PICKING UP THE PIECES
The ‘apocalyptic’ Colorado wildfire By Allan Stein
JANUARY 21–27, 2022 | $6.95
NO. 3
Editor’s Note
‘Apocalyptic’ Aftermath more than 1,000 homes were destroyed in Colorado late last month as a massive wildfire, driven by hurricane-force winds, hit the state. The fire destroyed nearly everything in its 6,000-acre path of destruction. Now, a community is picking up the pieces. First, there’s the task of sifting through the ashes and debris to recover anything of personal value. Next is the challenge of rebuilding homes and picking up lives. Insight reporter Allen Stein traveled to Louisville, Colorado, to speak with those whose lives have been changed by the Marshall fire. Residents describe the aftermath of the fire as “apocalyptic.” They describe the melted cars and the burned down homes. But in the midst of the ashes is also hope. Local residents are helping each other, and nearly 40 organizations are pooling resources at a disaster relief center to assist those affected. Dozens of volunteers are helping stricken homeowners to connect with financial assistance and counseling, and to acquire other vital resources and guidance to survive. “The outpouring of support is really overwhelming,” Louisville Assistant City Manager Emily Hogan told Insight. Jasper Fakkert Editor-in-chief
2 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
STEPHEN GREGORY PUBLISHER JASPER FAKKERT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CHANNALY PHILIPP LIFE & TRADITION, TRAVEL EDITOR PICKING UP THE PIECES
The ‘apocalyptic’ Colorado wildfire
CHRISY TRUDEAU MIND & BODY EDITOR
By Allan Stein
CRYSTAL SHI HOME, FOOD EDITOR SHARON KILARSKI ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR MONTH X–YY, 2022 | $6.95
NO. X
ON THE COVER A family walks through what remains of their grandfather’s house, in a neighborhood decimated by the Marshall fire, in Louisville, Colo., on Jan. 2. MICHAEL CIAGLO/GETTY IMAGES
BILL LINDSEY LUXURY EDITOR FEI MENG, BIBA KAJEVICH & JUNHAO SU ILLUSTRATORS SHANSHAN HU PRODUCTION CONTACT US THE EPOCH TIMES ASSOCIATION INC. 229 W.28TH ST., FL.7 NEW YORK, NY 10001 ADVERTISING ADVERTISENOW@EPOCHTIMES.COM SUBSCRIPTIONS, GENERAL INQUIRIES, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR HELP.THEEPOCHTIMES.COM (USPS21-800)IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE EPOCH MEDIA GROUP, 9550 FLAIR DR. SUITE 411, EL MONTE, CA 91731-2922. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT EL MONTE, CA, AND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE EPOCH TIMES, 229 W. 28TH STREET, FLOOR 5, NEW YORK, NY 10001.
vol. 2 | no. 3 | january 21–27, 2022
26 | Open Border
50 | Daily Regimen
An Arizona border rancher deals with a huge spike in illegal immigration.
A routine offers benefits but makes room for the unexpected.
51 | Teaching
28 | Pandemic
Coverup China’s true COVID-19 death toll is far higher than the official figure.
Freedom A professor finds a way to teach America’s founding principles to Muslim students in war-torn Kosovo.
34 | Beyond Meat
52 | Beginnings
Share prices show that plant-based meat alternatives aren't tasty to Wall Street.
44 | Vaccine Mandates The Supreme Court’s left-leaning justices prefer bureaucracy to democracy.
45 | Economic
Influence Beijing uses aircraft purchases to split the United States from Europe.
46 | US Taxes
Tax hikes can discourage innovation.
47 | Inflation
Headwinds persist for global supply chains.
48 | US Economy
Examining the most alarming data point in the U.S. jobs recovery.
49 | Chinese Economy
Economic challenges are piling up for Beijing.
Ben Carson speaks about the impact of education on his life.
Features
12 | Artificial Intelligence China used an AI virtual replica of a news anchor for 70 days without anyone noticing. 16 | Wildfire Aftermath A Colorado community is reeling after a fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes. 30 | Patent Piracy America’s patent system allows big companies to quash patents and take inventions. 38 | Ashli Babbitt Looking at the contradictions of the man who filmed the fatal shooting at the U.S. Capitol.
56 | Tortoise Hill
Perfect seclusion awaits on this 1,500acre game preserve.
58 | Fiji Dream
This is the South Pacific everyone dreams of.
60 | Tennis & S’mores Why just send the kids to camp? Send yourself to tennis camp.
63 | Porto’s Bakery
The Cuban bakery empire was built on a family's American Dream.
66 | Golf Gear Starbucks Corp. has ended its COVID-19 vaccine mandate following a Supreme Court ruling that the Biden administration’s attempt to force workers to get a vaccine or get tested weekly was an overstep of its authority. SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
Here’s a trove of cool, new practice gear for golf fanatics.
67 | On the Job
Workplace manners are essential, even if you work remotely.
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 3
SPOTLIGHT EPIPHANY DIP
AS PART OF THE TRADITIONAL EPIPHANY celebration, Kosovo Serbs participate in a swimming competition in the cold waters of Gazivoda Lake, an artificial lake in Kosovo, on Jan. 19. According to popular belief, the first swimmer to return a cross thrown by an Eastern Orthodox priest will enjoy good luck and health throughout the new year. PHOTO BY ARMEND NIMANI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
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NAT ION • WOR L D • W H AT H A P P E N E D T H I S W E E K
The Week
No. 03
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L) leaves Downing Street in London on Jan. 19. PHOTO BY TOLGA AKMEN/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
England Ends All COVID Passports, Mask Mandates, Work Restrictions People will no longer be required to wear masks anywhere or work remotely
✒
RESTRICTIONS INCLUDING COVID-19 passes, mask mandates, and work-from-home guidance will be removed in England, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced. Johnson also suggested that self-isolation rules may be thrown out at the end of March as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic becomes endemic. Effective immediately, the UK government is no longer asking people to work from home. The COVID pass mandate for nightclubs and large events won’t be renewed when it expires on Jan. 26. And from Jan. 26, indoor mask-wearing will no longer be compulsory anywhere in England. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 7
The Week in Short US
,S N O I T C E J N I H T I W E B O T G N I O S E R HT
93.7
P U S I HT P E K W F I“
million
R F AE T N I V E N O
” R. E H T O N A Dr. Peter McCullough, COVID-19 research expert, on the dangers of mass vaccination.
“Get prepared, because we granted parents the option to decide whether they want their child to wear a mask or not.” — Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), in a letter to DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow, calling for the company to keep television network OAN in its lineup. 8 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
$85
billion
The Department of Defense has missed a deadline to produce a report on the estimated $85 billion in U.S. weaponry left in Afghanistan, prompting a letter from 27 House Republicans demanding answers.
45% of Democrat voters
would back measures requiring that the unvaccinated live temporarily in “designated facilities or locations” for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a poll from the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports.
50% of Target American biofuel firms and refiners will reach less than 50 percent of their renewable diesel production targets for 2025, according to a study from consultancy Cerulogy.
40% of Deaths
Deaths of 18- to 49-year-olds in the United States rose more than 40 percent in 2021 compared to the year before, according to CDC data. The majority of those deaths weren’t associated with COVID-19.
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“It is important to have a range of media outlets in today’s political atmosphere.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest short-term energy outlook reveals that coal inventories in the electric power sector reached 93.7 million short tons as of December 2021—an increase since September 2021, when stockpiles hit a historic low not seen since the Carter administration.
The Week in Short US ELECTION
Manchin: The Law Already Protects Voting Rights WHILE SPEAK ING TO
Traffic backs up on a freeway in Houston on Sept. 5, 2017. RECOVERY
Texas, Arizona Have Recovered All Jobs T E X A S A N D A R I Z O N A H AV E recovered all jobs lost during the pandemic,
joining the ranks of Idaho and Utah, thanks to an influx of coastal urbanites and businesses into the states in recent years. The latest statewide data from Texas, dating to November 2021, indicates that the Lone Star State has added 28,000 more jobs than it counted in February 2020, while Arizona, Idaho, and Utah added 5,000, 14,500, and 61,000 new jobs, respectively.
NEW YORK
New York Sued for Using Race as COVID-19 Treatment Factor A L E G A L G R O U P has filed a
lawsuit against the state of New York for refusing to stop using race to help determine which New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during a news conference in New York on Dec. 14, 2021. people should receive monoclonal antibodies, a crucial treatment for COVID-19 that has been rationed by the federal government. America First Legal lodged the suit after the New York State Department of Health ignored a warning over the policy. “New York’s racist COVID decrees dispense lifesaving medicine based on the race or ethnic background of the patient,” Stephen Miller, the group’s president, said in a statement. In a Dec. 27, 2021, directive, New York officials highlighted the “severe shortage” of monoclonal antibodies and other COVID-19 treatments, and instructed providers that “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor, as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
reporters, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) rejected his party’s notion that tougher state-level election laws would obstruct voting rights, a bad sign for Democrats hoping to sway Manchin into weakening the filibuster. Democrats, in an effort to pass election legislation ahead of a midterm season that is expected to go in Republicans’ favor, recognized that they would have to weaken or abolish the filibuster. However, Manchin defended the filibuster in a statement because “allowing one party to exert complete control in the Senate with only a simple majority will only pour fuel onto the fire of political whiplash and dysfunction that is tearing this nation apart. Especially when one party controls both Congress and the White House.” MANDATES
At Least 19 Federal Agencies Consider Tracking Exemptions AT L E A S T 1 9 F E D E R A L
government agencies have implemented or are considering putting in place a system to track religious exemption requests for mandated vaccines, according to a review of Federal Register notices by Insight. The agencies include the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Treasury. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 9
The Week in Short World TONGA
Phones Reconnected in Tonga, Internet Will Wait a Month T E L E P H O N E L I N K S between
Hong Kong health officials enter a pet shop to cull pets and disinfect the store, in the Causeway Bay district, on Jan. 18. HONG KONG
Hong Kong to Kill 2,000 Pets, Alleges COVID-19 Transmission H O N G K O N G O F F IC I A L S A R E killing hamsters and other small pets by the
thousands after declaring the rodents responsible for spreading COVID-19. Hong Kong ordered 2,000 hamsters, chinchillas, rabbits, and other small animals to be “humanely” put down after a health check on the rodents found 11 to carry the Delta variant of COVID-19. All of them are hamsters imported from the Netherlands, from a local pet shop where a 23-year-old worker had tested positive for COVID-19. While the officials acknowledged there’s no clear evidence hamsters could transmit the virus to humans, they are telling pet owners who bought hamsters from any store in the city beginning Dec. 22, 2021, to hand over their animals for culling. VACCINE
T H E E U R O P E A N U N IO N ’ S D R U G
regulator has indicated that a change to the product information for COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson has been recommended to include a warning of a rare spinal cord condition called transverse myelitis (TM). TM is a rare condition that involves inflammation of one or both sides of the spinal cord. Symptoms can include weakness in the limbs, tingling, numbness, pain or loss of pain sensation, or issues with A dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine being prepared in Seoul, South bladder and bowel function. Korea, on Feb. 26, 2021. The Pharmacovigilance and Risk Assessment Committee, the European Medicines Agency’s committee that assesses the safety of human medicines, recommended the change after concluding that a causal link between the two vaccines and TM is “at least a reasonable possibility.” 10 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
A satellite image shows port facilities after the main eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga H’apai volcano, in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, on Jan. 18. UK
UK Inflation Soars to 30-Year High I N F L AT IO N I N T H E U K has
risen to the highest level for nearly three decades, fueled by rising food and energy prices. According to latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, the Consumer Prices Index rose by 5.4 percent in the 12 months to December 2021, up from 5.1 percent in November. This is the highest figure since March 1992, when the inflation rate reached 7.1 percent.
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Rare Spinal Cord Condition an Adverse Effect of COVID-19 Vaccines: Regulator
Tonga and the wider world began to be reconnected on Jan. 19, though restoring full internet connectivity is likely to take a month or more according to the owner of the archipelago’s sole subsea communications cable. The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, which killed at least three people and sent tsunami waves across the Pacific, knocked out communications around the nation of about 105,000 people on Jan. 15. Full network services won’t be available until the undersea cable is fixed.
World in Photos
World in Photos
FROM TOP: ISMAEL ADNAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, TRISTAN FEWINGS/GETTY IMAGES, PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
1.
1. The town of Amadiya, built at an altitude of 4,500 feet above sea level, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, on Jan. 17. 2. Items from Uncle Monty’s living room, in fact the home of the late professor Bernard Nevill, from the cult film “Withnail and I,” on display at Bellmans Fine Art Auctioneers in Billingshurst, England, on Jan. 18. 3. A horseman rides through a bonfire during the traditional religious festival of Las Luminarias, in honor of San Antonio Abad, patron saint of animals, in the village of San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain, on Jan. 16. 4. A snow plow clears a road at a camp for internally displaced Syrians, near Afrin, Syria, on Jan. 19.
2.
3.
4. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 11
An AI (artificial intelligence) news anchor for a statecontrolled news broadcaster is viewed on a laptop in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2018. PHOTO BY NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
CHINA USED
AI NEWS ANCHOR
FOR 70 DAYS UNNOTICED The new AI anchors are virtual replicas of two real-life news anchors By Shawn Lin
“HELLO EVERYONE, I AM THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NEWS ANCHOR O N N AT I O N A L BUSINESS D A I LY. I A M THE VIRTUAL TWIN OF THE ORIGINAL H O S T. I H AV E B E E N RUNNING— REPORTING THE NEWS— UNDETECTED F O R 7 0 D AY S NOW,”
China Technology
14 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
and synchronizing with the pre-trained virtual anchor, the AI can broadcast a complete live video on the network without any human assistance. “The era of an unwearied, safe, and reliable AI Being has arrived,” Xiaoice CEO Li Di said. “It is going to provide a steady news output.” According to an NBD report, AI news anchors are modeled using deep learning neural network technology, enabling them to broadcast in Mandarin, English, and other languages. The advanced AI technology is now being used to upgrade and transform the Chinese media industry as well as its film industry. Since the success of the AI Business Daily program, each NBD news channel will fully collaborate with Xiaoice to create AI TV programs. Xiaoice, or “Little Ice,” is an AI system developed by Microsoft Asia in 2014. The company was formerly known as the AI Xiaoice Team of Microsoft Software Technology Center Asia. It’s Microsoft’s biggest independent AI research and development team. In July 2020, Microsoft spun off the Xiaoice business into a separate company, allowing it to operate as an independent entity in China and other Asian countries. The Xiaoice Framework is one of the world’s complete artificial intelligence frameworks, with the largest AI interactions globally. Xiaoice’s Li said in October 2021 that a large number of AI subjects were created in the previous two years and that the number would rapidly expand. He expects AIs to eventually outnumber the human population, while incorporating diversity and individual customization. On Oct. 20, 2021, nine days after NBD’s AI TV test launch, China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television released the section of the regime’s 14th Five-Year Plan detailing its strategy for news broadcasting and audiovisual networks. The section proposes to strengthen AI applications in its news production and broadcasting, such as promoting the widespread use of virtual anchors in TV programs and improving news production and broadcasting efficiency using AIs.
AI Risks Artificial intelligence doesn’t need to eat or sleep, nor does it get sick or need
Visitors interact with facial recognition displays at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Aug. 29, 2019.
(Left) N Xiaohei’s AI-rendered virtual twin, seen against a blue background. (Right) A screenshot shows the reallife news anchor on the “N Xiaohei Finance” program. overtime pay, and now it can actively generate news content. However, many are also very concerned about the rapid development of AI. Artificial intelligence has far surpassed humans in terms of calculation methods, performance, and learning ability, Mr. Wang, a 20-year IT industry expert
FROM TOP: HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, THE EPOCH TIMES COMPOSITE IMAGE
AN AI (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE) news anchor named N Xiaohei revealed to Chinese television viewers on Dec. 20, 2021, after 1,700 hours of a continuous live news broadcast. The same day, Chinese state-controlled media outlet National Business Daily (NBD) and AI company Xiaoice jointly announced the official launch of their collaborative live news broadcasting TV program run entirely by AI—the first of its kind. The TV program, “AI Business Daily,” will broadcast financial news 24 hours a day, seven days a week, hosted by two AI news anchors—named N Xiaohei and N Xiaobai—and technically supported by Xiaoice. N Xiaohei and N Xiaobai are virtual replicas of two real-life news anchors—a man and a woman. The Xiaoice Framework uses data collected from the two human anchors to train the AI models. Meanwhile, Xiaoice Neural Rendering technology makes the virtual humans’ facial expressions and body movements look real and natural. While AI anchors have appeared on China’s TV programs in the past, they could be identified immediately. Since the test launch of AI Business Daily on Oct. 11, 2021, N Xiaohei’s account on Douyin—the Chinese version of TikTok—has accumulated more than 3 million fans, even with the real person not appearing on air for 70 days. Xiaoice, in collaboration with NBD, has the ability to develop virtual replicas that are almost indistinguishable from real humans through advanced AI learning and rendering technologies, according to the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency. According to the report, Xiaoice Framework’s small-sample learning technology allowed the two virtual anchors to complete their training cycle in one week. Chinese business commentator Zeng Xiangling said that while long training cycles were needed to train AIs in the past, short training cycles significantly reduced the high cost of developing AIs. Not only that, the Xiaoice Framework’s technical driver makes the end-to-end automation on AI possible, enabling the AI to collect, edit, and broadcast financial news by itself. From reading financial information, generating text and graphs,
China Technology
told Insight that the Chinese regime has no bottom line for fraud. “[The Chinese Communist Party’s] AI technology can now produce a close-toperfect virtual news anchor, but what is next? A fake politician? A party leader? Perhaps it has already been done,” Shi said. “The CCP is great at deceit. The international communities now have to pay close attention to the authenticity of China’s audiovisual programs and other media content.”
