 40 here. So the news about the US Supreme Court striking down affirmative action on the basis of race into universities, it did seem like a lot of journalists took that very personally because journalism as a whole is not a business that can stand on its own two feet. It's heavily subsidized and therefore it needs to accommodate itself to the powers that be and the powers that be the ones who rule virtually all institutions in our country are on the left. And the left is very pro affirmative action. All right. Remember woke means that there are certain groups, certain allegedly oppressed minority groups such as blacks and LGBTQ trans, et cetera, who must be exempt from criticism. Here's how it goes. Half a century ago, the media and the liberals love the Supreme Court. And why not? Those justices established the constitutional right to abortion and Roe v. Wade and said race could be considered as a factor in college admissions in the Baki case. Conservatives ripped those rulings, but didn't try to discredit the court. But with today's John Roberts court overturning both those rulings in the past year, the national right to abortion. And last week, tossing out college affirmative action, there's been something of a media freak out. Add to that the court knocking down Joe Biden's student debt relief and saying a web designer can't be forced to design a same sex wedding site. And you have many infuriated Democrats. AOC says impeachment is not off the table. Congressman Ted Lu says he wants to expand the high court because of its radical extreme supermajority. Keep in mind that court packing turned into fiasco for FDR for an infection has always had a contradiction at its heart, hurting some people like Asian Americans who are also a minority while helping others such as blacks and Hispanics and has brought out plenty of ugliness. The Atlantic's Jamel Hill, who is black, telling Asian American on Twitter that you gladly carried the water for white supremacy and stabbed the folks in the back whose people fought diligently for Asian American rights. White supremacy. It's perfectly fine for pundits to attack SCOTUS rulings they don't like. But is it going too far based on partisan differences to try to undermine the institution? I'm Howard Kurtz and this is Media Buzz. These end of the term rulings are fueling heated media reactions on the left and the right, sometimes in quite personal terms as well as from the president. Is this a road of court? This is not a normal road. Impeach the justices, term limit the justices, pack the court for all the talk of civility and the talk of the restoration of norms. It seems there is no institution of our republic that won't be destroyed in defense of their democracy. This court has adopted a kind of imperial mindset. Six right wing politicians in robes on the Trump Supreme Court are granting themselves the authority to govern as a kind of unaccountable super legislature. The court's affirmative action ruling, which was pivotal, it's causing liberals heads to explode. They are even using it to call Asians white supremacists. And I'm not joking. I'm not making this up. It's the feeling that I and people who look like me and were born like me don't have the right to the promise of America as spelled out in our founding documents. Wow. So unless unless people like Jonathan Capehart, who's a two for right, both black and gay, he feels denied the promise of America unless the playing field is tilted in his favor. So right now, Harvard uses approximately a 400 SAT, you know, point advantage to to admit black students if they were admitted solely on the basis of merit according to 30 fewer than one percent of Harvard would be black. But Harvard's freshman class, by contrast, it's 15 percent black. That's so by those standards, according to that study, that means that only about six out of 100 blacks in Harvard's freshman class would would be there if the sole basis for admission was academic merit. Joining us and analyze the coverage, Ben Dominic, editor-in-large for The Spectator and Richard Fowler, the radio talk show host, both are Fox News contributors. Ben, how did we go from the media criticizing these last Supreme Court decisions to denouncing its credibility and calling it corrupt? Well, one of the big things that's left out of all of this is that this court has actually been quite balanced in its rulings. It dealt some real losses to Republican efforts when it came to redistricting and the like just earlier in this term. And obviously, you know, there's there's a number of other areas where, you know, it performed in ways that are, you know, completely at odds with the framing of them, you know, as Chris Hayes said there, of being this kind of imperial, you know, entity handing down rulings. The other thing that I think that is left out here is that of all the entities that represent our federal government at the moment, I would argue that the court is being the most representative of public opinion in the sense that if you actually look at the affirmative action question when asked both by Harvard's own polling efforts and by the Pew forum and the like over the last several years, it's a 70-30 issue at best. It's the most recent Pew poll was 74-26 in terms of the number of Americans who were opposed to affirmative action. And so I don't think that this has the same kind of flavor as it would in perhaps other areas where it's viewed as the court supplanting itself over public opinion. In fact, they are ruling according to the Constitution and it's in and it is consistent with where Americans are. Well, you have a point on affirmative action, but Richard, with AOC talking about impeachment and Dems talking about court packing, the media reporting on this is not that this is loony tunes and we all know none of this is going to happen. Listen, I think the media is missing a story here, right? And I think it's important to figure out the missing stories so you can understand where AOC and all these folks will come up with court packing. I think, and that has to do with many of the ethical missteps that the court has made over recent, right? We have pictures of Supreme Court justices palling it up with millionaires. Oh, my God, the Supreme Court justices palling it up with millionaires. We can't have that. I mean, the court must be corrupted. Way to