In fresh statements aired by state media and picked up by Al Jazeera and other international sources, Iran says it has not only achieved hypersonic cruise missile technology, but is actually testing hypersonics, in what would mark a historic breakthrough for the Islamic Republic if true.

The missiles are reportedly currently undergoing tests and flight trials, which “will mark the beginning of a new chapter in the defense power of our country,” state media Tasnim announced Wednesday.

Tasnim further touted that the new hypersonic weapons could “significantly accelerate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s response time in case of any combat, and take away attacking forces’ opportunity for reaction.”

It was in early June that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi attended a ceremony unveiling the new Iranian-made “Fattah” (literally, “Conqueror”) hypersonic missile in Tehran. This was met with some degree of skepticism internationally, given the immense difficulty behind mastering the technology.

Raisi touted at the time: “Today we feel that the deterrent power has been formed.” He added, “This power is an anchor of lasting security and peace for the regional countries.”

The Iranians say their new hypersonic missile can reach nearly 900 miles and it cannot by countered by conventional anti-air defense systems. Iranian officials say it can also reach speeds of up to Mach 15. But expressing skepticism, here’s what Popular Mechanics has written [emphasis ZH]:

Unfortunately, the “hypersonic” term is often used deceptively to imply more advanced technology than what is actually present. By definition, hypersonic describes a missile/aircraft traveling at or over five times the speed of sound, or a mile per second. That’s certainly fast, but ballistic missiles have been rocket-boosting themselves up to hypersonic speeds since the 1950s and 60s.

However, the modern usage of “hypersonic weapons” refers to weapons that can sustain and maneuver at hypersonic speeds. One method of achieving this is to have a ballistic missile launch what’s called a hypersonic glide vehicle into the exosphere—a vehicle that’s then able to skip-glide just over the atmosphere, repeatedly bouncing off the dense air molecules below. The other method is to develop a cruise missile with an air-breathing ramjet motor that can sustain hypersonic speeds while within the atmosphere.

And what makes a hypersonic a hypersonic? According to more: 

The big deal with these weapons is not their maximum speed. Rather, the appeal comes from their sustainable speed, flatter—and thus stealthier—trajectory, and ability to maneuver and avoid entering the optimal engagement radius of air defenses. Those all significantly complicate hitting them with interceptor missiles.

Given the Iranians already unveiled in early summer that they have achieved hypersonic missile technology, this new announcement seems a reaction to specific geopolitical events in the gulf region, namely the US decision to send 3,000 additional troops aboard two warships. 

The US is considering deploying troops to commercial vessels in Gulf amid Iran tensions, but 5 unnamed US officials stressed to the that no final decision has been made, according to the Associated Presshttps://t.co/1xmmKWYNOf

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 5, 2023

The timing of the hypersonics announcement further comes just as the Pentagon is seeking to put US Marines on international tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, in order to safeguard them from Iranian hijacking. Iranian Brigadier-General Abolfazl Shekarchi earlier issued the following response, asking, “What do the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean have to do with America?” He further posed rhetorically, “What is your business being here?”

Iran has repeatedly rejected the US military involvement in regional waters, saying it only serves Washington’s interests, and is really intended to thwart Iran’s own crude exports, which are also under US-led sanctions.

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Crossing paths with a robot or “bot” online is as common as finding a pair of shoes in your closet.

It’s a fundamental part of the internet, but users have hit a critical tipping point: An increasing number of people are losing the ability to distinguish between bots and humans.

It’s a scenario developers have warned about for years, and it’s easy to see why.

A recent study concluded 47 percent of all internet traffic is now comprised of bot-generated content. That’s an increase of more than 5 percent between 2022 and 2021. Concurrently, human activity on the internet just hit its lowest point in eight years.

Coupled with advances in human-like exchanges driven by artificial intelligence (AI), almost a third of internet users can’t tell if they’re interacting with a person any more.

In April, a landmark study called “Human or Not?” was launched to determine whether people could identify if they were talking to another person or an AI chatbot.

More than 2 million volunteers and 15 million conversations later, 32 percent of participants picked incorrectly.

There was also little difference in the results based on age categories. Older and younger adults both struggled at a similar level to discern who—or what—was on the other end of the conversation.

The bottom line: While super realistic bots have taken over nearly half the internet, a rising number of folks can’t even tell.

Moreover, this historic intersection of swiftly evolving technology and decreasing perception within the general population is already causing problems in the real world.

Fool Me Once

“The bot-human blur is like a magic trick … As bots get smarter, we risk losing trust in online interactions,” Daniel Cooper told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Cooper is a tech developer and a managing partner at Lolly. He noted company and website transparency is key for people’s confidence in their online interactions. But in the meantime, there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned human instinct.

“Spotting bots is like finding Waldo in a crowd. Look for repetitive patterns, lack of personalization, or rapid responses. Also, trust your gut. If it feels off, it might just be,” he said.

While much of the discussion of malicious or “bad bot” traffic centers on social media, the influence of maligned AI interactions has much farther-reaching consequences.

Consumer confidence in reading online reviews for a product or service has been problematic for years, but it appears to have passed a new milestone.

Reports of AI language models leaving reviews for products on sites like Amazon emerged in April this year. The bot reviews were easy to identify since the chatbot literally told readers that it was an AI language model in the first sentence.

But not every bot masquerading as a human is so easy to catch.

Consequently, major companies and search engines like Google have been plagued with a sharp rise in false reviews.

Last year, Amazon filed a lawsuit against fake review brokers on Facebook, and Google had to remove 115 million counterfeit evaluations.

This is troubling, given the number of people who rely on product reviews. One 2023 survey noted online reviews factored into purchasing decisions for 93 percent of internet users.

“More bot traffic could indeed open the floodgates for online scams,” Mr. Cooper said.

Though it appears those gates have already been opened.

Fox in the Henhouse

Bad bot traffic has increased 102 percent since last year and may outpace human-generated content entirely. Yet again.

This happened in 2016 and was especially problematic during the U.S. presidential election. Since then, AI-generated content has grown more sophisticated, and tech insiders say people need to be prepared for another bot surge in 2024.