Big Data Big data is the key to AI research and development: the more relevant data, the better the AI is trained. While rapidly developing its own artificial intelligence, the CCP deliberately limits the flow of Chinese data abroad. China uses its massive population for gathering and developing its local AI technology. Tang Bohua, a patent examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that the CCP’s lack of regard for human rights and privacy opens up a huge data set for them, while the United States’ respect for these rights keeps data sets incomplete. On Jan. 4, the CCP introduced a new version of its Cybersecurity Review Measures. The newly updated rules will require all Chinese network platform companies with data on more than 1 million users to undergo a security review before listing abroad. A law professor at Taiwan’s National Taipei University of Technology, Christy Jiang, told Radio Free Asia on Jan. 4 that she believes the 1 million-user threshold most likely included all Chinese tech companies that may be seeking listings overseas. in Japan, told Insight. But the biggest problem is that it has no ethics, morals, or personal values, he said; in the wrong person’s hands, AI technology could be devastating to mankind. The current robotics technology is also very advanced. Some robots can even surpass humans or animals in many physical activities. Once AIs are given the ability to act physically, humans may not have the power to resist, granting the people in control of the AIs the ability to do whatever they desire, Wang said. Senior media professional Shi Shan
A Strategic Priority The CCP has prioritized AI development in recent years, making it a “key national development strategy.” It has mandated AI into many aspects of ordinary life, not only to surveil and control its people but also to use its massive population to spur development. To bolster the rapid development of AI, the CCP has issued a number of supporting policies and regulations, including its Made in China 2025 plan. In 2017, the State Council issued its New
Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, emphasizing the significance of AI in helping the government understand and control society. “Artificial intelligence technology can accurately perceive, predict, and early-warn the major trends of society. [It can] grasp people’s cognition and psychological changes and proactively decide the responses. [This technology] will significantly improve the ability and level of social governance. It is irreplaceable for effectively maintaining social stability,” according to the plan. “It will have a profound impact on government management, economic security, social stability, and global governance.” Hong Kong finance and economics columnist Alexander Liao says the CCP believes the emerging technology revolution—artificial intelligence—can revitalize the authoritarian system, which was on the verge of collapse. In 2013, the CCP proposed the Modernization of National Governance System and Governance Capacity plan and adopted it five years later at its 2019 plenary. According to Xinhua News Agency, the project is “a series of institutional arrangements aimed to make China’s governance system increasingly complete, scientifically standardized, and operate more effectively.” In 2014, the CCP launched its social credit system, which links the social behavior of all ordinary citizens with a large-scale monitoring system in mainland China. The system uses facial recognition and big data analysis technology to enact social control on a mass scale. By 2020, the system had been integrated into almost all public service fields, including employment, education, loan services, travel ticket purchases, and more. This control method has been fully popularized in the form of “health codes” during the CCP virus pandemic. Liao said, “All measures of ‘modernization of governance’ are the basis for strengthening the CCP’s authoritarian rule to ultimately achieving totalitarian control, and everything is rooted in artificial intelligence.” Ellen Wan contributed to this report. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 15
COLORADO
WILD AFTER
Colorado community reelin destroying more t
Text & Photo
A home burns after the Marshall fire, one of the worst in Colorado’s history, swept through the area, in the Centennial Heights neighborhood of Louisville, Colo., on Dec. 30, 2021. PHOTO BY MARC PISCOTTY/GETTY IMAGES
16 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
WILDFIRE
DFIRE RMATH
ng after fire ripped through, than 1,000 homes
os By Allan Stein
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 17
L
18 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Colorado natives “kind of have a sense” about a wildfire when it starts “based on what color the sun is outside,” according to Dunn. While having lunch with co-workers in Louisville on Dec. 31, 2021, Dunn became concerned when they saw smoke gathering outside the restaurant, so they checked their smartphones for emergency information. “By the time our food was ready, it had gotten so bad outside, there was ash covering the tables,” she said. “We could draw pictures on the tables because there was so much ash from when people would open the door. We were eating inside the restaurant, and the wind was blowing so badly, it would just rush in. “By the time we got to our office building, it was like, ‘You guys need to leave.’
A neighborhood decimated by the Marshall fire in Louisville, Colo., on Jan. 4.
MICHAEL CIAGLO/GETTY IMAGES
OUISVILLE, COLO.— Of the hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged in the Marshall fire in Colorado in December 2021, nothing appears to have been left intact, save for the plug-in outdoor nativity scene that miraculously survived the intense heat and flames. Whether by good fortune or divine intervention, the ornament’s resilience in the face of a sudden tragedy sits in stark contrast to the burned-out cars and the piles of rubble, ash, and twisted metal where houses once stood in the now ruined Centennial Heights neighborhood in Louisville, Colorado. “It looks apocalyptic—especially with the melted cars in front of the [destroyed] houses,” said Tara Dunn of Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Everybody was evacuating.” More than a week after the Marshall fire had swept through the town of Superior, Colorado, and the adjacent city of Louisville, Dunn said she still couldn’t believe the magnitude of the devastation left behind in its wake. “As I drove to work and started seeing all of the stuff that used to be there, it was extremely heavy, very sad,” she told Insight. Dunn and her friend Callie Paul said they both wanted to see the aftermath up close for themselves and “kind of process things.” “I did some [Hurricane] Katrina relief during my undergrad [studies]. This is the only thing I can compare it to— complete, total devastation and loss of everything, and just seeing remnants of people’s lives completely gone,” said
“IT LOOKS APOCALYPTIC— ESPECIALLY WITH THE MELTED CARS IN FRONT OF THE [DESTROYED] HOUSES.” Tara Dunn, local resident
Paul, also of Wheat Ridge. Described as one of the worst wildfires in Colorado history, nearly everything within the fire’s 6,000-acre path of destruction is gone. Officials say the next phase will involve sifting through the ashes and debris for anything of personal value to return to homeowners, including the remains of pets that perished in the fire. However, one county sheriff’s deputy labeled the destroyed subdivision in Superior as a “crime scene” as workers dressed in full-body hazmat suits sifted through the debris. At least two people are reported to have died in the blaze. Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle declined a request for comment. Driven by hurricane-force winds that exceeded 110 miles per hour, the Marshall fire destroyed an estimated I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 19
The Lead Rebuilding After Disaster
An insurance adjuster assesses damage to a house located in the Westminster Heights neighborhood of Louisville, Colo.
An electric nativity sce
A burned truck tilts precariously in the Sagamore subdivision of Superior, Colo., which suffered much of the damage caused by the Marshall fire, on Jan. 12.
Tara Dunn (R) and Ca East Boulder County, C
20 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
ene was the only thing left untouched by the Marshall fire, which destroyed an entire subdivision in Louisville.
allie Paul survey the remains of a subdivision that was destroyed by the fast-moving Marshall fire in Colo., on Dec. 31, 2021.
The Lead Rebuilding After Disaster
1,084 homes and damaged a nearby shopping mall on Dec. 30, 2021. The fire displaced tens of thousands of people who are now desperately seeking temporary shelter. Two municipal workers who witnessed the fire said it came without warning and spread quickly. “It was sudden,” said one of the workers, who asked to remain anonymous. “We saw just a little bit of smoke and thought it was fog and that a storm was moving in early. Within 20 minutes, the sky was red and orange, and we realized it was not just a little something. It was getting dire.” The worker referred to the high-velocity winds that drove the flames westward from the unincorporated community of Marshall as “chinooks.” “It’s the downward slopes where that high wind comes and then ramps up,” he said. A second worker, who also asked to remain anonymous, said he thought the fire was moving south and east of Louisville, “because you could see it just straight to the west.” “We thought we were going to be spared. The wind shifted. The power went out. Next thing you know, there were fire departments at our door telling us we got to leave,” he said. In the grim aftermath, a temporary disaster relief center has been set up at the Boulder County Southeast Hub, where 37 different organizations are pooling resources to help those affected by the disaster. “Probably the two biggest issues are housing and trying to find temporary short-term housing and questions around debris removal and how that’s going to be managed,” Boulder County Disaster Recovery Manager Garry Sanfacon said. “People have been really patient and understanding. It’s only been a little over a week since the event. We’re still in that immediate needs phase. We’re starting to transition to a longterm recovery, which will take years.” On Jan. 11, the relief center was abuzz with activity as dozens of volunteers sat behind laptop computers helping stricken homeowners with financial assistance, counseling, and acquiring other vital resources and guidance to survive. Sanfacon said the Community I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 21
The Lead Rebuilding After Disaster
Andrew Clark, owner of the Moxie Bread Co. in Louisville, Colo., said on Jan. 11 that the damage from the Marshall fire was the worst he’s seen yet.
Boulder County disaster recovery manager Garry Sanfacon shows the hundreds of bottles of water donated for the victims of the Marshall fire, on Jan. 11. Foundation of Boulder County had received more than $18 million in donations and had earmarked $5 million for the Marshall Fire Disaster Assistance Center in Louisville. Thus far, the relief center has disbursed $4 million in aid to 22 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
almost 1,700 households, he said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is operating its own disaster recovery center in the county hub building and has registered more than 2,200 households. The Colorado Small
Business Administration has given out 70 loans worth $12.7 million, Sanfacon told Insight. The county relief center will remain in operation for the next week or two, he said. Outside the center, the parking lot was crammed with major insurance company trucks manned by staff to help those who needed assistance processing their home insurance claims. A woman helping an elderly woman to her car declined to comment, except to say, “She’s got no place to live.” Louisville Assistant City Manager Emily Hogan said emotions have been running high since the tragedy. “The outpouring of support is really overwhelming,” she told Insight. “We’ve had dozens of people reach out to the city for what they can do. “It’s really a close-knit community. We witnessed that throughout the pandemic. We’re seeing that again in the aftermath of the fire. It’s really a terrible tragedy. We have many residents who have experienced such extreme loss. We just want them to know that the city is here for them. We will be here for you until you’re back home.” On social media, offers of life essentials for the Marshall fire victims continue to pour in. Brighton, Colorado, insurance company owner Melissa Rippy said she purchased a bookstore in October 2021 and converted it to a mobile free library to distribute books to low-income families. Now she’s distributing them to victims of the Marshall fire through a chartered service called Elsie.
THE BIGGEST ISSUES ARE FINDING HOUSING FOR AFFECTED FAMILIES AND MANAGING THE REMOVAL OF DEBRIS, DISASTER RECOVERY MANAGER GARRY SANFACON SAYS.
The Lead Rebuilding After Disaster
“All of our books are free, and we collect them for the whole family. We are hoping to get Elsie to those who have been affected by the Marshall fire so they can pick out some books through this difficult time,” Rippy told Insight. “It won’t bring their home back, but it may take their mind off of things for a while.” After the recent death of her mother, Maureen Todd, who lives near Superior, said she decided to donate all of the contents of her mother’s home to any affected family that needs boxes of household items to start over with. Todd even set up an email account just for this purpose: dogaholicmom@ gmail.com. “I’m just kind of wanting for a family to have everything—the towels, all the furniture, all the goods, a whole kitchen of pots, pans, plates, basic tools. This can start somebody off, and then they can say, ‘I can buy a new set of dishes,’” she told Insight. “I am fortunate I didn’t have this happen to me. I want to make their life easy. The whole purpose of this is so one family has everything.” Todd said the massive wildfire could be seen burning two miles away from her home, and it was like nothing she’d ever seen before. “You felt the pain even if you were 100 miles away,” she said. “It’s horrible. You wouldn’t think this could happen to a whole city.” Andy Clark, owner of Moxie Bread Co. in downtown Louisville, said the Marshall fire was the fastest moving fire he’d ever heard of. “I was actually in California with my son, and my wife was here, and the bakery called saying there’s a brush fire,” he told Insight. “A half-hour later, they called back and said things were like upside down, so they evacuated. “My wife said, ‘My gosh this is crazy. We all need to leave the house.’ It all just happened so fast. Then I got home and half the town was gone.” Clark said he’s doing what he can for his employees and friends who were displaced by the fire. “We have a baker here who lost her place, and a bunch of friends who lost their place as well. Everybody is scrambling to find a place to live,” he said. “I’ve been offering to find our folks a place, and a lot of people have generously of-
6,000 ACRES The Marshall Fire destroyed nearly everything within its 6,000-acre path.
Dozens of dogs and cats are believed to have perished in the Marshall fire. fered their bedrooms and B&Bs. The generosity has been really stunning.” The problem is that the quantity of local housing stock has been minimal for a decade and is in “very high demand,” according to Clark. “It will be years to rebuild,” he said. “A lot of the folks who were able to keep their house are in areas that are obliterated, like a war zone. Yes, they can go back to the house at some point, but it’s a strange place to live. The saddest thing I saw yesterday was some sifting service. Oh boy, you’re sifting through where your house used to be.” Near the Louisville fire station, a woman had placed a notice asking anyone to call her who knows the whereabouts of her beloved orange tabby, Ted. Officials said when the task of sifting through the rubble begins, it will involve uncovering the remains of the many dogs and cats that perished in the fire. Jennifer Fine, marketing and communications manager for the Humane Society of Boulder County, said the organization has received about 50 animals affected by the fire. Roughly 40 of them have been reunited with their families, while 10 remain in pet boarding facilities while their families determine new living arrangements, she said. “We continue to receive lost and found
reports via our website and phone calls to our facility,” Fine said. “We are still actively accepting evacuated pets and will continue to support our community any way we can.” At the county disaster relief center, Brittany Smith, head volunteer for the Colorado Pet Pantry, said that as of Jan. 11, the organization had received more than 1,000 pounds in donated pet food. People have also been donating other items, such as pet beds and toys. “There have been a lot of private donations. We love our animals, and there has been such an outpouring of support for people to find their pets,” Smith said. On Jan. 12, the former Nordstrom department store at the Flatiron Crossing mall in Louisville continued serving as a major drop-off point for private donations of food, clothing, toys, and other household goods for the displaced victims of the fire. Pam White, a team leader with Adventist Community Services Disaster Response, helped coordinate volunteer efforts in sorting and tagging items to place on store shelves and racks. “We’re definitely going to be here for three months,” White said, acknowledging the trauma many fire victims have sustained in losing their homes. “What happens is, when they first come in, they’re afraid to talk to us. They are just so affected by this fire and what it’s done to them. Later, as it goes on, their heads are up and they’re talking to us and getting joy out” of rebuilding their household inventory. And the generosity from the community continues nonstop. “We’ve had semi-trucks [arrive] full of new clothes—people with their own trucks that they collected from their own neighborhoods, church organizations,” White said. “It takes a village to really get this done. We started this on Sunday [Jan. 9], and it was an empty, messy store. We had to organize tables to get it working. I imagine we’ve had 40 to 50 clients today, and each one takes a cart” filled with household goods. One resident who lost her home in the fire appeared on the verge of tears as she loaded essentials into the back of her vehicle. “I’m obviously not in a good place to talk about it at the moment,” she said. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 23
SPOTLIGHT
RAIL THEFT
A UNION PACIFIC LOCOMOTIVE passes through a section of train tracks littered with trash from thousands of stolen boxes and packages, in downtown Los Angeles on Jan. 14. The company has reported a 160 percent increase over the past year in rail thefts in Los Angeles County. PHOTO BY PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
24 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 25
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Rancher Sees 2,400 Percent Increase In Illegal Aliens
Rancher John Ladd on his property that abuts the U.S.–Mexico border near Naco in Cochise County, Ariz., on Dec. 8, 2021.
Arizona border rancher at a loss over illegal immigration, keeps ‘a gun at every door’
C
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
26 I N S I G H T January 21 – 27, 2022
to the river areas, we went into the mountain areas, we went to the desert areas.” The money for the cameras was raised from private donations—Dannels refuses to accept government money that has strings attached. Four years ago, the sheriff’s border team, called SABRE (Southeastern Arizona Border Region Enforcement), rid Ladd’s ranch of drug smugglers, which was the biggest problem at the time. “There were 37 experienced smugglers [on his property] that are now sitting in prison,” Dannels said in 2019.
