EU Steams Ahead With Controversial, Centrally-Controlled Digital Euro
The European Union (EU) has been known to waste a lot of money on wrong or even hopeless causes, and opponents of centralized digital money (CBDCs) must be hoping that the digital euro, which has just had €1.3 billion earmarked towards its development, will be one of those.
In fact, in announcing the move EU’s European Central Bank (ECB) made sure to add the disclaimer that it is “not making a commitment to launch any of the development work listed.”
But for the moment, ECB is pushing forward with its plans, and much earlier than observers expected – so much so that the announcement is viewed by some as a surprise. A total of five private sector partners will now receive huge contracts; in the past, Amazon was controversially involved in the e-commerce payments prototype.
How a company that flaunted EU’s own data protection rules and was fined $887 million as recently as in 2021 found its way to becoming an EU “partner” on projects of this importance upset some members of the European Parliament.
And they won’t be pleased to know that although not guaranteed to continue, Amazon might easily be selected this time as well.
According to the ECB statement, the recipients of the money will be tasked not only with prototyping the CBDC, but also with developing a relevant app, offline payment schemes, and, “risk and fraud management.”
This last “initiative” will receive €237 million, while the majority of the funds will go toward creating offline payments – €662 million.
Regardless of how much criticism CBDCs are receiving, particularly in relation to being a power grab, supporters appear convinced that the digital euro would improve the bloc’s financial infrastructure.
And it looks like the EU would like to keep the money “in the Big Money family”: Etonec COO and Digital Euro Association chairman Jonas Gross thinks those most likely to get the contracts are “established CBDC tech providers with offline capabilities,” Big Tech, global financial consultancies, and, “smaller” (but also, “larger”) software firms.
Privacy violations concerns, and general usefulness of CBDC in terms of becoming viable competition to other kinds of digital payments remain recurring arguments offered by opponents.
SpaceX Sues Federal Agency Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Structure
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against a federal agency alleging that it’s out of control in violation of the constitution.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has a panel of judges which hear cases brought against companies over workers’ rights. One such complaint lodged in December against SpaceX is being sent there for adjudication – however SpaceX argues that they’re essentially a rogue agency.The U.S. Constitution requires the president to have “sufficient control” over the judges, and an appeals court concluded in 2022 that administrative law judges (ALJs) in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are unconstitutionally shielded from presidential oversight.
“The same reasoning applies to the ALJs of the NLRB, including the ALJ assigned to preside over the pending NLRB proceedings against SpaceX,” SpaceX said in the Jan. 4 suit.
The company is asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to rule that the current makeup of the NLRB is unconstitutional. –The Epoch Times
“To prevent SpaceX from undergoing protracted administrative proceedings before an unconstitutionally structured agency—after which SpaceX is unlikely to have a chance to secure meaningful retrospective relief—the court should stay or enjoin the current agency proceedings, declare that the NLRB’s structure violates the separation of powers under Article II of the Constitution, and permanently enjoin the NLRB and its general counsel from pursuing unfair labor practice charges against SpaceX before agency officials that are unconstitutionally insulated from presidential oversight, ” reads the filing, which also claims that the NLRB’s five-member board is structured improperly, and is the “very definition of tyranny.”
US District Judge Rolando Olvera, an Obama appointee, was assigned to the case after the NLRB accused SpaceX of violating federal law by firing workers who spoke out against the company’s practices.
In a 2022 open letter to management, workers complained about Musk’s posts on Twitter, calling them “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us,” and complained that it should be made clear that “his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”
According to NLRB officials, SpaceX, in a “wave of wrongful retaliatory terminations,” fired workers who signed the open letter, and others involved in activity protected by the National Labor Relations Act.
More via the Epoch Times;
Deborah Lawrence, one of the workers whom SpaceX fired, told news outlets in a statement through her lawyers that the company has a “toxic culture.”
“We wrote the open letter to leadership not out of malice, but because we cared about the mission and the people around us,” she said.
