PP NewsBrief: 2021-06-25

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Amazon Introduces New Surveillance Technology to Grocery Stores

"Amazon has just introduced its "Just Walk Out" technology into a full-size 25,000 square foot Amazon Fresh grocery store. The system uses overhead cameras, pressure sensitive-shelves, and biometric data to determine what customers put in their carts. The new store will be open on June 17 in Bellevue, Washington.

"Bringing Just Walk Out technology to a full-size grocery space with the Amazon Fresh store in Bellevue showcases the technology's continued ability to scale and adapt to new environments and selection. I'm thrilled it'll help even more customers enjoy an easier and faster way to shop and can't wait to get their feedback on this latest Just Walk Out offering," Amazon's vice president of Physical Retail and Technology, Dilip Kumar, said, according to The Verge.

The store will give customers two options when they arrive. Their first choice will be to go with a traditional checkout option. But if customers decide they would rather Just Walk Out, they can enter the store one of two ways, first, by scanning a QR code in the Amazon app followed by inserting a credit or debit card. Or they can utilize the Just Walk Out feature by scanning their palm when they enter."

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Mainstream media treats Joe Biden’s temper much different from President Trump’s criticism of the press

"The mainstream media has made a habit of referring to President Trump as a threat to the free press because of his negative comments about them. However, Joe Biden has received a free pass from such remarks for his recent attacks toward the press corps.

Biden’s latest hostility towards the media was directed at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After asking Biden how confident he was for a change in Putin’s behavior, Collins was met with frustration.

“…What the hell? What do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident?” Biden rambled. “I said what will change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world.”

Members of the corporate media were quick to perform damage control for Biden after his outburst. Vox’s Aaron Rupar tweeted “it would’ve served Biden better to not lose his temper with Kaitlan Collins, but the problem with her question is she put words in Biden’s mouth that he didn’t say.”

Biden went on to apologize later in the day, which Collins was all too happy to accept. Although she expressed appreciation for his efforts, the reporter went on to claim his apology was completely unnecessary.

The episode comes in stark contrast to a situation in 2020 when President Trump walked out of a press conference once Collins attempted to take control and criticize his handling of coronavirus...."

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California unveils new vaccine passport

"Residents of California now have a new way of “proving they have been inoculated against COVID-19,” a digital tool that the state is still refusing to call a digital “vaccine passport.”

The tool is not an app, not yet at least. It involves visiting this state government website, entering information, then setting a 4-digit PIN after which users will be redirected to a page containing their vaccine information. Users will then be forced to take a screenshot of the QR code containing the information, which can then be presented at venues for scanning.

...

The state built the tool based on the SMART Health Card Framework, which has been used by private, public, and non-profit organizations to create similar systems. According to the state’s chief technology innovation officer Rick Klau, the tool is secure as it is designed to digitally sign the QR code content, meaning after scanning, the information is matched with the information that the state has provided and the business cannot save or copy the QR code."

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How the Covid Land Rush Is Hurting New Farmers

"Abel Dowden, age 20, grew up on his family’s beef farm in the Missouri Ozarks. He just got married and is ready to start his own farm. Dowden had his eye on a neighboring place but he is a day late and a dollar short. Over the span of the last year, the price of the adjoining property has tripled. Since Dowden can’t afford the new price, the landowner decided to hold on to it until the right buyer comes along.

What caused this rapid spike in land value? Who will the right buyer be?

The data is still being analyzed but already agricultural economists across the country have noticed a marked increase in agricultural land value caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this new market, locals looking for their retirement property and out-of-staters looking for some peaceful country living or an easy investment compete with, and often out-compete, new farmers.

During the pandemic, federal stimulus money has poured into rural communities in the form of small business assistance, farm aid, unemployment benefits and income-based payments. While the money has helped some scrape by this year, it has left others with cash on hand they wouldn’t otherwise have. Levi McDaris, a commercial banker in the Missouri Ozarks, says that in his area many people are turning around and putting that money into land, driving up demand and prices.

At the same time, the uncertainty of Covid-19 prompted investors to seek out stable investments in an otherwise turbulent market. Ag land — known for steady, reliable returns — has long been a go-to investment for large firms but this last year also saw new people investing in land, says Ray Massey. Massey is an ag economist at the University of Missouri Extension which conducts an annual survey of the ag-land market....

...As Covid-19 has redefined the limits of modern work, urban people have reconsidered city living. Nearly 40% of U.S. adults living in urban areas would consider moving to rural areas according to an April 2020 Harris Poll. Rural housing markets around the country have been blown apart by this sudden demand. In parts of rural California, for example, housing prices have increased by an average of 25% since the start of the pandemic. In the small city of Springfield, Missouri, about an hour West of where Dowden lives, housing prices have increased about 11% since May 2020. This demand extended to ag land, especially into what might be called recreational ag land: often hunting grounds or small 40-or-less-acre lots used for lifestyle farming....

Since people looking for lifestyle or recreational properties ​“are willing to pay more than the agricultural value,” explains Wyatt Fraas, the farm and community assistant director at the Center for Rural Affairs, ​“all the surrounding ag land gets an increase in value.” The phenomenon has pushed up cropland prices across the U.S. in places like Iowa, Ohio, and Missouri.

Not only has the demand for lifestyle properties pushed up the price of ag land, but non-farming people moving into rural areas have also quickened the development of ag land into smaller, lifestyle plots around rural towns. When media outlets hasten to characterize the flight to the country as a revitalization of rural America, they miss this important part of the picture. ​“When newcomers move in and take that land out of production, they actually threaten rather than boost the rural economy,” says Julia Freedgood, co-author of the American Farmland Trust’s Farms Under Threat report

...

Despite the economic and environmental costs to local communities, the Farms Under Threat report finds that between 2001 and 2016, nearly 7 million acres of farmland were converted to low-density residential (lifestyle) land use.

And, of course, conversion into housing developments takes ag land out of the market and drives up land prices. The surging price may be good for landowners but it’s ultimately changing who can afford to become a landowner. Abel Dowden’s neighbor saw his property value triple, but this means Dowden, the new farmer, is unlikely to be able to buy his farm.

Some of the factors driving up farmland prices — such as low interest rates and federal stimulus money — probably won’t last. The newfound interest in rural living, however, may stick around or even increase. Currently, about 42 million people—mostly in rural America—are without access to broadband internet. Businesses and families alike view poor broadband access as a major detractor of rural living; thus, broadband access is arguably a major factor limiting rural growth. In response, Biden’s American Jobs Plan includes $100 billion for broadband infrastructure. As rural broadband access increases, more people may want to move to rural areas, buy land and build homes, further limiting the availability of affordable farmland.

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...As traditional farms and ranches continue to struggle with profitability, fewer and fewer retiring farmers are passing their land onto their children. Instead, their land enters the ag-land market, where it is difficult for new farmers to compete with industrial ag operations, investors, and developers. As prices go up, the imbalance of purchasing power intensifies. The Covid-19 uptick in prices and corresponding rise in investment and non-farming purchases is accelerating this long-running trend. Sadly, says McDaris, a banker who often works with farmers on getting loans, ​“the future of farming is not farm ownership because the cost of farm ownership is just getting too high.”

