NEW YOR K | DC EDITION
00
In the News
NEWS
Many Americans are un-
aware of “honey trapping,”
a well-developed espionage
strategy used widely by the
Chinese Communist Party
to gain political information
through romantic or sexual
relationships. ... A1
The Supreme Court has
thrown out a batch of requests
by President Donald Trump’s
campaign and Trump sup-
porters for expedited con-
sideration of legal challenges
to election results in multiple
states. ... A4
A month-long undercover
human trafficking sting in
Florida by Hillsborough Coun-
ty detectives has resulted in
71 arrests, the sheriff’s office
says. ... A4
A Minneapolis small-
business owner is prepared
to lose her business and go
to jail in the fight to keep her
restaurant open against the
Minnesota governor’s shut-
down orders. ... A1
The Chinese military is
equipping soldiers stationed
in Tibet with newly developed
helmets with a self-destruct
button that triggers an embed-
ded bomb, giving commanders
more control over soldiers at
the front line. ... A10
BUSINESS
The Bloomberg Commodity
Index bounced more than 2
percent last week, with most
commodities rising well above
global GDP growth estimates,
signaling a risk of stagflation,
economist Daniel Lacalle
says. ...A22
All potential Social Security
beneficiaries who are reach-
ing their so-called full retire-
ment age in 2021 should con-
sider filing for their benefits
this month, former Social Se-
curity Administration official
Tom Margenau says. ...A23
OPINION
Roger L. Simon: Welcome to
West China...A13
Conrad Black: Establish-
ment’s Threat of Impeachment
a Confession of Failure...A17
Rob Natelson: Don’t Be
Fooled! Don’t Let Them Divert
Us From Ensuring Electoral In-
tegrity! ...A21
FEATURES
The story of St. Christina,
who was persecuted by her
own father, shows the power
of unshakeable faith. ...B8
Even short bursts of exercise
can boost the metabolism and
counteract the health effects of
a sedentary lifestyle. ...C1
Unlike the ephemera of
today’s articles and blogs,
great books inhabit the mind
forever. ...B1
READERS’ VIEWS
Do you think large
corporations have become
more powerful than
the U.S. government?
Let us know at:
EpochQuestion.com
Read more on...A18
DON’T DELAY.
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| W E D N E S D A Y, J A N . 13 , 2 0 21
SOCIAL MEDIA
Big Tech’s Censorship of Trump
Stokes Global Security Fears
Countries may be forced to develop their own platforms rather than rely
on a handful of US companies that can cut them off, experts say
BY BOWEN XIAO
T
he swift and widespread
deplatforming of Presi-
dent Donald Trump has
broader, global conse-
quences, forcing other countries
to assess their communication
channels for potential risks to
national security, experts say.
World leaders including Mex-
Lisa Monet Zarza, owner of Alibi Drinkery, in her bar and restaurant in the Minneap-
olis metropolitan area on Dec. 30, 2020.
LOCKDOWNS
Minnesota Bar Owner Fights
System Over Shutdowns
BY CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON
MINNEAPOLIS—Bar and restaurant
owner Lisa Monet Zarza made a de-
cision in November to go all-in. She’s
prepared to lose her businesses and
go to jail in the fight to keep her bar
operating and her staff employed.
Zarza, the co-owner of Alibi Drink-
ery in Lakeville, Minnesota, a sub-
urb of Minneapolis, is currently
being threatened with jail time,
$3,000-per-day fines, and suspen-
sion of her food and liquor licenses as
she opens her bar against Minnesota
What Happened in DC on Jan. 6
Accuracy The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 as an independent newspaper with the goal to restore accuracy and
integrity in media. We have received numerous awards for our reporting, including from the Society of Professional
& Integrity Journalists, the Society for News Design, and the New York Press Association.
Truth & Tradition VOL . X V I I I | N O . 2 , 8 74 $3.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
CCP VIRUS
Chinese Regime
Struggles to
Contain CCP
Virus Outbreaks
BY NICOLE HAO
Chinese authorities are struggling
to contain CCP virus outbreaks
throughout northern China, even
as stringent lockdown measures
have been put in place.
Hebei Province is the hardest-hit,
with two of its cities, Shijiazhuang
and Xingtai, seeing the biggest surg-
es in new infections.
Authorities have publicized little
information despite imposing re-
strictions on people’s movements
Continued on A11
HOME DELIVERY ADDRESS :
The suspended Twitter account of President
Donald Trump appears on a laptop screen on Jan. 8, 2021.
ican President  Andrés Manuel valny, have accused their censor-
López Obrador, German Chan- ship of Trump as being motivated
cellor  Angela Merkel,  and Act- by partisan politics.
ing Australian Prime Minister Experts told The Epoch Times
Michael McCormack have con- this censorship by Big Tech could
demned recent moves by some of cause countries to consider devel-
the world’s largest tech compa- oping their own platforms rather
nies, arguing the companies vio- than depend on a handful of pri-
lated free speech protocols and vate U.S. companies that have the
have too much power. Others, ability to cut off communication
such as Kremlin critic Alexei Na- Continued on A3
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
CCP INFLUENCE
China’s Honey
Traps Target
US Politicians,
Experts Say
The espionage strategy President Donald Trump signs a plaque on
is commonly used by the the border wall in Alamo, Texas, on Jan.
12, 2021.
CCP to extract sensitive
info for blackmail ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
BY BOWEN XIAO
Trump Celebrates
Popular outrage in response to
the recent case of Christine Fang,
Border Wall in
a Chinese national who gradually
gained political access and power
Texas Visit
through romantic or sexual rela-
tionships with at least two mayors,
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
indicates that many Americans are
unaware that this is a common tac-
President Donald Trump traveled
to the southern U.S. border on Jan.
Gov. Tim Walz’s executive orders. tic used by the Chinese Communist 12 to tout the successful construc-
For nine months, like other bar and Party (CCP). tion of 450 miles of border wall and
restaurant owners, Zarza has had The term for this is “honey trap- a number of other immigration en-
to do flip-flops to keep up with the ping,” which may sound like some- forcement achievements from his
different executive orders issued by thing from a Hollywood spy movie, administration.
Walz, a Democrat, during the pan- but is a well-developed espionage The president delivered a brief
demic. In mid-March of last year, strategy used widely by the CCP. speech in Alamo, Texas, amid a
Walz declared the state in a peace- Honey traps are a serious risk backdrop of construction equip-
time emergency for 30 days and with regard to the loss of sensi- ment and a section of the border
has renewed the status each month tive or classified information, and wall. The barrier is one of the most
since, giving himself broad authority. particularly its use for blackmail. concrete landmarks of Trump’s
Alibi was closed in mid-March, American politicians in different legacy. The president spent years
initially for two weeks, although the positions of power, including those bargaining and battling with Dem-
closures were extended until June 1. in the intelligence community and ocrats to secure funding for the
Continued on A9 Continued on A10 Continued on A3
CENSORSHIP
READ MORE
ON A5
BONGINO SAYS RADIO
CENSORSHIP ‘FAKE NEWS’
Neither me nor
anyone else
on my team
received any
such email.
And if I had,
I would’ve
ignored it.
- talkshow host
Dan Bongino said.
Read more on A4
A2 | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

NEWS BRIEFS
IMAGES BY SHUTTERSTOCK; PHOTOS BY GETTY IMAGES; AP; INSTAGRAM; THE EPOCH TIMES

Dear reader, We are the world's last hope

I
n this week’s edition,
you will find on A5–A8
a complete overview of
what happened outside
and inside the U.S. Capitol
on Jan. 6.
Epoch Times reporter Petr Svab describes what
we currently know about the events and gives a
time line, based on video footage, interviews, and
observations by our reporters on the ground.
Meanwhile, this week’s lead story sheds light
on the global fallout of Twitter’s decision to ban
President Donald Trump’s account, and the con-
cerns that different leaders around the world have
about the move.
“Politicians have relinquished their authority
to the big tech companies to allow them to decide
how social media will be monitored and policed,”
one expert told The Epoch Times.
Also this week, we feature restaurant owner Lisa
Monet Zarza of Minneapolis, who recounts her
struggles with the impact of the CCP virus restric-
tions. Zarza, whose priority has been to take care of
her employees, now faces jail time and $3,000-per-
day fines.
“They shut us down with a two-week ‘flatten the
curve’ promise. And it was 2 1/2 months,” Zarza
told Epoch Times reporter Charlotte Cuthbertson.
“That first shutdown was hard, but it wasn’t as hard
as the second one—I think because we kept getting
hope.” Read the full story on A9.
Over the past week, the Chinese regime has shut
down a number of cities over outbreaks of the CCP
virus. With the Lunar New Year holiday coming
up, cases are expected to spike again in China,
where the CCP has closely limited the release of
information.
Jasper Fakkert
Editor-in-chief
for free speech and free
information.
John Matze, founder and CEO of Parler, talking
in a post on Parler about what he believes is a
coordinated effort by big tech companies Amazon,
Google, and Apple to remove the up and coming
social media platform as a competitor.
With seeking his removal for
incitement, Democrats would gut not
only the impeachment standard but
also free speech.
Jonathan Turley, constitutional scholar, telling The Hill that the
swift impeachment of President Donald Trump over his speech to
protesters—some of whom later entered the U.S. Capitol building
in the midst of chaos—would be unwise and set a "more extreme"
precedent.
CDC Says No Evidence 15,000 TROOPS
of a ‘USA Variant’ of The National Guard has confirmed in a statement
that up to 15,000 troops will be authorized
COVID-19 to be deployed around Washington ahead of
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
says there is no new variant of COVID-19 that
originated in the United States.
“Researchers have been monitoring U.S. strains
since the pandemic began, including 5,700 sam-
ples collected in November and December,” a Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention spokesman told news outlets.
“To date, neither researchers nor analysts at CDC have seen
the emergence of a particular variant in the United States as has
been seen with the emergence of B.1.1.7 in the United Kingdom
or B.1.351 in South Africa.”

Capitol Police Names

Biden to Nominate
William Burns
as CIA Director
Democratic President-elect Joe
Biden has announced that he
plans to nominate veteran U.S.
diplomat William Burns for direc-
tor of the CIA.
Burns, 64, was a deputy sec-
Acting Chief
Yogananda Pittman, who
joined the U.S. Capitol Biden Says He Will ‘Defeat the
Police in 2001, has been NRA’ While in Office
named acting chief of the President-elect Joe Biden has promised to “defeat
agency, after its previous the NRA,” or the National Rifle Association, once
chief resigned in the wake he’s sworn into office.
of the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Biden’s official Twitter account responded to for-
Capitol. mer Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was one
Pittman is the first woman and the Trump Administration of 14 people wounded by Jared Lee Loughner in
first African American to lead the law Directs States to Release All Tucson in 2011; six people died in the mass shooting.
enforcement agency.
COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Giffords had recounted how her life and community
“changed forever.”
Exiting Capitol Police President Donald Trump’s administration is asking states to re- Biden then responded, saying: “Your persever-
lease all COVID-19 vaccine doses, instead of holding some back.
Chief Says Efforts to Officials had implemented a strategy of keeping doses in re-
ance and immeasurable courage continue to inspire
me and millions of others. I pledge to continue to
Summon National serve to guard against potential manufacturing issues. work with you—and with survivors, families, and
Guard Were

25
retary of state during the Obama advocates across the country—to defeat the NRA

administration and held a num- Thwarted
ber of positions in the George W. Steven Sund, outgoing
Bush administration. He was also chief of the U.S. Capitol Po-
an ambassador to Jordan during lice, says House and Senate
the administrations of Bill Clinton security officials rejected or
and George W. Bush. Burns left slow-walked multiple requests by
the State Department in 2014 the agency to call in the National Guard
and served as president of the for assistance on Jan. 6.
Carnegie Endowment for Inter- Sund told The Washington Post in
national Peace. an interview published on Jan. 10 that,
in the days leading up to the Jan. 6
incident in which protesters and riot-
Rush Limbaugh Leaves ers breached the Capitol building and
Twitter After Platform
committed acts of violence, he had
Bans President Trump asked House and Senate security of-
Popular radio host ficials to let him request that the D.C.
Rush Limbaugh National Guard be put on standby. He
has deactivated told the outlet that the officials denied
his Twitter ac- or postponed his requests six times.
count, after the
technology giant Social media platform Gab
INVESTIGATIONS
and end our epidemic of gun violence.”
Law enforcement officials have opened at least
25 domestic terrorism cases related to the Jan. 6
breach of the U.S. Capitol building, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan
McCarthy told Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) in a phone call.
US Trade Chief Lighthizer Calls on Biden
to Maintain Tariffs on China: Report
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has urged the
incoming Biden administration to keep tariffs on China, while
crediting Trump with taking the regime in Beijing to task for its
spate of unfair trade practices that
disadvantaged America. Silencing people, not to
“We transformed the way mention the President of the
people think about trade, and
we transformed the way the
U.S., is what happens in China,
models are,” Lighthizer told not our country.
The Wall Street Journal in an
interview. “My hope is that Nikki Haley, former United Nations ambassador,

753
permanently banned President has reported a 753 per- that will continue.” commenting on Twitter about social media companies
Donald Trump. cent increase in traffic banning President Donald Trump from their platforms.
A Twitter spokesperson told as users migrated from
news outlets that Limbaugh, Twitter, one day after
who was followed by more than Twitter permanently
88 million people on Twitter, had banned Trump and a slew PERCENT
taken down his account. of other users.

Twitter Suspends Judicial

Watch President Fitton’s
Account
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton
says Twitter has suspended his ac-
count for at least seven days for al-
legedly violating the platform’s rules.
Fitton said he was locked out of his
account for posting "#Hydroxychlo-
roquine is a safe drug," a topic he had
been posting about since Septem-
ber. He said that at that time, Twitter
[President Donald "specifically found that it was not in
Trump] is not [violation] of its rules" but has now
resigning, and he decided to take action against
the account.
is not leaving the “I have ‘appealed’ but
public stage at all. we all know, given this
background, that this is
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), telling not about HCQ, it is about
“Fox Report Weekend” that Trump finding a pretext to silence
has no plans to resign and remains another leading conser-
the most powerful and influential vative voice,” Fitton said
Republican. in a statement on Parler.
Facebook to Remove All Content That
Mentions ‘Stop the Steal’ Ahead of
Inauguration Day
Facebook has announced it is removing all content that contains
the phrase “stop the steal” ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s
Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
The company issued a statement saying it was removing
content containing the phrase that was used by supporters of
President Donald Trump to question the integrity of the 2020
general election. Trump supporters held multiple rallies across
the country under the “Stop the Steal” slogan following the Nov.
3 election.
The move comes as big tech companies ramp up efforts to police
content that they claim could lead to potential harm offline. The
companies’ latest round of content policing started after pockets
of civil unrest and acts of violence marred otherwise peaceful
protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Biden Outlines Pandemic
Spending Measure Worth
Trillions
President-elect Joe Biden has previewed his priori-
ties for spending to address the CCP virus pandemic,
which could cost taxpayers “trillions” of dollars.
Biden said the pandemic relief bill passed in De-
cember 2020 was “just a down payment.” He out-
lined a plan that included $2,000 direct payment to
individuals and support for some small businesses.
In outlining the plan, the president-elect said that
“it’s time to raise the minimum wage” to $15 but
didn’t explain how the move would help small busi-
nesses already struggling to pay their employees.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July
2019 that raising the federal minimum wage to $15
would result in the loss of 1.3 million jobs nationwide.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 NATION | A3
SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Big Tech’s Trump

Censorship Stokes
Global Security Fears
Countries may be forced to develop their own
platforms rather than rely on a handful of U.S.
companies who can cut them off, experts say

CONTINUED FROM A1 ments for Trump’s campaign.

to millions. Ethical concerns have also
been raised, as well as what to do about
Section 230, an outdated law protecting
platforms from litigation for content their
users post, which critics and lawmakers
say needs to be repealed or reformed.
Any ideologically driven decision to censor
political speech is going to have ramifica-
tions, said Steven Mosher, president of the
Population Research Institute and a found-
ing member of the Committee on the Pres-
ent Danger: China.
Mosher said the companies are “grossly
underestimating” the number of people in
and out of governments overseas who sup-
port Trump.
“It will spark a massive move off of their
platforms to other existing and new plat-
forms that will be created,” Mosher told The
Epoch Times. “In fact, a few years down the
road, we may well be talking about how they
destroyed their own business model. This
move will cost them and their shareholders
tens of billions of dollars.”
Harsh Madhusudan, a public markets
investor based in India, wrote in a Twitter
post: “We must build our own social me-
dia platforms. This is too much power in
the hands of a private company.” Many ex-
pressed similar views.
Twitter has permanently banned Trump’s
account, while Facebook and Instagram
have blocked him from posting on their
platforms at least until the transition to
President-elect Joe Biden is complete. Snap-
chat and Twitch have also disabled Trump’s
account. Meanwhile, Stripe, which handles
payments and transactions on many web-
sites, has said it will no longer process pay-
The chancellor What shocks me
considers it is that Twitter is
problematic that the one to close
the accounts of his account. The
the U.S. president regulation of the
have now been digital world cannot
permanently be done by the
blocked. digital oligarchy.
A spokesman for German French Finance Minister
Chancellor Angela Merkel Bruno Le Maire
Twitter lost $5 billion in market value after
Trump’s account was banned, while its stock
fell as much as 12 percent on Jan. 11.
The global consequences of being deplat-
formed by Big Tech are major, according to
digital privacy expert Attila Tomaschek. If
Twitter and other platforms want to send a
message that incitements of violence will
not be tolerated, “they should be consistent
in their responses rather than picking and
choosing which world leaders should have a
voice ... and which shouldn’t,” he said.
“It is curious why, then, have other high-
profile accounts, which have much more
directly called for violence in the recent past, President Donald Trump uses his cellphone in the State Dining Room of the White House
not been de-platformed in the same way,” on June 18, 2020.
Tomaschek told The Epoch Times, pointing
to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hos- told The Epoch Times. content they post, social media platforms
seini Khamenei. Big Tech’s censorship of Trump could be are protected by Section 230 of the Commu-
Big Tech, as private companies, are free used as justification for some countries to nications Decency Act, which states that “no
to operate their platforms as they see fit, he potentially ban Twitter and Facebook, said provider or user of an interactive computer
noted, including establishing safety and se- Selepak, who noted that many want to create service shall be treated as the publisher or
curity policies and suspending users who their own Silicon Valley. speaker of any information provided by an-
violate any policies or otherwise breach the Other countries—particularly those with other information content provider.”
terms of service. more authoritarian governments—could Ryan Mauro, the Clarion Project’s national
make similar censorship moves such as cre- security analyst and Shillman fellow and di-
Targeted Censorship ating their own “nationalistic social media rector of Clarion Intelligence Network, ques-
While it’s unlikely social media companies in parts of the world” that thwart open com- tioned if Twitter’s ban was really about safety
such as Facebook and Twitter will ban for- munication, said Selepak. and security. Twitter could set up a delay on
eign leaders any time soon, which would With a likely Democrat-controlled White Trump’s tweets so they could block those
create more negative media attention, the House and Congress, it is unlikely action they felt could inspire violence, he noted.
recent moves against Trump “demonstrate will be taken to change Section 230. While “Wouldn’t that have been smarter, fairer,
that they have the power to do so,” said An- the act’s legislation is outdated, politicians less dangerous to free speech and better for
drew Selepak, social media professor at the have provided few alternatives to the law, Twitter’s stock value?” Mauro told The Epoch
University of Florida. Selepak said. Times. “Cancel culture and censorship con-
“Right-leaning politicians in other coun- “Instead, politicians have relinquished tributes mightily to the radicalization that
tries should be the most concerned that their authority to the big tech companies to Twitter says it wants to combat.”
these platforms appear to be targeting indi- allow them to decide how social media will According to Mauro, one of the important
viduals and politicians that are conservative be monitored and policed,” Selepak said. factors in radicalization is echo chambers
or promote right-wing ideologies,” Selepak While publishers can be held liable for any where the like-minded can meet, plot, and re-
inforce their alternate realities. It is better for
extremists or those who could be influenced
by extremism to be in a forum where their
ideas can be challenged, and to be exposed
to information that can de-radicalize them.
“There’s a strong argument for destroy-
ing the ability of designated terrorist groups
like ISIS to communicate via social media,
but those are targeted actions,” Mauro said.
“This measure is broad and sets a dangerous
I think that the ban of I don’t like anybody There’s been a lot precedent.”
Donald Trump on Twitter being censored or taking of people who have Los Angeles-based constitutional attorney
Robert Barnes said no country should al-
is an unacceptable act away ... the right to post said and done a lot low social media platforms to censor speech
of censorship. In my a message on Twitter of things on Twitter within their borders, especially speech by
opinion, the decision to or Facebook. I don’t previously that haven’t its elected officials.
ban Trump was based on agree with that, I don’t received that sort “Creating alternative platforms will be
emotions and personal accept that. A court of condemnation or, critical, both in the U.S. and abroad,” Barnes
political preferences. ... of censorship like the indeed, censorship. But, told The Epoch Times.
I get death threats [on Inquisition to manage again, I’m not one who “Twitter will likely face a securities class
Twitter] every day for public opinion: This is believes in that sort action because their conduct can be consid-
ered fraud on the market costing sharehold-
many years, and Twitter really serious. of censorship. ers $4B in value,” he said.
doesn’t ban anyone. Mexican President Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnes said it is “long overdue” for the
Russian opposition leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador Michael McCormack United States to amend Section 230 to
Alexey Navalny make protecting First Amendment activi-
ALL PHOTOS BY GETTY IMAGES ties a condition for the immunity of social
media monopolies.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

on track to complete the construction of

Trump Celebrates Border Wall,
Immigration Achievements in Texas Visit
CONTINUED FROM A1
project amid a surge in illegal crossings
over the border with Mexico.
“We worked long and hard to get this
done. They said it couldn’t be done. And we
got it done: one of the largest infrastructure
projects in the history of our country,” the
president said.
Alamo officials hadn’t received any no-
tifications about the president’s trip, ac-
cording to a statement from City Manager
Bobby Salinas.
The remarks in Alamo marked Trump’s
first public statement since his permanent
suspension from Twitter. The social media
giant severed the president’s direct line of
communication with tens of millions of
his followers on Jan. 8, prompting criticism
from world leaders in France, Germany,
Australia, and Mexico.
The company asserted that the president
had incited the breach of the U.S. Capitol
on Jan. 6. The president told reporters on
Jan. 12 that there was nothing wrong with
the speech he had given to a large crowd of
supporters that day.
“I think that Big Tech is doing a horrible
thing for our country and to our country.
And I believe it’s going to be a catastrophic
mistake for them,” Trump said before de-
parting for Texas.
“But there’s always a counter-move when
they do that. I’ve never seen such anger as
I see right now, and that’s a terrible thing.”
Speaking in Alamo, the president ap-
peared entirely unphased by the hyper-
partisan fallout from the breach of the Capi-
tol. Democrats in the U.S. Congress and
some Republicans have called on him to
resign from office. Democrats led by House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are seeking
to impeach him, alleging that the presi-
dent incited an insurrectionist mob. They
are also urging Vice President Mike Pence
to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove
Trump from office.
“The impeachment hoax is a continuation
President Donald Trump tours a section of the
border wall in Alamo, Texas, on Jan. 12, 2021.
of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt
in the history of our country, and is causing
tremendous anger and division and pain,
far greater than most people will ever un-
derstand,” Trump said in Alamo.
“Now is the time for our nation to heal.
And it’s time for peace and for calm.”
Border Wall
At the end of September 2020, the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security stated it was
450 miles of new border wall by the end
of the year. At the time, construction was
churning at 10 miles per day. A large portion
of the new wall replaced existing border
structures that were inadequate or broken.
The wall, combined with a series of poli-
cies, court victories, and diplomatic deals,
resulted in a dramatic decrease of illegal
border crossings in fiscal year 2020. Total
Customs and Border Protection enforce-
ment actions soared to more than 1.14 mil-
lion in 2019 from 526,901 in 2017. In 2020,
the number dipped to 646,822.
A standoff with the Democrats over fund-
ing for the wall resulted in the longest gov-
ernment shutdown in modern U.S. history.
Spanning 35 days from the end of 2018 into
the first month of 2019, the shutdown re-
sulted in either full or partial closures of
nine executive agencies with some 800,000
employees.
Trump ended the shutdown by approving
a temporary spending measure for three
weeks and demanded that Congress come
up with a bill to fund the wall in the mean-
time. When Congress failed to do so, the
president bypassed it by declaring a state
of emergency on the border.
A4 | NATION
71 Arrested in Human
Trafficking Sting in Florida
Ahead of Tampa Super Bowl
ISABEL VAN BRUGEN
A month-long undercover
human trafficking sting in
Florida by Hillsborough
County’s detectives has re-
sulted in 71 arrests, the Hill-
sborough County Sheriff’s
Office (HCSO) announced
on Jan. 11, National Human
Trafficking Awareness Day.
The operation, known as
“Operation Interception,”
was created to “combat hu-
man trafficking leading up
to the Super Bowl coming
to Tampa in February 2021,”
HCSO Sheriff Chad Chronis-
ter told reporters during a
press briefing Jan. 11.
“With less than a month
until the big game, our co-
vert operations continue,
seeking those who choose to
sexually exploit others here
in our community,” Chro-
nister said. “Our goal, as the
operation name explains,
is to ‘intercept’ individuals
involved in sexual exploita-
tion before they are able to
Supreme Court Won’t Fast-Track Remaining Lawsuits
Challenging Presidential Election Results
MATTHEW VADUM
With just over a week be-
fore Inauguration Day, the
Supreme Court on Jan. 11
threw out a batch of re-
quests by President Don-
ald Trump’s campaign
and Trump supporters for
expedited consideration of
legal challenges to election
results in multiple states.
The actions came after
Congress voted on Jan. 7 to
reject objections by sena-
tors and representatives
challenging Electoral Col-
lege votes from disputed
states won narrowly by the
Democratic Party ticket of
President-elect Joe Biden
and Vice President-elect
Kamala Harris. Republi-
can lawmakers’ support for
the objections collapsed
after multiple individuals
bearing Trump campaign
flags and paraphernalia ran
amok in the U.S. Capitol
building while lawmakers
were attempting to certify
the results of the Nov. 3 elec-
tion, delaying the process
several hours.
Although the lawsuits
the high court acted on re-
main pending, the terms of
office of the unsuccessful
Republican Party ticket of
President Donald Trump
and Vice President Mike
Pence are scheduled to end
at noon on Jan. 20, at which
point Biden and Harris
will be sworn in, replacing
them. Trump has said he
won’t attend the ceremony.
The Supreme Court, as is its
custom, didn’t explain why
it dismissed the emergency
applications seeking to fast-
track the lawsuits. There were
no noted dissents from any of
the nine justices.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Jan. 31, 2017.
take advantage of vulnerable
individuals, and ultimately,
to deter others.”
From Dec. 7, 2020, through
Jan. 9, 2021, undercover de-
tectives posted advertise-
ments online offering to meet
up for sex. Female detectives
also posed as sex workers.
All 71 suspects are male,
and are aged between 20 and
62, the sheriff said. Those ar-
rested include active-duty
military members, a fire-
fighter, a Christian school-
teacher, a banker, construc-
tion workers, local business
owners, and two registered
sex offenders.
All suspects were charged
with soliciting another to
commit prostitution or en-
tering/remaining in a place
for prostitution. Some re-
ceived additional charges,
including drug possession.
“All of these men have one
thing in common: They did
not care if the women they
were going to have sex with
were being exploited, forced
The lawsuits, which
concern the presidential
elections held in Arizona,
Georgia, Michigan, Penn-
sylvania, and Wisconsin,
are now in a state of legal
purgatory waiting to be
processed at the high court.
They could be heard later
this year after Biden and
Harris have taken office.
Many of the lawsuits chal-
lenge the election results on
the basis of allegedly uncon-
stitutional changes made to
state election procedures.
Article II of the U.S. Con-
stitution states, “Each State
shall appoint [electors for
president and vice president]
in such Manner as the Leg-
islature thereof may direct.”
Litigants point out that the
legislative power here is “ple-
nary,” meaning unqualified
and absolute. State officials,
they say, aren’t allowed to
modify election procedures
without the consent of the
legislature.
Trump campaign attorney
John C. Eastman of Anaheim,
California, told The Epoch
Times in an email he still
hopes the Supreme Court
will take up the case known
as Trump v. Boockvar. The
petition for certiorari and
motion to expedite were filed
on Dec. 21, 2020.
“By failing to act on our mo-
tion to expedite for over three
weeks, the motion to expe-
dite had effectively been de-
nied already,” Eastman said,
adding the issue of whether
the petition is moot remains
to be decided.
“There is a well-recognized
exception to mootness called
‘capable of repetition yet
evading review.’ It is invoked
quite frequently in election
litigation, as oftentimes the
THE MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
to sell their bodies against
their will,” Chronister said.
The arrests came as local
law enforcement officials
vowed to increase efforts to
prevent an increase in hu-
man trafficking before Tam-
pa’s Super Bowl next month.
“With less than a month
away from the big game,
our covert operations con-
tinue  and will continue
seeking those who choose
to sexually exploit others in
our community,” Chronister
said. “The Super Bowl should
not be a venue where these
types of crimes occur on the
sidelines, whether it’s before
the game, during the game,
or after the game.
“We know from past ex-
periences with major sport-
ing events that there will
be some who travel for the
exclusive purpose of taking
advantage of women and
children,” he added. “I want
to make it very clear, if you
are planning to engage in the
sexual exploitation of oth-
issues are as applicable to
the next election as to the
current one. Our legal is-
sue—whether non-legislative
election and judicial officials
in the state have the ability
to ignore or alter state elec-
tion law in the ‘manner’ of
choosing presidential elec-
tors violates Article II of the
U.S. Constitution, remains
important and in need of the
Court’s review.”
The petition states that
the plenary power “and the
statutory provisions enacted
by the legislature in the fur-
therance of that constitution-
ally-assigned duty may not
be ignored by state election
officials or changed by state
courts,” citing the Supreme
Court’s landmark 2000 rul-
ing in Bush v. Gore, some-
times called “Bush II.”
“Yet, during the 2020 presi-
dential election, that is what
the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court did in four cases.”
The lawsuit brought by
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.)
against Pennsylvania began
on Dec. 3, 2020, as an emer-
gency application aimed to
prevent state officials “from
taking any further action to
perfect the certification of
the results” of the election.
The Supreme Court denied
the emergency application
on Dec. 8, 2020.
Then, in a petition filed on
Dec. 11, 2020, Kelly asked the
high court to invalidate Act
77, which Gov. Tom Wolf, a
Democrat, signed into law on
Oct. 30, 2019.
“The no-excuse mail-in
voting system implemented
by Act 77 was substantively
unconstitutional and violat-
ed 158 years of standing legal
precedent,” Kelly argued.
Commonwealth Court
Judge Patricia A. McCullough
issued a ruling on Nov. 27,
2020, finding that the peti-
tioners met, in Kelly’s words,
“all six factors for injunctive
relief.”
“Petitioners appear to have
a viable claim that the mail-in
ballot procedures set forth in
Act 77 contravene Pa. Const.
Article VII Section 14 as the
plain language of that consti-
tutional provision is at odds
with the mail-in provisions
of Act 77,” McCullough wrote.
The Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania disagreed and
Police photos of suspects arrested in a human trafficking sting in Florida, announced on Jan. 11, 2021.
ers, I’m urging you to think
twice. We will find you, and
you will be arrested.”
Since taking office, Presi-
dent Donald Trump has
made fighting human traf-
ficking a top priority of his
administration. He signed
an executive order in January
2020 focused on eliminat-
ing human trafficking and
online child exploitation
in the United States, which
requires resources to be di-
rected in ways that would
result in the prosecution of
offenders, assist victims, and
expand prevention educa-
reversed the judge’s ruling.
The Supreme Court of the
United States refused Jan. 11
to expedite the appeal.
The Trump’s campaign
petition, filed Dec. 29, 2020,
challenging results in Wis-
consin raised the Article II
argument.
Trump supporter and at-
torney L. Lin Wood’s lawsuit
against Georgia Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger ar-
gues in his petition filed Dec.
8, 2020, that the Republican
secretary of state “usurped”
the plenary authority of the
Georgia Legislature “by
entering into a Settlement
Agreement with the Demo-
cratic Party earlier this year
and issuing an Official Elec-
tion Bulletin that modified
the Legislature’s clear proce-
dures for verifying the iden-
tity of mail-in voters.”
The March 2020 settlement
with the Democratic Party
of Georgia, the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Com-
mittee, and the Democratic
Congressional Campaign
Committee violated voters’
rights by setting forth “to-
tally different standards to
be followed [by] a poll worker
processing absentee ballots
in Georgia.”
A Georgia election-related
petition filed by attorney Sid-
ney Powell in a case known
as In Re Coreco J. Pearson
also named Raffensperger
as a respondent.
Another petition filed
by Powell in King v. Whit-
mer states that there were
“widespread voter irregu-
larities and fraud in the
State of Michigan in the
processing and tabulat-
ing of votes and absentee
ballots,” and that the trial
court “completely and ut-
terly ignored the dozens
of affidavits, testimonials,
expert opinions, diagrams
and photos that supported
the petitioners’ claim.”
A petition and motion to
expedite brought Dec. 11,
2020, by Kelli Ward, head
of the Arizona Republican
Party, asked the Supreme
Court “to declare uncon-
stitutional the dates/dead-
lines of December 8th, 2020,
and December 14th, 2020,
as applied to state-court
litigation over presidential
electors” in Arizona.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
tion programs.
The president also has
signed nine pieces of legis-
lation into law to help take
on human trafficking.
His administration has
also taken multiple crucial
steps to tackle the issue. In a
proclamation issued in Janu-
ary last year, the president
noted that the multi-agen-
cy Anti-Trafficking Coordi-
nation Team initiative had
more than doubled its con-
victions of human traffickers
in its targeted districts.
Trump said in a statement
on Oct. 20 last year, “We re-
Conservative talk show host Mark Levin speaks during the
2016 Conservative Political Action Conference
in Oxon Hill, Md., on March 4, 2016.
Levin, Bongino, Shapiro Deny
Receiving Censorship Memo
From Radio Company Owner
IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
Conservative talk radio
show hosts Mark Levin,
Dan Bongino, and Ben Sha-
piro have denied receiving
an alleged censorship memo
from the company that owns
the radio stations their
shows are aired on.
The Washington Post re-
ported on the alleged memo
from Cumulus, a syndicate
that owns 416 radio stations
in the United States, on Jan.
11. The memo purportedly
threatened to fire conser-
vative hosts who fail to tone
down discussions about
election fraud. A number
of left-wing media outlets
picked up the story.
Cumulus didn’t respond to
requests for comment from
either The Epoch Times or
The Washington Post. In-
side Music Media was the
first to report on the alleged
memo’s content, according
to the Post.
“I never got any memo,”
Levin said on his ra-
dio show on Jan. 11. “Nobody
threatened me. Nobody told
what I could or couldn’t say.
Because if they did, you’d be
hearing about it. But they
didn’t.”
“I haven’t incited anything.
I don’t promote violence.
But  The  Washington Post
has a narrative. Paul Farhi
has a narrative,” he said, re-
ferring to the reporter who
wrote the story for the Post.
“He’s also a liar. Paul Farhi
should have picked up the
phone and called me. And
I could have told him right
there and then I never got
any memo, but that would
destroy his entire narrative.”
The Washington Post
didn’t respond to a request
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
new our resolve to redouble
our efforts to deliver justice
to all who contribute to the
cruelty of human traffick-
ing, and will tenaciously
pursue the promise of free-
dom for all victims of this
terrible crime.”
The Department of Home-
land Security in October
announced the opening
of its Washington-based
Center for Countering Hu-
man Trafficking, calling it
the first operations center of
its kind supporting federal
criminal investigations in
the United States.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
for comment. The opening
sentence of the article ac-
cused Cumulus and its hosts
of “stoking anger about al-
leged election fraud.”
“That story is 100 percent
fake news,”  Bongino told
The Epoch Times. “I DO
NOT work for Cumulus, they
are only a sales rep. I don’t
know the person who sent
the email in question, and
neither me, nor ANYONE
else on my team received
any such email. And if I had,
I would’ve ignored it because
I am the only person who de-
cides what goes in my show.
But, to be clear, I was never
sent any such email.”
The Post story is appended
with a correction stating that
“that while Ben Shapiro is
one of Cumulus’s most popu-
lar hosts, he is not among the
voices who have promoted
claims of a rigged election.”
“Cumulus is not Ben’s em-
ployer and hasn’t told Ben
jack [expletive] about what he
can or cannot say on air,” Jer-
emy Boreing, the co-founder
of The Daily Wire and Shap-
iro’s boss, wrote on Twitter on
Jan. 11. “Also, Ben never said
the election was stolen.”
According to the Post,
Cumulus sent the letter out
on Jan. 6, the day a mob of
protesters broke into the
U.S. Capitol and interrupted
a session of Congress con-
vened to vet and certify Elec-
toral College votes. Big Tech
companies have used the
event to censor conservative
voices. Social media giants
Twitter and Facebook have
banned President Donald
Trump from their platforms.
Google, Apple, and Amazon
also booted free-speech so-
cial media app Parler from
their platforms.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 NATION | A5

