Post-Covid, firearm sales at the retail level soared to record levels. According to National Shooting Sports Foundation, the 2022 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) totaled 16.4 million. While NICS checks aren’t related to actual firearms sales, it’s a proxy for gun demand. 

A new monthly report from GunGenius, which uses data from Gunbroker, reveals the top-selling firearms sold online in 2022:

1. SIG Sauer P320 semi-automatic pistol
2. Remington 700 bolt-action rifle
3. Sig Sauer P365 pistol

Here are the top-selling handguns from last year. 

Here are the top-selling rifles. 

And top top-selling shotguns. 

Also, the top gunmakers last year. 

We have covered soaring NICS checks in the last few years but have yet to shine a light on what Americans have been panic-buying. This report offers some insight into buying trends. 

Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

So, here’s a “conspiracy theory” for you.

This one is about the global-capitalist thoughtpolice and their ongoing efforts to purge society of “insensitivity.” Yes, that’s right, insensitivity. If there is anything the global-capitalist thoughtpolice can’t stand, it is insensitivity. You know, like making fun of ethnic or religious minorities, and the physically or cognitively challenged, and alternatively gendered persons, and hideously ugly persons, and monstrously fat persons, and midgets, and so on.

The global-capitalist thoughtpolice are terribly concerned about the feelings of such persons. And the feelings of other sensitive persons who are also concerned about the feelings of such persons. And everybody’s feelings, generally. So they’re purging society of any and all forms of literary content, and every other form of content, that might possibly irreparably offend such persons, and persons concerned about the feelings of such persons, and anyone who might feel offended by anything.

By now, I assume you have seen the news about the “sensitivity editing” of Roald Dahl, the author of books like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, and numerous others. What happened was, Dahl’s publisher, Puffin Books, hired a little clutch of “sensitivity editors” to substantively rewrite his books, purging words like “fat” and “ugly,” and Dahl’s descriptions of characters as “bald” and “female,” and inserting their own ham-handed, “sensitized” language.

What you may not be aware of is that Puffin Books is a children’s imprint of Penguin Random House, a multi-national conglomerate publishing company and a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, a nominally German but in reality global media conglomerate. Penguin Random House is one of the so-called “big five publishers” that control approximately 80% of the retail book market. The other four are Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins.

Together, these five corporate behemoths, with their hundreds of divisions, publishing groups, and imprints (e.g., Puffin Books), control the majority of what everyone reads. Pull a few books off your bookshelves at random and look up the imprints to see how many are owned by one of the “big five” publishers or one of their divisions or publishing groups.

Another thing you may not be aware of is the increasing employment of “sensitivity readers” by these publishing conglomerates and their legions of imprints, and by writers aspiring to be published by these imprints. Writer’s Digest describes their function thus:

“Publishers and authors hire them to basically cancel-proof their books before they hit the street, hoping to head off any misspoken messages . . . hoping to depict peoples in an accurate light when it comes to genre, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more. Sensitivity edits are a publisher’s or editor’s insurance to protect reputation and ward off profit loss, just in case, and an author’s attempt to depict characters in an accurate light. Entities purchase a sensitivity read when the writing is outside of their expertise or experience, or they are uncertain they depicted details properly.”

Penguin Random House recommends “authenticity readers” to any of its authors who are “writing outside their personal experience” (i.e., using their imaginations), to prevent them from “perpetuating stereotypes,” or exhibiting their “unconscious or internalized bias” and creating “patterns of harmful representation,” and so on.

If this sounds to you like some kind of creepy, Orwellian-Ministry-of-Truth-type mindfuckery, that’s because that’s exactly what it is. It doesn’t really affect old farts like me — I wouldn’t let any of the big corporate publishers or their “sensitivity readers” near my writing, which they would never publish in any event, and which would likely cause them to experience seizures, and then stagger around the office looking for differently-abled-Black-transgender colleagues to kneel down in front of and apologize to — but there’s a whole generation of aspiring writers who are being conditioned to accept this as “normal.”

The Roald-Dahl story is being framed as a “woke/anti-woke” culture-war story. It isn’t. And it isn’t an aberration. It’s part and parcel of the new global-capitalist totalitarianism that I’ve been going on and on about. The entire “Wokeness” phenomenon is. Global-capitalist cultural revolutionaries are hunting down “insensitivity” everywhere. In the arts, schools, TV shows, films, social media, et cetera. “Insensitivity” being any and all forms of deviation from global-capitalist ideology, regardless of where they fall on the left/right spectrum. I have described the process as a new form of Gleichschaltung, the systematic coordination of every element of society — or every element that matters — in conformity with global-capitalist ideology.

