Month: June 2021

Wikileaks obtained a cable allegedly sent by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the embassies of member nations of the Australia Group, which at the time was planning a plenary meeting in Paris in September 2009.

The existence of this document was reported on Wednesday by Human Events’ editor Jack Posobiec.

On its website, The Australia Group describes itself as “an informal forum of countries which, through the harmonisation of export controls, seeks to ensure that exports do not contribute to the development of chemical or biological weapons.” Its 43 member nations include Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Argentina, to list a few. Neither China nor Russia are members of this group.

The cable, which can be viewed on Wikileaks, stated, “We believe it is important to focus on emerging chemical and biological technologies, trends in the trade of [chemical and biological weapons]-related goods and threats.”

Within the cable, Clinton reportedly issued unique sets of talking points to specific nation members. Posobiec reported that in her comments to France, she conveyed a not-so-subtle warning that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, then undergoing construction of its physical facilities, could eventually pose a “biological weapons proliferation concern.”

According to Wikileaks, the talking points to France read, “The U.S. believes participants would benefit from hearing about your experiences assisting China in setting up a Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the export control and intangible technology transfer perspectives.”

“We are particularly interested to know how China plans to vet incoming foreign researchers from countries of biological weapons proliferation concern.”

The talking points to Australia also started with the State Department’s reported expression of concern over China’s biological weapons program.

According to Wikileaks, the document read, “The U.S. believes AG members would be interested in any information you can share related to China and North Korea, specifically information related to: China’s Institutes of Biological Products, to include overhead imagery analysis, if possible; Your perceptions of the CBW proliferation activities by Chinese entities; Your perceptions of Chinese government efforts to enforce its export control rules.”

A quick read of the cable shows that Clinton was allegedly worried way back in 2009, long before the Wuhan Lab was even operational, about the potential for weaponized virus research at the facility.

She may have been wrong in believing that visiting foreign researchers posed a greater threat than the Chinese government and military, but according to this document, she was well aware of the opportunity for foul play that a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory could provide.

Why then would she remain silent when an outbreak of a contagious and mysterious SARS-like virus appeared in the same place this lab is located? It no doubt set off alarm bells in her head, if this cable is to be believed. As COVID-19 transitioned into a global pandemic, she kept mum on the possibility, heck, the probability, that this virus may have come from the lab.

Her hatred of former President Donald Trump is so deep and so obsessive, that rather than help her fellow Americans by stepping up and pointing out the connection, it looks as though she chose to use the pandemic as a club with which to bludgeon him.

And she hasn’t stopped. Here’s a more recent tweet from Clinton blaming Trump for the “recent rise in anti-Asian bigotry.”

Certainly, Clinton wasn’t the only government official who declined to make this connection. There are likely hundreds of people who refused to come forward, both in the U.S. and abroad.

I’m not claiming that she is part of a conspiracy or cover-up — only that it looks like she knew very well, and once worried about, the potential for danger posed by a little lab in Wuhan.

There is a certain level of greatness ascribed to canned tuna — it is high in protein, inexpensive, widely accessible and one of the nation’s most popular pantry perishables.

Tuna can be found canned in grocery stores, bought fresh at local fish markets or prepared at any Subway sandwich restaurant. Could tuna’s hot streak ever end?

Perhaps.

A class-action lawsuit against Subway is contending that the chain’s tuna sandwiches are “completely bereft of tuna as an ingredient,” according to The New York Times. (The suit was reported on during the winter by The Washington Post.)

Subway’s tuna is “anything but tuna,” posits Karen Dhanowa and Nilima Amin, the plaintiffs in the California-based lawsuit, according to The Times.

Subway unequivocally denies the claim, for it would be imprudent to remain ignorant on the matter.

“There simply is no truth to the allegations in the complaint that was filed in California,” a Subway spokesperson wrote in an email to The Times.

“Subway delivers 100 percent cooked tuna to its restaurants, which is mixed with mayonnaise and used in freshly made sandwiches, wraps and salads that are served to and enjoyed by our guests.”