As of now, a hearing in the matter is scheduled to take place on March 5 in Los Angeles, California, before an administrative law judge.
Campaign Against Musk
The NLRB is one of several government agencies that have brought actions against Mr. Musk after he became a critic of President Joe Biden and the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in August 2023 sued SpaceX, saying the company illegally only hired U.S. citizens and permanent residents. A countersuit in the same federal court in which the new suit was brought said the company was complying with federal law that governs companies involved with sensitive technology.
Judge Olvera ruled in favor of SpaceX and paused the case, finding that the way the DOJ’s administrative law judges act does not adhere to the Constitution.
The proceedings before the judges “are unconstitutional because the attorney general is not allowed to review” their decisions, he said.
The Constitution says presidents must appoint federal “principal officers,” although Congress can authorize the head of departments to appoint “inferior officers.” Those inferior officers, though, must be “directed and supervised” by a principal officer. The judges are not inferior officers because they’re not supervised, according to the ruling.
If the proceedings were not paused, SpaceX “will likely suffer irreparable injury,” Judge Olvera added.
He also addressed how the judges cannot be directly removed by a president. Judges can only be removed by board members, who themselves can be removed by a president. That structure may be unconstitutional but the removal restrictions are severable by the courts, he said.
The appeals court in the SEC case, which is set to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, found that because presidents cannot directly remove the administrative law judges, they are unconstitutionally insulated from the chief executive.
A judge who dissented disagreed, creating a split decision that the nation’s top court will resolve.
Study: Average IQ of College Students Has Fallen Over Decades, Now Matches The General Population
The average IQ of college students and college graduates has fallen so much in recent decades that it now matches the average IQ of the general population, a new study has found.
Meta-analysis: In recent decades, the intelligence quotient of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. https://t.co/5uaLX4JRp7 pic.twitter.com/iBtZbXLTEE
— Rolf Degen (@DegenRolf) January 5, 2024
From Frontiers in Psychology:
Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average
by Bob Uttl (Mount Royal University, Canada), Victoria Violo (University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Canada), Lacey Gibson (Western University, Canada)
Background. According to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points, that is, substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population (M = 100, SD =15). We traced the origin of this belief to obsolete intelligence data collected in 1940s and 1950s when university education was the privilege of a few. Examination of more recent IQ data indicate that IQ of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.
Method. We conducted a meta-analysis of the mean IQ scores of college and university students samples tested with Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale between 1939 and 2022.
Results. The results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year. The students’ IQ also varies substantially across universities and is correlated with the selectivity of universities (measured by average SAT scores of admitted students).
Discussion. These findings have wide-ranging implications. First, universities and professors need to realize that students are no longer extraordinary but merely average, and have to adjust curricula and academic standards. Second, employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees. Third, students need to realize that acceptance into university is no longer an invitation to join an elite group. Fourth, the myth of brilliant undergraduate students in scientific and popular literature needs to be dispelled. Fifth, estimating premorbid IQ based on educational attainment is vastly inaccurate, obsolete, not evidence based, and mere speculations. Sixth, obsolete IQ data or tests ought not to be used to make high-stakes decisions about individuals, for example, by clinical psychologists to opine about intelligence and cognitive abilities of their clients.
This is an astonishingly important study and most of their conclusions are dead-on (with the exception of the part about further dumbing down the curriculum).
This study needs to be on the desk of every CEO in America.
I fail to see any point in college at all if it’s just an extension of high school with no real gains. We need to go back to the time when college was only for the exceptional and high schools had actual standards.
For some time now, the high IQ have actually been crowded out of colleges as a result of alienating woke brainwashing and an extremely dumbed-down curriculum. Many high IQ people are literally not stupid enough to go to college even though in an ideal world they should stand to benefit the most from higher education.