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Some states have policies meant to address farmland development and encourage transition to new generations of farmers. These policies can protect agricultural viability and use zoning laws to control low-density sprawl. For instance, under some state programs — which are fairly limited in Missouri but more prevalent in other parts of the United States — Dowden might be able to sell an agricultural conservation easement on the land in order to make up part of the higher price. This would help him with the purchase now and ensure that the land is not developed even after he is done farming. Some states have also implemented Farm Link programs that connect land seekers with landowners who want their land to stay in agriculture. If such a program was established in Missouri, it might help young farmers like Dowden gain access to farmland.

...

For now, beginning farmers like Dowden continue to face an uphill battle, only exacerbated by the Covid storm. McDaris, the Ozark banker, reflects: ​“It’s not that people wanted it to become this way, I think it’s just the unintended consequences of who we are and what we’ve done.”"

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DePerno Files Motion For Reconsideration: More Evidence Of Fraud

"The Gateway Pundit (GP) reported: “[T]wo of the major ballot printing shops in the United States certified to print Dominion paper ballot products, Runbeck Election Services in Tempe, Arizona, and the Fort Orange Press in Albany, NY, are both 2021 major donors to the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED).” Jocelyn Benson is currently co-chair of the NASS elections committee.

According to GP, “Dominion Voting Systems, ES&S, and Hart InterCivic, the top election machine vendors in the United States also donated to NASS and NASED. In addition, Smartmatic donated to NASS.”

DePerno has growing additional evidence that allegedly proves there was fraud in the election. He and his client, William Bailey, want to see a full forensic audit of the ballots and machines in Antrim County similar to the one being performed in Maricopa County, Arizona. He contends that the election should be decertified based on the internet connections alone because of the potential vulnerability to hacking and vote switching.

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DePerno filed a number of new documents the second week in June. One such affidavit, in his newly filed motion for reconsideration, is captured in Exhibit 6 below. It shows a sworn declaration by the Central Lake Township County Clerk, Judith Kosloski.

Kosloski has served in the position twice—once for two years starting in 2006 and then again in 2012-present. As she states below, the county clerk’s job is to guarantee a safe, legal election. Kosloski noted some irregularities when she was called back in on Nov. 6 to retabulate the votes. Hers was the only county to retabulate, something to this day she does not really understand, per her statement below.

Oddly, the numbers had changed in her county between the tape read on Nov. 3 and the retabulation performed on Nov. 6. She contacted the Board of Canvassers, but no one responded.

On Nov. 26, a lawyer contacted her asking permission to examine her tabulator and other election equipment. She met with a team of cyber forensics experts on Nov. 27. They found “a discrepancy on the tape of 600+ votes on the Ellsworth School Board contest alone. Ellsworth Township had only six voters eligible to vote on that contest and three exercised their right to vote. Other races had discrepancies of one or two votes between the first and second tape.” The Marijuana Proposal also changed from a “tie vote to winning by one.”

Exhibit 7 in the motion pertains to testimony from digital forensics expert Ben Cotton, the founder of CyFIR, LLC (CyFIR). Per his affidavit, he examined the following:

--The Antrim County Election Management Server Image;

--Thirty-eight (38) forensic images of the compact flash cards used in Antrim County during the November 2020 elections that were imaged on 4 December 2020 by a firm named Sullivan and Strickler;

--One (1) SID-15v-Z37-A1R, commonly known as the Image Cast X (ICX), was used in the November 2020 elections;

--Two (2) thumb drives that were configured for a precinct using the ES&S DS400 tabulator[s] that were used during the November 2020 election;

--One ES&S server was used in the November 2020 election.

During his examination, he found evidence of internet “communications to a number of public and private IP addresses.” Alarmingly, he noted the following:

--An IP address that resolves back to the Ministry of Education Computer Center, 12F, No 106, Sec.2, Hoping E. Rd., Taipei Taiwan 106.

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He did not have the entire communications infrastructure for the private network, per his testimony, so he was not able to determine the full extent of communications or remote access. Nor could he determine “which other devices would have been connected to the private network.”

There was also only a single password shared for “shared for the EMSADMIN01, EMSADMIN, EMSUSER, ICCUSER01, ICCUSER02, and emsepsuser.” Those passwords had never been changed. Two local administrative accounts had no passwords. He found it “inconceivable that a system would have shared passwords or null passwords and still meet accreditation standards.”

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Also found was a remote Anonymous logon. The “first occurred on 11/5/2020 at 5:55:56 PM and the second occurred on 11/17/2020 at 5:16:49 PM EST.” Those are significant timestamps because they correlate with the dates the county clerk, Sheryl Guy, and SoS Benson were trying to correct the computer problems found at the time. Cotton noted the following:

“Given that this computer was supposed to be on a private network, this is very alarming. One would expect that any network logon if authorized by the accreditation authority, would require specific usernames and passwords to be utilized, not anonymous users. Given the vulnerable state of the operating system and antivirus protections, this apparent unauthorized access is particularly alarming and certainly would not have been authorized on an accredited system.“

The March 26 Halderman report validates these findings, according to Cotton. He also notes emphasized the following:

“It also validates that the system is in a state such that an unauthorized user can easily bypass the passwords for the system and database to achieve unfettered access to the voting system in a matter of minutes. These manipulations and password bypass methodologies can be performed remotely if the unauthorized user gains access to the system through the private network or the public internet.“

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Expert witness Jeffrey Lenberg also submitted additional testimony. UncoverDC reported his finding that modification and manipulation of votes at the tabulator is possible and can go undetected—making it possible to flip votes “of any and all races on the ballot.”

He has continued to examine the equipment and logs associated with the 2020 election. He performed a “case study” on Banks Township where he allegedly proves the Election Management System (EMS) had been subverted. He looked at the project files and the errors they produced. He saw a shifting of indexing in the project file, similar to what was discovered in Antrim County, “large enough to move all votes off the ballot.”...

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He found that the EMS had been programmed to suppress error messages. The 39-page affidavit on this subject is technical, but he explains how things seem to have been programmed and manipulated in such a way that “the subversion of the Antrim County EMS actually allowed twelve (12) additional townships compact flashcards to load successfully despite the flawed configuration that resulted in the shifting of votes. These additional townships would have failed to load on the EMS if not for the subversion in the Antrim County EMS system that allowed for the cards to load normally and not trigger any rejection of the cards or errors in the EMS.”"

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‘Catastrophic impact’: Tasmanian devils ‘wipe out’ large penguin colony on Australian island as animal introduction goes wrong

"According to The Australian newspaper, the devils were introduced to the tiny island off Tasmania’s east coast in 2012 as an “insurance population” due to the fears that a raging facial tumor disease would make the raccoon-sized creatures disappear completely.

The arrival of the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupials took a horrible toll on the island’s bird colony, as the initial group of 28 devils on Maria grew to 100 in just a few years.

BirdLife Tasmania conservation group said that in 2010-2011 there were around 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins, the Earth’s smallest species of penguins that are native to Australia and New Zealand, living across the national-park island.

Park officials “went out 18 months back and couldn’t find a single penguin breeding in any of the previously known penguin colonies on the island,” the group’s convener Eric Whoehler said.

“So, the devils have wiped out the penguins. It’s 100%,” Whoehler said, adding that Maria’s Cape Barren geese and native hens have also suffered from the carnivores.