So, what is global-capitalist ideology?

Well, I told you I had a “conspiracy theory” for you. It is not a very sexy “conspiracy theory,” but it’ll have to do, because it’s all I’ve got. And, forgive me, but I’m just getting started on my second “insensitive” dystopian novel, so I’m going to explain this “conspiracy theory” with a lengthy excerpt from the introduction to The War on Populism: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. II (2018-2019), one of my collections of essays, rather than taking the time to reword it badly. It really is a rather lengthy excerpt, so, if you happen to be reading this at work (i.e., when you are supposed to be working), or if you need to get back to a Twitter-fracas, or if you have the attention span of a gnat, you might want to save it and try to read it later.

Ready? OK, here we go.

‘This conflict (i.e., global capitalism versus a global “populist” insurgency) is at the root of all the madness of the last four years. To understand it, one needs to understand that it is primarily an ideological conflict, a global war for hearts and minds. Trump, Johnson, Corbyn, Sanders, and other so-called “populist” figures, were never a real threat to GloboCap, not in any material sense. They are symbols, figureheads, representations of resistance to global capitalist ideology. It is this resistance to its ideology (from both the left and the right … it makes no difference), more than any particular political leader or movement, that GloboCap has been trying to crush. It needs to put down this “populist” insurgency, so it can get on with the business of transforming the entire world into one big value-less marketplace … which is what it has been doing for last thirty years.

This is what capitalism was built to do. Ideologically speaking, it is a simple machine, one that strips societies of “despotic” values (e.g., religious, social, cultural values … values established by kings, priests, aristocracies, artists, communities, political parties, families, et cetera) and replaces them all with a single value (i.e., exchange value), rendering everything a commodity. In essence, it is an ideological machine, a values-decoding/recoding machine, which transforms societies into markets.

(I’ve cut a bit here, to make it somewhat less lengthy and get to the global-capitalist ideology part.)

…

Global capitalism’s ideology (i.e., the territory that comprises our “reality”) is unlike any other ideology in the 5,000-year history of ideology. It is an ideological territory without limits, neither internal nor external boundaries. It is a featureless territory, in which anything is possible, because nothing within it has any value, or meaning, in and of itself. It is literally a “desert of the real,” an infinite, seamless desert of values, across the lifeless surface of which the ghosts of values eternally wander, in circles, aimlessly, signifying nothing, going nowhere, for they are already there, in the only place there is to be, because the desert is everywhere, and everything.

There is nowhere and nothing outside of this territory. There is no “outside” where anything could exist. It is one big global capitalist world, one unitary, omnipresent, capitalist “reality” … one big global marketplace, or it will be, once GloboCap finishes destabilizing and restructuring what remains of the post-Cold-War world.

This is the story of the last thirty years. Beneath the distractions of the day, the manufactured mass hysteria, the propaganda, the fabricated outrage, the scandals, the wars, rumors of wars, the deafening roar of millions of voices shrieking gibberish on social media, conspiracy theories, real and imagined, the cheap charade of electoral politics, and so on, right out there in the open, because no one has been paying much attention, GloboCap has been mopping up, cleansing societies of their outmoded values, absorbing them into the global market … implementing ideological conformity.

You’re familiar with this ideological conformity. We all are. You’re probably in favor of many of the “values” it purports to want to promote, anti-racism, equal rights, separation of church and state, et cetera, the traditional liberal agenda. Remember, capitalist ideology is what finally freed us from the rule of despots, kings, aristocracies, priests. (Personally, I’m extremely grateful for that.) As I explained above, capitalism did this by eradicating “despotic” values and replacing them all with a single value, exchange value, rendering everything a commodity. That doesn’t sound very appealing, however. No one wants to see themselves as just a commodity, or live in a world without any real values. So capitalism marketed itself as “democracy,” and that went over much better with the masses.

Here we are, a few hundred years later, and “democracy” (i.e., capitalism) is running out of “despotic” values to eradicate and “liberate” us from. Sure, it still has some work to do secularizing the Middle East, and there are still a few countries that aren’t playing ball, but most of the planet has gotten with the program. Most of the values-eradicating work that remains to be done is right here at home. There are still a lot of Western consumers who haven’t completely embraced “democracy,” and who are clinging to old “despotic” values … racist values, religious values, nativist values, xenophobic values, homophobic values, transphobic values, cultural and artistic values, ableist values, alloist values, shadeism, lookism, ethnocentrism, cisgenderism, anti-Semitism, jingoism, sexism, sizeism, saneism … the list goes on and on, and on.

