NY Times Editorial Board Member Questions Free Speech on Internet: ‘I don’t think we can allow it to go on’

Mara Gay of the NY Times editorial board appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this week and questioned the idea of free speech on the internet.

She whined about so-called ‘hate speech’ and disinformation, which is classic leftist talk for, speech I don’t like.

Remember, this woman works for a newspaper that pushed the Russia collusion hoax for four solid years. She is appearing on a network that did the same, but now she is worried about disinformation?

NewsBusters reports:

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Morning Joe Declares Free Speech to Be ‘Out of Date’

MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay claimed Wednesday that technological advancements on the internet have rendered the idea of free speech “out of date” because non-journalists are using it to advance “hate speech” and “dangerous” content…

Offering up a combination of a statement and a question, he continued, “Isn’t it time for Congress to start holding Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and other owners of these, these corporations, just to the same standard that everybody else is held to? Why do we carve things out for — and I would ‘ve said Jack Dorsey before and I did say that a couple years ago? This is — it’s just insanity that we’re allowing these billion dollar corporations to have an exemption that nobody else has.”

Gay concurred with Scarborough’s assessment, “You know, Joe, you’re making a powerful case here that the law just, maybe it just is out of date. I mean, listening to you talk about the way you were thinking about it when it was enacted is reason enough. You’re right. The internet has changed.”

As for the First Amendment, Gay declared, “of course, as a journalist, that’s a wonderful thing.”

However, she lamented that other people, who are not journalists, have an expectation that the First Amendment applies to them as well, “The problem here is that the world has changed, and so to your point, Joe, now you have companies that are actually not journalistic organizations that disseminating information, some of it factual, some of it dangerous, some of it hate speech, and they are, they essentially have no responsibility for the consequences of that.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/ny-times-editorial-board-member-questions-free-speech-on-internet-i-dont-think-we-can-allow-it-to-go-on-video/

DOJ Adds Four More Indictments in SBF Case Including Money Laundering

The DOJ added four more indictments for Samuel Bankman-Fried this morning.

In December 2022 the DOJ announced their list of crimes against Sam Bankman-Fried who ran cryptocurrency exchange FTX into bankruptcy. The DOJ’s Southern District of New York (SDNY) was running the case. Because this office has been involved in the running of corrupt cases in the past, it was believed that they would only go so far and not bring in the cryptocurrency’s actions in Ukraine.

This was the case as the first set of indictments ignored any mention of Ukraine, where billions have been sent by the Biden regime.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/breaking-doj-adds-four-more-indictments-in-sbf-case-including-money-laundering/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/breaking-doj-adds-four-more-indictments-in-sbf-case-including-money-laundering/

Helicopter with Iranian sports minister crashes

His adviser was killed, while other people on board sustained injuries

A helicopter carrying Iranian Sports Minister Hamid Sajjadi crashed while landing in the southern part of the country on Thursday. According to local authorities, the minister’s adviser was killed in the crash, while the top official himself, as well as other passengers and crew members, sustained minor injuries and have been taken to the hospital.

The accident took place while the aircraft was landing at the sports complex in the city of Baft. Local governor Mohammad Mehdi Fadakar said that the aircraft had 12 passengers on board.

Citing an eyewitness, the IRNA news agency reported that Sajjadi appeared to be in “good condition.” Meanwhile, his adviser, Esmail Ahmadi, died in the crash.

Photos and videos released by local media outlets show a helicopter turned over on its roof, with no signs of fire or smoke. The helicopter also seems to have lost its trail. Other pictures show a sizable crowd not far from the aircraft’s wreck, as well as emergency services vehicles parked nearby.

https://www.rt.com/news/571979-iran-helicopter-minister-crash/

European Commission bans TikTok

Employees of the EU’s executive body reportedly have until mid-March to delete the app from their devices

The European Commission (EC) has ordered its employees to uninstall the popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from corporate devices, explaining the move as necessary to bolster cybersecurity.

