe, which occurred after he exposed a Pfizer employee bragging about how much money the company would make by creating new strains of viruses against which they can vaccinate. It was easily the most spectacular exposé of the institution’s history—and then, boom, he was fired.

Now, Mr. O’Keefe runs his own outfit that continues to chase down pharma executives.

As for Project Veritas, it just pulled the plug and fired all but a few employees. It has ceased operations, which isn’t surprising. When you get rid of the highest-performing person, the fumes you are left with don’t last long.

Think about it: This awesome operation was wrecked because some powerful people got squeamish about exposing the vaccine makers.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the biggest and most learned critic of Big Pharma on the planet, faced what might have been an assassination attempt last week. It didn’t even make the newspapers (The Epoch Times excepted). Meanwhile, he’s still being denied Secret Service protection even though he’s a serious candidate and faces non-stop threats on his life.

As president of Brownstone Institute, I see examples several times a day of what happens to doctors, professors, statisticians, or anyone who asks questions about this industry, which somehow has emerged as among the most powerful in U.S. politics. The dirty dealings of the industry in canceling critics are legion. Any study that questions the effectiveness, safety, or necessity of their products is nearly always rejected by the mainstream journals. Even letters to the editor that expose statistical errors end up in the dustbin.

As for Big Tech, they too are fully beholden. We have ironclad proof that Facebook and Twitter blocked any posts critical of vaccines. They went so far as to block “true information” about vaccine side effects that might contribute to an environment of “vaccine hesitancy.”

We must ask again: How did Big Pharma buy control of so many governments?

At this point, this problem has become a genuine threat to democracy and freedom. No industry has greater power to extract tax funding of its operations, retain intellectual property control over the results, enjoy indemnity from harms, and then even force its products on consumers. This is indefensible.

Any warrior who dares stand up to this deserves the support of everyone who believes in what was the American system.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has denied a report that he’ll resign before the end of his term, after Politico reported that he would do so after the next Speaker election.

“No, I’m not resigning. I’m staying, so don’t worry,” McCarthy told reporters on Friday, adding “We’re going to keep the majority, I’m going to help the people I got here and we’re going to expand it.”

Earlier, Politico reported that McCarthy told GOP members in a closed-door meeting: “I’m going to spend time with my family,” adding “I might have been given a bad break, but I’m still the luckiest man alive.”

At the same time, some Republicans are reviving his name as a speaker candidate, even as it remains unclear whether he’d accept it.

They argue no one else could get the 218 Republican votes needed to be speaker, they argue, as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise enter next week’s race as frontrunners that still might not be able to get over the top.

The “only workable outcome is to restore Kevin McCarthy as Speaker under party rules that respect and enforce the right of the majority party to elect him,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said in a statement on Thursday. “This depends entirely on several of the dissidents to disenthrall themselves from their decision and to repair the damage before it is too late. I appeal to them to act while there is still time.” -Politico

“I’ll do anything I can to help almost all of you. Don’t worry, I’ve raised a helluva lot of money in the last hour,” McCarthy told his members during a Tuesday closed-door conference meeting.

Looks like Kevin’s sticking around.