And with more people struggling to tell the difference, online scammers have a significant advantage.

“The difficulties in distinguishing between bots and actual humans will probably get worse as this technology develops, which will hurt internet users. The possibility of being used by bad actors is a major worry,” Vikas Kaushik, CEO of TechAhead, told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Kaushik said without the ability to identify bots, people can easily get caught up in disinformation and phishing scams. Further, these digital cons aren’t always obvious.

Tech security researcher Kai Greshake told Vice in March that hackers could trick Bing’s AI chatbot into asking for personal information from users through the use of hidden text prompts.

“As a member of the sector, I see this developing into a serious problem,”  Kaushik said, adding: “To create more complex detection techniques and build open standards for recognizing bots, developers and academics must collaborate.”

He believes education and awareness campaigns are essential so the public can be more cautious and confident while “conversing online with strangers.”

Mr. Cooper agreed.

“The bot-human confusion could lead to misunderstandings, mistrust, and misuse of personal data. It’s like chatting with a parrot, thinking it’s a person: amusing until it repeats your secrets.”

He compared the rise in bot traffic to inviting a fox into the henhouse. “We need to be vigilant and proactive in our defenses.”

Taking Action

For some, the solution is simple. Just “unplug” from the digital world.

It’s a sentiment shared often alongside notions of moving off the grid and a longing for the days when the “dead internet theory” seemed much less plausible. But for many, this isn’t realistic.

Alternatively, some are striving for a balance with their online usage, including limiting social media usage.

Humanity’s love-hate relationship with social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, has created anxiety, anger, and depression for millions.

Despite an uptick in social media usage this year, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe the platforms have a primarily negative effect on life.

And the surge in bot traffic is throwing gas on this fire.

Stepping back from social media and its bot swarms has its merits.

Findings from a 2022 study noted participants who took a one-week break from the platforms experienced improvements in anxiety, depression, and their overall sense of well-being.

As humanity’s day-to-day interactions continue shifting from physical to virtual, people have become increasingly dependent on the web. So it begs to question: Can humans take back the internet from the bots?

Some tech experts believe it’s possible. And it starts with helping people identify what they’re engaging with.

“There are a few strategies users can employ to identify bots,” Zachary Kann, the founder of Smart Geek Home, told The Epoch Times.

In his experience as a network security professional, Mr. Kann said there are methods a user can employ to determine if they’re interacting with another person.

Like Mr. Cooper, he suggested watching response patterns carefully.

“Bots often respond instantly and may use repetitive language.”

Mr. Kann also said people should check profiles since bots often have generic or incomplete online profiles.

He added an inability to distinguish between bots and humans could lead to research accuracy challenges.

“It can lead to skewed data analytics, as bot interactions can inflate website traffic and engagement metrics.”

Authored by Charlotte Allen via The Epoch Times,

It’s no secret that the vast majority of the people who operate U.S. colleges and universities are unhappy about the Supreme Court’s June 29 decisions that the use of race in admissions decisions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantees and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids recipients of federal funds to discriminate “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.”

The official reaction of the country’s top-tier institutions of higher learning – the ones that typically employ racial preferences (in contrast to their less-selective counterparts that admit almost all applicants of any race) – was dismay.

Within hours of the release of the court’s 6–3 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, incoming Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a video message.

Its tone wasn’t outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling, but it evidenced a distinct resolve to work around it.

“For nearly nine years, Harvard vigorously defended our admissions process and our belief that we all benefit from learning, living, and working alongside people of different backgrounds and experiences,” Ms. Gay said.

“We will comply with the court’s decision, but it does not change our values. We continue to believe—deeply—that a thriving, diverse intellectual community is essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders.”

The word “diverse” is, of course, code for achieving levels of ethnic-minority representation (typically blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans) that progressives find acceptable, whether or not the applicants’ academic records and SAT scores match those of other groups such as Asians and whites.

Other elite universities have followed Harvard’s lead.

Columbia University spokesman Ben Chang said, “Diversity is a positive force across every dimension of Columbia, and we can and must find a durable and meaningful path to preserve it.”

Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, issued a statement declaring:

“In the coming days, we will closely examine the court’s decisions and assess its implications for our admissions programs. Over the last several months, we have been reviewing the approaches taken by universities in states where a referendum or statute has restricted the use of race as one of many factors in a holistic admissions process.”

So the strategizing – aimed at maintaining pre-Students levels of black and Latino enrollments – has clearly begun.

The most obvious of the possible “approaches” is the application essay, which allows prospective students to reveal their race, among other things about themselves. Chief Justice John Roberts, author of the majority opinion in Students, seemed to shine a green light (pdf): “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

Although Justice Roberts warned universities to not use the essays to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling (“the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race”), several institutions have already established “overcome adversity” as a proxy for race.

The University of California–Davis’s medical school, for example, gives preference to students asserting a “disadvantaged” background.

The upshot: A full 84 percent of Davis’s medical school entering class for this fall claimed economic and social disadvantages growing up (pdf).

The result is an entering class that is 14 percent black and 30 percent Latino (blacks and Latinos make up 6 percent and 39 percent of California’s general population, respectively). Some 20 other colleges and universities have inquired about Davis’s complex—and so far secret—“adversity score” methodology, according to a New York Times report.

A more subtle tactic is likely to be dropping requirements that prospective students submit their SAT or ACT scores. Standardized test scores offer a clear metric for determining a student’s ability to perform college or graduate-level work, but they also provide evidence of racial bias when institutions reject higher-scoring applicants from one ethnic group in favor of lower-scoring applicants from another. Some 80 percent of colleges and universities—including all eight Ivy League campuses and other prestigious institutions such as Stanford and Rice—have already made SAT and ACT results optional in their admissions processes. That makes admissions procedures more opaque and thus more difficult for courts to scrutinize in lawsuits challenging admissions procedures on racial grounds.

