There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
The West may learn too late that there are only two options before us: Christ or chaos. Once we abandon God, as Dostoevsky warned, everything becomes permissible. And when everything is permissible, we lose, not only any meaningful basis for evaluating the behaviour of other cultures, but any effective means of slowing the moral decline of our own.
Since FIFA announced Qatar would be hosting the 2022 World Cup, the international football association has copped a world of criticism. Western nations, in particular, have threatened to boycott the tournament and its sponsors in protest of the predominantly Muslim country’s rejection of “Progressive” ideology.
No shortage of opinion pieces have been penned lamenting ‘human rights abuses’ in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison. Social media has been flooded with calls for players to boycott the competition, or at the very least, sport gay-pride uniforms or LGBTQAI+ symbolism alongside their national emblems.
In a mark of revolt, the U.S. men’s national team ditched their red, white, and blue crest, for the rainbow flag. A similar theme was adopted for their Qatar-based training facilities and press room backdrop. Other nations have threatened to do the same.
Amid all the pearl-clutching, however, is a glaring assumption that Qatar is in violation of some universal moral standard to which they must be held accountable. The problem is, the West is no longer able to coherently identify the moral standard they’re trying to impose on the world. So, like spoilt children, they stomp their feet and issue threats because the other kids don’t want to play by their made-up rules.
Non-Western nations know it better than most Westerners. To undermine, challenge, or criticise Qatar’s culture, you must first assume a moral standard of which their society falls short. You must assume a measure of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that Qatar is guilty of violating. But what is that moral standard and who gets to define it for the rest of the world?
For decades, so-called Progressives have insisted that morality is defined by the culture. After all, this is what the term “Progressive” implies. But if morality is defined at a social level, then what basis does one society have in criticising another? What ground is there for imposing one culture’s moral standard on a society that has developed their own? There can be no logical justification for this unless moral relativism is rejected, and a transcendent moral standard assumed – a standard to which one culture reflects more than the other.
It’s no good, at this point, to suggest that morality is democratically defined, or that ‘rights’ are determined by the consensus of the majority. This would mean “Progressives” could never condemn as ‘immoral’ anything previous generations deemed morally acceptable.
Many experts are now warning that we could see the housing market and the commercial real estate market simultaneously crash in 2023. If that were to happen, it would put an extreme amount of stress on our financial system. The only way we will avoid such a fate is if the Federal Reserve starts reducing interest rates. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. In fact, officials at the Federal Reserve keep telling us that interest rates are going to keep going up. This is literally a suicidal course of action, because higher rates are going to absolutely crush the economy.
If you doubt this, just consider what is already happening.
According to a new Alignable survey that was just released, 41 percent of all small business owners in the United States could not pay rent in November…
Due to high inflation, reduced consumer spending, higher rents and other economic pressures, U.S.-based small business owners’ rent problems just escalated to new heights nationally this month, based on Alignable’s November Rent Poll of 6,326 small business owners taken from 11/19/22 to 11/22/22.
Unfortunately, 41% of U.S.-based small business owners report that they could not pay their rent in full and on time in November, a new record for 2022. Making matters worse, this occurred during a quarter when more money should be coming in and rent delinquency rates should be decreasing. But so far this quarter, the opposite has been true.
In September, that same survey found that 30 percent of all small business owners could not pay rent.
Many were deeply alarmed by that figure, and then it jumped up to 37 percent in October.
Now we are at 41 percent, and if there is any time when small business owners should be able to pay rent it is during the holiday season.
When commercial real estate tenants cannot pay rent, it inevitably has a domino effect.
It appears that we will soon have millions of empty commercial spaces all over the nation, and many owners will soon be unable to make loan payments because sufficient rent money is not coming in.
If the Federal Reserve insists on raising rates even higher, I anticipate that we will eventually be facing a commercial real estate crash of unprecedented size and scope.
Meanwhile, the implosion of the housing market continues to pick up speed.
Existing home sales have now declined for nine months in a row, and the median price of a home in the U.S. has now fallen by about 7 percent.
Sadly, many experts are now warning that things will only get worse in the months ahead. Here is one example…
“In one line: Collapse in prices is coming,” wrote Kieran Clancy, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
I told my readers that this would happen if the Federal Reserve aggressively hiked interest rates.
Of course home prices could soon fall a lot more. In fact, Pantheon is projecting that they could ultimately fall by a total of 20 percent from the peak…
Pantheon estimates that existing home prices will keep falling, ultimately dropping by about 20% from their June peak of around $414,000.
If you are planning to sell a home, I would try to do it as quickly as possible before prices go way down.
Distressed crypto firm BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey following the implosion of putative acquirer FTX.
So why is BlockFi in so much trouble?
Well, the truth is that there are a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that they loaned 275 million dollarsto FTX that will never be repaid…
In the filing, the company listed an outstanding $275 million loan to FTX US, the American arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-bankrupt empire.
I warned my readers that FTX would not be the last domino to fall.
In a matter of days, FTX went from a $32 billion valuation to bankruptcy as liquidity dried up, customers demanded withdrawals and rival exchange Binance ripped up its nonbinding agreement to buy the company. Gross negligence has since been exposed. Ray added that a “substantial portion” of assets held with FTX may be “missing or stolen.”
FTX has more than 1 million creditors, according to updated bankruptcy filings, hinting at the huge impact of its collapse on crypto traders and other counterparties with ties to Bankman-Fried’s empire.
FTX was just one giant Ponzi scheme, but of course the entire system is just one giant Ponzi scheme.
The entire thing is eventually coming down, and a lot of prominent voices are trying to sound the alarm about this.
For instance, author Robert Kiyosaki tweeted the following just a few days ago…
Many of you know I do not invest in equities, bonds, ETS or MFs. Please DO NOT listen to what I’m going to say next: “I would get out of paper assets.” The world economy is not a “Market.” I believe economy is the biggest bubble in world history.