To protect the EC’s data and increase its cybersecurity, its management board has “decided to suspend the TikTok application on corporate devices and personal devices enrolled in the Commission mobile device services,” according to a statement posted by the body on Thursday.

Staffers have until mid-March to comply or else lose access to their EC email and Skype for Business apps, EURACTIV reported, citing an IT email sent to staff.

A TikTok spokesperson told EURACTIV that the ban is “misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions” about the social media platform. The spokesperson said the company had “contacted the Commission to set the record straight and explain how we protect the data of the 125 million people across the EU who come to TikTok every month.”

Last month, a group of Republican lawmakers in the US introduced the ‘No TikTok on United States Devices Act’, which seeks to ban the platform on all devices in the country. One of the bill's authors, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), argued at the time that the app “opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting.”

In December 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to “eliminate all cybersecurity risks posed by TikTok” and prohibited the use of the app on government-provided devices. Reports at the time suggested that lawmakers and staff at the US House of Representatives had also been instructed to uninstall the app from any corporate devices.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last year that the agency had “national security concerns” about TikTok, including the “possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users, or control the recommendation algorithm.”

Commenting on the allegations at the time, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused US officials of “spreading disinformation” in a bid to discredit a large Chinese firm competing with Western social media giants.

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, also dismissed claims that it ever planned to track Americans.

https://www.rt.com/news/571983-eu-commission-tiktok-ban-report/

Mad Cow Disease Detected In Brazil, Forces Beef Trade With China To Halt

Brazil, the world's biggest beef exporter, suspended beef shipments to China as a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) was detected, according to Bloomberg, citing the country's agriculture and livestock ministry.

Brazil's Minister for Agriculture, Carlos Favaro, said the animal illness known as mad cow disease was found on a small farm in the northern state of Para.

"All measures are being taken immediately at each stage of the investigation and the matter is being handled with total transparency to guarantee Brazilian and global consumers the recognized quality of our meat," Favaro said.

Favaro said the World Organization for Animal Health had been notified. Samples of the infected animal were sent to the organization's reference laboratory in Canada to determine if the case was "atypical."

Atypical occurs in older cattle. It's deemed low-risk and naturally occurring compared with other forms of the disease.

"The symptomatology indicates that it is the atypical form of the disease, which appears spontaneously in nature, causing no risk of dissemination to the herd and to humans," Para's agricultural defense agency said in a statement.

As a precaution, Brazilian authorities halted beef shipments to China. Favaro said the move would be short-term and that "dialogue with the authorities is being intensified to demonstrate all the information and the prompt re-establishment of the Brazilian meat trade."

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/mad-cow-disease-detected-brazil-forces-beef-trade-china-halt

Israel unleashes airstrikes on Gaza

The air raid came in response to shelling by Palestinian militants, the Israel Defense Forces have reported

Israel has conducted air strikes against Palestinian militants in Gaza in what it calls retaliation for rocket fire from the enclave. The aerial attack followed an Israeli military raid in the West Bank on Wednesday that claimed 11 lives.

Taking to Twitter on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “In response to the rockets fired from Gaza, IAF fighter jets struck both a weapons manufacturing site and military compound belonging to the Hamas Terrorist Organization, located in central and northern Gaza.”

Israeli military officials also accused the militant group of deliberately placing its facilities near civilian infrastructure.

Earlier the same day, the IDF reported that a total of six rockets had been fired from Gaza toward Israeli territory, with five of them having been intercepted and the other landing in an “open area.”

There have been no reports of damage or casualties.

On Wednesday, the IDF carried out a raid in the city of Nablus in the West Bank, targeting three militants. However, eight civilians, including a 72-year-old man and a teenager, also lost their lives as a result of the operation.

According to media reports, Israeli troops opened live fire on Palestinians protesting against the raid. The Guardian quoted unnamed Palestinian officials as saying that at least 103 people had sustained injuries.

