U.S. High School Defends Taking Money from Chinese Military-Linked Groups, Building Chinese STEM Program

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is defending the nation’s top-ranked public high school for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Chinese military-linked organization to build a STEM program in China.

As Breitbart News reported, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), since 2014, has received over $250,000 from Tsinghua University High School (TUHS) in Beijing — a school closely tied to Tsinghua University, which the Pentagon considers to be a Chinese military university.

TJ is what is known as a “Governor’s School” in Virginia, which are elite, require an admissions process, and specialize in specific areas of learning.

It has received over $1 million from Chinese interests in exchange for help developing advanced science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and lab research programs for high school students in China.

“Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is a world-renowned academic institution known for its innovative STEM education programming,” FCPS media relations manager Julie Moult told the Washington Examiner. “It is not unusual for elite public schools, colleges, and universities in the U.S. to benefit from donations and grants from various sources, including international sources.”

Parents Defending Education (PDE), which discovered the funding, sent letters Wednesday to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) calling for an investigation into the Chinese government funding of TJ.

TJ is already under investigation by Miyares’s office for implementing a racialized admissions system.

“Virginia taxpayers deserve answers about what has taken place at this Governor’s School, and how it threatens our national security,” PDE founder and president Nicole Neily said in a press release. “We hope Attorney General Miyares and Gov. Youngkin take decisive action to get to the bottom of this scandal.”

The Chinese funds go through the Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund (PF), which purports to be independent of the high school.

Despite that, the PF is operated out of the high school’s campus in Fairfax exists to support the high school for renovations and other expenditures and has a board including the school’s principal, assistant principal, faculty, and the head of the school’s parent-teacher association.

https://www.breitbart.com/education/2023/03/09/u-s-high-school-defends-taking-money-chinese-military-linked-groups/

Report: ‘Dozens’ More Women, Girls Accuse W.H.O. Ebola Workers of Rape and Sex Abuse

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) is still wrestling with a sexual abuse scandal stemming from its 2018-2019 mission to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

On Wednesday, the U.N.-founded New Humanitarian reported that “dozens more women have come forward” to accuse W.H.O. employees, and other aid workers, of sexually exploiting them.

The New Humanitarian partnered with Reuters to expose the W.H.O. sexual abuse crisis in September 2020. The original report included allegations from over 50 women, with corroborating testimony from witnesses who worked for other humanitarian agencies in the DRC.

In May 2021, a secondary scandal erupted when senior W.H.O. officials were caught lying about their knowledge of the allegations, which included such abuses as doctors working for the Ebola mission telling local women they could only gain employment by offering sexual favors. According to some of the complainants, virtually all local women employed by W.H.O. and certain other agencies during the Ebola crisis were abused, having been lured by the promise of double their normal wages. The men who demanded sex for employment allegedly disdained birth control, resulting in several pregnancies. Some of the victims said they were not merely propositioned, but violently assaulted, or drugged and raped.

“They hired you with their eyeballs. They’d look you up and down before they’d make an offer,” one Congolese woman told the New Humanitarian in 2020.

On Wednesday, the New Humanitarian reported 34 new allegations were uncovered when it conducted follow-up reporting last September. Twenty-six of the women said they became pregnant as a result of sexual abuse. Eighteen of the complaints concerned W.H.O. staff, five said they were abused by UNICEF staffers, and one complaint apiece was lodged against World Vision and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Four of the new victims said they were under 18 when they were abused.

Most of the original wave of complaints originated in the Congolese towns of Beni and Butembo, which were central to Ebola response efforts in 2019 and 2020. The new complaints are all from Cantine and Mangina, smaller towns located west of Beni.

The New Humanitarian said it alerted W.H.O. to the new complaints at once, but as of February, none of the women had been contacted by the independent commission W.H.O. established to investigate the scandal. UNICEF told the New Humanitarian to “encourage” the five new complainants to make contact with investigators.

“As of February, W.H.O. and its partner organizations had reached 115 victims, offering one-time payments of $250, counseling, medical care, and transport to appointments. Eleven refused any type of assistance,” the Wednesday report said.

Last month, two of the experts appointed by W.H.O. to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the DRC slammed the organization’s “restrictive” investigation as “an absurdity.”

Among other deficiencies, the whistleblowers noted that W.H.O.’s sexual exploitation policies only apply to women who receive aid from the organization, not those who work for it.