“These people can’t turn themselves in, they’ll get deported. These are the bad people. We’re dealing with the worst of the worst.” Mark Dannels, sheriff, Cochise County
The drugs are still coming across, but the cartels are making an endless amount of cash with human smuggling, so they’ve added a lucrative new revenue stream. Currently, Dannels’s cameras are detecting about 6,000 illegal aliens per month in the county, while Border Patrol is detecting an additional 10,000. Detective Jake Kartchner, who is part of the sheriff’s border team run by Sgt. Tim Williams, said each illegal alien must pay the Sinaloa cartel between $7,000 and $9,000 on average to get across the border. Getting across the border and to a road is the first step. Next, a smuggler receives
a GPS location of a group, loads them up, and heads to Phoenix. The drivers are mostly U.S. citizens who are recruited via social media and paid about $1,000 per alien transported to Phoenix, according to the sheriff’s office. “It’s like the cartel Uber. They just stage in public places all along the roadways waiting to get called up to go pick them up,” Dannels said. He said 900 to 1,000 smuggling vehicles are tracked in the county each month. Ladd said he has watched vehicles load up on Highway 92 after crossing his property. “Those cars aren’t even stopping— they’re slowing down and they’re running along and open the door and jump in and off they go,” he said. “It’s very well coordinated.” No state law against smuggling illegal aliens exists in Arizona, and the federal government isn’t prosecuting juvenile drivers or those transporting five or fewer aliens, according to Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre.
‘They’re Running’ Cochise County shares 83 miles of international border with Mexico and sits in the southeast corner of Arizona, abutting
ALL PHOTOS BY CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES
o c h i s e c o u n t y, a r izona—Ranching and smuggling are respectively the primary legitimate and illegitimate economic drivers in Cochise County, Arizona. Much to John Ladd’s frustration, the two industries intersect on his ranch, which is sandwiched between the U.S.– Mexico border and Highway 92, a convenient smuggling pick-up road. Ladd’s ranch shares 10 1/2 miles of border with Mexico and in mid-2019 had an average of 12 illegal aliens traversing it daily, with Border Patrol catching about half. Now, he says, it’s about 300 a day and Border Patrol catches about 30 percent on a good day. The numbers started escalating around the same time the 2020 presidential election swung Joe Biden’s way. “I’m not going to say there’s no hope, but nothing’s going to change as long as Biden’s there and his administration,” Ladd told Insight on Dec. 8, 2021. “And so what are we going to do, just let them come through?” The illegal immigrants traversing Ladd’s ranch aren’t seeking asylum— they’re mostly young, single men dressed head-to-toe in camouflage clothing and doing everything they can to avoid law enforcement and get to Phoenix. “These people can’t turn themselves in, they’ll get deported. These are the bad people. We’re dealing with the worst of the worst,” Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels said. Dannels’s border team has placed hundreds of trail cameras throughout the county since 2017 to detect illegal aliens, traffickers, and smugglers. “We put our cameras in areas where Border Patrol wasn’t going,” he said. “We went
Border Security Arizona
Detective Jake Kartchner said the sheriff’s office is investigating TV commercials shown in Mexico that are encouraging illegal immigrants to cross the border.
A view of John Ladd’s lands on the southern border, in Cochise County, Ariz., on Dec. 6, 2021. The border wall remains unfinished, after President Joe Biden halted all construction in January 2021.
New Mexico. The landscape consists of remote desert and mountain passes. Border Patrol apprehensions in the Tucson sector, which encompasses Cochise County, almost tripled in 2021 compared to 2020. In fiscal year 2021, border agents apprehended more than 190,000 illegal aliens in the sector, compared to 66,000 the year before. Thousands more evaded capture—including many on Ladd’s ranch. “This new invasion, they don’t want to get caught. This isn’t like Texas, where they’re coming, ‘Here I am.’ They’re running,” he said. Ladd said his family has to stay more vigilant than before and ensure everything is locked up. “We’ve got a gun at every door in the house. We had to go through all that again with the family—you better understand if you’re going to shoot somebody, the consequences, and you better make sure you’re really in danger,” he said. Ladd said two of the ranches on the Mexican side directly across from him are owned by the Sinaloa cartel, and the owners of the other two have been told to stay off their property after dark. Although he’s not looking to sell, Ladd said the border has halved the
value of his ranch since it was placed into a family trust in 1983. He had to get the ranch reappraised eight years ago when his mother died and the value had plummeted by half, he said, adding that improvements worth $2 million to $3 million had been undertaken during that time. “In the appraisal, they said, ‘This ranch’s southern fence is the border,’” Ladd said. “That was the first sentence in the appraisal.” His ranching costs are also higher as he deals with cut fences, gates left open, and more scattered herds. “The amount of labor involved to get cattle now is three or four times what somebody 50 miles north has to put up with,” he said. McIntyre said residents want to feel safe on their property. “You’re not going to feel safe if you’ve got 100 people across your property line at night,” he said. “And you don’t know that they’re armed and you don’t know who’s coming to pick them up and where they’re going to pick them up. It is a violation.”
TV Ads in Mexico Kartchner said the sheriff’s office
is currently investigating a new phenomenon involving television ads allegedly being broadcast in southern Mexico that spur illegal immigration. “The commercials are pretty much telling them—from what we’ve gathered—‘It doesn’t matter your immigration status, we’ll hire you,’” he said. The commercials are encouraging illegal immigrants to get to New Jersey, Oregon, or Chicago, and promising that work will be provided, Kartchner said. “They’ll freely tell you why they’re coming across,” he said of the illegal aliens they catch. He said up to 60 percent of them are currently saying they came because of the advertising. Ladd said he believes most illegal immigrants coming across his land end up being indentured servants to the cartel to pay off their smuggling debt. He’s bracing for another frustrating year in 2022 as the flow continues unimpeded. “The plan is to let everybody come,” he said, referring to the Biden administration. “And they’re all going to vote Democratic. I think that’s the biggest thing that people have finally understood—that’s what he’s doing.” I N S I G H T January 21 – 27, 2022 27
COVERUP
China’s True COVID-19 Death Toll As Beijing boasts an extremely low COVID death count, an analyst says the true figure is more than 300 times higher than the official tally
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By Eva Fu & David Zhang
28 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Residents burn paper offerings during the annual Qingming Festival, or tombsweeping festival, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on April 4, 2020. “Remember, in 2020, there was no vaccine, there was no treatment,” he said. “So you had an unprotected population that has shown zero COVID deaths, even though they’ve had tens of thousands of cases.”
MAINLAND CHINA HAS ONLY REPORTED
4 COVID DEATHS
SINCE MID-APRIL 2020. Curating public records and previous research reports, and analyzing the regime’s pattern of hushing up scandals in the past, Calhoun arrived at a conclusion that to him seems obvious: China has made its “zero-COVID” policy a political
objective, and is systematically falsifying data to prop up the claim. “Somebody put a message out at the end of the first quarter in 2020 and said, ‘Okay, we want to see zero COVID. That’s our policy.’ And it became zero COVID,” he said.
Anomalies The first “smoking gun” is a sudden drop in COVID-19 deaths since April 2020 from mainland China after a “raging” rate of infection, Calhoun said. From April 18, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2022, more than 35,000 cases were reported in mainland China (excluding asymptomatic cases), according to official data from China's National Health Commission. Only four deaths were recorded over the same period.
FROM LEFT: NOEL CELIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, ANTHONY KWAN/GETTY IMAGES
he chinese r egim e has likely understated the country's COVID-19 death rate by as much as 17,000 percent, in a systematic data-suppression campaign to sustain its political image, according to a U.S. analyst. That would put the number of COVID-19 deaths in China at around 1.7 million rather than 4,636, the two-year cumulative death figure that the Chinese authorities have maintained. That’s 366 times the official figure. Those findings, made by George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program at Stevens Institute of Technology, were based on data as of January generated by a model developed by The Economist. A vast majority of China’s officially recorded deaths came from Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic, with only hundreds more reported in the rest of the country since then. The Chinese regime only reported four additional deaths from April 18, 2020, ranking China as having the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rate, which Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese epidemiologist overseeing China’s outbreak response, boasted about just last week. But that jaw-dropping data point— hundreds of times lower than that of the United States—gave Calhoun pause. “That’s impossible. It’s medically impossible, it’s statistically impossible,” Calhoun told NTD.
Pandemic In China
tember 2021, China has become the world’s only country that hasn’t provided complete data on excess mortality—unexplained deaths beyond normal trends that can offer a crude estimate of uncounted COVID deaths, a survey from the University of Washington shows. The Economist model seeks to make up for that data gap. Based on the model, Calhoun said China’s excess mortality was off by about 17,000 percent. This discrepancy, he said, even surpasses those by countries mired in large-scale civil unrest, such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela. Venezuela, the highest of the four, has an estimated excess COVID-19 death ratio of 1,100 percent.
“Remember, in 2020, there was no vaccine, there was no treatment. So you had an unprotected population that has shown zero COVID deaths, even though they’ve had tens of thousands of cases.” George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program, Stevens Institute of Technology
By comparison, Hong Kong, which counted about half as many COVID-19 infections over the period, has reported 213 deaths to date. The case fatality rate (the proportion of those infected who died) in Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic averaged around 7.7 percent, more than five times that of the United States and four times the world average. Two scenarios are possible: either the virus was “far more deadly in early 2020 in Wuhan than anywhere else, at any other time,” or alternatively, the official infection numbers from China were too small by a factor of three or four, Calhoun said. Over the subsequent 20 months, there’s been a consistent lack of COVID-19 data from China. As of Sep-
Undercounting virus deaths is widespread across countries. Based on The Economist’s model, the United States’ official tally is short by about 30 percent. But China’s case is extreme. “They are through the roof,” Calhoun said of the discrepancy between China’s official figures and the estimated true death toll. “Something’s driving that.” While the virus might not be all to blame for the jump, tight-lipped Chinese authorities have offered few clues as to what else might have happened. Calhoun’s estimate coincides with anecdotal evidence from local residents, troves of internal documents leaked to Insight, and research studies into the impact of the virus in China, all of which indicate that the official figures have
been grossly understated. During the early months when the pandemic first emerged in Wuhan, some of the city’s funeral home workers told Insight they were working nonstop to cremate bodies. In March, thousands of ash urns were delivered to one of the crematoriums, when the official death number was over 2,000. The authorities raised the fatality figure by 50 percent a month later, attributing the gap to administrative inefficiencies. A study published in The Lancet last March said that as many as 968,800 people in Wuhan had antibodies by April 2020, which would mean they had been infected by the virus and developed immunity. The data inconsistencies aren’t limited to Wuhan. During a two-week period in February 2020, an internal document from Shandong health authorities showed that close to 2,000 people had tested positive for the virus, but only 755 infections were publicly recorded. Leaked documents suggest that the regime has continued to deem virus control a political task. In files recently obtained by Insight, a top Chinese official of Shaanxi Province, where the virus-hit Xi’an is the capital, ordered the “toughest measures” to be put in place to block the virus’s further spread from Xi’an. With the Beijing Winter Olympics coming up, a spillover would create “systemic risk” and “smear the national image,” the document reads.
China is the only country that hasn’t provided complete data on excess mortality—unexplained deaths beyond normal trends that can offer a crude estimate of uncounted COVID-19 deaths. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 29
WITH MILLIONS AT STAKE,
INVENTORS FIGHT PATENT P OACHING
America’s patent system allows big companies to quash
patents and take inventions By Jackson Elliott
T
Inventors protest outside the Patent Trial and App H E U . S . PAT E N T L AW
system once rewarded inventors for the telephone, the lightbulb, and the airplane. But some inventors now say that the same system has turned against them. According to them, the trouble started with the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA). Under that law, it’s cheaper to file lawsuits in a patent court to declare an inventor’s patent to be invalid than it is to pay the inventor for using their work. If an inventor creates a valuable new product or technology, this law incentivizes companies to steal their idea and bring a lawsuit to the patent office to overturn the patent. “What it has become is a tool for large businesses to invalidate the patents of smaller companies in order to utilize their inventions without paying them for it,” Emmy Award-winning inventor Glenn Sanders said. For inventors who often spend years and tens of thousands of dollars getting a patent, the consequences of this act have been devastating, according to inventor David Furry. “That was a $60,000 gamble,” Furry said, referring to his patent. “If it didn’t
30 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
work, it wasn’t worth anything.” Furry knows the patent industry from the inside. He created a camera designed to detect tiny, low-temperature gas leaks. To protect his idea, he spent about two years getting a patent. Most patents cost between $7,000 and $20,000. “We got a very, very tough examiner,” Furry said. “It’s kind of luck of the draw.” But inventors have good reason to endure the patenting process. Patents give inventors a legal monopoly on their invention for a limited time. During that time, no one can make their invention without paying them. If the invention is useful, a patent can make an inventor millions of dollars. GAS LEAK DETECTION is a multi-mil-
lion-dollar industry, and no visual device on the market was able to detect the small gas leaks that Furry’s camera could. He was poised to reap the rewards of his work. Exxon Mobile used his camera to find leaks at gas facilities worldwide. Then FLIR, a company that Furry had previously worked with, started producing his camera without paying him for it. When Furry sued them for patent infringement, FLIR responded by taking
Inventors burn patents in protest, outside the Pat
peal Board on Aug. 11, 2017.
tent Trial and Appeal Board on Aug. 11, 2017.
New Ideas Patents
PHOTO BY WANG ZHAO - POOL /GETTY IMAGES
the case to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), arguing that the camera wasn’t a breakthrough and didn’t deserve a patent. The PTAB was created through the AIA. It evaluates patents and decides whether there were good reasons to grant them. Among inventors, the PTAB has a nickname—“the patent-killer.” In about 84 percent of cases, the PTAB decides to invalidate patents. In comparison, civil court cases go in favor of the person suing only 56 percent of the time. The appeal board disputes these figures. Its own statistics show a win rate for inventors of about 59 percent. But the truth is very different, according to US Inventor’s fellow Josh Malone. PTAB counts lawsuit wins and losses, but US Inventor counts actual patents lost, according to Malone. If an inventor gets his patent challenged three times and loses on the third, it doesn’t matter if he won the first two challenges. US Inventor also counts settlements as patent owner losses, because patent owners lose the right to their cut of the profits. I N V E N T O R S S O M E T I M E S face a
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 31
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF U.S. INVENTOR
relentless barrage of lawsuits, according to Paul Morenville, the founder of US Inventor. In one instance, a company called Zond owned 10 patents, but faced 120 different petitions for patent invalidation, according to Morenville. It eventually lost all of them to this legal bombardment. “We consider that to be 10 patents 100 percent invalidated,” he said. “But PTAB considers that as less than 10 percent invalidated.” It’s cheaper to use the PTAB to invalidate a patent than to pay an inventor for patent infringement, according to patent attorney James Yang. Also, patent owners can’t file counterclaims of infringement to the PTAB and find themselves only able to play defense. When Furry’s case went to patent court, his patent was invalidated for a shocking reason. The court said his patent idea wasn’t original because there was already a camera designed to detect jet engine exhaust that often reaches thousands of degrees.
New Ideas Patents
Furry said the ruling didn’t make sense. “They compared leaks that I’m finding with probably half the gas that comes out of a cigarette lighter to the gas coming off of the F-15 jet engine. They said it’s the same thing,” he said. As FLIR continued to violate his patent, Furry watched his own sales decline. Furry said that losing his patent probably lost him $48 million.
“[Getting a patent] was a $60,000 gamble. If it didn’t work, it wasn’t worth anything.” David Furry, inventor
“It hurts, but I’m not going to dwell on any of that,” Furry said. “If the Lord had intended that to happen, it would have happened.” Many inventors have stories similar to Furry’s situation. SANDERS INVENTED a small micro-
phone that both recorded and transmitted audio at the same time. For actors and movie producers, the device was a welcome solution to faulty wireless connections. For his work, Sanders’s company Zaxcom received an engineering Emmy Award for innovations in wireless technology. “We have what is effectively the Nobel Prize of the industry, which is an ‘Academy Award,’” Sanders said. But a competitor, Lectrosonics, used the technology in violation of Sanders’s patent. When Zaxcom sued in response, 32 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Lectrosonics asked PTAB to overturn Sanders’s patent. PTAB ignored the rewards Zaxcom had received for innovation and ended the patent, according to Sanders. It compared his device to a previous invention—a large backpack that performed a similar function, but was too big for an actor to use. Sanders’s patent was specifically for small, concealable devices. “We were given a patent that basically said that the patent is only valid if the transmitter is easily concealed, hidden, and to the point where an actor could use it,” he said. Making a transmitter as small as a cigarette box required new technology, according to Sanders. “It was a lot of electronics, a lot of software, a lot of miniaturization,” he said. “There’s a whole host of things that had to be worked out to make this work. It’s a big deal.”
Glenn Sanders (C), with his lead patent counsel, Gregory Gonsalves, and patent prosecution counsel Rita Chipperson, poses with their Emmy Award at the U.S. Patent Office in August 2019.