Whoehler later told the media that there is always “a catastrophic impact” on one or more bird species when mammals are brought to oceanic islands, and losing thousands of pairs of penguins on Maria is “a major blow.”"

Look, we can't even manipulate the lives of medium-sized mammals without suffering severe unintended consequences. Why would giving science the ability to manipulate the building blocks of life turn out any better?

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Federalism is Key to Surviving a Divided Nation

"We live in a divided nation. Our politics have become not just polarized, but toxic. For a country founded on the principles of individual liberty, democratic choice in representative government, and republican protection of natural rights, America has seemingly lost its way. American politics have devolved into a zero-sum game power struggle between two wings of the same establishment—with the prize being the privilege of exploiting the American working class. We are a long way, both figuratively and literally, from the raging fires of liberty that opposed the crown’s Stamp Act in 1765.

Like all empires, America’s decline, or “transformation” in the words of our 44th president, was the result of poor decisions by both elected leaders and the citizens who elected them. Corruption on the part of a rent-seeking elite and apathy on the part of the citizens have delivered us to our present situation. Although it is important to understand the mistakes that we made along the road to our failing empire, the real question we should be asking now is what are we to do about our current predicament.

In David Reaboi’s essay in the Claremont Institute’s The American Mind, he discusses the importance of ending traditional America’s favorite pastime of arguing the same ground with the political opposition over and over again—as if minds are not already made up and just one more pithy tweet or witty meme would finally produce a tidal wave of political defections. Instead, he states, we should consider the work we must do in order to salvage some form of republican society that appreciates and protects the founding principles of America’s charter and our way of life.

This is an issue that cannot get enough attention. It is fruitless to continue arguing the same tired Left/Right arguments. “Owning the libs” on Twitter, relentlessly calling out the hypocrisy of our political opponents, and focusing our time and attention on outrageous content may be entertaining, but it won’t save us from the oppression and serfdom of the authoritarian oligarchy that is presently transforming America.

...

When we give credibility to a lie by arguing against it as if it were a sincere assertion, we are diminishing our brand and reinforcing the regime’s misrepresentations. Instead of wasting time and bandwidth on the regime’s specious gun violence argument, why not concern ourselves with what we can do  to thwart this and future efforts to restrict our constitutional rights? Why not focus on reforming the 1934 National Firearms Act to remove arbitrary restrictions on firearms and accessories that give the tyrant an entry to confiscation? It is not enough to attempt to conserve the last shards of our constitutional rights—we must instead focus on advancing our cause of liberty.

One of the difficulties with human nature is our tendency to remain frozen in a familiar construct. Right now, many Americans are still living in a construct that is no longer germane to the present. They have failed to detect the significant changes in our society’s institutions. The hard reality is we are living in a post-truth and post-justice world where our past ideas of freedom, individual liberty, and equal justice are simply no longer valid. The expectation that debate matters in a post-truth society inevitably leads to disappointment when no one cares about your truth. The idea that someone will save us from tyranny as long as we send money to a political party and cast our vote for the right candidate is obsolete—if we are to be saved, it is up to us to be the cavalry.

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Federalism is a compound form of government that combines a central government with regional governments in a single political system. Both the central and regional governments have the power to make laws, and they possess a certain level of autonomy from each other. This structure, designed by our founders, is the existing constitutional key to the solution for our divided nation.

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The regime in Washington, D.C. cannot effectively lead America. Neither can it rule it by the heel of the boot. Its fantastical ideas of doing so will only lead to civil unrest of massive proportions and, potentially, to the dissolution of the republic. So, instead of waiting for this train wreck of governmental malpractice to ruin America, perhaps it’s time to decentralize our system of government and rely on the concept of federalism to maintain our union until a time when we are less divided.  

It should not matter to a Californian what a Texan does in Texas—just as there is no benefit to Texans to impose their way of life onto Californians. Likewise, a regime in Washington, D.C. composed of bureaucrats whose belief system and way of life do not represent that of the majority—or even a plurality—of Americans does not have the moral authority to impose its version of America onto those who see that version as anathema to their way of life. One-size-fits-all government and culture has never been workable in a divided nation and eventually produces rebellion. This is particularly true in America, a country with a proud history of rebellion. People are not going to submit to a way of life they do not believe in.

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An authoritarian oligarchy doesn’t care about preserving a union of states or whether traditional America participates in its “democracy.” The oligarchy only cares about removing barriers to its business interests and preventing traditional America from getting in the way of its wealth and power. In their model, everyone does as they’re told, while national borders and sovereignty are quaint relics abandoned for the sake of progress, profits, and cheap labor. Traditional Americans should fight to preserve this union, while also preventing the obliteration of their way of life. That’s a fine line to walk, but it’s not an impossible one.

Consider the idea of preserving the union as maintaining a bridge to America as it was intended. While we are a divided nation, decentralizing control via federalism empowers states to govern their citizens in a manner that protects and enables their chosen way of life. It maintains our stake in the union while preserving our liberty. The union is the bridge to facilitate more effective participation of a centralized government if and when the conditions of national unity reemerge. Individual states are free to experience the rewards or consequences of their policies, which also serves as an objective measure to their respective efficacy, and influences others to likewise adopt or shun them. Either way, there is freedom of choice for Americans to live the way they choose without a Washington establishment attempting to impose its one-size-fits-all will on the unwilling.

Federalism necessarily defeats the oligarchy’s consolidation of power and at the same time prevents the premature dissolution of the sovereign nation-state that is America. The ideals that sparked the Declaration of Independence and subsequent armed rebellion from the crown were built upon individual liberty. Our founders chose freedom over subservience, democracy over monarchy, and representative government over a managed society. We have lived by their sacrifices for 256 years. Now it is for Americans to decide whether we will continue as citizens of a republic or as subjects under the rule of a wealthy technocratic elite. Our founders gave us federalism to protect us from the tyranny of the few—traditional Americans should embrace it as the solution to preserve our liberty and our way of life in this deeply divided nation."

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Fulton County: Election Monitor Details “Massive” Failures

"On Monday, November 2, 2020, Carter Jones of Seven Hill Strategies began a six-day assignment in Fulton County as an independent election monitor. Jones was appointed by the Georgia Election Board as part of a Consent Order to resolve complaints about problems during the June 2020 primary election. At a meeting on October 30, 2020, County election officials indicated they recognized issues during the primary, noting they were mainly caused by the “ongoing coronavirus pandemic.” After outlining the details of the Consent order and informing the Board of the provision allowing the State Election Board to “appoint a monitor to track and report progress to the Board,” Assistant Attorney General Charlene McGowan asked the Board to approve the appointment of Mr. Carter Jones.

As reported by Just The News, a 29-page compilation of “Unabridged Notes Detailing Everything Witnessed Nov 2-Nov 7, 2020,” written by Carter Jones on November 13, 2020, exposes—minute-by-minute—”the ‘massive’ election integrity failures and mismanagement that he witnessed in the Atlanta-area’s election centers.”

...

Tuesday, November 3 – Election Day

Carter Jones arrived at the warehouse at 5:07 am. At 5:47 am he reported on poll manager Susan Voyles’ refusal to wear a mask, and she “doesn’t seem to have any of her equipment yet.” His next note is at 4:00 pm when he arrives at State Farm Arena to monitor the pre-scanning and preparation for the evening’s influx.

