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Impossible Universe: The Reality of Cosmic Fine Tuning

Woke Coke, like Nike, Might Rightly Suffer for Political Bullying

Far too many corporate giants have engaged in ill-informed pandering to left-wing political causes, all while their own stables need major house-cleaning. They may suffer as they learn that political turnabout is fair play. And that’s a good thing.

A nearly 100-year-old group called Consumers’ Research, dedicated to “consumer knowledge and freedom,” today released a large “name and shame” campaign against companies that spend too much time “putting woke politics over consumer interests.” CR has made a seven-figure ad buy against Coca-Cola, Nike, and American Airlines on national cable outlets and in local markets where the companies are headquartered. This is just “the first phase” of what will be an “ongoing campaign” called the Consumers First Initiative.

A quick perusal of the ads (via the link immediately above) shows this group means business (pun originally unintended). Against Nike, for example, the ads say the company’s frequent forays into left-wing politics are “cover” for its own allegedly nefarious activities.

“Congressional reports suspect Nike used forced labor in China,” says one ad. “Religious minorities were ripped from their families, sterilized, sold to factories. Nike made shoes in those same areas. Congress tried to ban Nike’s labor practices. Nike fought back with highly paid lobbyists. Rather than hiring Americans, Nike chose China.” And so on.

Likewise, CR hit Coke for allegedly participating in “forced labor” in China and also for trying to “distract” from plummeting sales and from being exposed for “funding phony science” to hide how its products are contributing to an American obesity epidemic. The group hit American Airlines for poor customer service, losing luggage, and for taking “billions in taxpayer bailouts” while cutting 19,000 jobs at the same time it pays its CEO a $10 million salary.

This is tough stuff, and all of it merited. A number of big corporations are astonishingly hypocritical, falsely accusing American jurisdictions of violating civil rights while themselves contributing to far, far worse violations of much more basic human rights in other countries. For companies such as Nike, “rights” appear to end wherever their profits begin.

Judge Calls for Forensic Audit of Fulton County Ballots After Large Discrepancies Found in Ballot Batches

Henry County, Georgia Chief Judge Brian J. Amero ordered Fulton County ballots unsealed in a hearing on Friday.

The judge ordered the parties to appear at the ballot storage location at 10 AM on May 28th. The November 2020 ballots will be scanned at 600 dpi or higher.

CD Media is reporting on today’s hearing.

In an ongoing hearing, Henry County, GA judge, the Honorable Brian J. Amero may give access to the plaintiffs (VoterGA.org, Garland Favorito, and another plaintiff) to the physical mail-in ballots in Fulton County, which could show massive election fraud in GA during the 2020 presidential election cycle, and the follow-on runoff that decided control of the U.S. Senate for the Democrat Party, leading to full control of the American government.

In the hearing, lawyers for VoterGA.org described large discrepancies (21%) between the number of ballot batches reported by the GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who certified the election, and the number of ballot batches actually provided by court-ordered access in the previous April hearing in the case.

GA SoS Raffensperger Amicus Brief Denying Election Fraud Doesn’t Hold Water, Is Riddled With Deceit

VoterGA.org has been examining the ballot images at a low resolution since the hearing in April, and declared they need the actual physical ballots to understand the number of counterfeit ballots certified.

Judge Rules Against Christian College Suing Biden Administration Over Trans Mandate

Judge: Biden’s co-ed dorm mandate trumps religious freedom.

A district judge rejected a challenge to the Biden administration’s order to force co-ed bathrooms and dorms on a Christian college over the school’s religious objections.

In February, the Department of Housing and Urban Development directed collegesto eliminate single-sex facilities. The directive came after President Joe Biden issued an executive order in January directing federal agencies “to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” which would mean targeting religious institutions that maintain single-sex accommodations. The College of the Ozarks, a small Missouri Christian college, challenged the Biden administration for violating its religious rights in April.

On Wednesday, Western District of Missouri judge Roseann Ketchmark declined to temporarily halt the policy’s implementation in the face of the school’s religious objections. Alliance Defending Freedom, the religious liberty law firm arguing the case on behalf of the school, expressed dismay at the ruling and said the decision is likely to be appealed.

“Following the whims of special interest groups, lobbyists, and politicians, the administration is attempting to redefine the word ‘sex’ in federal law to mean sexual orientation and gender identity, rather than biological sex as that word has always been understood,” ADF senior counsel Ryan Bangert said. “As this case demonstrates, the administration’s twisting of words is threatening foundational liberties.”

Nobel Prize winner: Mass COVID vaccination an ‘unacceptable mistake’ that is spreading ‘variants’

In every country, ‘the curve of vaccination is followed by the curve of deaths,’ the famous virologist said.

French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier called mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic “unthinkable” and a historical blunder that is “creating the variants” and leading to deaths from the disease.

“It’s an enormous mistake, isn’t it? A scientific error as well as a medical error. It is an unacceptable mistake,” Montagnier said in an interview translated and published by the RAIR Foundation USA yesterday. “The history books will show that, because it is the vaccination that is creating the variants.”

Many epidemiologists know it and are “silent” about the problem known as “antibody-dependent enhancement,” Montagnier said.

“It is the antibodies produced by the virus that enable an infection to become stronger,” he said in an interview with Pierre Barnérias of Hold-Up Media earlier this month. 

Vaccination leading to variants

While variants of viruses can occur naturally, Montagnier said that vaccination is driving the process. “What does the virus do? Does it die or find another solution?” 

“It is clear that the new variants are created by antibody-mediated selection due to the vaccination.”

Vaccinating during a pandemic is “unthinkable” and is causing deaths, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovery.