Ziad al-Nakhala, head of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad militant group, branded the raid a “major crime” which the “resistance must respond to.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that the Israeli military has killed 62 Palestinians since the start of the year.

https://www.rt.com/news/571968-israel-air-strikes-gaza/

School district to pay $100,000 after banning moms from exposing sexually explicit material in schools' library books

A Georgia school district agreed to pay $100,000 in legal fees after it barred a group of moms from reading sexually explicit material found in their children's school library books aloud at school board meetings, Fox News Digital reported.

A group of mothers called the Mama Bears filed a lawsuit against Forsyth County School District, accusing district officials of violating the parents' First Amendment rights. One of the group's members, who was attempting to sound the alarm on inappropriate books in her child's school library, was banned from reading the pornographic excerpts at school board meetings.

Last February, Alison Hair, a Mama Bears member, read pages from the book "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer to the school board. The novel, Hair explained, was available at her son's middle school library.

Hair was interrupted by a school board member when she started to read, "I know that you give someone a blow job by putting your penis …"

The following month, Hair again attempted to read the book aloud at a school board meeting.

The board members responded by sending Hair a letter informing her that she was banned from attending future meetings until she complied with the board's policies. In the letter, the school board accused Hair of violating its public participation policy.

The Mama Bears filed a lawsuit against the district in July 2022.

"People cannot fairly pass judgment on books that they haven't read," the mothers' suit stated. "And when a school's judgment as to which books young children should read is the subject of political debate, the First Amendment protects parents' right to read aloud from these books, as well as the public's right to hear the language at issue. But the Forsyth County School Board, embarrassed by debate about its choices, has gone so far as to silence and banish from its meetings any parent who simply reads aloud from its schools' library books."

In November, a federal judge determined that the FCS school board's public participation policy was unconstitutional, according to the Institute for Free Speech, which represented the mothers in the case. The judge also forced the board to allow Hair to attend school board meetings.

The Mama Bears won the legal battle, and the school district agreed to pay the mothers' attorney's fees for censoring the women.

"Fee shifting is an important feature of our civil rights laws; and successful plaintiffs who are able to show that government officials censored them are entitled to having their attorneys' fees paid by the wrongdoers, just like for any other form of illegal discrimination. We hope that school-board members and their lawyers take note," Institute for Free Speech senior attorney Del Kolde told Fox News Digital.

The court also ruled that the board cannot prevent "current or future FCS speakers entitled to speak at an FCS school board meeting, from reading or quoting verbatim from the text of any book or written works available in an FCS library or classroom, while addressing the school board during the public-comment period at school board meetings."

"Our Board voted on the settlement agreement earlier this month," FCS told Fox News Digital. "The payment for legal fees was handled by our insurance company."

https://www.theblaze.com/news/school-district-to-pay-100000-after-banning-moms-from-exposing-sexually-explicit-material-in-schools-library-books

Officer Charged with Murder After He Was Caught Dumping Naked Body of Child in Woods

He was likely stalking the child for weeks before.

Earlier this month, the search for 16-year-old Susana Morales came to an end when her remains were found some 20 miles from her home. She'd been missing since July 26, 2022. She was last seen walking home on surveillance footage but tragically would never arrive. Her disappearance had been a mystery until then. According to an arrest warrant, she was dumped there by disgraced Doraville police officer Miles Bryant.

Last week, Bryant was arrested and charged with concealing Susana's death after dumping the child's body. This week, he was charged with murder.

“It’s unbelievable honestly, there is no words that I can say to explain it,” Susana's sister, Jasmine Morales said at the time. “It sucks that it took so long but I guess with him being an officer has something to do with that."

According to the arrest warrant, police say Bryant dumped Susana's naked body in a patch of woods in Dacula. Medical examiners are still trying to determine the teen's cause of death. The original warrant stated that police suspected Bryant of rape, murder, and other offenses, and this week he has been charged with those crimes.

According to NBC News, authorities homed in on Bryant after they found "a critical piece of evidence" — a handgun — "in close proximity" to where Susana's body was found during a grid search of woods near Highway 316 between Drowning Creek and the Barrow County line.