Democracy (i.e., global capitalism) will not rest until it has cleansed society (i.e., the global marketplace) of these ugly, destructive, despotic values, and implemented a worldwide “code of conduct” (like the ones that most global corporations have) with universal “anti-hate-speech rules,” and “appropriate vocabulary” lists, and has erased any visible symbol of such despotic values from public view, and any references to them from school curricula, and has otherwise transformed humanity into a mass of hyper-conformist consumers who all look like models in a Benetton commercial and talk like customer service representatives.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of democracy, and I’m not a fan of racism or any other type of discrimination or bigotry. I’m just trying to shed a little light on the forces behind the identity-politics zealotry that has been raging recently, and the “populist” backlash against such zealotry.

This zealotry, this crusade for ideological conformity, is described by many leftists as a movement to establish “social justice,” and by many right-wing types as “cultural Marxism.” It is neither. Or … OK, it contains elements of both, but fundamentally it is global capitalism purifying society of despotic values, establishing that infinite, value-free, meaningless “desert of the real” I described above.’

That’s it. I warned you that it was rather lengthy. It was written in September of 2020, so about six months into the roll-out of the New Normal.

As for the Roald-Dahl dust-up, what will happen now (and what is currently happening) is that A-list authors, journalists, and other official mouthpieces of the global-capitalist Simulation of Culture will make a big stink for a couple days, and then Penguin Random House and the other “big-five” publishers will go on “sensitivity-editing,” and “authenticity-editing,” and otherwise aggressively homogenizing mainstream literature until it won’t really matter which books you read because they will all be minor variations of each other that will resemble nothing so much in their utterly soul-deadening, interchangeable blandness as the lobbies of corporate offices.

Of course, if you are into the literature thing, you can always seek out and read other books by disreputable and “insensitive” authors like me who are unaffiliated with any global publishing behemoths, that is, assuming they haven’t been hidden from you behind these fake “sensitive content” warnings.

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Let’s talk foreign interference in Canadian democracy – CCP edition.

“We will not let any foreign entities that seek to do harm to Canada or Canadians, erode trust in our democratic institutions, or question the legitimacy of our democracy.”

— Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety

Bombshell revelations over the weekend (although perhaps not entirely surprising) that the Chinese Communist Party actively interfered in the 2021 Federal Election in Canada to tip the scales in favour of another Trudeau minority government and the defeat of certain Conservative Party MPs who were seen as critical of the Chinese regime.

“China employed a sophisticated strategy to disrupt Canada’s democracy in the 2021 federal election campaign as Chinese diplomats and their proxies backed the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – but only to another minority government – and worked to defeat Conservative politicians considered to be unfriendly to Beijing.”

The details emerged in leaked CSIS documents which were reported by the Globe and Mail.

Ironically, the opening quote from Bill Blair was not about China interfering in a Canadian election. Blair said that almost exactly a year ago, about the Canadian #FreedomConvoy. It was among numerous claims made by the Trudeau Liberals , the NDP to vilify the truckers – and which were endlessly repeated and amplified by the corporate press. All of which were found to be false in the ensuing inquiry into Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergency Act on Feb 14, 2022.

The #FreedomConvoy myths perpetuated included:

• MYTH: The convoy was being funded by foreign entities seeking to “destabilize our democracy” and “fund terrorism”

  REALITY: Upon examination it was found that nearly all funding to the convoy came from Canadian citizens (over 88%) and “a federal anti-terror agency in an internal memo said it saw no evidence millions raised by the Freedom Convoy were intended to bankroll terrorism”. That memo actually came out  three weeks before the Emergency Act was invoked.

• MYTH: The Emergency Act was enacted in response to pleas from the Ottawa Police force who feared an insurgency

• REALITY: During the hearings  it emerged  that nobody in the Ottawa Police, including then-chief Peter Sloly nor his successor Steve Bell, asked Ottawa to invoke the act.

• MYTH: The convoy was an insurgency that violently occupied Ottawa, setting fire to apartment buildings, desecrating the Unknown Soldier Memorial statue, and sporting swastikas and confederate flags.