“We are not satisfied. The ‘zero tolerance policy’ does not mean engaging in subterfuge to make sure no one is responsible for sexual abuse and exploitation,” the angry investigators, who were personally appointed by W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in 2020, told the Associated Press.

Also in February, W.H.O. announced that 104 victims of sexual violence perpetrated by aid workers in the DRC have “accepted the offer of medical, psychological, or financial help” extended by the United Nations Population Fund, which was enlisted by W.H.O. to locate and assist the victims.

W.H.O. is partnering with two other non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Africa, a Christian group called Heal Africa and Dyamique des Femmes Juristes (DFJ), which provides legal assistance to abused women and children. W.H.O. is publicly committed to compensating all victims of sexual abuse from the Ebola mission in the Congo, even where the perpetrator was not a W.H.O. employee.

https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2023/03/09/report-dozens-more-women-girls-accuse-w-h-o-ebola-workers-rape-sex-abuse/

Here Comes the Communist AI: China’s Baidu Scrambles to Build System Like ChatGPT

Chinese internet giant Baidu is scrambling to ready the communist regime’s first AI ChatGPT equivalent, with hundreds of employees working around the clock to get the AI-powered chatbot launched by March 16.

Baidu, China’s biggest search-engine operator, is racing to meet its deadline, with the AI tool, dubbed Ernie Bot, still struggling to perform a few basic functions, according to people familiar with the project who spoke to the Wall Street Journal.

Other teams have reportedly been pulled to help with Ernie Bot’s development, and asked to lend staff their computer chips, as Chinese companies can no longer buy chips due to U.S. sanctions.

While the development team has been working nonstop — even through China’s Lunar New Year holiday at the end of January — some employees are worried that Ernie Bot might not meet user or market expectations, sources told WSJ. Some employees have even sold their Baidu stock ahead of the launch.

Ernie Bot was initially supposed to be bilingual, communicating in both English and Chinese, but the project has since been scaled back to being an AI-powered chatbot only writing Chinese, the sources added.

Baidu is hurrying to roll out the ChatGPT rival to reportedly get ahead of other Chinese companies that have recently announced similar plans.

Moreover, Baidu has fallen out of investor favor in recent years, so the company hopes that a successful launch of an AI-powered chatbot might be the catalyst for it to once again become one of China’s most prominent technology companies.

The search-engine operator is planning to roll out Ernie Bot in stages. First, the company will open the AI chatbot for testing to a restricted pool of users before opening it up to the public. Baidu hopes Ernie Bot will improve its performance by gaining experience running under different scenarios.

The company has also received encouragement on its plans to build the chatbot from government officials in Beijing, where Baidu is based, WSJ reported.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/03/09/here-comes-the-communist-ai-chinas-baidu-scrambles-to-build-system-like-chatgpt/

Mexican President: Fentanyl is a U.S. Problem — ‘We Don’t Make It’

Mexico’s president blamed the U.S. for the fentanyl crisis as pressure mounts on his administration to stop cartels.

“They are doing this with a propagandist purpose,” Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said referring to calls by U.S. politicians for stronger actions against cartels. “They got this thing with fentanyl, that ‘it’s Mexico’s responsibility…’ Here, we don’t make fentanyl, nor consume it.”

The confrontational tone from AMLO comes as U.S. politicians increase pressure on Mexico and call for cartels to be designated as terrorist organizations. Some even float the idea of U.S. military actions.

The Mexican president said that while he feels bad for Americans suffering fentanyl overdoses, he asked why the U.S. does not do enough to fight distribution and target cartels domestically.

“Why don’t they take care of their young ones,” Lopez Obrador said. “Why don’t they take care of their social decomposition?”

The claims made by Lopez Obrador about Mexico not producing fentanyl go against information released by his own government. Military forces have raided clandestine labs where synthetic drugs including fentanyl are manufactured.

The Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco New Generation are the main suppliers and producers of fentanyl. The drug has become extremely popular because it is cheap to produce and lets traffickers cut their loads several times while maintaining potency. However, due to its extreme potency and limited dilution in lab settings, overdoses are common.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2023/03/09/mexican-president-fentanyl-is-a-u-s-problem-we-dont-make-it/

Millions of NYC rats could have Covid-19 – study

The infection may be able to jump from rats to humans, researchers have concluded

The iconic rats infesting New York City are susceptible to infection by multiple strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, researchers with the University of Missouri found after analyzing rats caught at various locations near city sewers during three months of 2021.