Of course he is quite correct.
We have been living in the largest bubble in all of human history.
And once it finally shatters into billions of pieces nobody is going to be able to put it back together again.
So get ready for a massive adjustment in your standard of living.
With very hard times looming, the Washington Post is encouraging their readers to reduce food costs by eating bugs…
The Washington Post advised Americans Sunday that instead of a traditional season dinner, which now is unaffordable for a quarter of families, they should instead look to eating bugs.
A tremendous amount of economic chaos is on the way.
The Federal Reserve could help matters a great deal if they would just stop raising interest rates.
But that isn’t going to happen, and so it appears that 2023 will be a year of severe economic pain all over the nation.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.John 13:1
This fact is essentially a promise; for what our Lord was He is, and what He was to those with whom He lived on earth, He will be to all His beloved so long as the moon endureth.
“Having loved”: here was the wonder! That He should ever have loved men at all is the marvel. What was there in His poor disciples that He should love them? What is there in me?
But when He has once begun to love, it is His nature to continue to do so. Love made the saints “his own”—what a choice title! He purchased them with blood, and they became His treasure. Being His own, He will not lose them. Being His beloved, He will not cease to love them. My soul, He will not cease to love thee!
The text is well as it stands: “to the end.” Even till His death the ruling passion of love to His own reigned in His sacred bosom. It means also to the uttermost. He could not love them more: He gave Himself for them. Some read it, to perfection. Truly He lavished upon them a perfect love, in which there was no flaw nor failure, no unwisdom, no unfaithfulness.
Such is the love of Jesus to each one of His people. Let us sing to our Well-beloved a song.
“John replied, ‘No one can receive anything unless it is given from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said that I’m not the Christ but that I’m the one sent before him. The groom is the one who is getting married. The friend of the groom stands close by and, when he hears him, is overjoyed at the groom’s voice. Therefore, my joy is now complete. He must increase and I must decrease.” John 3:27-30
I was told I would not be considered for a national leadership role that had opened up in the organization I’d served with for many years. Yet, deep inside, I felt God was asking me to take the role. After some soul searching and checking of my motives, I sent a letter expressing my interest in the position and the conviction that God was motivating my response. I received no immediate reply but after six months I was asked to take the position!
In this process, the words of John the Baptist gave me confidence: “No one can receive anything unless it is given from heaven.” Early in my career, I became convinced that God places people where He wants for His purposes. This has given me a clear sense of who really is in charge. John was sure of who he was and who he was not. He was not the Christ, the Messiah, but he was the friend. Christ was to be honored — that was John’s chief purpose and joy.
Calm and confidence will invade your life when you understand that God is in control, even when the circumstances do not seem to be lining up the way you want. When you intentionally commit to honoring Christ in all circumstances, a profound joy will follow. Are you willing to release control and trust God to be Lord over all? Can you be content to honor Christ and give Him greater reach into your life and circumstances?
Jesus, you are the Messiah and Lord of all things, I am not. I want to trust you today. I give you my cares, desires and concerns. I affirm that no one can receive anything unless it is given from heaven. I trust you have the best plan. By faith, I thank you for what you have planned for me. Amen.
“Say to the righteous, that it shall be well with them.” Isaiah 3:10 (NKJV)
Missing church on Sunday leaves a hole in my week that is difficult to patch up. A chronic illness makes this absence unavoidable at times. But I can always count on this loving message and sincere promise when it occurs: “Tell Bethany I’ll be praying for her.” Knowing the one who faithfully sends me this message, I’m always confident the promise has already been kept.
Recently, I discovered a similar message in God’s Word and a promise as sure as the One Who sent it: “Say to the righteous, that it shall be well with them.” (Isaiah 3:10)
This message was sent to a nation unsure of God’s ways. And the promise it contains is for those in the same situation. Those full of questions yet righteous in Christ have this promise: “. . . it shall be well with them.” No matter the doubts, the frustrations, the “wish-things-were-different” thinking that takes our affection off things above, in Christ, we can be confident that it will be well with us.
Knowing the God who made this promise, we can be sure it is strong enough to lean on.
And it doesn’t take one ounce of strength to lean.
Father, Help us to lean our weakness and our questions on Your promises. We praise You for being as certain as the promises You’ve sent. Thank You for the assurance that because of Christ, it will be well with us. In His Name. Amen.
BLASPHEME: Cambridge University dean says Jesus could have been transgender A University of Cambridge dean claimed that Jesus Christ could have been transgender. The inflammatory comments were made by Dr. Michael Banner, who is the dean of Trinity College – a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Banner declared that it was a “legitimate” assertation that Jesus could have been transgender. The incendiary theory was made during Evensong at Trinity College chapel on Nov. 20.
The Biblical Foundation of American Freedom Our fathers’ God to Thee, Author of liberty, To Thee we sing. Long may our land be bright, With freedom’s holy light, Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King! – America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee) The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly, she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America’s king.
New Study: Climate Models Got It Wrong, Eastern Pacific Ocean Is Cooling, La Niña Winters Could Keep On Coming A new research paper has found ‘real world’ temperature differences in the Eastern Pacific Ocean that vary wildly from what the climate models say should be happening. The study also suggests that La Niñas –the colder counterpart of El Niños– could keep on coming, adding to the climatic woes that the phenomenon delivers, which is to say harsher winters for much of the Northern Hemisphere, and heavy precipitation for the likes of Australia.
EU Accuses Washington Of Making A Fortune From Ukraine War “Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West,” Politico observes in a surprising admission which marks a stark reversal from prior mainstream media optimism and cheerleading of the White House’s blank check approach to supporting Ukraine. “Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.”
Musk Blasts Claims That Reinstating Banned Twitter Accounts Puts ‘Lives At Risk’ Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk took a swipe at a mainstream media report that cited activists claiming lives were being put at risk by Musk’s decision to reinstate a number of banned Twitter accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.
