Real Estate Brokerages Zillow, RedFin Tumble After Jury Finds Realtors Conspired To Keep Commissions High

Real estate brokerages such as Zillow, RedFin, ReMex and others tumbled after a federal jury found the National Association of Realtors and large residential brokerages such as HomeServices of America and Keller Williams, liable for about $1.8 billion in damages after determining they conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high.

Under antitrust rules, the presiding judge could triple the damages verdict, which would total more than $5 billion. The plaintiffs also have asked the judge to order changes to how the industry operates.

The verdict came in the first of two major antitrust lawsuits that target decades-old industry practices and argue that unlawful industry practices have left consumers unable to lower their costs even though internet-era innovations have allowed many buyers to find homes themselves online. The two-week trial involved claims by home sellers in several Midwestern states; they sought to drive down commissions and change the way agents are compensated.

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/real-estate-brokerages-zillow-redfin-tumble-after-jury-finds-realtors-conspired-keep

CA Funding LGBTQ+ Group Fighting Parental Notification

Over the summer, when a Southern California school board opposed a new state-determined social studies curriculum that included a bio of slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a threatening tweet calling out the school board president by name.

“This isn’t Texas or Florida. In the Golden State, our kids have the freedom to learn,” Newsom tweeted. “Congrats Mr. Komrosky you have our attention. Stay tuned.”

Newsom followed up the vague warning with a far more tangible one. In a subsequent statement, the governor labeled the board’s reluctance to accept the curricula an act of “hate” and announced a $1.5 million fine for what he described as a “willful violation of the law.” He also threatened a lawsuit and a state Justice Department civil rights investigation.

“Demagogues who whitewash history, censor books, and perpetuate prejudice must never succeed,” Newsom added. “Hate doesn’t belong in our classrooms, and because of the board’s majority’s antics, Temecula has a civil rights investigation to answer for.”

Komrosky and other members of the school board for the Temecula Valley Unified School District were concerned about Milk’s well-documented relationship with a 16-year-old boy when he was in his 30s. He and other board members labeled Milk a “pedophile” and didn’t want his bio included in a supplemental curriculum for certain grade levels.

After Newsom’s threat of legal action, the school board began to waver. Komrosky called an emergency Friday meeting that stretched late into the night and partially backed down, agreeing to accept the textbooks but putting off a decision on the 4th-grade lessons on civil rights, including the gay rights movement, until the board and parents could review it further.

The confrontation spurred weeks of headlines, with members of the LGBTQ+ community praising the governor’s actions while parents’ rights groups bemoaned the top-down threats from the highest level of state government.

The Democrat-controlled state legislature last month passed a bill that would legalize hefty state fines for school boards that reject state-determined curricula and other state policies. The state attorney general also sued a different school district in Chino for requiring parents to be notified when their children begin identifying as a different gender in California public schools.

In mid-October, a judge sided, at least temporarily, with the state, and granted a preliminary injunction against the parent notification policy until he makes a final decision.

Over the last several months, the school board clashes have fueled a series of protests and rallies at the state Capitol in which parents, students, pastors, and school board members have accused the Newsom administration and the state legislature of keeping secrets from parents and undermining their ability to care for and oversee their children.

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2023/10/28/ca_funding_lgbtq_group_fighting_parental_notification.html

REPORT: ESPN Broadcast Feed Appears to Cut-Off After Aaron Rodgers Starts Talking About Vaccine

Viewers of an ESPN feed for the Pat McAfee show reported their screen suddenly went dark when the hosts started using the words “vaccine” and “spike protein” during an appearance of New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers on Tuesday.

In a video of the incident, Rodgers started talking about his Halloween costume, and co-host AJ Hawk asked if Rodgers’ costume was Anthony Fauci. McAfee then chimed in to ask if he was dressed as the coronavirus vaccine.

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2023/10/31/report-espn-broadcast-feed-appears-to-cut-off-after-aaron-rodgers-starts-talking-about-vaccine/

Former Police Chief Convicted for Cyberstalking and Threats in Multi-Victim Sextortion Scheme

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/former-police-chief-convicted-cyberstalking-and-threats-multi-victim-sextortion-scheme

Russia warns Israel about attacks on Syria

Israeli jets have repeatedly targeted Syrian airports since October 7

Spreading conflict to other countries in the Middle East is “unacceptable,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, discussing a spate of recent Israeli airstrikes with his Syrian counterpart.

Lavrov brought up the issue of Israeli airstrikes, “which have become more frequent against the backdrop of events around the Gaza Strip,” during a phone call with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a readout of the call.

Both ministers “emphasized the danger of attempts by external forces to turn the Middle East, in its current explosive situation, into an arena for settling geopolitical scores,” the readout added.

Mekdad phoned Lavrov to discuss the current situation in Gaza, as well as a number of bilateral issues and the progress in ending the war in Syria. While the 2011 attempt at armed “regime change” backed by the West and some regional powers ended in failure, the north and northeast of Syria are still outside the control of the government in Damascus.