The results of their study, published on Thursday in the journal mBio, showed 13 of the 79 rats (16.5%) tested positive for the virus, a figure that can be extrapolated to potentially 1.3 million of the city’s eight million rats.

The researchers found that not only could the rats be infected with Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants of the virus in both their upper and lower respiratory tracts, but that SARS-CoV-2 mutated after infecting them to adapt to its new hosts – something researchers said was important for being able to predict the possibility of future strains breaking back out and reinfecting humans.

The findings “highlight the need for further monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 in rat populations for potential secondary zoonotic transmission to humans,” principal investigator Henry Wan explained in a press release accompanying the study’s publication.

The Covid-19 pandemic was initially blamed on zoonotic transmission of a mutant bat coronavirus to humans through an intermediate host in a wet market in Wuhan, China. However, subsequent evidence pointed to the virus spreading in other areas of China as early as October 2019, before the first Wuhan cases were detected — and researchers believe some cases also occurred in Europe and the US in the last months of 2019.

A recent investigation by the US Department of Energy concluded the virus had likely been “leaked” from a Chinese lab. Beijing has countered that the World Health Organization’s own investigation found it “extremely unlikely” the Wuhan lab was the source of the outbreak.

Rats are far from alone in their susceptibility to the virus that causes Covid-19. Some 17 million mink were preemptively exterminated in Denmark in 2020 after some were found to be infected with a new strain of the virus thought to menace humans, a decision later determined to be illegal.

Last year, Hong Kong ordered the culling of 2,000 imported hamsters after a resident’s Covid-19 infection was traced to his handling them in a pet shop; a ban on owning foreign hamsters was only lifted in January.

And it was recently revealed that the UK government nearly ordered the mass extermination of residents’ pet cats in order to “flatten the curve” after a Siamese was found to have contracted the virus in 2020, despite next to nothing being known about how the disease was transmitted between species.

https://www.rt.com/news/572724-rats-human-virus-transmision-covid/

Twitter Files expose ‘censorship-industrial complex’ – journalist

Matt Taibbi presented the US Congress with evidence of corporate, NGO and government collusion

Social media platforms colluded with non-governmental organizations and the US government to suppress information they did not like in the name of fighting “disinformation,” journalist Matt Taibbi testified at a congressional hearing on Thursday.

Taibbi appeared alongside Michael Shellenberger, another journalist who has covered the “Twitter Files” for the past several months, before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Congressman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.

Taibbi described what he called the “censorship-industrial complex,” calling it “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives,” and the exact opposite of a free press envisioned in the US Constitution.

Right before his testimony, Taibbi also published a lengthy thread on Twitter, laying out the evidence he entered into the congressional record.

According to Taibbi, Twitter acted “more like a partner” to the government, censoring based on requests it received from federal agencies as well as taxpayer-backed NGOs. Intelligence agencies, dubious “disinformation researchers” and corporate executives effectively worked as a team, he argued.

Taibbi’s thread described an “incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back,” with the same agencies inviting the same “experts” funded by the same foundations and covered by the same reporters to every panel and every conference.

He identified the key players in the censorship-industrial complex as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, authors of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard. Many of the NGOs involved received funding from the US government, while legacy media outlets acted as their proxies, demanding censorship.

Taibbi described the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and its “Election Integrity Partnership” – renamed the Virality Project after the 2020 election – as “perhaps the ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations.” By its own admission, it labeled 22 million tweets during the 2020 election campaign, and was then given access to Twitter’s JIRA ticketing system, which is able to tackle 50 million tweets a day.

SIO is run by Renee DiResta, who helped design Hamilton68 and worked at New Knowledge – a group caught creating fake “Russian bots” to help Democrats in the 2017 Alabama special election for the US Senate. That did not stop them from advising the Senate Intelligence Committee on “Russian interference” in US elections, and the US legacy media from not questioning any of their conclusions.

“Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, [the CIC] is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality,” Taibbi wrote. “Without real oversight mechanisms, there is nothing to prevent these super-empowered information vanguards from bending the truth for their own ends.”

During the hearing, multiple Democrats tried to pressure Taibbi into revealing his sources, insinuating Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, was behind the disclosures.