say, hey, we're gonna unelect them or they're beholden to the people. So with that being said, when you put the affirmative action court, when you put the affirmative action ruling in the microscope and you say, well, okay, so if this is true, it'll to most applicants. So but before that, the coverage was like this is the apocalypse. You know, I certainly think that, you know, there's an overreaction on on this point because of so much of the dedication of a lot of a significant portion of the left to the ideas that are that undergird the affirmative action system. But I would point to the analysis of someone who I think is as one of the most intelligent political analysts on the left, Rita Sherra, who's formerly the Center for American Progress now in AI, who made the point that if you're actually running against this, you're doing it at odds with the current trends among the American working class and middle class in terms of their priorities. You're doing it, you know, completely at odds with what we see them saying about that way that they want our college systems to work. And I didn't hear any of that in this media coverage. Any of it sort of saying, well, you know, the court is basically saying we have to reset on this on these things on these different questions. The colleges are free to analyze things in different ways, which I expect that they will, you know, leaning more into personal essays, leaning more into things like that, as opposed to test scores, there's going to be a backlash to this. But yeah, it's fascinating how conservatives are so quick to claim that absolutely hopeless that these Kenny left wing college administrators will figure out ways to get around this for California banned affirmative action. And as a result, there's been a dramatic decrease in the number of, you know, like low IQ groups admitted to our elite universities. So the university industrial complex will found ways of mitigating, mediating, reducing the claims of merit, all right, to maintain a certain diversity of low achieving groups. But this will still have a substantial effect. Okay, so I was able to sleep in this morning. So I'm so energized right now is able to sleep until about 420 this morning. After my shower, I fired up my computer. And just before I was going into my recorded 12 step talks that I like to listen to to get my head straight for the day. This is what YouTube promoted to me on the front page of YouTube.com. So surely, surely YouTube is not promoting misinformation here. Well, welcome to today's talk Tuesday, the 6th of June. Now today I want to report on the most impressive piece of scholarship that's so far been released on the most impressive piece of scholarship. Oh, it's from a, a doctor, Dr. John Campbell, a doctor. Well, not a medical doctor. He's a retired dude in public health. He used to teach nursing. But it's really important to him that you think of him as a doctor. They're not a medical doctor. So in Australia, right, chiropractors are not considered doctors. But whenever I talk to a chiropractor on the phone, or in real life, they always introduce themselves. This is, you know, Dr. Cohen, you know, Dr. Ali, Dr. Salazar. And whenever I talk to a medical doctor, it's invariably, you know, this is John, this is Pete, the effect of lockdowns. This is it here. The whole thing is available and in the public domain. And I'm just going to give you a headline to see if you want to watch this video or not. The talk is called lockdowns were a costly failure. And COVID-19 lockdowns were a global policy failure of gigantic proportions, according to this report. And this report actually looks at empirical data, real numbers in the real world, not Whoa, this report guys, it looks at empirical data. I mean, it's looking at real numbers in the real world. This blog's got 2.81 million subscribers. And he's saying that evidence on COVID restrictions is now conclusive that they were absolutely useless. Because we have a John Hopkins study, guys, John Hopkins study looking at real data, empirical data, data from, you guessed it, hold on, the real whoa, whoa, art modeling, as was done quite, pretty well always in the past. Oh, so it's just modeling being done in the past. So socially isolating yourself is a response to pandemics that's existed for thousands of years. It was existed in biblical times. Right. The Torah prescribes social isolation during, you know, sometimes a plague and pandemic. It's was used with regard to the black death. It's a very common time tested way of responding to social pandemics. But apparently all studies until now, according to this doctor, were just based on modeling, but now we've got empirical real world data. Very exciting. So that's what this is about. Now, this is the report here, just released on the just released in June, as I say, very thorough report, all available in the public domain, published by the London based Institute of Economic Economic Affairs. And Okay, so this is a libertarian Institute. It goes on to well over 200 pages. So check it out for yourself. Completely free to download, which is very magnanimous, of course, of the authors in the Institute of Economic Affairs to do that. But comprehensive and completely readable. So let's get straight down to what it's talking about. Now, lockdowns are a costly failure. Like a global policy failure. So this is everywhere. Pretty well wherever you are, we've been let down by our government. So we'll be looking at the way reports were written, but not adequately scrutinized by government. This is primarily a governmental failure. So this guy is upset that we haven't adequately scrutinized previous academic studies. So you can be sure that he's thoroughly scrutinized this particular study. Guys, we need to thoroughly scrutinize these things before we change our way of life. And I personally feel that down and I know a lot of you do as well. Now this is the update we're just looking at here. That was the previous version there. So as I say, all available, check it out for yourself. The systematic review and meta analysis. So it takes to So when I have friends who want to push like French medical scientific theories on me, I always tell them send me and they what they usually send me are like tweets from various randos. That's it. No, send me a meta analysis published in a prestigious