It was determined that Bryant had reported the personal gun missing on the morning of July 27. This "coincidence" made him a person of interest in the case.

According to court records, Bryant lived near Susana. Local news, 11 Alive interviewed neighbors who said Bryant was normal.

One of those neighbors shared cell phone videos, showing what they described as investigators collecting a bed sheet from Bryant's personal car. In one of the videos, his police car was being towed away.

“It’s hard to put my mind around it right now, that’s this person who lived in this complex did that,” said another resident who asked not to disclose her identity out of fear of retaliation. That neighbor says while she didn’t know Bryant personally he has introduced himself several times as a police officer who also moonlights as security at the complex.

Neighbors said Byrant’s demeanor during the past six months wasn't alarming.

“He was very normal, just smiling laughing, living his life," the neighbor said. "Poor baby laid out in a field somewhere. Are you serious, how can you be that cold-hearted? How is somebody that cold-hearted?”

As we pointed out last week, though much of the media has been referring to Bryant as a "former officer," he was a cop earlier this month. He was only fired after being charged with dumping the naked body of a teenager in the woods.

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-watch/officer-charged-with-murder-after-he-was-caught-dumping-naked-body-of-child-in-woods

Inside Trump grand jury foreperson’s bonkers Pinterest account — which promotes witchcraft

https://nypost.com/2023/02/23/emily-kohrs-has-pinterest-account-promoting-witchcraft-and-spells/

More Than 850,000 Power Outages Reported in Cross-Country Winter Storms, With More Snow, Icing and Blizzard Conditions Ahead

Brutal winter storms are expected to deliver snow, blizzard conditions, or icing across strips of the US from California to the Northeast on Thursday, part of a multiday event that has already closed roads and caused numerous power outages—even as the Southeast basks in unseasonably high temperatures.

More than 60 million people are under winter weather alerts Thursday morning from the West into the northern Plains, Great Lakes region, and New York and New England. That’s part of storms that already have left more than 850,000 homes and businesses without power, mainly in Michigan—struck partly by freezing rain and ice that’s damaged utility lines and trees—and other parts of the Midwest, according to tracker PowerOutage.us.

Heavy snow already hit some of these areas over the past two days—including, as of early Thursday, more than 40 inches in parts of southern Wyoming; up to 32 inches in northwestern Montana; and generally 3–6 inches across Nebraska and the Dakotas.

Search and rescue operations were underway Wednesday evening in several counties across Wyoming to recover motorists that become trapped in heavy snow, the state highway patrol said.

In Minnesota, swaths of which saw 3–7 inches with locally higher amounts as of early Thursday, more than 160 vehicle crashes were reported and dozens of cars spun off roads Wednesday, Minnesota State Patrol spokesperson Lt. Gordon Shank said in a series of tweets.

In Wisconsin—similarly hit by snow since Tuesday in the north and freezing rain Wednesday in the south—Gov. Tony Evers declared a statewide energy emergency Wednesday, saying it will “allow for a more swift and efficient restoration of any electric power outages throughout the state,” a news release from his office said.

Perilous travel conditions are expected to continue in many of these areas Thursday. Snowfall of up to 1 to 2 inches per hour could hit parts of the West, the northern Plains, and Great Lakes on Thursday, joined by winds as high as 40 to 50 mph, according to the National Weather Service. The combination will cause “significant impacts that will include major disruptions to travel, infrastructure, livestock, and recreation,” the service said.

The upper Midwest and Northeast could see an additional 6 to 12 inches of snowfall, with locally higher amounts, through Thursday, the service said.

And an ice storm warning stretched Thursday morning from central Iowa to the Wisconsin-Illinois line and through southern Michigan—with freezing rain threatening ice accumulations that could make morning travel “nearly impossible” in places, the service said.