It is the classic case of one person’s word against another.

But the plaintiffs have refused to indicate the specifics of their qualms with Subway’s fish. At the moment, they simply contend  the chain is deceiving its customers by selling “falsely advertised” tuna sandwiches.

According to The Times, a Subway spokesperson continued to recapitulate that, “The taste and quality of our tuna make it one of Subway’s most popular products, and these baseless accusations threaten to damage our franchises.

“Subway’s tuna sandwich ranks among our guests’ favorite sandwiches.”

But as the litigation drags on, a Times reporter investigated the case further. The reporter recently bought 60 inches of Subway tuna sandwiches from three locations in the Los Angeles area, then removed and froze the tuna meat and shipped it to a commercial food testing lab across the country to discover whether Subway’s tuna meat was, in fact, tuna.

Once the product arrived at the lab, a PCR test — a process by which billions of copies of a specific DNA sample are produced — would identify whether Subway’s tuna included one of the two species of tuna Subway says it uses in its sandwiches.

The lab took more than a month to respond.

“No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA,” the testing lab said in an email to The New York Times. “Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”

However, the lab spokesman did not stop there.

“There’s two conclusions,” the email read. “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.”

Subway declined to comment on the results from the lab, according to The Times.

Before final judgment can be made, however, there are a few important things to note.

For one, after tuna meat is processed and cooked, the fish’s DNA is essentially destroyed, making it almost impossible to determine results from a lab test.

It also wold be uneconomical for Subway to intentionally deceive customers. Tuna already is an affordable protein, so why mislabel its contents?

Dave Rudie, president of Catalina Offshore Products in San Diego, told The Times it might be unnecessary to blame Subway.

“I don’t think a sandwich place would intentionally mislabel,” he said. “They’re buying a can of tuna that says ‘tuna.’ If there’s any fraud in this case, it happened at the cannery.”

An earlier investigation conducted by Inside Edition found that three Subway locations in Queens, New York, used tuna in their sandwiches, according to lab testing.

Thus, it’s possible the sandwich shop could win the California class-action lawsuit.

In addition, the plaintiffs have softened their original stance, according to The Times. In a new filing from last month, the plaintiffs’ complaints focused not on whether Subway’s tuna was tuna, but whether it was “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna.”

The next time you venture to Subway for a fresh sandwich, however, you might want to think twice about ordering tuna.

According to this fallacy, Henry Ford raised wages so as to increase productivity

The “newspaper of record” trots out this economic fallacy: “Perhaps the most famous illustration of the benefits [of higher wages stoking the sputtering engine of economic growth] is the story of Henry Ford’s decision in 1914 to pay $5 a day to workers on his Model T assembly lines. He did it to increase production — he was paying a premium to maintain a reliable work force. The unexpected benefit was that Ford’s factory workers became Ford customers, too.”

Who says so? What is the evidence that he did this so as to increase productivity? His own claim? Why believe him?

Were his workers starving and feeble before this great generosity of his? Of course not. And, even if this were true, it by no means follows that this is the royal road to profits.

From an economic point of view, even if this were the result, it would have been in spite of this “decision” of his, not due to it.

The best estimate of productivity, indeed the only one, is actual wages paid.

Of course, there are always errors in any market comprised of flesh and blood human beings. But the incessant hunt for profits and to avoid losses ensures that there is a continually operating tendency for productivity and wages not to diverge too greatly.

In any case, if this Ford fable were true, as per The New York Times, it would undercut its support for minimum wage laws and organized labor. These would not be needed if we could rely on employers voluntarily paying increased wages so as to boost productivity.

As for enough to buy back the product, the people who sell burgers at fast-food restaurants can already easily afford to consume them as well.

But what about the producers of airplanes, yachts and office towers? There is no way that the average individual employee can be able to purchase these pricey items.

Is this then yet another “market failure”? Hardly. The failure, rather, is one of logic. There is simply no earthly reason why those who work on a product should be able to purchase it, too.

Further, this fallacy is often used to buttress the minimum wage law. But even supposing that this is precisely why Ford practically doubled the wage he offered, that was a voluntary act on his part.