What Happened Some who stormed the

Capitol wanted to talk

in DC on Jan. 6 to their representatives;

others vandalized and stole
WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

1:12 p.m. President Donald

TIME LINE Trump finishes his speech at
JENNY JING/THE EPOCH TIMES
the Ellipse in The President’s
Park.
tral east Capitol entrance
is breached. The crowd
climbs the stairs and spreads
through the upper level.
on the other side of the door.
He alerts the crowd, but some
rioters continue to break
through the glass. JIM WATSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES 2:08 p.m. The Capitol is TWITTER/ASHLI BABBITT

placed under lockdown.

12 p.m. President Donald
Trump starts his speech. A
sizable group of protesters
has already gathered at the
Capitol’s outer perimeter, at
1st Street.
SHAO LIN/THE EPOCH TIMES
12:37 p.m. A stream of
people leaving Trump’s
speech early slowly make
their way down Constitution
Avenue toward the Capitol.
The 1.2-mile stretch is about
a 25-minute walk.
12:45 p.m. A suspicious
package, later revealed to be
a pipe bomb, is found at the
Republican National Commit-
tee headquarters, just south
of the Capitol.
MEGAN VARNER/GETTY IMAGES
1:14 p.m. More scuffles
break out between rioters and
police. The line holds.
1:15 p.m. A suspicious pack-
age, later revealed to be a pipe
bomb, is found at the Dem-
ocratic National Committee
headquarters just south of
the Capitol.
1:20 p.m. A temporary fenc-
ing perimeter is reestablished
in the Inauguration platform
area at the bottom of the dou-
ble staircase.
JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
1:25 p.m. People are spotted
on the metal structure of the
2:08 p.m. The crowd that
entered from the west
reaches the entrance to the
southern wing, where the
House chamber is located.
The corridor is blocked by
about half a dozen offic-
ers. Some in the crowd try to
negotiate passage with them.
TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES
2:11 p.m. The central east
Capitol entrance door is
opened. It’s unclear how.
DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
2:15 p.m. The crowd at the
southern wing pushes its way
2:24 p.m. Air Force veteran
Ashli Babbitt climbs into an
empty frame left after a win-
dow is broken. She is imme-
diately shot by a plainclothes
policeman on the other side.
At the same time, four offic-
ers in tactical gear and rifles
reach the scene from a lower
level through a staircase to
the north.
2:24 p.m. Trump says in a
tweet: “Mike Pence didn’t
have the courage to do what
should have been done to
protect our Country and our
Constitution, giving States a
chance to certify a corrected
set of facts, not the fraudu-
lent or inaccurate ones which
they were asked to previously
certify. USA demands the
truth!”
2:25 p.m. Capitol Police
report shots fired.
2:45 p.m. A crowd is seen
inside the Senate chamber.
WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
2:47 p.m. Intruders are on
the Senate floor.
3:33 p.m. A stream of people
is seen leaving the protest.
3:35 p.m. Pence writes on
Twitter: “The violence and
destruction taking place at
the US Capitol Must Stop and
it Must Stop Now. Anyone
involved must respect Law
Enforcement officers and
immediately leave the build-
ing. Peaceful protest is the
right of every American but
this attack on our Capitol will
not be tolerated and those
involved will be prosecuted to
the fullest extent of the law.”
SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES
4:10 p.m. President-elect
Joe Biden condemns the
storming of the Capitol and
calls on Trump to give a tele-
vised address.
4:17 p.m. Trump posts a
video on Twitter reiterat-
ing to his supporters that
the election was stolen, but
that there must be peace and
they “have to go home now.”
Shortly after, Twitter deletes
the video.
5 p.m. A steady stream of
people leave the Capitol
premises. Some cite the cur-
few as the reason.
5:10 p.m. Police use tear gas
to drive people from the Capi-
tol’s upper level.
SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES

Inauguration platform around past the outmanned police

12:53 p.m. Vice President
Mike Pence releases a state-
ment saying he lacks the
authority to reject electoral
votes.
12:57 p.m. Several people
jump fencing at 1st Street,
behind the Ulysses S. Grant
Memorial.
12:58 p.m. A crowd breaks
through temporary fencing
near the Peace Monument.
1:01 p.m. The first police line
breaks on the west side of the
Capitol.
LEO SHI/THE EPOCH TIMES
the northern staircase.
1:35 p.m. Police fire irritants
into the crowd, likely from
the upper level of the Capitol,
above the double staircase.
1:50 p.m. A crowd breaks
through temporary fencing at
the top of the northern stair-
case. Several officers guard-
ing it retreat.
JON CHERRY/GETTY IMAGES
1:55 p.m. A crowd breaks
into the building through a
with minimal resistance. The
crowd reaches the House
chamber entrance. Later
images from inside show the
entrance is at some point bar-
ricaded, with police guarding
it with guns drawn.
2:16 p.m. Another crowd
reaches the entrance to the
northern wing, which houses
the Senate chamber.
2:18 p.m. The House calls a
recess during its debate over
an objection to the electoral
votes from Arizona.
2:21 p.m. At the House
chamber, the crowd, now
about 200 strong, is unable to
get through the door. Most of
the intruders give up on that
2:26 p.m. Capitol Police Chief
Steven Sund joins a telecon-
ference in which he asks the
Pentagon for immediate help
from the National Guard, as
per his interview with The
Washington Post.
SCREENSHOT VIA SENATE.GOV
.
2:26 p.m. The Senate calls a
recess during its debate over
an objection to the electoral
votes from Arizona.
2:30 p.m. Lawmakers and
staff are evacuated through
3:35 p.m. The Department of
Homeland Security says it’s
sending in agents to aid Capi-
tol Police.
3:36 p.m. White House press
secretary Kayleigh McEnany
writes in a tweet: “At Presi-
dent [Donald Trump]’s direc-
tion, the National Guard is on
the way along with other fed-
eral protective services. We
reiterate President Trump’s
call against violence and to
remain peaceful.”
3:55 p.m. Congressional
5:40 p.m. National Guard
troops arrive at the Capitol.
6 p.m. Eleven glass jars sus-
pected of being improvised
bombs are found in a cooler in
a vehicle near the Republican
National Committee building.
6:01 p.m. Trump says in a
tweet: “These are the things
and events that happen when
a sacred landslide election
victory is so unceremoniously
& viciously stripped away
from great patriots who have
been badly & unfairly treated
for so long. Go home with love
& in peace. Remember this
day forever!”
DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

1:02 p.m. Low fencing at the
Capitol steps is breached.
Scuffles break out. The police
use pepper spray.
1:03 p.m. Another police line
forms at the Capitol’s double
staircase. Riot police arrive.
SAUL LOEB/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
1:06 p.m. The joint session of
Congress convenes to count
the electoral votes.
window and a secondary
entrance north of the main
entrance on the upper level.
Some people are driven
back out by police, but more
pour in.
2:02 p.m. The temporary
fencing and police line set up
about 250 feet from the cen-
tral east Capitol entrance is
breached.
TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES
2:07 p.m. The temporary
fencing and police line set
up at the steps of the cen-
entrance and head east down
the corridor and around two
corners to the entrance to
the Speaker’s Lobby, situated
behind the House chamber.
2:22 p.m. The crowd reaches
the glass-paneled door to
the Speaker’s Lobby, which
is barricaded with furniture
from the other side. Three
officers are standing in front
of the door.
2:23 p.m. The officers aban-
don the door upon shouts
from the rioters and persua-
sion from John Sullivan, a vid-
eographer and “racial jus-
tice” activist. Several rioters
immediately start breaking
through the glass. Sullivan
spots a man with a gun drawn
underground tunnels.
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
2:31 p.m. District of Colum-
bia Mayor Muriel Bowser
announces a curfew to begin
at 6 p.m.
2:38 p.m. Trump says in
a tweet: “Please support
our Capitol Police and Law
Enforcement. They are truly
on the side of our Country.
Stay peaceful!”
Democratic leaders demand
that Trump order his support-
ers to leave the Capitol.
4 p.m. The National Guard
mobilizes 1,100 troops. As
per KSTP News, Pentagon
officials say the D.C. request
for troops wasn’t rejected
earlier in the day, but troops
can’t be used in a law enforce-
ment role. They need to be
deployed to replace police in
different roles. The freed up
officers can then join the law
enforcement action. 8:06 p.m. The Senate
resumes proceedings.

PETR SVAB of fraud, and unconstitutional vot- with protesters ... returned to his di- since been announced.

W
ASHINGTON—On
Jan. 6, supporters
of President Don-
ald Trump gath-
ered in the na-
tion’s capital for a demonstration,
called the “Save America March.”
The plan was to hold a rally in
The President’s Park just south of
the White a and then march to the
Capitol building to demand that
Congress and Vice President Mike
Pence reject electoral votes for for-
mer Vice President Joe Biden from
states where election results were
marred by irregularities, allegations
ing rule changes.
By the end of the day, the Capi-
tol went through several rounds of
Three lockdown after a sizable group of
rioters protesters broke inside. Four people
proceed died in or around the Capitol, in-
cluding Ashli Babbitt, a woman who
to break was shot dead by a Capitol Police of-
the door’s ficer. Three others died due to medi-
window cal emergencies, authorities said.
One man died of a heart attack and
panes another of a stroke, and one woman
using a flag was crushed by the crowd, several
media reported.
pole and a A Capitol Police officer, Brian Sick-
helmet. nick, died the next day. He “was
injured while physically engaging
vision office and collapsed,” Capitol
Police said in a statement.
ABC News reported that “authori-
ties believe Sicknick’s death was driv-
en by a medical condition,” referring
to anonymous sources “familiar with
the situation.” Some reports said he
was hit with a fire extinguisher at the
Capitol. Authorities are investigating
those reports, the sources said, but
they remain unconfirmed.
At least 57 officers were injured
and 68 people were arrested by
the next day, authorities said,
while announcing that the chief
of Capitol Police had resigned. At
least a dozen more arrests have
The dramatic and unprecedented
events shook the nation; lawmak-
ers and officials across the board
denounced the violence. Trump
repeatedly called for peace, but
was later shut down by social me-
dia companies. His aide put out a
statement in which the president
committed to a peaceful transfer of
power after Congress certified Biden
as the next president.
In a short address on Jan. 7, Trump
condemned the storming of the
Capitol. He called it a “heinous at-
tack” that “defiled the seat of Ameri-
can democracy.”
Continued on A6
A6 | NATION WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

CONTINUED FROM A5

“To those who engaged in acts of

violence and destruction, you do not
represent our country. And to those
who broke the law, you will pay,” he
said. “We have just been through
an intense election and emotions
are high. But now, tempers must be
cooled and calm restored.”
Here’s how events unfolded on Jan.
6, based on information collected
MICHAEL YON/CC BY-SA 3.0

from video clips, live video streams,

and accounts collected from people
on the ground by The Epoch Times.
The day started like many other
recent Trump rallies. His support-
ers began to gather in the early
hours of the morning, growing into
a crowd of at least tens of thousands.
A lineup of conservative personali-
ties gave speeches, some focusing
on demands for rejecting the cur-
War correspondent
Michael Yon in Iraq in 2011. rent election results, while others
focused more on the future of the
Republican Party.
At about noon, Trump gave a
speech to a crowd of what appeared
Michael Yon at the time to be more than 100,000
identified at people.
least three He said several state legislatures
wanted to claw back the certification
small groups of their electoral votes, due to accu-
of individuals mulating evidence of irregularities
engaged in and fraud. Pence, he said, had the
power to reject the votes that those
behavior that state lawmakers no longer consider
aligns with that legitimate.
of Antifa cells. “Republicans are constantly fight-
ing like a boxer with his hands tied
behind his back,” Trump said to
the crowd. “It’s like a boxer. And
we want to be so nice, we want to
be so respectful of everybody, in-
cluding bad people. And we’re go-
ing to have to fight much harder.
And Mike Pence is going to have
to come through for us. And if he
doesn’t, that would be a sad day for
our county. Because you’re sworn to Protesters walk through the U.S. Capitol
uphold our Constitution. Rotunda in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Now, it is up to Congress to con-
front this egregious assault on our
democracy. And after this, we’re OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