• REALITY: The person who desecrated the Unknown Soldier memorial was “a woman [who] was not from Western Canada and had nothing to do with the convoy” police said.

  The people who barricaded an apartment building door and were attempting to light a fire turned out to also be locals (*cough* Antifa? *cough*) with no connection to the convoy.

  That one guy with the confederate flag and the one other guy with the swastika turned out to be the only two people at the protest wearing masks (the latter seemingly accompanied by a professional photographer). They were run out of the area by the other protesters. Speculation abounds that both were agents provocateurs, and one was named by a Freedom Convoy lawyer who accused a former Toronto Star manager and Liberal Party publicist  – although there is no mention of those allegations in the final report (the person named is suing the lawyer for defamation).

The list goes on. The final report on the Emergencies Act Inquiry dropped over the weekend, and was a compendium of softballs and cherry-picked testimony. While Bill Blair is taking another victory lap, saying the report finds the government was justified in invoking the act, the nuance is that it did so “reluctantly” and because of the failures in every level of government and not because the convoy itself posed a threat to our democracy.

Yet, Canadian leaders, like Jagmeet Singh, the junior partner in Canada’s ruling Liberal/Socialist coalition, pushed all of these myths and still routinely refers to the protest as a foreign funded insurrection that sought to overthrow the government and install a fascist  dictatorship.

The convoy is occupying our nation’s capital.

Donald Trump and members of the Alt-right have endorsed them.

Foreign money is financing them.

And, a stated goal is to overthrow our democratically elected govt.

This is a clear threat to our democracy.https://t.co/z3MxvU3Kww

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) February 7, 2022

Chinese Interference should be the elephant in the room…

So given all the hysteria from our federal leaders around foreign interference in our democracy, it’s rich that Canada’s own intelligence apparatus found that the ChiComms really did interfere in the 2021 election – and they put their thumb on the scale in favour Justin Trudeau.

In the hours after the report emerged, Trudeau appeared dismissive,

“This is not a new phenomenon. This is something that countries around the world have been grappling with for a long time and Canada is no exception.”

(The PM stopped short of seizing the bank accounts of Chinese nationals with ties to Beijing. )

All we need now is for the CBC to reframe the CSIS findings as a “conspiracy theory” and we can get back to the hyper-normality that defines our age.

*  *  *

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There’s slow but significantly gaining momentum in the West building toward supplying Ukraine with fighter jets as well as long-range missiles, namely the ATACMS systems (the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System).

First, pressure is growing on British leadership, with former prime minister Liz Truss joining former PM Boris Johnson in urgently calling for providing fighter jets. She said that Britain needed to “do all we can, as fast as we can” to help Ukraine win, in her first speech since stepping down as prime minister.

Her remarks before MPs in the House of Commons included an appeal to “do all we can to make sure Ukraine wins this war as soon as possible” which must include an option to provide fighters jets, “otherwise they will not be able to prevail”. Zelensky has all along been pleading with the US and UK in particular to help “close the skies” in providing jets, as well as sending more sophisticated anti-air defense systems.

According to the BBC, “The call was echoed by former PM Boris Johnson during a debate on Ukraine, putting pressure on PM Rishi Sunak.”

Sunak has stated his position that “nothing is off the table” – including the supply of jets. However, like with the tank issue which was hotly debated over the last months before the trigger was finally pulled, a common agreement will likely have to take shape among NATO powers, given it would mark the biggest escalation of the war to date (among many prior escalations). 

There’s also the issue of training pilots, which the UK has already set up a program for in anticipation of a potential future move to send jets. The idea is to speed pilots along on NATO-standard aircraft to be ready for such an option.

As for the United States, the Biden administration has thus far resisted calls from Congressional hawks to “close the skies” with jets and longer range missile capabilities, but according to one powerful lawmaker who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the political winds are blowing in favor of transferring F-16s to Kiev.

“A senior U.S. lawmaker said during a visit to the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday that momentum in Washington was shifting toward sending the long-range missiles and fighter jets coveted by Kyiv as it battles Russia’s invasion,” according to Reuters, which further writes: 

Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Biden administration and National Security Council were still split over “how fast and what weapons” to send Ukraine, which wants ATACMS missiles and F-16s.

“But I’m seeing increasing momentum towards getting the artillery and the planes in,” he told reporters in central Kyiv. “And in any event, we can start training the pilots right now so they’re ready.”

Washington has provided $24 billion in security assistance since Russia’s Feb. 24 assault but has so far held back from sending planes and long-range missiles.