journal. Right. If you meta analysis mean you look at all previous studies on the topic, and you rate and rank the studies by their power, right? By, you know, how how important they are by, you know, how many people they use the methods that we use. And so you develop an overview of all learning in a particular area until now and you put it all together. So meta analysis absolutely essential for getting a handle on things. But what this review does not do is publish in a prestigious journal. Now that doesn't mean it's wrong. But if I'm going to spend my time reading a scientific study, I want it to be in a prestigious journal. And if it's going to be something groundbreaking, normally I'm going to want to see a meta analysis. A nation of useful papers, which is an excellent way to do research. Published in London Institute of Economic Affairs, did lockdown COVID restrictions, social distancing, non-pharm suitable interventions, whatever you want to call it, affect COVID mortality based on the empirical evidence. This is not someone sitting in a back room with a sophisticated calculator or sophisticated computer. This is actually real world data. What actually happened? Of course, that is what science is all about. Science is all about empiricism or it's about nothing at all. Science is not theoretically is a practical discipline. Systematic search and screening procedure. So they looked at pretty well 20,000 studies, 32 qualified, but only 22 converted for meta analysis. And that is because only 22 contain the real world data that was required. In other words, the numbers, the numbers in the real world. And this is why this study is so refreshing. We're getting back to reality. I think we've been in a bit of a flight of fancy for the past few years. Thank God, guys, we're getting back to reality. All right, finally, we got some scrutiny. And we're going to deal here with empiricism and real world data. I mean, what a relief. Thank God that there are these brave, contrarian voices out there. Even though squashed by YouTube, and I mean, Pope likes being limited to just 2.81 million subscribers Dr. Dr. John Campbell, right, not a not a medical doctor, but retired nursing instructor ably led by government and mainstream media. But now we're back to scientific reality, which delights me. Wow. So 22 is actually measured mortality data not derived from modeling. Now the use of stringency index as one of the one of the things they looked at. That's how strict the lockdowns were. So they were comparing to less strict areas such as Sweden, average lockdown in Europe in the United States in the spring of 2020, which is as far as this data goes. So this is the essentially the first wave isn't it the spring of 2020 only reduced mortality cover 19 by 3.2%. Man, this is so exciting. I mean, I'm so, so thrilled to be able to share this with you. And luckily, Fox News is on this story guys. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post completely avoid John Hopkins study finding COVID lockdowns ineffective. Man, why do they why do they try to hide the truth from us? I mean, next they're going to start turning the frogs gay. Come on, guys. We are getting reaction tonight to a report we told you about yesterday, including the coronavirus lockdowns have had little to no effect on mortality during the pandemic. Corresponded Jonathan Seary shows this tonight from Atlanta. Opponents of mandates are expressing vindication after one of the most trusted sources of data on COVID-19. Johns Hopkins University published a study concluding that lockdown policies are ill founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument. I think it's very appropriate that we take a look back and admit our mistakes. If if if we were wrong, we need to know from the next pandemic in the last few weeks. We're going to take a look at some of the data. In the Johns Hopkins report three leading economists analyzed data from 24 studies and determined travel bans and mandatory school and business closures early in the pandemic reduced COVID deaths by only 0.2 percent. I think it's important that we try and remove all the politics and really talk about what the data shows, what science shows and in support free inquiry and people asking important questions about how COVID-19 is going to happen in the next few weeks. The White House COVID briefing, however, federal health officials said they welcome a proposal in the Senate to create a bipartisan task force to investigate the pandemic's origins and the response of the Trump and Biden administrations. I think it's important to look at every aspect of this outbreak for lessons learned that is not only what the government can prevent something like this happening or respond better if and when it does. And an FDA advisory panel is scheduled to meet February 15 to discuss Pfizer's application to expand vaccine access to children under the age of five. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that three in 10 parents with kids in this age group would get the shots for their children right away if approved. John. Well, thank God for Fox News, those brave truth soldiers at Fox News. They're willing to bring us the news that the mainstream media is just trying to black out from our knowledge. All right. This is Bruce Lee. He's a senior contributor to Ford's. He's a writer and a journalist and a systems modeler. What does he have to say? Have you seen the so-called Johns Hopkins study that's been making the social media and Bill Marr rounds lately? Some folks have been asserting that this Johns Hopkins study somehow showed that COVID-19 lockdowns have been essentially useless. If you haven't seen what they've been referring to, could it possibly be because there's been so called a full on media blackout of this so called Johns Hopkins study as an article for Fox News has claimed? Or maybe just maybe this Johns Hopkins study didn't receive much press because it wasn't exactly what some people have been claiming that it is. If you've noticed some have been repeating the name Johns Hopkins study as if it were some kind of magical phrase like open sesame or umbop. In actuality, it's not really appropriate here to call what's Johns Hopkins study, which might suggest that Johns Hopkins University has somehow commissioned or endorsed the study. Nevertheless, some people and