“Atmospheric Chess Pieces Align”: Polar Vortex May Unleash Arctic Blast As Far As Deep South According to freelance meteorologist Mike Masco, a “monster negative NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation] signal showing the pattern will reload the cold FAST as the atmospheric chess pieces align to produce major cold & potential polar vortex into the eastern/northern USA Dec. 5 & Beyond.”
Clashes in Shanghai as COVID protests flare across China Hundreds of demonstrators and police clashed in Shanghai on Sunday night as protests over China’s stringent COVID restrictions flared for a third day and spread to several cities in the wake of a deadly fire in the country’s far west. The wave of civil disobedience is unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago, as frustration mounts over his signature zero-COVID policy nearly three years into the pandemic. The COVID measures are also exacting a heavy toll on the world’s second-largest economy.
Hackers leak personal data of over 100,000 Israelis A new hacker group called BlackMagic hacked into several Israeli websites over the past weekend and disclosed personal records of over 100,000 Israelis, including personal data and even pictures of IDs.
Niece of Iran’s Supreme Leader urges world to cut ties with Tehran over unrest Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s niece, a well-known rights activist, has called on foreign governments to cut all ties with Tehran over its violent crackdown on popular unrest kindled by the death in police custody of a young woman. A video of a statement by Farideh Moradkhani, an engineer whose late father was a prominent opposition figure married to Khamenei’s sister, was being widely shared online after what activist news agency HRANA said was her arrest on November 23. “This regime is not loyal to any of its religious principles and does not know any rules except force and maintaining power.” Farideh Moradkhani
Yuval Noah Harari to CNN: ‘Israeli public has moved on from two-state solution’ In interview to CNN today, @harari_yuval says:”A lot in the Israeli public has gradually switched from a belief in the TSS to an implicit belief in the ‘3 Classes Solution’ that you have just one country between the Jordan and Med, with 3 classes of people:
“I’m Not Christian” – Lapid’s Wife Sues Over False Claim of Faith in Jesus In a social media post last week, Lihi Lapid insisted that the articles on her website had been planted by political opponents. But more importantly, she announced a lawsuit against an American rabbi for defamation after he used the claims as a political smear against her and her husband. According to Lihi, Rabbi Tovia Singer, a known anti-Messianic activist, “spread the message that I was no longer Jewish, that I had converted to Christianity.”
Iran blames Israel for Fars News Agency hack Iran International reported on Saturday that a group called Black Reward claimed responsibility for the attack, which allegedly deleted nearly 250 terabytes of data from the Fars servers.
Deadly Landslide Engulfs Italian Island of Ischia, Up to a Dozen Missing, Feared Buried In Mud After days of heavy rainfall, the Italian island of Ischia was engulfed in a landslide that burying everything in its path. Italian officials are still assessing the situation but believe up to a dozen people may be trapped under the mud. One body has reportedly already been recovered.
Severe weather delays over 2,500 post-Thanksgiving flights in U.S. More than 2,500 flights into or out of U.S. airports were delayed as of late Sunday morning during the post-Thanksgiving travel rush as severe weather, including rain, heavy winds and snow, swept through major cities.
Doctors Warn We Are About To See One Of The Biggest Die Offs Of All Time Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it (ANP: As we’ll see below, the 2nd Amendment and 10’s of millions of VERY WELL ARMED Americans IS a ‘preventive measure!’). The process is not linear. Stages occur simultaneously. Each stage is itself a process. Their logic is similar to a nested Russian matryoshka doll.
Bans On “Assault” Weapons Do Not Reduce Crime The assumption that the 1994 assault weapons prohibition was successful in lowering gun homicides, mass shootings, or even the possession of assault weapons is not backed by strong evidence…
Anti-lockdown protests in China spread as fury grows over zero Covid policy China is facing its largest anti-government protests since the Tiananmen Square massacre after activists filled the streets to openly call for an end to the rule of President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Accused of “Corona Insanity”: Swiss Doctor Locked Away in Mental Asylum for Speaking Against COVID Laws, April 2020 Dr. Thomas Binder is a Swiss cardiologist with over 34 years of experience in treating respiratory infections. He received a doctorate in immunology and virology, specializing in internal medicine and cardiology, from the University of Zurich. Binder is an intelligent man who was deemed insane by the Swiss government for speaking out against COVID regulations.
World Shadow Government Has Built a Global Vaccine Regime That Has Infiltrated Governments and Public Health Institutions The same organisations that have an interest in vaccinations today also had a lot of influence in laying the groundwork decades ago. People tend to think of these large and well-known organisations – such as Rockefeller Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF; CDC, GAVI, USAID, the World Bank – as independent of each other, but they are not. They are part of a vaccine infrastructure – a global vaccine regime. Or, as Nations in Action describes it, the vaccine shadow government architecture.
“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” —Joseph Story
“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” said the president.
Nate Jackson
Joe Biden has a long history of saying dumb stuff, not least of which pertains to firearms. He’s advised people to fire shotguns through doors or off balconies, and one of his favorite and most-repeated lines that we suppose he thinks is funny is that old canard about deer wearing kevlar vests. Then there are the multiple occasions on which he’s threatened the American people with F-15s and nukes. But when the president of the United States proclaims that virtually every gun in America should be banned, Liberty-loving Patriots take notice.
“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” Biden lamented, on Thanksgiving Day no less. “It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
He added, “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”
So the obvious question is whether Biden was just displaying his increasing senility or if he really meant what he said and is simply taking the mask off.
“Semiautomatic” describes the vast majority of guns in the country, not just the AR-15 leftists love to demonize. “Semiautomatic” means one trigger pull, one bullet fired. Nearly all modern handguns and many if not most hunting rifles and shotguns fit in this category. Does Biden really intend to go after all of them? Does he really not understand the difference between a semiautomatic gun and a select-fire rifle — a.k.a. actual military weapons that, with the flick of a switch, can change to automatic fire? The latter are already heavily restricted to the point of being effectively illegal.