Out west, in an extremely rare event, California’s Los Angeles and Ventura Counties will be under blizzard warnings from Friday morning through Saturday afternoon, the weather said. That will be the first blizzard warning issued by the weather service’s Los Angeles office since 1989, it said.

https://www.ntd.com/more-than-850000-power-outages-reported-in-cross-country-winter-storms-with-more-snow-icing-and-blizzard-conditions-ahead_903215.html

Hearing on Pfizer Clinical Trial Violations Set to Take Place

A hearing is scheduled to take place in a legal case brought by a whistleblower who confirmed that violations occurred during the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial.

The company Ventavia failed to properly report adverse events and keep all participants blinded, according to internal communications revealed by Brook Jackson, the whistleblower.

Pfizer paid ICON, a clinical research group to oversee the vaccine trial, and ICON contracted with Ventavia and other companies to run trial sites.

Jackson was hired by Ventavia in September 2020. She worked on clinical trials for 18 years. One company official described her as an expert. She was fired 18 days after starting, on the same day she alerted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the trial issues.

Jackson sued Ventavia, Pfizer, and ICON in 2021 for violating the False Claims Act, a law that prohibits knowingly making a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval from the government. She also accused Ventavia of illegal retaliation.

The case was unsealed in 2022 after the United States government declined to back Jackson.

The defendants have moved to dismiss the case. During a hearing on March 1, U.S. District Judge Michael Truncale, a Trump appointee, is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the motions to dismiss. The Epoch Times plans to attend the hearing, which is currently designated in-person only.

Arguments

Under the False Claims Act, U.S. citizens can file suits on behalf of the government. Suits are brought under the act against people or entities accused of defrauding the government.

Pfizer signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense in 2020. The military agreed to buy up to 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for $1.95 billion, pending authorization or approval by U.S. regulators.

Ventavia’s violations of the trial protocol, as well as ICON and Pfizer failing to properly oversee the trial, means that the Food and Drug Administration’s December 2020 authorization was “based in part on Defendants’ falsified clinical trial results and concealment of key information,” the suit states.

Jackson, through her lawyers, argues that the U.S. government would not have bought the vaccines had it known of the violations. That means the government was defrauded, the suit asserts. The contract states that government must pay for vaccine doses after authorization unless the FDA withdrew the authorization.

Pfizer told the court in a motion to dismiss that because the agreement was a “prototype,” a federal regulation that guides most other contracts does not apply. It also noted that the FDA authorized the vaccine after hearing from Jackson, who informed the regulator of issues she witnessed.

ICON said that it was aware of concerns with the trial but that it worked to “address and ameliorate them as the study progressed.” The company said that the complaint “falls far short of pleading any viable claim against ICON.”

https://www.ntd.com/hearing-on-pfizer-clinical-trial-violations-set-to-take-place_903187.html

‘Amnesty in All but Name’ – UK to Hand Thousands of Migrants Asylum without Even Talking to Them

The UK government has been accused of granting an “amnesty in all but name” to migrants coming to Britain, with the country announcing it will accept thousands of people’s requests to stay in the country without so much as even interviewing them in a bid to clear its application backlog.

Thousands of migrants are set to be given the right to stay in Britain without any government worker ever interviewing them, with the Rishi Sunak administration announcing on Thursday that it will start granting asylum to large numbers of foreign arrivals without interviews.

Britain’s Tory Party has hailed the decision as a way to reduce the country’s record-high backlog of asylum claims, but critics have slammed the move, with one major border control think-tank describing it as “an amnesty in all but name”.

According to a report by The Times, in the hopes of processing asylum claims faster, all migrants who claim to have arrived from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Yemen and Libya before June last year will be sent ten-page questionnaires asking them about their claims.

So long as these migrants return this questionnaire within 20 working days, they will be granted asylum so long as officials from the Home Office believe there is enough evidence present in the paperwork to do so, with the migrants being able to bypass any interview where they might be scrutinised.

“This is an amnesty in all but name,” Alp Mehmet, the Chairman of border control think-tank Migration Watch, explained to Breitbart London.