--Too many ballots coming in for secure black ballot boxes. They are being moved from Pryor St. in rolling bins 2k at a time, a massive chain of custody problem. Jones says the ballots are supposed to be moved in numbered, sealed boxes to protect them.

...

--11:17 pm—In response to news that Fulton Co. stopped scanning at 10:30 pm, news reaches warehouse that Sec. Raffensperger “ripped” Fulton Co., saying ‘Fulton can’t get anything right.’ Morale hit palpable in warehouse body language. Chairman Pitts “pissed”

--11:26 pm—Confusion about whether they’re still scanning at State Farm because of reports that the staff there told the rest of the staff and press to leave, but I am still getting number reports from Shaye.

--11:52 pm—I arrive at State Farm Arena and report to Ryan Germany and Deputy Secretary Jordan Fuchs that they staff are still scanning on all five scanners. “The media just packed up when I released all the staff opening and sorting ballots,” Shaye told me. The scanners worked to clear what had been processed that day instead of interrupting the processing flow to secure the ballots before leaving. Their goal is to hit Ralph’s 100k by the end of the night.

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Wednesday, November 4 – E-Day Plus 1

At 12:08 am Jones sent Germany a photo with a timestamp showing that scanners are still working so he can refute stories to the contrary. He also noted that Ralph had recently re-scanned some ballots that Shaye had already processed, and order was starting to break down.

--12:15 am—Inspector James Callaway arrives to investigate the accusations that the Fulton staff had told the press to go home and were scanning without observers.

--1:12 am—I arrive back at the warehouse to double-check that materials from Election Day were collected correctly

--As I arrive, I see Rick and other Fulton leadership going through a mail cart. I am told that ‘they are doing a final check to make sure that everything has been recorded,” ‘moving from one stack to another but Tia, who was doing the intake, is nowhere to be found to give me final numbers. I am (cryptically) told that she is unavailable because she is “dealing with an issue.”

--They’re pulling compact flashes (CF)→poll manager put a Mobile 2 CF in Mobile 1 CF slot, which is causing confusion now. People are talking about a “master bus” problem for the backups, which seems to be causing the confusion.

...

--8:10 pm—Matthew Mashburn from the State Election Board tells me that a party poll watcher was on the elevator with two new reinforcements. The first asked the second if they ‘were ready for a long night.’ The second replied that, “yeah. I’m ready to f*ck sh*t up.” I must keep an eye on these two. Perhaps this was a bad joke, but it was very poorly timed in the presence of a poll watcher.

--Rick’s girlfriend is hanging out in the scanning area and keeping him company without credentials to be there. He seems very distracted with his new celebrity status still and is laughing while reading tweets aloud.

...

Thursday, November 5 – E-Day Plus 2

--~12:45 am—Malcolm (poll tech) brings me an iPad showing that 157 polls are still “open” in Fulton’s backend software. He shows me that he can personally close one himself.

--3:52 am—Rick getting double feeds on the OPEX and I’m not sure he’s matching ballots with the Oath envelopes correctly. He’s also on the phone.

--11:37 am—A panicked staff member tells me that Fulton “found” four boxes or trays at the warehouse and that they’re on the way here now. I alert SOS contacts. I ask Ralph and am told that these are cured ballots that cleared the second phase of rejections→cured ballots all collected before the poll close.

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Friday, November 6 – E-Day Plus 3 (“Provisional Ballot Day”)

Jones noted that materials were put away hastily and it was a slow start to the morning to sort it out. He was told that all provisional scans from Thursday night needed to be reorganized, noting that the Fulton staff blamed reinforcement staff from Happy Faces. Jones commented, “Sloppy shutdown yesterday has caused lots of problems this morning.”

...

--3:37 pm—Ask Ralph about the last ballot box of provisionals sitting under a table. “Oh, there’s another box down there?” he says as he goes and pulls them out for sorting. Can assume they would’ve been forgotten even though he put them there.

--Learn that 35 compact flashes (CF), some still in the scanners, were not used on Election Day because of the low turnout.

--I overhear someone say on the phone, “Seal everything and then verify numbers later.”

--9:35 pm—I find a stack of ballots requiring duplication sitting on table where another staffer had been working. I bring to Ralph’s attention. He hadn’t noticed it.

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Saturday, November 7 – E-Day Plu 4

--3:15 pm—State Farm security guard hasn’t verified which GOP observers can come in. She literally just told them that “Democratic observers are allowed in and not Republican” because she didn’t have their names. After unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her that this process must be open to the public, I give the GOP poll watchers my number to call her supervisor and go up to the processing room so that staff are not left alone with ballots.

--7:35 pm—After talking to Ralph, Rick tells me that they are now counting the number of salmon provisional envelopes to make sure that all are accounted for because Ralph never counted them on the way in—unaccounted-for ballots are a huge problem! My problem is that, therefore there is a possibility that; 1), not all provisional ballots made it to State Farm or, 2) some are missing because they never did an intake count. Both are bad.

--11:04 pm—Staff leaving. Did not log off computers like they did last night. I am told that the Dominion people will handle that; yesterday, I was told the opposite by a Dominion tech.

Prior to the unveiling of his “Unabridged Notes,” Jones presented a 14-page report for the Georgia Election Board elaborating on the nearly 270 hours he spent from October to January observing “every aspect” of Fulton County’s elections. Yet, in a stark contradiction to his notes, Jones stated in his official report that although he did observe “sloppy data entry” and several procedural problems, “at no time did I ever observe any conduct by Fulton County election officials that involved dishonesty, fraud, or intentional malfeasance.” Additionally, Jones wrote that he did not witness any “ballot stuffing” or “double counting,” which would “undermine the validity, fairness, and accuracy of the results published and certified by Fulton County.”"

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Could an Invisible Military Laser Steal Your Privacy?

"In 2019, the MIT Technology Review reported the US Special Operations Command (SOC) had asked for a new system for positive identifications on the battlefield. The goal was to help snipers ID terrorist/insurgent targets.

The gadget was dubbed Jetson. It is an infrared laser that, in 30 seconds, at distances of 200 meters (close to 700 ft), claims to identify an individual via his or her heartbeat, a “heartprint,” if you will, with 95 percent or greater accuracy, using laser vibrometry. The 200 meter range figure is likely an underestimate of what Jetson can do, as is the 95 percent accuracy figure. Steward Remaly, the program manager who ran Jetson development for the DOD’s Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO)* told MIT that longer ranges and greater accuracy should be possible (and the DOD rarely publicizes the full capability of new gear).

The first mention of Jetson I found was the CTTSO’s 2017 Review Book, which said it will ID targets within five seconds. That five-second figure was absent in the CTTSO’s 2018 Review Book. When the 2019 MIT story appeared a year later, it said 30 seconds, as did all subsequent coverage. We don’t know which figure is more accurate.

In February 2021, with help from DOD public affairs, I interviewed Remaly, the Jetson program manager at CTTSO, about Jetson. Remaly was amiable but vague in most of his responses. The main takeaways from the Remaly interview were that Jetson was developed by Ideal Innovations Incorporated, aka I3, working with Washington University in St Louis. And that Jetson development started in 2010.