The Left has been both ignorantly and deliberately conflating the two types of guns for decades because they want to scare people into submitting to restrictions and bans.
As is usually the case with Democrats, Biden made his remarks after yet another mass shooting — this one at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, where an employee (who doesn’t fit the Left’s preferred “angry white male” profile) killed six coworkers with a pistol before killing himself. That came just days after a “non-binary” assailant (another profile breaker) murdered five people at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, and a couple of weeks after four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death with no suspect even named by authorities.
The stabbings, of course, show that a mass murder can be committed without a firearm, but Democrats prefer to exploit only some murders. There have been no calls for banning knives here. Yet.
“This year, I signed the most significant gun reform in a generation, but that is not nearly enough,” Biden argued. “We must take greater action.”
Way back in March 2020, when the American people should have realized just how awful Biden really is, he had this exchange with an autoworker:
“You are actively trying to end our Second Amendment right and take away our guns,” said the man.
“You’re full of s**t,” Biden retorted. “I did not — no, no, shush. Shush. I support the Second Amendment.”
Does he?
“How exactly Biden intends to ‘get rid’ of these weapons, the vast majority of which, obviously, are owned and used by non-criminals, is anybody’s guess,” writes political analyst Teresa Mull. She then quips, “though getting your ‘sister-in-law-turned-lover’ to toss your gun in a random dumpster seems to do the trick.” Hunter Biden’s sordid story also includes felony lying on a federal background check document when purchasing a firearm.
As for Biden’s comment denying “a single solitary rationale” for owning a semiautomatic firearm, we humbly point him to the Second Amendment he claims to support. Despite years of Democrat protesting to the contrary, there is no qualification in that Amendment restricting arms to those available at the time it was written. No one makes any such argument about any other right in the Constitution — for good reason.
We don’t have to justify some “rationale” that Biden can understand before we speak or worship freely, or before we have rights protecting to our personal effects on digital devices from search or seizure. Heck, Biden and his fellow Democrats don’t even want to provide a “rationale” for killing an unborn child up until the moment of birth, and that “right” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. We certainly don’t need to satisfy his “rationale” test before owning a semiautomatic firearm.
Meanwhile, the number of Americans carrying handguns each day continues to rise. Guess what they carry? By and large, semiautomatic pistols.
Twitter’s Elon Musk is committed to free speech, and the Left is equally committed to stopping him.
Douglas Andrews
There’s a two-front war being waged against Twitter, and it confirms everything we’ve long suspected about the Left and its hostility toward free speech.
One battlefront revolves around advertising, the revenue from which is the life’s blood of a social media platform. The other front involves Twitter’s users, who the Left hopes to chase away to an alternative platform by making Twitter seem socially unacceptable.
Earlier this month, we got a sense of how that advertising war is being waged, and by whom. As NBC News reported: “A group comprised of 60 civil rights and civil society groups, including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, launched the website, StopToxicTwitter.com, urging major brands to halt advertising on Twitter.”
It didn’t take long.
The Washington Post, NPR, Media Matters, and other reliably left-wing organs are now gleefully reporting on the exodus of major advertisers from Twitter. According to the Post: “More than a third of Twitter’s top 100 marketers have not advertised on the social media network in the past two weeks, a Washington Post analysis of marketing data found — an indication of the extent of skittishness among advertisers about billionaire Elon Musk’s control of the company.”
Media Matters was even more enthusiastic about this advertising attrition: “Fifty of the top 100 advertisers have either announced or seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter,” they report. “These advertisers have accounted for nearly $2 billion in spending on the platform since 2020, and over $750 million in advertising in 2022 alone.”
The Soros-funded, Fox-News-deranged Media Matters goes on to list the advertisers that have either publicly announced that they’ve stopped advertising on Twitter or are “quiet quitters.” Those publicly quitting include Chevrolet, Chipotle, Ford, Jeep, Kyndryl, Merck, and Novartis. The quiet quitters include Abbott Labs, Allstate, American Express, AT&T, BlackRock, Citigroup, CNN, Fidelity, and plenty more.
All this is based on data from a company called Pathmatics, which, we’re told, “offers brand analysis on digital marketing trends.”
How serious is the threat to Twitter’s advertising pipeline? Very serious. “If it becomes an essential street fight around hate speech, advertisers are going to run for the hills,” said Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives. “That fundamentally is the problem. You’re trying to bring advertisers back on while loosening content moderation. Those go exactly against each other. And no advertiser is going to jump in the deep end until they know the rules of the game. And Musk goes to the beat of a different drummer.”
Thus, with corporate advertisers being naturally averse to controversy, and with an activist group of “civil rights” organizations chirping in their ears, it’s not hard to see how this works — and how it’ll hurt Twitter’s bottom line regardless of wherever else it might be cutting costs and streamlining its operations.
Then there’s the alternative platform push — in this case to a micro-blogging site called Mastodon. Fox News reports: “As Twitter users chatter about the platform’s potential impending demise amid mass layoffs and resignations and reports that the app for employees had begun to slow, some users have turned to Mastodon as a potential alternative.”
Mastodon, which fancies itself as “radically different social media, back in the hands of the people,” was founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko. Remarkably, he’s the project’s only full-time employee, and the decentralized, open-source social network is a nonprofit.
At this point, Mastodon doesn’t pose a numerical threat to Twitter. The platform currently has more than a million users, nearly half of whom Rochko said signed up after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October. Twitter, by comparison, reported 238 million daily active users at the end of the second quarter of 2022.
But while Twitter is still the dominant force in the micro-blogging space, those who appreciate free speech shouldn’t underestimate the Left’s hatred of it, nor the lengths to which it will go to control the marketplace of ideas.