social media accounts have been pushing the whole Johns Hopkins name. Yeah, the university itself didn't write the paper because buildings can't type on laptops without crushing them. Heck, the paper even stated that views expressed in each working paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions with. Therefore, if folks really want to mention Johns Hopkins, they should instead be referring to this working paper as being from a professor at Johns Hopkins University, as Maher did in this past week's episode of his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. As you can see, Maher dropped the Johns Hopkins name without even mentioning the professor's name, Steve H. Hank, PhD, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Cato and American Libertarian think tank. Maher also didn't specify that two of three authors weren't even from Johns Hopkins University. Jonas Erby, MS, whom the working paper described as a special advisor at Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Lars Johnning, PhD, who is a professor emeritus in economics at Lund University, Sweden. Moreover, Maher didn't clarify that the three authors were economists rather than medical, psychology, or public health experts. Isn't that a bit like three proctologists telling you how the economy is doing? It's not clear how much economists alone would understand the complexities and subtleties of medicine in public health. After all, if you were to end up in the emergency room with an injury, don't worry an economist will be around shortly to reattach your arm, may not be the most comforting thing to hear. Oh, and note that Erby, Johnning, and Hank themselves used the term, working paper, to describe what they had put together. Simply calling it a John's Hopkins study glosses over this important distinction. A working paper is not the same as a peer-reviewed study published in a reputable scientific journal just like how a YouTube video of you getting pelted with sausages would not be the same as a full-length Hollywood movie. Basically, anyone who has access to the Internet, a laptop, smartphone, and opposable thumbs can post a working paper on a website. So while it is clear that Meerkats alone did not write and post this working paper, take anything that it said with 17 ugg boots full of salt. This working paper did make some bold claims. For example, it concluded that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects. They have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument. By the way, what did the authors consider lockdowns? Well, according to the working paper, lockdowns are defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention, NPI. Holy changing definitions, Batman by Irby, Johnny, and Hank's definition, even face mask requirements would be considered a lockdown, right? After all, face masks are NPI since you don't eat or inject face masks into you. Yet, how many times have you heard when wearing a mask, how's that lockdown of your face going? Sure, a face mask may prevent your nose from wandering away from your face and partaking in a rave, before returning to your face in the morning. But other than that, face mask requirements really don't restrict your ability to move away from your home. This doesn't quite jibe with the dictionary.com definition which describes a lockdown as a security measure taken during an emergency to prevent people from leaving or entering a building or other location. So unless you are wearing a ridiculously enormous face mask or one with BDSM chains attached to your friend, wearing a face mask shouldn't prevent you from leaving or entering most buildings. Okay, changing definitions aside, did this working paper really provide enough evidence to support its bold claims? In a word, no. In two words, hack no. The authors claim that they performed a systematic review and meta-analysis. That should mean that they should have considered and included all published peer-reviewed studies relevant to the topic at hand. Yet, this working paper did not include or even acknowledge many such studies that have shown the benefits of NPIs such as face mask wearing and social distancing without explaining why the three authors excluded such studies. Of the 34, studies included in the review, 12 of them were actually working papers. In fact, 14 of the studies were actually from economists with only one being from epidemiologists. This is odd since most of the key NPI research studies have been conducted by epidemiologists, medical researchers, and other public health experts. To qualify as a meta-analysis, a study needs to fulfill established criteria, which includes demonstrating that you've included all of the studies that have been published. Without providing clear evidence that you have done so, instead of a literature review and meta-analysis of the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality, would a better title of this working paper have been stuff that we selected to support our point of view? Not only that, others have pointed out various flaws in the working paper's actual analyses. For example, here's what Gideon Myrowitz Katz, an epidemiologist, tweeted. Later in the tweet thread, Myrowitz Katz suggested that some cherry picking was going on with the working paper. And when you do a review of the literature and select a paper to be included in your so-called meta-analysis, it's not a good sign when the authors of that paper disagree with your interpretation of their paper. Claiming that NPIs have had little to no public health effects, simply goes against what's been observed and documented throughout this COVID-19 pandemic. Just look at the rather stark differences among how countries have fared during this pandemic in terms of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Countries that have followed the existing scientific evidence such as New Zealand, Taiwan, and South Korea have had much fewer deaths and hospitalizations than countries that have frequently veered away from the science such as the US, the UK, and Brazil. These certainly weren't the only problematic issues with the working paper. But why go deeper into them since there's been a so-called media blackout of this paper, right? At least, that's what Joseph A. reporter for Fox News tweeted in all caps. Yep, Wolfson claimed in an article for Fox News