Finally, there’s the ingenious tactic for getting around racial preferences proffered in an amicus curiae brief filed in Students by more than 50 Catholic colleges led by the Jesuit-run Georgetown University. The colleges averred that their religious mission to train leaders devoted to the common good gave them a right, protected by the First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantees, to consider race and ethnicity in their admissions practices, asserting that “as a crucial component of their efforts, Catholic colleges and universities strive to admit and educate racially diverse student bodies.”

That First Amendment argument made little impression on the Supreme Court, even on its three dissenters who would have upheld racial preferences. But it has gained new life, at least according to some law school professors.

The Supreme Court, in another 6–3 decision, ruled on June 30 that the First Amendment protected Christian web designer Lorie Smith’s refusal to create wedding websites for same-sex couples on the grounds that she would be forced to express support for views contrary to her religious beliefs. The ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis carved out an exemption from a Colorado law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It continued a recent line of Supreme Court decisions upholding the right of individuals, businesses, and religious communities to not comply with laws that interfere with their beliefs about such issues as homosexual conduct, abortion, and birth control.

“The admissions decisions of religious universities to create diverse student bodies are expressive of those schools’ values  in ways that would seem to merit the same kind of protection from state interference the court has granted in cases like 303 Creative,” Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law professor at Boston College, and Eduardo Peñalver, president of Seattle University (both Catholic institutions), wrote in a July 19 article for The Hill headlined “How the First Amendment Can Save Affirmative Action.”

Should First Amendment arguments such as these prevail in court, we might see secular universities such as Harvard suddenly rediscovering their 17th-century roots as training grounds for religious ministers.

At the very least, they demonstrate the extent to which institutions are willing to go – and the complex, even contorted strategies they plan to use – to preserve consideration of race in admissions policies even after the Supreme Court has pretty much ruled out that practice.

Was Barack Obama the first gay US president?

According to an interview with Tablet magazine, Obama biographer David Garrow discussed a letter Obama wrote to a former college girlfriend in which he “repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

“So when Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, ‘It’s about homosexuality,” Garrow told the outlet, discussing the 1,472-page biography of the former president titled “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.”

The letters made their way to Emory University, where Garrow associate Harvey Klehr manually transcribed the salacious details.

“So I emailed Harvey, said, ‘Go to the Emory archives.’ He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures,” said Garrow. “So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.”

Meanwhile, rumors abound that Michelle may satisfy Barry’s alleged proclivities.

Stop acting like you never saw Michelle Obama’s testicles dancing on Ellen Degeneres show 😂😂😂 https://t.co/D7hOi0b9Zq pic.twitter.com/VIFW0APaVw

— S͎K͎E͎L͎E͎T͎O͎R͎🍄🍿 (@Skeletor_1981) August 4, 2023

RIP Joan Rivers.

Joan Rivers.. made millions … out of knowing who was who

Obama was gay and Michelle is a man according to her

Michelle is a transgender …
~Joan Riverspic.twitter.com/q5gPql6ua5

— Madeleine Case Tweets🌐 (@McCannCaseTweet) August 1, 2023

As for the rest of the interview, American Greatness’s Lloyd Billingsley has the following;

“Whatever you do. Don’t ask him about his father.”

That was Bob Bauer, lawyer for President Obama, to biographer David Garrow as he prepared to interview the president for the Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, released in 2017.

“Barack Obama devoted dozens of hours to reading the first ten chapters of this manuscript,” Garrow says on page 1084, and had “remaining disagreements – some strong indeed – with multiple characterizations and interpretations” in the book. Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has some rather strong disagreements with Obama.

“I’ve always thought that the whole Obamacare thing was, in large part, a fraud.” And as for Obama, “he’s not normal—as in not a normal politician or a normal human being.”

That was Garrow to David Samuels in a rambling August 2 Tablet interview headlined “The Obama Factor.”  Barack Obama is the author of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, published in 1995. Here is what Garrow said about it in Rising Star:

“Dreams from My Father was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction. It featured many true-to-life figures and a bevy of accurately described events that indeed had occurred, but it employed the techniques and literary license of a novel, and its most important composite character was the narrator himself.”

“He wants people to believe his story,” Garrow told Samuels. “For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction—oh God, did that infuriate him.” Samuels, who also writes for Harpers, the Atlantic and New York Times Magazine,  countered that “the pose of being a writer is actually one that he prefers in many ways to being a politician.”

“Oh God, yes. Yes, yes, yes,” said Garrow, “He doesn’t want the writerliness challenged. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book [Dreams] is so fictionalized.”

In the Dreams novel, the father is the Kenyan Barack Obama, a student at the University of Hawaii. The Kenyan “bequeaths his name” to the American, and by the end of the novel, he becomes a nameless “old man.”

In all his written communications from 1958-1964, housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, the Kenyan Barack Obama makes not a single mention of an American wife and son. Perhaps that is why President Obama never accessed the archive.

The Dreams author, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, devotes more than 2,000 words to a happy-drunk black poet known only as “Frank.” In Rising Star, Garrow identifies “Frank” as Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist pornographer.

Paul Kengor’s The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis – The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor, revealed “remarkable similarities” between the politics of the Dreams author and Davis, a Stalinist who dedicated most of his life to the all-white dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Davis also bears strong physical resemblance to the Dreams author, who at Occidental College penned a poem to a black poet he calls “Pop.”

The rising star would “forcefully reject the Davis hypothesis,” Garrow wrote, and “Davis’ Communist background plus his kinky exploits made him politically radioactive.” That is why Barry needed the “historical fiction” of Dreams from My Father, the story about the Kenyan foreign student. Garrow called out the book as fictional, but came up a bit short on the author’s plagiarism.

In Dreams, the author visits Kenya and the account bears remarkable similarities to I Dreamed of Africa, published in 1991, and the 1994  African Nights. Both books are the work of Italian writer Kuki Gallmann, a longtime resident of Kenya.

In African Nights, Gallmann and company “camped in the area of Narok, one of the main centers of the proud Maasai tribe.” In Dreams from My Father, the American travels to Narok, “a small trading town where we stopped for gas and lunch.”