Alaska got Murkowskied: Thanks to Alaska’s adoption of the dubious ranked choice voting system, long-time incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski was able to hold on to her seat over conservative Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka, despite the fact that Tshibaka won the most first choice votes. Murkowski is not a conservative, as demonstrated by her record of voting with Democrats over 60% of the time. Ranked choice voting is being pushed by leftist outfits like FairVote, which bills itself as “nonpartisan” but in reality is a progressive group, and such activists seek to undermine America’s historical electoral system in favor of a system that has proven time and again to favor Democrats. Ranked choice is billed as a system that will prevent “extremist” candidates from winning elections, but in reality it is a system that thwarts challenges to establishment candidates. In Alaska’s down-ballot races, a solidly red state turned a definite shade of purple, as Democrats came away with gains that would not have been possible in the past but for ranked choice voting.
Another strategic blunder by Herschel Walker: With the December 6 Senate runoff election looming in Georgia between Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, political blunders need to be avoided. Unfortunately, Walker just made a big blunder, similar to that of Republican candidate Mehmet Oz in his failed Pennsylvania race. It’s the “carpet bagger” label, which Oz was never able to escape. It turns out that Walker is receiving a primary resident tax break on his home in Dallas, Texas. Back in 2021, Walker registered to vote in Georgia not long before launching his Senate bid in the Peach State. For decades prior, Walker lived in Texas, and records indicate that he took the “principle residence” tax break for his Texas home on his 2021 and 2022 tax returns, despite the fact that he had already launched his Senate bid in Georgia. While it appears that legally speaking, Walker’s Senate bid in Georgia is within bounds of the law, politically speaking this is another flaw that Warnock is sure to use to paint Walker as an outsider, despite Walker’s storied history as Georgia’s most famous running back.
Home ownership is increasingly out of reach: “Affordability challenges are a major reason why home sales have slowed so dramatically over the last few months,” stated the real estate brokerage company Redfin in a recently released report. Thanks to sustained high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s repeated interest rate hikes over this year, fewer Americans are be able to afford purchasing a house. The median annual household income requirement to afford doing so has risen to $107,281, up from $73,668 just last year — an increase of almost 50%. However, despite the fact that home affordability has decreased, housing prices have remained relatively steady thanks to decreasing volume. Investment property sales have also slowed, down 30% from last year.
Headlines
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says he’s not going anywhere (Townhall)
Kari Lake sues Maricopa County over Election Day issues (Daily Wire)
Georgia Supreme Court sides with Raphael Warnock, Democrats in early voting fight (Daily Wire)
Georgia Supreme Court reinstates six-week abortion ban (Washington Examiner)
Please join us today!: The deadline for meeting The Patriot Post’s operating budget needs into 2023 is quickly approaching. If you haven’t already done so, please help us meet this goal today. Your gift in any amount — large or small — is put directly toward this need. Thank you for standing alongside us as we work to keep the timeless message of Liberty in front of conservatives around the nation. —The Patriot Post Editorial Team
One of the biggest factors leading to the U.S. military struggling to meet recruitment goals has to do with the obesity of America’s youth.
Thomas Gallatin
The problem of obesity across America has been a growing trend observed for several decades. To put it bluntly, America as a whole has been getting fatter, and not just during the days between Thanksgiving and that new diet in January.
Back in 1960, the number of American adults classified as obese and extremely obese represented less than 15% of the population. Fast-forward to 2016, and the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that nearly 40% of Americans classify as obese.
This has been a long and troubling trend, which has most often been discussed in relation to the impact on Americans’ general health, especially with the implementation of ObamaCare and the continuing creep toward single-payer healthcare. The more taxpayers pay for healthcare, the more this all matters from a fiscal standpoint.
However, another significantly negative result from America’s obesity epidemic is less obvious, but its implications are just as concerning. America’s obesity epidemic is not merely a problem plaguing adults, but increasingly it is a problem for America’s youth. This has not just life-long health affects but national security implications.
This past fiscal year, the U.S. Army fell short of recruitment goals by a whopping 25%, or 15,000 soldiers. The other U.S. military branches, while meeting their recruitment goals, still observed a similar troubling trend, a dwindling pool of fit youth.
Back in 2014, it was found that just 29% of Americans met military fitness requirements to serve. That fitness percentage has now dropped to 23%, and most of this decrease has to do with America’s increasing obesity rates.
“In 2010, 30% of adults between 18 and 39 suffered from obesity,” observes Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation. “In 2020, just 10 years later, that statistic had skyrocketed to 36.3% and is expected to continue to rise to 43% by 2030. With this tragic trend comes increases in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, joint damage, and other serious ailments.”
Put simply, America’s obesity crisis is significantly diminishing our nation’s future combat readiness on a scale. Currently, 21% of American youth between the ages of 12 and 19 are obese. Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that only a quarter of school-age youth meet the recommended minimum of 60 minutes of physical activity a day. As a result more young Americans are suffering from preventable diseases such as type two diabetes than ever before.
Making matters worse has been the woke “body positivity” movement, which decries any criticism of obesity as “body shaming” and effectively denies the severe health risks associated with obesity.
Thankfully, for the vast majority of the American public, obesity can be reversed. It does take work and discipline, but the benefits far outweigh (no pun intended) the initial discomfort of exercise and eating less.
So, after having enjoyed this Thanksgiving holiday season, take time to enjoy getting out for a walk. And if you have younger children at home, encourage them to go outside and play. In a very real sense, America’s nation security depends upon it.
Over a year ago, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused retired Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli’s of sexually assaulting her. There is no such thing as #MeToo in China, making this kind of accusation the act of a desperate woman. Peng probably knew that this wouldn’t end well for her. Not only was her post containing the accusation quickly taken down, but she was missing from the public eye for months until the CCP faced enough global pressure that she was allowed to resurface.
Her sad and probably coerced statements to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and L’Equipe magazine were done over video with armed guards in the background. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) remained unconvinced and put a stop to tournament play in China in protest. This was an unexpectedly honorable move, especially considering the WTA was under contract for 10 years to play the finals in Shenzhen. Steve Simon, chairman and CEO of the WTA, stated at the time that until he is assured of Peng’s safety and well being, the tournament hiatus will continue.