that there has been a full-on media blackout of the new study outlining the ineffectiveness of lockdowns to prevent COVID deaths. Really, a full-on media blackout? Apparently, many of us didn't get the memo. In his article, he asserted that the Johns Hopkins study received no mention on any of the five liberal networks this week. According to Grabean Transcripts, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC all ignored the anti-lockdown findings after having spent much of the pandemic shaming red states with minimal restrictions in events deemed by critics as, super spreaders. Oh, there were plenty of non-political and non-partisan reasons not to cover this working paper. Obviously, media outlets can't cover everything that anyone happens to post on a website. Otherwise, you'd be getting daily updates on what's been posted on the FartShare website. It's not clear what a full-on media blackout even means or how exactly it would work. How in the world would someone corral all legitimate journalists everywhere and tell them not to cover something? Would there be a secret sign, emoji, or set of semaphores? And would space lasers somehow be involved? Telling real journalists not to write about something probably would motivate them even more to write about it. This whole Johns Hopkins study situation is like deja vu all over again. Back in April 2021 I covered for Forbes how some people were pushing a so-called Stanford study that wasn't exactly from Stanford and wasn't even really a study. So be wary whenever people emphasize the name of any particular academic institution associated with a study rather than focusing on the study itself and who specifically performed it. Universities consist of many different professors and other academics who have varying levels of expertise and experience in the academic freedom to pursue whatever research they choose. Just because someone is from a given university doesn't necessarily mean that the person knows what he or she is talking about. Again, instead, evaluate the person's background and what specifically he or she is saying. Chora, Irby, Johnny, and Hank working paper may not sound quite the same as a Johns Hopkins study. But in this case, the former would be more accurate description than the latter. Okay, there's a lot of common sense there in that analysis. I mean, that people on the right in particular just the dissidently inclined or just jumping all over this the study seemed sympathetic. I mean, touting itself as a Johns Hopkins study because it was conducted by an economist at John Hopkins then claiming there was a full-on media blackout of the paper. Right? First of all, paper is a working paper, not peer reviewed. It was published on the website of the Institute for Applied Economics. Right? Not exactly a traditional medical institution. None of the authors are doctors or scientists. There are two economists and one employee of this libertarian institute. All of these trio have been extremely anti-lockdown since March 2020. And the paper has got a really weird definition of lockdown. Right? So the most inconsistent aspect of the paper is reinterpreting what a lockdown is. The authors define lockdown as the imposition of at least one compulsory non-pharmaceutical intervention. So if you wear a face mask anywhere that is considered a lockdown. So Neal Ferguson of Imperial College says in the UK has been in permanent lockdown since the 16th of March 2021 and remains in lockdown. Given that it remains compulsory for people in the UK with diagnosed COVID to self-isolate for at least five days. Of the 34 papers ultimately selected for this meta-analysis 12 working papers rather than peer reviewed. 14 studies were conducted by economists. Not exactly public health or medical experts. And the inclusion criteria doesn't include moderate counterfactuals, the most common method using infectious disease assessments. It excludes most epidemiological research from the review. Included studies are not representative of research as a whole on lockdowns. Many of the most robust papers on the impact of lockdowns are excluded. All this adds up to is a very weird review paper. The authors exclude many of the most rigorous studies but include those that are the entire basis for their meta-analysis in the first place. They then take a number of papers, most of which found that restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions had a benefit on mortality and then derive some mathematical estimate from their regression coefficients indicating less benefit than the paper suggests. All this together means the actual numbers produced in the review are not interpretable. So if someone goes gaga over this paper and touts it as, you know, some major thing, like Dr. John Campbell here, then he's a pretty ignorant person. This translates to approximately 6,000 avoidable deaths and 4,000 avoidable deaths in the United States. And when we come to look at the cost benefit analysis of this and how this compares to other diseases, these really are small amounts given these people primarily with significant comorbidities. Not all, but primarily. So Dr. John Campbell turns out to be primarily a trainer of nurses, not exactly much of a doctor. So what's going on with the Biden administration, the courts and social media? So major... Judges rule the Biden administration must limit most contacts with social media giants in a suit filed by Republican agencies in Louisiana and Missouri. In a decision some media folks are calling an attack on free speech, the Trump appointed judge ruled that Biden officials went too far in lobbying to remove posts dealing with vaccines and interference in American elections. There are some allegations and some very heavy handed tactics here where the government was pressuring social media companies to say what it wanted to say. When the government is telling social media companies what to do, there is a risk of censorship there. For them to now suddenly have a hands-off attitude and let anything run rampant across all of these platforms would just be radical. Joining us now from Connecticut, Charlie Gasparino, senior reporter at Fox Business Network. Charlie, the judge in this case and the Biden administration has appealed and the Junction could be overturned, says not only did the administration go too far in lobbying, pressuring