going to walk down, and I’ll be

there with you ... we’re going to
walk down to the Capitol and we’re
going to cheer on our brave sena-
tors and congressmen and women.
And we’re probably not going to be
cheering so much for some of them.
A man holds a
Stop the Steal sign Because you’ll never take back our
on Capitol Hill in country with weakness. You have
Washington on Jan. to show strength and you have to
6, 2021. be strong.
LEO SHI/THE EPOCH TIMES
“We have come to demand that
Congress do the right thing and only
count the electors who have been
lawfully slated—lawfully slated. I
know that everyone here will soon
be marching over to the Capitol
building to peacefully and patrioti-
cally make your voices heard.
“Today, we will see whether Re-
publicans stand strong for the in-
tegrity of our elections.”
Breach of the Capitol
Before Trump had finished his
speech, many people had set off on
the mile-long walk to the Capitol.
Some said they needed to be there
in time for the electoral vote count,
which started at 1 p.m.
Hundreds of people, carrying
Trump flags and wearing MAGA
(Make America Great Again) hats
and other Trump gear, had already
gathered around noon near 1st
Street, where police set up a fence
about 500 feet from the Capitol.
Some people wore helmets and
other protective gear. Most stood
around or chanted slogans.
Shortly before 1 p.m., a group of
protesters approached the north-
west part of the outer perimeter
near the Peace Monument and de-
manded that they be let through the
portable fence, which was guarded
by a handful of police officers, one
video shows. One man appeared
to try to pick a fight with an officer,
but another man stopped him and
pulled him away.
As more people approached, sev-
eral rioters in the front started to
TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES
The scene
outside the
U.S. Capitol in
Washington on
Jan. 6, 2021.
(Above L) A yank the fence and quickly pushed
congressional it over, pinning one female officer
staffer holds his underneath. Two protesters im-
hands up while mediately came to her rescue and
a Capitol Police helped pull her up and walked her to
SWAT team her colleagues. One rioter climbed
checks everyone
in the room as
over the fence and was immediately
they secure grabbed by two officers. Two riot-
the floor at the ers tried to pull the first one back,
U.S. Capitol in but another officer rushed in and
Washington on punched one of the rioters. It ap-
Jan. 6, 2021. pears none of the three rioters were
wearing any Trump gear.
(Above R) Meanwhile, a stream of people
A Capitol
Police officer
poured over the downed fence. The
looks out of a perimeter was broken.
broken window Another video appears to have
as protesters captured the same moment from a
gather on the different angle near the center of the
U.S. Capitol in outer perimeter behind the Ulysses
Washington on S. Grant Memorial. A thin crowd of
Jan. 6, 2021. protesters is seen on the street, with
more and more coming. A section of
fencing is already broken. A hand-
ful of police are seen standing on
the lawn further behind the fence.
A woman with a loudspeaker starts
to shout “Patriots go!”, urging people
to jump the fence.
“Break the law! Hey, we’re break-
ing the law. We’re breaking the law!
[Expletive] them! [Expletive] the
police!” she shouts. Only a handful
of people cross the fence. The vid-
eographer uses the hole in the fence
to go in and heads to the northwest
part of the perimeter, capturing the
moment when the crowd breaks
through.
Another clip of this moment was
posted on Twitter at 1 p.m., about
12 minutes before Trump finished
his speech.
Two more layers of the portable
fence were placed on the pathway
and in front of the first few Capitol
steps, but the police weren’t guard-
ing them at this point and people
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES
quickly dismantled or knocked
them over. Police tried to form a
line in front of another short fence
near a second layer of steps, but as
the crowd grew, the officers with-
drew behind it. It took less than two
minutes for the crowd to knock that
barrier over. A few scuffles broke out
and police used pepper spray.
The officers formed another line
and a group of riot police arrived to
fortify it.
The officers then pushed the crowd
back, occasionally using  pepper
spray, and set up a layer of portable
fencing. One man put his hands
on an officer, who immediately
punched him in the face. Another
officer sprayed the man’s face with
mace.
While the police line held, many
people started to climb the scaffold-
ing on the side of the steps leading to
the west side entrance to the Capi-
tol, as well as at least one secondary
entrance.
At around 2:20 p.m., police were
still blocking people on the ground
level, but a large group had already
formed on the upper levels and bro-
ken inside through a window they
broke and a secondary entrance
to the north of the main entrance.
The crowd started to push through
the police line near the southern
staircase, an expletive-laden video
shows.
One man slipped through, but
was quickly knocked to the ground
and apprehended by police; one of-
ficer proceeded to punch him into
submission. Two more men got
through and also were knocked to
the ground.
Meanwhile, the police line near
the northern staircase began to
collapse, allowing a crowd to push
through and pour into the space
SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
LEO SHI/THE EPOCH TIMES
(Above ) between the two staircases. Fights
Protesters broke out between some rioters and
scuffle with the the police. While some people were
Capitol Police pulling rioters away from the police,
on Capitol Hill in the aggression continued. One offi-
Washington on cer was knocked down from behind;
Jan. 6, 2021. a rioter threw a fire extinguisher at a
group of riot police, hitting an officer
into the back of his helmet.
Videos from the scene taken by
people who arrived with the main
group of protesters from the rally
show a group of rioters already
clashing with police at the west
Capitol entrance, above the steps,
while a large group of protesters
watches. At that point, it appears,
I know that hundreds have already made it in-
everyone side the building and some can be
here will soon seen through one of the windows.
Another video shows a crowd of
be marching rioters trying to force their way in
over to the through the west entrance. A large
group of riot police eventually
Capitol pushes them out. At least one rioter
building to sprays the officers with what looks
peacefully like pepper spray.
One video shows a heap of media
and equipment, some of it damaged, in
patriotically front of the Capitol building, with
make your protesters standing around.
At about 2:25 p.m., Capitol Police
voices heard. reported shots fired; only a handful
of people knew what had just hap-
President
Donald Trump
pened.
At about 2:30 p.m., lawmakers
and staff were evacuated. At 2:31,
Mayor Muriel Bowser imposed a 6
p.m. curfew.
Some media blamed talk show
host Alex Jones, head of Infowars,
for inciting the Capitol breach. In-
fowars then published a video that
shows Jones trying to convince the
crowd to remain peaceful, avoid
confrontation with police, leave
the Capitol steps, and go to the other
side of the building, where an event
President Donald Trump speaks at the Save America rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
with speakers was supposed to take
place. (The Wall Street Journal has
retracted its claim about Jones.)
The video shows a large group of
protesters did move to the other side
of the building. There was no sign of
the event, however, according to one
of the protesters on site who later
spoke to The Epoch Times.
Instead, a large group of protesters
was walking to the central east side
Capitol entrance. Smaller groups
of protesters were also seen on the
upper levels near the left and right
secondary entrances on the east side
of the building.
Police set up temporary fencing
and formed a line behind it, about
250 feet from the east entrance. As
the crowd grew, those in the front
started to yank the fence and scuffle
with police. The perimeter collapsed
shortly after 2 p.m.
The protester said he was on the
front lines as the crowd approached
the steps leading to the central en-
trance. Only a handful of officers
were there, and looked completely
unprepared for the situation, he
said. The crowd started to push its
way up the stairs.
It appeared to the protester that
some of the people around him and
even some of the officers weren’t
taking the situation very seriously,
although one female officer was
visibly upset and began to cry. She
grabbed the protester’s hand, he
said, but it appeared to him that she
didn’t apply much force to stop him.
He took hold of her hand in return,
quipping, “Are we going to dance
here?”
The crowd swarmed up the stairs
until the police line broke and
people approached the door. Some
were banging on the door, before
it was opened; it’s not clear how,
the protester said. Photos taken by
the protester indicate the door had
a magnetic lock, which could be
forced open if the door handle was
pulled strongly enough.
“I was kind of cattled in with the
rest of the crowd,” the protester said.
One video shows people trying to
keep the door open, while officers
both inside and outside try to close
it. One officer is pushed and collaps-
es to the ground. Several people help
him get back on his feet and usher
him away.
At one point, Jones is seen at the
steps of one of the east entrances,
urging people to come down.
More footage shows a young man
with no clear affiliation breaking
a window next to the entrance on
the right. He manages to smash one
pane before he’s taken down by po-
lice, who handcuff him. The officers
took him away, said the videogra-
pher, Bobby Powell, in a commen-
tary to the video. The video shows
the officers leaving, with nobody left
to guard the broken window.
As Powell picks a few shards of
glass from the windowsill, one man
is heard saying, “Why don’t you guys
open up the rest of it?”, apparently
talking about the partly broken win-
dow.
“Because I think that’s probably
illegal,” Powell is heard responding.
The man makes another comment
that is hard to understand. Powell
said he was the same man who then
came by and tore out another pane
from the window. A man with an
American flag pushes him aside as
he approaches the window, appar-
ently to stop others from going in.
“Do not go in there,” Powell says.
“No,” the man replies. The man who
tore out the pane shoves the other
man back before saying something
to him and shoving him again.
Overall, it appeared that several
hundred people entered the build-
ing through different entrances and
NATION | A7
LISA FAN/THE EPOCH TIMES
broken windows; the police needed
several hours to clear them out.
Many of the Trump supporters in
the main crowd outside the Capitol
were unaware of what was going on
inside, according to Ed Martin, pres-
ident of the Eagle Forum Education
and Legal Defense Fund and one of
the event’s organizers.
“I walked toward the Capitol. I got
there a little bit later,” he told The
Epoch Times. “All I saw was people
protesting and actually kind of cel-
ebrating. There was a lot of joy and
a lot of encouragement. The people
that did terrible things and violence
and all, I don’t know who they were.
I don’t like that. That’s not something
that I wanted to see. It makes every-
one look bad.”
An affiliate of Turning Point USA,
a conservative student organization,
bussed more than 300 students to
the event, but they left right after
Trump’s speech and didn’t partici-
pate in the march to the Capitol, said
Andrew Kovlet, the group’s spokes-
man, in an interview with The Epoch
Times.
Intruders
Among those who entered the build-
ing, there appears to have been sev-
eral distinct behavior patterns.
One group seemed to just be wan-
dering about without any apparent
purpose.
Another group was walking
through the corridors looking for
lawmakers, whom they sought to
confront with their concerns or
demands. These groups appeared
splintered and disorganized, with
each smaller group seemingly led by
several aggressive individuals will-
ing to kick down doors and smash
window panes in the process. There
were some people trying to hold
these people back in confronta-
tions with police, but nobody was
stopping them from trying to break
through closed doors, some footage
indicates.
The interviewed protester said he
took the opportunity to get inside to
find and talk to one of his represen-
tatives. Some others voiced similar
intentions, he said.
Some individuals engaged in van-
dalism and stealing. Some stole
small objects, apparently as “sou-
venirs,” but more valuable items also
were pilfered. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.)’s spokesman said
that somebody stole a laptop belong-
ing to her office from a conference
room. It was “only used for presen-
tations,” the spokesman said. Sen.
Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also reported a
stolen laptop. A video shows that the
office of the Senate parliamentar-
ian was possibly ransacked. It also
appears some of Pelosi’s mail was
stolen.
A number of individuals appeared
eager to fight with the police; they
repeatedly provoked and scuffled
with the officers at multiple loca-
tions, various videos indicate.
It appears there also was a group
of people coming with a more de-
fined plan. They came wearing vari-
ous combinations of helmets, black
or camouflage outfits, backpacks,
and protective gear. Some had ear-
phones and walkie-talkies. At least
three men were carrying zip-tie-
style handcuffs commonly used
by law enforcement, including one
identified online as a retired Air
Force lieutenant colonel. It appears
one of the zip ties was used to block a
door, though it’s not clear by whom,
since police were also equipped
with the zip ties.
While some people had posted on-
line about plans to storm the Capitol
and disrupt the vote certification,
it isn’t clear if those were the same
Continued on A8
A8 | NATION
CONTINUED FROM A7
people who entered the building.
The people who stormed the build-
ing didn’t appear to be carrying
firearms, although at least one was
carrying what looked like a Taser.
Some people also built gallows near
the Capitol Reflecting Pool. The in-
terviewed protester said that while
some people were yelling things
about killing people, the crowd
shouted them down.
Some people have speculated that
the intrusion was a coup attempt.
However, it’s not clear how that was
supposed to happen without fire-
arms.
Police Conduct
The Capitol Police has been criti-
cized for failing to prevent people
from entering the building. Un-
identified people familiar with the
situation told The Associated Press
that the police rejected several of-
fers of help, while Steven Sund, the
chief of the Capitol Police who has
resigned effective Jan. 16, says House
and Senate security officials rejected
or slow-walked multiple requests
by the agency to call in the National
Guard to assist.
One video clip circulated online
shows several police officers allow-
ing a crowd of protesters to breach a
fence with minimal resistance; the
video appears to be from a perimeter
farther away from the Capitol.
Another video shows people en-
tering a door and walking inside the
building with police officers on both
sides of the narrow corridor stand-
ing by, making no attempt to stop the
people.
“You can’t go inside,” one of the
officers says. Another appears to be
shaking his head in disbelief.
The police appeared unprepared
for crowd control at multiple points
around the building. Bowser mobi-
lized the National Guard ahead of
the protest for “logistical support,”
but, on Jan. 5, sent a letter to the Jus-
tice Department and the Pentagon
saying she wasn’t requesting any ex-
tra federal personnel and that none
would be deployed without coordi-
nating with the D.C. police first.
Sund told The Washington
Post that he asked the House and
Senate sergeant-at-arms, his su-
pervisors, for permission to get the
National Guard on call ahead of the
protest. He was denied.
At 2:26 p.m., he said, he joined a
conference call to the Pentagon and
asked for additional backup. He was
denied. Pentagon officials said the
National Guard isn’t suited for an im-
mediate deployment and couldn’t
be engaged in law enforcement ac-
tions. The troops eventually reached
the Capitol after 5:40 p.m., the report
said.
The behavior of the police inside
the Capitol varied widely.
Videos from the House chamber
show doors barricaded with fur-
niture and officers guarding doors
with guns drawn. In the Senate
chamber area, it appears somebody
used a fire extinguisher to try to stop
the intruders.
Some videos show lawmakers vis-
ibly shaken, kneeling on the ground
and hiding under desks. Some tried
to contact law enforcement and even
the military for help, but were told
that police were already doing what
they could, The Washington Post re-
ported.
Lawmakers and staff were even-
tually evacuated through under-
ground tunnels.
The interviewed protester said that
upon entering, he and about a dozen
others tried to go down a corridor
from the Capitol Rotunda, but were
almost immediately stopped by a
group of police in riot gear. The of-
ficers first used pepper spray with
no effect and then another irritant
and tear gas, which quickly forced
the trespassers back.
Eventually, a larger group of riot
police came in from inside the
building and cleared the area.
Other videos show officers stand-
ing or walking around among the
protesters inside the building. One
protester took a selfie with an offi-
cer, who was later suspended. He’s
under investigation as are several
other of his colleagues, including
one who was reportedly seen wear-
ing a MAGA hat and was seen direct-
ing people around, Acting Capitol
Police Chief Yogananda Pittman
said in a Jan. 11 statement.
It isn’t uncommon for protesters
UNITED STATES CAPITOL Door guarded
with guns.
Door never
breached.
Door
Breached
First
Breach
Short impass
with Police.
Main Crowd
to enter government buildings en
masse or to disrupt meetings of
elected officials. In 2018, a crowd
protesting the nomination of Su-
preme Court Justice Brett Kavana-
ugh took over the atrium and some
corridors of the Hart Senate Office
Building, just northeast of the Capi-
tol.
“We were planning to shut down
the Capitol Building but the authori-
ties were so scared of this #Wom-
The ensWave that they shut it down for
dramatic and us,” reads a tweet from the official
unprecedented account of Women’s March, one of
the organizers.
events shook An actual storming of the Capitol
the nation; by the United States’ own citizens,
lawmakers and however, is unprecedented. A group
of intruders had never before caused
officials across an interruption of the joint session of
the board Congress that certifies the president.
Some lawmakers, including Pe-
denounced losi, have called for fundamental re-
the violence. forms of Capitol Hill security. Both
the House and Senate sergeants-at-
arms have resigned, while the Capi-
tol Police union has blamed a failure
on the part of the leadership for the
breach of the Capitol.
Antifa-Style Tactics Used,
Involvement Unconfirmed
Videos indicate that some of the
protesters acted as provocateurs
and agitators, whipping up ire and
urging people to push through the
police, according to Michael Yon, a
war correspondent with extensive
experience covering violent protests,
who was on site.
Yon described the actions of some
individuals as “a mixture of agents
provocateur and direct action at-
tacks under cover of protest.”
He told The Epoch Times he iden-
tified at least three small groups of
The Capitol individuals engaged in behavior that
Police has aligns with that of Antifa cells.
been criticized Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) spoke of
an advance warning that Antifa
for failing to might infiltrate the protest.
prevent people “Congressman told me he was
from entering warned on TUESDAY by Capitol
Police officer that intelligence sug-
the building. gested fascist ANTIFA was going to
try to infiltrate the Trump rally by
dressing like Trump supporters,” he
said in a Jan. 7 tweet.
At least two Antifa supporters were
spotted at the protest, an anony-
mous law enforcement source told
The New York Post. FBI Assistant Di-
rector Steven D’Antuono said on Jan.
8 that there hadn’t yet been an indi-
cation of a role by Antifa, BuzzFeed
reported.
An NTD cameraman captured the
moment when a crowd of protest-
ers spotted a man trying to break
a window at the west side entrance
with a club. The crowd started boo-
ing the man. Another man in a red
Trump hat grabbed the man from
behind and pulled him away from
the window, to cheers from the
crowd, which then started to chant,
“[expletive] Antifa.”
Three men standing around the
one who was banging on the win-
dow immediately came to his res-
cue. That aligns with Antifa opera-
tions, in which several individuals
provide cover for the one engaged
in illegal activity, Yon said.
A similar thing happened at an-
other door, a video shows, where two
people were trying to break in, until
one protester stopped them, again
followed with chants of “[Expletive]
Antifa” from the crowd.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
THE EPOCH TIMES
Glass door broken.
Ashli Babbitt Shot.
One of the people inside the build-
ing was John Sullivan, an opponent
of Trump and a self-professed sup-
porter of violent revolution. He said
on Twitter that he was only there to
report the events and tried to “blend
in,” although a video that he pub-
lished online shows him egging on
intruders and convincing police
officers to let them through during
several impasses.
He was closely followed inside by
a female videographer. At one point,
she turns to Sullivan and says: “Let
me give you a hug now. We did it.
You were right. We did it.”
“Dude, I was trying to tell you. I
couldn’t say much,” he replies.
The woman also says, “You aren’t
recording, right?”
“I’ll delete that [expletive] up,” he
replies. “But I didn’t record you, I
mean.”
He didn’t respond to questions
sent via Twitter direct message.
Photos of some intruders from
inside the Capitol were circulated
online with the claim that three of
the men pictured are Antifa adher-
ents, which appears to be incorrect.
One of the men was Jake Angeli. He
appears to be a regular at different
kinds of protests and has frequented
pro-Trump events. He has professed
sympathies to “Q,” the anonymous
online persona that makes cryptic
posts insinuating that Trump and
others are fighting against a global
cabal engaged in corruption and
child trafficking. The Arizona Re-
public described Angeli as a “sha-
manic practitioner” at a climate
activism march in 2019.
“I’ve been practicing shamanism
for over a decade,” he told Infowars
in a recent interview, when Jones
excoriated him for his actions at the
Capitol.
His tattoos appear to be largely
related to folk spirituality. There’s
no indication that he has any con-
nection to Antifa, and he also has
denied having any. He used to have
an actor’s profile on Backstage.com.
The other two men accompanying
Angeli bear a resemblance to two
people tied to neo-Nazism. One was
involved in the Traditionalist Work-
ers Party, a now-defunct national
socialist group. It isn’t clear whether
the pictures indeed show the same
man. The other man has in the Capi-
tol photo a visible tattoo on his hand
that at first looks similar to a ham-
mer and sickle, a communist sym-
bol. On closer inspection, however,
it seems the symbol is actually from
a video game and doesn’t appear to
be tied to any political group.
Some protesters started to man-
handle an AP photographer outside
the building, mistaking him for an
Antifa follower as he was dressed in
all black with a gas mask on, which
aligns with an Antifa tactic called
“black bloc.” The crowd let him go
after he produced his press pass.
The FBI has  released photos of
dozens of people, asking for help
with identification. Most face
charges of unlawful entry. The bu-
reau also asked for help with iden-
tifying a masked man who officials
say placed pipe bombs at the Re-
publican and Democratic National
Committee headquarters. One of
the devices was found around 12:45
p.m. and the other at about 1:15
p.m. on Jan. 6, according to a Jan. 7
National Explosives Task Force re-
port obtained by CBS News reporter
Catherine Herridge.
Another 11 suspected improvised
bombs were found in a vehicle near
Republican National Committee
headquarters around 6 p.m., the
report said.
Woman Shot
A tragic moment took place at about
2:24 p.m. One graphic video shows
a group of protesters in a corridor
being approached by several of-
ficers wearing tactical gear and
armed with rifles. The officers are
interacting with a man in a black suit
with a pin on his lapel and a black
mask covering a respirator on his
face. Some of the protesters were
standing in front of a door marked
“Speaker’s Lobby,” which is located
in the south wing behind the House
chamber. Glass panels in the door
and on both sides of it are broken
or missing.
A young woman wearing a Trump
flag on her back is seen climbing
into an empty frame on the right
side of the door. A single gunshot is
heard. The woman falls back out of
the empty frame. With blood on her
mouth, she seems to try to get up,
but unsuccessfully. The officers and
the protesters both realize what has
happened and try to stop the bleed-
ing and get the woman out. She was
transported to a hospital in critical
condition.
Several hours later, a police spokes-
woman said the woman had died.
She was identified as Ashli Babbitt, a
U.S. Air Force veteran. The shooting
is under investigation.
Another graphic video, taken by
Sullivan, shows that the door was
blocked from the other side by a
pile of furniture while three officers
stood in front of the door guarding
it as the crowd rushed in. While
some shouted at the police, Sulli-
van tried to convince them to leave
voluntarily.
“Bro, I’ve seen people out there
get hurt. I don’t want to see you get
hurt. ... Please, let us make a path.
Just let us make a path. I want you
to go home,” he says.
The officers seem to talk to each
other briefly and then walk away.
“Go. Go. Let’s go. Get this [exple-
tive],” Sullivan shouts.
Three rioters proceed to break the
door’s window panes with kicks, a
flag pole, and a helmet.
“Yo! There’s a gun! There’s a gun!
There’s a gun!” Sullivan shouts,
while his video shows a man in a
white shirt and dark suit and mask
behind the door. The man is aim-
ing a handgun in the direction of the
empty frame for about nine seconds.
As soon as Babbitt climbs in, he fires
a single shot.
One of the protesters at the scene
described the situation in a WUSA
interview:
“We had stormed into the cham-
bers inside and there was a young
lady who rushed to the windows and
a number of police and Secret Service
were saying, ‘Get back, get down, get
out of the way.’ She didn’t heed the
call and as we kind of raised up to
grab people, pull them back, they
shot her in her neck, and she fell back
on me and started saying she was
‘fine, it’s cool’ and then she started
kind of like moving weird, and blood
was coming out of her mouth and
neck and nose, and I don’t know if
she’s alive or dead anymore.”
That protester identified himself
as Thomas Baraniy from New Jersey.
He said he and others entered the
building after climbing the scaffold-
ing and were eventually ushered out
of the building by riot police.
“We tore through the scaffold-
ing, the flashbangs, and tear gas,
and blitzed our way in through all
the chambers just trying to get into
Congress or whoever we can get to
and tell them that we need some
kind of investigation into this,” he
said. “And what ends up happening
is someone might [have] ended up
dead and that’s not the kind of gov-
ernment we can have. People have
to do something about it.”
He said he wasn’t injured, but not-
ed that it might have been him who
was shot if the woman hadn’t been
the first to try to climb in.
The police managed to clear the
protesters and rioters out of the
building by about 5 p.m., and the
Senate session resumed shortly af-
ter 8 p.m. In the early hours on Jan. 7,
Congress certified Biden as the win-
ner of the 2020 presidential election.
NTD contributed to this report.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
Lisa Monet Zarza, co-owner of Alibi Drinkery, in her bar in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, on Dec. 31, 2020.
Minnesota Bar Owner Fights System
Over Shutdowns
CONTINUED FROM A1
On June 1, the governor allowed
outside-only dining, then, on June 10,
allowed for 50 percent capacity inside;
followed by open inside at 50 percent
capacity but closed by 10 p.m. from
Nov. 13; a week later, on Nov. 20, they
were completely closed again; then
on Dec. 18 reopened for outdoor-only
dining.
Since Jan. 11, indoor dining at 50
percent capacity until 10 p.m. was
declared allowable.
“They shut us down with a two-week
‘flatten the curve’ promise. And it was
two and a half months,” Zarza told The
Epoch Times on Dec. 30, 2020. “That
first shutdown was hard, but it wasn’t
as hard as the second one—I think
because we kept getting hope.”
While the business was closed, they
saw casinos open, airport bars and res-
taurants open, retail stores open, and
businesses in neighboring states open.
When the first shutdown began on
St. Patrick’s Day last year, there were
54 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in
the state of 5.6 million, according to
Minnesota Department of Health
Commissioner Jan Malcolm.
That first shutdown
was hard, but it wasn’t
as hard as the second
one—I think because
we kept getting hope.
Lisa Monet Zarza,
co-owner, Alibi Drinkery
“We need to take these temporary
actions to flatten the outbreak curve,
so we can avoid stretching our health-
care system too much,” Malcolm stat-
ed in a March 16 statement.
Nine months later, when the order to
close again came down, Zarza had had
enough and reopened fully on Dec. 16.
“You can’t take something that be-
longs to me and threaten me with jail
time,” she said. “So they’re trying to
take my liquor license. They’re try-
ing to take my food service license.
They served me with the temporary
restraining order. They served me with
a cease and desist.”
On Dec. 18, she was served a tempo-
rary restraining order and a tempo-
rary injunction to close down;  a court
hearing was set for the following week.
“The temporary injunction would
prevent her from operating the busi-
ness,” Zarza’s lawyer, Mike Paddon,
said. “If she operated that business,
she’d be in violation of a court order
and could be actually arrested. That’s
what’s scary. For contempt of court.”
In deference to the judge, Zarza
closed Alibi for the hearing, after which
Graffiti along the front windows of Alibi Drinkery in the Minneapolis metro area,
Minn., on Jan. 3, 2021.
she was told she’d have a decision the
following day. A week later, she heard
back—the judge upheld the temporary
injunction—but she decided to reopen
anyway, on New Year’s Eve, the third
anniversary of the restaurant opening.
“You’re damned if you do; you’re
damned if you don’t,” Paddon said.
“They keep moving the goalposts.”
Paddon is arguing that there is no
evidence that bars and restaurants
are a significant cause of COVID-19
spread, despite Walz’s claims. His
second argument is under the Con-
stitution’s equal protection clause, it’s
impermissible that other businesses
are allowed to be open, but Zarza’s
isn’t. And the third argument is that
the government is taking away Zarza’s
right to operate her business without
just compensation.
Zarza said the science has been po-
liticized and not applied equally.
“It’s like going to school and the
teacher telling you the first day one
plus one is two, and the next day one
plus one is three. And the next day
one plus one is four. And the next
day, they’re going to say one plus one
is what? And you’re like, we have no
idea what it is because I thought one
plus one was two, but it’s not,” she said.
She has been vocal about reopening
against the governor’s orders as she
wanted to get as much community
support behind her as possible, espe-
cially as retail stores had been allowed
to open since before Black Friday.
“Menards has a sign that says their
occupancy is 7,000 people,” Zarza said,
referring to the mega sporting and out-
doors chain. “And I’m sorry, but our
bar holds 100 people. And they all have
the right to be here.
“The Constitution guarantees your
rights. So, if you don’t feel safe going
into my restaurant, don’t come in. If
you feel safe coming into my restau-
rant, come in.”
Walz said in May that “while the
virus won’t yet allow for business as
usual,” he encouraged people to pa-
COURTESY OF LISA MONET ZARZA
tronize restaurants over the summer.
“Our restaurants and bars are an in-
tegral part of the social fabric of Min-
nesota, and it has been heartbreaking
to see this pandemic wreak havoc on
our hospitality industry,” he said in a
May 20 statement.
Struggling Staff
Zarza employs 22 people at Alibi,
about half of whom are single parents.
“Our staff couldn’t survive,” she said.
“There’s five or six staff members
here that have two jobs, both those
jobs are in the restaurant industry.
Those are just five of the single parents
that we have that support their family
100 percent. And they lost all sources
of income from that shut down.
“It was horrible. And when we
opened. there were a lot that said
they couldn’t come back because
they were afraid that they’re going
to get arrested, they’re afraid they’re
going to get fined. Because if you read
the executive order, [Walz] was say-
ing he’d come after anyone that was
working. So we’ve got probably about
half of our staff that came back on the
16th when we opened.”
Zarza estimates that she lost hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars in rev-
enue in 2020. The federal Paycheck
Protection Program money she was
able to access held her over for about
a month, but wasn’t close to what she
needed for such an extended loss of
business.
During the shutdowns, Zarza
opened Alibi for takeout and delivery,
but kept her second restaurant closed.
Alibi’s sales were at 5 percent of the
projected sales between the two res-
taurants and only two staff members
were required out of the 40 total.
“They asked us to change our busi-
ness plan, they asked us to change who
we were, they took away 38 people’s
jobs. It just blows me away,” she said.
“You don’t have the right to destroy
our staff’s lives, our lives. What we’ve
worked for. This is my life.”
NATION | A9
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES
Over the summer months that they
were allowed to open for outside ser-
vice, Zarza set up tables in the parking
lot and business boomed. To initially
reopen, she had to use her personal
savings for food and alcohol orders,
but over time, was able to put aside
some money in preparation for the
next shutdown. Her customers were
generous with their tips, which helped
pull the front-of-house staff through.
The cash donations she received went
to the cooks as Christmas bonuses.
“They all got money so that they
could—at that point, it’s not even at
the point of buying your kids Christ-
mas presents, it was buying grocer-
ies,” she said.
Zarza’s business model is based
around being a community bar,
which was apparent as Alibi opened
at 11 a.m. on New Year’s Eve. By 11:30
a.m., the place was bustling, with
staff and customers happy to see each
other again.
However, that didn’t come without
a cost. Two days later, Zarza came to
work to see graffiti all over her build-
ing, including “Fascist bar” written in
large blue letters along her front win-
dows and “Nazis” along the side wall.
“Some of the messages that I’ve got-
ten from people—horrible, horrible,
horrible messages—like ‘I hope you
die,’ ‘I hope your family dies,’” Zarza
said. “I’ve been followed, I’ve been
threatened, just because I want to
open my business.
“Every single season, we see some-
thing else that’s trying to tear apart
America, and we’re supposed to be
standing together and fighting to-
gether.
“That’s what I see this whole pan-
demic is—it was one more way for
them to segregate America. And it’s
just so sad.”
On Jan. 7, a judge issued Zarza a
$3,000-per-day fine if she opened
again, and she felt forced to close the
doors. That is, until Walz’s executive
order allowed the reopening of restau-
rants on Jan. 11, at 50 percent capacity.
“Given the fact that Defendant is
purposely promoting its violation of
the injunction, exposing a multitude
of patrons at the establishment, the
fine should be in an amount to achieve
compliance,” the judge wrote.
For now, Alibi is open, but Zarza is
bracing for the next battle.
“It sounds like you’re in Germany, it
sounds like you’re in Russia, it sounds
like you’re in a communist country,
when you say you’re going to go to jail
for opening your business,” she said.
On Dec. 28, the Star Tribune listed 94
restaurants in the Twin Cities that had
permanently shuttered after a year of
shutdowns and riots devastated the
region. The list was far from compre-
hensive, but was still about triple the
number reported in 2019.
A10 | CHINA
China’s Honey Traps Target US Politicians, Experts Say
CONTINUED FROM A1
especially members of Congress,
are all prime targets, experts say.
The prevalence of such incidents
is believed to be underreported
due to their sensitive nature.
According to Axios, which
broke the story on Fang, she was
believed to have helped place
“unwitting subagents” in local
political and congressional of-
fices, but it was unlikely that she
herself received or passed on
classified information. Nonethe-
less, she collected private infor-
mation about U.S. officials. Fang
also targeted Rep. Eric Swalwell
(D-Calif.) and appeared to have
became close with him before
federal investigators alerted
Swalwell to their concerns in a
defensive briefing.
“The ‘honeypot tactic’ is the
oldest trick in the book,” Rep. Jim
Banks (R-Ind.) told The Epoch
Times.
“Swalwell’s gullibility and reck-
lessness should disqualify him
not just from a seat on the House
Intelligence Committee, but also
from being a member of Congress
as well,” he said.
And it’s not just happening in
the United States. There are pur-
ported CCP honey traps in the
United Kingdom as well.
Chen Yonglin, a former senior
diplomat at the Chinese Con-
sulate in Sydney, Australia, who
defected in 2005, claimed China
was operating a network of “over
1,000 Chinese secret agents and
informants in Australia.”
Sex and money are often used
as bait, he says. The honey trap
is a favorite tactic of Chinese in-
telligence to try to compromise
an official. Chen says that while
he was in office, one Australian
official on a visit to China was de-
tained by authorities after he was
caught having sex with a minor
girl. They released the man, keep-
ing evidence of his affair, after he
“offered to work for the regime,
similar to an agent,” Chen says.
‘They Warned Me’
Honey trapping is just one tool
in a broader arsenal used by the
CCP to politically influence the
United States and gain intel-
ligence, according to Timothy
Heath, senior international de-
fense researcher at RAND Corp.
“We know it is a tactic that is
used by Chinese intelligence
agencies,” Heath told The Epoch
Times. “To obtain both intelli-
gence and political influence and
access to political intelligence. It
could be used for a wide range of
purposes.”
Heath was previously a senior
analyst at the China Strategic Fo-
cus Group at U.S. Pacific Com-
mand.
“I’ve heard American scholars
and others who visited China
have been approached by attrac-
tive young women and solicited,”
he said. “In most cases I’m aware
of, these Americans received
China Develops Helmets for Soldiers With Self-Destruct Button: Report
NICOLE HAO
The Chinese military is equipping
soldiers stationed in Tibet with
newly developed helmets embed-
ded with a self-destruct button.
The button triggers an embedded
bomb to go off, killing the soldier.
“At a battalion or brigade level
command center, a commander
monitors a soldier who is far away
by using the navigation system. The
commander can activate the self-
destruct function of the soldier’s
helmet if he can’t get in contact
with him,” state-run media China
Observer reported on Dec. 27, 2020.
Soldiers can also press the but-
ton themselves. “If a soldier is seri-
ously wounded and doesn’t want
to be captured, he can activate the
self-destruct function himself. This
can maintain his dignity, as well as
prevent the enemy from obtaining
this system,” the report stated.
The new helmet is part of a “indi-
A Chinese paramilitary soldier secures an entrance of Jingxi hotel where the fourth plenary session of the CCP is being
held in Beijing on Oct. 28, 2019.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) listens during the House Judiciary committee hear-
ing on “Oversight of the Department of Justice: Political Interference and Threats
to Prosecutorial Independence,” on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 24, 2020.
Honey trapping is
just one tool in the
broader arsenal
used by the CCP to
politically influ-
ence the United
States and gain
intelligence, ac-
cording to Heath.
vidual soldier digital combat sys-
tem” given to troops in the Tibet
theater command. They face Indian
troops at the border, where there
were recent skirmishes over dis-
puted territory in the Ladkh region.
The system includes an antenna
and bomb, night-vision multi-
functional glasses, and a digital
control terminal that can be worn
on the arm.
After being equipped with the
system, soldiers at the frontline
can communicate with the battal-
ion commander at the command
center via radio, according to the
report.
Meanwhile, the commander can
see the frontline by reading the vid-
eo footage captured by the soldier’s
camera equipped inside his jacket.
By viewing the footage, the com-
mander can order to fire artillery
targeting Indian soldiers, the report
stated. It further claimed that sol-
diers can push the button to deto-
ANNA MONEYMAKER/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
briefings from intelligence warn-
ing them about this.”
CCP agents, for example, might
use a honey trap to seduce a
U.S. intelligence official or some
other official into providing sen-
sitive information, Heath said.
The CCP agents would then turn
around and blackmail the victim
to get more.
While it’s nearly impossible to
pinpoint the exact number of
honey traps that could be occur-
ring in the United States, an un-
named former defense and intel-
ligence operative told Fox News it
could be well into the hundreds,
if not thousands.
More than a decade ago, Ian
Clement, the former deputy may-
or of London, warned the public
about the tactic after he himself
fell victim to it.
When Clement traveled to
the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as
London’s deputy mayor, he had
been briefed by Britain’s intel-
ligence service. But he failed to
take heed.
“They told me about honey
A Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldier takes part in military training in
Kashgar, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, on Jan. 4, 2021.
nate when they approach Indian
forces. This system would ensure
that the Chinese side would win
any potential conflict with the In-
dian army, the report stated.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
traps and warned me that the
Chinese secret service often use
women to entice men to bed to
get information. I didn’t think for
one minute that I would fall for
it,” Clement told the Mirror.
Clement said an attractive Chi-
nese woman he met at a party
likely spiked his drink. After he’d
passed out, she went through his
room, collecting information
about London’s operations and
business dealings.
“While I was in Beijing, I was
making planning decisions from
my BlackBerry. We’re talking ma-
jor, major decisions,” he told the
outlet. “They wanted to know
which businesses I was courting.”
And in one case in 2011, South
Korean authorities revealed that
more than 10 South Korean dip-
lomats working in China had
sexual relations with a Chinese
woman called Deng Xinmin,
who was able to extract key intel-
ligence information from them.
Chinese Hotel Rooms
Monitored
Nicholas Eftimiades, a former
senior U.S. intelligence official
and author of the book “Chi-
nese Intelligence Operations,”
told The Epoch Times that Bei-
jing is investing significantly in
long-term espionage operations
to infiltrate U.S. politics.
Eftimiades said the Christine
Fang operation was “beautifully
handled” in the way it combined
both intelligence gathering and
political influence. It’s a strategy
that “can really be devastating to
another country.”
Congress members, who are
entitled to access classified in-
formation but aren’t required to
have security clearances, have
been particularly vulnerable to
covert influence and spying ef-
forts for decades, Eftimiades said.
A former Chinese official who
STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Soldiers in special forces units,
the squad infantry, as well as the
artillery, aviation, and armor divi-
sions will be equipped with this
system.
later defected to Canada said the
CCP uses a number of tactics to
gather intelligence. Guangsheng
Han, who spent 14 years as head
of the Public Security Bureau and
another five years with the Judi-
cial Bureau in China, said that
all over China, “there are hotels
designated for foreigners to stay.”
“For these designated hotels,
there are certain rooms that
have monitoring capability,” he
told The Epoch Times. “So when
guests who have certain identi-
ties check in, they were put in
these rooms.”
Hunter Biden’s Sensitive
Material
Hunter Biden, son of Demo-
cratic presidential nominee Joe
Biden, said on Dec. 9 that he was
being investigated by the U.S. At-
torney’s office in Delaware over
his tax affairs. He didn’t elaborate
on the nature of the investigation,
but it’s been widely reported that
some of his Chinese business
dealings and other transactions
were under scrutiny by the Jus-
tice Department.
In October 2020, lawyer Rudy
Giuliani alleged that there was
“sensitive” material on a laptop
belonging to Hunter Biden, in-
cluding pictures of minor girls.
Giuliani told Newsmax he had
turned the laptop over to the au-
thorities.
Giuliani also said the CCP had
seen the Hunter Biden materi-
al, telling Steve Bannon’s “War
Room: Pandemic” podcast that
everything Americans have seen,
“China’s been looking at for a
long time.”
“If the Chinese government
doesn’t have these photographs,
they’re not really a rival,” Giuliani
said.
According to Seamus Bruner, a
researcher who focuses on gov-
ernment integrity and who was
provided access to emails be-
tween associates of the Bidens,
Hunter Biden was viewed “as a
pipeline to the administration”
by the associates. The Bidens
have denied any wrongdoing.
Director of National Intelli-
gence John Ratcliffe wrote in a
Dec. 3, 2020, op-ed in The Wall
Street Journal that in 2020, “Chi-
na engaged in a massive influ-
ence campaign that included
targeting several dozen members
of Congress and congressional
aides.”
“I briefed the House and Sen-
ate Intelligence committees that
China is targeting members of
Congress with six times the fre-
quency of Russia and 12 times
the frequency of Iran,” he wrote,
referring to influence operations
in general.
“If I could communicate one
thing to the American people
from this unique vantage point,
it is that the People’s Republic of
China poses the greatest threat to
America today, and the greatest
threat to democracy and freedom
worldwide since World War II.”
Hours after the Observer pub-
lished the report, the content about
the embedded bomb and suicide-
style attacks was deleted.
But the original report was ar-
chived by multiple websites.
U.S.-based China affairs com-
mentator Tang Jingyuan noted
that this new equipment is evi-
dence that the People’s Liberation
Army (China’s military) struggles
to manage its soldiers, and has to
use extreme methods to ensure
they don’t desert their posts or dis-
obey their commanders.
Since 2018, the Chinese regime
has issued increasingly severe pun-
ishment on deserters, such as ban-
ning them from public transporta-
tion, attending school, operating a
business, working in government
posts, and applying for passports.
“Now PLA soldiers are forced to
fight after wearing the helmets.
Otherwise, they will be killed by
their commander,” Tang said.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 CHINA | A11

Chinese Regime Struggling to Contain CCP Virus Outbreaks

CONTINUED FROM A1
and requiring mass testing for
COVID-19, the disease caused
by the CCP (Chinese Communist
Party) virus.
While the central government
is reporting dozens of new cases
each day, official directives sug-
gest the outbreak is more severe
than authorities let on.
Shijiazhuang
Meanwhile, citizens revealed the
harsh reality of living under lock-
down. All gatherings, large-scale
events, and inbound and out-
bound travel have been banned.
Stores have been shut down. In
some parts of the city, residents
can’t leave their homes.
In recent days, residents in Shi-
jiazhuang complained that food
prices had gone up dramatically.
They worried that their savings
may soon run out.
“The mayor said eggs are 4.14
yuan per 500 grams (about $0.58
per pound),” Cheng Lan (pseud-
onym) told the Chinese-language
Epoch Times in a Jan. 11 phone in-
terview. “But the lowest price I can
find is 7 to 8 yuan per 500 grams
(about $1 to $1.12 per pound).”
Cheng said the prices of many
food products, such as fruits and
vegetables, have at least doubled
in the past few days.
Due to the worsening outbreak,
some schools have forced students
off campus. Meanwhile, all public
transportation and taxi services
were suspended last week under
a lockdown, leaving the students
stranded on the streets.
An internal notice issued by
the Shijiazhuang “command
center” that handles COVID-19
outbreaks and obtained by The
Epoch Times indicates that au-
thorities are anticipating a surge
in COVID-19 infections during
the Chinese New Year holiday,
which begins on Feb. 12.
Hundreds of millions of people
travel to their hometowns to re-
unite with family as part of the
Chinese New Year, the nation’s
most important traditional holi-
day event.
The command center stated in its
Jan. 6 “action plan” that districts,
counties, and cities throughout
Hebei must “lock in” supplies
for pandemic control during the
holiday, and “be well-prepared
for large-scale nucleic acid tests
in case of any emergencies.”
The Epoch Times also obtained
an “emergency notice” issued on
Jan. 6 by the “quarantine sup-
port team” within Shijiazhuang’s
command center. That instructed
Gaocheng district—where most
of the city’s infections have been
Residents line up to be tested for COVID-19 in Beijing on Jan. 11, 2021.
Passengers are stopped at the entrance of a railway station as the city cuts outside transport links and bans residents
from leaving, in Shijiazhaung, Hebei Province, China, on Jan. 7, 2021.
detected—to immediately inspect
469 rooms at three local schools
and prepare them for use as isola-
tion units.
These makeshift quarantine
facilities are typically used for
people who are close contacts of
confirmed COVID-19 patients and
suspected by authorities to have
been exposed to the CCP virus.
Xingtai
On Jan. 10, the Xingtai United
Front Work Department urged
residents to donate supplies for
people who will be staying at a
new makeshift quarantine facil-
ity. The city’s United Front also
said it needed to furnish 5,000
rooms with a single bed, mat-
tress, blanket, pillow, toiletries,
tea kettle, and other necessities.
The announcement added that
materials for 3,000 rooms should
be made ready within two days.
The goods are to be used in
Nangong, a municipal area with-
in Xingtai, while the furnished
rooms would be used by medical
staff who are treating COVID-19
GREG BAKER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
STR/CNS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
patients and close contacts of di-
agnosed patients.
While Nangong has only an-
nounced 15 infections so far, the
city says 334 medical workers are
caring for COVID-19 patients.
The discrepancy between au-
thorities’ preparation measures
and the low number of confirmed
infections has led to questions
about the official data.
“More and more residential
compounds and neighborhoods
were sealed off in the past days.
... I can’t tell you the number of
infections. We are not allowed to
say it. You should understand my
meaning after I told you that Nan-
gong is fully locked down,” Ms.
Chen, who lives in Nangong, told
Radio Free Asia.
Unannounced Outbreaks
Two northeastern provinces,
Heilongjiang and Jilin, an-
nounced new confirmed pa-
tients, although the central gov-
ernment didn’t include them in
its official tally.
Wangkui county in Suihua
city, Heilongjiang, reported that
a pregnant woman tested posi-
tive after a nucleic acid test. Her
10-year-old son has since also
tested positive.
Two days later, on Jan. 11, the
county entered full lockdown
and officials told all residents not
to leave city borders. Authorities
can be seen sealing off residential
compounds in videos shared by
Wangkui residents with The Ep-
och Times.
A man who works at a local ho-
tel said in a phone interview that
all residents are now being re-
quired to take nucleic acid tests.
Each household is only allowed
to have one person go outside to
buy necessities, he said.
No taxis or private vehicles are
allowed on the roads, according
to a man working at another ho-
tel. All businesses except hotels
and supermarkets have been
closed since Jan. 10, he said.
The outbreak has now spread
to other cities.
On Jan. 12, Harbin, Qiqihar,
and Yichun cities in Heilongji-
ang, as well as Changchun city
of Jilin, announced that they
detected patients who tested
positive after visiting Wangkui
county recently or coming into
contact with someone who had
traveled there.
In addition, Changchun au-
thorities were seeking out peo-
ple who took the same buses,
shopped in the same stores, or
visited the same restaurants as
the diagnosed patients.
Similar scenarios occurred in
Jinzhong city, Shanxi Province,
and Langfang city, Hebei.
On Jan. 11, Jinzhong city an-
nounced “wartime” mode after
two people who recently visited
Hebei tested positive.
Langfang, a city of 4.9 million,
went into full lockdown after a
person who recently traveled to
Beijing tested positive. All resi-
dents were ordered to be con-
fined at home for seven days and
tested for the virus.
Frank Yue contributed
to this report.