In I Dreamed of Africa and African Nights, the reader finds “the ink-black of Arap Langat” and “the ink-black darkness” where fish are approaching. Under a slate sky lies the “ink-black turmoil of the ocean.” Dreams of My Father speaks of “ink-black stairwells” and “tall ink-black Luos and short brown Kikuyus.” In Kenya, men “dive into inky-black waters.” And so on, with many other passages too similar to be accidental.

Back in 2008, David Samuels re-read Dreams from My Father and came upon the passage where Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro, takes Barry into the back yard and teaches him to fight.

“Wait a minute, I know this scene,” Samuels told Garrow. “And then I went back and found the battle royal scene in The Invisible Man.

“Each of us was issued a pair of boxing gloves and ushered out into the big mirrored hall,” Ralph Ellison wrote. “A glove smacked against my head. . . Blows pounded me from all sides while I struck out as best I could.”

In Dreams, Barry has a tussle with a boy down the road. The next day, Lolo “had two pairs of boxing gloves,” and they lace them up. “Keep your hands up,” Lolo tells Barry. “You want to keep moving but always stay low. Don’t give them a target.” And so forth.

“Right, right, right,” says Garrow, who also noted that Dreams “completely omits women. I’ve always thought that there’d eventually be a feminist critique of Obama because his mother and all the girlfriends—they’re not there. They don’t exist.”

As Garrow reveals, the Dreams author wrote to Alex McNear, his girlfriend at Occidental College, “about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.” Samuels is more curious about the composite character’s actions in office, for example, the Iran deal.

“I do find the Iran deal offensive and puzzling,” Garrow said. “I mean, it’s an explicitly antisemitic state.” As Samuels notes, Obama is “fixated on Iran after the Iran deal failed.” The easy explanation is that “Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House.”

True to form, as Fred Fleitz explains, Biden is planning to evade Congress with a “secret nuclear deal with Iran.”  The composite character president was also fixated on normalizing relations with Cuba, a Communist state.

“I also found the Cuba thing deeply puzzling and offensive,” Garrow said. “It’s a fucking dictatorship that imprisons all sorts of truly progressive, creative people.” Many of the regime’s political prisoners are black but in the style of Frank, Obama is basically uncritical of the regime’s all-white Stalinist dictatorship.  But then, as David Garrow says, the composite character is not a normal politician or human being.

In one of his first actions, Obama  canceled missile defense for U.S. allies Poland and the Czech Republic, and Garrow laments his “failure to object to Russia taking Crimea and the Donbas.”

“For Barack, everything has to be a success,” Garrow explained. “Everything has to be a victory.” And on his own terms, Obama may be the most successful president ever. He transformed the nation into a place where the outgoing president picks his successor and deploys the FBI and DOJ to help Hillary Clinton and harm candidate and President Donald Trump.

“From the first time I saw it,” Garrow said, “I realized that Christopher Steele’s shit was just complete crap. It was bad corporate intelligence, even. It was nonsensical.” Samuels is also concerned.

“A new milieu had been created consisting of party operatives, the people in the FBI and the CIA who are carrying out White House policy, and the press,” Samuels explains. “That’s something people still seem loathe to admit, even to themselves, in part because it puts them in a state of dissonance with this new kind of controlled consensus that the press maintains, which is obviously garbage. But if you question it, you’re some kind of nut.” 

The interview keeps returning to Dreams from My Father, which biographer David Garrow exposed as a novel, infuriating the president. 

“There was something about this fictional character that he created actually becoming president,” contends Samuels, “that helped precipitate the disaster that we are living through now.” The nation has been transformed into a “Gilded Age oligarchy” by Obama, the “Magic Negro of the billionaire industrial complex.”

See the full interview for more insight on the man David Garrow says is not a normal politician or normal human being.

Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

We live in an era in which bots regularly masquerade as humans online. Ours is an age in which identity theft and fraud plague online interactions, and where one’s right to privacy and sanctuary are regularly violated with impunity by both government and corporate actors.

In today’s world of artificial intelligence (AI), bots can solve CAPTCHA puzzles and defeat other attempts to verify humanness. AI programs can create complex deepfake images and writings indistinguishable from work created by individuals. So how can people interacting in cyberspace prove that they are not only human but a unique and particular person? And, ideally, do so while retaining anonymity, i.e., without revealing exactly which real person is acting and without giving away personal details? This challenge is known as the proof-of-personhood (PoP) or unique human problem.

The Worldcoin Foundation is trying to solve the problem of PoP, but some critics aren’t buying it.

Worldcoin was founded in 2019 by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, whose stated mission is to “create safe AGI [artificial general intelligence] that benefits all humanity.” Worldcoin’s objectives include “establish[ing] universal access to the global economy,” “becom[ing] the world’s largest human identity and financial network,” and “establishing a place for all of us to benefit in the age of AI.”

Worldcoin anticipates a world in which AI-enabled robots have displaced humans in the workplace and that governments around the world will need to provide humans with some minimum level of financial support, known as universal basic income (UBI). To avoid fraud, the hypothetically billions of UBI recipients would need to prove not only that they are human but also that they are unique (so that one person doesn’t receive multiple allotments). Still, today, a substantial minority of people on this planet have neither bank accounts nor the government-issued ID and other documentation necessary to get one.

To accomplish these goals, Worldcoin takes a biometric scan of the human eye in order to create a “WorldID,” a cryptographic hash (a unique and non-replicable mathematical algorithm).

Other than this hash, Worldcoin asserts that no biometric data are transmitted from or retained by the “Orbs,” specially designed cameras intended to be deployed at locations all over the world which capture the images needed to make the WorldID unique to each person.

Critics, however, warn that Worldcoin’s technology poses risks.

Vitalek Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, for example, identifies four categories of potential risks:

1) privacy, i.e., that, despite assurances to the contrary, Orbs could be maliciously hacked and made to release data;

2) accessibility, i.e., the need for very large numbers of Orbs distributed around the world to scan billions of people;

3) centralization, which in theory could allow Worldcoin to create a backdoor and misuse or sell data, and even arbitrarily create fake human identities; and

4) security, e.g., the possibility of using 3D printing or other technology to create fake people and sell WorldIDs. Mr. Buterin concedes that Worldcoin is aware of and is addressing these issues in a better way than previous attempts at creating PoP applications.