McCaul’s Kyiv visit came immediately on the heels of President Biden’s surprise visit to meet with Zelensky, where he pledged a half-billion dollars more in defense aid to the Ukrainian government.

As for Rep. McCaul, Zelensky handed him a weapons “wish list” – a tactic which Western officials have grown used to from Ukrainian officials at this point: 

The lawmaker, who met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Ukrainian leader gave him a wishlist of weapons including the F-16s and ATACMS, which he said were intended “to go all the way into Crimea” to hit Iranian drones used in recent air strikes.

And of course, right on cue, the neocons among the Republicans are speaking up…

The pro-Ukraine Republicans speak up.

House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R.-TX), visiting Kyiv:

“[President Biden] needs to get Ukraine the weapons they need to win now, especially ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System)…”https://t.co/inzq3L1Tag #FoxNews

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 21, 2023

Of course, if that kind of talk is directly backed by the West, it would be a recipe ensuring direct NATO-Russia clash over Ukraine. Already the Kremlin sees NATO as a party to the conflict, having long ago blown past a number of stated red lines. First it was tanks approved only very recently, and jets are likely fast coming next. 

Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

The co-creator of ChatGPT warned that the world may not be “that far away from potentially scary” artificial intelligence (AI).

Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, said in a series of tweets on Feb. 18 that it was “critical” for AI to be regulated in the future, until it can be better understood. He stated that he believes that society needs time to adapt to “something so big” as AI.

“We also need enough time for our institutions to figure out what to do. Regulation will be critical and will take time to figure out. Although current-generation AI tools aren’t very scary, I think we are potentially not that far away from potentially scary ones,” Altman tweeted.

Altman further said that the path to an AI-enhanced future is “mostly good, and can happen somewhat fast,” comparing it to the transition from the “pre-smartphone world to post-smartphone world.”

He said that one issue regarding society’s adoption of AI chatbot technology is “people coming away unsettled from talking to a chatbot, even if they know what’s really going on.”

Altman had written about about regulating AI in his blog back in March 2015:

 “The U.S. government, and all other governments, should regulate the development of SMI,” referring to superhuman machine intelligence.

“In an ideal world, regulation would slow down the bad guys and speed up the good guys. It seems like what happens with the first SMI to be developed will be very important.”

Microsoft’s ChatGPT AI Faces Criticism for ‘Woke’ Responses to Users

Meanwhile, there have been well-publicized problems with with Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine in the past week.

Bing has reportedly given controversial responses to queries, which ranged from “woke”-style rhetoric, deranged threats, to engaging in emotional arguments with users.

Microsoft noted in a blog post last week that certain user engagements can “confuse the model,” which may lead the software to “reflect the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses that can lead to a style we didn’t intend.”

According to a blog post on Feb. 17, Microsoft will now limit the number of exchanges users can have with the bot to “50 chat turns per day and five chat turns per session,” until issues were addressed by programmers.

Musk Calls for AI Regulation at Dubai

Industrialist Elon Musk, a co-founder and former board member of Open AI, has also advocated for proactive regulation AI technology.

The current owner of Twitter once claimed that the technology has the potential to be more dangerous than nuclear weapons and that Google’s Deepmind AI project could one day effectively takeover the world.

According to CNBC, Musk told attendees at the the 2023 World Government Summit in Dubai last week that “we need to regulate AI safety” and that AI is “I think, actually a bigger risk to society than cars or planes or medicine.”

However, Musk still thinks that the Open AI project has “great, great promise” and capabilities—both positive and negative, but needs regulation.

He was also critical of Open AI’s direction in a tweet on Feb. 17.

Musk said he helped found it with Altman as an open source nonprofit company to serve as a counterweight to Google’s Deepmind AI project, “but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.”

Musk announced his resignation from OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018 to “eliminate a potential future conflict” with Tesla’s self-driving car program.

He later wrote in a tweet in 2019 that “Tesla was competing for some of same people as OpenAI and I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”

Others involved in the project, such as Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, told Time on Feb. 5 that ChatGPT should be regulated to avoid misuse and that it was “not too early” to regulate the technology.

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

The New York Post has come under fire from former President Donald Trump after it ran a lengthy profile of potential 2024 White House candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the weekend.

The profile, which was published on Feb. 18, includes photographs of the governor as a boy enjoying baseball and fishing, as well as a headline with DeSantis’s talking point.