“I’m not his source, but, yeah, obviously asking journalists to reveal sources is not cool,” Musk tweeted on Thursday afternoon, in response to the hearing.

https://www.rt.com/news/572719-twitter-files-hearing-congress/

Fauci: ‘Whole Scientific Community Feels’ You Have to Be Able ‘to Manipulate Organisms’ — ‘Very Few Reasons’ to Make Pathogens Worse

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” former NIAID Director and former White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that there are “very few reasons” to engage in research “where you deliberately make a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic,” but “the whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms” and there is critical research that “involves manipulating organisms. You want to call it gain-of-function, it really is not in many respects, but when it is, it needs to be very well-regulated.”

Host Neil Cavuto asked, [relevant exchange begins around 9:20] “What are your views then — regardless of what happened here, I guess we’ll never know definitively, I know what the FBI and the Energy Department have said on this — but on gain-of-function research itself. Do you think it serves any value?”

Fauci responded, “Well, certain types of — again, the problem, Neil — and you and I have discussed this on previous interviews that we had over the years — is that it depends on what your definition of gain-of-function is. Again, if you’re looking at something where you deliberately make a pathogen more transmissible or more pathogenic, namely causing more severe disease, there [are] very few reasons to do that. But if you do, it should be done under very strict guideline conditions. So, that’s the thing that, if anything comes out of all of this back and forth arguing is that we’ve got to do two things: We’ve got to make sure that laboratory work that involves potentially pandemic pathogens [is] done under the most importantly-controlled conditions, and secondly, that we’ve got to make sure that we take a real good look at the animal-human interface and we look at the situations where there could be that jumping from species from an animal to a human. Both of those things need to be controlled.”

Cavuto then asked, “But what about not doing gain-of-function research at all, especially if there’s even the most remote possibly — we don’t know definitively — that not doing it all just is not worth the risk. What do you say?”

Fauci answered, “Well, take me out of the picture, Neil, and look at a whole array of virologists and scientists who do research that’s absolutely critical for the health of the country. Some of that involves manipulating organisms. You want to call it gain-of-function, it really is not in many respects, but when it is, it needs to be very well-regulated. If you shut off all gain-of-function research — did you get the flu shot this year, Neil? If you did, and you got it from an influenza vaccine, that was gain-of-function that made that influenza vaccine. So, that’s what people don’t understand.”

Cavuto then cut in to ask, “Some of the members of that committee had very low tolerance for even some of the kind of specific gain-of-function studies that you advocated, that they don’t think it should ever be allowed anywhere, let alone in China. You say?”

Fauci responded, “[Y]ou’ve got to take me out of this, because I’m a charged person…the whole scientific community feels that you have to have some degree of being able to manipulate organisms. When you do it, you’ve got to do it carefully and under very, very well-controlled conditions. I think the entire scientific community of virology and infectious disease would argue strongly that if you shut down all of that research, a lot of things that would be important for the health of the country would not be able to be done.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/03/09/fauci-whole-scientific-community-feels-you-have-to-be-able-to-manipulate-organisms-very-few-reasons-to-make-pathogens-worse/

>>18477877

What game do you think you are playing?

The US military plans to use deep fakes and take over appliances for propaganda

The Pentagon is asking for help in taking its brainwashing operations to the next level

Can you create cutting edge “deep fake” videos, spy on people using household appliances, and make massive data dragnets? If so, the Pentagon wants to hear from you so it can amp up its manipulation efforts.

US Special Operations Command (US SOCOM) has issued proposal requests for a whole host of dodgy services, according to new documents obtained by The Intercept.

Specifically, the Pentagon is looking for “next generation capability to ‘takeover’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices in order to collect data and information from local populaces to enable a breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received.”

For what purpose? “This would enable MISO [Military Information Support Operations] to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by the local populace in relevant peer/near peer environments,” according to the document.

Despite publicly obsessing over others’ foreign interference and propaganda, Washington is now openly admitting that it is actively seeking these new technologies for its own “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns at the tactical edge and operational levels.” You know, exactly the same kind of thing, over which it drums up fear as a threat to freedom and democracy among the general public.

Earlier this year, a Washington-based advisory firm OODA published a report warning that Chinese-made household items could not only be spying on you, but basically fronting for the Chinese government. The report’s author called for the British government to act on claims that Chinese-made Internet of Things appliances, and even car components, can collect and transmit data through cellular 5G networks to Chinese companies, which could then be ordered to pass it on to the government. The story was hysterically splashed across British media.

https://www.rt.com/news/572674-us-pentagon-deepfake-propaganda/

Pentagon blocking information on alleged war crimes in Ukraine – NYT

US military chiefs reportedly fear setting a precedent in the Hague court that might lead to the prosecution of Americans

The US Department of Defense is reportedly at odds with the administration of President Joe Biden over helping the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

According to the outlet, the Pentagon is currently blocking Washington from sharing evidence gathered by US intelligence agencies about alleged atrocities committed by Russian forces amid Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.