The minimum wage law, in sharp contrast, is a compulsory mandate, compelling all and sundry to go along with this enactment or suffer fine and even a jail sentence.

Just because one man doubled the remuneration he offered his staff with no negative aftereffects does not at all demonstrate that if this sort of thing becomes a legal requirement, no ill effects will ensue.

Rather, if the minimum wage level is approximately doubled from its present $7.25 to $15.00 per hour, all those with productivities below the latter level will soon enough be added to our unemployment rolls.

And what about the present enactment requiring that $7.25 be paid? This spells the death knell for the employment prospects of all those who cannot add that much, on an hourly basis, to the bottom line.

Get rid of this pernicious law, and the highly unskilled will also be able to earn an honest dollar.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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Walter E. Block is the Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at the College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute.

Walter E. Block is the Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at the College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute.

He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross and the University of Central Arkansas.

He is the author of more than 600 refereed articles in professional journals, two dozen books and thousands of Op-Eds for publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows.

He was the the 2011 Schlarbaum Laureate at the Mises Institute and has won the Loyola University Research Award (2005, 2008), the Mises Institute’s Rothbard Medal of Freedom in 2005 and the Dux Academicus Award, Loyola University, 2007.

Prof. Block counts among his friends Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. He was converted to libertarianism by Ayn Rand. Block is old enough to have played chess with Friedrich Hayek and once met Ludwig von Mises, and shaken his hand. He has never washed that hand since.

Something was wrong. But it was different this time than any previous illness. I was so weak that I could not even stand up during my shower. What had happened to me? Even in the midst of a worldwide COVID pandemic, I knew I needed an urgent examination by a health care professional.

At the emergency room, they discovered my blood oxygen level was only 73 percent. It was so low that the nurse could not believe I had enough energy to walk into their facility. My COVID test was positive along with a diagnosis of both bacterial and viral pneumonia. I was admitted to the hospital.

The next afternoon the doctors needed to increase my supplemental oxygen flow from 4 liters to 60 liters per minute. What I did not fully realize is that I was only one step away from intubation, which has a low survival rate.

This was serious. I looked at my feet and hands. They were ashen gray with no sign of pink. I then fully realized that I was dying. This frightened me, so I began to pray fervently about my situation.

That evening I remembered words spoken at a meeting the previous week about how we are engaged in spiritual warfare. As president of EEM, a Bible distribution organization in Eastern Europe, I then fully realized that I was under personal attack and needed to fight back.

I immediately picked up my cellphone and called friends, telling them to spread the word that I urgently needed prayers.

I don’t know how coherent I was. I could barely speak, and the background noise in the room was loud. But I knew that a prayer vigil around the world was being organized on my behalf for the reversal of my deteriorating health. Then I asked God to send angels to my bedside to protect me and help me in my time of greatest medical need.

As I lay in bed face-down, praying to God to help me understand my critical medical condition, I offered my request that I did not want to die and for Satan to win. I love my family, my co-workers and the eternal impact of my work.

I had made jokes that my wife was an “EEM widow” since I worked so much for the ministry and had a tendency to ignore certain issues around the house. And now the “widow” possibility could become reality.

This was not only a time of prayer but also a time of introspection and reflection as well as an opportunity to talk to God about my life and work. I rejoiced over EEM’s record-breaking results in 2020. In spite of a worldwide pandemic with logistic problems and other issues, our European distribution numbers were up. It is amazing that EEM distributed over 1.35 million Bibles, New Testaments, teen Bibles, children’s Bibles and other literature free of charge amid the chaos of 2020. And this growth continued into 2021.

I continued to pray off and on during the night until I finished by delegating my life-or-death status to God. Only in his wisdom could he understand how all these various actions were related. I asked God, “Let your will be done, not mine.” I then added, “Please tell me your decision soon.”