the social media companies to take things down but has silence conservatives in the process? Well, all that could be true and this still could be kind of a funky ruling, right? I mean, listen, obviously the facts are not great here. The Biden administration basically got Twitter essentially to censor anything that was not following the party line regarding vaccines and more than that and actually getting people canceled. Alex Berenson, the journalist, was canceled because he's a vaccine skeptic. All horrible, disgusting stuff. But I don't know, how is it illegal for the government to ask? Do you see what I'm saying? They don't make the final decision. The companies make the final decision. Right, we're reporters. We get a lot of crap from people, right, and people call our supervisors. The question, you know, you want to have that dialogue with people that you're covering and social media is kind of a journalism outfit even though it does have pleasures that we don't have like section 230 of the communications acts. They can't get sued for life. By the way, let me just jump in because the Trump campaign did some of this as well and the Twitter files investigation uncovered some of this and the mainstream media basically ignored it, but do you see it as a battle over free speech? You know, it is a battle over free speech. I don't know the law here. The law seems dubious here that you can tell the government not to call up anybody, not to call up a social media company. Now, if the government was essentially, I don't know, bribing them, extorting them, okay, you know, we'll take away X if you don't ban Alex Berenson from Twitter, well then we're talking, then that's legal and that's not a First Amendment issue. That's a crime, okay, now how can you charge a government for that? I don't know, but that gets into another area. So Mark Zuckerberg got 70 million sign-ups in a couple of days for his new okay, so if the full force of the United States government is reaching out to you, doesn't that inherently have a chilling effect, right? If the White House reaches out to you, you know so much of your welfare and your profits are based upon government favor, why would you not be intimidated? Why would that not have a sensorious effect? Okay, so I'm struck by all the coverage of the French riots that almost all the coverage treats it as something that's unique to France and some problem with France when in reality the populations involved, they cause very similar problems everywhere they are in the world. There's nothing particularly French about these French race riots. So let me play a little bit here from our favorite Peter Zayn. France. There have been a number of protests and a number of schools and police officers have been burned in the last couple of days. The triggering event is the police killed a kid I want to say it was like 15, 17, something like that and so there's been the spontaneous uprising of violence. We haven't seen activity like this since 2005. Back then similar cause, police killed a couple of kids that were hiding from the police and it triggered riots that lasted several weeks. Too soon to know if this is going to be one of those sort of explosive protracted events, but it's worth considering because France is not like a lot of other places. Now here in the United States Yeah, so he's saying essentially there's something unique to France that's causing these riots but I have a bigger question where exactly has it worked out well for a host first world country to import low IQ groups? So I can understand in certain circumstances where you desperately need the labor and being low IQ isn't disqualifying because you have such a desperate need for labor, but where has it worked out very well for any first world country to import low IQ groups? I'm just unaware of that working out well for anyone everywhere that has done this has ended up with French, these type of French race riots We obviously have a checkered pass at a checkered present when it comes to issues of race and it's part of the conversation Checkered meaning that different groups tend to have different gifts tend to perform at different levels, have different levels of educational attainment, different levels of income, different levels of law abiding this, different levels of committing rape and murder Time, and there are members of a number of minorities that are representative in governments at all levels especially the national level, we've even had a black president. That is not the situation in France. In France, they made the decision back after the revolution that ethnic conflict was so extreme that they had to redefine what the term Okay, so where on earth with these particular ethnic mixes have they gotten it right? There are different approaches but none of them have borne any empirical result that any same country would want a model. Not the United States, not Canada, not Australia, not England, not France, not Germany. How do you know if groups are low IQ? Well, it's about the most replicated part of social science. We're in the replication crisis of social science but the most replicable, most predictive and most explanatory analysis in social sciences is the predictive power of IQ for groups of large numbers. You can also give an individual kid an IQ test at age 6 and you pretty much know what he's capable of achieving as an adult. If he scores under 100 on a Raven's matrices test at age 6, he's never going to graduate college. He's going to need a lot of help as he goes forward. In the modern age, what that means it's illegal, unconstitutional even, to collect ethnic data on the French population and if everyone was just Basque or Catalan or French or Alsatian that might be okay but that is not the France of today. I know what you're thinking, Forty, wouldn't it be wonderful if nature collocated people to our advantage so we could just look and see at a glance whether someone was likely to be dangerous, whether someone was likely to be intelligent, whether someone was likely to be a good fit. I mean, this urge for simple solutions. Now, of course you can't look and tell at a glance whether someone's usually male or female and we know that men are 10, 20 times more likely to commit murder than women but young men are far more likely to commit murder than older men. So I guess some