A start-date of 2010 puts a different spin on Jetson’s status. Instead of a pilot project cobbled together in 2017–2018, Jetson is the fruit of eight years of R&D, suggesting a mature piece of tech was delivered to the Army by the CTTSO. The CTTSO’s 2018 Review Book designated Jetson a “completed project” almost a year before the MIT article ran. The Army has now had that completed project for at least two years, possibly longer.

...

A challenge in reporting on Jetson was finding cardiologists to examine its central claim—the mysterious ability to ID people via remote measurement of their heartbeat. The majority of cardiologists I contacted declined to comment about Jetson, and wouldn’t say why.

Dr. Ronald Berger of Johns Hopkins is a cardiologist and a biomedical engineer and a professor of both. Despite Dr. Berger’s stellar credentials, he was also reluctant to comment. I told Dr. Berger that Steward Remaly said Jetson produced an ECG-like reading, but I speculated that Remaly might have used the term ECG because it is a common term for a device that measures the heart.

Dr. Berger emailed back: “Seems possible (for Jetson) to get an assessment of heart rate, but not ECG … Even if you had an ECG, it’s not quite like a fingerprint. Even if it were, you would need to know their individual pattern ahead of time in order to ‘recognize’ the individual. If all you have is a pulse reader, then I cannot see how that would allow for individual identification.”

...

...A tip identified the engineer (who did not respond to requests for comment) that ran Jetson development at Washington University. A review of his work turned up the 2009 research paper, ‘Laser Doppler Vibrometry Measurements of the Carotid Pulse: Biometrics Using Hidden Markov Models.’

Jetson development began the year after this paper was published. And the smoking gun, Jetson’s mechanism of action, was in the abstract.

"Small movements of the skin overlying the carotid artery, arising from pressure pulse changes in the carotid during the cardiac cycle, can be detected using the method of Laser Doppler Vibrometry (LDV) … these variations are shown to be informative for identity verification and recognition … The resulting biometric classification performance confirms that the LDV signal contains information that is unique to the individual."

This was expanded on in a 2012 paper, ‘Hidden State Models for Noncontact Measurements of the Carotid Pulse using a Laser Doppler Vibrometer.’ A 2016 paper, ‘Cardiorespiratory interactions: Noncontact Assessment Using Laser Doppler Vibrometer‘ noted LDV was useful on a non-contact basis, required no skin preparation, and could be used in harsh environments.

...

Dr. Berger was more forthcoming after I sent him the abstracts. While noting he didn’t have time to do a full review of the literature, he wrote, “This seems like a credible explanation of how it works and what it does.”

I3 refused to discuss Jetson, but I3’s website does offer this “Standoff Biometric Service.”

"I3 designed, developed and demonstrated [sic] man-portable system for heart biometrics using a standoff laser vibrometer to measure pulse response at distances up to 200m. This system enables the operator to covertly collect heart biometrics from multiple body locations, including some that might be covered by clothing. The matching algorithm uses unique aspects of the heart pulse shape to create biometric signatures that cannot be disguised by the subject."

...

My best guess of who has custody of the Jetson program is the Army’s Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency (DFBA), whose motto is “Deny the Enemy Anonymity.” The guess rests on a few points. Jetson is a new biometric device for IDing enemies. I3 has three different contracts with the DFBA worth over $76 million. DFBA lists counterinsurgency as part of its mission, explaining on its website, “Terrorists, foreign fighters, and insurgents utilize anonymity to shield themselves from US Forces.” One of I3’s contracts include support to the DFBA’s Biometrics Operations Division (a division not mentioned on the DFBA’s website).

What we don’t know and can’t guess is who will be allowed, or has already been allowed, to buy Jetson as a device or service. We know per CTTSO’s 2018 Review Book that the Special Operations Command and the Intelligence Community will get access to it first. But both of those groups have a network of local and international tech and data sharing arrangements. Additionally, the 2018 Review Book notes, “CTTSO directly manages bilateral agreements with five partner countries: Australia, Canada, Israel, Singapore, and the United Kingdom … In addition to CTTSO’s bilateral partners, CTTSO cooperates with other countries when appropriate.”

...

Assume you are James Doe, standing in a crowd at a demonstration (or sitting on a park bench, or at a stoplight in your car, or standing in line at a DMV). Jetson’s optical tracker is aimed at you, which kicks on a beam director, which gimbals Jetson’s laser into alignment, and shoots the invisible infrared beam at you from a box about 8×8″ (20 cm) square. You won’t see the box, let alone the invisible laser, because it is hundreds of feet away from you. The interferometers sensing reflections of the IR laser quantify the individual-specific movements in your skin from the combination of your carotid pulse and breathing.

Now your unique “heartprint” is in a Jetson database.

To usefully identify and track you, that heartprint will have to be attached to a name. A camera linked to a face recognition database will search for a picture of James Doe. If it finds one, or one “close enough” according to the face recognition algorithm, the heartprint and face match will be a permanently linked record. Thereafter, no further use of camera or face recognition software is necessary; you will be considered positively IDed any time another Jetson laser is aimed your way and matches the heartprint on file.

To work, Jetson will need to build a database of heartprints and linked face IDs. But it gets more than halfway there by linking Jetson to photos accessed by face recognition systems. Counting only Clearview AI or Rekognition, Jetson database developers would have instant access to billions of photos of potential suspects (aka ordinary citizens).

If the DFBA has custody of Jetson, it is reasonable to assume it will use its existing storehouse of suspect IDs as a base on which to build out a Jetson heartprint database. The Army sub-agency states it currently has, which have so far generated in excess of 300,000 watchlist hits.

We don’t know if the DFBA or I3 has paired with any federal, state, or local police departments, to gather “heartprints.” We do know per the “Technology Transition” section in CTTSO’s Review Book, CTTSO builds production partnerships and independent operational testing into every project. Many of CTTSO’s projects involve partnerships with, or are developed specifically for, local law enforcement. A partnership with a sheriff’s department in Oregon is how Amazon Rekognition’s photo databases were started.

...

As Jetson’s beam is invisible, any current or future James Doe won’t know to protest the violation of his 4th Amendment right to be “secure in his person” against unreasonable search and seizure with no probable cause. Violators can decide its more convenient to keep the citizenry that might make such complaints in the dark, just as the Washington County Sherriff’s Office in Oregon and NYPD did for years with face recognition.

...

Where we are now with Jetson is where we were 20 years ago with face recognition tech. So far, years of warnings about face recognition have been largely ignored, allowing Clearview AI to metastasize in a blight on privacy.

There are excellent reasons we don’t put tools of mass surveillance or war in the hands of civil authorities. It’s not about supporting the police. It’s about what kind of society we want to live in."

========

Black Lives Matter and the Psychology of Progressive Fatalism

"...the culture war rages on—the latest front is a fight over whether or not critical race theory should be taught in schools, and another summer of upheaval appears to be underway. What the outcome of all this will be, no one can honestly say yet, but the signs are not encouraging. What can be said, however, is that last year’s racial activism didn’t arise in a vacuum—it was made possible by a deepening progressive fatalism about race in America and the sharp cultural turn toward identity issues in the 2010s.