Peng also was seen at the Beijing Olympics during skier Eileen Gu’s gold medal run. Gu, who was American-born and raised but who competed for China, was the face of the Beijing Olympics.
Peng announced her retirement from professional tennis shortly after the Olympics came to an end and hasn’t been seen or heard from since February 2022.
Disappointingly, talks are resuming between the WTA and China. Many are calling it a “moral failure” to even resume talks. One can only assume that the driving motivation for the revisiting of negotiations is that the decision to keep the WTA out of China has hit the organization hard in the pocketbook. One frame of reference for just how distinctly this decision has cost the WTA is seen in the drastic drop in prize money. In 2019, the WTA had $179 million in the winners’ pot; in 2022, it was only $157 million.
Is garnering more prize money and profit more important than standing for the rights and dignity of an alleged victim? That’s most certainly what China is counting on. The Chinese government is banking on the worlds’s short attention span and the avarice of international organizations like the WTA to quietly let Peng Shuai disappear. She is being victimized twice over as a result.
The WTA may have resumed talks with China, but it’s not guaranteeing a return. Simon is vocal about his remaining concerns for Peng. “We’ve been consistent with that,” Simon declared. “We want to have both dialogue with Peng, but we also want a transparent investigation as to the allegations that were set forth so that we can get to an appropriate resolution. As I’ve said all along as well, if you can get to a resolution that, you ask somebody to do something and they do it, you then have an obligation to return.”
The WTA has been a courageous example of an international industry willing to stand up to China. If it caves now, it will be deeply disappointing.
If violent crime disproportionately affects black communities, why do the Democrats keep trying to ignore the issue?
Douglas Andrews
Do black lives matter, or don’t they? The answer apparently depends on whom you ask: a Democrat or a Republican.
“In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections,” writes author and researcher Heather Mac Donald, “conservatives had relentlessly raised the alarm about the post-George Floyd crime surge: homicides had risen 29 percent in 2020 (the largest increase on record), and they have continued rising since then. Democrats and their media allies responded either that crime was a racist fiction or that, because post-Floyd crime levels nationally were still lower than they were in the early 1990s, there was nothing to see here, folks, move on!”
Blacks, though, seemed less inclined to obey this Democrat directive than in years past. In an election cycle whose results were disappointing for Republicans, the GOP nonetheless saw some a demographic bright spot among blacks: As columnist Star Parker notes, “Republican House candidates got 14% of the Black vote, almost twice the 8% of the Black vote that Republicans captured in 2020 and 2018.”
What accounts for this significant shift? A youth movement, as it turns out. Pew Research reports that 28% of black Republicans are ages 18-29, compared to 17% of black Democrats and 10% of white Republicans. And this shift may be driven by a realization among young blacks that their inner-city communities are hit hardest when law and order breaks down as it did during the long, hot, violent summer of 2020. As Mac Donald writes:
Black Americans have borne the brunt of the increased violence since the George Floyd race riots. Their share of homicide victims went from 53 percent in 2019 (blacks are 13 percent of the national population) to 56 percent in 2020. At least an additional 2,164 black lives were lost in 2020 over the 2019 count, compared with an increase of 950 white and Hispanic homicide victims combined in 2020. Such disparities only worsened in 2021 and 2022. In 2020, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at 20 times the rate of whites in the same age range. In 2021, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at nearly 25 times the rate of whites of the same age.
Could it be that blacks — and especially young blacks — are beginning to realize that decades of fealty to the Democrat Party have brought little more to their communities than death and destruction? As our Mark Alexander has made clear, the Democrat Party has inarguably racist roots, and it continues to be a powerful vehicle for black oppression. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our decrepit inner cities, which Democrats have controlled for decades and whose overwhelmingly black populations are nonetheless beholden to.
The Democrats are inclined to dismiss the Republicans’ focus on law-and-order as little more than a racist dog whistle, but facts are stubborn things. Nowhere was the issue of crime more powerfully driven home than in New York, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Did it work? We might ask Zeldin’s opponent, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul, who wound up getting just 53% of the vote in a state where her party outnumbers Republicans by two to one.
Of course, much of the black community’s allegiance to the Democrat Party is borne out of dependence, and a reluctance to bite the hand that feeds it. What Thomas Sowell wrote back in 2016 is no less true today: “A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression. In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.”
Whether by downplaying the seriousness of violent crime, or by failing to address the collapse of the black family, or by continually opposing such reforms as school choice, Democrats are doing black Americans no favors. To them, it seems that black lives matter only for their votes.
Roger Helle: Joe Biden’s Thriving Economy — The president has built and appealed to the myriad leftist grievances about our great country.
Ron Helle: Much Afraid — I’ve heard it said that courage is the opposite of fear. I’m not sure I agree with that assessment. Courage is acting in spite of the fear.
The Chop Clinic — Gender reassignment for kids was done without evidence, Rachel Levine email shows.
‘It’s Pretty Damn Simple!’ — GOP lawmakers blast Joe Biden during a recent visit to the border calling on him to enforce the laws that are already on the books.
America Is Fat, but You Don’t Have to Be — Renowned fitness expert Vinnie Tortorich offers three key behaviors that must be repeated to get and stay in shape. Anyone can do it.