The American military leaders are reportedly concerned that helping the Hague court investigate Russians could set a precedent that could lead to the prosecution of Americans themselves. Washington has long criticized the ICC for having “insufficient checks and balances” on the authority of its prosecutors and judges and “insufficient protection against politicized prosecutions or other abuses.”

The US officially withdrew from the ICC in 2002 and has passed laws that limit the amount of support the government can provide the court. In December, however, Congress modified its longstanding restrictions on American help to the ICC, allowing Washington to assist the court with investigations and prosecutions related to the war in Ukraine.

However, not everyone in the Biden administration has been on board with the policy, the NYT said, citing anonymous officials familiar with the discussions. Last month, the US National Security Council convened a cabinet-level “principals committee” in an attempt to resolve the dispute. However, Defense Secretary LLoyd Austin continued to object to sharing materials, while Biden has yet to resolve the matter, officials told the outlet.

D.O.D. [Department of Defense] opposed the legislative change — it passed overwhelmingly — and they are now trying to undermine the letter and spirit of the law,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, who helped push Congress to ease restrictions on aiding the ICC. “The sooner we can get the information into the hands of the I.C.C., the better off the world will be,” he told the NYT.

Russia, meanwhile, has denied allegations of war crimes in Ukraine and has decried attempts by Western countries to “whip up a quasi-judicial mechanism” to hold Moscow accountable for the purported atrocities. The Russian Foreign Ministry has said such efforts are yet another example of the West’s “practice of double standards.”

In 2017, when the ICC tried to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan, Washington imposed sanctions on court personnel, prosecutors, and their families. The sanctions were lifted by the Biden administration in 2021 and the investigation was dropped.

https://www.rt.com/news/572696-pentagon-blocking-war-crime-information/

>>18477914

Heh.

>>18477391 tyb

Berlin to let women go topless in public pools

The new rules will ensure “equal rights for all Berlin residents,” a city anti-discrimination official has said

Officials in the German capital of Berlin have introduced new rules for public swimming pools and bathing facilities, allowing women to use them topless. The measure was introduced after a successful anti-discrimination complaint was hailed as a step towards creating “equal rights” for all of the city’s residents by a local anti-discrimination ombudsperson.

“Berlin bathing establishments will apply their bathing regulations in a gender-neutral manner,” the city’s government said in a statement on Thursday, adding that “topless swimming” should now be possible in the city’s public indoor and outdoor swimming pools for “all females or people with breasts perceived as feminine.”

A spokeswoman for the city’s bathing association confirmed that the policy had been updated by telling RBB radio broadcaster that “topless swimming is equally allowed to everyone.” The new rules do not mean that women in Berlin are obligated to swim topless, however, as they can still cover their breasts if they want to.

The policy change was triggered by a successful anti-discrimination complaint filed by a 33-year-old female pool-goer. The woman was asked by the supervisory staff at one of the Berlin pools to cover her breasts during a visit to the facility back in December 2022. After she refused, the staff made her leave the pool.

The woman then argued that the facility’s rules did not have any gender-specific regulations and only required the clients to wear “common bathing suits.” The rules were then changed following an intervention by the city’s antidiscrimination ombudswoman, Doris Liebscher.

Liebscher herself hailed the changes on Thursday by saying that the new regulations ensure equal rights for “male, female or non-binary” Berlin residents and “create legal certainty” for pool staff members. “Now it is about ensuring the regulation is applied consistently and there are no more evictions or [pool] bans,” she added.

Berlin is not the first German city to introduce such rules. The city of Siegen in the north-western state of North-Rhine Westphalia and Goettingen in the neighboring Lower Saxony region also did so in 2022. Lower Saxony’s capital of Hannover followed suit by the end of last year.

https://www.rt.com/news/572721-berlin-women-topless-swimming/

US sanctions Chinese firms over ‘Iranian’ drones

Five companies and one individual allegedly supplied UAV parts to Tehran

The US Treasury Department has placed one Chinese national and five companies on the Iran-related sanctions blacklist, claiming on Thursday that they were part of a “procurement network” Tehran supposedly used to obtain parts for drones it allegedly exported to Russia.