things you can just tell at a glance but unfortunately nature hasn't collocated people for our benefit, gosh darn it. Of the colonial legacy a number of people from their former colonies have moved to the mainland France, metropolitan France and even have fresh citizenship. In fact, in some cases their great-great-great grandparents had French citizenship so these are not people who arrived recently but because it's illegal. Wow, so the people writing and not necessarily people who've arrived recently but apparently knowing who someone's ancestors are is highly predictive of how individuals will perform and it's true like low performing groups tend to stay low performing over many generations so sometimes they even regress. So in some ways like second and third, first second and third, Mexican immigrants to California are higher achieving than fourth and fifth generation Mexican immigrants. So if you want to collect any sort of racial data they exist as a sort of second class that is from the American term almost undocumented because of the racism that exists in all societies. So in the case of... Why do I assume that these riots are low IQ because higher IQ people are more able to see the future and smarter people would recognize that participating in riots like these has a very good probability of destroying your future life prospects and so higher IQ people would be much less likely to engage in the type of writing that is convulsing France right now. Also we know the average IQ of a prison population is usually around 90. So crime is overwhelmingly something that is committed by low IQ people except for high IQ forms of white collar crime. Friends, they don't even know how big the racial problem is. It's probably about 15% of the population is non-ethnic French but legally French and that has institutionalized the racism in a way that we have a really hard time... Institutionalized the racism there's no such thing as racism it's an entirely made up moral category. People just prefer people like themselves. Everyone has an in-group preference and often race is a component of people's in-group preference. Clint Medley knows that if the mean IQ is mean, then it's better unseen. Processing here in the United States doesn't matter what they've got in Brazil. You've got an urban center where the ethnic French live that is relatively well off and then you've got a ring of suburbs that is more akin to... So were the January 6th rioters all low IQ? They were not rocket scientists. It was an idiotic thing to do and yeah, I think that they were a very modest IQ. I would be surprised if the average IQ of the January 6th rioters particularly the ones fighting the police above 100. So anyone with anything to lose would have been highly unlikely to participate in the January 6th riots. So if you had a prestigious position such as you're a TV commentator you were a professor you were an important bureaucrat, you're a CEO of a company. You'd be highly unlikely to participate in things like the January 6th riots or the current French race riots. Slums were most of the non-ethnic French who are still French citizens live. Would 40 send the January 6th people to Gitmo if he were president? I would allow the justice system to work. I am not up in arms that some of them have been sentenced to years in prison. I think anyone who participated in the January 6th riots and didn't get shot and killed on the spot by police should simply count as lucky. And so that they are still alive I think they should simply have gratitude for that. So I am all for cracking down and prosecuting rioters where they are on the right or the left prosecuting them to the full extent of the law I don't think it's necessary to send them to Gitmo but to put them away for a long time in prison let that serve as a warning to others is a really stupid thing to do. It wasn't a coup. It was a riot that got out of control and idiotic people need to be punished for that sort of destructive behavior. And because the French can't even do the first step of collecting data in order to get a good grip on what the size of the issue is it's really hard for the government to apportion resources. Yeah, higher IQ January 6th rioters didn't riot they stayed away. They weren't heading into combat. So don't join low IQ groups like the Proud Boys or any low IQ groups. I remember I was walking around with this Orthodox Jew from Israel and he just started yelling death to the Arabs. I mean just totally a moronic thing to be yelling in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is still majority Jewish but it's just an idiotic thing to be yelling out loud and it's not really a high IQ thing to do. This was not a doctor a lawyer, a dentist an accountant or a professor or a CEO. The sources outside of law enforcement so in many ways parts of France even in their major cities resemble a little bit of armed camps and that makes it very easy for violence to erupt because it's it's not a big reach for people who are the subject of... You know what makes it really easy for violence to erupt people who have low IQs than have much of a future time horizon don't have a lot to lose and they do have develop all sorts of assertive and aggressive tendencies that may well serve them in one particular environment but don't serve them as well in a first world country. Living in the armed camps to rebel against the people who are supposedly providing law and order. Now for those of you who know my work you know that I'm very bullish on France in the long run. They never bet their economic much less their political system on globalization and they never integrated their economy into the European Union. They've always seen themselves faced a lot of efficiencies and a lot of the reach they could have gotten under the globalized era in order to maintain a more nationally oriented economic system that comes at a big cost but it does mean as globalization breaks down that the French don't have that far to fall because if the EU were to dissolve tomorrow and freedom of the seas would deceased to exist next week the French economic system is largely in-house they're a massive producer and exporter of agricultural products they've got energy nearby in both the North Sea and in Northwest Africa they're several countries removed from the Ukraine war with the Russians and