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TRUTH AND TRADITION

 JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES
OPINION OPINION

An Ascendant Left Silences Establishment’s Threat

and Excludes Their Enemies of Impeachment a
Michael Walsh
Confession of Failure
Conrad Black

See A16 See A17

OPINION |BUSINESS | ECONOMY| PERSONAL FINANCE WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 A13

NOAH BERGER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Facebook’s “War Room,” in Menlo Park, Calif., on Oct. 17, 2018.

Welcome to West China

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

ROGER L. SIMON during COVID-19 than anyone on
the planet—ejected Parler from
Did you ever won- his AWS servers.
der what it’s like The upstart company was disap-
to live in a one- peared, its millions of users dis-
party state? enfranchised and denied freedom
Well, wonder no of speech.
more. You’re living Sound Chinese?
in one. The major More than a bit.
means of communication—in Think this was planned?
today’s terms, that means social Just the other day, I wrote of the
media—have now been taken “false flag” (left-wing provocateurs)
over completely by the left. behind the mayhem in the Capitol.
Not only has Donald Trump— Many in high places pooh-poohed
still the president of the United what I and others were saying. I
States—been permanently wasn’t too sure of it myself.
banned from Twitter, but the But let’s review what’s happened
platform’s rapidly growing, open- since:
to-all substitute Parler has almost Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.)
simultaneously been deplat- forthcoming book … on Big Tech,
formed by Google. no less … has been “canceled” by
You couldn’t get their app for Simon & Schuster. Hawley had
Android anymore. been among the most outspoken
Then Apple made its move, first about investigating the possibility
threatening, then demanding of election fraud.
that Parler kowtow to Cupertino’s Twitter permanently blocks
vision of what the world should be. General Flynn. I guess they don’t
think he had enough already.
Twitter permanently blocks
Lin Wood, the well-known attor-
More insidiously, ney working to unmask possible
Facebook has started to fraud. Ditto for the courageous
delete groups or forums Sidney Powell.
Not to be outdone, Facebook
of people who publicly blocks Trump’s account. (Not sure
stepped away from the who was first—Facebook or Twit-
Democratic Party because ter—not that it matters.)
More insidiously, Facebook
of its extreme-left policies. starts to delete groups or forums of
people who publicly stepped away
I suppose that’s a social-justicey- from the Democratic Party be-
politically-correct totalitarianism cause of its extreme-left policies.
led by left-leaning ... or so they want (Elsewhere, it’s revealed that
us to believe ... tech billionaires. Facebook banned accounts at the
Another day and Parler was behest of Hunter Biden.)
gone from the App Store, followed YouTube announces it will no
by the coup de grâce: Amazon’s longer distribute videos investi-
Jeff Bezos—the billionaire of gating election fraud and that its
billionaires, the man who has producers will be punished for it
undoubtedly made more money if they do.
Multiple companies from Mar-
The suspended Twitter riott to Blue Cross suspend dona-
account of President tions to politicians who voted
Donald Trump appears against Biden certification.
on a laptop screen in All this in a few days, the excuse
San Anselmo, Calif., on being, in almost all cases, that
January 8, 2021. the conservatives involved were
instigating violence, the “outrage”
that occurred at the Capitol.
This from the people who ig-
nored exponentially more vio-
lence and destruction for months
all across urban America.
Sense a strategy here? A plan?
I know—I’m one of those con-
spiracy mongers. Everything has
been “debunked.” Indeed, it was
“debunked” before it happened.
Only I’m not a conspiracy mon-
ger, my friends. I’m one of those
guys who is perfectly willing to
admit it was Lee Harvey Oswald
working alone from the Texas
School Book Depository.
I’m the opposite. I’m an Occam’s
Occam’s razor razor guy—what you see is what
you get.
tells me the United And Occam’s razor tells me the
States is turning United States is turning into a
into a near clone near clone of the People’s Repub-
lic of China.
of the People’s That’s not communism in the tra-
Republic of China. ditional sense. Karl Marx wouldn’t
recognize it, not that what he had
on offer was any better. For China,
the word communism is a kind of
paleo-virtue signaling.
What China actually is (and
where the USA is headed or has
already arrived) is a form of
oligarchic fascism. The capital-
ist market’s fine as long as it’s my
capitalist market and you’re a
member of my party.
Communist Party, Democratic
Party, what difference does it
make? As long as it’s ONE PARTY.
And we’re in charge. The state
über alles.
So forget about personal liberty
and free expression and brush up
your “social credit score.” Learn to
be obedient, if you wish to survive.
And above all don’t say anything
critical or even slightly contro-
versial on social media or you’re a
dead person—or might as well be,
because you’ll be canceled.
So be careful, but don’t worry
about erasing or deleting this ar-
ticle because it probably won’t be
here tomorrow.
Just kidding.
I think.
Well ... either that, or stand up
and fight the new power. As some-
body once said, “What have you
got to lose?”
Roger L. Simon is an award-win-
ning novelist, Oscar-nominated
screenwriter, co-founder of PJ
Media, and now a columnist of
The Epoch Times.
A14 | OPINION
Wake Up,
America
DANIEL OLIVER
What a disaster!
Even sensible people
are calling on President
Donald Trump to resign.
The gravamen of the com-
plaint against him seems
to be that he repeatedly said
the election was fraudulent—and that
those comments stoked the fury that was
on display at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
To which the most succinct reply is:
Nonsense! Trump has only been say-
ing what about a third of the country
also thinks. That means Trump is in
good company—good company if you
like Americans. Of course, if you think
Trump supporters are just a bunch of
deplorables, then you don’t care much
about them, and you probably think they
should all go, too.
But go where? Not to hell, because most
of the people who don’t like deplorables
don’t believe in hell. Guess they’ll all have
to go with the Trumps to Mar-a-Lago.
Of course, the “woke” left don’t really
want him to resign: They’d rather im-
peach him.
If the Republican Party is
afraid now, it will disappear.
And it will never be missed.
But truly, leftists must have no god:
Newsmax reported that a source close
to the Rasmussen polling company told
them that Trump’s approval rating went
up, to 51 percent, the night after the
breach of the Capitol.
It’s important to focus on what’s actual-
DILBERT
PEANUTS
RED AND ROVER
GRAND AVENUE
MUTT & JEFF
ly going on here. The left don’t care about
Trump: He’ll be gone in a week anyway.
What the left want to do is discredit what
Trump has accomplished, and to dis-
credit his supporters as well. And a lot of
weak-kneed Republicans, many of whom
never wanted Trump to be president to
begin with, some of them in Congress,
will go along with it—unless it interferes
with cocktails.
Of course people shouldn’t break into
the Capitol. But people shouldn’t have
looted all across America following the
death of George Floyd—who actually
may have died of a fentanyl overdose.
The refusals, month after month, of the
left (the politicians and the media) to
condemn the rioting by Antifa mobs and
their hangers-on were teaching mo-
ments. But what they taught was Rioting
101—or maybe Rioting 301 (a gradu-
ate course). We were told, all summer,
ad nauseam, that the rioters were just
peaceful demonstrators expressing their
frustrations with the system. Nothing to
worry about here. Keep moving.
Please.
But now—of course—the Jan. 6 demon-
strators are criminals. And surely many
of them were. But the left-wing politicians
and their media allies have no credibility
on the matter, which suggests the mob will
return. Someday. Perhaps someday soon.
Meanwhile, the left will try to discredit
everything Trump has done and every-
one who supported him.
His foreign policy successes are sig-
nificant, but they’re deeply resented by
the foreign policy establishment. When
Trump told NATO’s member countries to
meet their financial obligations, we were
told by the left that it would wreck NATO.
It didn’t. It made NATO stronger.
His peace-promoting initiatives in the
Middle East would have won a Nobel
Prize, perhaps several, for anyone else.
But not for Trump.
His solicitude for downtrodden blacks
in this country was historic. His policies
produced the lowest unemployment
numbers for them ever. Did you see that
praised by The New York Times? Please.
We’re being serious.
COMICS
GARFIELD
GINGER MEGGS
BIG NATE
DRABBLE
FRANK AND ERNEST
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
Trump won about 8 percent of the black
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
vote in November, which was a 2 percent
improvement on his 2016 vote. That is
a problem—for the left. How do you get
away with calling Trump a racist (no, a
RACIST!) when more blacks voted for him
the second time around?
In September 2019, the jobless rate for
Hispanics hit a record low, about 3.9 per-
cent. And in the 2020 election, Trump got
President approximately 32 percent of Latino votes,
Donald Trump. about 4 percent more than he received in
2016. That’s another problem.
Of course the 2020 election was stolen,
as the 1960 election, it’s widely agreed,
was stolen: the point being that stealing
elections is neither impossible nor new.
Richard Nixon decided not to fight. He
has been praised (though almost always
very quietly, because after all he was,
well, you know, Nixon) for not putting the
country through the ordeal of that fight.
As a result, we got Kennedy, and then
Johnson and his Great Society programs,
from which the country, and most espe-
cially blacks, have never recovered.
Nixon was wrong not to have fought,
wrong to have abandoned the Americans
The riot was the who voted for him. Wrong to have set the
precedent. Probably he was afraid of the
sideshow. The main press and their friends.
event is what the Trump isn’t afraid.
woke left Democrats If the Republican Party is afraid now, it
will disappear. And it will never be missed.
plan to do to this None of this is to condone rioting. But
country: enact the riot was the sideshow. The main
left-wing programs, event is what the woke left Democrats
(office holders, media baron accom-
and control the flow plices, mega-billionaire monopoly tech
of all information. giants) plan to do to this country: enact
left-wing programs, and control the flow
of all information.
Pay attention, America. We’re entering
a dark age.
Daniel Oliver is a senior director at White
House Writers Group in Washington,
D.C. In addition to serving as chairman
of the Federal Trade Commission under
President Ronald Reagan, Dr. Oliver was
executive editor and subsequently chair-
man of the board of William F. Buckley
Jr.’s “National Review.”
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
(Left) President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on June 19, 2020. (Right) (L-R)Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan hold up documents after participating in the signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House
on Sept. 15, 2020.
Taking Stock of President Donald Trump
ROGER KIMBALL
It’s too early to render a
final judgment on the
Trump administration.
For one thing, it’s not
quite over yet.
For another, the direc-
tor of this entertainment
is still trying to decide between two
or three very different endings for the
president’s latest reality show. Im-
peachment? Resignation? Gary-Coo-
per-in-“High Noon”-like disgusted
departure on Jan. 20?
No one knows yet.
Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s too
soon to tally up a preliminary docket
of President Donald Trump’s accom-
plishments, pay homage to his achieve-
ments, and minute for the record some
of his mistakes and deficiencies.
Conrad Black titled his recent book on
Trump, “A President Like No Other.” I
think even Trump’s critics would agree
that it’s an apposite description.
The Good
The list of Trump’s achievements is long
and impressive.
He’s not shy about mentioning them
himself. In his talk at the “Save Ameri-
ca” rally on Jan. 6, he touched on many
highlights:
I A huge tax cut, which benefited
some 85 percent of taxpayers, cut the
corporate tax rate, and thus created
millions of jobs and primed the pump
of the economy.
I When Trump took office, the Dow
Jones Industrial Average stood at
some 18,000. As he leaves, it is 30,000.
How many trillions of dollars of value
does that represent?
I A newly revitalized military. Trump
managed to invest more than $2
trillion in modernizing the military,
which had the collateral benefit of
revitalizing morale in the services. He
also created Space Force, an entirely
new branch of the armed services.
I A tooth-and-claw attack on regula-
tory excess. Trump promised to get
rid of at least two obstructionist
regulations for every new regulation:
the actual ratio was something like 16
cashiered for every new one. Hurrah!
I That spirit of entrepreneurship is
what made it possible for his admin-
istration to oversee Operation Warp
Speed, which brought at least three
effective vaccines for the CCP virus to
market in less than a year, something
that experts predicted would take
a minimum of three to five years to
achieve.
I He was unable to get rid of Obam-
acare—thank you, John McCain—but
he did manage to get rid of its most
onerous provision, the individual
mandate.
I He cleaned out the Veterans Admin-
istration and made sure that those
who have served our country would
not be subjected to second- or third-
class medical care.
I He nominated and saw confirmed
three constitutionalist Supreme
Court justices and, at last count, 234
similarly disposed federal judges, a
stunning achievement that will long
outlast his tenure.
I He brought peace to the Middle East.
Let me repeat that one. He brought
peace to the Middle East, saw the nor-
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
(Left) A vaccine is stored at a hospital in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2020. (Right) A pharmacist
at Memorial Healthcare System, receives a Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine from a nurse,
in Miramar, Fla., on Dec. 14, 2020 .
malization of relations between Israel
and several Arab countries, something
his predecessors going back to Jimmy
Carter had tried for but failed to obtain.
I He drastically cut illegal immigration
across our Southern border.
I He largely unwound the insane witch
hunts undertaken on college cam-
puses under the auspices of super-
charged Title IX mandates.
I He began a similar attack on the
racialist initiatives undertaken
throughout the federal bureaucracy
under the rubric of “critical race
theory.”
I On the positive side of this equa-
tion, his 1776 Commission was part
of a larger effort to revive in schools,
colleges, and the culture at large
an appreciation of America’s noble
founding ideals as a counter to the
“blame-America-first” mentality
abroad in academia, the media, and
large swaths of corporate culture.
These are just a few specifics.
Behind them was the populist spirit
that Trump embodies.
What is that spirit?
It’s the anti-globalist, America-first
spirit that prizes individual liberty
and limited government, distrusts the
regulatory state, the pretensions of the
credentialed class, and the sticky en-
tanglements of identity politics.
The Bad
Almost all politicians are egotistical
narcissists, and the higher the office the
more acute those traits are likely to be.
President Barack Obama couldn’t open
his mouth without referring to himself
and his wonderfulness.
But there is an agility to successful
narcissism that Trump never mastered.
When he went to Georgia a week
ago, it was ostensibly to campaign for
two Senate candidates. He mentioned
both early and often. But the tenor of
his remarks revolved around himself,
especially his grievances. Why did he
harp on the awfulness of Gov. Brian
Kemp? He is awful, he should be voted
out, but that was not the occasion to air
that argument.
When he spoke at the “Save America”
rally on Jan. 6, he was once again too
absorbed in his grievances to read the
crowd.
The idea that his behavior was “insur-
rectionist” is ridiculous. I am sorry to
see my friend Sen. Pat Toomey climb
onto that bandwagon.
But his behavior was, as I have noted,
irresponsible.
What happened at the Capitol on Jan.
6 wasn’t Trump’s fault. But to some
extent, it was his responsibility.
In many ways, Trump has superb
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
political instincts.
But in this case, his self-absorption
blinkered his judgment. It was a stu-
pendous failure.
The Irony
The great irony about Trump is that
his virtues are nearly inextricable from
his flaws.
I never minded his tweets, surprising
though they often were, because they
seemed like just another facet of his
independent spirit.
The side of his personality that drove
the establishment crazy was the side
I found refreshing. I liked it when he
went after preening charlatans like Jim
Acosta, when he called the media “fake
news,” when he taunted politicians who
crossed him.
Trump fought. I delighted in that,
partly because of the fury it inspired
in the objects of his obloquy, partly
because it was inseparable from many
of his successes.
Donald Trump threw open
the window of resistance. The
giddy breezes of freedom blew
about for a bit. That window
has been slammed shut now.
The long march continues.
A friend wrote me this morning,
“Donald Trump lacks just one attribute
of a great politician, self-discipline, and
it ruined him.”
That may be the case, though as
I say, the concluding scenes of this
drama have yet to be decided. Trump
has often been down and out. Hitherto,
he has always bounced back.
Will he perform his Lazarus act yet
again? We’ll see.
The Judgment
In 2018, Victor Davis Hanson suggested
that Trump, for all his energy and accom-
plishments, was “a tragic hero of sorts.”
The brash, unclubbable billionaire
might stir the masses but would never
be accepted by the smooth Eloi who
actually administered our society.
Back in 2008, Obama told GOP leaders
“elections have consequences ... I won.”
It was his way of warning them that his
socialist-lite, globalist agenda was com-
ing soon.
I have no doubt that the 2020 elec-
tion will have huge consequences for
America. I think the Biden-but-soon-
to-be-Harris administration will be bad
for the economy, bad for race relations,
bad for America’s place in the world,
and bad for individual liberty.
But at the end of the day, all of those
OPINION | A15
- SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
bad things—like Trump’s defeat—are
less the result of the election than they
are the result of the culture.
“Politics is downstream from cul-
ture,” Andrew Breitbart used to say. The
long march of socialist animus, newly
galvanized by identity politics, long ago
captured first the universities and then
the schools.
They extended their empire by taking
over the media, where “progressive”
sentimentality now rules, and lately
corporate culture.
Hence all of those bulletins from
Brooks Brothers, Nike, and other woke
emporia declaring their solidarity with
Black Lives Matter this past summer
and now, in the wake of the disrup-
tion at the Capitol last week, we have
another round of hand-wringing,
virtue-signaling bulletins denouncing
Trump for his supposed assault on “our
democracy.”
It’s been a long time coming. Imme-
diately after the 2016 election, Google
devoted one of its company-wide
discussion sessions to the awfulness
of the election and what it would do to
prevent it from happening again.
The company would, asserted one ex-
ecutive, devote its enormous resources
to ensure that the populist movement,
“not just in the U.S. but around the
world,” would be merely a “blip” and
a “hiccup” in the “moral arc of history
that bends toward progress.”
Well, Google certainly did its bit to
defeat Trump, and now, they have joined
other fascistic bastions of Big Tech—
Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and
the rest—to clamp down on dissenting
opinion wherever it might be found: in
the hands of Trump, certainly, who was
unceremoniously booted off social me-
dia even as the free-speech Twitter alter-
native Parler.com was canceled from the
Android and Apple app store and even
booted from Amazon’s data servers.
The friend who wrote me this morning
continued with this cherry prognosti-
cation: “I think that power will reveal
the weakness, not the strength, of the
Democrats, and they will tear them-
selves apart in the next two years.”
Maybe.
And maybe he’s also right that “the
Republicans will win big in 2022, and
Biden, assuming he lives four years, will
be the last Democratic president, at least
as that party is currently constituted.”
That is entirely possible, too, but only
because the party is moving so rapidly
to the left.
It’s his conclusion I find myself skepti-
cal about. “The election of 2020 was,
I think, the dawn of a new American
politics.”
At the moment, I confess, it looks
to me like the 2020 election was just
the next step in that long march I
described. Trump threw open the win-
dow of resistance. The giddy breezes
of freedom blew about for a bit.
That window has been slammed shut
now. The long march continues. Those
directing it were surprised by Trump in
2016. They resolved not to let it happen
again.
I’d say the odds are pretty good that
it won’t.
Roger Kimball is the editor and
publisher of The New Criterion and
publisher of Encounter Books. His most
recent book is “Who Rules? Sovereignty,
Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom
in the 21st Century.”
A16 | OPINION
An Ascendant Left
Silences and
Excludes
Its Enemies
MICHAEL WALSH
The best show on televi-
sion right now features
a major city, the capital
of an unsteady govern-
ment, that is gradually
being pulled apart by two
competing political parties.
The center can’t hold; it’s being steadily
overwhelmed by a pair of rival Socialist
groups who don’t hesitate to take their
conflicts into the streets as they sweep
away their country’s past and head into a
glorious future.
Meanwhile, the citizens of this increas-
ingly fractured metropolis take refuge in a
variety of vices, including transvestitism,
casual sex of all permutations, part-time
prostitution, blackmail, drug addiction, fi-
nancial speculation and, when necessary,
murder—and these are just the cops try-
ing their best to hold the Republic togeth-
er. Meanwhile, outside the elegant halls of
authority, armed gangs roam the streets,
setting upon each other with abandon in
the ultimate game of thrones.
Washington, D.C., in 2021? No, Berlin in
the late 1920s.
“Babylon Berlin,” now in its third season
on Netflix, isn’t only brilliant storytelling
for grownups, but a cautionary tale for our
times. The collapse of the Weimar Repub-
lic, which lasted from the chaotic after-
math of World War I to the triumph of
National Socialism under Adolf Hitler in
1933, was a brief, “liberated” interregnum
between two halves of the same conti-
nent-wide civil war among the grandsons
of Queen Victoria, marked by a febrile,
anything-goes artistic and social freedom
that burned itself out in less than 15 years.
In the struggle for Socialist supremacy,
it was Hitler’s brownshirts who bested
Stalin’s red shirts. Instead of owning the
means of production, as Marx and Lenin
had advocated, the Nazis—like their
counterparts in Mussolini’s Italy—simply
co-opted them.
As in China today, the mighty engines
of capitalism were allowed to flourish
within tight parameters, and everything
was put to the service of the State. In short
order, the German military machine was
back in business, national pride restored,
and the population was infused with a
kind of pre-modern “wokeness,” in which
the leader was worshipped, dissent was
regarded as treason, and ideological
enemies weren’t only to be monitored and
crushed but liquidated.
Ascendant Left
It can’t happen here, you say?
In the few short days following the
collapse of President Donald Trump’s at-
tempts to bring evidence of electoral fraud
to the attention of the state legislatures
and the courts—not to mention the ca-
lamitous events of Jan. 6—the ascendant
left has moved swiftly to capitalize on
what has proved a stunning propaganda
Follow 3 immigrants circa 1900 to and across
America in this epic and true story of unyielding
faith, love, and honor…
Honoring Anna — A Two-Book Series
from beloved Author Douglas Hoff
victory for them and neutralize their en-
emies on the right.
Forget the looting, burning, and general
civil unrest at the hands of BLM and Anti-
fa in cities across America last summer—
for which next to no one has yet been
punished, and which was widely cheered
by both the mainstream media and
Democrat politicians up to and includ-
ing Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
That’s all ancient history now, replaced by
the “insurrection,” the “armed riot” at the
Capitol, the “worst attack on Washington”
since the War of 1812, when the British
burned the capital and the White House.
Of course, it was not. Unrecalled by the
born-yesterday media, for example, is the
1954 attack by four Puerto Rican sepa-
ratists on the House of Representatives,
during which some 30 shots were fired
and five congressmen were wounded; the
terrorists were later pardoned by Jimmy
Carter in 1979. Also forgotten: the bomb-
ings of the Capitol building and the Pen-
tagon in the 1970s by the radical leftists of
the Weather Underground, led by Barack
Obama’s buddy William Ayers.
Never mind. In less than a week, the
Democrat/Media/Tech/Social Media
complex has sprung into action, deplat-
forming their ideological enemies in a
mighty blitzkrieg, starting with the presi-
dent of the United States, who has been
rendered a non-person in true Stalinist
style. Twitter accounts belonging to po-
litical undesirables starting with Trump
have suddenly been suspended without
warning—including mine (@dkahaner-
ules)—or explanation, in the name of
“safety” from competing ideas.
Meanwhile, the upstart rival Parler has
been summarily unhosted by big tech
servers, in the hopes that it will wither and
die. The Republican National Committee
has found itself cut off from email fun-
draising regarding election fraud by an
email marketing firm called Salesforce,
while the Hallmark company is now ask-
ing Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Roger
Marshall (R-Kan.) to return its campaign
contributions, on the specious grounds
that the two Republicans are somehow
culpable for last week’s disturbance by
questioning the Electoral College votes.
The Marriott hotel chain has now
suspended donations to the Republi-
can senators who objected to certifying
Biden’s win on Jan. 6.
Civil Rights Act
Such burgeoning private-sector fascism
is naturally cheered on by the left but also
by “conservatives” whose devotion to
Milton Friedmanesque capitalism has led
them to defend censorship by observing
that a), it’s not a First Amendment viola-
tion because it’s not the federal govern-
ment that’s doing it and, b) if you don’t like
it, start your own Twitter or Facebook.
This is nonsense. The big tech compa-
nies are no longer fledgling startups in
Jeff Bezos’s garage (Amazon) or Mark
Beautifully written… An amazing true story
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— Vicki Heller
A powerful and emotionally stirring profile of
an amazing woman, written from the heart.”
— Amazon book review
Honoring Anna is destined to become an
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— Abraham Hoover
A captivating story, overflowing with
adventure and romance.”
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A Most Meaningful Gift
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BN.com
Black Lives Matter protesters raise their fists as a fire burns, after clashes with law enforcement
near the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct, in Seattle on June 8, 2020.
Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room (Face-
book). Instead, they have become public
utilities and monopolies, buying up or
driving out their competition in a way that
would shame Standard Oil or AT&T. They
have also become, in effect, indispensable
public utilities, like electric companies,
providing essentials but regulated by lo-
cal, state, and federal governments for the
common good.
In attempting to stifle Parler and other
rivals so brazenly and ruthlessly, the big
tech monopolies have also left them-
selves wide open to juicy restraint of
trade lawsuits, as well as federal charges
for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964
definition of public accommodations,
which prohibits discrimination against
any class of citizens in businesses that are
open to the public.
Let’s look at the law: Title II of the Civil
Rights Act explicitly states, “All persons
shall be entitled to the full and equal
enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities,
privileges, advantages, and accommoda-
tions of any place of public accommoda-
tion, without discrimination on the ground
of race, color, religion, or national origin.”
Such places were defined as hotels,
restaurants, movie theaters, concert halls,
sports arenas, stadiums, “or other places
of entertainment” which “customarily
presents films, performances, athletic
teams, exhibitions, or other sources of en-
tertainment which move in commerce.”
Can you spell Facebook? Do you ever
watch YouTube (owned by Google)? With
so much commerce now being conducted
online—both Twitter and Facebook are
important selling spaces for many busi-
ness—how do the tech giants not fall
under these provisions? If the right to an
abortion can be discerned in the penum-
bras and emanations of an occluded con-
stitutional “right to privacy,” can anyone
seriously argue the tech companies aren’t
subject to the Civil Rights Act?
Similarly, restraint of trade, which
derives from English common law and
is embedded in the U.S. code, forbids
monopolies, tortious interference with a
rival’s business, and price-fixing. Hello,
Parler!
Power
And where are the conservative lawyers,
who should have been fighting this battle
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tion. Arping Restaurant 45 Inc.
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STELLA’S
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LIES KILL, TRUTH SAVES
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
DAVID RYDER/GETTY IMAGES
for at least the past four years?
The problem now is that the incoming
Biden administration has no intention
of going after its digital brownshirts and
manufacturing partners, any more than
Hitler would have gone after Krupp or
Thyssen while they were supplying the
means to rearm Germany, or punishing
reporters for the Völkischer Beobachter,
the Nazi Party newspaper. Getting the
media on their side was crucial to both the
success of the National Socialist movement
in Germany and in its erstwhile ally, the
USSR, where Pravda and Izvestia provided
all the news that was fit to print according
to the party commissars.
Like the journeymen who quickly
adopted the party line in Germany after
1933, the American media has plainly
chosen sides. Dissenters from the new or-
thodoxy will not only be kicked off social
media, they’ll be branded as ideological
lepers and denied further employment.
Anyone so much as associated with or
supportive of the Trump administration
will henceforth be deemed an outcast,
and headed for the re-education camps
or worse.
“Let it be known to the business world:
Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists
above, and Forbes will assume that
everything your company or firm talks
about is a lie,” wrote that magazine’s chief
content officer, Randall Lane recently.
“We’re going to scrutinize, double-check,
investigate with the same skepticism we’d
approach a Trump tweet.”
At a time when the Democrats are beg-
ging for a peaceful transition of power,
this would seem an odd way to heal the
country’s divisions. But who’s going to
call them on it? A country that prides itself
on the fiction that we’re a nation of laws,
not men, is finding out the hard way what
repressive ideologues have known not
only since Weimar and Berlin, but since
Babylon itself: power is all that matters,
and the laws will follow.
Who’s going to stop them?
Michael Walsh is the editor of The-Pipeline.
org and the author of “The Devil’s Pleasure
Palace” and “The Fiery Angel,” both pub-
lished by Encounter Books. His latest book,
“Last Stands,” a cultural study of military
history from the Greeks to the Korean War,
was recently published.
Legal Notices
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under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at
3952 Broadway, New York, NY 10032. New York
County, for on premises consumption. Ku-Raku
New York Inc.
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Wine # 1321007, has been applied for by
the undersigned to sell Liquor, Wine, Beer
& Cider at retail in a Restaurant under the
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ber 1331008, for Restaurant Wine, has been Grand Ave., Maspeth, NY 11378. Queens
applied for by the undersigned to sell Wine, Beer County, for on premises consumption. The
& Cider at retail in a Restaurant under the Alco- City Diner Corp.
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& Cider at retail in a Restaurant under the Alco- Kings County, for on premises consumption.
holic Beverage Control Law at 215-10 Northern Tikal Cafe Corp. d/b/a Tikal Cafe.
Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361. Queens County, for on
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Number 1331328, for Restaurant Wine, has
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# 1333302 for Wine & Beer has been applied for Wine, Beer & Cider at retail in a Restaurant
by the undersigned to sell Wine & Beer at retail under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at
under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at 276 366 W. 52nd St., New York, NY 10019. New
5th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215. Kings County, York County, for on premises consumption.
for on premises consumption. Bariyabaibai Inc. Toribro Ramen Inc.
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ber 1323955, for On Premise Liquor has been Number 1330889, for Restaurant Wine has
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Wine, Beer & Cider at retail under the Alcoholic Wine, Beer & Cider at retail in a Restaurant
Beverage Control Law at 360 9th Ave., New York, under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at
NY 10001. New York County, for on premises 108-25 Ascan Ave., Forest Hills, NY 11375.
consumption. Mates Global LTD d/b/a Hudson Queens County, for on premises consump-
Yards Tavern. tion. Akal Holdings LLC d/b/a White Radish.
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 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 OPINION | A17