A N O T H E R I N V E N T O R , Rod Pink-
ston, created a new feral hog trap that uses cameras and cellphone activation to help trappers catch an entire herd of hogs at once. A third inventor, Roy Smith, created a new type of children’s shoes with lights that shine underneath their fabric, not under hard plastic. Each of these inventors discovered competitors who were copying their patent without paying them, sued the competitors for infringement, and watched the competitors complain to PTAB rather than pay for patent infringement. According to Malone, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and other Big Tech companies often infringe patents, then use PTAB to avoid paying for intellectual property theft. Apple alone has about 700 patent challenges to its name. “They get good rates from their attorneys because they do such volume,” Malone said. “So for probably $100,000, you can take out a patent that may be worth tens of millions of dollars.” China also gets in on the action. Spy drone company Shenzhen DJI, Chinese social media company TikTok, and Chinese phone company Huawei have all used PTAB to kill patents with lawsuits. The Big Tech companies that kill the most patents have many former employees within PTAB, according to
Rod Pinkston’s phone-operated feral hog trap from 2019.
New Ideas Patents
of companies trying to revoke patents. In one case, the U.S. Patent Office (USPTO) told federal Judge Gary Taranto that it picks administrative patent judges with the intent of ensuring the ruling desired by the patent office’s director. “The director is trying to ensure that her policy position is being enforced by the panels,” a USPTO official told the judge. Inventors also say that PTAB judges are financially incentivized to judge against them. Investigations have shown that PTAB judges get more money when they rule against inventors. O N E A N A LY S I S F O U N D that judges
“appeared to earn an average bonus of $255 per decision when granting institution, but only an average of $208 per decision when denying institution.” They also appeared to earn an average bonus award of $314 per case when canceling patent claims, but an average of $2 when upholding all patent claims. However, federal circuit courts have rejected claims of PTAB bias. In response to these criticisms, a PTAB spokesman said the bonus structure mentioned in this study no longer exists and that administrative patent judges have never received bonuses based on decision outcomes. “Our administrative patent judges Malone. He also noted that Big Tech are technical subject matter experts in attorneys often become PTAB judges, various areas of patent law who work then decide in favor of their former tirelessly to uphold the America Invents employers. Act standards set forth by Congress and “Their attorneys serve our world-class have applied to work innovation system,” at PTAB and then behe said. come high ranking But inventors don’t judges and set poliseem to trust that cy,” he said. “One of their patents will be them ruled in favor upheld anymore. In about 84 percent of of Apple in 23 out of Furry, who held cases, the PTAB decides 24 cases. And then a patent worth to invalidate patents. they go back and millions of dollars work for Apple for before PTAB invalihuge salaries and dated it, said he now bonuses.” advises inventors to Currently, the Biden administration spend money on advertising instead has nominated attorney Kathi Vidal of patents. as PTAB director. Vidal has worked for “What I would do is try to keep as Apple, Microsoft, and other companies many of the secrets to myself as I could that have filed a total of 2,381 PTAB cases and try to make as much money as I to revoke patents. could with it before a competitor started Right now, she’s the attorney-of-re- showing up,” he said. “It’s not worth it cord in 14 pending PTAB cases on behalf at all.”
84%
JAGER PRO
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 33
TRADING
Wall Street Appetite for Beyond Meat Stock Erodes as Shorts Intensify Lackluster outlook for plantbased meat alternatives drives share price plummet
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By Andrew Moran
34 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Beyond Meat attributes the slowdown to pandemic-related uncertainty, moderating sales growth, weather conditions, and labor shortages. in Beyond is simply reaching a peak.” nues tumbled by 13.9 percent, driven by The company appears to agree, accord- weaker supermarket demand. The net ing to forecasts. loss totaled $54.8 million, or 87 cents per The maker of plant-based substitutes, share—worse than the $19.3 million, or including ground beef and chicken, 31 cents per share, loss in the previous is anticipating $85 million to $110 mil- fiscal year. lion in revenues during the fiscal fourth In addition to slumping demand, the quarter. If accurate, it would be down business has experienced swelling transfrom the $101.9 million in portation and warehousing revenues reported in the costs as well as rising invenprevious fiscal year. tory write-offs that have The California-based firm eaten into its profits. attributed the revision to Still, Beyond Meat leadBEYOND MEAT pandemic-related uncerers are confident about the shares have tainty, moderating sales company’s future. plummeted 52 growth, weather conditions, “Near-term market and percent over the and labor shortages. operating conditions notpast 12 months. In the third quarter, net withstanding, we remain sales for the company committed to our long-term advanced by 12.7 percent strategy,” Chief Executive to $106.4 million, falling short of the Ethan Brown said in a quarterly confermarket estimate of more than $109 ence call with analysts. million. Compared to the same period Beyond Meat has entered into partin the previous fiscal year, its U.S. reve- nerships with Tim Hortons in Canada,
52%
ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
he beyond meat stock is struggling to withstand the invasion of short-sellers. Short interest climbed to about 36 percent of Beyond Meat’s free float, making it the most shorted business in the Russell 1000 index. This is up from 26 percent at the beginning of October 2021, and short interest is rising at an alarming rate for the producer of plant-based meat. This might be a justified strategy for the short bets, considering Beyond Meat’s disappointing stock performance, abysmal financials, and lackluster overall outlook in recent months. Its shares have plummeted by 52 percent over the past 12 months, falling below $67. A flurry of good news has supported the stock to kick off 2022, with a year-to-date gain of roughly 2 percent. Several brokerages have slashed their price targets on the stock. Based on 14 Wall Street analysts providing 12-month price targets in the past three months, Beyond Meat has a median target of $72. Many market analysts project that the vegan burger maker will continue to endure a slowdown. “We view the results as further evidence that Beyond’s business is reaching market saturation faster than expected and that the company has deeper problems that won’t be easy to fix,” Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow wrote in a note. “Consumer interest
Markets Meatless Meat
“2020 was a breakout year for plant-based foods across the store.” Kyle Gaan, research analyst, Good Food Institute
Subway, A&W, Denny’s, and many others in recent years. For a limited time, Kentucky Fried Chicken is selling Beyond Fried Chicken nuggets, a plant-based alternative to its original fried chicken. “It’s packed with delicious flavor and the juicy satisfaction that you’d expect from KFC’s iconic fried chicken but in a plant-based option that’s still finger lickin’ good,” Yum! Brands said in a statement. The company stated that the offerings wouldn’t be prepared in a vegetarian or vegan way because they would likely be cooked in the same fryers where the meat-based fried chicken is made. Last week, Pizza Hut restaurants in Canada added Beyond Meat vegan sausage to their menus at more than 450 locations nationwide. A specialty pizza, an alfredo flatbread, and a creamy alfredo pasta will include the pea protein substitute.
“With the combined strength of our brands, we are continuing to increase the accessibility of plant-based protein for Canadians everywhere,” Deanna Jurgens, chief growth officer at Beyond Meat, said in a statement. “At Beyond Meat, we believe that small changes like choosing plant-based protein on your favourite pizza, can make a positive impact on human health and the health of our planet.” A U.S. launch hasn’t been confirmed, although Pizza Hut tested plant-based pepperoni in five cities this past summer.
Hungry for Vegan? Despite the forecast for the global vegan market to grow by nearly 10 percent by 2027, plant-based meat sales have slumped in the United States. Numbers from U.S. retail data group SPINS, published by the Good Food Institute (GFI) and the Plant Based Foods Association, there has been a notable
deceleration in plant-based protein sales growth. In the four weeks ending Oct. 3, 2021, retail sales slipped by 1.8 percent compared to the same time the previous year. But there’s plenty of room for growth, according to GFI research analyst Kyle Gaan. “2020 was a breakout year for plantbased foods across the store,” Gaan said. “The incredible growth we saw in plantbased foods overall, particularly plantbased meat, surpassed our expectations and is a clear sign of where consumer appetites are heading. Almost 40 percent of households now have plant-based milk in their fridge, and at this rate, it won’t be long until we see just as many households purchasing plant-based meat.” Despite rosy projections and upbeat expectations, experts warn there are still many problems to resolve. Bahige El-Rayes at the consultancy Bain told Financial Times that simulated meat products are still as much as 40 percent more expensive than authentic meat because of a paucity of output capacity that could help cut costs. El-Rayes said improvements in taste and texture and additional research and development investments are required. Competition has also become a chief hurdle for Beyond Meat to overcome, something Brown noted in November. “With increased competition over the past two years, we’re seeing, as expected, some impact on our market share,” he told analysts. In supermarkets, various brands have filled refrigerator shelves, including Gardein, Yves, Daiya, Amy’s Kitchen, and stores’ generic brand labels. In addition, companies have started serving customers the Impossible Burger at many fast-food chains and restaurants or produced their own in-house vegan or vegetarian options. The vegan market has been steadily growing in the United States and worldwide. More plant-based products are being created, such as almond milk, oat coffee creamer, and mung bean-based eggs, and sold at grocery stores and restaurants. These are ingredients for “a lot of enthusiasm and excitement” in this market, according to Steven Cahillane, chief executive of Kellogg, which owns the MorningStar Farms brand. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 35
36 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
T H G IL T O P S MILITARY INTELLIGENCE MEMBERS OF FRANCE’S FOREIGN intelligence agency attend a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the creation of the BCRA (Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations), at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Jan. 17. PHOTO BY THOMAS SAMSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 37
Protesters rally against the 2020 presidential election results outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. PHOTO BY SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
38 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Nation Capitol Riot
JANUARY 6
Contradictions of the Man Who Filmed Ashli Babbitt Shooting John Sullivan, who remains free pending trial, has expressed opposing views on many issues
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By Joseph M. Hanneman ohn E . S u l l i va n , t h e s o c i a l -
justice provocateur who filmed the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, at times says he doesn’t believe in God, yet at other times, he does believe. He recently produced a series of Satan-themed music videos, but says he doesn’t idolize the devil. Despite the troubling and graphic imagery in some of his music, Sullivan said his work is artistic social commentary about the state of society and human relations. He is often a polarizing figure, yet he insists he’s nonviolent and desires peace in American society. A year after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, Sullivan in many ways is a man of contradictions. Some of his music has dark, satanic themes, but he says he believes in God. Society is heading for dark times, he says, given the prevalence of anger and hatred in the public square. He sometimes says the shooting of Babbitt outside the Speaker’s Lobby at the Capitol was justified, but his public comments over the past year indicate that her death affected him more than most people realize.
Not What You’d Expect Sullivan, 27, who uses the trade name Jayden X, is not what you might expect, based on his public persona and the ire he has drawn from the right and some on the left. Sullivan was arrested in January 2021 and charged with a variety of federal crimes for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He is among the 725 people arrested across nearly every state since the FBI launched a dragnet immediately after the Capitol incident.
Sullivan said the widely circulated story that he dressed as a Trump supporter at the Capitol isn’t true. The selfie of him wearing a Trump cap was taken on Jan. 5. Sullivan filmed the Jan. 6 protests and rioting while seeming to encourage people to vandalize the Capitol and “burn this [expletive] down.” He said that what might have sounded like inciting was him covering himself so he didn’t become a target of violence. “Anything that I might have said was to protect me among a crowd of Trump supporters, white supremacists, and terrorists,” he told Insight. “I am not about to have my black [expletive] lynched by a mob of raging idiots.” Sullivan filmed the chaos in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby the afternoon of Jan. 6. Shortly before Babbitt was fatally shot by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, Sullivan told two officers guarding the doors to leave. Sullivan then told the men nearby. “Go! Go! Let’s go! Get this [expletive]!” Two men then attacked the glass in the double doors. Babbitt, whose husband believes she was trying to escape the chaos, climbed through a broken window and was shot in the shoulder. She fell back to the floor, mortally wounded. Sullivan’s views on the shooting of Ashli Babbitt have run the gamut. During the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Sullivan wrote on Twitter: “Whoever shot her, maybe should be held accountable. I guess that’s up to the law to decide.” In 2022, he wrote in a pinned tweet on Twitter: “The Capitol police officer is a hero and did the right thing in shooting Ashli Babbitt. If he didn’t, Trump’s terrorist would have never stopped!” That is a very different tone than he used
JOHN SULLIVAN
John Sullivan took this selfie on Jan. 5, 2021, but did not wear Trump gear at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 39
Nation Capitol Riot
(Above) Ashli Babbitt. Her husband believes she was shot while trying to escape the chaos. (Top left) Ashli Babbitt (R) at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Left) An ambulance rushes the mortally wounded Ashli Babbitt to the hospital after she was shot outside the Speaker’s Lobby at the U.S. Capitol.
40 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
“She’s just staring straight at me, and I just see her soul leave her body, just the light just leave her eyes. I felt a lot of anger, I felt a lot of sadness and sorrow, frustration. I don’t think I could ever have prepared myself for it. This was the first time I saw somebody die. I’m still trying to deal with it.” Despite now saying Babbitt’s shooting was a heroic act, in a Jan. 9 exchange on YouTube, Sullivan said he wanted to prevent the shooting. “I tried to save her, and the least I could do was document it for everyone to witness, regardless of political discretion,” he wrote on Twitter. “I believe you have the right to see the truth, regardless of my input, and I did exactly that. I could have run from those guns. But I thought of someone other than myself.” Sullivan said he doesn’t bear responsibility
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shortly after the shooting when he told Rolling Stone magazine that witnessing Babbitt’s death was very upsetting to him. “The guy who was pointing a gun at her was leaning with an intent to shoot; he was not playing,” Sullivan told the magazine. “There’s a difference between holding a gun up and warning somebody versus, like, really leaning into it. I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to show the world why she died. And I’m not going to let her death go in vain.’ Because I didn’t think that she deserved to die. She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t have anything.” Sullivan said he wasn’t prepared for what he saw. “I remember she dropped to the ground, and I don’t think that’s the part I was ready for. That was emotional for me. I remember just like looking into her eyes, like she was staring at me.
Nation Capitol Riot
“I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to show the world why she died. And I’m not going to let her death go in vain.’ Because I didn’t think that she deserved to die.” John E. Sullivan, witness at the U.S. Capitol breach
John Sullivan speaks at an event.
for Babbitt’s death. “I didn’t pull the trigger, so, no,” he told Insight. “I know who should feel guilty though, Trump and all the political figures who were at the Ellipse rallying the crowd to ‘Stop The Steal.’ They single-handedly imprisoned hundreds of their supporters, killed six people, and then left them out to dry.”
Not Embraced by the Left In the public realm, while Sullivan has often been associated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa, many on the left reject him and his tactics, according to a 2021 profile on the journalism site The Grayzone. The profile said Sullivan is viewed by some on the left as a dangerous provocateur and someone seeking profit from societal upheaval. Sullivan’s online store at one time sold black riot-gear clothing; the site is no longer accessible. On his new Twitter account (a previous one was suspended), Sullivan calls himself “Antifa Superman aka Jayden X,” and refers to his occupations as “Music and VFX Artist, Video Journalist, Social Justice Activist.” He said the Antifa reference is a jab at Alex Jones of InfoWars, who called Sullivan “the Antifa Superman.” Sullivan told Insight that he’s not a BLM member. “I believe that black lives matter and that there needs to be police reform, but past that point, I am not a member of the organization BLM. Antifa is not an organization, so no. I do love to have a good laugh and troll idiots who think so. Hence, my Twitter bio.” Sullivan founded Insurgence USA, an organization promoting racial justice and police reform, after the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Police tactics used in Floyd’s arrest sparked outrage and a summer of rioting across the country.
Sullivan’s Satan-themed music video was greeted with hostility on YouTube. Commenters noted his role at the U.S. Capitol and his federal charges. “You’re going to experience the same hell you created on earth forever,” a YouTube user named “Lauren D” wrote. “Literally. You won’t ever be able to escape it or leave. You will have to see all the problems you created and relive it forever. And feel what you did to everyone else.” When another reader objected to Lauren’s harsh comments, she replied: “...He can take honest feedback. He doesn’t have a soul, so everything bounces right off him.” Jayden X responded, “Bingo.” Sullivan was criticized on Twitter by Joseph McBride, the New York attorney who represents a number of Jan. 6 defendants, including Victoria White, whose beating captured on video at the Capitol sparked a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. McBride decried the fact that Sullivan is free pending trial, while many other defendants have been held for up to a year in pretrial detention under brutal conditions. “January 6th detainees are held in solitary while this demon walks the earth,” McBride wrote. Sullivan replied: “This right-wing nut thinks I don’t have due process. Also, he thinks I worship Satan because I have lyrics in my music about Satan. Logical connection.” Sullivan added later: “...Nor are you God and nor can you cast stones. I’ll let the everlasting determine my fate and judgment, not man.”