Immediately I heard a nurse say, “Mr. Burckle, Mr. Burckle, wake up. How do you feel?” It was 3:30 a.m., so I mumbled, “I am OK.” She continued, “There has been a dramatic drop in the amount of oxygen you needed in the last six hours. We have never seen anything like this. The doctors are baffled and have no idea as to its cause. You need to have a CT scan now. The doctors want to check for blood clots.”

I was relieved to hear that news because I knew it was not blood clots. It had been about six hours since my prayer vigil had begun. This meant that God answered my prayer and I would live. I cried tears of joy, relief and thanks. Later I was told that the amount of oxygen that I required had dropped 50 percent from 60 liters per minute to 30 in just six hours. I told the nurse that I knew the change was from answered prayers on my behalf from people all over the world and that I would recover.

It was a potentially dangerous trip to the CT test location since I needed to be away from the high-flow oxygen for over 30 minutes and I would be disconnected from all monitoring equipment. The CT test was negative for blood clots, and my oxygen did not drop during transit or the procedure.

I asked God to do his part in helping me with my recovery and I would do mine. Gradually, I required less and less oxygen as my lung function improved. I was released on a Sunday from the hospital with no supplemental oxygen required.

This health emergency was sudden and a surprise to me. I have always been healthy. Yet these nine days in the hospital had given me time to think about priorities in life and future opportunities for more Bibles and biblical literature distribution to those seeking to know God.

I am humbled by the fact that I have been chosen to be in a leadership position of such a pure ministry. I am sure that none of us will ever know how what we do today will have an eternal impact on lives of the many people that we touch.

Thanks be to God for answered prayers!

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled against Facebook as the social media giant tries to use a controversial federal law to dodge liability for its platform being used by human traffickers to recruit victims.

The ruling allows three survivors of human trafficking who want to sue Facebook to move forward with their cases, according to Forbes.

Facebook had argued it was not responsible for what its users say under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.

Section 230 has become a controversial piece of law, with critics saying it gives social media companies too much power.

Forbes reported that in 2018, Congress carved out exceptions to Section 230 so that lawsuits could be brought against companies that violate human trafficking laws.

In his opinion, Justice Jimmy Blacklock noted those limits.

“We do not understand section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking,” he wrote.

“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing. … Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”

“Section 230, as amended, does not withdraw from the states the authority to protect their citizens from internet companies whose own actions — as opposed to those of their users — amount to knowing or intentional participation in human trafficking,” the ruling said.

The case involved three women who, according to the ruling, “allege they were victims of sex trafficking who became entangled with their abusers through Facebook.”

One was 15 years old when she was befriended by a Facebook user who told her he would help her pursue a modeling career.

“Shortly after meeting him, Plaintiff was photographed and her pictures posted to the website Backpage (which has since been shut down due to its role in human trafficking), advertising her for prostitution. As a result, Plaintiff was ‘raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,’” the ruling said.

Another of the women was 14 when she was recruited by human traffickers through Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

“Her traffickers used Instagram to advertise Plaintiff as a prostitute. … As a result, Plaintiff was raped numerous times. Following Plaintiff’s rescue from the trafficking scheme, traffickers continued to use her profile to attempt to entrap other minors in the same manner.

“Plaintiff’s mother reported these activities to Facebook, which never responded,” the ruling continued.

The third woman was 14 when she began corresponding with a man on Instagram who “convinced Plaintiff to sneak away from her home and meet him.”

“Upon meeting her, he took her to a motel, photographed her, and posted the pictures to Backpage. Plaintiff was then raped repeatedly by men who responded to her traffickers’ posting on the site,” the ruling said.

The women’s petitions state that Facebook “knowingly aided, facilitated and assisted sex traffickers” and “‘knowingly benefitted’ from rendering such assistance,” according to the ruling.

The decision could have an impact beyond these three cases.

“This puts pressure on the tech [companies] to reform,” attorney Carrie Goldberg said, according to Forbes.

Facebook could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that would only invite further scrutiny of the legal shield provided by Section 230, said Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval Academy.

“If you open it up, they could narrow the whole scope of Section 230,” he said.

Facebook is reviewing the ruling and “considering potential next steps,” a spokesman said.