Establishment’s Threat of Impeachment

a Confession of Failure
MARK ZOU/THE EPOCH TIMES

CONRAD BLACK People march

The whole world is now
witnessing the most
lethal episode to date in
the national bipartisan
political establishment’s
effort to destroy Donald
Trump.
Approximately half the country believes
that the presidential election was rigged,
and no honest person can deny that there
are legitimate questions about the vote in
five or six states. The fact that the election
went off smoothly in the other 44 states
highlights the irregularities that may have
determined the result.
Now, practically the entire media and so-
cial media have locked arms in an airtight
pretense that any question of the legiti-
macy of the election is “nonsense” (veteran
Fox News commentator Brit Hume), and
any suggestions to the contrary are banned
on the major social media outlets. This
is a totalitarian suppression of legitimate
public concerns; it’s unconstitutional, and
it’s not a demonstration of confidence by
Trump’s tormentors.
The pretense that it has been fairly and
judicially determined to have been a just
election is required to make the case that
the great Trump meeting on Jan. 6 in
Washington was a criminal enterprise,
and not what it really was: a peaceful
gathering of some of the scores of millions
of people who feel that the election was
stolen from them.
Trump didn’t incite violence, as anyone
can ascertain by listening to his remarks.
The trials of the chief perpetrators will
reveal who among them were profes-
sional hooligans and who were really
active Trump political supporters. But in
either case, what occurred is the last thing
Trump himself wanted. (There’s no ex-
cuse for the insufficient security protect-
ing the Capitol.)
But in order to try once again to destroy
Trump and disperse his immense follow-
ing, his enemies have had to try to stamp
out any public airing of the continuing
doubts about the validity of the election,
The logical and creditable response to
the collapse in the prestige of the coun-
try’s orthodox leaders is to raise their
game, put up better candidates in both
the parties (not the dismal selection of
senatorial candidates available to Geor-
gia’s voters last week), and produce some
original policies. Instead, they have just
tried to stone to death the person who did
produce original policies.
Serving the Country Well
The political establishment has tragically
missed the point: if it had been serving
the country well, Trump would not have
been elected four years ago. If he had
not been a capable president, most of his
policies would not have been effectively
endorsed in the congressional and state
elections across the country. Those whom
he displaced would not have had to resort
to such extremes to evict him from the
White House.
were racist, that the Capitol Police were
racists, that Trump was reminiscent of
Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels,
and then Biden called for national unity.
Trump made a serious mistake in
imagining and publicly asking that Vice
President Pence reject the determination
by the Senate of the Electoral College vote.
Pence had no authority to do anything
of the kind. But Pence’s election was as
much violated as Trump’s, and if he at-
tends the inauguration now, Pence will be
choosing the Democratic antics over his
own party and needlessly compromising
his political future.
Impeachment is nonsense, Trump won’t
resign, and an inept government won’t be
able to use defamation and dirty tricks as
a substitute for public service for long. If
Trump is the only person who can defend
to Capitol
Hill as part
of a protest
questioning
the legitimacy
of the election
results, in
Washington on
Jan. 6, 2021.
the people against incompetent admin-
istration, cowardly legislators and jurists,
and a system that has become largely
rotten and doesn’t run honest elections or
even fair trials, (98 percent conviction rate
and a quarter of the world’s prison popu-
lation), while a totalitarian woke media
and dictatorial censors of social media
silence dissent, his influence will rise and
not be dissipated.
Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s
most prominent financiers for 40 years,
and was one of the leading newspaper
publishers in the world. He’s the author of
authoritative biographies of Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most
recently, “Donald J. Trump: A President
Like No Other,” which has been repub-
lished in updated form.

and to confect the demonstrable fraud
that he incited violence.
This was necessary to promote the ap-
plicability of the 25th amendment, which
deals with presidents who have lost their
mental capacities, and impeachment,
which requires egregious and generally
criminal behavior. All of this is lacking,
and the president will not be removed
from office other than on the expiry of his
term next week.
Distraction and Fear
It all begs the question of why Trump’s en-
emies are still so fanatical in their efforts
to separate him from his huge following
and destroy him politically, in Stalinist
fashion. In part, the Democrats seem now
to be addicted to the practice of distract-
ing the public from the political unaccept-
ability of their own program and record
by a febrile defamation of the president.
He is not and never in his adult life was
a racist or sexist. He has a number of an-
noying mannerisms. They can be seen
by everyone, and voters decide for them-
selves whether they outweigh the presi-
dent’s better qualities and achievements.
The obsessive desire to destroy Trump
even as he leaves the presidency cannot
be based on anything but fear of a man
who has successfully defied the political
establishment, exposed it as substantially
a failure, and exploited the fact that the
pre-Trump status quo was despised by a
majority of Americans.
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calls
for the removal of President Donald Trump
from office, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington
on Jan. 7, 2021.
FREE BOOK
Polls indicate uniformly that barely 10
percent of Americans respect the legisla-
tors in Congress and no more than 15
percent of Americans believe their media.
Even the questionable election revealed
that 48 percent of Americans preferred
Trump to the candidate of Wall Street,
The Great Gold Comeback
Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, and
the media and social media, despite the
Bankruptcy of the Welfare State
Democrats’ huge financial advantage
and wall-to-wall media defamation of the
incumbent.
The pre-Trump decades brought end-
less, fruitless war in the Middle East, with
“There is no way I could
an accompanying humanitarian disas-
ter; the greatest economic crisis in the ever properly express my
world in 80 years; more than 10 million
unskilled illegal migrants flooding across
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cessors were swindled by North Korea
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Trump addressed these problems; the
you have written within it.
dire predictions of his dangerous incom-
petence came to nothing, his vote total What a real treasure!
grew by 20 percent between elections,
and his party did well in congressional
and state elections. - M.R.
Yet his opponents didn’t respond with
better candidates or policies, they ex-
humed the defeated candidates Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris and set them atop a
Sanders-Warren far-left program, ignored
the worst rioting in the country for over Best-selling author James R. Cook tells you why
50 years, apart from defunding police and
engineering huge spikes in violent crime, the welfare state is going broke, and the outcome
and exploited the COVID crisis to adopt PD\EHUXQDZD\LQÁDWLRQ
election laws that incite the inference that
the election has been stolen.
And they got a free pass when the Su-
preme Court declined to hear the com-
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states, that four states had failed to assure
a fair presidential election. Trump’s 74 Name: ______________________________________________________
million supporters were left with nothing
to do except protest. Address: _____________________________________________________
Only Alternative City: ______________________________ State: ______ Zip: _________
In falsely accusing Trump of inciting
insurrection, they have again ignored Home Phone:__________________ Work Phone: ___________________
the public desire for better government
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incited it, that the motives of the rioters 1-800-328-1860
A18 | OPINION WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

Readers’ Views YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NATION

Question of the week: Next Week’s Question: Do you think large corporations have become more powerful
than the U.S. government?
Do you feel that elected officials in your state have
Check next week’s edition to see
done enough to investigate allegations of voter fraud? Send Your Answers to: EpochQuestion.com if your answer made it into print.

I live in the great state of Tennessee, and our elected
officials have done a great job not only with the
current election, but with all of the COVID hysteria. I
can’t think of a better place to live than Tennessee.
Rosemary Mills, Tennessee
My state appears to be almost completely Blue,
therefore the powers that be really don’t care about
voter fraud. Sad for those of us who remain true to the
Red.
Judith Verrips, California
They absolutely have not. Seventy percent of
Republicans think voter fraud took place. Even
around 20 to 30 percent of Democrats believe so.
The people have lost faith in the election process.
Jane Smith, California

California has reached the ability to ignore any
allegations of voter fraud. 100,000 registered
voters in a county, but 150,000 voted? Oh well,
says the left!
Susan Hall, California
No, they haven’t done enough. We must get all of
the truth out, and the people responsible need to be
charged and punished. State legislatures must change
election laws.
Eric Wall, Minnesota
No! Mail-in ballots were subject to massive voter
fraud and ballot harvesting. This country must fix
the voting system to regain my confidence.
Evan Wall, Minnesota

Absolutely not, and although Indiana didn’t seem to
have problems, who’s to say we won’t in the future?
MJ Kurdys, Indiana
In California, they have done absolutely nothing, Their efforts or actual lack thereof are eerily similar
acting as if none of the many sources were credible, as to loading the bases with nobody out and then not
it didn’t fit their narrative. scoring. Short answer: a big fat NO.
Denise Kalm, California Joel Tanner, Florida

The congressional contingent this state (Vermont)
sends to D.C. is pathetic. They’re essentially as
useless as female parts on a boar hog. They’ve done
little or nothing to investigate voter fraud, nor do I
expect them to.
Thomas Girard, Vermont
Absolutely not! Every U.S. senator and U.S.
representative had the responsibility to demand
investigation of alleged fraudulent votes that were
counted. They failed to represent the voters who
want only legal votes counted!
Karen Burton, Ohio
Legislators in the disputed states have abdicated
their plenary power to determine how their state
electors are selected. Unfortunately, they failed to
recognize their power was being stolen when vote by
mail was instituted. Pure ineptitude.
Michael Krausz, Missouri

The Readers’ Turn

USSA
At the close of the Constitution-
al Convention of 1787, Benjamin
Franklin was asked, “Well, doc-
tor, what have we got, a Republic
or a Monarchy?” His response
was prophetic: “A Republic, if
you can keep it.” Today, those
words reverberate in our hearts
as we and the world witnessed
the open and blatant theft of
the presidential and two Geor-
gia Senate elections through
the prejudicial lens of our
state-controlled media. Today,
America has officially become
an open plutocracy—the United
Socialist States of America. The
exceptionalism that once was
Political Survival in 2021 America
Now that we have seen the
complete and utter takeover
of the electoral process by the
Democrat Party, and now that
we have seen that the Dems
will stop at nothing to push
forward their radical anti-
American agenda, where do
conservatives go? What is our
pathway forward?
I thought that surely people
would stand up against the
tyranny in the Democrat Party.
However, judges are afraid to
do the job we have put them
there to do; the mainstream
media has not only gotten into
bed with the Democrats, but
they are eagerly participating
in promoting their cancerous
progressive ideology. Even once
stalwart, dependable conserva-
tive politicians are turning into
weak-kneed, spineless shells
of their former selves when the
pressure and threats rise.
What are we, as individuals,
to do when we see the loudest
voices calling for cleansings of
our beliefs and freedom-loving
ideology while socialist Dems
America for the last 244 years
is now on life support pend-
ing imminent death. We now
have a political class that rules
supreme, where politicians
and their minions operate with
impunity, outside our Consti-
tution and laws—never being
held accountable. They claim to
represent the people who sup-
posedly voted them into office;
rather, they are the puppets of
the mega-wealthy who entice
them with wealth at the ex-
pense of losing their souls and
our country.
ROBERT FORD
are calling for fundamental
changes to, or outright re-
moval of, our basic constitu-
tional rights, and fundamental
changes to government struc-
ture to make good on those
changes? We are in trouble,
and while the news outlets that
continue to ring the bell for
truth and freedom are few and
far between, I support them
and I will as long as we have a
First Amendment.
Edmund Burke’s words from
over 200 years ago are ringing
loudly in my ears: “The only
thing necessary for the tri-
umph of evil is for good men to
do nothing.”
I encourage those that write
and read The Epoch Times to
stand up and be counted. I tru-
ly believe in the silent majority,
but now more than ever, we
must become loud and vocal.
Let’s not let radicals dictate our
future and the futures of our
children and grandchildren.
TODD HUFF
ARIZONA
Trump Rally Hijacked
On Wednesday, Jan. 6, we witnessed the
hijacking of President Donald Trump’s
rally. The president called on his sup-
porters to demonstrate their disapproval
of the 2020 election. He did not encour-
age them to attack and illegally enter and
damage the Capital.
History and the Wednesday time line
support this position. Trump’s rallies,
while very large, have been peaceful. No
looting, property damage, or assaulting
of police. Republicans are peaceful, law
abiding, loyal Americans.
There were several news reports of
people flying to Washington with riot
gear in the overhead compartments of
airplanes. Why? At the rally, Trump sup-
porters were wearing winter clothing,
not riot gear. So who were these people
flying to Washington with riot gear?
Trump started his rally comments at
11:50 a.m. He spoke for better than an
hour until after 1:00 p.m. It is almost
two miles from the White House to the
Capitol, a distance that takes at least 30
minutes to walk. In a crowd, it could
easily take an hour.
The police perimeter at the Capitol
was assaulted at 1:10 p.m., about the
same time Trump was finishing his
rally presentation.
Who were these people, some of
whom were wearing riot gear? Trump
supporters? Not likely. Would some-
The Deep State Is Back
They lived in fear from the minute he
took office. Knowing what they had got-
ten away with for eight years, Democrats
got busy right away to collectively go to
war against President Donald Trump.
For four years, they kept at it, keeping
him preoccupied with a Soviet-style
investigation and a burlesque-House
impeachment meant to keep him off
balance and unable to expose them.
The fake news did its part; pummeling
Trump relentlessly with biased report-
ing or burying positive news, while
relentlessly being critical of his agenda
and completely dismissive of the values
of his supporters.
one come to see the president speak
and then leave halfway through the
speech? Doubtful, unless they had
other motives.
We have seen numerous Black Lives
Matter protests turn violent when a
small group dedicated to the distraction
of America used the peaceful protest to
precipitate violence. This happened on
Wednesday. Trump’s rally was hijacked.
To be accurate Trump supporters
did swarm the Capitol. However, the
assaults on police, forcible break-in at
the Capitol, and subsequent vandalism
were not caused by Trump supporters.
People who live peaceful lives, who
bring their children to see the presi-
dent, who are supporters of law and
order, and who are concerned about
their country don’t break the law.
All Americans should help root out
those who assaulted our country on
Wednesday. They should be arrested
and prosecuted to the full extent of the
law. They are domestic terrorists.
President Trump has done great
things for our country. You may not like
his presentation, but the results speak
for themselves. President Trump did not
cause what happened on Wednesday;
people who want to destroy America
are responsible.
RICHARD L. BLOMQUIST
The push for another impeachment
is just a distraction, but it points to the
fear. The president has not declassified
the numberless documents and digital
evidence that can put hundreds of them
behind bars. That fear is well-founded.
Trump can still ruin many of the biggest
of them. He can easily ruin Biden. Hillary
would be a chip-shot. But Obama, the
big fish, brings down the whole shabby
enterprise that has become the Democrat
Party. Indeed, Trump may well have one
more move. Eighty million American vot-
ers want their president back.
MARK ALESSE