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all the others.” —Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC)
Observations
“There’s no one who wants to be known as a victim, except for the former president of the United States. ‘I am a victim,’ [Donald Trump] said in his announcement speech. ‘I will tell you I’m a victim.’ Trump has created a dynamic for his supporters where the more victimized he is, the better. … In all of this, Trump has the advantage of having been actually treated unfairly in the Russiagate investigation. It gives Trump the credibility to characterize any other allegation or investigation as simply 2017 redux. The way Trump uses victimhood accounts for his bizarre ability to reverse the usual political physics of events. Until the day before yesterday, having the FBI search your residence as part of a federal investigation would have been a major blow, if not the end of the target’s presidential ambitions. It helped Trump. An indictment might help him (at least in the short term) even more.” —Rich Lowry
For the Record
“As a tactical concern, the House GOP’s decision to open an investigation into Biden family corruption is questionable. It promises limited political return. It would serve Republicans, and the country, far better if the House focused on a hyper-politicized Justice Department that targets the political opposition, labels concerned parents ‘domestic terrorists’ and ignores violence aimed at pregnancy centers, for starters. None of that, however, means there isn’t sufficient circumstantial evidence suggesting President Joe Biden not only lied about knowing his son was favor-trading on the family name with corrupt autocracies but that he was a beneficiary of those business dealings. Indeed, precedent says we Republicans have a duty to ‘democracy’ to investigate. … If Joe were a Republican, Adam Schiff would not only have opened an investigation but he would have claimed to be in possession of irrefutable proof that the 2020 election had been bought by the Chinese.” —David Harsanyi
Non Compos Mentis
“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no social redeeming values. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturer.” —Joe Biden
“If you spent the last two years helping to save democracy … I am very thankful for you!” —Congressman Eric Swalwell
“Today is a good day to remind you that whitewashing American history is how white supremacy thrives.” —former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich
The BIG Lies
“It’s also important to unpack the myth of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday riddled with historical inaccuracies, built on this myth that the indigenous welcomed their colonizers with open arms and ears of corn — a simplistic fairytale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between indigenous tribes and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed. It’s the truth Republicans want banned from our textbooks, because here’s the secret they want so desperately to keep: We are a country founded on violence. Our birth was violent.” —MSNBC’s Joy Reid
“If you just read that [‘all men are created equal’], you think the Declaration of Independence is a liberty document. But it’s actually not.” —1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones
Victimitis
“It will always be hard for me to claim any sort of patriotism. Just as a black person who descends from slavery.” —Nikole Hannah-Jones
Evangelist Franklin Graham is warning Christians that the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, which is set to be voted on by the Senate Monday, is a deceptive smoke-screen that would change the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman while not protecting those who hold a traditional view of marriage.
The Respect for Marriage Act “could impact you, your family, your church, and our nation,” Graham wrote on Facebook during the weekend. “The name is a smoke-screen. Very deceptive.”
He compared it to the Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act that “did nothing but increase inflation and further hurt our economy.”
“The current version of the Respect for Marriage Act being pushed by Senator Chuck Schumer is designed to provide strong protections for same-sex marriage — but it fails to protect those of us who believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” explained Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse.
“It is dangerous legislation that would be used against individuals, churches and organizations who honor traditional marriage.”
The bill to enshrine the right to same-sex marriage into federal law cleared a major procedural hurdle in the Senate earlier this month, with critics saying that a religious freedom amendment added to the legislation doesn’t adequately protect those with deeply held beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman.
Graham said Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s proposed amendment “can improve” the legislation and “bring critically-needed protection for religious liberty and rights of conscience.”
He continued, “Many say this is a long shot, but we desperately need senators to demand the Lee Amendment be added to the current version of the Respect for Marriage Act before it is finalized.”
The measure would codify the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to same-sex marriage, into federal law and formally repeal the unenforced Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman at the federal level.
Graham urged Christians to call their senators “as soon as possible and ask them to vote YES for the Lee Amendment — or to vote NO to the Respect for Marriage Act if it doesn’t have this amendment.”
He warned, “Time is short — freedom-loving people have to take action before it’s too late.”
The Respect for Marriage Act previously passed the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in July with the support of all Democrats and 47 House Republicans.
The legislation would require all states to give “full faith and credit to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State pertaining to a marriage between 2 individuals, on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.”
Passage of the bill has become a top priority for congressional Democrats following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, determining that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t contain a right to abortion. In a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas described the substantive due process as “legal fiction,” suggesting that the justices should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including Obergefell.
In a recent op-ed for The Christian Post, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, also warned that the bill “opens the door to American persecution.”
“As the mainstream culture moves further and further away from a Christian worldview, I’ve witnessed the hostility to moral truth creep closer to our shores,” he wrote. “The West, once the safe haven of free speech and religion, is turning cold to the foundations that made our countries thrive.”
He cited an FRC report released in July, which tracked 99 incidents of government attacks on religious freedom against Christians or Christian institutions across 14 Western countries in the last two years alone.
Inside Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu chooses controversial political ally Itamar Ben-Givr for the post of National Security Minister; CBN News Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchell talks about the criticisms of Ben-Givr, what his supporters say about him, and the possible changes he could make regarding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; widespread protests erupt in China against President Xi Jinping’s Covid lockdowns, with some calling for Xi to resign; as illegal immigration surges, a look at the…
Chinese authorities responded Monday to a weekend of unprecedented protests against the regime for its excessive COVID-19 restrictions by loosening its “zero COVID” strategy.
The post China Rolls Back COVID Restrictions in Response to Anti-Lockdown Protests appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
Chinese government bots are tweeting “sexually explicit posts about porn and escorts” to drown out news of protests against dictator Xi Jinping, the New York Post reported Monday.
The post China Floods Twitter With Porn To Suppress Protests appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
Protests against communist Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and his regime’s draconian COVID-19 protocols erupted across China over the weekend in what has been called the “White Paper Revolution.” This uprising is reportedly the biggest since 1989, when the communist regime killed thousands of Chinese in the Tiananmen Square protests.
What are the details?
Mass protests erupted in Shanghai, Beijing, and several other cities across China, condemning the communist regime’s so-called “zero-COVID” policies. Chinese police have reportedly rounded up some protesters, pepper-sprayed thousands, and have altogether attempted to clamp down on the demonstrations in the authoritarian surveillance state.