Musical References to Hell Some of Sullivan’s music speaks graphically about the netherworld. The “Last Goodbye” music video includes satanic imagery, although he curiously misspells the devil’s name in the lyrics on YouTube: Satin [sic] is waiting In his kingdom So that he burn your body Liberate you from Jesus Get on your knees [expletive] And beg him for mercy The song is full of dystopian lyrics that speak of pain, suicide, gun violence, and hell: Go and find a gun So that you can Blow their mind Going on a killing spree Just to kill some time Destroy the world Purge the populace So that we all can go to hell I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 41
Nation Capitol Riot
In the music video, Sullivan dons all-black riot gear similar to what he wore at Black Lives Matter and other racial-justice protests in 2020. In an August 2020 protest in Washington, Sullivan told participants to “rip Trump right out of that office right there.” He started a chant with the crowd: “It’s time for revolution.” Sullivan said he’s not a satanist, but uses dark imagery with a message. “I sing about Satan as it gives a real-world perspective on where the world is headed if we don’t change as a society,” he told Insight. “I wish that I had happier things to talk about, but I feel too deeply for people and situations in general and it affects me greatly,” Sullivan said. He said he’s “especially disheartened by the events I witnessed at the Capitol. It was sickening to see so much hatred, racism, and evil in this world displayed so openly.” Sullivan has more than 30 songs on his website and on music platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify. He says he left his sales job at age 24 and dedicated himself to music. His music often references pain and contains suicidal ideation. In several songs, he uses the words “Don’t give up on me.” He has several songs dealing with hell. In one, “Depths of My Soul,” he says, “You are about to realize that nothing is really as it [expletive] seems. You are about to realize that you made me into this. You turned me into this demon. You turned me into this [expletive] dark soul, on the edge of losing [expletive] control.” His most disturbing music video, “Gates of Hell,” shows female figures swaying in a line of fire.
“Welcome to the gates of hell. Sorry, I really tricked you with a spell, so come on down, it’s warm in here, no need to fear because your soul is going to burn in eternal fire with the devil.” His song, “Second Advent,” is liberally sprinkled with expletives. “Jayden X is my name, your [expletive] king. [Expletive] bow down, you’re in the presence of a god. Pray for mercy or face my [expletive] iron rod.” On Jan. 16, Twitter users challenged Sullivan to explain his behavior on Jan. 6, to which he replied: “I cannot confirm or deny, everything will be told at my trial. You’ll get your answer then.” He said he’s not and has never been an informant for the FBI or other law enforcement entity. There has been online speculation amid evidence that seeming agents provocateur such as Ray Epps encouraged people to go inside the Capitol. Sullivan was a 2018 U.S. Olympic speed skating hopeful and was a salesman who achieved $3 million in sales in one year, according to his video biography. His brother James is a major Trump supporter. The brothers’ seemingly opposing political views led videographer Jade Sacker to spend months documenting the brothers’ lives. Sacker accompanied Sullivan to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and they both filmed the unrest. Sullivan said that despite the assumptions, he is not a political person. “I don’t care about politics, people keep trying to force that down my throat,” he said. “I only have personal quarrels with political figures that have targeted me. That has nothing to do with politics at all. That’s personal.”
John Sullivan’s new music video “Last Goodbye” includes satanic lyrics and images. He sings, “Purge the populace so that we can all go to hell.”
42 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
FROM TOP: JAYDEN X/YOUTUBE, SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES
Protesters breach the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
P OL I T IC S • E C ONOM Y • OPI N ION T H AT M AT T E R S
Perspectives
No. 03
A staff member disembarks an Air China airbus at the international airport in Athens on March 21, 2020. PHOTO BY DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
China Splits Europe From US Beijing is leaving the United States out of the Chinese market by manipulating aircraft purchases to benefit European manufacturers at the expense of U.S. companies. 45
PREFERING BUREAUCRACY TO DEMOCRACY 44
✒
IS INFLATION PEAKING? 47
TAXES AND INNOVATION IN AMERICA 46
INFLATION HITS THE JOB RECOVERY 48
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 43
THOMAS MCARDLE was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush and writes for IssuesInsights.com.
Thomas McArdle
Preferring Bureaucracy to Democracy 3 left-leaning justices’ trust in the judgment of bureaucracies is staggering
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u c h at t e n t io n is being given to the Supreme Court’s reining in of the Biden administration’s overreach in its mixed rulings on Jan. 13, which blocked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine mandates on private companies with over 100 employees but allowed the mandates that apply to health care workers at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. What shouldn’t be overlooked, however, was the chilling peek into the mindset of the left that was provided in the Democratic-appointed justices’ dissents. OSHA was established in 1970 to keep workplaces free of hazards such as toxic chemicals, harmful noise levels, mechanical dangers, dangerous extremes of temperature, and unsanitary conditions. It wasn’t intended to address an infectious disease spreading through the general population, and OSHA’s legislative architects couldn’t have foreseen COVID. But the left wants bureaucracies to have maximum leeway and minimum democratic accountability. They want maximum—if not exclusive—federal involvement and direction, and a minimum state and local self-governmental role. In their dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both placed on the high court by President Barack Obama, said of their six colleagues in the majority, “Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the Government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies.” At work here is the judicial doctrine of “Chevron deference,” dating from
44 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
a 1984 Supreme Court ruling on environmental regulations. Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens’s decision stated that “if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute”—in other words, extreme deference to federal agencies’ judgments of the extent of their powers.
The choice in the eyes of Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan isn't between governmental regulation and personal liberty but between the various sectors of the federal government leviathan. The justices’ bias toward and trust in the judgment of the bureaucracies is staggering. They remark that “as long as the pandemic continues, so too does the risk that mutations will produce yet more variants—just as OSHA predicted before the rise of Omicron.” So OSHA is, apparently, a medical authority. The choice in the eyes of Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan isn’t between governmental regulation and personal liberty but between the various sectors of the federal government leviathan. The three justices write: “Underlying everything else in this dispute is a single, simple question: Who decides how much protection, and of what kind, American workers need from COVID–19? An agency with expertise in workplace health and safety, acting as Congress and the President authorized? Or a court, lacking any knowledge of how to safeguard workplaces, and insulated from responsibility for
any damage it causes?” “The agency has thoroughly evaluated the risks that the disease poses to workers across all sectors of the economy ... informed by a half-century of experience and expertise in handling workplace health and safety issues,” they argue. Apply this to an individual patient. Imagine a government bureaucrat informing you that “the agency has thoroughly evaluated the risks [of] the disease” you have contracted, and that it has decided on your course of surgery and medicinal treatment. That the left-leaning justices have little shame in utilizing politicized, incendiary rhetoric in the public eye in service to optimum federal power was at its most blatant in Sotomayor’s false assertion during oral arguments on Jan. 7 that “we have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators” and that “Omicron is as deadly as Delta.” Even sympathetic media outlets swiftly pushed back, with The Washington Post’s fact-checker bestowing four Pinocchios. Not to be outdone, Kagan asserted that workers “have to get vaccinated so that you’re not transmitting the disease,” despite the vaccinated transmitting and contracting Omicron like crazy; and Breyer contended that there were “750 million new cases”—over twice the population of the United States. It all serves as a grave reminder that had Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump not prevented what would have been a 7–2 left-leaning majority in the Supreme Court (assuming Chief Justice John Roberts would often vote left of center), there would now be no check on the federal government’s control over individuals and businesses, in sharp defiance of the constitutional foundations of America’s freedoms.
ANDERS CORR is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. He is an expert in political science and government.
Anders Corr
China Punishes US airlines
Beijing splits Europe from America through aircraft purchases
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h e u n i t e d s tat e s , Europe, Japan, and other powerful economies should align more closely to protect democracy against China’s unscrupulous trade policies. But as illustrated by the airline industry, Beijing skillfully uses its gatekeeper status to the massive China market to play the democracies against each other. Since at least 2019, for example, Beijing has effectively used aircraft preferences to split the United States from Europe by manipulating purchases to benefit European manufacturers at the expense of U.S. companies such as Boeing. This scares countries such as Germany and France into silently accepting Beijing’s illiberality, including its now widely recognized goal of global hegemony. When two of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes crashed in 2019, Beijing took the opportunity to be the first to ground the jet, and was the last major airline market to only partially approve MAX flights. More than 185 of 195 regulators globally cleared the MAX to fly after November 2020, yet 100 of the planes that China ordered still remain idled. In 2021, Europe’s Airbus delivered 90 planes to China, but Boeing only delivered two. China’s Xiamen Airlines, which previously only used Boeing jets, announced plans in November 2021 to purchase 15 new Airbus A321 planes for its fleet. China was the destination for a quarter of planes in 2021, according to Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, who claimed on Jan. 10 to “have a strong presence in China.” Airbus has a final assembly facility in Tianjin for A320 single-aisle jets, and increased plane deliveries by 8 percent in 2021. Beijing is also cutting U.S. airline access to China, with six more flights canceled on Jan. 13. The ostensible reason is the failure of airlines to en-
force COVID-19 testing, and a growing number of COVID-positive passengers arriving in China. Before the pandemic, U.S. and Chinese airlines operated approximately 100 China flights per week, now reduced to just 20. Hong Kong is currently undergoing a two-week ban on flights from the United States, Britain, and six other countries.
Beijing’s constriction of flight routes from the United States has increased the cost of a ticket to as much as $6,000. “Beijing and Washington have sparred over air services since the start of the pandemic,” according to Reuters, including through retaliatory 40 percent capacity limitations that Beijing started against United Airlines in August 2021. Beijing’s constriction of flight routes from the United States has increased the cost of a ticket to as much as $6,000. Airlines typically pay half the purchase price upon delivery of the aircraft, indicating to investors that Boeing will report 2021 sales of only $65 billion on Jan. 26 from 280 deliveries out of 909 orders, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Many Boeing orders went undelivered due to COVID cancellations, the 737 MAX crashes, and 787 Dreamliner production problems. But in the case of China, regulatory delays have an additional political motivation. “Airbus, which announced a new wide-body freighter last year to challenge Boeing’s dominance in that segment, has the advantage of still being able to deliver to Chinese airlines, a market all but closed to Boeing at present because of broader trade tensions between the U.S. and China,”
according to the Journal. That helps Airbus in the short term, given that Airbus now controls 60 percent of the workhorse jet market. The A320neo is sold out for the next few years, and the A321neo is selling increasingly well, including for international service. Airbus is outselling the largest MAX six to one with its own large plane, according to year-end orders of aircraft not yet delivered. Boeing seeks to increase production, but realizing this requires not only the recovery of airline traffic to pre-pandemic levels last seen in 2019, but a resumption of China deliveries. That resumption would require Chinese regulators to fully clear the 737 MAX. Pre-pandemic, a quarter of Boeing’s orders came from China. But since the trade dispute of 2017, Beijing hasn’t ordered more Boeing jets. The 100 MAX jets idled for China now cost Boeing a fortune, with ever greater regulatory demands for new upgrades, training, maintenance, and paperwork to get some hoped-for delivery date in 2022 that could actually be never. Beijing’s punishment of Boeing scares Airbus, and in turn Brussels, Berlin, and Paris into going soft on China’s human rights abuse and territorial aggression. Beijing can ensure that Europe wins the general aviation manufacturing competition until China is able to acquire the necessary technology to compete. That leaves the United States—which is advocating for a tougher and united stand against the Chinese Communist Party—out in the cold from the China market, and with deteriorating economic strength compared to Beijing. While Europe’s economic interests may in the short term be served by U.S.– China tensions, in the long term, Brussels should cooperate more closely with Washington, or see the world increasingly fall into Beijing’s illiberal orbit. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 45
MILTON EZRATI is chief economist for Vested, a contributing editor at The National Interest, and author of "Thirty Tomorrows" and "Bite-Sized Investing.”
Milton Ezrati
Taxes and Innovation in America New research tells where tax hikes discourage innovation
n old rule of thumb among policymakers and economists holds that the more the government taxes something, the less of it the economy gets. Recent research from Harvard University, the Harvard Business School, and the University of Chicago not only verifies this old saw, but also puts some precise figures on it. The academics focus on innovation—which makes it especially pertinent—for innovation is the lifeblood of any economy, especially this one. Their detailed work makes clear beyond cavil that taxes, on income especially, adversely affect innovation—nationally and where it occurs within the country, though it’s far from the only factor. Previous efforts to specify the effects of tax on innovation have suffered from a lack of comprehensive data. This joint research effort achieved some precision, however, by applying the considerable analytical abilities of the research team with three newly available data sets: a complete digital record of patents and research citations going all the way back to 1920; an equally complete national compilation of research facilities across the nation and the number of people employed in them over time; and complete data on state as well as federal level corporate and individual income tax rates. What these researchers discovered is that the tax impact on innovation nationally is present, but less significant than how state taxes determine where innovation locates within the country. Not surprisingly, the hurdle to leave the country is higher than the hurdle to move from one region of the nation to another. 46 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Even then, the analysis shows less impact from taxes where innovators cluster. If a region contains a significant concentration of firms and individuals in the same technological field, it will continue to show high levels of innovation almost regardless of taxes. The continued productivity in Silicon Valley in high-tax California stands as an example, as does the continued impressive activity around Route 128 in Massachusetts. But even considering the impact of concentration, the work of this impressive team found a clear inverse relationship between taxes and innovation.
States that want to attract innovation would do well to contain both personal and corporate taxes. It seems that especially those the researchers categorized as “superstars” are sensitive to tax. Evidently, those who generate an inordinate number of patents and receive a lot of research citations—whether individual innovators or corporate efforts—have confidence that others will follow if they move. Without risk of isolation, these “superstars” can afford to respond more readily to tax considerations. Think Elon Musk moving from California to Austin, Texas. The researchers calculated what they refer to as negative “elasticities” between tax hikes and the loss of innovation. The term elasticity has a strict technical meaning, but for these purposes, it might be viewed as a percent effect on location for each percentage point of additional
tax. The averages they arrived at were 2 and 3.4 to hikes in personal income taxes, and 2.5 and 3.5 to hikes in corporate taxes. When the analysis breaks out the impact on individual inventors, the elasticities tend to shrink, though they still find an adverse impact of tax on innovation. When personal state income taxes rise, patents fall by an elasticity of between 0.6 and 0.7, while the elasticity on citations falls between 0.8 and 0.9. State taxes also determine the flow of individual innovators from elsewhere. The adverse elasticity is lowest when the inventor is originally from the state in question. It comes in at only 0.11. Evidently, family and personal connections act as an anchor to those who otherwise might move. For innovators with origins in another state, this adverse elasticity of state income taxes rises to 1.23. The policy implications are clear enough. States that want to attract innovation would do well to contain both personal and corporate taxes. This is true especially of states that, from historical accident, don’t already enjoy a cluster of innovation, which can attract others and hold those already in place despite tax considerations. These conclusions are clear even in the historical period of analysis when federal tax law was more generous to high-tax states than now. If anything, the less generous federal law now in place will increase these adverse “elasticities,” though it will take years before research can put a number on the extent. And indeed, census data on migrations from high-tax states, such as California, to low-tax states, such as Texas, verify the picture, though the census data is much broader than just innovators.
EMEL AKAN is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times in Washington, D.C. Previously she worked in the financial sector as an investment banker at JPMorgan.
Emel Akan
Is Inflation Peaking?
Supply chain problems are expected to persist, analysts warn
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onsumer prices jumped 7 percent in 2021, the largest annual increase in nearly four decades. After months of increasing prices, the most pressing question now is: Has inflation in the United States peaked? In the latest economic projections by the Federal Reserve, headline inflation is expected to retreat to 2.6 percent in 2022 and then 2.3 percent in 2023. Wall Street analysts project four rate increases this year from the U.S. central bank. As interest rates rise, so does the cost of borrowing, which will take some of the steam out of the economy. But can the Fed contain stubbornly high inflation while some headwinds persist for supply chains? The pandemic has paralyzed the production and flow of goods around the world, causing prices to rocket. Yet bottlenecks are expected to continue as the Omicron variant and China’s “zero-COVID” strategy deal further blows to global supply chains. “The impact of the Omicron variant may continue to unfold,” John Porcari, the Biden administration’s port envoy, said at a White House press briefing on Jan. 5. Porcari was tasked with addressing port congestion in August 2021. He said ports have seen significant progress and have been operating at record levels. However, he noted, “it’s hard to tell” whether supply chain pressures have peaked. More Chinese cities are coming under lockdown as part of Beijing’s zero-COVID policy to contain the virus. These restrictions affect operations in key manufacturing plants and ports, and therefore pose significant risks to global supply chains, analysts say.
The Omicron variant and China’s ‘zero-COVID’ strategy are dealing further blows to global supply chains. The strict measures have recently rattled China’s industrial city of Ningbo, which is home to the third-largest container port in the world. Lockdowns in the city have put many local truck drivers and port workers under quarantine after more than two dozen COVID-19 cases were detected. Since late December 2021, Chinese officials have disrupted business operations in several cities over cases of COVID-19, including Tianjin, a major port city near Beijing, and Shenzhen, the southern tech hub just across the border from Hong Kong. Toyota, Volkswagen, and chipmaker Samsung are among the companies that have suffered production delays, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Disruptions and backlogs in global supply chains have overwhelmed the United States’ two largest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach in California, since last summer. Southern California is “the epicen-
ter for imports from Asia,” and therefore, any backlogs in these ports have a “domino effect” on major U.S. ports, Mario Cordero, executive director at the Port of Long Beach, told Insight. In addition, a truck driver shortage in the United States continues to exacerbate these problems and increase shipping costs. The American Trucking Associations forecasts that the United States is short 80,000 truckers—an all-time high for the sector. Supply disruptions will persist until the end of 2022 for more than 50 percent of all sectors, according to S&P Global Ratings’ analysts. They found that in 54 out of 78 global sectors, most companies are “finding it very easy or somewhat easy to pass on costs” to consumers. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently created a new metric, the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), to measure supply chain pressures. The new gauge aims to “provide a more comprehensive summary of potential disruptions affecting global supply chains,” New York Fed researchers wrote in a paper. “More recently, the GSCPI seems to suggest that global supply chain pressures, while still historically high, have peaked and might start to moderate somewhat going forward.” Some economists, however, challenge the views that pressures may have peaked. They warn the potential consequences could be more severe than last year if China escalates its containment policy. The Consumer Price Index rose 7 percent in the 12 months through December 2021, the fastest pace since June 1982 and much higher than the Fed’s 2 percent target rate. The core inflation rate, which strips the volatile food and energy sectors, advanced 5.5 percent year-over-year—the highest rate since June 1991. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 47
DANIEL LACALLE is chief economist at hedge fund Tressis and author of “Freedom or Equality,” “Escape from the Central Bank Trap,” and “Life in the Financial Markets.”