“People don’t want ‘agenda being rammed down their throats,‘” DeSantis said, according to the article.

The seemingly positive piece prompted a heated social media remark from the former president and 2024 White House candidate on Feb. 19.

Trump took a similar path to how he spoke to the American People during his presidency, calling out the news media, saying the article was “fake news” and claiming the New York Post is “dying.”

“In writer Salena Zito’s fake news’ puff piece’ about DeSantis, which supposedly appeared in the dying New York Post, which is way down in readership just like FoxNews is way down in ratings. Why doesn’t she mention that he wants to cut social security and medicare, loves losers like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and Karl Rove, and it getting clobbered in the polls by me?” Trump wrote on Sunday on Truth Social.

“DeSantis is a RINO [Republican in Name Only] who is trying to hide his past. I don’t read the New York Post anymore. It has become fake news, just like Fox and WSJ!”

Read more here…

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Minnesota bar owner lost her business, liquor and food service licenses, and is facing up to $350,000 in fines for violating a governor’s executive order. But the Minnesota Attorney General’s lawsuit doesn’t list any actual harm caused by her actions.

“I didn’t break the law; I defied the executive order,” Lisa Monet Zarza told The Epoch Times.

Zarza’s attorney, Richard Dahl of Brainerd, Minnesota, did not respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times. Nor did the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.

The lawsuit was filed in Minnesota District Court in Dakota County. It alleges that Lionheart LLC, doing business as Alibi Drinkery of Lakeville, Minnesota, opened for business illegally from Dec. 16–30, 2020.

Gov. Tm Walz had ordered bars, restaurants, and other businesses closed to stem the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

It was one of a series of executive orders issued from March 2020 to June 2021 after Walz declared a “peacetime emergency.” A review of available data by The Epoch Times indicates Walz’s orders likely accomplished nothing toward controlling the spread of the CCP virus.

Zarza said that she and her business partner had complied with all state mandates up to that point. They closed for the initial two-week period in March 2020 to “flatten the curve.” They offered take-out service and outdoor dining as much as they could.

Zarza said Alibi Drinkery never reported an issue and was never connected to any COVID cases.

“We closed exactly how they said,” she said.

The peacetime emergency declaration, approved by the legislature, allowed Walz to issue edicts with the power of law. One of those was Executive Order 20-99.

It was issued on Nov. 19, 2020, in response to a spike in positive tests for the virus in the state.

According to the order, “The virus is everywhere, meaning that every interaction we have with people outside our households poses a risk of transmission.”

The 23-page order declared that previous efforts to control the spread of the virus needed to be increased. Therefore, a mask mandate was instituted, and various organizations such as gyms, bars and restaurants, sports venues, and others considered high risks for spreading the virus were ordered to close.

She described Alibi Drinkery as a “hometown bar” in Lakeville, a community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. She said she was active in the Lakeville business scene serving on various boards and with the Chamber of Commerce. Alibi Drinkery sponsored sports teams and hosted parties and community events.

“We were embedded in the community,” Zarza said.

Zarza said she started in the restaurant business as a 20-year-old. She loves the work, and it has become the only life she has ever really known.

“I don’t drink, and I don’t do drugs; I run restaurants,” she quipped during a telephone interview.

Read more here…

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Around 15,000 pounds of contaminated soil and 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water have been excavated from the site of a train derailment earlier this month in East Palestine, Ohio, train operator Norfolk Southern said on Feb. 20.

The announcement comes shortly after a state senator warned people living in close proximity to the derailment not to drink or bathe in the water.

Norfolk Southern said that the excavated contaminated soil and water will be transported to landfills and disposal facilities that are “designed to accept it safely in accordance with state and federal regulations.”

“Additionally, a series of pumps have been placed upstream to reroute Sulphur Run around the derailment site,” the carrier said. “The affected portion of Sulphur Run has been dammed to protect water downstream.”

“Environmental teams are treating the impacted portions of Sulphur Run with booms, aeration, and carbon filtration units,” Norfolk Southern said, adding that those teams are “also working with stream experts to collect soil and groundwater samples to develop a comprehensive plan to address any contamination that remains in the stream banks and sediment.”

The train, carrying about 50 freight cars, was traveling from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 3 when it derailed in East Palestine.

State officials ordered the evacuation of a 1-mile radius surrounding the crash site shortly after the incident but lifted those evacuation orders after crews burned the chemicals onboard, which included vinyl chloride, ethylhexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, and butyl acrylate, in a controlled release on Feb. 6.