In 2013, for instance, 72 percent of white adults and 66 percent of black adults reported that race relations were either very or somewhat good, according to Gallup. By 2020, those numbers had dropped to 46 percent and 36 percent, respectively. The percentage of white Democrats who say that racism is a big problem in the US leapt from 52 percent in January 2015, to 89 percent by early June of 2020, a Monmouth University poll found, while the percentage of black Democrats who agreed rose from 69 percent to 93 percent over the same period. White liberals have recently become the only political-racial group in the country with a pro-outgroup bias in favor of nonwhites, and report more racism against blacks in the United States than blacks themselves.

As the work of political scientist Zach Goldberg has shown, the shift in progressive opinion on race is correlated with the explosion of social media and digital journalism. The percentage of Americans listing the Internet as their primary news source rose from 14 to 47 percent between 2006 and 2018, with progressives leading the way. And the ubiquity of camera-phones has allowed rare but distressing incidents of police misconduct to go viral, shifting attention from local news to national and global narratives and enabling a feedback loop of perpetual moral outrage.

...

Debates about race—and anti-black racism, in particular—cut deeper than other issues in America. The legacy of American race relations conjures brutal recollections of bondage, subjugation, and atrocity spanning hundreds of years. The discrepancy between the Enlightenment ideals upon which the world’s oldest democracy was built and its participation in slavery and racial apartheid means the condition of American blacks is fraught with uniquely powerful feelings of symbolic national guilt. Moreover, anti-racism provided a paradigm for change in American society. The women’s suffrage movement was the offspring of abolitionism, and the civil rights revolution midwifed second wave feminism, gay rights, and other forms of social protest and group activism. Since the 1960s, “racist” has been among the worst epithets in American public life and anti-racism has developed into something resembling a national moral iconography, with its own set of symbols, myths, dreams, and taboos intended to purge the collective shame of historical racism in perpetuity.

Symbolism is by no means unimportant—it provides cultures with the emotional geography to navigate complex historical realities. But an over-reliance on metaphor can blind us to the accumulation of material change and preclude a balanced understanding of the present. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement argue that blacks are routinely killed by the cops because America hates them. After the first wave of protests last summer, the New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote: “The protests are not necessarily about Floyd’s killing in particular, but about the savagery and carnage that his death represents: The nearly unchecked ability of the state to act with impunity in the oppression of black bodies and the taking of black life.”

However, political narratives constructed on anecdotal evidence can create and fortify highly misleading impressions....

...

...the percentage of young black men killed by police has declined since the late 1960s by about 80 percent, according to an extensive data analysis by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. And despite considerable evidence that police are more likely to pull over, harass, search, and otherwise mistreat black Americans compared to other groups, multiple studies have found no evidence of bias in police shootings of black suspects once the rate of encounters between police and civilians have been accounted for. Reporting on his study in the New York Times, behavioral scientist Sendhil Mullainathan concludes, “If police discrimination were a big factor in the actual killings, we would have expected a larger gap between the arrest rate and the police-killing rate. This in turn suggests that removing police racial bias will have little effect on the killing rate.”

Even if racial bias really were the problem, there doesn’t seem to be any readily available solution. Implicit bias training doesn’t really work, racial sensitivity programs tend to backfire, and white police officers are no more likely to kill minority suspects than black police officers. Meanwhile, black Americans are about 30 times more likely to be killed by fellow citizens than police, as the writer Andrew Sullivan has observed. In a stroke of tragic irony, the widespread perception that police are a net negative for black people may result in more black homicides by reducing police presence in high-crime minority communities. Eighty-one percent of black Americans say they want more or the same amount of police in their neighborhoods.

On its face, there’s something odd about launching a nationwide movement around an issue that is rarer than being struck by lightning, has no obvious solution, has been rapidly improving, and ignores a far worse problem. But it’s less strange in the context of a culture obsessed with untethering itself from its own history. It is the symbolism of a white cop killing a black suspect that arouses collective moral indignation. If Derek Chauvin had been black, or if George Floyd had been white, it’s worth wondering whether or not the latter’s death would have elicited the same response.

...

Surprisingly, the most radical forms of activism often emerge after demands for reform have been met or set in motion. Black Power arose in the late ‘60s following the tangible victories of the civil rights movement in the previous half-decade; LGB and radical trans activism grew after gay marriage rights were secured at the federal level; race pride and identity extremism in post-colonial Africa flourished after nations slipped the Western yoke; Black Lives Matter was founded after America’s first black president was elected. As the writer Shelby Steele put it, “Anger in the oppressed is a response to perceived opportunity, not to injustice. And expressions of anger escalate not with more injustice but with less injustice.” Underlying this phenomenon is a sense of disappointment. Even in the face of obvious progress, democratic societies remain flawed and unequal in a number of ways. So, what if the problem is society itself? Fatalism takes hold and empowers the demand for the most extreme measures like de-funding the police.

...

...selective forgetting is a basic feature of human psychology: We get used to new things, take them for granted, and the mind moves on to other problems. Since we are only ever capable of experiencing the present, memories of the past often deceive. Gratitude is fleeting.

The same phenomenon can be scaled up to the level of society. With all of the focus on history in contemporary discussions of racism, Americans seem to be unable (or unwilling) to imagine what the country was actually like before the civil rights movement. Those who lived through that era are remembered either as victims, as perpetrators, or as indifferent bystanders instead of as complex human beings living their lives under different conditions. The real tragedy of racism was its everyday banality. By religiously dramatizing our racial history, we risk losing vital historical perspective. If history is the memory of the human race, it is a selective memory indeed, and our selective memory on race explains how the perception of racism can grow even as racism itself is in precipitous decline.

No metric better indicates declining racial stigma in an increasingly multi-ethnic society than intermarriage. Between 1958 and 2013, the percentage of Americans who endorse intermarriage increased from four percent to 87 percent. Between 1980 and 2017, the rate of intermarriage nearly quadrupled from five percent to 18 percent, Pew Research found. The intermarriage rate is higher among American whites, Hispanics, and Asians than among black Americans, but there were other signs of symbolic and material progress for native blacks in the 2000s and 2010s....

Whether or not people intuit these changes, meaningful progress was occurring right before we began to believe it wasn’t. In the 1970s, almost 60 percent of white Americans agreed with the statement “blacks shouldn’t push themselves where they’re not wanted,” the General Social Survey reported by Kaufmann found. This had declined to 20 percent by the early 2000s before the question was discontinued. According to a study by Swedish economists and a collection of world survey data published in the Washington Post, the United States is now among the least racist countries in the world in terms of who citizens accept as neighbors. For all intents and purposes, basic racial equality has long been achieved in the United States, even while the lofty aim of proportional outcomes between racial groups remains out of reach. If this isn’t progress, nothing is.

...

...if we don’t acknowledge how far we’ve come then we don’t know where we are and we can’t know where we are going. Is it really necessary to wait another 300 years before admitting that things have fundamentally changed in American culture and politics with respect to race? And what could “dismantling white supremacy” possibly mean in a country where the upcoming generation is predominantly “non-white,” or where a non-white racial group—Asian-Americans—vastly outearn white Americans, or where multiple African immigrant groups already eclipse the national average income, or where millions of minorities voted for a Trump-led Republican Party in 2020? Something is amiss when every major institution—from Walmart and Goldman Sachs to CNN and the CDC— supports a movement which holds that racism infects every major institution.