According to the US government, the companies “facilitated” the transactions of aerospace components to the Iranian company HESA, which produces Shahed-136. Washington and Kiev have accused Tehran of supplying these UAVs to Moscow, which the Iranian government has denied.

“Iran is directly implicated in the Ukrainian civilian casualties that result from Russia’s use of Iranian UAVs in Ukraine,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson.

Treasury claims that Hangzhou Fuyang Koto Machinery used the Hong Kong-based Raven International Trade Limited as a “front company” to sell aircraft engines for Shaheds to HESA.

Guilin Alpha Rubber & Plastics Technology allegedly “facilitated the sale and shipment of thousands of aerospace components worth over a million dollars” to Iran. Shenzhen Caspro Technology and S&C Trade PTY were also accused of facilitating the sale and delivery of “thousands of aerospace components worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for fixed-wing, rotorcraft, and UAV applications.” S&C employee Yuan Yunxia was sanctioned as an individual.

The sanctions mean American residents are banned from doing business with the designated companies and all their property within US jurisdiction is frozen until further notice. The sanctioned entities and individuals have no legal recourse against the measure.

Ukraine has accused Iran of supplying Russia with kamikaze drones used to strike strategic targets. Kiev officials have even called for US strikes on Iranian targets, though they denied all responsibility when a military factory in Isfahan was damaged in late January.

Tehran has denied the accusations, insisting that – unlike the West – Iran is not arming either party to the conflict. A sample selection of drones was provided to Moscow months before the current conflict escalated, the Iranian foreign minister said in early November.

The Russian Defense Ministry insists that its Geran-2 drones are produced at home, just like all the other hardware used in the military operation against Kiev.

https://www.rt.com/news/572713-china-iran-drone-sanctions/

>>18477944

Why don't you bring some information?

You're a man of leisure.

>>18477944

Or post some snappy logic.

BBC presenter faces firing over Nazi comparison

The former footballer accused the government of “immeasurably cruel” immigration restrictions

BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker could face termination at the state broadcaster after comparing a new immigration plan to the policies of Germany in the 1930s, according to a former top official at the outlet.

Lineker kicked off a firestorm of criticism on Tuesday after sending a pair of tweets taking Tories to task for a new border proposal seeking to curb the flow of illegal immigration, calling the plan “beyond awful” while drawing a comparison to Nazi Germany.

“There is no huge influx [of illegal immigrants]. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s,” he added.

Amid outrage from Conservative MPs and officials – among them Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer – the BBC said it was taking the matter “seriously” and would have a “frank conversation” with the ‘Match of the Day’ host, who said he had been in touch with BBC director-general Tim Davie.

The BBC’s former chief of editorial policy, Richard Ayre, suggested Davie would be forced to sack Lineker over the comments, telling BBC Radio 4 “I don’t think he is going to have any choice but to let him go unless he can be certain that this is the end of it.”

However, on Thursday the host said the “ridiculously out of proportion” response to his tweets seemed to be “abating,” indicating that he would not face termination following discussions with higher-ups at the government-owned outlet. Though it remains unclear whether he will see any disciplinary action as a result of the posts, Lineker said he stands by his comments, vowing to “continue to try and speak up for those poor souls that have no voice.”

Lineker later received support from fellow journalists, with Sky News pundit Adam Boulton saying he is “entitled to say what he likes” on social media, especially given that he does not cover political subjects. Broadcaster Piers Morgan also stepped up to bat for Lineker on similar grounds.

Though BBC reporters are ostensibly required to remain impartial toward political matters in their public commentary, Lineker is not a permanent staffer at the outlet, but rather a freelance employee, meaning he is not subject to the same guidelines. However, the BBC also maintains separate rules governing the use of social media which apply to all of its workers, and warns that violations could lead to “disciplinary action” up to and including “possible termination of employment in serious circumstances.”

https://www.rt.com/news/572727-bbc-presenter-immigration-nazi/

>>18477958

No gays please.

Le Blackmail? France to Tell Britain It Needs More Money to Fight Boat Migrants Crisis Yet Again

France is to demand Britain give it even more money to deal with boat migrants crossing the English Channel.

French president Emmanuel Macron is to demand the British government hands his country even more money than it already has to deal with the ongoing migrant crisis, implying that such payments will be needed for police patrols on his country’s coast to continue.

The British government has already handed hundreds of millions to France for the purpose of funding operations targeting illegal migrants in the country, none of which has put a significant dent in the ever-increasing number of arrivals.

