Today's Must-Reads - 6 July 2024

Exposing the narrative with the latest news, studies, reports and articles!

Naked Emperor: Exposing the Narrative

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• Joe Biden accidentally says he is the 'first Black woman' to serve in White House – audio. Joe Biden accidentally said he is the 'first Black woman' to serve as vice-president 'with a Black president', during an interview with Philadelphia’s WURD radio station. The US president was referring to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, and former president Barack Obama when he made the comments. The slip-up came amid a political fallout following a disappointing debate performance last week that sent Democrats scrambling.

• Keir Starmer: The World’s Most Typical Pol. In 2020, Starmer was a doubtful prospect as the successor to the polarizing socialist Jeremy Corbyn. Against the made-for-TV personality of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Starmer was as charismatic as a tea towel. At the height of the Brexit debate, he was one of the most recognizable Remainers. And amid convulsions of right and left populism, he had somehow managed to preserve his image as both a do-gooder human-rights lawyer and the country’s former chief prosecutor, with a history of going after left-wing protesters. The neoliberals who run Labour’s machinery adopted Starmer as a disposable interim agent to shutter democracy within the party, ensuring that the Corbyn wing would never again accidentally attain power.

• Pentagon hid taxpayer funding for Chinese labs fumes Republican Rand Paul vowing to expose Dr. Fauci and COVID origins 'cover-up'. The Republican requested Sec. Austin turn over files relating to the Pentagon's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) that funded Chinese pathogen research, similar to the research done on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID pandemic.

• Credit Suisse no longer exists as legal entity in Switzerland. Switzerland's largest bank UBS has taken a decisive step forward in the integration of Credit Suisse. The merger of the local legal entities - UBS Switzerland and CS Switzerland - has been completed. Credit Suisse Switzerland has thus also been deleted from the Commercial Register of the Canton of Zurich and no longer exists as a separate legal entity. All rights and obligations of Credit Suisse Switzerland have thus been transferred to UBS Switzerland.

• Mysterious Symbols on 4,000-Year-Old Rock Art Hint at an Unknown Culture. Hidden deep in the highlands of southern Venezuela, archaeologists have uncovered one of humanity's best-kept secrets. At around 20 different sites, carved and painted in caves and on boulders, archaeologists have discovered glyphs, pictograms, and other symbols, left behind thousands of years ago. It's the first rock art of any kind discovered in southern Venezuela, and while there are similarities to rock art in Brazil, it's unclear whose hands left behind the mysterious motifs.

• US to complete withdrawal from Niger's Air Base 101 on Sunday. Niger's ruling junta in April ordered the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, in an embarrassing setback for Washington that followed a coup last year in the West African nation. Before the coup, Niger had been a key partner in the U.S. fight against insurgents in the Sahel region of Africa, who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more. Washington is searching for a Plan B in West Africa but the process is slow and officials caution that U.S. intelligence is dimming on the fast-growing extremist groups in the region.

• U.S. Faces Sea Power Gap in China's Backyard As Carriers Leave Asia. The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its escorts are racing from Asia to the Middle East, leaving a rare carrier gap in the Western Pacific region where it hopes to counter China's expanding military footprint. The Roosevelt recently participated in the Freedom Edge exercise alongside U.S. treaty allies Japan and South Korea, much to the chagrin of Kim Jong Un's North. The East China Sea drills from June 27-29 were its final maneuvers in the region for some time.

• State pension could be means-tested under Labour, admits senior Keir Starmer advisor. Sir Edward Troup, a former executive for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) who has been advising Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, said action has to be taken on pensions. Speaking to LBC, Sir Edward claims that pensioners must "contribute possibly more" than Britons of working age in some circumstances. "My generation, the pensioners' generation, if they've got income, if they've got means, should be contributing at least as much, and possibly more than those people who are working, bringing up families and are really contributing now to that country.'"

• Earth’s core has slowed so much it’s moving backward, scientists confirm. Deep inside Earth is a solid metal ball that rotates independently of our spinning planet, like a top whirling around inside a bigger top, shrouded in mystery. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means. The new findings also confirm that the changes in rotational speed follow a 70-year cycle.

• Viewing AI as Alien Intelligence. Large Language Models with Artificial Intelligence (AI) are neural networks whose hardware is very different from the human brain. They consume giga-Watts of power instead of tens of Watts, they are made of silicon instead of spongy flesh and blood, and their artificial neurons transmit signals at the speed of light. Such signals would have traveled 150 kilometers during the half-millisecond it takes neurotransmitter molecules to travel between synapses in the million-times smaller brain. These material differences suggest that AI systems represent an alien intelligence. Sure, we can do our best to align AI with humans through extensive training and supervision, but in the long run this attempt might look like putting lipstick on a pig.

• Ukraine’s new F-16 fighter jets will be destroyed as soon as they arrive. In a brutal and terrifying three days, Russia has wreaked havoc on the tiny, battered Ukrainian air force – lofting drones to surveil the air force’s front-line airfields and then firing ballistic missiles to destroy hard-to-replace warplanes. As the missile campaign continues and the toll mounts – four or five aircraft were destroyed in 72 hours.

• The Net Zero Cure is Far Worse Than the Disease. The risks of Net Zero mitigation policies are manifest. First and most obvious, they cannot work against climatic changes that are driven by forces other than CO2. Second is the outright cost. In 2020, the National Grid ESO estimated the cost of the energy transition to be around £3 trillion. Expensive energy has led to creeping deindustrialisation as we have seen with the closure of Port Talbot and our last fertiliser plant. With geo-political tensions rising the closure of domestic steel, fertiliser and chemical industries means we are less able to defend ourselves and feed the nation in the event of a crisis.

• Climate Fatigue strikes in Ireland: Most people don’t believe it harms them and have no plans to be vegetarian or give up their cars. Yet another survey shows most people know what to say when asked banal questions of climate dogma — “Yes they are “very worried”. But more than half the population don’t believe climate change is going to harm them and they have “no intention” of giving up meat, or their cars or their pets. And for people who only fly once a year, the idea of flying less was very unappealing. Worse, the under 35s like taking a series of flights each year is so normal now it’s “part of their identity”.

• ‘In denial’: Democrats livid that Biden is digging in. A House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “Denial of the problem is not a solution or a path forward to convincing our constituents that he has the capacity or the vision for four more years.” A defiant Biden held a campaign event in Wisconsin on Friday before recording the interview. He repeatedly said on Friday — at his event, on social media, during the interview and in fundraising emails — that he wasn’t dropping out of the race, and he used the ABC interview to dismiss his devastatingly low polling numbers and growing pleas for him to step aside. Biden’s repeated dismissals and refusal to seriously address concerns about his age and mental acuity struck many Democrats watching the interview closely. A Democratic official who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign said it appears Biden’s team “isn’t being straight with him, and that’s dangerous.”