“The message to the criminal gangs is, if you get your clients to destroy their ID and claim to be from a ‘high success’ country, they’ll be tick-boxed into the UK,” he continued. “The triple killer of Tom Roberts came from such a country, and had been denied asylum in Norway before our already-lax system allowed him to con his way in.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/02/23/amnesty-in-all-but-name-uk-to-hand-thousands-of-migrants-asylum-without-even-talking-to-them/

Biden Family Key Partner Eric Schwerin to Flip in House Oversight Probe

Hunter Biden’s top financial lieutenant Eric Schwerin is expected to “soon” provide documents to the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of the Biden family for nine violations, including money laundering and wire fraud, a spokesperson for the committee told Breitbart News.

Schwerin, who shared bank accounts with President Joe Biden and dubbed the family’s “moneyman,” also maintained guest lists for White House functions and negotiated the settlement with Hunter’s first wife, Kathleen. Emails from Hunter’s laptop show Schwerin was deeply embedded in Hunter’s personal life and the Biden family networks for nearly two decades and is even pictured at campaign events with Joe Biden.

Schwerin was also the president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a fund created by Hunter Biden and several​ associates that spawned business deals in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Romania. Many of those deals yielded the Biden family business millions over decades while Joe Biden was an elected official.

Joe Biden and his team have claimed at least seven times the president is not involved in the family’s international business deals, but more than 17 instances show that Joe Biden was involved in the business. In one example, Schwerin visited the White House and other official locations 27 times when Joe Biden was vice president.

A committee spokesperson told Breitbart News it has been in contact with “Schwerin’s attorney and expect him to start producing documents to the Oversight Committee soon.”

Wednesday was the deadline set by the committee for Schwerin, James, and Hunter to comply with demands to disclose a host of both classified and unclassified documents, records, and communications between business associates and family members, including Joe Biden.

While Hunter has refused to comply with the request, the committee told Breitbart News that James has received correspondence from his attorneys. It is unknown if James is complying with the requests.

“Oversight Committee staff will be in communication with them about Chairman Comer’s request,” the spokesperson said.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) has stated in February the “next step” to compel the relevant information from Hunter and James is to issue subpoenas to Hunter and James if they do not comply.

The revelations about Schwerin’s willingness to turn over documents to the committee comes as Republicans have been stonewalled by Hunter, the Treasury Department, and former FBI “point man” Timothy Thibault, who allegedly “improperly” “shut down” a probe into Hunter’s laptop that is likely unrelated to the ongoing criminal probe concerning reported tax fraud by the president’s son.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/22/biden-family-key-partner-eric-schwerin-flip-house-oversight-probe/

Higher Cognitive Ability, Less Concern for Political Correctness – Study Finds

Britain’s elite cultural institutions – the BBC, universities, the national trust – are dominated by the woke. Since smart people tend to get ahead in life, you might assume the woke would have higher intelligence. Not so, according to a new study.

Louise Drieghe and colleagues surveyed 300 North Americans adults using the platform Mechanical Turk. To measure participants’ cognitive ability, they administered the Ammons Quick Test, which involves correctly assigning words to pictures. Previous studies have shown that people’s scores on the test correlate strongly with their scores on more comprehensive IQ tests, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.

The researchers also assessed participants’ support for free speech and concern for political correctness. To measure the former, they constructed a 9-item scale, comprising items such as “Every individual has the unalienable right to express their thoughts freely,” and “Censorship of speech leaves little room for debate and diverse points of view”.

To measure the latter, they used a 7-item scale developed by two other researchers. It includes items such as “I get mad when I hear someone use politically incorrect language,” and “I try to educate people around me about the political meaning of their words”.

Drieghe and colleagues’ key finding is shown in the first column of the table below. The values are correlation coefficients – a way of quantifying how strongly related two variables are.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/02/20/higher-cognitive-ability-less-concern-for-political-correctness-study-finds/

US sending up to 200 troops to Taiwan to train for attack from China

The U.S. is more than quadrupling the number of troops deployed to Taiwan, the island nation hotly contested by China, just as tensions with China are reaching new highs.