There is also the yuck factor.

The prospect of having one’s irises scanned by one of Worldcoin’s shiny yet sinister-looking metallic Orbs in order to be provided an indecipherable number to exist as a human being and engage in economic, social, and political processes feels dreadful. It sounds like dystopian science fiction.

I write in my new book, “Why America Matters”:

“If a technology exists, then governments will exploit it. Moral implications are considered only rarely. If government can better track its citizens and use technology to keep them under control, they will, unless otherwise prevented…

If China and other illiberal countries can surveil not just their own citizens at home and abroad, but eventually everyone in the world, why should the United States fail to do the same? Doesn’t this put the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage? This is the dilemma of our age.”

Biometric data-capture is already widely used.

From Touch ID on our mobile phones, to Clear at airport security, to Global Entry and Mobile Passport at border control stations, biometric data are regularly used to prove someone is who they say they are. Surveillance cameras on our streets and roadways regularly identify and track us. Whether by fingerprint, iris scan, facial or other markers, each person’s unique identity can be found and validated. And these systems can also be hacked. Some knowledgeable critics of government surveillance and the so-called deep state remain staunchly opposed. Exiled NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, for example, posted on social media in response to Worldcoin, “Don’t use biometrics for anti-fraud. In fact, don’t use biometrics for anything.”

In a world of AI and existing government surveillance programs, a decentralized private sector proof-of-personhood solution seems not only inevitable but necessary. A world without PoP would be either anarchic or authoritarian, as it would be impossible to transact without government-imposed centralized identity solutions. Surely a nongovernmental PoP solution is desirable to counteract the encroaching power of totalitarian governments. True decentralization is key to achieving that level of privacy and security. Whether Worldcoin will safely provide such a solution is impossible to tell at this stage. In the meantime, it will continue to creep people out.

Several left-leaning corporate media outlets have stated, “Stop blaming mental illness for mass shootings” and “Mental illness is not to blame for shooting massacres.” Even the progressive non-profit, Common Dreams, wrote, “Targeting Mental Illness Will Not Prevent Mass Shootings.”

Could the solution to preventing some of these tragic shootings lie in enhancing mental health resources for those in need? Even suggesting that mental health plays some role in a mass shooting appears controversial. 

This viewpoint should be reconsidered after the San Antonio Express-News reported that the 17-year-old cousin of the gunman responsible for the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 was arrested on Monday in what appears to be a ‘mental health crisis’ after threatening to shoot up a school and family member. 

An arrest affidavit states that Nathan Cruz’s mom “reported the suspect planned to ‘do the same thing’ as his cousin.” He also threatened to shoot another sister in the head, Cruz’s mother told police. His sister believed it was a credible threat “due to the recent history of their family and the suspect’s knowledge of his cousin’s actions.”

Nathan Cruz

But Salazar said her mom called the police because she was concerned about the threats to his sister, not because he threatened to shoot up a school.

“The only thing my mom was trying to do by calling the cops was to get him help. He needs mental help. He doesn’t need to be locked up,” Salazar said. — San Antonio Express-News

Progressive media often highlights the call for increased gun control while ignoring the conversation on mental health. Take a look at Statista data showing mass shootings in the US between 1982 and July 2023, by the presence of prior signs of the shooter’s mental health issues. 

On the gun policy side, Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, stated: 

The headline should read, “Texas stops mass shooter without ‘red flag’ law or new gun control.”

The decision to arrest and charge this dangerous individual, rather than leaving him at large in society to commit a mass act of public violence, is the best way to handle the situation and doesn’t involve any new or unconstitutional gun laws. Anyone calling for more gun control after this incident must clearly believe that our existing gun laws—barring those under 18 from purchasing firearms and the new under-21 background check system—don’t work and aren’t effective public safety tools.

The crux of the matter is that mental health should be a topic of discussion, not ignored. Moreover, existing gun laws prohibited the 17-year-old from legally possessing a firearm. Also, enforcing stricter gun control will only penalize law-abiding citizens. 

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The first of four supporters of President Donald Trump to die on Jan. 6, 2021, received emergency medical care away from the fast-growing crowd on the U.S. Capitol’s west plaza—before any explosive munitions were used by police—new security video reveals.

Capitol Police closed-circuit-television (CCTV) footage obtained by The Epoch Times calls into question the popular narrative that Benjamin James Philips was struck by a police munition before he collapsed from a fatal cardiac event.

Mr. Philips, 50, of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, had organized a busload of area residents to travel to Washington for Mr. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. He followed the bus in a van.

He got separated from the group when he drove away to search for parking. He got as far as the U.S. Capitol that day but never made it back home.

It has long been contended that Mr. Philips’s death was related to police riot munitions. A popular version of the story is that he was in the thick of the quickly expanding crowd on the west plaza beneath the inauguration stage when he was struck by an explosive munition tossed or shot by police.

A large sign with an artist’s sketch of Mr. Philips is often seen at Jan. 6 events contending that he was “murdered by Capitol Police.”

However, the previously unreleased CCTV video, which was obtained by The Epoch Times from a Capitol Police database, shows that an unconscious Mr. Philips was tended to by protesters behind the large scaffolding complex on the west side, away from the main crowd.

A west dome security camera shows the small area where Mr. Philips later collapsed was breached by the crowd at 12:58:52, shortly after a much larger crowd breached the iron fence protecting the west plaza. Several bike-rack barricades were pushed over as the crowd surged forward.

The camera isn’t zoomed in, so distinguishing details is difficult, but the video appears to show someone stumbling and falling at 12:59:17 in the spot where Mr. Philips was later seen. Bystanders began to gather around the downed individual.

The zoomed-in video of Mr. Philips’s rescue attempt begins at 1:02:51 p.m. That’s the time that the U.S. Capitol Police Command Center trained one of its security cameras on the area where he fell. While the closeup video doesn’t show the moment Mr. Philips collapsed, it picks up shortly after bystanders rendered medical aid and started CPR.