The Daily Mail reported that over the weekend in Shanghai, protesters demanded that the regime “lift lockdown in Urumqi, lift lockdown for Xinjiang, lift lockdown for all of China!”
Some protesters called for Chinese dictator Xi Jinping — who extended his rule last month — to step down as well as for the CCP to relinquish power, saying, “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!”
\u201c\u201cTraitor #XiJinping! #XiJinping, step down! Dictatorial Government, step down! F*ck\u2026\u201d \nCrowds shouting while they gathered at #Urumqi Road in #Shanghai city today to protest against the #CCP\u2019s #ZeroCovid #lockdown.\u201d
— Jennifer Zeng \u66fe\u931a (@Jennifer Zeng \u66fe\u931a) 1669513376
Several police attempted to disappear one protester in Chongqing, who declared, “Without freedom, I would rather die!”
According to Newsweek, many protesters have taken to the streets holding blank sheets of white paper to both symbolize and denounce the Chinese regime’s censorious nature, earning the movement the name “White Paper Revolution” or the “A4 revolution.”
A video reportedly went viral depicting a woman at the Communication University of Nanjing holding up a blank piece of paper, which another individual then quickly took away.
A translation of one iteration of the post on Twitter stated, “Even if you hold up a blank sheet of paper, it makes them fear. It is not the power of the blank sheet of paper, but the power of awakening. Because, it is precisely because there is nothing written, so everything is written…”
CNN previously underscored how open defiance of the regime is “extremely rare,” particularly in a country where dissidents and perceived foes of the state are imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, and in certain cases tossed into concentration camps.
Why and why now?
After three years of COVID-19 policies and decades of murderous authoritarianism, the catalyst for the Chinese protests was a fire and a reimposition of localized lockdowns nationwide.
The new lockdowns reportedly came as a result of a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, with an estimated 40,000 people catching the virus daily (in a country of over 1.4 billion people).
In certain areas of the country, the regime is constructing new detention camps for the infected. A new camp in Guangzhou, for instance, will be able to accommodate and isolate nearly 250,000 persons accused of having COVID-19.
\u201cFor the second day in a row, China has recorded an explosive increase in coronavirus infections.\n\nIn the city of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, which has the largest number of cases, the construction of a quarantine center for 80,000 people has begun.\u201d
This new series of lockdowns was poorly received, particularly at the world’s biggest iPhone plant in Zhengzhou, where workers staged a protest last week, partially over pay, but also over strict quarantine rules. They smashed surveillance cameras and windows and sparred with police, reported the New York Post.
Against a backdrop of tensions already boiling over and three years of punitive COVID-19 measures, the fire that set off protests in China took place in a high-rise in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.
Residents, confined to their apartments on account of the new lockdowns and the regime’s zero-COVID policy, were unable to flee when a fire spread through the building on Thursday. Quarantine protocol also hindered the efforts of first responders, who couldn’t douse the flames or rescue those trapped inside the inferno in time.
At least 10 people died in the fire.
\u201cFamilies in a hi-rise in China were locked into their apartments as their building caught fire. Urumqi, in Xinjiang Province\n\nThey burned alive as they couldn’t escape and no one could get to them in time \n\nThis is directly on the CCP and Xi’s Zero-Covid lockdown strategy\u201d
— Jack Posobiec \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Jack Posobiec \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1669601782
ABC News Australia indicated that while China’s COVID protocols have inadvertently resulted in multiple casualties in recent years, this particular fire constituted the straw that broke the camel’s back.
\u201cRemarkable scenes across China tonight. Feels like spite against zero COVID restrictions is boiling over. Millions online blaming lockdown measures for 10 deaths in an Urumqi high-rise fire. Students chanting “long live the people” at a university in Nanjing:\u201d
Chinese police also brutalized and arrested BBC journalist Edward Lawrence, who had been reporting on the protests. The BBC indicated that Lawrence “was held for several hours before being released. During his arrest he was beaten and kicked by police.”
\u201cWitnessed a BBC journalist got sieged and dragged to the ground by several cops in Shanghai earlier tonight on the Urumqi Rd. His friend said he was targeted becuz he was filming the protest. (feel free to @ his handle if you know who this journalist is ) @BBCNews @BBCNewsAsia\u201d
The AP reported that in response to the protests, some Chinese authorities had eased certain COVID-19 protocols by Monday, but there was no indication that Beijing would back down on its overarching virus mitigation strategy.
One easement announced was that Beijing’s municipal government would no longer barricade and fence in apartment compounds containing persons who had been infected.
Another easement announced was that mass testing would no longer be required for all residents in Guangzhou.
While Beijing made minor efforts to address protesters’ concerns, bot accounts were weaponized online to hijack the hashtags associated with the White Paper Revolution, flooding Twitter and other social media sites with adult content (i.e., pornographic images, gambling posts, ads for escorts).
Jens Monrad, a cybersecurity analyst, told Newsweek that “using a (trending) hashtag in a spam campaign potentially hides authentic content observed during a protest or event, which can move focus away from a protest or ‘drown’ vital information posted on social media platforms.”
Although Monrad could not confirm that this campaign was state-backed, it would nevertheless be in the CCP’s interest to drown out the protesters’ critiques.
When asked about the anger over the regime’s pandemic policy, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened. … We believe that with the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and cooperation and support of the Chinese people, our fight against COVID-19 will be successful.”
By Casey Hall and Martin Quin Pollard SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) -Police on Monday stopped and searched people at the sites of weekend protests in Shanghai and Beijing, after crowds there and in other Chinese cities demonstrated against stringent COVID-19 measures disrupting lives three years into the pandemic. From the streets of several Chinese cities to dozens…
TODAY, David Fiorazo shares alarming evidence that evil agendas have gained much ground in America. Population control propaganda and LGBTQ ideology have saturated society. Referring to the constant marketing of evil, David exposes tactics the godless left uses to convince people to reject God, truth, and biblical values.
Truth2Freedom's Blog 