Daniel Lacalle
Inflation Hits the Job Recovery
There’s a clear threat to American workers from persistent high inflation
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he u. s. decem ber jobs report shows that the labor market remains weak. The headline 3.9 percent unemployment rate looks positive, but job creation fell significantly below consensus, at 199,000 in December versus a consensus estimate of 450,000. The weak jobs figure should be viewed in the context of the largest stimulus plan in recent history. With massive monetary and fiscal support and a government deficit of $2.77 trillion, the second highest on record, job creation is falling significantly short of previous recoveries, and the employment situation is significantly worse than it was in 2019. The most alarming data point is that real wages are plummeting. Average hourly earnings have risen 4.7 percent in 2021, but inflation is 7 percent, sending real wages into negative territory and the worst reading since 2011. The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job didn’t change in December, at 5.7 million. This is still 717,000 higher than in February 2020. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) remained at 2 million in December, or 887,000 higher than in February 2020. Long-term unemployed accounted for 31.7 percent of unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The labor force participation rate remained at 61.9 percent in December and has been stagnant for almost 12 months. Labor participation remains 1.5 percentage points lower than in February 2020. Finally, the employment-to-population ratio is just 59.5 percent, or 1.7 percentage points below the
48 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
The United States won’t have a strong jobs market unless it recovers the trend of rising real wages and increasing labor participation rate that existed in 2018–2019. February 2020 level. Meanwhile, businesses big and small are struggling to find workers to fill their job openings. The number of available jobs remains at record-high levels. Now put this in the context of a massive $3 trillion stimulus and the evidence is clear. There’s no bang for the buck from this unprecedented spending spree. All the jobs recovery has come from the reopening. The stimulus plan hasn’t accelerated job growth, it’s slowed it. As I wrote in a previous column, all we see in the U.S. economy is a direct consequence of the reopening. The economy sank due to the shutdown and is recovering due to the opening. The only thing that government and central bank actions have achieved in the mean-
time is to drive inflation and debt higher. More government spending and more debt are causing a weaker recovery and slower job creation. At the same time, excessive monetary stimulus is eroding real wages. A few months ago, I had a conversation with Judy Shelton, one of the top economists in the United States, and she mentioned that the recovery would be stronger without this stimulus plan—and she’s been proven right. No U.S. citizen should be happy about plummeting real wages and stagnant labor participation in the middle of a strong recovery and the second-largest deficit on record. The unprecedented number of resignations isn’t a positive. It’s evidence of a broken labor market where hundreds of thousands of Americans can’t afford to go to work because the costs outweigh their salary. This isn’t a signal of strong employment; it’s a signal of a genuinely concerning side effect of inflation. The United States isn’t even close to full employment. Erasing people from the unemployment lists isn’t full employment. There’s a clear threat to American workers from persistent high inflation and the higher taxes that the massive deficit includes—and the destruction of the middle class and fewer job opportunities in the future as small and medium enterprises, the largest employers in the United States, suffer rising input prices and weaker margins. The United States won’t have a strong jobs market unless it recovers the trend of rising real wages and increasing labor participation rate that existed in 2018–19. Everything else is just a poor and unproductive bounce.
Fan Yu
FAN YU is an expert in finance and economics and has contributed analyses on China's economy since 2015.
CCP Faces Biggest Economic Challenges in Years Economists are closely watching how the CCP responds to the Omicron variant
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he new year is less than a month old, and economic challenges are already piling up for Beijing. It’s a pivotal year for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is expected to announce a new slate of leadership (besides Xi Jinping) later this year. How well (or poorly) the Party handles the country’s economy and health will be critical going forward. Real estate risks remain front and center. Despite turning the page to a new year, last year’s property sector issues persist. Embattled real estate developer China Evergrande remains embattled. After missing an interest payment on a dollar-denominated bond in December 2021, Evergrande’s shares were temporarily suspended from trading in Hong Kong after authorities in Hainan Province ordered the firm to demolish 39 under-construction buildings. Another developer, Shimao, reportedly missed an interest payment on a trust loan product. The real estate sector remains an urgent issue for Beijing. Credit-rating firm S&P Global stated this month that real estate developer defaults will accelerate this year if the CCP government policy doesn’t “meaningfully ease.” And easing isn’t what Beijing wants, even if it has loosened the reins slightly this month. After famously putting limits last year on how much developers can borrow in an effort to deleverage the industry, the CCP is unlikely to open the flood gates. The catch-22 for the CCP is that if left unsolved, an illiquid real estate market will cause broader issues, especially at local and municipal governments.
An illiquid real estate market will cause broader issues, especially at local and municipal governments. We’re not talking about governments of coastal tier 1 cities such as Shanghai or Hangzhou, but smaller cities and municipalities in the interior and the northeast of China. In many cities, sales of land to property developers serve as a critical revenue source, as much as one-third of all fiscal revenues. This would create a funding crunch for municipalities, which uses the proceeds from land sales for public works and infrastructure projects to provide both jobs and future revenue streams. So if developers halt new real estate projects, the local governments could quickly see their projects also halted. Many of those projects have their own debt attached. We could very well see a local government default crisis as a next leg following the real estate crisis. China’s COVID-19 policy also presents a challenge. The country’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy has meant draconian lockdowns
in exchange for suppressing the virus. And in the face of the highly contagious Omicron variant, authorities have shown little willingness to ease the policy. The CCP has locked down three cities since December, including Xi’an, Anyang, and Yuzhou, for weeks. More recently, the coastal city of Tianjin began testing all residents to stamp out COVID. Economically, China’s lockdowns are pretty destructive not just for China but abroad as well. Business activities halt, transportation stops, and factories are shut down. China, as the world’s manufacturing hub, could worsen the ongoing supply chain crisis if the lockdowns become widespread. Economists are closely watching how the CCP responds to the Omicron variant over the next several weeks. Chinese New Year begins early this year, on Feb. 1, and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing begin on Feb. 4 and will last for three weeks. These two major events will drive a significant movement of people and goods. COVID outbreaks during these activities could send the country under lockdown and cause issues for Beijing. These are a few of the more immediate troubles facing the CCP in January. And this doesn’t include more macro issues such as the U.S. Federal Reserve’s expected interest rate rises later this year, which could hurt foreign investments into China, or higher global inflation hurting demand for Chinese products. These challenges coupled with a pivotal political year for the CCP—leadership reshuffle, Taiwan dilemma, and global pushback of Beijing’s agenda—will guarantee an eventful year for the Chinese economy. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 49
JEFF MINICK lives and writes in Front Royal, Va. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.”
Jeff Minick
The Days of Our Lives
Finding balance between the established and the unexpected
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’m a creature of habit and routine. That routine has long depended on my work and my personal circumstances. For the past three years, I’ve generally woken up before dawn, poured a cup of coffee, scouted out some different sites online, and then settled into a couple of hours of writing. The rest of the day I divide into segments: cleaning and tidying the house, more writing, some seasonal yard work, trips to town four and five times per week to shop or to write in a coffee shop or at the public library, answering emails and addressing business affairs, and enjoying wine and a movie or book in the evening. Sounds dull as dead grass, right? But having a routine is how I— and millions of others—get things done in this world. Google “the value of routine,” and you’ll discover all sorts of advantages granted by organizing and blocking out the day. Some of these sites stress the mental health benefits of following a schedule, while others cite physical benefits, such as exercise, a healthy diet, and better sleep. Some of them tout the productivity created by routine and habit. Such a daily timetable can also strengthen family life. In an article in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, “The Importance of Creating Habits and Routine,” Katherine Arlinghaus and Craig Johnston take a broad look at the advantages bestowed by routine. “Routine is consistently found to be important for children,” the article reads. “A bedtime routine is associated with increased family functioning and improved sleep-
50 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Having a routine is how I—and millions of others—get things done in this world. ing habits. Family routines have been linked to the development of social skills and academic success, and adherence to family routines has been identified as important for family resilience during times of crisis.” Of course, routine, particularly when we rigidly follow a schedule day after day, can sometimes deaden our mind and spirit. If we plod along fulfilling our obligations while ignoring the people and events around us, we run the risk of becoming sleepwalkers. In “Why It’s Important to Break Routines,” Lisa Firestone wrote that blindly following a routine can dull our creativity and our perceptions and can close off “our sense of awe, curiosity, or excitement.” Firestone remains an advocate of routine, but wisely noted that when we adhere too tightly to our habits we risk losing “a child’s sense of wonder about the world.” As in so much of life, balance is
key. We can stick to an established regimen while at the same time allowing not just for unwanted intrusions, but welcoming unexpected opportunities to enhance the day. These can be small things—taking a break from supper preparation to read “Curious George” to your 4-year-old, inviting your spouse to go on a walk after supper, and putting aside your phone and talking with your teenage daughter about her day. And sometimes a longer respite from our daily schedule offers welcome and necessary gifts. We vacation at the beach in large part to break out of our routine, to spend some days just hanging out and enjoying some sunshine and seafood (Here, I’m smiling at myself, as I spent five days at my daughter’s house over Christmas. For the first 48 hours, I felt restless and at loose ends, drifting around without the helm of my routine to guide me. Clearly, I needed a break from my daily schedule.). Routine allows us to shape our days. An openness to adventure, interruptions, and unexpected gifts adds zest to that schedule. When we work it right, this combination offers us the best of both worlds.
Profile A Third Alternative Teaching American Founding Principles in War-Torn Kosovo By Patrick Butler
COURTESY OF BILL BURTNESS
H
ow d o c o m mu n i s t s ruling a nation prevent an American professor from teaching a course called “Foundations of American Political Thought” at a Muslim university, using the Bible as a source? They couldn’t. Or perhaps they just didn’t. Either way, professor Bill Burtness of the University of Pristina in Kosovo taught hundreds of Muslim students the U.S. Founding Fathers’ ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness over a period of 10 years. “These were principles our Founding Fathers believed in,” Burtness told Insight on Jan. 10. “Their concepts came from the Reformation, and the Fathers believed the principle of self-government under God was the key to freedom itself, both nationally and individually. “The state was not sovereign in their view, and the individual was not sovereign because it led to anarchy.” There was a “Third Alternative,” the title of his lecture notes, self-published by Burtness, who had been studying American political thought for years. “The third alternative is an individual governing themselves and being responsible to a sovereign God,” he said. “The Fathers believed that if people would do that, the nation would avoid tyranny—which many of them had come out of—and anarchy, which was every man selfishly for himself. “Friends at home were very interested in this and asked if I’d written it down. I finally self-published my notes and began handing it out. An American doctor volunteering in Kosovo read the notes, and passed it along to a regent of the university. “When we were in Kosovo volunteering to build freshwater wells, this doctor set up a lunch meeting with the regent to discuss my notes. At that meeting he told the regent, ‘Bill wants to teach a course at the university,’ and I looked at him and said, ‘I do?’ “He said, ‘Yes, you do.’ And that’s how
Professor Bill Burtness (L) answers questions from students attending a course he teaches, “Principles of American Political Thought,” at the University of Pristina in Kosovo, in this file photo. that happened.” Bill Burtness and his wife, Susan, were hired by the university, but the new, war-torn nation was strapped for cash and couldn’t deliver on the promise of payment, living accommodations, or an allowance for traveling back and forth from America to Kosovo. “We didn’t start out as volunteers,” he said. “That only happened because no one paid us. We had a contract. We were supposed to be paid.” So why did they volunteer? “Here was a chance to set a nation straight right from the beginning,” he said. “The students were crazy to hear how Americans thought, believed, and how we’d sustained liberty for so long. They had no idea how it worked.” “We looked into their faces, hungry to learn,” Susan Burtness said. “They were so excited. We simply couldn’t say no.” The Burtnesses didn’t have much money themselves. Travel was expensive. One time they arrived in Austria without any money at all. “Waiting for our connecting flight to Pristina, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we going to do?’ Right then, we were
told our flight was overbooked, but they would pay us 700 euros to take another. “We lived on that money for almost two months in Kosovo,” she said. The class wasn’t in huge demand—at first. “We had 12 students the first class, then 25 the next semester; then 60 the next, then 110. Eventually, there was a class of 300. My wife had to stand at the back of the class and keep the doors closed while people banged on them, demanding to be let in.” Even as the results were exciting, volunteering was hard sometimes. “Living conditions were difficult because the communist mindset was in charge,” Bill Burtness said. “If someone in our sector failed to pay their electricity bill, they would turn off the power to the entire sector until that person paid, so it was freezing in our apartment.” Even so, they were continuously amazed at the reception their class got. “It’s astonishing what you can experience if you are willing to sacrifice some of your personal peace and comfort,” he said. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 51
Nation Profile
THOUGHT LEADERS
Ben Carson: ‘A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand’ Former HUD secretary on the impact of education on his life and the rise of critical race theory
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his country is about liberty,” says Dr. Ben Carson. “Because people wanted to be able to live freely without the government’s foot on their neck, they came here.” In a recent episode of EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek spoke with Carson, a former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the founder of American Cornerstone Institute, a nonprofit organization promoting conservative solutions based on the principles of “faith, liberty, community, and life.” JAN JEKIELEK: Dr. Ben
Carson, it’s a pleasure to have you back on American 52 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Thought Leaders, and that I get to talk to you about where you came from. DR . BEN CARSON: There
are those who don’t particularly like my story, because it doesn’t cater to the idea of victimhood. My parents got divorced early on. We had to move from the home in Detroit that I really loved. One of my mother’s sisters in Boston took us in. It was a typical tenement that you see on TV, with rats and roaches and gangs and sirens and murders and broken glass all over the place, but it was a roof over our head. That couple of years gave my mother time to get on her feet, and we moved back to Detroit. I was a horrendous student. But my mother was always encouraging me. She worked as a domestic, and
Dr. Ben Carson, former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in Virginia on Dec. 7, 2021.
Nation Profile
“We have a wonderful system. We cannot be so foolish as to allow someone to make us think that it’s rotten to the core and that we need to change it.” she cleaned these beautiful homes, and she was always saying, “What makes these people so successful?” And she concluded they read a lot. So she imposed that on me and my brother: two books a week from the public library and written book reports. I didn’t like it much at first, but after a while, I couldn’t wait to get into my books because they opened up a whole new world. MR . JEKIELEK: How old
were you when this happened?
YORK DU/THE EPOCH TIMES
DR . CARSON: Fifth grade.