U.S. officials said that between 100 and 200 troops are planned to deploy to Taiwan in coming months, after only about 30 were deployed there a year ago, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The troops will serve to expand a secretive program that is training Taiwanese forces on U.S. weapons systems and military maneuvers, with an eye toward defending against an attack from China, officials said.

A contingent of Taiwanese forces is reportedly also being trained by the Michigan National Guard. They have trained at northern Michigan’s Camp Grayling during annual exercises with multiple countries, people familiar with the training told the Journal.

China and Taiwan split in 1949 in a civil war that never officially ended. Since then, China’s openly stated goal of reabsorbing the democratic and capitalist island has grown into one of the world’s most sensitive geopolitical flashpoints.

Defense Department data shows that recent years have seen slight fluctuations in the number of U.S. troops on Taiwan, the Journal reported. The new surge has been planned for months, officials said, well ahead of the closely-watched flight of a Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. earlier this month.

The spectacle of the balloon, which China insists was a weather balloon blown off course, soured already-tense relations between the superpowers. The incident prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone an upcoming trip to Beijing, where he planned to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

As to whether China will see the new Taiwan deployments as a provocation, a U.S. official said it is difficult to determine “what is really objectionable to China.”

“We don’t think, at the levels that we’re engaged in and are likely to remain engaged in the near future, that we are anywhere close to a tipping point for China, but that’s a question that is constantly being evaluated and looked at specifically with every decision involving support to Taiwan,” the official said.

In a public address last week on the spy balloon, Biden said, “We seek competition, not conflict, with China. We’re not looking for a new Cold War.”

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/02/us-sending-up-to-200-troops-to-taiwan-to-train-for-attack-from-china/

Taiwan to send at least 500 troops to US for combat training, report says

Battalion will travel to United States in second half of the year, according to semi-official Central News Agency

Taiwanese military source says plan is unsurprising given the increased exchanges between the two sides

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3211248/taiwan-send-least-500-troops-us-combat-training-report-says

Hackers obtain passwords for data centers; Apple, Walmart, and more impacted: Report

Hackers have reportedly broken into two of the largest data centers in Asia, gaining access to troves of data of international firms that have relied on their data storage services.

Customer support websites for the Shanghai, China-based GDS Holdings Ltd. and Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) were breached in recent hacking efforts, according to an analysis by the cybersecurity firm Resecurity, Inc. shared with Bloomberg.

Resecurity believes the hackers may have gained access to the emails and passwords of 2,000 GDS and STT GDC customers. The hacked information could impact global firms like Alibaba , Amazon, Apple, BMW AG, Goldman Sachs, Huawei Technologies, Microsoft Corp, and Walmart Inc, according to Resecurity and hundreds of pages of documents it shared with Bloomberg.

The hackers have logged into at least five firms, according to Resecurity. Those targeted firms included China’s main foreign exchange and debt trading platform and four unspecified Indian firms. It’s unclear what the hackers have done with other data they may have.

Both data storage firms told Resecurity that the stolen information would not impact their clients’ information technology (IT) systems or data. But Resecurity and executives at four of the affected U.S. companies believe the stolen credentials represent a real risk because the stolen data controls who can physically access IT equipment stored at the data centers.

“This is a nightmare waiting to happen,” said Michael Henry, former chief information officer for Digital Realty Trust Inc., a U.S. data center operator. Henry said if hackers can gain physical access to client’s servers, they can install malware or other equipment and “potentially disrupt communications and commerce on a massive scale.”

Many major firms are reliant on third party services to house their data and expand their business networks to other parts of the world. The vulnerability is particularly bad for firms doing business in China, where laws require them to partner with local data service providers.

Other companies who relied on these data storages included Ford, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, Paypal, Porsche, Verizon, Wells Fargo and ByteDance — the firm behind the popular TikTok video sharing app whose data-collection practices have already raised U.S. national security concerns.