Now, according to a report by The Times, further payments from the British will be necessary in order to keep these questionably effective patrols up, with Macron set to demand regular annual payments from the British government at a coming meeting in Paris this week.

“We’re trying to agree with our British counterparts a multi-annual financing framework that would allow us to better plan our actions and increase our human resources, equipment and infrastructure,” one French official reportedly told the publication regarding the President’s coming request.

Another suggested that while France was already patrolling its coastline to deal with migrants, more resources needed to be allocated to the project in order to get sufficient results.

“We already have a lot of boots on the ground,” they claimed. “Being effective in our response necessitates much more than more police on the beaches of Pas-de-Calais.”

It appears likely that Macron’s plan to deal with the crisis will go down like a lead balloon, with a number of British MPs already questioning the value of sending France even more cash.

“The British taxpayer has generously subsidised the French police for several years now over which time we have seen a substantial increase in the numbers successfully evading their measures,” Conservative Party MP Tim Loughton remarked.

“The real issue is that the French police will not arrest those migrants they intercept on the beaches so they are back again the following night with a new boat to try again,” he continued. “They only have to get lucky once.”

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party, also lashed out at the request, saying that the United Kingdom was not getting “value for money” from arrangements already in place.

There will also likely be questions as to whether giving France funding to deal with the crisis will be necessary following the United Kingdom’s new illegal immigration reforms, with Rishi Sunak joining predecessors Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and the short-lived Liz Truss in promising real action on boat migrant arrivals that will ultimately see the multi-year crisis finally end.

Under the scheme, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, will be legally required to detain and deport illegals to the likes of their home country or a third safe country like Rwanda, with those caught trying to enter the United Kingdom by boat to receive a lifetime ban from ever receiving asylum.

Some pundits have already suggested that this Australia-style crackdown is all talk though, with the measures likely to be killed in either the British or European courts.

“These new promises by the Government to stop the boats are just cynical politics,” said Nigel Farage.

“When UK legislation is inevitably overruled by foreign judges in Strasbourg, Tories will fight the next election on leaving [European Court of Human Rights].”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/03/09/le-blackmail-france-to-tell-britain-it-needs-more-money-to-fight-boat-migrants-crisis-yet-again/

Biden to propose new billionaire tax – Bloomberg

In addition to the measure, the corporate tax rate would rise to 28%

US President Joe Biden’s budget proposal to Congress will include a 25% tax on billionaires as well as increased rates for wealthy investors and corporations, according to Bloomberg. The plans are set to be unveiled during Biden’s visit to the swing state of Pennsylvania on Thursday.

In addition to the “25% minimum tax” on billionaires, the plan would nearly double the capital gains tax rate for investment to 39.6% from 20%, as well as raising income levies on corporations and wealthy Americans, Bloomberg reported, citing a White House official “familiar with the proposal.” The corporate tax rate would rise to 28% from 21%, which would undo a “signature Trump tax change,” the report noted.

The proposals would appear to have little chance of passing Congress, given that Biden failed to push through similar plans even before the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.

The speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy, told reporters on Wednesday he does “not believe raising taxes is the answer,” arguing that doing so “in a low-growth economy like this will only hurt us more and put us into recession.”

The two parties are also locked in debate over raising the US debt ceiling, which hit the $31.4 trillion threshold in January and threatens to trigger a default on the federal government’s debt. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, warned in February that the money on hand could run out by summer if the ceiling was not increased.

The Biden administration has not commented on the latest reports, but White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said during a Wednesday press briefing that the president will present his budget plan on Thursday. Jean-Pierre said the administration is focused on “making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share without raising taxes on Americans that are making less than $400,000.” According to Bloomberg, those making $400,000 would have their top tax rate increased to 39.6% from 37%.

Jean-Pierre said Biden wants to work “in a bipartisan way” and is ready to talk with Republicans on the budget.

https://www.rt.com/news/572701-biden-tax-the-rich/

Ildefonso Ortiz on ‘Milenio’: U.S. Media Ignore Mexican Cartel Violence Until Victims Are Americans

Legacy news outlets in the U.S. generally ignored daily cartel violence in Mexican border cities until the FBI confirmed that four recent victims were Americans, said Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz in an interview on Milenio Noon Newscast with Carlos Zuniga.

“Shootouts in Mexican border cities like Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo Laredo are relatively common,” Ortiz said. “And it is something that in the U.S. rarely gets any news coverage. It wasn’t until the FBI confirmed that there were four U.S. citizens missing that the case got stirred up.”