All of which gets to the central contradiction of modern anti-racist activism—its very success disproves its central claims. If white racism continues to dominate American society, it would be difficult to explain why some of the most powerful people on Earth were literally kneeling in homage to George Floyd. Ta-Nehisi Coates insists that the country will never consider the case for reparations because “it simply broke too much of America’s sense of its own identity.” And yet, programs described with that very term are being doled out at this very moment and Affirmative Action policies have existed for over 50 years. It is as if the Great Society and the War on Poverty never happened.

...

If racism were to disappear tomorrow, not only would many activists, politicians, and pundits be out of a job, but many more Americans would lose a deeply felt sense of moral meaning. Committing oneself to an intergenerational struggle against the transhistorical force of white supremacy is one way of achieving a sense of purpose. The term “woke” itself implies an awakening....

...

There is nothing wrong with elevating anti-racism in one’s own life. But there is something wrong with imposing one’s moral reality upon total strangers. What works for us doesn’t necessarily work for other people. The point of representative democracy in a diverse society is to balance conflicting interests without devolving into ethnic tribalism. Moral zealotry—the absolute certainty of one’s own personal sense of good and evil—cannot be reconciled with the complex system of trade-offs involved in societal decision-making. Any moral theory is necessarily black and white. But reality, to paraphrase Albert Murray, is the color of infinity."

========

Joe Biden Asks Americans to Report ‘Radicalized’ Friends and Family to the Government

"During a teleconference with the press, a senior administration official said that they were seeking “to improve public awareness of federal resources to address concerning or threatening behavior before violence occurs.” “This involves creating contexts,” the official continued, “in which those who are family members or friends or co-workers know that there are pathways and avenues to raise concerns and seek help for those who they have perceived to be radicalizing and potentially radicalizing towards violence.”

In addition to seeking tips from American citizens to turn in their friends and loved ones, the official also said that the government would be working with tech companies to increase surveillance on alleged “radicals.”

“Any particular tech company often knows its platform very well. But the government sees things, actually, threats of violence, across platforms,” the official claimed, with no evidence. “They see the relationship between online recruitment, radicalization, and violence in the physical world.” To this end, the official said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would begin implementing “digital literacy” and “digital fitness” programs, enabling the agency to detect “malicious content online that bad actors deliberately try to disseminate.”

The official concluded by noting that “we are investing many agencies of the government and resourcing them appropriately and asking our citizens to participate. Because, ultimately, this is really about homeland security being a responsibility of each citizen of our country to help us achieve.”"

========

Missouri Gov. Signs 2nd Amendment Preservation Act

"...Missouri governor Mike Parson (R) signed legislation establishing the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA). The move, which brings an end to eight years of tireless effort by dedicated grassroots activists, brings the state one step closer toward ending federal acts that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

House Bill 85 (HB85), introduced by Rep. Jered Taylor (R-District 139) and co-sponsored by Sen. Eric Burlison (R-Senate District 20) and Rep. Bishop Davidson (R-District 130), declares that the courts and law enforcement agencies must protect the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. It also prohibits the enforcement of federal gun laws by local law enforcement agencies. Taylor said in February:

“I think anything on the federal level as it relates to the second Amendment is an infringement. If anyone were to pass gun legislation, it should be on the state level… We’re just telling the federal government we’re not going to help you enforce your federal gun laws.”

...

The bill includes a detailed definition of actions that qualify as “infringement,” including but not limited to:

--Taxes and fees on firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition not common to all other goods and services that would have a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership of those items by law-abiding citizens;

--Registration and tracking schemes applied to firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition;

--Any act forbidding the possession, ownership, or use or transfer of a firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition by law-abiding citizens;

--Any act ordering the confiscation of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition from law-abiding citizens.

As pointed out by the Tenth Amendment Center, the federal government depends on state cooperation to execute and enforce most of its laws, regulations, and acts—including gun control. As noted by the National Governors’ Association in 2013 during the partial government shutdown, “states are partners with the federal government on most federal programs.” Because most enforcement actions rely on support from state and local governments, James Madison’s advice in Federalist #46, “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union,” is an efficient way to bring down federal gun control measures. The center explains:

“By simply withdrawing this necessary cooperation, states and localities can nullify many federal actions in effect.”"

========

4 times as many US soldiers and vets died by suicide than in combat since 9/11 War on Terror – study

"A new report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project provides a new insight into what many dubbed an epidemic of suicides among the US military. Based on data from the DoD, the VA and secondary sources, the study found that at least four times as many military lives were lost to suicide than to combat in wars launched since the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Since President George W. Bush launched his global War on Terror in 2001, 7,057 service members have been killed in military operations. Over the same period, an estimated 5,116 active-duty personnel died by suicide. Between 2011 and 2020, 1,193 National Guard service members and 1,607 Reserve component service members also took their own lives. The suicide death toll among veterans of those wars was conservatively estimated at 22,261. The numbers totals 30,177 – more than four times higher than the combat deaths.

The estimated number of suicides is a minimum, the report stressed, as there was no statistical data available for Reserve and National Guard deaths prior to 2011. In addition, the statistics do not necessarily include every suicide, since in some cases attribution may be difficult. Overdose deaths, weapon misfires or single-vehicle crashes may not be conclusively linked to suicidal behavior.

Even so, the recorded suicide rates among both active-duty service members and veterans have surged and significantly surpass those in the general population, which itself has been increasing in the US, the study said.

This goes against historical trends. Active-duty personnel usually have lower suicide rates than the general public and these went even lower during wartime in every US conflict before Vietnam. More recent military suicide deaths continued to climb even after combat deaths sharply decreased after 2007.

The study says there is no single cause of the surge and outlines a number of factors that appear to drive soldiers to take their own lives. Some of those are the usual problems that members of armed conflicts face: exposure to physical and moral trauma, stress and burnout, military culture that requires soldiers to toughen up and hide what is perceived as weakness, and difficulties in adjusting to civilian life.

Other factors are specific to the kind of wars that the US has been waging over the past two decades. The wide use of improvised explosive devices against US troops has caused an increase in traumatic brain injuries and polytrauma. At the same time, advances in medical science and the sheer length of the forever wars allow soldiers to live and fight another day, even when they have to deal with chronic pain and other issues from their previous injuries. About a third of wounded soldiers go for at least one more deployment after recovering."

========

New Zealand’s medical regulator greenlights Covid-19 jabs for 12- to 15-year-olds

"In a statement made on Monday, Ardern revealed that: “After careful consideration of the most up-to-date scientific and medical data available, Medsafe has announced provisional approval for our young people to be given the Pfizer vaccine.”

The PM’s statement will mean that 265,000 minors will be eligible to receive the vaccination by the end of 2021, if approved by the government later this month. However, the Pfizer vaccine is not expected to be offered to this group until October, as the country intends to vaccinate members of its more vulnerable population first.

While Ardern noted that children often experience mild Covid-19 symptoms, she stressed that they can be carriers of the virus and subsequently infect more vulnerable members of both their families and the wider society, concluding that “it’s in all of our interests for this group to get the vaccine.”"