The first Capitol Police radio call for help was broadcast at 1:04 p.m., according to Jan. 6, 2021, audio recordings obtained by The Epoch Times.

“Can you please have someone respond to my location with an AED [automated external defibrillator]? The bottom of the west front with an individual that’s down here, unconscious and not breathing,” a female officer broadcast on the main U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) radio channel.

According to CCTV footage reviewed by The Epoch Times, the first police munitions on Jan. 6, 2021, weren’t used on the west front crowd until 1:10 p.m., about 10 minutes after the first breach of police lines near the Peace Monument. This was moments before Mr. Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse, which is two miles from the Capitol.

Capitol Police Deputy Chief Eric Waldow ordered “less-than-lethal” force to be used on the crowd just prior to 1:06 p.m., according to police radio transmissions obtained by The Epoch Times. It wasn’t until nearly five minutes later that force was actually used.

“I got a crowd fighting with officers, pushing, throwing projectiles,” Deputy Chief Waldow broadcast. “I have given warnings about chemical munitions. I need the less-than-lethal team positioned above me to identify the agitators and start deploying. Launch, launch, launch!“

Security video shows that the iron railing and fence blocking access to the west plaza was breached by protesters at 12:58:41 p.m. Thousands of people quickly filled the plaza.

The first use of explosive force occurred on the south end of the plaza—the opposite side of the west front, where Mr. Philips went down.

Overhead CCTV video footage reviewed by The Epoch Times shows that there were no police munitions used on the north side of the plaza until 20 minutes after Mr. Philips collapsed. By this time, Mr. Philips was in a D.C. Fire and EMS Department ambulance.

The first munitions on that side of the plaza went off far back in the crowd at 1:21 p.m. At 1:25 p.m., two flashes were seen just north of the center of the plaza. Seconds later, two more powerful explosions cleared a circle around where the munitions dropped. This set off visible rage among the protesters.

Over the next hour, more than 40 munitions exploded in the crowd, most of them in the northern half of the west plaza, bodycam and security video footage shows.

A woman who appeared to have a medical kit took charge of performing CPR on Mr. Philips. She took turns doing chest compressions with a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

“Be advised that the person on the northwest side of the upper west terrace is now receiving CPR,” a male USCP officer told the police Command Center. “Have the ambulance come down the northwest sidewalk.”

A man in full camouflage tactical gear standing nearby extended his left hand in prayer and was joined by several others in the crowd.

A group of bystanders appeared to offer opinions on how best to provide advanced life support for Mr. Philips, the video footage shows.

A Capitol Police officer was concerned that the crowd was getting too agitated.

“We need this ambulance,” he said over the USCP radio at 1:13 p.m. “We’re about to lose control of this crowd down here.”

‘Refusing to Come Down’

At about 1:15 p.m., an out-of-breath officer announced that the D.C. Fire and EMS Department rescue squad wouldn’t come down to the scaffolding where Mr. Philips lay on the sidewalk.

“They are bringing the patient up to the ambulance right now,” he shouted on the radio. “They are refusing to come down.”

Another officer said, “The group is carrying the individual up to the ambulance up the northwest drive.”

A dozen or so bystanders and police officers laid a section of bicycle rack flat on the sidewalk. After placing Mr. Philips on it, the group lifted the rack and carried it like a battlefield stretcher.

A woman straddled Mr. Philips and continued CPR as the group carried them about 100 yards up the sidewalk to rescue Squad 18. They turned Mr. Philips over to paramedics at 1:19 p.m.

According to the District of Columbia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Mr. Philips died from a stroke. His manner of death was listed by the pathologist, Dr. Fernando Diaz, as “natural,” and the cause was hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Mr. Philips was a self-employed computer programmer and toy inventor. He founded Trumparoo LLC, which marketed a line of Trump-inspired toys that went on sale in 2020.

The “Trumparoo” was a kangaroo bedecked with a swirling Trumpian coiffure. He developed a Trumparoo social-media-style website where owners of the toys could communicate.

Mr. Philips got the idea after seeing actress Alyssa Milano post on social media about Trumpy Bear, a stuffed toy with Trump’s signature hairstyle and red tie.

“I thought a kangaroo would be even better than a bear,” Mr. Philips told the local Press Enterprise newspaper in September 2020. “Kangaroos are fighters.”

He developed other characters in the Trumparoo line, including “Fightin’ Trumparoo the Heavyweight,” “Fightin’ Trumparoo the Hippo,” and “Count Trumpula.”

Mr. Philips organized a rally in Bloomsburg on Nov. 14, 2020, to protest election fraud. At about the same time, he established the website ScummyDemocrats.com, which carried his views about the 2020 presidential election. He called the site the Scummy Democrat Accountability Project. The home page headline read: “Remember What They Did.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, he drove a van to Washington while other Trump supporters went on a motor coach. He told a Philadelphia newspaper that he was eager to hear what Mr. Trump had to say at the Ellipse.

“It seems like he called us there for a reason,” Mr. Philips said. “I think something big’s about to go down that no one’s talking about yet. I think he has an ace up his sleeve.”

He spoke openly about election fraud and the meaning of the forthcoming rally with Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Julia Terruso. In an interview with her during the ride to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, he spoke what turned out to be prophetic words.

“It seems like the first day of the rest of our lives, to be honest,” Mr. Philips said. “They should name this Year Zero because something will happen.“

The Epoch Times was unable to reach members of Mr. Philips’ family for comment.

For further proof that the “work from home” trend that started during Covid has spoiled employees rotten, about 66% of respondents in a new survey of 700 financial executives working remotely said they would quit their jobs if forced to return to the office 5 days a week.

The revelation came as part of a survey published this week by Deloitte, reported on by Banking Dive. 

Among the key revelations in the Deloitte survey were:

• Overall survey results indicate that financial services institutions (FSIs) with overly strict in-office mandates could face dual challenges: possibly losing their pipeline of leaders and having difficulty recruiting talent.

• Among respondents who still work remotely at least part-time, 66% say they will likely leave their current role if mandated to return to the office five days a week.