I started reading about scientists and surgeons and explorers and entrepreneurs. I came to understand, as my brother did, that you were the person who would decide where you’re going to go. Within a year and a half, I went from the bottom of the class to the top. MR . JEKIELEK: You’re at
the bottom of the class, your mom forces you to read books and write reports on them. And in a year and a
half, you shift to the top of the class. Do you remember something specific like an “aha moment”? DR . CARSON: I do. I read
all the animal books. I loved animals. Then I read all the plant books, and then I started reading about rocks and minerals. Pretty soon, I could name any rock, tell you how it was formed, where it came from. Still in the fifth grade and still the dummy, and one day the science teacher walked in and held up this big, black shiny rock and said, “Can anybody tell me what this is?” I raised my hand and answered, “Mr. Jake, that’s obsidian.” There was silence because nobody knew whether I was right or wrong. After he got over his shock, he said, “That’s right.” And I went on, “Obsidian is formed after a volcanic eruption and the lava flows down and hits the waters. ...” They were all staring at me. But I was the most amazed. It dawned on me that I knew the answer because I was reading
books. From that point on, you never saw me without a book. Waiting for the bus, reading a book. On the bus, reading a book. MR . JEKIELEK: There
seems to be a lot less emphasis on these things. DR . CARSON: That’s the
critical problem in our schools right now. In Baltimore City, the number of students working at grade level is almost zero. In so many of our large cities, that seems to be the case. We really need school choice in a big way, and we need to make it possible for the money to follow the children so they can get a good education. If you get a good education, you write your own ticket. MR . JEKIELEK: Some peo-
ple don’t even know basic history. DR . CARSON: History is so
important because your history is what gives you your identity, and your identity is what gives you your beliefs. This country is about liberty. It’s one of the key things that we emphasize at the American Cornerstone Institute: faith, liberty, community, and life. Because people wanted to be able to live freely without the government’s foot on their neck, they came here. MR . JEKIELEK: So, the
Cornerstone Institute. You’ve focused on this idea of critical race theory in schools and the question of race, right? DR . CARSON: A house
divided against itself cannot stand. Critical race theory and the 1619 Project, which presents white people as oppressors, create division, animosity, and resentment. Not to mention the fact that it’s based on a series of untruths. People are people, and what makes a person who they are? Their skin color? Really? As a neurosurgeon, I can tell you that when I open somebody’s skull and start working on their brain, that’s what makes them who they are. MR . JEKIELEK: Nobody
disputes the horror of slavery in America. Do you feel that chapter has been closed? DR . CARSON: Remember,
slavery has been a part of society since we have written records. And I’ll tell you something that’s pretty shocking, there are more slaves in the world today than there have ever been. Just look at sex trafficking. So we don’t have to go back 200 years. We can look at what’s going on right now. There’s a movie coming out soon called “The Sound of Freedom” that really details child sex trafficking and the kind of lives they live. There was nothing unique about the United States and slavery. What was unique is that we had so many people who were vehemently opposed to it, that we were willing to fight a civil war and lose a huge number of people to try to stop it. We have a wonderful system. We cannot be so foolish as to allow someone to make us think that
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 53
Nation Profile
it’s rotten to the core and that we need to change it. MR . JEKIELEK: You men-
tioned earlier that a house divided against itself isn’t going to work. DR . CARSON: Unfortunate-
ly, we’re very much there right now. The media have fomented the hatred, and I don’t know why they do it, why they push scenarios that make socialism and communism more acceptable. Do they not know that the first thing communist governments do is completely control the media? They’re supposed to disseminate unbiased information to the people. Now the majority of people no longer trust the press. MR . JEKIELEK: Let’s talk
about COVID-19. DR . CARSON: I have some
difficulty with the way that COVID is being utilized to manipulate and frighten people. We should be using every tool available to fight the pandemic. There’s no
question about that. But that means therapeutics, which have been pooh-poohed. I understand why. Because in order to get an EUA, an Emergency Use Authorization, to pursue the vaccines, you can’t have an effective alternative. So that’s a defect in our system. A lot of people died unnecessarily because we had that attitude. Look at the infusion of monoclonal antibodies. A tremendous advantage, which was not utilized the way it might have been. My life was saved because of it. I was severely ill with COVID. I was ready to move on to the next world, and that therapy turned things around for me. Our people are not stupid. They’re able to process information. If we stop treating them like children and level with them, people will make the right decisions. It’s one of the reasons people are losing confidence in the CDC and the NIH and our governmental agencies. And that’s going to impact public health issues well beyond COVID. It’s a serious issue.
“History is so important because your history is what gives you your identity, and your identity is what gives you your beliefs.” We have a situation, for example, where the government is advocating that children be vaccinated, even though the risk for death for a child with COVID is 0.025 percent. So why would you subject an innocent child to a lifetime of unknown risk? It just makes absolutely no sense.
DR . CA R SON: Let’s open
things that work. Let’s look at the fact that on the western coast of Africa, there’s almost no COVID and ask ourselves, “Why is that?” And then we see they take anti-malarial drugs, particularly hydroxychloroquine. Let’s listen to these physician groups who’ve had incredible success with ivermectin. Let’s look at the results with monoclonal antibodies. And let’s throw the politics out. We could solve this problem pretty quickly.
this thing up to all the different mechanisms. Let’s look around the world at
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MR . JEKIELEK: There’s
a lot of despondent people out there. How do we get out of this?
54 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
THIS PAGE: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
People gather before the start of a rally against critical race theory instruction in schools, at the Loudoun County Government Center in Leesburg, Va., on June 12, 2021.
T R AV E L • F O O D • L U X U R Y L I V I N G
Unwind
No. 03
We’ve got a variety of gear that you can use on the course or at home, or even at the office. PHOTO COURTESY OF SKLZ
Game-Changing Golf Gadgets These products use cutting-edge technology to help improve your game. 66
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IF YOU LIVE and breathe tennis 24/7, consider taking your next vacation at a tennis camp in an exotic place you’ve always wanted to visit. 60 BEFORE BECOMING Southern California’s most beloved Cuban bakery, Porto’s began with a mother secretly selling cakes out of her home in communist Cuba. 63
JAMES MICHENER called Fijians “the nicest people in the world.” Their hospitality and Fiji’s uncrowded beaches are prime reasons to visit. 58 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 55
Named for the indigenous leopard tortoises often seen on the property, this magnificent estate features unique water features, ponds, and irrigated gardens. This part of Africa is a yearround treasure trove of wineries, farms, nature reserves, game parks, botanical gardens, and adventure sports.
Perfect Seclusion in the
VALLEY OF WINE AND ROSES
Tortoise Hill, in South Africa’s Cape Winelands, is a grandiose property on 1,500 acres of game preserve By Phil Butler
N
56 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Phil Butler is a publisher, editor, author, and analyst who is a widely cited expert on subjects ranging from digital and social media to travel technology.
CAPE WINELANDS ESTATE FRANSCHHOEK, WESTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA R75,000,000 ZAR ($4,953,944) • 7 BEDROOMS • 9 AND A HALF BATHS • 1,500-ACRE PRIVATE GAME RESERVE KEY FEATURES • BREATHTAKING VIEWS • GAME GRAZING AREAS • STATE-OF-THE-ART SECURITY • POOL, GARDEN, AND LUXURIOUS AMENITIES • REMARKABLE WILDLIFE AND NATURE AGENT GREEFF CHRISTIE’S INTERNATIONAL REAL ESTATE AIMEE CAMPBELL, FR ANCHISE OWNER +27 72 693 4052
ALL PHOTOS BY HARRY BODEN PHOTOGRAPHY
ew on the market in the wonderful Cape Winelands of South Africa, Tortoise Hill is listed for $4.8 million. A game preserve and recreational estate, the property is centered around a main residence built in 2014. In all, there are seven bedrooms and nine full baths and a half-bath, spread out over three residences; outdoors, 1,500 acres of private game reserve beckon in the heart of the Cape Winelands. Inside the main house, the scale and grandeur of the home are breathtaking. As for the surrounds, there’s a surreal experience of unspoiled Africa. Located just outside the picturesque town of Robertson, Tortoise Hill offers its owners and their guests perfect seclusion and a remarkable nature experience. Towering acacia and fever trees welcome visitors driving up the mile-long brick-paved driveway that leads to the local stone-clad main residence. Once inside the main house, the interiors are truly grandiose, but also warm and welcoming, with fireplaces in almost every room. The rooms in the house are bathed in natural light, and there are even dedicated sitting rooms for taking in the uninterrupted north-facing panoramas of the Langeberg Mountains. The main house also features two stun-
ning professional kitchens and semi-formal dining areas. A central breezeway, or main lounge, connects the east and west wings of the main house, which adds an open-casual living experience. There’s a library, music room, a dedicated IT room, and a fully equipped gym. The outdoor pool and entertainment area, two double garages, private terraces, balconies, and patios further punctuate this amazing home. Two luxurious guest cottages, staff quarters, a barn, and other out-buildings, along with meticulously designed grounds with unique water and pond features complete this fabulous estate. The Robertson area, known as the Valley of Wine and Roses, sits in the middle of the route from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. Route 62, said to be the longest wine route in the world, winds its way through the town’s jacaranda-lined streets, past quaint Victorian buildings and wonderful gardens. In the surrounding area, there are activities galore, from cruises along the Breede River, olive grove experiences, golf outings, and elegant wine and food tastings. Adventure lovers come here to hike, ride horseback, and experience unspoiled nature.
There are three en-suite bedrooms on the upper level of the manor house, which is served by an elevator. The master suite has its own balcony, sitting room, spa bath, and dressing area, as well as a walk-in safe.
The main residence has an independent IT room with high-speed internet capabilities, a music room, a billiards room, a library, a reading room, and two studies.
The barn is dedicated to stores for animal forage, as well as the estate’s sustainability engineering, including a water purification plant, rainwater storage units, a filtration system, backup generator, and the 25 kilowatt solar power infrastructure. There are two apartments above for staff.
Each of the guest bedrooms has an en-suite bathroom with freestanding bath, frameless shower doors, double basins, a pellet-burning stove, and a balcony.
The main house also has two kitchens, one for intimate family dining, and another for much larger gatherings. There’s also a kitchen at the pool house for entertaining outdoors. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 57
Travel Islands
It’s the abundance of uncrowded beaches like this that has convinced many travelers that Fiji is a better choice destination than Hawaii. It’s also considerably less expensive.
A South Pacific Dream In Fiji, if you’re visiting, you are considered a friend
T
By Fred J. Eckert
58 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Visitors are amazed by Fijian hospitality. Few other countries in the world make the visitor feel so welcome. Fijians are unbelievably friendly and hospitable. It’s not feigned, not just some gimmick designed to boost tourism—it’s the real thing. It’s just the way they are. Being nice comes naturally to Fijians.
FIJI’S PEARLS ARE FAMOUS
due to their unusual colors. Visit J. Hunter Pearls retailers for a closer look at these natural treasures.
A COUNTRY WITH Western heritage—it’s a former
British colony, a member of the British Commonwealth, and English is the official language—and South Seas charm, Fiji is a mosaic of cultures. Indigenous Fijians, most of Melanesian ancestry but some of Polynesian, make up about 54 percent of the country’s population of 900,000. About 38 percent are Indo-Fijian descendants of indentured workers the British colonial power brought in to work on Fiji’s sugar plantations. The remainder is a mix of European, Chinese, other Asian, and other South Pacific islanders. Fiji’s cultural diversity brings forth some pretty good cuisine and makes for interesting cultural performances. Especially noteworthy are Fijian
FROM TOP L: DON MAMMOSER/SHUTTERSTOCK, FRED J. ECKERT, FRED J. ECKERT, FRED J. ECKERT
he sand under my bare feet is sparkling white and powdery fine. As I stroll along the winding beach, my feet sink in ever so slightly—just enough to nicely cushion my steps. The weather is perfect—temperature in the low 80s, clear blue skies overhead, a gentle tropical breeze blowing. There’s no one else on this stretch of beach, no one else anywhere in sight. This is the South Pacific everyone dreams of. Far more so than most other popular tourist destinations, the islands in the Fiji archipelago—especially as you move away from its large main island—have essentially maintained the character and culture that make them so wonderfully pleasant. You can find beautiful islands with plenty of sunshine and great beaches all over the world, but it’s the Fijian people, as warm and delightful as these islands they call home, that are what gives Fiji its edge. “The nicest people in the world,” “Tales of the South Pacific” author James Michener called them.
Travel Islands fire-walking ceremonies, Indian curries, and Fijian song and dance. Fijian music is exceptionally pleasant, and Fijian singing can be unforgettably beautiful. What seems to deter many from considering Fiji is a false perception about costs. Actually, the costs of accommodations, entertainment, and food have always been considerably less in Fiji than in either Hawaii or Tahiti. TAKING A CRUISE, either to the Mamanuca group,
the farther away Yasawa group, or still more distant parts of Fiji, is a great way to see and experience what many—me among them— think of as the real Fiji. On them, I’ve relaxed on pristine beaches, snorkeled in some of the finest AUSTRALIA snorkeling spots in the world, visited Fijian villages, attended a village feast, enjoyed some great Fijian singing, and learned about Fijian culture. Accommoda- tions aboard the ship were very comfortable, food and service excellent, and sailing in these waters very smooth. The capital city of Suva, set on a bay against a backdrop of volcanic hills, isn’t much of a tourist destination—no beaches and a lot of rain. While it’s the largest city in the South Pacific outside Australia and New Zealand (pop. 100,000) it has a small-town ambiance. From Suva, it’s easy to get to a few places I’ve enjoyed visiting, one of which is the tiny upscale resort of Toberua Island. Reached by a 30-minute boat ride, its beautiful beaches and crystal-clear water make it seem a world away from Suva. An hour or less flight away from Suva lie three Fiji islands worth visiting. Vanu Levu, Fiji’s second-largest island, is home to two particularly outstanding resorts, both located just outside the tiny town of Savu Savu: Namale Plantation, one of Fiji’s finest, and the Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort,
A country with Western heritage and South Seas charm, Fiji is a mosaic of cultures.
If You Go Best Time to Go: Anytime. Fiji’s climate is sunny and tropical; the weather is generally pleasant year-round. You’ll get better pricing if you take care not to schedule your visit during Australian or New Zealand school vacations.
FIJI
Safety: Fiji is considered a safe travel destination— and one of the friendliest—but petty crime is becoming a problem in the capital city of Suva.
NEW ZEALAND
Fiji is an 11-hour nonstop flight from Los Angeles.
The archipelago of Fiji consists of
300 islands, 100 of which are inhabited, in addition to
540 islets.
Traveling from the main island to some of Fiji’s outer island resorts takes a half-hour or so by seaplane.
(Top) A girl in a song and dance performance. (Above) A Fijian blows into a shell to announce an event.
Costs: Food and accommodations are reasonably priced. Compared with Hawaii or Tahiti, Fiji can be a bargain destination.
which caters to everyone, not just divers. Taveuni, Fiji’s third-largest island, known as the Garden Island, remains a largely undiscovered gem. The island has some beautiful black sand beaches as well as white sand ones, and scenic parks and waterfalls. Accommodations are limited to a few small hotels, which mostly cater to divers who have made Taveuni a favorite destination. Ovalau, a small volcanic island known for its high peaks, is an interesting place to visit if you’re a history buff. Its one town, Levuka, once a whaling settlement, was Fiji’s capital until 1881. For those who want to splurge for the experience of a lifetime, Fiji offers some incredible upscale resorts that are like something out of the movies. A good example is Turtle Island, which was, in fact, featured in the 1960s film “The Blue Lagoon.” Sited on its own 500-acre island in the far western Yasawas group and reached by a half-hour seaplane flight from the main island, Turtle Island is the resort that set the standard for Fiji’s reputation as one of the world’s finest get-awayfrom-it-all destinations. “As close to heaven as you’re likely to get,” Harper’s Hideaway Report calls it. Fred J. Eckert is a retired U.S. ambassador and former member of Congress. I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 59
Tennis camps are a great way to combine a vacation with learning how to be a better player
By Bill Lindsey
Lifestyle Up Your Game
At tennis camp, every day and every activity is designed to improve your level of play and improve your physical fitness.
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF EAGLERIDER
S
um mer c a mps conjure images of young people enjoying outdoor activities such as paddling in canoes, taking nature hikes, and enjoying s’mores around nightly campfires, but they’re not just for kids. For those serious about improving their tennis game as well as those who want to learn how to play, a tennis camp may be worth considering. The benefit of attending a tennis camp is to become a better player. This includes learning and improving basic skills while addressing physical fitness concerns in order to safely progress to the next level. Anyone, from those who have never held a tennis racket to advanced players, can benefit from time spent at camp. With excellent camps located worldwide, the trick is to select one that suits your needs and provides the specific training and environment that leads to noticeable improvements as well as an enjoyable experience. Because tennis is a vigorous sport, all well-run camps incorporate physical fitness into the training regime. In addition
Anyone, from those who have never held a tennis racket to advanced players, can benefit from time spent at camp. to the benefits of a faster serve and more speed and stamina on the court, being fit helps prevent injuries on the court. Most programs will incorporate light weight training in addition to exercises selected to improve on-court performance. When it comes to tennis-specific training, a good instructor will begin by focusing on the basics, regardless of the experience level of the student. Even advanced players may have bad habits that hold them back from progressing to the next level of play. Accordingly, be honest about your skill level when applying for camp to avoid being placed in a group that may be at a higher level. The basic skill set includes serving the ball to initiate a game and staying
in bounds while delivering it; making forehand shots, which make up the majority of all play, utilizing the player’s strong side; the backhand shot, which is very often the most difficult to master; the lob shot, which can be decisive in winning a set; the overhead, a shot many players need assistance in perfecting, as it is typically delivered using way too much power; and how to volley, or in other words, how to keep the ball moving from one side of the net to the other until a set point opportunity arises. In all, finesse is stressed; unlike baseball, where it’s all about knocking the ball out of the park, the most successful tennis players have the ability to direct the ball with the perfect amount of power required to exactly the right location on the court. This surgical precision is what makes a great player. For all of these skills, proper stance will also be addressed to ensure the player is ready to receive the serve and respond to volley shots. These techniques will be demonstrated for use in singles and doubles play. Students in advanced programs will learn how to use them in I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 61
Lifestyle Up Your Game
LIFESTYLE
GRAND SLAM! Attending tennis camp makes you a better player and is great fun
Look for a camp that has at least one instructor for every four students, to make sure the techniques taught are being correctly applied.