If you would like to submit a letter to the editor, please contact us: Email: lettertoeditor@epochtimes.com | Mail: The Epoch Times 229 W. 28th St., Fl. 7, New York, NY 10001
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
SPECIAL SERIES
How the Specter of Communism
Is Ruling Our World
Desecrating the Arts
The Epoch Times here serializes an adaptation from the Chinese of
“How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World,” a new book by
the editorial team of the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.”
3. Communism’s
Sabotage and Abuse of Art
c. The Inversion of
Traditional Aesthetics:
The Ugly as Art (cont.)
If people look closely at the differ-
ences between avant-garde and
traditional art, they will find that
the artists of the Renaissance not
only used art to praise God, but also
presented beauty in an uplifting
manner that engendered feelings of
truth and goodness in the human
heart. In doing so, their art helped
maintain the morality of society.
On the other hand, the various
mutated forms of avant-garde try to
upend all the achievements of the
Renaissance, “to destroy the uplift-
ing—therefore, bourgeois—potential
of art, literature, and music, so that
man, bereft of his connection to the
divine, sees his only creative op-
tion to be political revolt.” Ugliness
that is “so carefully nurtured by the
Frankfurt School [has] corrupted
our highest cultural endeavors,” and
popular culture in turn, becomes
“openly bestial,” wrote one academ-
ic. [24] Admiring and idolizing such
ugliness brings forth the dark side of
people; decadent, depraved, vio-
lent, evil, and other negative kinds
of thoughts gain ascendancy. The
pursuit of such ugliness has led to
deconstructing and uglifying scenes
of the divine and of humanity’s
own divine nature, as well as acts of
direct blasphemy against the divine.
This has alienated people not only
from the divine, but also from their
innate divine nature and traditional
values.
d. The Perversion of Literature
Literature is a special art form. It
uses language to pass on the wisdom
that the divine has bestowed upon
humankind, as well as to record the
formative experiences of human-
kind. The two great epics of ancient
Greece, “The Iliad” and “The Odys-
sey,” both portray the complex series
of events surrounding the Trojan
War, vividly depicting a historical
epic of gods and men. The virtues of
courage, generosity, wisdom, justice,
and temperance that were praised
in the epics became an important
source of values for the Greek world
and all of Western civilization.
Due to the great influence literature
has, evil elements use it to control
people, concocting and promot-
ing written works that impart the
ideology of communism, slander
traditional culture, destroy people’s
morality, and spread pessimism and
an attitude of passivity and mean-
inglessness toward life. Literature
has become one of the key tools com-
munism uses to control the world.
The communist parties of the
Soviet Union and the CCP, in order
to brainwash the general public,
both instructed their intellectuals
to portray the lives of the proletariat
and the concept of class conscious-
ness using traditional techniques, in
order to explain communist ideol-
ogy and policies. This gave rise to
a large number of propagandistic
literary works, including the Soviet
novels “The Iron Flood” and “How
the Steel Was Tempered” and the
CCP works “The Song of Youth,”
“The Sun Shines on the Sanggan
River,” and others, all of which had
an enormous impact. Communist
parties call this style of work “so-
cialist realism.” Mao generalized its
function as “serving the workers,
peasants, and soldiers” and serving
“the proletariat.” [25] The ability of
this type of literature to instill ideol-
ogy is obvious and well-understood.
However, communism’s use of
literature to destroy humanity is not
limited to this.
The following summarizes some of
the major aims and effects of com-
munist-influenced literature.
Traditional art conveys
harmony, grace, clarity,
restraint, propriety, balance,
universality, and ideals, which
require selection and choice.
Art originates from everyday
life, but it should transcend
everyday life so that it may both
delight and instruct. Because of
this, during the creative process,
artists must select, refine, and
process what to portray.  by thought, in the absence of any
Using Literature
to Destroy Tradition
A major step in the destruction of
humanity has been to slander the
traditional civilizations that the
divine bestowed on mankind. Com-
munist elements use intellectuals
with modern thoughts to create and
promote works that distort tradi-
tional culture.
In Europe in 1909, Italian poet
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti pub-
lished the “Futurist Manifesto,” call-
ing for the total rejection of tradition
and the celebration of machinery,
technology, speed, violence, and
competition. Russian poet and
communist Vladimir Mayakovsky
published the manifesto “A Slap in
the Face of Public Taste” in 1913, in
which he expressed his resolve to
break away from traditional Russian
literature.
During China’s New Culture
Movement, author Lu Xun became
famous for viciously attacking
tradition and denouncing Chinese
antiquity. In his first novel, “A Mad-
man’s Diary,” he had the protagonist
declare that all of Chinese history
could be summed up in two charac-
ters: “man eating.” Lu was praised
by Mao as “the greatest and most
courageous standard-bearer of this
new cultural force” and “the chief
commander of China’s Cultural
Revolution.” Mao also said, “The
road he took was the very road of
China’s new national culture.” [26]
Defending Hideous
Portrayals as ‘Reality’
Today, intellectuals and artists
use literature and the arts to por-
tray things or scenes that are ugly,
strange, and terrifying, using the
excuse that they are merely showing
things as they really are.
Traditional art conveys harmony,
grace, clarity, restraint, propriety,
balance, universality, and ideals,
Chapter Eleven
which require selection and choice.
In the view of modern artists, such
works cannot be considered authen-
tic. This view, however, comes from a
misunderstanding of the origin and
function of art. Art originates from
everyday life, but it should transcend
everyday life so that it may both
delight and instruct. Because of this,
during the creative process, artists
must select, refine, and process what
to portray.
Blindly focusing on this under-
standing of realism artificially
restricts the boundaries of life and
art. If this type of realism is art, then
what everyone sees and hears is all
art—in which case, why spend time
and money training artists?
Corrupting Moral Values
Pretexts such as “expressing one’s
true self” and giving free rein to
one’s “stream of consciousness” have
led people to abandon traditional
moral standards and indulge in the
demonic side of human nature.
French communist and poet André
Breton defined surrealism as “psy-
chic automatism in its pure state, by
which one proposes to express—ver-
bally, by means of the written word,
or in any other manner—the actual
functioning of thought. Dictated
control exercised by reason, exempt
from any aesthetic or moral con-
cern.” [27]
“Stream of consciousness” writing
and surrealist “automatic writing”
are closely related. Influenced by
Sigmund Freud’s psychopathology,
some writers in the West started
to experiment with stream-of-
consciousness writing from the
beginning of the twentieth century.
Such writings usually have simple
storylines and focus on the inner
and private thought processes of in-
significant characters (anti-heroes)
through narratives composed of
meandering thoughts.
Human beings simultaneously
contain the potential for both
kindness and evil. A life should be
dedicated to the constant elevation
of moral standards and cultivation
of virtue through self-restraint. In
modern society, many people experi-
ence ill thoughts and desires. Putting
them on display for public consump-
tion is equivalent to polluting society.
Notes
24. Michael Minnicino, “The New
Dark Age: The Frankfurt School
and ‘Political Correctness,’” in
Fidelio Magazine 1, no.1 (Winter
1992).
25. Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yenan
Forum.”
26. Mao Zedong, “On New Democ-
racy,” in “Selected Works of Mao
Tse-Tung” (Beijing: Foreign
Languages Press, 1942), Marxists
Internet Archive.
27. André Breton, “Manifestoes
of Surrealism,” trans. Richard
Seaver and Helen Lane (Ann Ar-
bor, MI: University of Michigan
Press, 1969), 26.
See next edition for the next
installment.
To purchase the books, visit
EpochShop.com
OPINION | A19
Stephen Gregory, Publisher
Jasper Fakkert, Editor-in-Chief
Channaly Philipp, Life & Tradition,
Travel Editor
Chrisy Trudeau, Mind & Body Editor
Crystal Shi, Home, Food Editor
Sharon Kilarski, Arts & Culture Editor
ABOUT US
The Epoch Times is a media
organization dedicated to seek-
ing the truth through insightful
and independent journalism.
Standing outside of politi-
cal interests and the pursuit of
profit, our starting point and our
goal is to create a media for the
public benefit, to be truly respon-
sible to society.
We endeavor to educate read-
ers about today’s most impor-
tant topics, seeking to broaden
and uplift minds. We believe that
rational, balanced debate is key
for fostering a healthy democ-
racy and a compassionate
society.
As an independent media out-
let, we use our freedom to inves-
tigate issues overlooked—or
avoided—by other media outlets.
We seek to highlight solutions
and what’s good in society rather
than what divides us.
We report respectfully, compas-
sionately, and rigorously.
We stand against the destruc-
tion wrought by communism,
including the harm done to cul-
tures around the world.
We are inspired in this by our
own experience. The Epoch
Times was founded in 2000 to
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We still believe journalism is a
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A20 | OPINION
(Left) The Parler logo displayed on a smartphone in Arlington, Va., on July 2, 2020. (Right) Employees walk past the Twitter logo as they leave the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Aug. 13, 2019.
Parler Is
Silenced
WESLEY J. SMITH
The social media com-
pany Parler—which is a
French word meaning “to
speak”—was mugged and
left for dead by Big Tech
last week in what appears
to be the start of a cultural
offensive aimed at stifling conservative ad-
vocacy in our country’s public discourse.
I am shocked but not surprised. In my
last column in these pages, I warned of a
looming and authoritarian “corporatoc-
racy” that threatened to stifle freedom in
a way that our government never could.
Little did I know that within a week of
writing, behemoth social media compa-
nies would prove my words prophetic.
Here’s the story: After the godawful Cap-
itol Hill riot of Jan. 6, Twitter and Facebook
launched a cyber jack-booted clampdown
on conservative advocacy. Not only did
the social media giants cancel President
Donald Trump’s accounts, but Twitter ap-
pears to have launched a great purge.
Washington Examiner columnist Byron
York, actor and conservative icon James
Woods, and Fox News pundit Brit Hume,
among many others, announced that they
had each lost tens of thousands of follow-
ers on Twitter in just a few days. Similarly,
less famous voices reported the loss of
hundreds of followers.
Whatever is going on—Twitter hasn’t
said—the company seems hellbent on
stifling conservatives’ ability to commu-
nicate across the width and breadth of
the social media public square.
Elites’ War on Party of the Country Is Now out in the Open
LEE SMITH
When a regime sanctions
the political violence of
one faction against an-
other, events such as the
bloody skirmishes at the
U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are a
foregone conclusion.
Presumably, the country’s corporate, po-
litical, and cultural elite assumed that after
four years of trying to humiliate and unseat
President Donald Trump that his support-
ers would simply accept their continued
degradation, impoverishment, and dis-
enfranchisement. Or maybe they thought
that with their allied press and social me-
dia obscuring reality, no one would notice
they were waging war on Americans.
Details of the events on Jan. 6 are still
unfolding. In places, protestors overran
police. A Capitol Police officer died of
injuries suffered while holding off protes-
tors and others were reportedly injured.
Elsewhere, it seems that law enforcement
welcomed Trump supporters into the
Capitol and posed for pictures with them.
No doubt there were agents provocateurs
among the MAGA crowd, but Ashli Bab-
bitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol
Hill policeman when she tried to crawl
through a window, wasn’t with Antifa.
She proudly supported Trump, as she
proudly served her country, doing four
tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.
No one in the building that the 15-year
Air Force veteran entered illegally can
explain why America is still committed to
those strategically pointless wars.
Neither can anyone on the Democratic
or Republican side rationally justify why
OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Attacking a Competitor
The subsequent attack on Parler was even
more egregious. Parler is a direct com-
petitor of Twitter and operates in almost
the exact manner; members post their
thoughts or news articles, with “follow-
ers” able to comment and add the origi-
nal posts to their own timelines.
Parler differs from Twitter, Facebook,
and other social media platforms in one
important respect: It still follows the
original concept of social media by allow-
ing people to post without fact-checking
or political interference.
Because many conservatives reasonably
believe that Twitter and Facebook moder-
ate their platforms with a heavy leftwing
bias, Parler came to be perceived on both
the left and right as the “conservatives’
Twitter” (although the company has never
so described itself). Indeed, many promi-
nent conservative public intellectuals and
“influencers” publicly moved their pri-
mary social media focus to Parler in recent
months, inviting their supporters to follow.
In a sense, this was in keeping with
the libertarian response to Twitter/
Facebook’s liberal bias: These are private
companies, the argument goes. If conser-
vatives don’t want to be censored, start
a conservative social media platform
where you can post freely.
So much for that idea. At the same
time that Twitter was clamping down on
conservative accounts, Google, Apple, and
Amazon acted simultaneously to drive
Parler out of business.
First, both Google—which services
Android and other devices—and Apple re-
moved Parler’s app from their online stores,
declaring that the company would be
blackballed until Parler moderated posts.
That wounded but didn’t kill Parler
because its customers could still access
the site on the company’s website. Then
Amazon—which hosted the company’s
cloud services—announced that sup-
posedly “violent content” on Parler’s site
violated its terms of service and canceled
large parts of the country are still under
coronavirus lockdowns—public health
measures draining Americans’ life savings
and, as importantly, their hope—to fight
an illness with a 99.7 percent survival rate.
No one can say why the senior FBI, CIA,
Justice Department, Pentagon, and State
Department officials from the Obama ad-
ministration who plotted against Trump’s
White House before he was inaugurated
are still at liberty, and why some have
been named to the incoming administra-
tion of Joe Biden.
Nor can the representatives of the
American people explain to them why
the lights went out in half a dozen states
on election night with Trump holding
commanding leads, and came back on
hours later with Biden in front in all six.
But don’t blame the people sent to
Washington for the fate and fortune
of the Americans they’re supposed to
represent. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) says
Trump is at fault for the Jan. 6 unrest.
“The president formed the mob, the
president incited the mob, the presi-
dent addressed the mob,” she said. The
Wyoming congresswoman is one of the
staunchest supporters of the Afghanistan
war, begun when her father was George
W. Bush’s vice president.
To hand down a war from one genera-
tion to the next is a sign of a careless and
depraved elite.
Trump’s former Defense Secretary
James Mattis also blames the president.
“His use of the Presidency to destroy
trust in our election and to poison our re-
spect for fellow citizens has been enabled
by pseudo-political leaders whose names
will live in infamy as profiles in coward-
its contracts with the company. As things
now stand, Parler is offline, meaning it’s
dead as a social media company unless it
can find alternative web hosting services.
John Matze, Parler CEO, told Maria
Bartiromo on “Morning Futures” that
his company’s experience demonstrates
that Big Tech “has the power to destroy
anybody.” He’s right. Businesses, non-
profit groups, and individuals all depend
on websites, email, social media, and the
like to fully engage in modern life. And
those tools are almost wholly controlled
by Big Tech.
We suddenly face one of the most
profound liberty crises in our
country’s history, in some ways
made more intractable because
it emanates from the private
sector instead of government.
Liberty Crisis
It’s a real predicament. Speech is being sig-
nificantly constrained by these companies
for distinctly ideological reasons. But since
the government isn’t doing it, the First
Amendment isn’t infringed.
Google, Apple, and Amazon would
seem to be violating anti-trust laws. But
it’s doubtful that the Biden administra-
tion will act against companies that are
its great supporters.
Parler can always sue, and indeed, has
announced its intention to seek legal
redress. But the defendants are the rich-
est and most powerful enterprises in the
world, with enough clout and money to
bankrupt the upstart company in motions
and dilatory litigation tactics. In any event,
such a case will take years.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has called
for a racketeering investigation. Good luck
with that. Democrats are now in complete
control of Congress. I doubt the likes of
SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES
A worker sweeps up the dust and debris left
behind by protesters in the Rotunda of the U.S.
Capitol in Washington on Jan. 7, 2021.
ice,” the retired Marine general wrote.
In June, he defended the Black Lives
Matter and Antifa riots that caused bil-
lions of dollars in damage across the
country and left dozens dead, including
law enforcement officers. Those protests,
said Mattis, “are defined by tens of thou-
sands of people of conscience who are
insisting that we live up to our values.”
Both parties within the Beltway are
joined in their attacks on Trump because
partisan identity—Democrat and Re-
publican—is no longer relevant in U.S.
politics. It’s the Country Party, currently
represented by Trump, versus the Estab-
lishment Party, representing the interests
of an oligarchy anchored by Big Tech and
owing its power, wealth, and prestige to
its access to cheap Chinese labor and
China’s growing consumer market.
The Establishment Party protects its pro-
testors because they are the instruments
weaponized to target Trump supporters.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
GLENN CHAPMAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the head of
the House Judiciary Committee, will even
hold a hearing.
Conservatives could always try to shame
the behemoth social media companies by
calling them out publicly. But Big Tech is
beyond shame. Besides, mass shaming re-
quires the mainstream media to drive the
story. How likely is that to happen? Indeed,
many minions in the MSM are allies of Big
Tech and are openly cheering.
What about a boycott? Given the central-
ity of these companies, that would be hard
to do. Besides, Big Tech has made it very
clear that it’s willing to lose profits in the
great cause of woke.
It won’t stop with social media censor-
ship. I expect these behemoths to soon
move against controversial industries, just
as they did Parler. For example, if internet
cloud companies refused to do business
with the gun industry, it could drive man-
ufacturers and sellers out of business—ac-
complishing a progressive agenda dream
without violating the Second Amendment.
We suddenly face one of the most pro-
found liberty crises in our country’s his-
tory, in some ways made more intractable
because it emanates from the private sector
instead of government. Freedom requires
comity. Social harmony depends on every-
one believing they have a fair shake.
Stifling speech will not eliminate con-
servative perspectives. Stomping liberal-
disfavored industries or organizations will
not convince those who hold such views
that they are wrong, but rather, persuade
them that they no longer have a stake in
the great American experiment.
This is literally playing with fire. As
history teaches, desperate people do
desperate things. Here’s hoping Twitter,
Amazon, Facebook, and the rest gain
wisdom commensurate with their power
and reverse course before it’s too late.
Award-winning author Wesley J. Smith
is chairman of the Discovery Institute’s
Center on Human Exceptionalism.
“Protestors should not let up,” Vice
President-elect Kamala Harris said of the
summer’s violence.
“There needs to be unrest in the streets
as long as there’s unrest in our lives,” said
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).
“I just don’t even know why there aren’t
uprisings all over the country,” said
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
It isn’t hypocrisy that corporations
such as Bank of America and Coca-Cola
that issued statements in support of the
summer riots were quick to denounce the
Jan. 6 protests. Nor is it hypocrisy that the
activists who took over parts of a Senate
office building to protest the Supreme
Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh
were celebrated, while Biden and the
press labeled the people who broke into a
federal building as domestic terrorists.
It isn’t hypocrisy for the establishment
to draw a sharp divide between allies and
enemies, but rather just evidence that they
are at war with the party of the country.
History, as well as simple common
sense, tells that when one side shoots at
the other, the side taking incoming has
two choices: surrender or shoot back.
There’s little doubt the party of the estab-
lishment will use the events on the Hill to
implement further measures to punish
the party of the country, for they would
use any pretext—a respiratory illness, for
example—to serve those ends.
But now, they can no longer be sure how
the party of the country will respond.
Lee Smith is the author of the recently 
published book “The Permanent Coup:
How Enemies Foreign and Domestic
Targeted the American President.”
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
Supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrate at a "Stop the Steal" rally in front of the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix on Nov. 7, 2020.
Don’t Be Fooled! Don’t Let Them Divert
Us From Ensuring Electoral Integrity!
ROB NATELSON
The public furor over the
illegal Capitol break-in is a
diversion. Don’t let it stop
us from planning and
implementing our agenda
for the immediate future.
I’ve been in and around
politics for over 50 years. I know a diver-
sion when I see one. Those trying to turn
the Capitol incident into an impeachment
know there’s no time, or grounds, for
impeachment. They also know that Presi-
dent Donald Trump didn’t incite illegal
behavior. Anyone can see that by reading
his allegedly objectionable words. (I have
reproduced them at the end, courtesy of
Snopes, a left-leaning website.)
The goals of this diversion apparently
are to (1) move public attention away
from election irregularities and the legiti-
macy of the Biden presidency, (2) forestall
honest investigation into those irregulari-
ties, and (3) prevent corrective action.
But we mustn’t be diverted. This is
the first essay in a five-part series lay-
ing out a two-year agenda for concerned
Americans. If adopted, these changes will
reduce greatly many of the problems that
bedeviled the 2020 election. They also
will begin to ameliorate dysfunctions and
divisions in our political system.
This agenda focuses on state legislatures.
There’s no hope of making much progress
at the federal level, where the system—and
perhaps the elections themselves—has
been corrupted. In Washington, the power
and incentives are stacked against the
responsible and productive Americans
who make up our country’s backbone. In
the federal political game, we always have
to start on our own two-yard line and run
the football uphill. The other side starts on
our 20 and runs downhill. The referee (i.e.,
the mainstream media) calls every real or
imaged penalty against our side and rarely
calls one on the opposition.
That’s why fiscally conservative Ameri-
cans have not been very successful at the
federal level. It’s why, other than Ronald
Reagan, there hasn’t been a consistently
conservative president for nearly a cen-
tury. (Trump was conservative on some
issues, but liberal fiscally.)
In most states (sorry, California!), the
playing field is very different than at
the federal level. Moreover, in the 2020
election, while Trump was purportedly
losing, at the state level conservatives were
gaining. Republicans (admittedly, not all
of whom are conservative) now control
both legislative chambers and the gover-
norship in 23 states. In at least seven more,
they control both houses of the legislature
without the governorship.
And while it’s not widely known, state
legislatures are near the heart of our
constitutional system. They have power
to force changes in federal operations—in
There’s no hope some cases, even without the consent of
their governors.
of making much What follows are the four agenda items.
progress at the The succeeding essays in this series will
federal level, elaborate on each.
Item 1: Constituents must educate state
where the system— lawmakers about their constitutional role
and perhaps and motivate them to fulfill that role. As
the elections mentioned above, state lawmakers have
important constitutional responsibili-
themselves—has ties. They govern the presidential election
been corrupted. process, they have much to say about the
congressional election process, and they
can control the constitutional amendment
procedure. State legislatures have been
neglecting these duties. That must change.
Item 2: Reform state election laws. After
the 2020 election, the need for this is
evident. The details to be addressed vary
from state to state. However, it’s clear that
the promiscuous use of mail-in ballots is
dysfunctional, as well as unconstitutional.
That being said, it’s clear that election law
change can’t cure all corruption. That’s the
reason for Item 3.
Item 3: This applies in states with his-
tories of big-city or university town-vote
corruption. These include six swing states
with Republican legislatures: Arizona,
Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Penn-
sylvania, and Wisconsin. Their legislatures
should adopt resolutions whereby those
states’ presidential electors are chosen by
congressional district rather than at large.
Two states—Maine and Nebraska—do
this already, and the Supreme Court has
upheld that approach. The consent of
the governor isn’t necessary. This reform
would effectively cage local corruption to
a few congressional districts rather than
allow it to infect the presidential election
in the entire state.
Item 4: Persuade as many state legisla-
tures as possible to endorse the “Conven-
Protesters and Capitol Hill tion of States” application for constitutional
Police officers scuffle in amendments. These amendments would
front of the U.S. Capitol in impose federal term limits and restrain fed-
Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. eral power. Over the long term, this is the
most important of the four agenda items.
LEO SHI/THE EPOCH TIMES
OPINION | A21
MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
Certain problems in our current system
of governance are acknowledged across
the political spectrum: severe division
among citizens; enormous special interest
influence; poorly functioning, and some-
times abusive, government; excessive
centralization; and an oligarchy (whether
you call it the “deep state” or the “military
industrial complex”) not subject to popu-
lar control. Only a convention of states—
or, in the Constitution’s phrase, a “conven-
tion for proposing amendments”—would
have both the will and power to propose
constitutional reforms to address those
problems. Only the state legislatures can
ensure a convention is called.
Each of those four goals is achievable on
a playing field where productive Ameri-
cans, rather than so-called “progressive”
interests, have the advantage. And each is
a relatively small change with big poten-
tial effects.
More in later essays.
Postscript: As promised, here are the
actual words in President Donald Trump’s
speech. Where’s the incitement to violence?
“After this, we’re going to walk down—
and I’ll be there with you—we’re going to
walk down, we’re going to walk down—
anyone you want, but I think right here—
we’re going to walk down to the Capitol,
and we’re going to cheer on our brave
senators and congressmen and women.
And we’re probably not going to be cheer-
ing so much for some of them. Because
you’ll never take back our country with
weakness, you have to show strength, and
you have to be strong. We have come to
demand that Congress do the right thing,
and only count the electors who have
been lawfully slated—lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be
marching over to the Capitol building to
peacefully and patriotically make your
votes heard today. ...
“The best is yet to come. We’re going to,
we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania
Avenue—I love Pennsylvania Avenue—
and we’re going to the Capitol. And we’re
going to try and give—the Democrats are
hopeless, they never vote for anything,
not even one vote—but we’re going to try
to give our Republicans, the weak ones
because the strong ones don’t need any of
our help; we’re going to try and give them
the kind of pride and boldness that they
need to take back our country. So let’s walk
down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional
law professor, is a senior fellow in constitu-
tional jurisprudence at the Independence
Institute in Denver, and a senior adviser
to the Convention of States movement.
His research articles on the Constitution’s
meaning have been cited repeatedly by jus-
tices and parties in the Supreme Court. He
is the author of “The Original Constitution:
What It Actually Said and Meant.”
A22 | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
BUSINESS & ECONOMY $525
Commodities Signal
Stagflation Risk
DANIEL LACALLE
The Bloomberg
Commodity Index
bounced more
than 2 percent
in the first week
of January. At the
close of Jan. 10, most
commodities are rising well above
global GDP growth estimates.
China restocking, inventory
build-up, and economic recov-
ery added to a cold winter have
driven iron ore and energy com-
modities much higher, even after
a strong bounce in the second
half of 2020.
Oil has soared 7 percent year-to-
date driven by OPEC cut commit-
ments and rising heating de-
mand, and natural gas has risen
between 6 and 8 percent in most
regions because of the cold spell
affecting many developed coun-
tries. Iron ore is up more than
6 percent, copper higher than 4
percent, and aluminum rising 2
percent alongside soybeans, corn,
sugar, and cotton.
On the other hand, global GDP
growth estimates are unchanged
The Now-Complete
Democrat Trifecta
Threatens Tax Hikes
ANDREW WILFORD
Understandably
lost in the wake
of the shocking
events on Jan. 6
was the fact that,
with two election
wins in Georgia,
Democrats took control of the
Senate to go with control over the
House and presidency. Though
tax policy may have taken a back-
seat in these Georgia elections,
the results raised the chances
of significant tax hikes, and the
undoing of progress made in the
2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA),
substantially.
The most likely tax hikes that
President-elect Joe Biden will
push for with a Democratic
Congress are increases to income
tax rates. During the campaign,
Biden proposed to raise the top
individual income tax rate from
37 percent to 39.6 percent. Biden’s
tax plan also included a provision
that would subject annual income
in the past two weeks, despite the
vaccine rollout and positive news
about trade deals and the Brexit
agreement, while estimates for
the eurozone and Canada have
been trimmed significantly.
Central banks remain oblivious
to the risk of stagflation, but it’s
important, because a significant
part of the commodity rise, priced
in U.S. dollars, comes from the
impact of the massive increase
in central banks’ balance sheets.
There’s a problem when mon-
etary policy is entirely obsessed
with creating inflation, and when
banks have ignored the massive
inflation in asset classes, com-
modities being an important asset
class that feeds through to the real
economy.
Take the eurozone official infla-
tion figures for December 2020.
The estimated number for De-
cember came in at minus 0.3 per-
cent due to a 6.9 percent decline
in the energy component. How-
ever, fresh food prices rose more
than 2 percent, and insurance
and rent, as well as basic utilities,
haven’t fallen at all. Furthermore,
no eurozone citizen has seen his
The most likely
tax hikes that
President-elect
Biden will push for
with a Democratic
Congress are
increases to
income tax rates.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
President-elect Joe Biden
delivers remarks at The
Queen in Wilmington,
Del., on Jan. 8, 2021.
To date, the Paycheck Protection
Program has distributed $525
billion through more than 5 million
loans. The new round of the program
began this week, with $284 billion
in new funds and revamped rules to
BILLION prevent fraud and abuse.
WANG KAI/XINHUA VIA AP
The only way to
avoid stagflation
is to curb massive
inflationary
policies before they
create a larger mess.
Machines load imported
coal from a cargo vessel
docked at a port in Rizhao
in China’s Shandong Prov-
ince on Nov. 21, 2019.
or her energy bill come down 6.9
percent.
As Marshall Reindorf of the
International Monetary Fund
explains, “Underestimating the
weight of food and overweighting
transport are the main causes of
incorrectly estimating inflation.”
Jochen Moebert estimates that the A worker prepares to
cost of housing is underestimated re-stock fruit and vege-
by making national averages that table shelves inside an
disguise the increase in the most ASDA supermarket in
populated cities. Alberto Cavallo, Walthamstow in London
on the other hand, estimates that on Dec. 22, 2020.
real inflation in the COVID-19 era
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
above $400,000 to Social Secu-
rity taxes (currently only annual
iaries when repatriated back to
the American parent company.
income up to $142,800 is subject This policy had the effect of
to these taxes). simply encouraging corporate in-
Biden will also likely push to versions, or the shifting of opera-
increase taxes on capital gains.
Capital gains and dividends are
currently taxed at a lower maxi-
tions to a country that didn’t have
this requirement (such as 29 of 35
member countries of the Organi-
mum rate of 23.8 percent, in rec- zation for Economic Cooperation
ognition of the fact that this same and Development). Eliminating
income has already been taxed this outdated global tax encour-
once. Biden’s campaign called for aged companies to come back
taxing capital gains and dividends to the United States and to bring
as ordinary income, which would cash back into the country—re-
push the maximum tax rate up to sulting in the repatriation of more
39.6 percent when paired with his than $1 trillion in assets. Biden’s
proposed hike to the top indi- proposal to undo this change
vidual income tax rate, increasing would likely send many multina-
the double-taxation penalty on tional companies and their assets
investment income. back overseas.
But even as capital gains and Another questionable change
dividends tax hikes are proposed, Biden is likely to pursue is the
so too may Biden seek to increase removal of the cap on the state
corporate taxes. His tax plan and local tax (SALT) deduction.
would raise corporate income tax Prior to the TCJA, taxpayers who
rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, itemized deductions could deduct
while also reverting to a global tax their state and local taxes against
system. their federal income tax liability.
The TCJA improved America’s This effectively blunted the im-
corporate tax competitiveness pact of high state tax rates—part
substantially not only by lowering of the reason that blue states have
the corporate tax rate to 21 per- proved so eager to remove the
cent from 35 percent, but by shift- $10,000 cap the TCJA placed on
ing to a so-called territorial tax the deduction.
system. Prior to this change, U.S.- Yet the SALT deduction is a
based multinational corporations handout to the wealthy, and
had to pay U.S. income taxes on removing the cap would do very
income earned by foreign subsid- little to benefit most taxpayers.
COVERING
IMPORTANT NEWS
OTHER MEDIA IGNORE
ReadEpoch.com
is up to three times higher than
the official one, especially for
the most disadvantaged people,
something that Bloomberg Eco-
nomics also reflects.
In The Wall Street Journal,
James Mackintosh showed that
inflation shoots up in the goods
that we actually buy, and the
official consumer-price index
(CPI) disguises that rise with
obsolete weights, putting in the
same basket things that we buy
every day, those that we can’t do
without, with leisure, technol-
ogy, and things that are sporadic
purchases.
This recent rise in commodities
may be perceived as temporary,
but the concern about the ris-
ing cost of living while economic
growth estimates remained weak
was already evident in the protests
against the increase in living ex-
penses in 2018-2019 in many cities
in Europe but also Latin America.
Central bankers are ignoring
both the risks of massive infla-
tion in asset prices as well as the
red signals in essential goods and
services.
What’s the problem of stagfla-
tion? Prices rise but economic
growth is stagnant, which means
that the cost of living for most citi-
zens worsens dramatically. The
central bank may continue with
its misguided and wrongly called
“expansionary policy” because
growth is poor, but the situation
of millions of citizens rapidly
deteriorates. In that scenario, gov-
ernments resort to hiking taxes,
which puts another burden on
growth and jobs.
The only way to avoid stagflation
is to curb massive inflationary
policies before they create a larger
mess. It may cause a short-term
bump in sovereign yields, but the
demand from fixed-income in-
vestors should be ample enough
to avoid a debt crisis. After all, if
central banks and mainstream
economists believe there’s such a
savings glut and such a massive
search for yield, a slowdown in
asset purchases should have no
consequence.
What can really cause a debt
crisis is to ignore the risks and
continue expanding the central
banks’ balance sheets as if noth-
ing is happening.
Daniel Lacalle, Ph.D., is chief
economist at hedge fund Tressis
and author of “Freedom or Equali-
ty,” “Escape from the Central Bank
Trap,” and “Life in the Financial
Markets.”
ZACH GIBSON/GETTY IMAGES
The Internal Revenue Service in Wash-
ington on April 15, 2019.
A staggering 96 percent of the
benefit of removing the SALT cap
would go to the top 20 percent
of taxpayers, while also using
federal tax policy to effectively
encourage higher state tax rates.
And this is just a selection of
some of the most significant tax
changes a Biden presidency could
oversee with control of Congress.
Changes to the estate tax, refund-
able tax credits, and other deduc-
tions could very likely be coming
down the pipe as a direct result
of the Georgia election results.
Taxpayers can only hope that
Congress shows restraint and
avoids sweeping changes that
harm an economy that needs all
the help it can get in the middle of
a pandemic.
Andrew Wilford is a policy analyst
with the National Taxpayers Union
Foundation. From RealClearWire.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
Are You Ready
for a Financially
Healthy 2021?
CARRIE SCHWAB-POMERANTZ
Dear Readers, at
the beginning of
each new year,
I’m filled with
a sense of new
direction. At the
same time, I like to
look back at the previous year,
evaluate what worked, and make
a fresh commitment to keep going
on whatever path proved most
successful.
One of the things that was a real
boost to me in 2016 was a 30-day
food cleanse that left me feeling
stronger and more in control of my
physical health. I turned that idea
of a physical cleanse into a 30-day
financial cleanse, with the goal
of giving people a way to super-
charge their financial health. The
response I got was so positive that
I decided this is one of those ideas
that really should be repeated.
It’s pretty generally acknowl-
edged that financial health and
physical health go hand in hand.
And it’s all about stress. In fact,
studies have found that financial
stress leads to a whole range of
serious physical problems from
heart attacks to ulcers to mi-
graines to depression.
Plus, according to the Interna-
tional Foundation of Employee
Benefit Plans, financial stress can
also significantly impact your pro-
fessional life. A 2016 IFEBP survey
found that financial issues result
in employees’ inability to focus at
work. So it only makes sense that
paying attention to your finan-
Turning Full Retirement Age in 2021?
Consider Filing for Benefits This Month.
TOM MARGENAU
I write a column
similar to this
one every Janu-
ary. But I don’t
mind plagiarizing
myself, because it
contains a very
important message for people
planning to retire in 2021.
January is a critical month for
the hundreds of thousands of
potential Social Security benefi-
ciaries who are reaching 66 and
2 months, their so-called full
retirement age (FRA), in 2021. The
important message: All of them
should at least consider the pos-
sibility of filing for their benefits
this month, even though they
may not be reaching their retire-
ment age until later in the year.
Please note that if you want to
delay filing for your Social Secu-
rity benefits until 70 to get the “de-
layed retirement credit” of almost
32 percent added to your monthly
benefits, then you should forgo
the procedure discussed in this
column.
But if you aren’t interested in
that strategy, and plan to start
your benefits at FRA in 2021, then,
as I said, you may want to consid-
er filing for benefits in January.
The reason for this early filing
timeframe has to do with some
quirky and complicated features
of Social Security’s earnings pen-
alty provisions. Those provisions
generally keep seniors who are
still working off of Social Secu-
rity’s rolls until they reach that
magic full retirement age.
The law essentially says if you
are over 62 but under your full
retirement age and are still work-
ing full time, you are not eligible
for Social Security. Specifically,
the rules require that the Social
Security Administration deduct
cial health not only potentially
improves your personal well-
being but may also have a posi-
tive impact on your professional
productivity—a clear win for both
employees and employers.
It starts with mindful spending.
One of the best ways to reduce
financial stress is to refocus on
where your money is going and
where you want it to go. Sound dif-
ficult? It’s not. You just need to zero
in on three things: your spending
and saving patterns; your short-
and long-term goals; the changes
you need to make to align your
spending with your personal pri-
orities. And the financial cleanse is
designed to help you do just that.
4 Weeks to a Financially
Healthier 2021
The New Year is the perfect time
to detox your finances and com-
mit to financial health. So for
those of you who followed my
financial cleanse a few years ago
and want a refresher—and those
who are looking for a way to less-
en financial stress in 2021—here is
the program in a nutshell:
Week 1: Set the stage for success.
If this were a food cleanse, you’d
start by cleaning out the pantry
and refrigerator to get rid of un-
healthy foods. For your financial
cleanse, this means temporarily
putting away your credit cards
and using cash for your day-to-
day expenses—things like lunch-
es out, hair appointments, morn-
ing coffee, outings with your kids,
date nights, and impulse pur-
$1 from any retirement benefits
you might be due for every $2 you
earn over $18,960 in 2021.
However, the rules say that once
you reach your full retirement
age, you are due full Social Secu-
rity benefits even if you are still
working and no matter how much
money you are making.
Let’s follow an example. Let’s say
Ed was born in May 1955, which
means he’ll reach his full retire-
ment age of 66 and 2 months in
July 2021. And let’s further say Ed
generally makes about $80,000
per year, and he plans to continue
working indefinitely. Based on the
earnings penalty rules I briefly
outlined above, Ed figures he
must wait until July (his full retire-
ment age) to begin collecting his
Social Security benefits. As I said,
at that magical point, the earnings
penalty rules no longer apply, and
he can get his Social Security.
And prior to that, he’s mak-
ing way more than the $18,960
income threshold.
But here is why Ed should check
into applying for Social Security
in January. Congress set up a
more lenient earnings threshold
for the year you reach your full
retirement age. Specifically, it
says you can earn up to $50,520
chases. To increase your aware-
ness even more, keep a written
record of where your money goes.
Can you identify areas where you
could easily cut back?
Week 2: Track ALL your ex-
penses. From mortgage or rent
to utilities to insurance premi-
ums to subscriptions and club
memberships, add up all your
monthly expenses. Then project
your total monthly expenses and
compare them to your take-home
income—try using an online
budget planner to make it easier.
Will you fall short or have extra?
Where can you make changes?
Week 3: State your goals. Rainy-
day fund? House? Vacation? Col-
lege? Dream a little, but be realis-
tic. To make your goals concrete,
pick one short-term, one medium-
term, and one long-term goal, and
assign a dollar amount to each.
Week 4: Put the pieces together.
Look at the evidence you’ve col-
lected and be honest with your-
self. Does your spending align
with your priorities? Do you need
SUNDRY PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK
A Social Security Admin-
istration sign at the San
Mateo County branch
building in Redwood City,
Calif., on Mar 16, 2020.
If you want to
delay filing
for your Social
Security benefits
until 70 to get
the ‘delayed
retirement credit’
of almost 32
percent added
to your monthly
benefits, then
you should forgo
the procedure
discussed in this
column.
BUSINESS & ECONOMY | A23
A man shops at a depart-
ment store in Manhattan
on Sept. 14, 2020.
In my experience,
change doesn’t
have to happen all
at once; it can be
incremental. Just
take it one small
step at a time.
between January and the month
you reach your full retirement
age and still get Social Security
benefits. And even if you earn
more than $50,520, you lose only
$1 from your benefits for every $3
you exceed that threshold.
Ed is going to make $40,000
between January and June (i.e.,
before he reaches the magic age of
66 and 2 months). And that’s un-
der the $50,520 threshold for 2021,
which means Ed is due benefits
beginning in January. He does
NOT have to wait until July to ap-
ply for his Social Security checks.
But there is a bit of a catch. By
starting his benefits in January,
Ed will be accepting a slightly
reduced amount. (Benefits are
reduced roughly one-half of 1
percent for each month they are
taken before full retirement age.)
If Ed’s Social Security benefit at
full retirement age is $2,500 per
month, let’s look at his options.
Ed’s first option is to wait until
July to start his Social Secu-
rity benefits. He’ll get $2,500 per
month for six months or $15,000
for the year 2021.
Ed’s second option is to file for
Social Security in January. Start-
ing his benefits slightly early, his
monthly rate is reduced to about
$2,400. That comes out to $28,800
in total benefits for the year 2021.
The downside to option two is his
ongoing monthly benefit rate will
be $100 less than what he would
have been getting in option one.
But because he’d be getting about
$13,800 less in 2021 benefits in
option one, it would take Ed a long
time to make up that loss with his
extra $100 per month in ongoing
benefits.
Even if Ed was going to make
more than the $50,520 income
threshold between January and
June, he only loses $1 in Social
Security benefits for each $3 he
exceeds that amount. So, he still
might come out ahead by filing in
January.
Here is a quick example using
that scenario. Let’s say Ed will
make $60,000 between January
and June. That’s $9,480 over the
CHUNG I HO/THE EPOCH TIMES
to adjust your budget? Can save
more toward your goals?
Are You Ready to Make a Change?
If I’ve piqued your interest, the
next step is to make a personal
commitment to improve your
financial health. But don’t think
you have to do everything all at
once or necessarily all by yourself.
To help you get going, I’ve devel-
oped a Financial Cleanse Quick
Start Guide with simple to-dos for
each week plus tips to help you
keep motivated and on track. Find
more information at SchwabMon-
eyWise.com/financialcleanse.
In my experience, change doesn’t
have to happen all at once; it can be
incremental. Just take it one small
step at a time. Within a few weeks,
those baby steps can build into a
formidable habit that will soon be-
come second nature and put you on
a lifelong path to financial health.
Believe me, it’s worth the effort!
Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, a certi-
fied financial planner, is president
of the Charles Schwab Foundation
and author of “The Charles Schwab
Guide to Finances After Fifty.”
$50,520 limit. And one-third of
that excess, or $3,160, must be
deducted from his 2021 benefits.
But he would still get $25,640 in
benefits for the year. That’s still
way better than the $15,000 he
would be due by waiting until July
to file for his Social Security.
Please note that this strategy
generally only works for those
whose earnings are at least close
to the $50,520 limit and who turn
full retirement age in early- to
mid- 2021. In other words, if you
will make a lot more than $50,520
this year, or if you reach your full
retirement age later in the year,
you should probably just wait un-
til your FRA to file for your Social
Security benefits.
I know these rules are compli-
cated and the math in the ex-
amples above might be difficult to
follow. But my overall message is
easy to follow: If you’re reaching
age 66 and 2 months in early- to
mid-2021, talk to a Social Secu-
rity representative sometime this
month to find out if it’s to your
advantage to file for your benefits
to start in January.
One word of caution: Many
readers in the past told me that
when they tried to file in January,
Social Security Administration
representatives told them they
couldn’t do so. Sadly, far too many
SSA agents are unfamiliar with
how these rules work. If you run
into the same problem, ask to
speak to a supervisor.
Tom Margenau worked for 32 years
in a variety of positions for the So-
cial Security Administration before
retiring in 2005. He has served as
the director of SSA’s public infor-
mation office, the chief editor of
more than 100 SSA publications,
a deputy press officer and spokes-
man, and a speechwriter for the
commissioner of Social Security.
For 12 years, he also wrote Social
Security columns for local news-
papers, and recently published
the book “Social Security: Simple
and Smart.” If you have a Social
Security question, contact him at
thomas.margenau@comcast.net
A24 | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

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TRUTH AND TRADITION

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT
What I Learned at
the Rally
We must first believe we can win this fight for America’s
soul. If we give way to despair, we lose.
See B4
TRADITION|VALUES|FAMILY
LIFE & TRADITION
In books we find
new and old friends.
Like the food we eat, what we put into our
brains is just as crucial to our health.
Flipping the Script on the Abortion Narrative
COURTESY OF RYAN BOMBERGER U
CATHERINE YANG
When Ryan Bomberger was 13, everything
he knew about his origin story changed.
He already knew he was adopted—his
adoptive parents and siblings are white,
and he’s biracial, he said with a laugh, but
every adoptee goes through a process of
wondering why they were given up for
adoption. So to realize his birth mother
couldn’t keep him because he was the
product of rape was shocking.
“It was devastating to think of,” said
Bomberger, a creative professional and co-
Ryan Bomberger is a creative professional founder of pro-life nonprofit The Radiance
and co-founder of pro-life nonprofit The Foundation. “You throw in a rewrite of your
Radiance Foundation. origin story to the most violent form of con-
BIBARYS IBATOLLA/UNSPLASH
ception and that was really hard for me.”
“But because I was so loved by my par-
ents, I turned that pain into something very
constructive,” Bomberger said.
Bomberger was adopted at just a few
weeks old into a family that showed their
love through actions and service to their
community around them. He was the first
of the children they adopted; almost every
year after that, over the next 12 years, his
parents adopted another child.
“So even though I was conceived in rape,
I was adopted in love, and so I grew up in
a family of 15, where out of 13 children, 10
of us were adopted,” he said. “We’re white,
and black, and biracial, and Native Ameri-
can, Vietnamese, some with physical dis-
WHAT TRADITIONAL ART OFFERS THE HEART
The Miracles of Faith: ‘The
Martyrdom of Saint Christina’
There is power in faith, in the doubtless belief in
something without the need for physical evidence.
See B8
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 B1
A Return
to Books
and
Reading
Unlike the
ephemera of today’s
articles and blogs,
great books inhabit
the mind forever
JEFF MINICK
Y
ears ago, I owned a book-
store in Waynesville, North
Carolina, where we sold
used and new books, and
a healthy collection of chil-
dren’s literature.
One summer afternoon, a woman ac-
companied by two adolescent grand-
children entered the store. While the
kids browsed the shelves, the grand-
mother and I visited at the checkout
desk. At one point during our cordial
conversation, she looked at her grand-
children, both of whom were absorbed
in books, smiled, and said, “You know,
I don’t really care what they’re reading
as long as they’re reading.”
Only the desire for a sale—like most in-
dependent booksellers, I always needed
cash—prevented my reply: “That’s like
saying, ‘I don’t care what they’re eating
as long as they’re eating.’”
What we put into our brains is just
as crucial to our health as what we put
into our bodies. An example: Once
at Waynesville’s public library, I was
standing behind a young woman, age
16 or 17, who handed the librarian a
book she was returning and said: “This
should have a warning label on it. It’s
put images into my head that won’t go
away.”
The book was Thomas Harris’s hor-
rifying “The Silence of the Lambs.”
What we read does indeed matter.
And so do those books we don’t read.
A Love Neglected
A talk with a New York friend prompt-
ed this article. We were speaking by
phone, and she mentioned that in the
past year she had been reading fewer
and fewer books.
“I’m online a lot,” she said, “and I’m
reading articles and blogs there, but
I’m not really reading real books. And
to me, there’s a big difference between
engaging with a book and reading some
column on my laptop.”
Continued on B2
abilities, some with learning disabilities,
but all adopted and loved.”
That Fringe Example
Bomberger’s shock turned into grateful-
ness, not bitterness. “That ‘Wow, she was
courageous enough to go through that,
horrific experience and still give me life,
still give me the gift of adoption,’” Bomb-
erger said. His loving upbringing had given
him the foundation to see that life is a gift,
and that life has purpose.
A few weeks later, for an eighth-grade
persuasion speech assignment, he spoke
of his own story from a pro-life stance.
Continued on B4
B2 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

A Return to Books and Reading SAMANTHA HENTOSH/UNSPLASH

Unlike the
ephemera of
today’s articles
and blogs, great
books inhabit
the mind forever
Continued from B1

Her comments reminded me that I was

reading fewer books as well. Even in my
busiest days 30 years ago, when my wife
and I were raising children, running two
businesses, and working other jobs to try
to pay down our debt, I read more than I do
now. Because I write reviews for a regional
weekly, The Smoky Mountain News, I do
read, but I consume those books for work
and under a deadline, and not for plea-
sure.
Since my childhood, reading had
brought me a special joy. No—more than
a joy. Reading books was my avocation,
perhaps even an addiction. Always I’d had
a book going, sometimes two or three at
the same time, but after my conversation
with my friend, I realized this lifelong
habit had, in the past year, seemingly van-
ished. Instead, I now spend several hours
a day, off and on, skimming sites on the
internet, looking for the latest news about
the pandemic, riots and unrest, and the
presidential election.
This is absurd.
Time to become a reader of books again.