their primary economic competitor is also their primary political partner in the current environment and that is Germany. And unlike the French the Germans have gone whole hog on globalization to the point that we're already seeing massive problems there when it comes to exposure to the Chinese systems or the Russian systems or whatever the French have none of that. Okay I think that's pretty good P-design analysis it's true the French did not go in the globalist direction that Germany did as a result France may well be better positioned to survive than Germany Germany you know sold out to Russian energy they got away with it this past winter because it's about the mildest winter on record but Germany and its economy seem to be in a lot more trouble than France and then finally the French demographic is strong because there's a neonatal sort of policy set that encourages people to have kids in large numbers giving France the healthiest demographic structure in the world outside of New Zealand and the United States happens to be third in that regard among the advanced countries so all of these things add up to a strong prognosis for the French over the medium to long term but the racial issue is absolutely France's Achilles' heel now the racial issue is everyone's Achilles' heel that has the same proportion of races it's not something that unique to France or something particularly French all right might be wondering what went on at the 2023 Melbourne International International Comedy Festival hi hi everyone my name is He is spelled as H-E and that's it it is my first name it is not my pronoun but I know my name is only two letters in English but in Chinese it's actually spelled as just one second everybody on the stool is great yeah I do grow up in China I found a small town in China my hometown is pretty small we only have half a billion people yeah they're all Chinese you probably can tell I am pretty single I'm in my 30s and very horny for love and visa sponsorship pretty desperate it's so funny like I'm being single have driven my mom insanely progressive now like in my early 20s she said to me she was like that's my name you can only date Chinese guy from mainland China I was like okay in my late 20s she was like hmm Alabama kinda black is fine okay now I'm in my 30s fuck anyone don't get me wrong I'm trying I'm trying to date I'm trying to stay in shape recently I've been fasting if you don't know what is fasting it's basically the modern ways to starve yourself to death you'll be amazed there are so many ways I'm fasting this week and it gave me nightmares like for example last night I was dreaming about dry humping rice like white rice one by one I was like yes Jasmine let's get wet oh I tried really hard I'm trying to date English in my second language I feel like dating in English can be challenging for me for example I found dirty talking in English is really confusing I have to google it all the time for example why it is okay to say oh give it to me daddy but not okay to say oh give it to me uncle come on guys they are the same generation and my uncle is hotter than my dad okay the melbourne comedy festival alright I just finished a book it's on the tutors it's by this bloke peter acroyd he's got this multi-part series on history of England so this is a book on Henry the 8th and Elizabeth the 1st this is the very conclusion of the book so talking about the reformation of the English church I was raised a Protestant I was raised at the most important centuries in Christianity but the 4th century Christianity became the empire the Roman empire took over the Roman empire and the 16th century when we had the reformation and maybe the 20th century but the reformation of the English church I learned as a child through much of a religious lens but from this book says that performing the English church was a political matter it had no roots in popular protest it wasn't the people were crying out for relief from the oppressive burdens imposed by the Roman Catholic church it wasn't driven by principles of humanist reform John Calvin or Martin Luther would have been permitted to flourish in England but Henry the 8th and Elizabeth the 1st were highly discouraging of any forms of religious enthusiasm and the English have remained over the past 500 years quite averse to religious enthusiasm so the reforming the English church was entirely conducted under the direction of the king and the queen so in continental Europe those countries that espoused Protestantism they did away with rituals and customs of Catholicism there'd be no mass, no virgin married, no court of the saints yet in Henry the 8th he was basically an Orthodox Catholic except when it came to people sovereignty so he destroyed some monasteries, he replaced the Pope but the mass survived and those who supported the king's reforming of the church were of a practical persuasion so just like the people who supported Hitler and the people who supported Stalin they did it for practical reasons so the supporters of King Henry the 8th they wanted the lands and the revenues of the Catholic church for themselves they were lawyers and courtiers, they were members of parliament and they voted in accordance with the king's will so for only a very few was the theology of the reformation important so what you got in England was kind of a mishmash of contradictory elements that developed the name of Anglicanism Anglicanism is as alien to the pure spirit of Protestantism as it was to the doctrines of Rome it was just kind of a mix and match of old religion and new religion so England became Protestant by degrees by accommodation by subtle adjustment and the people went along so time forgetfulness, apathy, indifference right that weakened the old religion beyond repair England became a Protestant nation and what that really meant is that England was no longer Catholic so the passage of time accomplished what the will of man could not work and you see the enduring effects of the reformation in the emphasis on the individual in England rather than on the community private prayer takes the place of public ritual manuals address the personal devotional life your personal work walk with Jesus right they abound justification by faith alone becomes one of the cardinal tenets the new religion this is wholly private in character right the struggles