Cryptos Crash After China Again Vows Crackdown On Mining And Trading

Another day, another attempt by China – where the reception of the digital yuan has been a total disaster so far much to Beijing’s complete humiliation – to crash Crypto, with Reuters and Bloomberg reporting moments ago that just two days after the PBOC barred financial institutions from accepting bitcoin as payment, China’s vice premier Liu He said (at 11pm on Friday local time) that China will crack down on bitcoin mining and trading activities, which of course is what we already knew.

From Reuters:

  • CHINA’S VICE PREMIER LIU HE SAYS TO CRACK DOWN ON BITCOIN MINING AND TRADING ACTIVITIES

And From Bloomberg

  • CHINA REITERATES CALL FOR CRACKDOWN ON BITCOIN MINING, TRADING

So China will reiterate, i.e., repeat what it has said, the same news every day until bitcoin hits 0? Or at least it hopes to, and somehow this is supposed to inspire confidence in the digital Yuan? And yes, this is as some have jokingly pointed out, the 1000th time China has tried to ban bitcoin:

What is even funnier is that a month ago Peter Thiel grabbed headlines with his laughable conclusion that bitcoin was helping China to end the reserve status of the dollar and was a “Chinese financial weapon”. How about now, Peter, is China’s crushing bitcoin to boost the dollar? Inquiring minds want to know.

Incidentally, a cynical take of this report is that it is great news as it means no more dirty coal bitcoin mining in Xinjiang. How will the ESG cult bash bitcoin if there are no more coal-fired plants generating the electricity for Chinese miners?

As a reminder, China is the bitcoin bears biggest friend: as long as bitcoin can be mined in China it is “dirty.” Once China bans bitcoin mining there, the anti-ESG case collapses as miners end up moving to cleaner and more ESG-friendly venues.

Biden Keeps Spending Money No One Has.

On Day 109, a ransomware attack on a major U.S. fuel pipeline turns up the heat on Biden’s ability to not just spend on infrastructure, but keep it secure.

Ransomware Attack Cripples Major U.S. Pipeline.

A ransomware attack allegedly executed by hacker group DarkSide crippled the computer systems at Colonial Pipeline, the company that supplies 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel, and shut down a vital, 5,500-mile U.S. pipeline over the weekend.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on CBS Sunday that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the attack and that the Biden government was working “all hands on deck” to restore pipeline operations. The U.S. Department of Transportation issued an emergency declaration to create flexibility for transporting fuel and mitigate disruptions to supply. 

“Colonial Pipeline is the country’s largest refined products pipeline operator, transporting more than 100 million gallons of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and home heating oil, daily,” Business Insider reported. “A prolonged shutdown could roil fuel markets, disrupt supply to the East Coast and cause the price of gasoline to jump just as coronavirus pandemic restrictions lift and Americans begin summer travel.”

The attack draws attention again to the fact that Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan doesn’t include a strategy for securing critical infrastructure investments against cyberattacks or espionage—and experts admit that current federal guidelines are not clear or robust enough to condition infrastructure funding on security. On April 20, the White House separately announced a 100-day effort to bolster U.S. cybersecurity in various infrastructure sectors, beginning with the electric grid.

California County’s Order Requires Businesses to Track COVID-19 Vaccination Status of All Employees

Health authorities in Santa Clara County, California, said that businesses are now required to determine the vaccination status of employees.

An announcement posted on the county’s website this week stipulated: “All businesses and government entities must ascertain the vaccination status of personnel and must comply with the rules for personnel who are not fully vaccinated, as required under” a recent county order.

The health order allows an employee to decline to hand over their COVID-19 vaccination status to their employer. If the employee declines to provide the information, the business “should assume the employee may be unvaccinated and follow State and local requirements for unvaccinated employees.”

The order raises obvious privacy questions.

A Bay Area-based lawyer, Sandy Rappaport of Hanson Bridgett, told the Mercury News that employers have to generally keep vaccination statuses of employees confidential, noting that the new order “seems to mandate that employers disclose employees’ vaccination status” because unvaccinated employees would have to wear masks at work.

“This order does go farther than what most employers have been doing, in that it requires employers to collect the information by either reviewing an employee’s vaccination card or having an employee complete a self-certification form, and the employer has to maintain records of what has been reviewed,” Rappaport told the paper, saying that if an employee refuses, their bosses have to—under the order—keep asking them their status every two weeks.

Greene invokes the Holocaust over Pelosi keeping congressional mask mandate

Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene invoked the Holocaust during a discussion Thursday about the mask mandate on Capitol Hill.

Greene, 46, made the comparison when she was asked about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to lift the mandate. Pelosi and some House Republicans have fought about the mandate since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on May 13 that those who are fully vaccinated could shed their masks, indoors and outdoors.

“This woman is mentally ill,” Greene said of Pelosi on Real America’s Voice.

“You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens,” she added. “So much so, they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

Trump Reportedly Hit With $22 Mln Lawsuit for Calling COVID ‘China Virus’ and ‘Kung Flu’

Ex-US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he uses the term because the coronavirus “comes from China”, something that Beijing rejects. 

A Chinese American civil rights group has reportedly launched a lawsuit against Donald Trump over the former POTUS’ use of terms such as “China virus” to describe COVID-19.

The celebrity gossip website TMZ reported that the Chinese American Civil Rights Coalition (CACRC) is suing Trump for about $22.9 million as the group claims the 45th US president using derogatory terms added to the recent rise in violence against Chinese and other Asian Americans.

A recent study revealed that there had been an almost 150 percent spike in reports of anti-Asian hate crimes last year after the first reported outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan, China in late 2019.