The Reset
Part of my problem, which began about
20 years ago, has to do with modern fic-
tion. I’ll still pick up the suspense novels of
certain authors, or stories that have to do
with bookstores and librarians, or novels
by authors I’ve long loved like Anne Tyler,
but otherwise, most fiction written nowa-
days leaves me as cold as today’s snow in
my yard. Fantasy, romance novels border-
ing on pornography, tales from abroad,
and stories about murderers or deviants
crowd the new arrivals shelves of my lo-
cal library, and all would be as welcome
in my home as ... well, as Antifa wanting
to make my place an autonomous zone.
The political folks I read several years
back also hold little interest for me. Time
Author C.S. Lewis advised, “It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old
and again, their books have ridden home one in between.”
with me in my Civic, only to gather dust
on the floor by my desk. Their arguments TAKAHIRO TAGUCHI/UNSPLASH

these days are all too familiar to me from

my online excursions and are often dated
as well.
In terms of new books to read for plea-
sure and edification, then, history and
biography will become my companions.
Like reading, history has also been a life-
long passion, and the past, I believe, will
shine a light on my present and give me
the fortitude to face future trials. Should
it arrive in the mail on time, I’ll start this
project next week with Michael Walsh’s
“Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All
Is Lost.”

Old Masters, New Friends
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “It is a good rule
after reading a new book, never to allow
yourself another new one till you have
read an old one in between.”
I doubt whether I can meet that stan-
dard, but confess my negligence of old
books distresses me. In my 20s and early
30s, I read many of the masters: Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky, Conrad, Chaucer, Cervantes,
Dickens, and so on. Later, I taught some
of these writers as well as Austen, Emily
Brontë, Shakespeare, Christopher Mar-
lowe, and Sophocles to the homeschooled
students in my seminars.
Again, for the past year or two, I have
read few older writers, and again intend
to change my ways. Having come across
mentions of Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe”
many times over the years without ever
having read it, I have begun that tale of
England set in the time of Richard I. I’ve
only read the first 30 pages or so, but I’ve
enjoyed the slow pace, the revived memo-
ries from my graduate school days when
I studied Medieval English history, and
some remarks that seem apropos to our
current political climate 200 years after
Scott wrote them. Here he describes the
animosity between the Norman conquer-
ors of England and their Saxon subjects:
“The royal policy had long been to weak-
en, by every means, legal and illegal, the
strength of a part of the population which
was justly considered as nourishing the
The memorable
characters in books such
as Dostoevsky’s “Crime
and Punishment” or
Fitzgerald’s “The Great
Gatsby” lend these novels
enduring power.
Please tell us about
your favorite great
books—the ones that
have stayed with you
and perhaps changed
you for the better.
Email tradition@
epochtimes.com
or mail to Life &
Tradition, The Epoch
Times, 229 W. 28th
St., Floor 7, New York,
NY 10001.
most inveterate antipathy to their victor.”
Sound familiar?
Up next may be Dostoevsky’s “The Dev-
ils,” which I once promised myself to read
but never did; some ancient Greek plays
I’ve never explored; perhaps Eliot’s “Mid-
dlemarch;” and Halldor Laxness’s “Inde-
pendent People,” recommended to me by
a friend who knocks back book after book.
Inspirational Readers
That friend lives in North Carolina. Three
others, one in North Carolina, one in Vir-
ginia, and one in Minnesota, also remain
voracious readers, despite all the tempta-
tions of our digital age. Whenever I speak
with them by phone or in person, the talk
inevitably turns to the novel, biography, or
history they’re now reading. Having awak-
ened to my own stunted literary state, I
intend to bring something to our conver-
sation the next time we speak.
So why should we wish to emulate read-
ers of books in this digital age? Why decide
to make books important again in our lives
as opposed to the constant blur of online
articles?
Because most of what we read on the sites
and blogs we visit is ephemera. Here today
and gone tomorrow. Most of what I write,
for instance, fits in this category snuggly as
a foot in a shoe. I have no delusions about
my articles and pieces I send to various
publications; most will be read, perhaps
appreciated, and forgotten within a week.
The Bibliophile Is Back
But books—good books, great books—
inhabit the mind forever. Here’s an ex-
ample: Almost 50 years ago, I read Larry
Woiwode’s “Beyond the Bedroom Wall.”
This novel, now largely forgotten by today’s
readership, had a massive impact on me.
Woiwode’s story of the Neumiller family
has haunted me for years, and even today,
two copies of his novel, one of which I gave
to my mother and retrieved after her death,
sit side by side on my bookshelves.
As for the Great Books, characters like
Heathcliff and Catherine in “Wuthering
Heights,” Raskolnikov and Sonya in “Crime
and Punishment,” the characters in “The
Great Gatsby,” Henry V in Shakespeare’s
play by the same name: These and a host
of others inhabit my brain like old friends,
loyal, always ready to be summoned up
when I need or want their company.
This year, I resolve to expand that circle
of friends.
Jeff Minick has four children and a
growing platoon of grandchildren. For
20 years, he taught history, literature,
and Latin to seminars of homeschool-
ing students in Asheville, N.C. He is the
author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and
“Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of
nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Mov-
ies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and
writes in Front Royal, Va. See JeffMinick.
com to follow his blog.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
DEAR JUNE
Family
On Familily
am y and Relationships
d Re
Rela
lati
tion
o sh
hipss
Dinner
Conversation
Topics: Does
Anything
Go?
Dear June,
Is there such a thing as appropri-
ate topics to only converse about in
mixed company anymore? Or does
anything go?
My husband and I have a 12-year-
old daughter that we homeschool.
On a regular basis, we open our
home for dinner to get to know the
other families from the co-op better.
Two months ago, we had a family
over for dinner. After the husband
talked about overcoming an illness,
the outgoing mother shared of her
experiences of her water breaking
during each of her three children’s
births. The kids’ ages ranged from 8
to 13. It wasn’t like this was a recent
experience. This struck me as odd
that she would share this personal
event in front of the husbands and
kids. It seemed to me this should
be a “ladies only” conversation.
I inquired with my husband and
daughter after they left how they felt
about the conversation. My husband
admitted it made him feel uncom-
fortable. My daughter was “grossed
out” and kept wishing the mother
would stop talking.
The next month when we had
another family over for dinner, the
same situation occurred. After the
husband shared about healing from
a recent injury, the mother, whose
youngest is nine, shared about her
labor experience that led to a C-
section. I politely tried to cut her
off, explaining that I have a queasy
stomach when it comes to medical
procedures. The mother steered the
conversation from the gory medical
details to the disappointment of not
experiencing a natural birth. Neither
DEAR NEXT GENERATION:
The Beauty of ‘Wow Moments’
« Advice from our readers
to our young people
VICTORIAN TRADITIONS/SHUTTERSTOCK
the husbands or kids were partici-
pating in the “family dinner.” Again,
I felt this was a topic to be shared in
private and not at a group dinner.
I will extend some grace, knowing
that the pandemic is causing many
of us to feel an impact from lack of
social connectivity.
My husband and I had our only
child when we were 40, often mak-
ing us 10 to 15 years older than the
other parents with a child our age.
Am I outdated to think there are
topics which you refrain from talk-
ing about in mixed company?
Fuddy Duddy
« Dear Fuddy Duddy,
There most certainly are topics that
are appropriate for mixed company
and those that are not (details of
childbirth are not appropriate in
my opinion). However, it’s also true
that in certain circles, people are
comfortable sharing very intimate
information.
I can’t say why people feel it’s per-
missible to discuss intimate infor-
mation, other than it can feel good
to talk about one’s personal life, and
culture has been trending toward
informality for a few generations
now. Certainly pandemic isolation
may also be blunting our social
graces.
I do think it shows a basic lack of
respect and/or awareness to discuss
topics that make others present
feel uncomfortable. However, as
you said, we need to have grace for
others because most people don’t
intend for their conversation to bore,
disgust, or offend.
At the table, where the audience
is captive, my rule of thumb would
be that conversation should be as
pleasant and engaging as possible
for everyone.
Descriptions of things with an ick
factor are not suitable. I would say
childbirth should be ladies-only for
sure (I really cannot imagine any
man of my acquaintance being in-
terested in the details of this event).
As for illness recovery, this is prob-
ably not interesting to most young-
sters and so better discussed in
adults-only conversation, of course
with consideration for the interest
of others.
Dinner conversation is often the
result of where our minds have been
during the day, so when we cultivate
some knowledge and appreciation
for the beautiful and amazing things
in this world, our dinners will be
lively and interesting and broaden
everyone’s perspectives.
I would love to hear from readers
what topics of conversation you have
found enjoyable for the table, and
maybe our older readers can chime
in about what they were taught
about table conversation etiquette.
Please send suggestions and topics
to tradition@epochtimes.com.
Sincerely,
June
My husband and I have two daughters and
four grandchildren. Although our daugh-
ters did well in school and life has been
kind to them, they definitely dealt with a
lot of challenges during their school years
especially when they were young. I spoke
to them about “Wow Moments” to help
them through the disappointments in life.
I hope this can help other children keep
a positive attitude when life doesn’t seem
quite so “fair”:
When my kids were little, I spoke to them
about “Wow Moments.” Everyone gets a
certain amount of “Wow Moments” in
their lives. You never know when you’ll
get to use one of your “Wow Moments.”
Sometimes you might really, really want
something so badly and you worked so
hard; but someone else wins, gets picked
for a team or a play and you might be really
sad. But you are only witnessing someone
else getting to use their “Wow Moment.”
The thing to remember about “Wow
Moments” is that you only get so many.
If everything you really, really wanted in
kindergarten happened, you might have
used up all your “Wow Moments.” As life
Dear June,
I have recently been able to find
the contact information for a dear
friend. When I last wrote to this
friend, she was going through
a tough emotional time. I often
wonder if in my zeal to share all
of my news, I neglected to express
concern for her situation. Though
I really cannot remember exactly
what I wrote in the letter, I do know
that I have not heard from her since.
(Note: We have both moved several
times since that last communication
and did not have cell phones yet.)
When I tracked her down this
month, it was her place of busi-
ness, so I left a message with her
receptionist. After two days of no
return call, I called again to get the
business mailing address in order
to send a Christmas card. I chose to
include my contact information “if
you want to be in touch.”
If I offended this friend in any way,
I would appreciate the opportunity
to apologize, and wonder if there
is anything else I can do, without
seeming pushy or presumptuous?
Sincerely,
Kathleen
« Dear Kathleen,
If you have not yet heard from her
after the holidays have passed, I
unfolds, you’ll see that what you thought
might be the beginning or the end isn’t ex-
actly as big as you thought and you might
be really happy you didn’t use up one of
your “Wow Moments” back then.
The really great thing about “Wow Mo-
ments” is that they love company. When
you see someone use their “Wow Moment,”
you can be pretty certain they’d really ap-
preciate it if you would join in their cel-
ebration. Congratulate them. Be happy
you get to witness their special moment
just like you’d like to see others happy to
see you using your “Wow Moments.” Ev-
eryone has their own so don’t worry if they
are using one of theirs. It will not lessen
how many you will still have. When you
don’t get to use your “Wow Moment,” just
remember kindergarten and know your
special moment just hasn’t shown up yet
because it just wasn’t your special “Wow
Moment” time.
Some people don’t get to use their “Wow
Moments” until much later in life—great
careers, marriages, adventures. Some
people use them up quickly—great school
friends when they are young, being asked
to a dance. Just keep a positive attitude
and keep a look out for “Wow Moments”—
yours or others—so you won’t miss any of
the good stuff in life. Believe in yourself,
B3
SIMONA PILOLLA 2/SHUTTERSTOCK
would write to her again. In this
letter, I would share your reflections
that perhaps you were not sensi-
tive during her time of difficulty
and offer your apology if this was
indeed the case. This will allow her
to see that you do care and value her
friendship, and apologizing will also
give you peace of mind. It would
be good to reiterate that you would
be happy to renew your friendship
since you truly do care about her,
and because you are sincere, I don’t
think this is presumptuous or pushy.
There could, of course, be other
reasons why she has not respond-
ed—busyness, or perhaps she’s in a
profession that’s experiencing dif-
ficulty or extra work at this time due
to the holidays or pandemic.
Sincerely,
June
Do you have a family or relationship
question for our advice columnist,
Dear June? Send it to DearJune@
EpochTimes.com or Attn: Dear June,
The Epoch Times, 229 W. 28th St.,
Floor 7, New York, NY 10001.
June Kellum is a married mother of two
and longtime Epoch Times journalist
covering family, relationships, and
health topics.
be kind, and be joyful for others and you
will find yourself in the middle of a “Wow
Moment” when you least expect it. Mean-
while, stay on your path you were meant
to walk, and life will unfold as it is meant
to be.
—Johanne Schwartz
Six words to be of real value to family,
friends, in the workplace, and especially
yourself:
“What can I do to help?”
—Dave Stellingworth
What advice would you like to
give to the younger generations?
We call on all of our readers to share the time-
less values that define right and wrong, and
pass the torch, if you will, through your wis-
dom and hard-earned experience. We feel
that the passing down of this wisdom has
diminished over time, and that only with a
strong moral foundation can future genera-
tions thrive.
Send your advice, along with your full name,
state, and contact information to Next-
Generation@epochtimes.com or mail it to:
Next Generation, The Epoch Times, 229 W.
28th St., Floor 7, New York, NY 10001
B4 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

Flipping the Script on Alveda King (C), niece of

Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., speaks following a
meeting with President
Donald Trump and other

the Abortion Narrative

faith-based inner-city
leaders at the White
House in Washington,
D.C. on July 29, 2019.

Continued from B1

“I realized I had a powerful story to tell,” My parents

Bomberger said. The responses to his
speech were mixed, but for some it was
an illuminating and indelible one. “I can
almost never forget what abortion does, not
just the lives it destroys but the people it
would completely erase from other people’s
lives.”
“I’m actually the 1 percent that’s used 100
percent of the time to justify abortion,” Bom-
berger said. “My birth mom experienced
the horror and violence of rape, so I’m one
of those fringe cases, the exceptions.”
“There’s something so powerful and
disarming about my own story, because I
am that fringe example, that any time you
talk about abortion, it gets to that question:
‘Well, what about rape?’” Bomberger said.
He’s heard people who say they are pro-life
balk when it comes to that question as well.
“I answer that question. I’m that tangible
example right before them, and I know that
is in large part a powerful part of it, because
I take away that abstract. It’s easy to reject
something in the abstract.”
When a life is aborted, or not aborted,
there is a powerful ripple effect. Bomberger
has never met his birth mother, but says if
he could, he would thank her for her coura-
geous act of life and show her that effect.
Because of her, he has become a brother,
husband, author, speaker, singer and song-
writer, an Emmy award-winning designer,
and much more, and his story has touched
many more lives.
Race and Abortion
About 10 years ago, Bomberger and his wife
Bethany founded The Radiance Founda-
tion and as a fledgling little nonprofit de-
cided to do an outdoor creative campaign.
In Georgia, Atlanta, 15 billboards went up
for TooManyAborted.com, stating: “Black
children are an endangered species.”
The billboards were placed in black com-
munities, because abortion marketing
and clinics have a decades-long history
of targeting minority communities, and
abortion has had a particularly devastating
effect on the black population.
According to national data, white women
have 37 percent of the abortions and black
women have 36 percent, but black women
make up 13 percent of the national popula-
tion (compared to non-Hispanic whites at
60 percent).
“We highlighted the history of eugenics
of Planned Parenthood’s racist past and
unaltered present,” Bomberger said. The
response was polarized, as expected. There
was negative, skeptical coverage from lib-
eral media and strong support from pro-life
voices—and some civil rights leaders.
Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther
are
Christians,
and the most
important
thing they
taught us is
to love one
another, and
we saw them King, Jr., keenly understands the abortion
narrative. She had two abortions herself,
carry that out and then a miscarriage and a divorce. She
not just in the later learned that in the 1950s, her mother
was pregnant with her as a college student
13 children and was about to get an abortion—then
illegal, and an exploratory procedure—
that they but was stopped by her father who saw his
loved and granddaughter Alveda King in a dream.
Since 1983, she has become a voice for the
cared for, but unborn, and quickly lent her support to The
the people Radiance Foundation’s work.
“The coverage was massive,” Bomberger
around them. said. In fact, Planned Parenthood’s coordi-
nated response was very telling, he added,
Ryan Bomberger, as they felt threatened to the point that they
co-founder, The called a conference of national bloggers
Radiance Foundation and journalists in their headquarters “to try
to figure out how to counter our message.”
“What happened after that was that
Planned Parenthood produced a 20-min-
ute documentary called “A Vital Service” in
direct response to our campaign,” Bomb-
erger said. The film highlighted the health
care that the clinics could provide black
women, because they have higher rates
of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted
Ben Watson in his diseases, and cervical cancer. But the na-
documentary “Divided tion was already shocked at the staggering
Hearts of America.” number of black abortions.
COURTESY OF DIVIDED HEARTS OF AMERICA
SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
This racial targeting by the abortion in-
dustry is nothing new and has been going
on for decades, Bomberger said, but more
people understand it now. “There are lead-
ers in the black community where abortion
is hardest felt statistically, who are awaken-
ing to this; that’s a great victory,” he said.
A few years ago, former NFL player Ben
Watson gave a speech citing statistics that
more black babies were aborted than born
alive in New York City, and it made head-
lines. Fact-checkers picked up the story and
found the statistics true. The discrepancy
still hasn’t changed.
Abortion is a heated, divisive topic in the
United States. Watson recently made a doc-
umentary, “Divided Hearts of America,” in
which he spoke openly and honestly with
people on both sides of the issue.
Race is undeniably an issue in the abor-
tion debate—experts have already sounded
the alarm on record low birth rates, and the
black population is in the most precarious
position, with one interviewee citing sta-
tistics that if this continues, the trend will
be irreversible by 2050.
Watson said he has long known about
the statistics of how the black population
disproportionately makes up the number
of abortions, and has been driven to fight
against injustices all his life. “My reaction
has been to understand why,” Watson
wrote via email. “The more I’ve researched
and spoken to those directly affected, I’ve
found that there are several factors that
contribute to this dilemma.”
Watson found that Americans were
deeply divided on the topic of abortion,
but it wasn’t at all a clear-cut left-versus-
right issue.
“There are nuanced points of view that
don’t get airtime on cable news. I’ve learned
that the current landscape, especially po-
litically, is a recent development,” Watson
said. “In order to correctly address the pres-
ent, we must understand how we got here
and where we may be headed.”
Watson spoke to more than 30 experts,
legislators, doctors, women who have had

MARK ZOU/THE EPOCH TIMES

Pro-Trump happy—the event seemed more like a big,
supporters wonderful party than a protest—but they
march in were also kind and polite. Those slipping
Washington on through the crowd were always saying
Jan. 6, 2021.
“Pardon me.” When an older woman with
a walker fell, others rushed to her aid and
returned her to her chair. Noticing that I
was breathing into my hands—it was cold,
and the wind was brisk—one of the Florida
ladies offered me a small disposable hand
warmer. I declined, but appreciated this
sweet gesture.
After President Donald Trump finished
speaking, our group decided to skip the
march to the Capitol and return home. The
Commitment and Attitude
That day I spoke with a man from Hawaii,
an ICU nurse from Wisconsin, some nuns
in full habit from Minnesota, and a couple
from Georgia. All of them had sacrificed
their time and money to attend this rally, to
protest what they believed a corrupt elec-
tion, and to take a stand for liberty.
And every one of them displayed a cheer-
ful and upbeat love for their country and
their cause.
We must do the same.
In the months to come, we must emu-
late that spirit of goodwill, pushing back
when we can against policies with which

Fighting the Good Fight: 11 young people were exhausted, and all of
us were cold, and so we missed the may-
hem the media then used to characterize
we disagree, but aiming always to keep a
positive attitude. If we give way to despair,
we lose. It’s as simple as that.

What I Learned at the Rally the entire event.

Bad Times Ahead?

JEFF MINICK
Here’s what I witnessed in Washington on
Jan. 6 at the Save America March.
Surrounding me were patriotic Ameri-
cans who had traveled from all parts of
our land to protest what they believed was
a fraudulent election. My daughter’s friend
had secured VIP seating for our party, but
few people sat during the event. Instead,
many of them danced, tapped their feet, or
sang to the music from the loudspeakers.
Others chatted and laughed with friends,
stood on the chairs to snap pictures of the
enormous crowd, and enthusiastically ap-
plauded the speakers.
To the amusement of those who could see
him, a middle-aged man with yellow-tint-
ed hair, silver earrings, and golden sandals
danced up and down the aisle. The three
women from Florida next to me bounced
up and down in time to the music, and
some of the teenage girls who were in our
group spent time braiding their friends’
hair.
Not only were most of these people
Now, we are facing what Joe Biden has pre-
dicted will be a dark winter. That winter
may last for months or possibly even years,
and some of us are undoubtedly disheart-
ened by the prospect of such a bleak future.
Hold it right there, my friends.
Long ago, an anti-drug advertisement on
television featured the catchphrase: “Just
say no!” We should say “NO!” to depression,
despondency, and fear every time those
swamp creatures rear their ugly heads.
Instead, let’s take some lessons from
those people I saw in the crowd on that
January morning.
Strength in Numbers
Many of us this past year, including me,
have often felt alone and isolated, sucked
down by a maelstrom of catastrophes.
The masks and social distancing of the
pandemic have brought a feeling of sepa-
ration, the riots of the past summer that
wrecked several of our cities filled us with
a sense of impotence and rage, and the
election results have surely left some be-
lieving all is lost.
Let’s take a lesson from that calm and
joyful D.C. crowd and break that feeling
of loneliness by joining together with
those who share our love for this nation.
We can link up with family and friends
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 B5
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF RYAN BOMBERGER UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Ryan
Bomberger
speaks at
Harvard. He
has noticed
that students
are presented
with a “narrow,
singular
perspective”
at most college
campuses.

abortions, people who survived abortions,
and fathers affected by abortions. “It touch-
es all of us in some way,” Watson said.
New Perspectives
When Bomberger started giving talks, it
took him to many prominent college cam-
puses, including Ivy League schools.
“I’m thinking I’m not worthy, this is an
Ivy League school, they’re going to ask
these deeply intellectual questions—with
citations even. And it wasn’t like that at
all,” Bomberger said. Instead, at Harvard,
people protested against him and activ-
ists screamed profanities at him. It was a
disappointing and poor reflection of the
school, he said.
But what was quickly revealed, Bomb-
erger said, was how little the pro-abortion
students really knew about abortions—and
people attending his presentations left with
broadened horizons.
“It depends on the lens which you look
at the world through: If I see them as my
enemy, I’m going to treat them the same
way some of them treat me, but I don’t. I see
them as people who are worthy of love and
worthy of dignity and respect, even when
they don’t give any of it,” Bomberger said.
He admits it isn’t easy to stand there and
smile when he’s being attacked, but his
faith in God is where his belief that all life
has value comes from, and Bomberger lives
by his beliefs.
“Every life is equal and has irrevocable
worth, that’s what drives me and Bethany,”
he said.
Bomberger comes to these presentations
prepared to talk about any issue—poverty,
Medicaid, incarceration rates, race—and
answers every question during the long
question-and-answer sessions afterward.
The abortion movement talks about critical
race theory and things such as intersec-
tionality, so many issues have become in-
extricably linked, and Bomberger is happy
to address all of it.
“Those who come in self-identifying as
pro-choice, in many instances their minds
have been changed. I’m not saying every
student who comes in, but it’s really obvi-
ous. I’ve had students come up afterward
and say, ‘I wanted to hate you when you
came in, but you gave me a perspective that
I’ve never heard before,’” Bomberger said.
“They get such a narrow, singular per-
spective on most of these college campuses,
they don’t ever get a truthful perspective.
Harvard was the perfect example, the pro-
fessor I was debating knew nothing about
... abortion’s impact on the black commu-
nity. But this is why we do what we do. Our
campuses need more truth, not less.”
Aside from the 50 or so media presenta-
tions a year, the foundation also creates
fact sheets, memes, videos, and articles.
The Bombergers also have written two
books. The billboard campaigns, which
they began with, have met with more re-
sistance over the years as they’ve dealt with
companies that will put up pro-abortion
billboards (“Abortion is a family value”)
but refuse their pro-life advertising.
“They said our campaign is ‘an attack
ad’,” Bomberger said of their WhatAbor-
tionReallyIs.com, with messages such as
“Abortion is lost fatherhood.” A billboard
that said “Abortion endangers us” that was
put together with a coalition of black pas-
tors was also refused.
“That’s preventing us from doing what we
started out doing,” Bomberger said.
“My creativity, as far as I’m concerned,
is given to me by God,” Bomberger said.
“It’s always life-affirming, it’s always illu-
minating, it’s always revelatory—that’s our
hope, that we reveal something different to
someone. They may have heard the mes-
sage a thousand times but because the way
that we’ve created or design it, they see it
differently and feel it differently.”
“My wife and I couldn’t do the work that
we do if we didn’t believe that we are all
created in God’s image.”
The Radiance Foundation is named for
Ryan and Bethany’s daughter Radiance.
The two met during a planning meeting for
a pregnancy center—Ryan was the singer
Ryan
Bomberger
speaks
at Bishop
O’Connell
High School in
Arlington, Va.
for the event and Bethany was working
on marketing—and Bethany was a single
Every life is mother at the time, who had her own un-
planned pregnancy. The couple now have
equal and has four children, two adopted, and the most
important thing Bomberger says he wants
irrevocable to pass on to them is what his own parents
worth, that’s instilled in him.
“My parents are Christians, and the most
what drives important thing they taught us is to love
one another, and we saw them carry that
me and out not just in the 13 children that they
Bethany. loved and cared for, but the people around
them. I grew up watching my parents serve
Ryan Bomberger, those who were in need. And of course,
co-founder, The our family was in need, too—we were not
Radiance Foundation wealthy—so I grew up watching them just
pour out love for people,” Bomberger said.
“For my children, that is the most impor-
tant thing, to love one another and love
people who are hard to love, too.”
“Hand in hand, when you love God as
my parents did, the natural outflow of
loving God is loving people,” Bomberger
said. It may not be easy in our culture that
now seems more prone to hating first than
loving first, he added, but love is what en-
ables reconciliation and communication.
“People are a little more responsive to love
than the dismissiveness of hate.”