Since the Hamas incursion from Gaza on October 7, Israel has bombed Syria at least three times, repeatedly shutting down the airports in Aleppo and Damascus. One of the attacks was acknowledged by an Israeli ambassador to Germany, who said it was intended to disrupt “weapons deliveries from Iran.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once acknowledged that there have been “hundreds” of strikes into Syria over the past decade. On the rare occasion when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) comment on the attacks, they claim to have acted in pre-emptive self-defense operations against Iran, accusing Tehran of supplying the Hezbollah militants. Damascus has repeatedly protested the raids as a violation of Syrian sovereignty, to no avail.

Lavrov and Mekdad agreed on the need for an “immediate end to the bloodshed” in Gaza and a solution to all the humanitarian problems created by the fighting.

Russia has condemned the Hamas attack but called Israel’s response against Gaza an unacceptable form of “collective punishment” against innocent civilians. Moscow has called for a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians through the creation and recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

https://www.rt.com/news/586313-russia-syria-israel-strikes/

US blew up Nord Stream gas pipelines – Moscow

Washington used Ukraine to separate Russia and the EU and fix its own economic problems, Nikolay Patrushev has claimed

“The US, using the Ukrainian crisis, managed to sever economic relations between Europe and Russia and eliminate its economic competitors. They solve their economic problems at the expense of other countries. And to make sure Europe could not receive gas from Russia, the Nord Streams were blown up,” Patrushev asserted.

“They act in exactly the same way in Ukraine, where they provoked a coup d’etat, condoned the growth of neo-Nazi ideology, turned Ukraine into a testbed for military-biological experiments, turned a blind eye to the killings of civilians in Donbass, and prepared for military action against our country,” Patrushev told the council.

https://www.rt.com/russia/586283-us-ukraine-russia-eu/

Top UN official resigns over body’s failure to stop ‘genocide’ of Palestinians

The organization has “surrendered to the power of the US” and given in to the “Israeli lobby,” Craig Mokhiber has said

The director of the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) in New York, Craig Mokhiber, has resigned from his post, citing the body’s failure to properly address the Israel-Palestine crisis. Instead of doing its job, the UN has “surrendered to the power of the US” and given in to the “Israeli lobby,” while the “European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase,” the senior official argued.

“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber said in a letter to UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Volker Turk, published on Tuesday.

The official squarely described the ongoing Israeli action in the Gaza Strip as “genocide,” acknowledging that this word “has often been subject to political abuse.”

“But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology … leaves no room for doubt or debate,” Mokhiber argued.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.

The governments of the US, the UK, and “much of Europe are wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” not only through a mere failure to fulfill their international obligations but by “actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities,” Mokhiber stated. The “cover” is further reinforced by “Western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent,” which has been “continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred,” he stressed.

https://www.rt.com/news/586302-un-official-gaza-resignation/

Fauci-run Montana lab conducted coronavirus experiments on bats with virus shipped from Wuhan in 2018: report

The coronavirus was shipped from the same Wuhan laboratory where some experts believe the 2020 pandemic-causing virus leaked from.

The taxpayer-funded National Institute of Health reportedly conducted experiments with coronaviruses more than a year before the global outbreak of Covid-19, a new investigation has found.

The NIH infected 12 Egyptian fruit bats with WIV1, a "SARS-like" virus, at a Montana lab in 2018. The bats were obtained from a Maryland "roadside" zoo that lies just 15 minutes away from Camp David, according to the Daily Mail. The WIV1-coronavirus was shipped from the same Wuhan laboratory where some experts believe the 2020 pandemic-causing virus leaked from.

The research, published in a 2018 study and revealed this week by a campaign group, determined that the specific virus could not cause "robust infection."

According to the Daily Mail, the study was first flagged by DRASTIC, "a group of internet activists who investigate the origins of Covid-19 and the lab leak theory." White Coat Waste, a watchdog group, is now using the Freedom of Information Act to request more details about the experiment.

The 2018 experiment was carried out at the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, This lab was overseen by Dr. Anthony Fauci, former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director.

The bats were obtained by scientists from the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve in Thurmont, Maryland, which has a history of animal welfare violations and was fined $12,000 in 2012 for inadequate animal care and poor and dangerous animal housing.

The scientists inoculated the bats with the WIV1-coronavirus, which was first detected in Chinese rufous horseshoe bats, and performed exams on the bats daily.

On days three, seven, and 28, four bats were euthanized and their organs were collected for analysis, with scientists also analyzing the bats’ white blood cell count and antibodies.

The scientists determined the virus did not cause "a robust infection" and "observed very limited evidence of virus replication."

President and founder of White Coat Waste Anthony Bellotti said in a statement: "Our investigation has uncovered the real-life horror story of how a shady roadside zoo whose curator was an NIH animal experimenter shipped off bats to a deadly government virus lab overseen by Dr. Fauci to be infected with a coronavirus obtained directly from the Wuhan lab that experts believe caused Covid."

https://thepostmillennial.com/fauci-run-montana-lab-conducted-coronavirus-experiments-on-bats-with-virus-shipped-from-wuhan-in-2018-report