62 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
awards dinner. Set in the heart of Palm Springs, the resort offers spa, golf, and dining amenities of a world-class caliber, with a wealth of natural attractions in the vicinity. Yet another option allows the entire family to train together. Located in Sarasota, Florida, IMG Academy was founded and originally operated as the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. Utilizing an excellent four-to-one student-to-instructor ratio, the facility features 55 courts, including 17 clay and four indoor courts. Students receive on-court coaching as well as after-hours reviews of video to identify and address specific areas requiring improvement. The facility offers programs for recreational players as well as for juniors planning to play at the college level or players of any age seeking to play at a professional level.
Why Go to Tennis Camp? Tennis campers learn the basics, improve on existing skills, and are coached on the importance of physical fitness. Best of all, they do all this in a fun environment, spending time with other tennis fanatics.
2 Where and When Should I Go? Because there are so many camps to choose from, you can pick a location based on convenience or from a bucket list. Camps in states such as Florida, Texas, and California operate yearround, making them a good choice when it is snowing where you are.
3 What Else Can I Do?
Some camps specialize in developing the next generation of tennis pros.
While some camps are focused solely on tennis, many are located at resorts that offer other activities for off-court time or to keep other family members entertained. Call the camp for suggestions of local attractions to experience as part of your stay.
IMAGES COURTESY OF AUSTIN TENNIS ACADEMY
high-pressure competition scenarios. Camps are typically organized by participant age and skill level. Facilities such as the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Florida, operated by Wimbledon champion Chris Evert, specialize in training junior players from 8 to 18 years of age. Programs offered include weekend classes and programs where students live on campus, attending academic classes in addition to tennis and overall physical fitness training sessions. The students range in experience level, from those entirely new to the game to those who play competitively. John Newcombe’s Tennis Ranch in Texas Hill Country between San Antonio and Austin offers a variety of programs geared to adult players at various skill levels. With a ratio of one instructor to every four students, individual attention is ensured; private instruction is also available. Newcombe’s students spend many hours on the court, in the gym, and in classroom seminars. Meals and lodging are included, with adult campers enjoying social activities at the ranch’s Aussie-style bar in the evening. Women seeking to play better may be intrigued by the Cliff Drysdale Ladies Tennis Retreat. This ladies-only five-day intensive program is held at the Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa in Rancho Mirage, California. In addition to daily tennis clinics combining drills and match play, at the conclusion of the program, participants are invited to compete in a Pro-Am tournament with ranked players, followed by an
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Food Restaurants
BEHIND PORTO’S, CALIFORNIA’S LEGENDARY CUBAN BAKERY: A FAMILY AND THEIR AMERICAN DREAM The story starts with a mother, her 3 children, and an underground home bakery in communist Cuba By Crystal Shi
A
t p ort o’s ba k e ry i n Buena Park, California, before the pandemic, lines routinely wound through the 25,000-square-foot space, wrapped around the building, and continued down the street. “On a regular day, we [served] 100 people in 10 minutes,” said Betty Porto. She runs the family business with her siblings, Raul Jr. and Margarita. Since Rosa Porto, their late mother, opened the first Porto’s in 1976, the beloved Cuban bakery has wooed locals and visitors alike with flaky guava and cream cheese pastries, fluffy-crisp deep-fried potato balls, and hefty Cubano sandwiches. Today, the multimillion-dollar enterprise includes five locations in Southern California, with a sixth in the works. Its story, however, starts in communist Cuba.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF PORTO’S BAKERY & CAFE
Secret Beginnings When Cuba fell to communism, as punishment for requesting safe passage to the United States, Rosa was fired from her office manager job and barred from employment, and her husband, Raul Sr., was sent to a forced labor camp for eight years. Left to fend for herself and her young children, Rosa, a talented baker, started selling cakes out of her home to neighbors and friends. Since private businesses were illegal, ingredients had to be bought on the black market or brought by clients, who paid in government rations. When the secret police came knocking, the community banded together to hide Rosa’s equipment. In 1971, the Portos finally immigrated to Los Angeles. “[Rosa] already had clients waiting for her,” Betty said. In their tiny Echo Park
(L–R) Margarita, Raul Jr., and Beatriz “Betty” Porto as children.
The signature potato balls are stuffed with Cuban ground beef and deep-fried to perfection.
Rosa Porto with her husband, Raul Sr., grew Porto’s from her humble home kitchen to a thriving business.
Cakes are immaculately decorated and sold for every occasion.
PORTO’S BAKERY & CAFE Locations: Glendale, Burbank, Downey, West Covina, and Buena Park, Calif. Hours: Open Monday– Thursday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday–Sunday from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Must-Orders: Cheese Rolls and Potato Balls Nationwide shipping available at Store.PortosBakery.com
apartment, “we grew up listening to her baking.” Raul Jr., who slept on a sofa bed a thin wall away from the kitchen, fell asleep to the sound of whisking. During the day, Betty and Margarita’s beds were covered with plastic to use for cooling cakes. In 1976, Rosa opened a 300- square-foot shop on Sunset Boulevard. She relocated to Glendale six years later; from there, the business only grew.
A Family Legacy Rosa died in 2019, at age 89, but her legacy lives on. The growing menu at Porto’s remains anchored by her recipes. Everything is still made from scratch, and the family insists on using the highest-quality ingredients while keeping prices low.
Through the pandemic, pivoting to curbside pickup and expanding Porto’s Bake at Home, a nationwide shipping service, helped keep them afloat. So did their loyal following. Porto’s hardly advertises; word of mouth has long been its most powerful tool. Often it passes along family lines: Betty recalls kids whose parents were married with a Porto’s cake returning to the bakery for their own wedding. Once, she said, “I was a marshal in a parade and the people wanted me to throw potato balls at them.” The reason for their popularity is clear to her. Upon trying their first potato ball, “the reaction I get from young people is, ‘Oh my god, this tastes like something that my grandmother made in her kitchen,’” she said. “They can taste the love.” I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 63
Epoch Booklist
RECOMMENDED READING NONFICTION
‘Stops Along the Way: A Catholic Soul, a Conservative Heart, an Irish Temper, and a Love of Life’
By L. Brent Bozell III
Brent Bozell’s Excellent Adventure If you’re tired of today’s news headlines, Bozell’s book offers a lighthearted respite and a look at a bygone time in America. The founder of media watchdog Media Research Center, Bozell recounts his childhood on a farm and his many adventures through life so far.
This week, we explore a lighthearted autobiography, the power of habits, and a classic Civil War novel.
An accident in 2014 leaves him physically and psychologically challenged. What will revive his spirit? It turns out to be a journey to Tibet in search of the elusive snow leopard. Traveling in a small group, including noted wildlife photographer Vincent Munier, Tesson embraces a frigid yet fateful environment and an encounter that requires steadfast silence. PENGUIN PRESS, 2021, 195 PAGES
‘The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business’
By Charles Duhigg
POST HILL PRESS, 2021, 224 PAGES
The Science of Habits
‘The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet’
Duhigg’s book points to a Duke University study that found that “more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.” These elements of life that operate on autopilot can, in fact, have a powerful influence on our lives. If we learn to manage them with intention, we can become more effective in accomplishing our goals. This profound read makes a strong case for giving greater attention to the seemingly mindless minutiae we engage daily
By Sylvain Tesson
Watching and Waiting Adventuring in the wilderness isn’t new to French author Sylvain Tesson. He has ridden across Central Asia on horseback and traveled the Himalayas by foot.
RANDOM HOUSE, 2014, 416 PAGES
64 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
Are there books you’d recommend? We’d love to hear from you. Let us know at features@epochtimes.com
FICTION
of it recounting the travails of George Washington, Nathanael Greene, and Henry Knox during that tumultuous year, a page-turner. Given the odds faced by the vastly outnumbered patriot troops, it’s impossible to not pause to consider the miracle of America’s independence.
FOR KIDS
By Graham Greene
SIMON & SCHUSTER, 2006, 386 PAGES
By Oliver Hunkin
Love, Hate, and Mystery
CLASSICS
‘The End of the Affair’
Novelist Maurice Bendrix carries on an adulterous love affair with Sarah Miles, the wife of a British civil servant. When she leaves him, Bendrix is convinced she’s seeing another man, hires a private detective, and is eventually stunned to learn why she abandoned him. In what he does best, Greene explores the tangled pathways of the heart, the meaning of love, and the mysteries behind the curtain of everyday reality. PENGUIN CLASSICS, 2004, 192 PAGES
HISTORY
‘1776’
By David McCullough
A Pivotal Year Drama, adventure, and military intrigue make McCullough’s book, much
‘The Red Badge of Courage’
‘Dangerous Journey’
The Road to the Celestial City This retelling of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and a search for salvation features John Bunyan’s original words and Alan Perry’s lavish illustrations. A great read-aloud. One caveat: Some of the pictures may frighten young children. EERDMANS BOOKS, 1985, 126 PAGES
By Stephen Crane
Gods of War Filled with dreams of glory, Union private Henry Fleming goes into battle, runs away, and eventually rejoins his unit feeling a coward. In the next fight, Henry carries the colors, helps lead a charge, and regains what he considers his lost manhood. Praised for its realism— Crane interviewed many Civil War soldiers before writing his novel—“The Red Badge of Courage” continues to raise questions in its readers about courage and fear. Both teens and adults should find enjoyment and food for thought in this great American novel. READER’S LIBRARY CLASSICS, 2021, 158 PAGES
‘A Street Through Time’
By Annie Millard, Illus. by Steve Noon
One Street, 12,000 Years This striking picture book presents, with stunning detail and impressive simplicity, a panoramic view of a street along a river and the changes over time. Beginning with the Stone Age, it advances through different ages up till the modern age. DK CHILDREN, 2020, 32 PAGES
Ian Kane is a U.S. Army veteran, filmmaker, and author. He enjoys the great outdoors and volunteering.
MOVIE REVIEWS
Epoch Watchlist
This week, we suggest a fantastic anime as well as a couple of films about resilient families dealing with adversity together.
NEW RELEASE
FAMILY PICK
‘October Sky’ (1999)
‘Belle’ (2022) High schooler Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) is grieving the loss of her mother. To escape her episodes of depression, she crosses over into a digital world and becomes her popular alter ego, Belle. However, her perfect virtual world is soon thrown into turmoil when certain nefarious forces arrive on the scene. Simply put, this film is an emotional powerhouse. With marvelous voice acting, sumptuous animation, and a riveting storyline that has to do with the human soul, this is a fine example of what animated films can aspire to be.
ANIME | ADVENTURE | DR AMA
Release Date: Jan. 14, 2022 Director: Mamoru Hosoda Starring: Kaho Nakamura, Ryo Narita, Shota Sometani Running Time: 2 hours, 1 minute MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: Theaters
Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a teenager growing up in a mining town in the 1950s. He’s expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and work the mines. But when he watches the launch of a satellite, he becomes obsessed with building his own. In this quest, he and his like-minded friends will face many challenges. With a fantastic cast that portrays believable characters (it’s based on a real-life story), this film has a mix of ex-
citement, disappointment, humor, hope, and beautiful oldies tunes that will keep your toes tapping. BIOGR APHY | DR AMA | FAMILY
Release Date: Feb 19, 1999 Director: Joe Johnson Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: Vudu, Redbox, DirectTV
TOP ACTION THRILLER
‘Jack Reacher’ (2012)
ROUSING FAMILY DRAMA tiful scenery. But what’s most memorable is its message of hope despite facing some incredibly tough odds. DRAMA | FAMILY
‘How Green Was My Valley’ (1941)
In a Welsh mining village at the turn of the 20th century, life is a challenge. But the Morgans have strong
familial bonds. When the village is threatened by the mine’s owner, they must take desperate measures. This classic is filled with memorable characters and beau-
Release Date: Oct. 28, 1941 Director: John Ford Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee Running Time: 1 hour, 58 minutes Not Rated Where to Watch: Watch TCM, Vudu, DirectTV
When former military sniper James Barr (Joseph Sikora) is jailed for killing five people in a quiet Midwestern city, he asks for ex-Army MP Officer Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise). However, Jack knows Barr from Iraq and wants to find him guilty. But as Jack digs deeper into the case, he begins to suspect that things aren’t as they seem. This is an increasingly rare type of action thriller—full of
mystery and intrigue while being light on gratuitous violence. It’s also a very wellcrafted film. ACTION | THRILLER
Release Date: Dec 21, 2012 Director: Christopher McQuarrie Starring: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins Running Time: 2 hours, 10 minutes MPAA Rating: PG-13 Where to Watch: Redbox, Hulu, Epix
I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022 65
Luxury Living Fitness
Golf Made Better:
MAY THE ‘FORES’ BE WITH YOU! Playing golf well requires a huge amount of time and effort, so we’ve compiled gear to help you improve, as well as some that lets you play from your living room. By Bill Lindsey
C H O O S E Y O U R C L U B W I S E LY
A COURSE ON YOUR WRIST
NIKON COOLSHOT PROII LASER RANGEFINDER
GARMIN GOLF WATCHES $1,500
$399.95
If your work or home schedule keeps you off the course, wear it! This handsome smartwatch is loaded with precise details of 41,000 preloaded golf courses, while Virtual Caddie helps with club suggestions, distance to hazards, wind speed and direction, and much more. It’s invaluable when out on the course, but could also be an antidote to boring Zoom meetings—but don’t get caught!
Knowing the distance of each shot is critical when selecting the proper club. Yards are marked at the tee, but estimating the range while out on the course can be a challenge. A 6x lens enhanced with a laser beam and image stabilization provides a visual and an audio signal to confirm you’re locked in on the flag. The range display can be adjusted for slopes or as actual yardage.
A C O U R S E AT H O M E
OPTISHOT GOLF SIMULATOR FROM $1,348
SWING CADDY 300I LAUNCH MONITOR $499.99
Imagine having a pro standing next to you, monitoring every swing and telling you how far the ball traveled, as well as providing a wealth of concise feedback and videos that can be stored to measure improvement. Using Doppler radar technology, swings are analyzed for ball speed, launch angle, swing speed, carry distance, and more. 66 I N S I G H T January 21–27, 2022
BUILD MUSCLE MEMORY ANYWHERE
GOLF FLEX TRAINER FROM $69.99
Golf is all in the swing, making practice critical for improvement. Using this trainer for 10 to 20 swings every day can help improve balance, tempo, and strength. The weighted head ensures full extension of arms in order to create and maintain a perfect swing. Ideal for use at home, the office, or while traveling to maintain muscle tone, and before actual play to stretch and warm up.
FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF NIKON, GARMIN, OPTISHOT, VOICE CADDIE, SKLZ
A PRO IN YOUR BAG
If the weather isn’t cooperating on golf day, head to your living room to play The Plantation Course in Hawaii or 14 other courses. Players enjoy the actual golf experience, using their clubs and balls; the system provides shot feedback as well as stroke and swing analysis. A net safely captures the ball while the monitor provides a lifelike view of the course. You can even compete with other OptiShot members in weekly tournaments.
How to Earn
Respect at Work
To quote actress Lillian Gish, ‘You can get through life with bad manners, but it’s easier with good manners’ The need for good manners extends into the workplace and at all work-related events. Even those working remotely need to be aware of how they interact with coworkers via phone calls, texts, emails, and online meetings. By Bill Lindsey
What Happens in 4 the Office Stays at the Office
1 Respect the Work Environment During work hours, you’re expected to be on time, working efficiently and as hard as possible. You are also expected to adhere to the dress code. Dressing right extends to online meetings; even if you’re the CEO, you need to be presentable. If a suit and tie aren’t required, follow Casual Friday standards, avoiding T-shirts with questionable messages. Also, keep your workspace or what can be seen in online meetings tidy and organized.
CSA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
2
Be Responsive and Pay Attention
Respond to emails, texts, and calls as soon as possible; they contacted you for a reason, so don’t dawdle replying. But during meetings or phone calls, pay 100 percent attention. If you take notes, don’t get so engrossed that you miss key information. Turn off your phone’s ringer, or even better, don’t bring it to the meeting. Resist the urge to read texts, emails, or surf the net regardless of how boring the meeting may be.
YouTube etiquette expert Myka Meier says to resist the urge to post comments about coworkers or your work on social media. Even truly innocent comments could be misconstrued and come back to haunt you. On a related note, Meier recommends respecting boundaries by not becoming too familiar or oversharing your personal information with coworkers. If you realize a coworker is oversharing with you, find a diplomatic way to end or redirect that and future conversations.
Be Nice, Be Helpful, 3 but Don’t Be That Guy Just because your mom says you’re special doesn’t mean you are the smartest, most talented person at work or have all the answers. Similarly, denigrating others or efforts made prior to your arrival won’t be wellreceived by coworkers. Working as part of a team, brainstorming ideas and finding solutions can be very productive and fun, and lets your coworkers know you respect them and their work. At all times, be pleasant, acknowledging coworkers with a smile.
5
Leave Your Home Life at Home
It’s understandable that a stressful situation at home can affect your business day, but the most successful people find a way to separate their personal life from their workday. Everyone has issues, but it’s not wise to broadcast them at work. Doing so can distract you and others from your responsibilities. If you have an overwhelming issue that is negatively affecting your performance, schedule a meeting with your supervisor to request their assistance and understanding.
I N S I G H T January 21 – 27, 2022 67
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