Concerns over Cancer-Causing Pollutants

The controlled release also sent phosgene and hydrogen chloride into the air.

At the time the order was lifted, officials declared that it is safe for residents to return to the area after monitoring the air and water in surrounding communities and claiming they were not affected.

Read more here…

Go to any social media feed today and you’ll find an endless array of zennials entering adulthood who are discovering that they are indeed expected to work, struggle, sacrifice, and make their way up the ladder of life like 99% of all human beings.  The next generation is finding out, slowly but surely, that they will not be YouTube celebrities or Instagram influencers or Big Tech executives; they will not be raking in easy money or be showered in gratification.  Many of them have stacked up sizable college loan debts in exchange for degrees with minimal demand.  Even if they have a legitimate goal they will have to work hard to achieve it.  

Reality is hitting younger Americans like a freight train and they are enraged. In response, many of them are sadly turning to leftist movements like the “anti-work movement” and the “quiet quitting” movement in retaliation.  While the Reddit born anti-work movement has slowly faded in the past six months, the overall agenda continues on in other forms. 

There has been a rising narrative among young people regarding skilled labor vs unskilled labor.  Their position?  That there is no such thing as unskilled labor and that workers need to be handed a “living wage” no matter their level of contribution.  Either that, or they need to stop working altogether while others pay their way.  If they don’t get what they want, they plan to burn the economy to the ground.

That kind of sentiment sounds like insanity to anyone that understands free markets (or reality), but to naive young adults with visions of immediate success, it might sound like wisdom.  They have been tricked into thinking that the laws of supply and demand no longer apply to labor, but they do.  Here are some questions any person should ask themselves when they stumble upon that internal existential crisis of career and future.  Are you actually being “oppressed”, or are you being paid exactly what you are worth and it’s making you feel inadequate?  

How easy is it to replace you?

Do you work a job that many people can do?  It’s not that hard to figure this out quickly.  Just look at the number of qualified people applying for the same job you have.  If that number is high, then you might be easy to replace.  If you flip burgers or run a cash register for a living, understand that you will have to offer something other than your time in order to secure higher pay and a better position.  This is what is often referred to as “unskilled labor,” because almost anyone can do what you do.    

How long does it take to train for your job?

Can a company train a new person for your job in two weeks, two months, two years or two decades?  If the honest answer is two weeks, then you are not in a position to demand a living wage.  Are you a surgeon or a fast food worker?  One involves incredible levels of training time while the other involves none.      

How much intelligence is required to do your job?

Brainpower is in short supply these days as public schools slowly erode academic standards in the name of “equity.”  This means that truly intelligent people will be in high demand while the mediocre will be common and battling each other for lower wage work.  Leftists want to change this dynamic by enforcing diversity quotas among employers, but all this will accomplish is companies collapsing sooner rather than later as they take on a bunch of brain-dead charity cases rather than the best people for the job.

By extension, there are many jobs that require expertise and expertise requires quick learning.  There is no such thing as equality in terms of intelligence; some people are born with it and some people are not.  It might not be fair but it is what it is, and smarter people are more likely to make more money as skilled labor.    

How big a part does your labor play in the larger process?

Is your job to fill a basic position on an assembly line?  Or, do you build the entire product yourself?  Do you merely act as a mechanism in a larger process, or is the process impossible without you?  Are you the farmer, or are you the strawberry picker?  Are you an architect, a contractor, an electrician, a brick layer, or just the guy that cleans up the trash after the building is done?  There are levels of importance to various jobs in the process of production.  In other words not all labor is equal in accomplishing the end result, no matter what leftists claim.

How many people need to strike to make your job valuable?  

Leftists often make the argument that without labor all other endeavors are meaningless.  That is to say, without the labor of unskilled workers the efforts of business owners, inventors, engineers and managers can never come to fruition.  That may be true, but only if the majority of unskilled workers strike at the same time.

Look at it this way:  If you strike by yourself, is the company going to panic because you are integral to their operations?  If a handful of your co-workers in the same field strike with you, is the company going to panic?  Or, do thousands of people need to strike for your job to be worth a damn?  If so, that’s not a good sign in terms of your market value.

Pandemic Inflation And The Illusion Of Labor Shortages

One major contributor to the spread of the anti-work movement was the notion that labor is in short supply and therefore labor has more leverage.  This is an oversimplification of the situation.    