Exactly who is behind these hacking efforts and their motives remain unclear.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/02/hackers-obtain-passwords-for-data-centers-apple-walmart-and-more-impacted-report/

Shotgun WAS found near the body of Clinton aide linked to Jeffrey Epstein: He texted wife 'found a perfect place for a nap' before blasting his chest and falling from bench with electrical cord tied around his neck

Clinton White House aide Mark Middleton killed himself on a ranch in Arkansas

A Perry County sheriff now says a gun WAS found, 30 feet from his body

Middleton was found dead from what officials suspect to be a suicide on May 7, 2022 after texting his wife to say he was 'going to rest'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11782661/Shotgun-near-body-Clinton-aide-linked-Epstein.html

The TGA’s Actions Are Truly Inexcusable

Missouri AG fires Soros-backed St. Louis prosecutor Gardner for missteps

"Instead of protecting victims, Circuit Attorney Gardner is creating them," the Missouri attorney general said.

Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Thursday fired St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner for missteps, after she refuse to accept his ultimatum to resign.

This is a developing story ..

Bailey issued his ultimatum Wednesday evening after 16-year-old volleyball player Janae Edmonson was visiting St. Louis with her team over the weekend when she was hit by a speeding vehicle and lost both of her legs.

The vehicle's driver, Daniel Riley, "is a dangerous gunman who should have been in jail," Bailey said. The suspect was charged in 2020 in connection to stealing a firearm at gunpoint, and since that time he has violated his bond conditions more than 100 times and he never even had a driver's license, local outlet KMOV reported.

"Instead of protecting victims, Circuit Attorney Gardner is creating them," the Missouri attorney general said. "This is the latest in a long pattern of brazen neglect. The St. Louis Circuit Attorney has a long history of failure to prosecute violent crime, with a backlog of at least 3,000 cases."

Bailey says he will initiate quo warranto proceedings to remove Gardner if she dosn't quit. The writ requiring people to whom it is directed to show what authority they have for exercising some right, power or franchise they claim to hold.

Gardner, a Democrat whose campaign was supported by contributions from megadonor George Soros, was accused of "disturbing and unethical" behavior by a grand jury last year after she admitted to prosecutorial misconduct in her case against former Missouri GOP Gov. Eric Greitens.

She was also under fire in 2020 for her case against Mark McCloskey, who came into the spotlight for pointing firearms at protesters outside his home during the Black Lives Matter-related unrest. A judge barred her from prosecuting McCloskey after she used his case to fundraise for her reelection campaign.

https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/missouri-ag-demands-soros-backed-st-louis-prosecutor-resign-or-be-removed

Birth Rates Plunge in Heavily Vaccinated Countries

In many countries, births drop sharply nine months after peak COVID vaccine uptake. Let’s look at how this happens. And will these populations recover?

Vital Statistics – Hidden Data

Since the beginning of COVID, vital statistics as reported by governments around the world are hard to come by. Spotty availability hinders analysis and understanding.

For example, even today in the United States, Massachusetts and New York, Illinois and Washington are four of the states that, at this writing, have not updated births data since 2019 [1] and 2020. [2] [3] [4]

Nineteen European Countries

By August 2022, Raimond Hagemann, Ulf Lorré and Dr. Hans-Joachim Kremer had compiled data on birth rate changes in 19 European countries and produced an extremely important paper. [5] In country after country, the inflection point of reduced births is consistently at the end of the year 2021. This was nine months after the spring zeitgeist to take the COVID vaccines. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovenia, as well as Iceland, Northern Ireland, Montenegro, Serbia, all show this pattern. Nine months after peak vaccine uptake, the births decline.

From Hagemann, et al. Danish data:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/birth-rates-plunge-heavily-vaccinated-countries/5809579

Former Pharma Executive And Cousin Charged With Insider Trading Of Kodak Stock

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-pharma-executive-and-cousin-charged-insider-trading-kodak-stock

R Kelly sentenced to 20 more years for child sex crimes conviction

Kelly is already serving 30 years for a 2021 conviction on "racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court."

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-r-kelly-sentenced-to-20-more-years-for-child-sex-crimes-conviction