========

Reading, Writing, And Ratting Each Other Out

"Much ink has been spilled over the illiberal education that college students receive these days, and how ivory tower-incubated ideas are now finding their ways into society at large. But less well-known is how some of the more devious – and unconstitutional – policies employed by America’s colleges and universities have begun to migrate down to the K-12 level as well.

One such program is the bias response team, which encourages students and staff to file reports about perceived “bias incidents” through portals on the school’s website – anonymously if individuals so choose. Reports are sent to a school’s “team,” which is often composed of assorted university officials such as campus police, deans of students, Title IX administrators, and diversity employees. A 2017 report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education identified 231 bias response teams operating in higher education institutions across the country, a number which has undoubtedly risen since then.

...

It should surprise nobody that these programs have become weaponized in recent years. Students frequently reported for discussing political and religious topics – which are constitutionally protected on public university campuses, much to the chagrin of these bureaucratic star chambers. Once made aware of these programs’ existence, most rational students simply refrain from discussing potentially controversial topics altogether out of an abundance of caution; as a result, whole lines of discussion and arguments that might be found on a nightly news show quietly and conveniently disappear from college campuses.

But to a growing number of K-12 administrators, that chilling isn’t a bug – it’s a feature. And it’s why they’re spreading.

In California, the Acalanes Union High School District maintains an online portal “for students to report incidents of harm - acts of racism, bias, sexism, microaggressions, etc.”

In Massachusetts, Wellesley Public Schools (WPS) maintains a policy on “Responding to Bias-based Incidents,” which lists “telling rude jokes” and “using a slur or insult toward a student or their family” as examples of bias-based behavior; slides of a mandatory teacher training provide examples of microaggressions in the classroom, such as “mispronouncing the names of students” and “scheduling tests and project due dates on religious or cultural holidays.” Microaggressions in the workplace include saying, “you’re so articulate,” and “my principal is crazy!”

...

Bias response programs have come under significant criticism by federal appellate courts, and with good reason. In an October 2019 decision, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found that students at the University of Michigan faced “an objective chill based on the functions of the Response Team.” In October 2020, a decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the University of Texas’ Campus Climate Response Team “represents the clenched fist in the velvet glove of student speech regulation.”

Students absorb more in school than simply lesson plans; they’re also learning how to interact with individuals who come from different backgrounds and viewpoints. Bias response teams send a clear message not only that certain opinions are wrong but that the correct coping method, when confronted with such a situation, is to “go tell the grownups.”

Creating the expectation that authority figures can – or should – adjudicate all interpersonal disputes isn’t just denying children the opportunity to develop better interpersonal skills. It’s also a slippery slope to big government, which by necessity must expand to fulfill this new role."

========

South Korean Inventor Creates ‘Third Eye’ as a Warning to “Smartphone Zombies”

"Paeng Min-wook’s ‘The Third Eye’ is basically a sophisticated robotic eyeball that users strap to their forehead which warns them if they are about to bump into something.

“Paeng’s invention uses a gyro sensor to measure the oblique angle of the user’s neck and an ultrasonic sensor to calculate the distance between the robotic eye and any obstacles. Both sensors are linked to an open-source single-board microcontroller, with battery pack,” reports Reuters.

When the user gets within 2 meters of another object, an audible beep warns them to take evasive action.

The South Korean made it clear that his invention was a “satirical” sideswipe at the dystopian levels of smartphone obsession now seen amongst young people.

“As we cannot take our eyes off from smartphones, the extra eye will be needed in future,” he said.

“By presenting this satirical solution, I hope people would recognize the severity of their gadget addiction and look back at themselves.”"

========

Vaccine Hesitancy and the Paradox of Choice

"A recent survey revealed that 29 percent of Australians said they were not likely to get a COVID vaccine. Even as a new outbreak had emerged in Melbourne, vaccination hubs were not being utilised anywhere near their capacity. Vaccine hesitancy appears to be the latest COVID related challenge for health authorities in Australia.

...

One of the underlying messages to the public is that, when it comes to getting a COVID vaccine, we have choices. The assumption appears to be that it’s better to give people more choices than less. Instead of having just one generic vaccine available, we have several products for people to choose from. It’s assumed that those who might be hesitant about a particular brand of vaccine will simply choose an alternative.

...

Most of us value the right to choose in many parts of life. Giving people choices about what food they eat, what clothes they wear, or what smartphone they buy, is widely assumed to be beneficial.

But what are the effects of having to make a choice about everything?

The “paradox of choice”—a phenomenon observed by psychologist Barry Schwartz—suggests that giving people more choice can also reduce their wellbeing. Increased choice can lead to hesitancy, where people may postpone or neglect to make a choice, in part because they don’t want to make the wrong choice. Too much choice, in Schwartz’s view, can produce paralysis rather than liberation. When we don’t have all the knowledge or skills required to be able to make an informed decision, choices can be difficult to make. In situations where a choice appears particularly consequential, having to make a choice may be more of a burden than a benefit.

...

The vaccine hesitancy we are seeing may be partly an inevitable outcome of making vaccination seem like a consumer choice, rather than just another essential medical service. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell you what brand of flu vaccine they had received in the past, nor the brand of many other medical treatments they’ve used.

Few of us have the necessary understanding of the science of vaccines and immunology to be in a position to make a thoroughly informed choice about which vaccine we should get. For most medical treatments, including other vaccines, we rely on health authorities with the relevant expertise to administer treatments that are safe and effective. By requiring people to make a choice about which COVID vaccine they should receive, we also create a situation in which people could see themselves as potentially making the wrong choice. The paradox of choice suggests that this will make some people more anxious and hesitant than if they weren’t burdened with the choice in the first place."

Expect this line of thinking to inform future mass experimentation attempts.

========

Unvaccinated Cadets Fear Retaliation at West Point

"Three dozen unvaccinated cadets at the military's West Point academy now fear retaliation after the academy's implementation of stricter quarantines and other restrictions than at the pandemic's height.

The unvaccinated few stand alongside 4,500 students at the academy, the rest of whom have been vaccinated. The new measures included a seven-day quarantine for the unvaccinated cadets before summer training.

"It's like solitary confinement — for a disease we don't have," one cadet said anonymously, according to FOX News, fearing they could be reprimanded.

The seven-day quarantine is stricter than the previous restriction of motion (ROM) put in place because before, cadets coming back from break could still enjoy some activities, including going to the mess hall.

Last week, documents were revealed that indicated unvaccinated cadets were cited with Negative Cadet Observation Reports, or NCORs, for not social distancing or wearing a mask.

...

According to the U.S. Military Academy's Public Affairs Office, the reason for the restrictions is that unvaccinated individuals still posed a risk of spreading the virus.

"Though they train together and are fully integrated in all activities, unvaccinated cadets are currently being housed separately from vaccinated cadets to minimize transmission risk and are provided with equal or better living conditions," one spokesperson said.

"The academy's risk mitigation plan for summer military training was developed under the guidance of medical advisers, experience from last year's academy summer training experiences, and is aligned with the measures used in other military training exercises across the Army."

West Point denied that the school's COVID coordinator, Col. Laura Dawson, coerced cadets into getting the vaccine or face the possibility of leaving the academy."