• Among surveyed caregivers, those who work remotely or have hybrid arrangements are 1.3 times more likely than responding noncaregivers to say they’ll leave their current role if their ability to work remotely was eliminated.

• Some FSIs now require their workforce to return to the office three to four days a week. But only 18% of respondents say this would be their ideal arrangement.

• While remote working has improved respondents’ engagement and well-being, most of those surveyed believe remote work models will put them at a disadvantage. This could erode engagement and commitment levels over time.

• Financial services firms face a palpable risk of losing talented women leaders. Almost half of women respondents in senior leadership roles report being likely to leave their current employer over the next year.

More than half of those who responded (52%) admitted that they thought in-office workers were paid more — it was a tradeoff they were willing to accept. 63% of those responding also thought that in-office workers were promoted more. 60% of those who responded said that they thought employees with caregiver responsibilities, working under the hybrid model, were less likely to be promoted. 

But about 75% of men and 67% of women said that hybrid work life allowed them better relationships with their children. 18% of survey respondents said they preferred to work in the office 3 or 4 days a week, and 62% said they thought it would hurt their careers if they came in less. 

Neda Shemluck, Deloitte’s U.S. financial services DEI leader, commented: “There’s a perception that employers want people in the office 100% of the time and employees don’t want to be in the office at all, and that’s not true.”

Shemluck continued: “The struggle is, how do you still require some in-person connectivity, and yet provide autonomy to team leaders to determine what is best for their teams?”

“If an organization is mandating hybrid for one or two days, there needs to be transparency around the implications to you as an employee or as a team leader if you are tracking differently from that. Right now the challenge is the speculation as to the career impact that will have, without the transparency of long-term implications,” she added. “You have to take small steps and constantly do pulse checks and get real reactions as to what is working, and recognize that you’re going to constantly pivot. We had hundreds of years of working one way; it’s going to take us a long time to get comfortable with this new way of working, and it’s going to be an iterative process.”

Recall, we have been writing about how Wall Street banks have been mandating that their employees come back to the office now that the Covid hysteria has subsided. In March 2023, we wrote about how the era of working from home was drawing to a close. Returning to the office hasn’t gone over well everywhere. In Seattle, Amazon employees are protesting returning the office due to “climate change”, among other idiotic reasons, we wrote about in June. 

We also noted in June that NYC office occupancy had hit 50% for the first time since the Covid crunch. 

Kastle Systems, the gold-standard measure of office-occupancy trends via card-swipe data, shows NYC hit 50.5% in the week ending June 7, the highest level in three years but still far from the near 100% occupancy level before the pandemic. 

“The milestone came just as the city was engulfed in smoke from Canadian wildfires, briefly becoming the most polluted major city in the world,” Bloomberg pointed out. 

Reverting to pre-Covid times is impossible. Companies are axing employees while reducing office space. Real estate firm Colliers said office space available for lease in Manhattan climbed to a record high during the first quarter of 2023. 

Japanese automakers are entering a fight for survival in China, a market they once easily held significant ground in. Instead, now, automakers based in Japan will have to take the next few years to reevaluate whether or not business is worth even continuing in China. 

Japanese companies have “been losing long-held ground”, according to the Wall Street Journal, who notes that Nissan is “facing major challenges” in the geography. For its year ending in March, Nissan expected to sell 800,000 vehicles in China, which is 330,000 fewer than it originally intended. 

Its new EV and hybrid lineup “will be the determinant of our survival,” Chief Executive Makoto Uchida said last month.

Honda is also facing challenges, according to its finance head, Masaharu Hirose. Hirose said this week that competition was making it difficult for the automaker to hit its previously announced goal of 1.4 million vehicles sold in the country this year.

Mazda has sold only about half the vehicles in China that it sold in the same period last year, WSJ writes. Its CFO said this week: “We are taking urgent action to recover” instead of withdrawing from the market. Mitsubishi has already suspended production at a joint venture it has in China, as a result of “sluggish sales”. 

“For now, they’re really behind,” said Takaki Nakanishi, head of Tokyo-based automotive consulting firm Nakanishi Research Institute of Japanese automakers. “For the Japanese auto industry, which has until this point centered itself around sales in China and the U.S., it may be on a path to lose one of those cores.”

Recall just weeks ago we wrote about how Chinese automakers were dethroning competition from the West. 

Local auto brands produced in China made up 54% of the wholesale car market for the first half of 2023, The Wall Street Journal noted last month. This is up from 48% a year prior and marks the second 6 month period wherein local brands have surpassed foreign ones in a row. 

It’s no secret that NEVs are leading the charge for China’s home grown vehicles. We noted last month that NEV sales in China were up 25.2% YOY, totaling 665,000 units. Passenger vehicle output fell 0.5% YOY but was up 10.3% sequentially, coming in at 2.2 million units. 

It’s no secret that NEVs are leading the charge for China’s home grown vehicles. We noted just days ago that NEV sales in China were up 25.2% YOY, totaling 665,000 units. Passenger vehicle output fell 0.5% YOY but was up 10.3% sequentially, coming in at 2.2 million units. 

9 of China’s 10 best selling electric vehicles makers were local companies, led by BYD, the Journal reported. Tesla was the only foreign automaker on the EV Top 10. The country’s focus on EVs since 2009 has turned it from a global “follower” to a global “leader” in the industry. 

Stephen Dyer, a Shanghai-based auto consultant at AlixPartners, told WSJ other other automakers would have to learn from China’s developing trend if they want to find success in the market.

Many Western companies started to step away from China after its auto market peaked in 2017. ICE vehicle sales had fallen by about 8 million vehicles by 2022, following this peak and as a result of demand compression from Covid amid a shift to NEVs.

Ford has since reduced investments in China since its Mach-E wasn’t as successful as originally planned in the country.

And Honda’s Chief Operating Officer Shinji Aoyama commented earlier this year: “Japanese, American and European automakers all have this sense that they were too late to make the initial moves. We’re now in a phase of trying our best to catch up.”