Ortiz went on one of Mexico’s most-watched news programs to talk about how the Gulf Cartel kidnapped four Americans in Matamoros last Friday and killed an innocent bystander in the process. Initially, the case only garnered minimal local attention with outlets only reporting a short official statement confirming the death of the bystander. Two days later, the FBI announced a reward for the missing Americans.

“That is a taste of the power that the Gulf Cartel has in Matamoros to silence local news outlets where they could hide this story until it became national news,” Ortiz explained.

Zuniga pointed out that a video recorded by a citizen helped further expose the kidnapping.

Once national and international news outlets began reporting on the abductions, the case garnered immense pressure on Mexico’s government.

“One thing is without a doubt, the response from Mexico’s government was unusual,” Ortiz said. “[It’s a] response you don’t see when the victims are Mexicans.”

Ortiz further claimed that the widespread violence in Mexico, particularly in Tamaulipas, is common where gunmen routinely stop tourists to extort them. Since most of the victims are not U.S. citizens, there is little response from authorities.

“Tamaulipas is a state where the number of forced disappearances reaches thousands,” Ortiz said. “There are clandestine grave sites everywhere. It is terrible what is happening in Tamaulipas. But in this case, there was massive deployment of military and police forces until they were able to reach [the kidnapping victims].”

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2023/03/09/ildefonso-ortiz-on-milenio-u-s-media-ignore-mexican-cartel-violence-until-victims-are-americans/

EU country to restrict semiconductor exports to China – media

The Netherlands is joining the US supply ban on the most advanced chip technology

The Netherlands plans to restrict exports of semiconductors to China following pressure from the US to join its policy of curbing Beijing’s access to advanced technology, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing the Dutch government.

In a move that is reportedly aimed at defending national security interests, the Dutch authorities are set to take the first step towards adopting the new export controls initiated by Washington last year.

In October, the White House imposed sweeping export restrictions targeting China’s semiconductor industry. The package included a ban on shipping to China without an export license chips made with US technology and intended for use in artificial intelligence and supercomputers. Washington also restricted the sale of chip manufacturing equipment and technology to Chinese companies and curbed the ability of US firms to work with Chinese chip producers unless granted special permission.

However, the restrictions would only work if approved by key chip makers in the Netherlands and Japan.

After months of pressure from Washington, Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher announced the decision in a letter to parliament, saying the restrictions would be introduced before the summer.

“Given the technological developments and the geopolitical context, the government has come to the conclusion that the existing export control framework for specific equipment used for the manufacture of semiconductors needs to be expanded, in the interests of national and international security,” the letter said.

The document doesn’t mention China or specific companies. However, it refers to the deep ultra violet (DUV) lithography systems technology as subject to the new controls. DUV machines are produced by the Dutch-based company ASML, Europe’s largest tech company and a major global semiconductor producer.

ASML dominates the market for lithography machines, which are used to manufacture memory chips for a range of devices, from smartphones to laptops and servers, and could eventually be used for artificial intelligence applications.

Since 2014, ASML has sold more than $8.4 billion worth of DUV machines to China.

Japan, a second key semiconductor supplier, is expected to release its update on export policies this week, sources told Reuters.

“For national security reasons we constantly review export rules, but it doesn’t mean we have decided anything at this point,” Japan’s economy minister, Yasutoshi Nishimura, told parliament when asked about possible restrictions.

China has repeatedly said that by imposing export controls on Beijing the US is infringing on free trade rules.

https://www.rt.com/business/572689-netherlands-china-semiconductor-export-restrictions/

>>18477973

Dealing with Clowns & Shills

New? Use logic and reason when evaluating posts, look beyond the content of the post(s) and evaluate intent.

>>2322789 How To Quickly Spot A Clown

>>18477990

The use of time is important.

>>18478001

I don't understand the nerve to come here to chat.

>>18478012

Heh.

That's a big man.

>>18478016

>>18478011

Oh, I'm sorry, basic conversation is only about what's necessary, and maybe I just can't bring myself to talk about it.

>>18478032 ⇨ >>18478075

old hand

Looks like a job, sir, looks like a job.

Because it's too difficult for new fag!!!!

>>18478096

old hand

It's note-taking time!

I use a translator LOL

>>18478109

If you're going to put on a big face, do what you have to do.

>>18478110

I'm an Anon apprentice.

>>18478124

o7