What has happened in the past few years is an inflationary deluge; over $8 trillion in covid helicopter money was dropped on the US economy in 2020/2021 alone through PPP loans and stimulus checks, not to mention unemployment checks and moratoriums on rent.  This resulted in a wave of fiat cash hitting the economy all at once.  The retail and service sector exploded with activity as people rushed out to spend, and this generated a need among businesses for more workers.  

However, these conditions are a short lived symptom of stagflation, not a permanent trend.  In fact, mass layoffs are already taking place in the tech sector and this is just the beginning.  Covid dollars and the savings people stockpiled during the lockdowns have run out and high prices are still here.  The anti-work movement was predicated on the assumption that demand would continue to outpace supply.  It was a dumb assumption.  

High employment numbers bought with inflation are not reliable nor sustainable.  This is why it’s absurd for Joe Biden and the White House to take credit for the supposed “jobs boom”; all those jobs will disappear as the helicopter cash dries up.   

Labor Is About Survival

In the meantime, leftists seem to think they are above work more than they suggest they are misused by work.  Have zennials been born into a time of hardship?  Yes.  Do they have less opportunities than their parents did decades ago?  Probably.  Is this unfair?  No, there’s no such thing.  

We don’t get to choose the prosperity of the times we are born into.  Some generations are born into great crisis while others are born into great wealth.  Those that are born into crisis have to work more, not less.  In an era of inflation, this means being innovative and becoming a producer.  That’s a lot of effort to adapt to circumstances.  The perpetually entitled are doomed.     

This is perhaps the first generation in American history that argues they should not have to work at all or that their unskilled labor is just as valuable as the labor of a person with extensive merit and accomplishment.  At bottom, the rules of survival do not care if you feel underappreciated or underpaid according to your concept of self worth.  If you hate a job you can always quit that job, but you will always be paid according to the value you bring to the table.  Only you determine that value.    

In times like these, the individuals that work hardest to improve themselves and improve their productive value will survive while the individuals that sit around complaining all the time will not.  This is true for people that work for a company as much as it is true for people that work for themselves.             

Via The Cradle,

Israeli media reported on Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office is considering whether to accept an invitation for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. The proposal for a meeting with Netanyahu came from Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who paid a visit to Kiev last week, according to Channel 13. Such a meeting could put Israel in a difficult position, given the current political climate and Israel’s sensitivity to Russian concerns, but the Prime Minister’s Office is still looking into the request, according to top Israeli officials.

During his recent trip to Israel, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was given a promise from Netanyahu to review Israel’s stance on arming Ukraine with air defenses systems, which Tel Aviv has so far refused to do.

Meanwhile, MPs Zeev Elkin (National Union) and Yuli Edelstein (Likud) held a surprise meeting with Zelensky in Kiev, a day after the Ukrainian president met with Foreign Minister Cohen, who reiterated their support for Ukraine.

Zelensky again called for more support from Israel during the meeting with the Knesset deputies, according to Israeli state broadcaster Kan:

“I am glad that there is finally an embrace from Israel. This includes the chancellor’s visit. But I want to see action. I hope to see a change in Israeli policy, especially as Russia and Iran are getting closer. Israel has to help not only with the early warning system, but also with drone defense systems,” Zelensky demanded.

Edelstein later confirmed the visit, posting a photo with Zelensky on his Twitter account.

“I met last night with Ukrainian President Zelensky and saw with my own eyes what is happening in the region. Iranian intervention is evident. Iranian technology and weapons are used by the Russians and provide Iran with combat experience. Israel must side with Ukraine against the dangerous combination of Russia and Iran,” Edelstein said.

Glad to welcome representatives of the 🇮🇱Knesset, @YuliEdelstein and @zeev_elkin, in 🇺🇦 Kyiv. We discussed the security situation in 🇺🇦 & key aspects of bilateral cooperation in the defense sector. Sincerely grateful to 🇮🇱 for the support & humanitarian assistance provided🇺🇦 🤝🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/YEJfUE47Yb

— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) February 20, 2023

On Sunday, the US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, told Tel Aviv’s government that it can do “whatever they need” to against Iran, affirming US support on the issue, despite pending US-Iranian negotiations regarding Tehran’s nuclear program.

Nides added that as long as Iran provides Russia with drones for its military operation in Ukraine, indirect negotiations with Tehran regarding the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would not continue. Nides highlighted that a “nuclear Iran” is not just a threat to Tel Aviv but rather to the entirety of West Asia and Washington.