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HEART DAMAGE: COVID Jabs Cause Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, Research Shows
Another heart problem linked to Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccination” has made it into the annals of science.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, the clinical presentation of which resembles that of acute myocarditis, is listed in a new study as having manifested in a 59-year-old woman who developed the disease after receiving a COVID “booster” shot.
For six hours, the patient experienced persistent dyspnea, prompting her to visit an emergency room. The woman told hospital workers she developed consistent chest pain in the two days prior, which she described as a stabbing sensation that got progressively worse with each subsequent episode.
Physical exertion worsened the pain, the woman revealed, and there was no relief method she could come up with to help her feel better. The woman had taken a booster shot from Moderna, one of the two providers of mRNA (modRNA) COVID injections.
Though the woman remained conscious with a blood oxygen saturation of 89 percent and blood pressure of 150/90 mmHg, attending physicians detected crackling and rattling sounds in her lungs, a phenomenon known as crepitations.
The woman tested “negative” for COVID using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, while an emergency electrocardiogram showed ST-segment elevation. A chest X-ray also revealed pulmonary edema, while an ultrasound showed reduced left ventricular systolic function with an estimated ejection fraction of 30 percent.
The attending medical team eventually administered intravenous injections of norepinephrine and dobutamine as treatment. When no other etiologies were identified, the woman was officially diagnosed with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
(Related: Leaked evidence shows the blueprints for a planned release of a deadly COVID bioweapon.)
Skip the jabs and save your heart
On the sixth day, the patient improved somewhat and was discharged, though she continued to experience persistent tachycardia, requiring treatment with metoprolol, a medication prescribed for high blood pressure.
Before ever getting injected, the woman suffered a history of hyperlipidemia, hypothyroidism and celiac disease. She was also a smoker for five years, but had quit in the 15 years prior to getting injected for COVID. She had no history of alcohol consumption or drug abuse.
Though the researchers stated that the physiopathology of COVID jab-induced Takotsubo cardiomyopathy cannot definitively be proven, they did admit that “several theories have been proposed.”
For some individuals, they stated, the immune response triggered by COVID injections may “result in an exaggerated inflammatory cascade, leading to endothelial dysfunction, microvascular dysfunction and myocardial injury.”
“Vaccination may also stimulate the release of pro-inflammatory factors such as interleukin-6,” reported The Epoch Times.
“Additionally, the stress response induced by COVID-19 vaccination could potentially ‘dysregulate the autonomic nervous system, contributing to the development of cardiac dysfunction.’”
Another peer-reviewed study published in the same journal also analyzed the evidence of COVID jab-induced Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. That one involved 15 case reports on 16 patients, 14 of whom received mRNA injections from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
Seven of the 16 patients developed Takotsubo cardiomyopathy after the first dose, and seven more after the second dose. All of the patients exhibited elevated cardiac troponin levels, abnormal electrocardiogram findings and reduced ventricular ejection fraction on echocardiograms.
“The most predominant symptom among patients was chest pain, followed by dyspnea and nausea,” reports explain. “Eventually, 14 patients recovered and were discharged, while two of the patients died.”
The good news is that 87.5 percent of the patients recovered and were discharged, highlighting the “transient and reversible” nature of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The death of the two patients, however, highlights the “potentially life-threatening nature of this vaccine-related adverse event.”
The latter study also mentions other potential side effects from COVID injection, including pain and swelling at the injection site, fever, headache, myalgia (muscle pain), fatigue and nausea.
The latest news about the after-effects of Operation Warp Speed can be found at VaccineInjuryNews.com.
Sources for this article include:
BREAKING: Court Releases 4th Round of New Epstein Documents Friday Afternoon
Documentary filmmaker Jason Bermas joins The Alex Jones Show to break down what was in the 4th round of newly released Epstein documents.
Former Congressman Steve King Begs President Trump to Fight Giant UN Land Grab in America’s Heartland
Former Congressman Steve King joins The Alex Jones Show to call on Trump to fight the UN land grab happening in America’s heartland in the name of climate change.