Authored by J.M.Phelps via The Epoch Times,

An Army officer was court-martialed after she refused requests to change recommendations she made that were critical of command while probing suicides at a military facility, according to her lawyer.

The Army brought 24 charges against Army Reservist Lt. Col. Joy Thomas, and her trial began on June 20 at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, now known as Fort Liberty. Two weeks later, she was found guilty of only one charge of disrespecting a senior officer and given a $1,000 fine.

Lt. Col. Thomas’s attorney R. Davis Younts, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former Judge Advocate General officer, said the charges against his client were “retaliatory” and accused her command of acting “vitriolically” when Lt. Col. Thomas was only doing what she believed was right.

Lt. Col. Thomas’s career began at the U.S. Army’s lowest enlisted rank. After 18 years of service, she achieved the rank of senior commissioned officer.

Problems arose while she was completing an active-duty tour at Fort Bragg. In 2018, she was tasked with three suicide investigations. A “rash” of suicides has plagued the Army installation in the past several years, and her findings and recommendations were critical of command, Mr. Younts said, adding that, “they tried to get her to change them.” Five other investigating officers had reached the same conclusions.

“Command just kept trying to find someone to say something more favorable, and when she didn’t, they had it out for my client,” Mr. Younts said, describing her career as “absolutely stellar” and calling her “a top-notch performer” in all previous military assignments.

Lt. Col. Thomas faced court-martial for 24 charges involving allegations of desertion, absent without official leave (AWOL), and false official statements. Mr. Younts represented her at trial, which resulted in punishment for only one incident of “rolling her eyes and having a disrespectful tone,” he said. While Mr. Younts considered this a natural response to “the animosity of her chain of command,” he also acknowledged that “the judge needed to send a message that even on the worst day, soldiers still have to respect rank and the uniform.”

Before the trial, Lt. Col.Thomas became the “black sheep” of her unit, and her command began to “do things that would have never been done to any other soldier,” Mr. Younts said. A career officer with aspirations to become a general “literally put his hand in her face during a very disrespectful, angry outburst,” he said. Despite having the incident witnessed by 24 soldiers, she was threatened not to file a complaint. “But she did file a complaint and that started an investigation into the colonel,” he said. The Epoch Times has viewed a copy of the document. As a result, he was “flagged,” according to Mr. Younts, preventing his promotion to general.

In another example, Lt. Col. Thomas was marked absent without leave for four days. This was merely an attempt to “hurt” her career, Mr. Younts said, as the entire installation was closed for inclement weather.

In a separate incident unrelated to her work assignment, she lost consciousness and suffered a concussion. “A friend contacted her command from her phone and let them know she was in the hospital,” he said.

Lt. Col. Thomas ended up in the hospital for two weeks. While there, her command “counseled” her, and served her with separation papers at the hospital, as if she had abandoned her military duty, Mr. Younts said. After two weeks in the hospital, she was scheduled for further neurological evaluation with the primary care doctor on base.

“She leaves the hospital, goes to that medical appointment, and the doctor tells her to come back the next day.”

She was arrested upon returning to the base the following day, an incident Mr. Younts called “shocking.”

“They charged her with being AWOL.”

With ongoing, apparent retaliation from her command, Lt. Col. Thomas went to the provost marshal, the police authority, at the installation. She let him know she no longer felt safe reporting to her superior officer. Mr. Younts said she felt like command was “constantly harassing her, abusing AWOL, and doing things to set her up to get her into trouble.”

After being threatened by the career officer in the above-mentioned confrontation, she asked for a no-contact order through the Provost Marshall’s office. Mr. Younts said, “her supervisor denied knowing that she ever requested a no-contact order.” But at trial, the now-retired provost marshal testified that a complaint was filed and that he personally notified her supervisor, directly contradicting the supervisor’s testimony.

A Missed Opportunity

Lt. Col. Thomas attempted to leave her current duty assignment to pursue another position in the military in the spring of 2021. Col. June Copeland, who has since retired, had hoped to hire her for “a very critical mission project,” according to Mr. Younts. Not only is Col. Copeland a West Point graduate, but her three daughters also graduated from the military academy. Lt. Col. Thomas considered the opportunity to work alongside Col. Copeland to be a much-needed boost to her increasingly stressful career.

“Because Thomas’ chain of command was retaliating against her, they didn’t want her to leave,” Mr. Younts said.

“Within 48 hours of speaking to Copeland, a flag appeared on Thomas’s record.”

Lt. Col. Thomas would be unable to take the position as a result. Col. Copeland later testified at trial that there was no flag on Lt. Col. Thomas’ record at the time she was being considered for the position.

“All these things were—and remain—deeply concerning, as each circumstance was being used as a weapon against her,” Mr. Younts said.

“Even after being charged with disrespect toward a senior officer and being ordered to pay a thousand dollar fine,” Mr. Younts said, “the government still asked for a dismissal.”

A dismissal is the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for an officer, he explained.

“Had she gotten a dismissal, she would have lost the benefits she earned, [including] her retirement, her medical, and more.”

Mr. Younts strongly believes the findings and the sentence were intended to send a message to command that there were significant leadership failures. According to him, Lt. Col. Thomas should have avoided court-martial altogether and received nothing more than an Article 15 from her command to discipline her for the minor offense, which would have allowed her to move to her next assignment.

He said an Article 15 would have been “an easy fix” that would have allowed Lt. Col. Thomas to “use her expertise and continue to pursue opportunities that would have been valuable to the United States Army, but her command continued to punish her instead.”

“It was very, very troubling to see how personal the attacks were against Thomas,” he said.

“It just gives me pause about Army leadership and makes me question how these individuals can be so concerned about their own careers and reputations at the expense of someone else.”

“After calling 40 witnesses for the military and costing the government taxpayers over a million dollars, this is a case that could have been easily handled with nothing more than an Article 15,” he said.

“Her command failed her on a lot of levels, and what the Army needs are more people, like Lt. Col. Thomas, who refuse to compromise their ethics and morality.” Going forward, Lt. Col. Thomas hopes to retire without further incident.

Fort Liberty Public Affairs did not return a request for comment from The Epoch Times.