through social media, yes, but even bet-
ter, we can throw dinners and parties
in our homes, we can gather people for
musical sing-along evenings, and we can
take time from our busy schedules to talk
with others—conversations that are as
healthy for us as vitamins.
The more ambitious might consider
giving their time, talents, and money
to groups who stand for American val-
ues and freedom. Women for America
First, for example, organized the rally in
Washington. We can go online and seek
out similar groups. Even better, those
who cherish America can work on the
grassroots level to bring change to local
governments, joining community groups
that seek improvement and advocate for
freedom.
Optimism and Sanity
A good friend and I talk every other day
or so about personal matters and politics.
With all the latest explosions—the main-
stream media deceptions, the silencing of
the president, the corruption in our politi-
cal system, the looming presidency of Joe
Biden and crew—John is as discouraged
as I’ve ever seen him.
And as he said just this morning after we
discussed the headlines, “I feel like I’m liv-
ing in Bizarro World,” meaning he senses
the country is going off the deep end.
The people in the crowd I saw on Jan. 6
took a more hopeful view of the future.
They wanted Trump’s reelection, yet
many of them, including Trump him-
self during his speech, stressed that this
movement was bigger than one man and
that no matter what happens, together we
must carry on the battle for liberty.
To do so, we must first believe we can
win this fight for America’s soul. We must
also refuse to allow ourselves to be sucked
into the craziness of online speculations,
charges, and counter-charges, avoiding
the paranoia and fear that abound in to-
day’s public square.
If we are to make our
way through the coming
storm, we must stick to
our principles and try in
our personal lives to live
well and righteously.
Staying on the Right Path
The patriots surrounding me at the rally
reminded me of people I see every day in
the streets and shops here in Front Royal,
Virginia: decent folks of all ages, races,
and creeds who work hard and who ap-
pear to lead virtuous lives. Like my fellow
Virginians, those I encountered in D.C.
struck me as men and women who hold
down jobs, who love their families, who
believe in law and order, and who honor
the Constitution.
If we are to make our way through the
coming storm, we must stick to our prin-
ciples and try in our personal lives to live
well and righteously. Some of us, perhaps
most of us, have fallen at times in the past,
but given the challenges ahead, now more
than ever we must practice moral recti-
tude, both to keep our own souls intact
and to inspire others around us.
Keep the Faith
In times like the present, circumstances
can tempt some believers to lose faith in
God. The shutting down of church ser-
vices for so many long months has doubt-
lessly damaged the spiritual practices of
some of the devout, and some in the me-
dia and in our culture will likely continue
to attack and denigrate religious faith.
But now is precisely the time—and I’m
directing these words at myself as well
as you readers—when we believers must
look to God for succor and nourishment.
Like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet
gulag, we can grow in our faith in times of
adversity. We can deepen our prayer life,
and we can join or form spiritual groups
that will encourage us in our struggles
with the secular world.
“In God we trust” is still the motto of
the United States of America. Those of
us who believe in God should make that
motto our own as well.
Woke Warriors
These past few years, especially 2020,
have opened the eyes of many citizens. To
steal a word from the left, we are “woke,”
albeit in an entirely different sense. The
sleep-walkers among us, those who were
going through their busy lives without
paying attention to the machinations of
some politicians, our big tech gang, and
our politically correct and cancel culture
radicals, have shaken off their somnam-
bulism and are now conscious of the de-
ceits and intentions of their enemies.
So, now is not the time to give way to
despair or to sink into apathy. No—now is
the time when we must join those patriots
in D.C. and put ourselves body and soul
into the battles awaiting us.
Let’s make the good, the true, and the
beautiful our banners and trumpets, and
never ever give up the fight.
Jeff Minick has four children and a grow-
ing platoon of grandchildren. For 20
years, he taught history, literature, and
Latin to seminars of homeschooling stu-
dents in Asheville, N.C. He is the author
of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust
On Their Wings,” and two works of non-
fiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies
Make The Man.” Today, he lives and
writes in Front Royal, Va. See JeffMinick.
com to follow his blog.
B6
Jack of All Trades
Man pays off $50,000 student debt
within a year by taking on 300 odd jobs
LOUISE BEVAN
A Hawaiian man has achieved a feat that
many students may deem impossible. He
has paid off more than $50,000 in student
loan debt in just 11 months by saying “yes”
to an incredible array of odd jobs.
Kamaka Dias, 27, graduated from the Uni-
versity of Hawai’i at Mānoa and made the
decision to pay off his debt as quickly as pos-
sible after calculating what his expenses un-
der a loan repayment plan would look like.
“I think it would have been $500 a month
for 10 years, and I would have paid $70,000,”
the Hilo native told KHON2, “so I was like,
COURTESY OF LOUANN HAYS
(Left) Rebel Hays (L) and Paul Scott have become good friends. (Right) Rebel leads Paul during
a race.
Guiding Hand
4th-grade star athlete helps blind runner compete
in cross-country
LOUISE BEVAN
A fourth-grade star athlete has made
headlines for keeping up with high school-
ers. The selfless student is a guide runner
for a blind, autistic teen who needs a help-
ing hand on the cross-country course.
Rebel Hays, 11, of Fayetteville, Arkansas,
stepped up as a guide runner for ninth-
grader Paul Scott when West Fork High
School put out a call for volunteers.
Named “Fastest Kid in Fayetteville” for
his age bracket in 2019, Holcomb Elemen-
tary School student Rebel started out ac-
companying Paul on two-mile courses at
the beginning of the season. Connected by
a handheld rope, the pair then took on 5K
races with an eventual goal of completing
a 5K course in under 20 minutes.
As they ran together, the pair also became
firm friends.
“Paul and Rebel’s story is so much more
than running,” Rebel’s mother, LouAnn,
told The Epoch Times. “Paul is also autistic
and so he doesn’t have many friends, and
so Rebel doesn’t just guide him at races.”
They also spend time together, she said,
telling jokes and rehearsing card tricks.
Paul, grateful for his young guide’s direc-
tion, told WCNC that Rebel “directs me,
whether there’s a ditch or there’s hills.”
Rebel, he said, “inspires me to run faster.”
‘Nope! I’m not going to do that.’”
Dias then launched his mission at the be-
ginning of 2020, calling it “The Race to $50K.”
He worked almost every day, document-
ing every job, gig, chore, and milestone on
his Instagram page as the dollars mounted.
Rather than charging for his time, he asked
employers to give what they wanted.
Working between Hilo and Oahu, Dias’s
list of odd jobs soon grew diverse.
“I picked up groceries, cupcakes, flowers,
food, weed-whacked, planted trees, cleared
bushes, raked leaves, painted, did dump
runs. Everything!” he told Hawaii News Now.
However, it wasn’t all manual labor for
COURTESY OF NHI BLANSETT VIA LOUANN HAYS
“If I don’t run this distance, I’m cheating
on Paul,” said Rebel, who was practicing
every day to keep up, “so I have to run this
distance, or this time, no matter what.” The
athlete admitted that the going gets tough,
but he loves the challenge nonetheless.
“I just wanna do it for Paul,” he said. “I
have to do it for Paul.”
In honor of their partnership, West Fork
High School shared a tribute to Rebel and
Paul on Facebook. Posting last October af-
ter a 5K race in which the boys achieved a
personal record of 21 minutes, school rep-
resentatives said, “Rebel Hays [has] been
helping Paul all season long. Rebel is a stud
runner, but even more importantly, he has
a huge heart! Thank you, Rebel! We all ap-
preciate you a lot!”
According to MileSplit Arkansas, which
provides Arkansas high school running,
cross country, and track and field news,
Paul said that his goal this year was to break
21 minutes; although he fell short at the
Chile Pepper meet, he achieved it at the Van
Buren Pointer Classic, finishing with a time
of 20:59:44. With assistance and guidance
from Rebel, Paul finished 59th out of 135
runners in the 3A boys race at the state meet
in Hot Springs in early November.
Paul still has one more year of eligibility
in cross country and has set a new goal of
under 20 minutes.
(Left) Dias took on many jobs, from cleaning to grocery runs.
(Middle) Dias dresses up as Buzz Lightyear for a 3-year-old's
birthday party.
(Right) Dias also made cupcake deliveries.
the industrious graduate. He even offici-
ated a close friend’s wedding, walked and
bathed dogs, and dressed up as Buzz Light-
year of “Toy Story” fame for a 3-year-old’s
birthday party.
Dias launched his mission
at the beginning of 2020,
calling it ‘The Race to $50K.’
During this period of time, Dias lived with
his parents to save money and used every
opportunity to be frugal such as choosing
not to eat an acai bowl that looked tempt-
ing until he finished his goal and could
finally treat himself. Word of mouth about
his mission earned Dias more and more
job opportunities, and by the end of the
year, he had logged more than 300 different
assignments.
“People have been inspired by the hustle,”
Wreaths to Remember
Nicole Pompei breathes new life into old military uniforms
LOUISE BEVAN
After the U.S. Air Force switched over
to new uniforms, a staff sergeant from
San Antonio, Texas, found a unique way
to memorialize her old ones. She repur-
posed the material into a wreath.
Nicole Pompei, 29, a former Marine
and active-duty airman, was looking for
ideas for what to do with the old uniforms
when the Air Force switched from Airman
Battle Uniforms to Operational Camou-
flage Pattern uniforms. In July 2020, she
posted her question on a women veterans’
Facebook page, where many people rec-
ommended making a wreath.
Pompei admitted she had no idea how
to create one.
With support from her skilled mother,
who helped create the design, Pompei
made a prototype. After posting photos
in the veterans’ group, she was flooded
with requests from families who wanted
to honor their loved ones in the same way.
Pompei then launched a website called
Wreaths by Nicole P. She has crafted more
than 200 wreaths since July.
“It just kind of blew up,” she told Fox
News.
One of Pompei’s most noteworthy com-
missions to date was from a friend’s cous-
in who wanted three military uniforms
from 1946 repurposed. Pompei admit-
ted feeling reluctant to cut them up but
is happy she did.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF KAMAKA DIAS
he said, crediting huge community support
for his success even during the pandemic.
One kind donor even gave Dias a car to
drive himself to jobs.
To give back to his supportive commu-
nity, Dias even donated his stimulus check
toward gift packs for hundreds of high
school seniors.
Dias made his final loan repayment in
December 2020. In total, he paid off $53,757
in just 11 months, proving to graduates with
loan debt everywhere that where there’s a
will, there’s a way.
“This journey finally comes to an end,”
Dias wrote on Dec. 6 on Instagram. “I’m
finally free, the weight is off my shoulder
and I can’t wait to start the next chapter in
my life ... DEBT FREE!!”
“I asked for it, so yeah it’s on me,” he said
of his student loans. “It’s my responsibility
to pay it back. So, I wanted to show people
that if you live a certain way, and you just
work hard, you can do it.”
Dias plans to write a book about his expe-
rience to further inspire others.
“Now they have a blended moment that
they can hold with them for a lifetime,”
she wrote.
Pompei’s creations come in a spectrum
of sizes and bespoke designs, with some
being patriotic with stars and stripes
while others are festive holiday themes.
Pompei relies mostly on donated military
uniforms, supplementing with fabrics
that she buys herself. It takes four hours to
make one wreath from beginning to end.
The sergeant’s favorite aspect of her
unique hobby is hearing the stories be-
hind the uniforms and connecting with
military families across the country.
“I feel so honored that I can memori-
alize and honor their service,” she told
People. “I have such respect for anybody
who has served in the military.”
Pompei’s creations have also elicited
very emotional responses from a number
of recipients.
“I often joke that my motto should be,
‘Wreaths by Nicole P: Making moms cry
since July 2020,’” she told KENS 5. “I cannot
tell you how many times I’ve had custom-
ers tell me the recipient began crying from
being so overwhelmed with their gift.”
“Each wreath tells a story,” Pompei said.
“Whether it’s old uniforms stuffed in the
back of someone’s closet, to retirements,
birthdays, Christmas gifts,” she said,
“when I make each wreath, I get to learn
a bit about someone’s service and I get to
honor that service in a unique way.”
WREATHS BY NICOLE
Nicole
Pompei
shows some
of her wreath
creations.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 B7
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE

The Italian painter Canaletto famously painted this view of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London.

LARGER THAN LIFE: ART THAT INSPIRES US THROUGH THE AGES English Civil War (1642–1651). Wren believed that “architecture aims
In place of the palace is an astounding at eternity,” and as such, he wanted the

A Maritime Masterpiece: testament to Britain’s maritime history:

the magnificent baroque-style Old Royal
Naval College, built during the late 17th
hospital’s design to be timeless, said Will
Palin, former head of conservation at the
Old Royal Naval College, in an audio re-

Old Royal Naval to early 18th century.

College at Greenwich
Greenwich Palace—the birthplace of the
Tudor monarch King Henry VIII—once
stood on the site where the Old Royal Naval
College now stands in Greenwich, London.
Known as “the father of the royal navy,”
Henry made substantial investments in his
fleets. Located beside the River Thames,
the palace site was ideal for Henry to be
close to the docks where his favorite war-
ships, the Great Harry and the Mary Rose,
were moored.
Traces of the Tudor palace do remain
on the site, but most of the palace was de-
stroyed after it fell into disrepair during the
Before her death, Queen Mary II (1662–
1694) commissioned the Royal Hospital for
Seamen to be built at Greenwich for Royal
Navy retirees, although it was more of an
almshouse than a hospital. It took over 50
years to build and operated from 1694 until
1869. The hospital became the Royal Naval
College from 1873 until 1997.
Although preeminent architect Sir Chris-
topher Wren was appointed architect for
the new hospital, he was busily rebuilding
over 50 churches after the Great Fire of Lon-
don, so his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor
completed most of the work.
cording.
The college complex consists of four
courtyard buildings that sit on either side
of a path that leads to the River Thames.
The purpose of this design was to allow
the view of the river from the Queen’s
House, which was set farther back, to be
unimpeded.
Built from white Portland stone, the
buildings mirror one another with a se-
ries of columns, capitals, pediments, and
colonnades, all of which lead to a harmo-
nious design. Under the matching domes
are the St. Peter and St. Paul Chapel and
the Painted Hall, which is a banquet hall.

1. 2. 3.

6. 4.

5. OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE AND JIGSAW DESIGN & PUBLISHING 2010

(Clockwise) 1. The Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, where hundreds of figures feature in Sir James Thornhill’s paintings celebrating Britain’s monarchs and its naval
and merchant might. 2. The proscenium arch connects the lower and upper Painted Hall. On the arch’s ceiling are the allegorical signs of the zodiac representing the constellations the seamen navigated
by. 3. The upper hall of the Painted Hall in Greenwich, London, depicts King George surrounded by his family to show the strength of his reign and the solidity of the Protestant line. 4. Inside the Chapel
of St. Peter and St. Paul at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. 5. The Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul is located under the left dome of the Old Royal Naval College and the Painted Hall is under the
right dome. The Queen’s House sits in the distance. 6. The magnificent Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor.
B8
“The Martyrdom of Saint Christina,” 1895, by Vicente Palmaroli. Oil on Canvas, 71.5 inches by 118.5 inches. Prado Museum, Spain.
REACHING WITHIN: WHAT TRADITIONAL ART OFFERS THE HEART
The Miracles of Faith:
‘The Martyrdom of Saint Christina’
ERIC BESS
I
’m sometimes left wondering about
this thing we call faith, a thing the
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
celebrated as a paradox in which
we, as individuals, have an absolute
relationship with the Absolute, that is,
God.
There is power in faith, in the doubt-
less belief in something without the
need for physical evidence. Those who
do have faith might cite spiritual evi-
dence: a power within themselves that
confirms the legitimacy of their belief,
and sometimes this power cannot only
save us from our own limitations but also
produce miracles.
Many of the spiritual exemplars we’ve
come to know and love don’t possess this
type of doubtless faith. Actually, many
doubt and question their faith but do so
in a way that allows their faith to even-
tually grow and strengthen, and doubt
becomes part of their paths.
One of those few who seem to have
doubtless faith, however, was St. Christina.
Saint Christina
Christina lived in the third century. Her
father, Urbain, a magistrate, worshiped
idols that represented the tenets of a
hedonistic spirituality. Urbain wanted
his daughter to become a priestess of this
hedonism, so he locked her in a room
and ordered her to worship the idols.
Christina, however, was able to look out
her window, and the grand, organized
universe she saw daily caused her to
understand that there must be a Creator
beyond the manmade idols locked in her
room with her.
She fasted and began to pray that she
could come to know God, and she began
to experience a deep love inside her. She
continued to fast and pray, and an angel
came to her and taught her about Chris-
tian faith but told her that she would
suffer for it.
Undeterred, Christina immediately
destroyed the idols. When her father
visited her and noticed the missing idols,
he began to question her. She refused to
speak to him. He instead told his ser-
vants to speak to her to find out what was
going on, and to them she revealed her
new faith.
Urbain was upset upon hearing about
his daughter’s faith and decided to make
sure she would suffer for it. He had her
servants executed and beat her before
throwing her into prison.
Urbain tried to beat and torture Chris-
tina’s faith out of her, but nothing he
did worked. Every time Urbain hurt her,
angels appeared, saved her, and healed
her wounds. Finally, Urbain decided to
execute her but died the night before he
could carry out his plan.
A new governor, even more evil than
her father, began to torture Christina, but
she never lost faith and survived nearly
everything thrown at her. Her faith and
resolve inspired others’ interest in God.
The new governor recognized that she
would never relinquish her faith and
finally executed her.
‘The Martyrdom of Saint Christina’
In 1895, over 1500 years later, Spanish
painter Vicente Palmaroli created “The
Martyrdom of Saint Christina.” He de-
picted one of Urbain’s attempts to kill his
daughter: Urbain ordered Christina to
be thrown into a lake with a heavy stone
tied to her. However, angels appeared,
untied her, and kept her afloat.
Palmaroli depicted our focal point, St.
She puts her Christina, just right of center. She wears
a plain, white gown representing her
hands together, purity. A rope fastens her to the rock on
closes her eyes, which she sits. She puts her hands to-
gether, closes her eyes, and slightly bows
and slightly her head in prayer as the wind blows
through her amber hair.
bows her head An angel is seen immediately to the
in prayer as right of St. Christina. This angel looks
at her, and with the touch of its fingers,
the wind blows effortlessly keeps afloat the heavy rock to
through her which she is tied. A group of ethereal an-
gels follow behind the first, and they all
amber hair. sing and play music to celebrate her faith.
To the left of St. Christina, another an-
gel is floating above her and holds high in
the air a palm frond, which traditionally
represents the martyr’s strength of spirit
to resist temptations of the flesh.
Here, the palm frond is also a celebra-
tion of the power of St. Christina’s faith,
an unwavering power that enabled her
to not only endure immense suffering
but also access a world of angels and
miracles.
The Miracles of Faith
Palmaroli showed us a grand scene
of angels assisting and celebrating St.
Christina. Without the angels, she would
sink to the bottom of the lake and drown.
The angels make the impossible happen:
They make what is heavy light so that the
load cannot pull her down.
Indeed, the angels save Christina
from her own limitations. She lacks the
physical strength to carry the heavy rock
to which she’s attached; she needs the as-
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
PUBLIC DOMAIN
sistance of the angels, or she would die.
We sometimes take on heavy loads that
prove to be too much for us. These loads
may not only consist of work, relation-
ships, finances, and so on, but also
might include inappropriate things that
infiltrate our lives and compete with our
spiritual lives. These may prove too dif-
ficult and overwhelming for us to handle
by ourselves, and we find we need help.
The angels, however, assist Christina
only because of her strong faith. Despite
her father who, believing differently than
she does, tries to force her into a set of
beliefs that she finds false, she remains
steadfast and unmoved in her belief.
Without faith, she would have lived a
completely different life. Faith seems
to not only have deepened the love she
experienced but also opened up an
ethereal world beyond the physical one,
a world of angels and miracles.
But what is the nature of St. Christina’s
faith? Did she ask for help from the an-
gels? Would asking for help to avoid her
hardships constitute a doubtless faith?
Or does her faith consist of an unshake-
able belief and constant praise of God
despite the hardships?
Herein lies the significance of these
questions: Questions allow us to explore
and see exactly where we stand in these
matters. Asking questions presumes that
we mere humans don’t have all of the
answers; this is an undeniable truth.
So, what is faith? How faithful are we,
really? Not everyone can be as imme-
diately and doubtlessly faithful as St.
Christina, but is faith something that can
be practiced and strengthened?
How might we examine, practice, and
strengthen this thing we call faith? Can
we have an unshakeable faith in God,
so pure and so doubtless that we can be
assisted in carrying our heavy loads, and
once again, allow miracles to return to
our world?
Art has an incredible ability to point to
what can’t be seen so that we may ask
“What does this mean for me and for
everyone who sees it?” “How has it influ-
enced the past and how might it influence
the future?” “What does it suggest about
the human experience?” These are some
of the questions I explore in my series
“Reaching Within: What Traditional Art
Offers the Heart.”
Eric Bess is a practicing representational
artist and is a doctoral candidate at the
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual
Arts (IDSVA).
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
COMMUNITY
The Neighborhood
Stands Between
Us and Totalitarianism
ANNIE HOLMQUIST
The string of bonfires my neighbors hosted
last fall were a departure from the norm in
more ways than one.
Anticipating the bleak prospect of a Min-
nesota winter with limited social gather-
ings, my neighbors decided to rally those
around them for a time of encouragement.
Neighbors who have waved at each other
for years came together for a few evenings
to actually solidify each other’s names in
the recesses of memory.
Totalitarianism seeks to
destroy traditions and
cultures because ‘a sense
of the past is far more
basic to the maintenance
of freedom than hope for
the future.’
Huddled around the fire, my neighbors
dove beyond names, and began to tell
about their pasts and how they reached
their present states in life. Soon these per-
fect strangers were having deep, meaning-
ful conversations with each other.
“For better and for worse, it was the year
of the neighborhood,” writes Henry Grabar
over at Slate. He believes the neighborhood
trend will continue in upcoming months,
and if what’s happening in my own com-
munity is any indication, he seems to be
making a reasonable prediction.
Grabar focuses on the negative aspect of
this development, emphasizing the eco-
nomic segregation of American neighbor-
hoods. I, however, prefer to focus on the
positive. The fact that this last year was the
year of the neighborhood signals that all is
not yet lost in the fight against totalitarian
government.
To explain this connection between
neighborhoods and the fight against to-
talitarianism I turn to Robert Nisbet’s
classic work, “The Quest for Community.”
Getting rid of the individual is one of the
FAMILY
The Endgame of Transgender Ideology Is to Dismantle the Family
The stage is being set for the legal marginalization of mothers, fathers, and families by force of law
KIMBERLY ELLS
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and
her fellow gender-inclusive enthusiasts
have taken a bold and much-disparaged
move to erase language that expresses the
reality of familial relationships.
In the name of inclusivity, words such as
“father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister,
uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece, husband,
wife, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law” might
be erased from House proceedings.
If pursued, this scrubbing of gendered
words from public communications, in con-
cert with other trans-inclusive initiatives,
will prove seismic in its effect on society.
If we are to avoid the
destruction of the family
and the domination of
the state that necessarily
follows, we must
resist efforts to cancel
biological sex.
Pelosi and her associates are echoing
the socialist-feminist ideology articulated
by Shulamith Firestone in the 1970s: “It has
become necessary to free humanity from
the tyranny of its biology” and “eliminate
the sex distinction itself [so that] genital
differences between human beings would
no longer matter culturally.”
most visible goals of totalitarianism, Nisbet
explains. In actuality, the undermining of
the individual starts earlier with the dis-
solving of community structures (such as
neighborhoods) and relationships:
“We may regard totalitarianism as a pro-
cess of the annihilation of individuality,
but, in more fundamental terms, it is the
annihilation, first, of those social relation-
ships within which individuality develops.
It is not the extermination of individuals
that is ultimately desired by totalitarian
rulers, for individuals in the largest num-
ber are needed by the new order. What is
desired is the extermination of those social
relationships which, by their autonomous
existence, must always constitute a barrier
to the achievement of the absolute political
community.”
Breaking up small social groups removes
an individual’s support structure, causing
them to forget the God-given rights that
keep freedom alive, Nisbet writes. Totali-
tarianism seeks to destroy traditions and
cultures because “a sense of the past is far
more basic to the maintenance of freedom
than hope for the future.” He continues by
saying, “The former is concrete and real,”
while the latter is “more easily guided by
those who can manipulate human actions
and beliefs.”
We live in a time when many of our tradi-
tions and cultural associations are quickly
vanishing. Politicians and bureaucrats have
stripped them from us in the name of keep-
ing us safe, telling us to stay at home, and
to avoid church, school, and family gather-
ings. We accept these dictates, believing
that we will regain our cultural associations
and traditions sometime in the future. But
will we? Nisbet suggests that eliminating
these is one of the first steps in our enslave-
ment to a totalitarian government:
“Totalitarianism has been well described
as the ultimate invasion of human privacy.
But this invasion of privacy is possible only
after the social contexts of privacy—family,
church, association—have been atomized.
The political enslavement of man requires
the emancipation of man from all the au-
thorities and memberships….”
Thus, the fact that the neighborhood is see-
ing something of a resurgence during these
At its core, that means that male and fe-
male manifestations of the human body
should no longer be legally recognized or
culturally valued. We have been marching
down this road for decades and are now ap-
proaching the endgame: a genderless soci-
ety. The vilification of gendered language in
public settings is a significant leap toward
“freeing humanity from the tyranny of its
biology” and undoing the significance of
biological sex.
Mothers on the Trash Heap of History
Firestone made a stunning prediction. She
jubilantly declared that when biology was
subdued and “transsexuality” became the
legal and cultural norm, “the blood tie of
the mother to the child would eventually
be severed” and the triumphal “disappear-
ance of motherhood” would follow. And
she was right. Legal movements surround-
ing transgenderism are setting the stage
for the legal marginalization of mothers,
fathers, and families by force of law.
While Firestone’s astute prediction has
been largely overlooked in the debate
about transgenderism, the fact remains
that when women legally disappear, so do
mothers because “mother” is a sex-specific
designation. The same goes for fathers. If
there aren’t two specific, perceivable sexes
that can be definitively recognized by law,
then it becomes difficult to define or de-
fend mothers and fathers—along with their
parental rights—in legal terms. Therefore,
the belonging of children to their parents
is increasingly thrown into question and
the family stands on trembling legal legs—
which is precisely the point.
Some families have formed “learning pods” until schools run at full steam again.
Neighbors enjoy a front porch concert in New Orleans in July 2020.
strange times offers hope that the trend to-
ward totalitarianism will not become com-
pletely entrenched. As long as some form of
association exists, where individuals can get
together and talk about their lives and ideas,
it is much harder for isolation to set in and for
individuals to easily capitulate to the whims
of a few totalitarian-minded elites.
The neighborhood, it appears, is the last
acceptable bastion of association with oth-
ers ... so why not take advantage of that?
Join forces with other neighbor families
by forming a type of community school
with a learning pod until schools and their
activities are again running at full steam.
Hold a bonfire like my neighbors did,
where a handful of people can get together
and discuss ideas or needs.
Make religion and faith part of the con-
versation. It was once impolite to discuss
issues of faith in public society, but the
When parents’ ties to their children are
obscured or weakened, it creates an en-
vironment hospitable to government in-
tervention and socialist-communist rev-
olution. That is why Marx’s Communist
Manifesto openly called for the “abolition
of the family.” Dethroning the family cre-
ates a void that can and must be filled—
though it’s impossible to adequately fill it.
If we are to avoid the destruction of the
family and the domination of the state that
necessarily follows, we must resist efforts
to cancel biological sex.
Rejection of Anatomy
The push for gender abolition seems to be
accelerating. Last year, a California state
Senate committee attempted to ban the
words “he” and “she” during committee
hearings. The “rainbow voting agreement”
in the Netherlands calls for “the registra-
tion of gender to be abolished wherever
possible.” A recent article in the New Eng-
land Journal of Medicine, arguably the
world’s most prestigious medical journal,
asserted that sex demarcations on birth
certificates should be reconsidered be-
cause “assigning sex at birth perpetuates
a view that sex, as defined by a binary vari-
able, is natural, essential, and immutable.”
It’s becoming difficult to keep up with the
myriad initiatives being rolled out to forc-
ibly suppress biological sex distinctions.
The legal and social embracing of trans-
genderism encapsulates rejection of the
human body as inherently manifested in
two distinct and complementary forms.
This rebellion against anatomy isn’t
only tragic for individuals, who wage war
B9
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
game has changed everywhere, and the
closure of many churches has left many
people without an outlet to consider the
all-important topic of God and our purpose
in this world.
Above all, strive to make every situation
one of warmth and kindness. This doesn’t
mean that difficult topics should be avoid-
ed; rather, they should be embraced and
discussed freely, for doing so will reveal that
not all thought is as uniform as the elites in
media and politics would have us believe.
The neighborhood is making a comeback.
Hold on to it while you can. It may be the
last remaining thing standing between
average citizens like ourselves and the to-
talitarians who seek to enslave us.
Annie Holmquist is the editor of Intellec-
tual Takeout. This article was originally
published on Intellectual Takeout.
against their own bodies, but it also under-
cuts the inherent, two-pronged voltage of
male and female that propels, balances,
and drives the world.
If it becomes legally inappropriate to rec-
ognize the two bodily sexes or to articu-
late how the interplay of those sexes forges
and perpetuates the basic relationships by
which we fundamentally define ourselves
(mother, father, son, daughter) then the
core of civilized society is in peril.
What started out masquerading as a cel-
ebration of gender turns out to be an edict for
the elimination of the sex distinction itself,
which, in turn, erodes the family—the essen-
tial cradle of humanity. If we are to salvage
the family and civilization with it, we must
protect and defend the “gendered language”
that is now on the chopping block.
Kimberly Ells is the author of “The Invinci-
ble Family: Why the Global Campaign to
Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t
Win” and is a policy adviser for Family
Watch International, where she works to
protect children from early sexualization,
defend parental rights, and promote the
family as the fundamental unit of society.
Kimberly is an avid researcher and writer
on family issues and has authored policy
briefs for international distribution. She
graduated from Brigham Young Universi-
ty with a degree in English. She is married
and is the mother of five children. Contact
her at kimberlyells@hotmail.com and
InvincibleFamily.com
This article was originally published on
MercatorNet
B10
AL
LP
HO
TO
S
BY
SH
UT
TE
RS
TO
CK
Screen-Free Winter Family Fun at Home
BARBARA DANZA
T
he early months of the year tend to
offer more at-home time than oth-
ers (though most of us have been
clocking record amounts of time
at home of late, haven’t we?). With
early sunsets and chilly temperatures outside,
and with the holidays behind us, it’s a great
time of year for simple family fun at home.
Rather than relying on television and digital
devices for your family fun, here are some
other ideas that don’t involve staring into a
screen. Some of them may just turn into your
fondest memories.
To further avoid the siren call of the televi-
sion or those other digital devices, accom-
pany these activities with some enjoyable
background music playlist the whole family
can enjoy. Good music tends to encourage
activity flow and a reluctance to turn it off in
favor other entertainment.
Start a Puzzle
Choose a challenging puzzle and work to-
HOMESCHOOLING
Kiwi Homeschoolers: Life on Their Terms
BARBARA DANZA
Daniel and Naomi Morris work together
as online business owners and as home-
schooling parents in New Zealand. They
both grew up in the city, but since meet-
ing and getting married, they’ve lived on
a hobby farm in a small country town
while homeschooling their daughters,
now age 3 and 5. They blog at OurKiwi-
Homeschool.com.
I asked Naomi about their homeschool-
ing journey and what advice they’d give
to other parents thinking about taking
the same leap. Here’s what she said.
The Epoch Times: What made you de-
cide to homeschool your children?
Naomi Morris: We wanted to home-
school so that we could spend more time
as a family and have greater freedom.
This is also the reason we started online
businesses so that we could work online
together. The flexibility of being able to
travel, to learn alongside our kids, to
spark their curiosity, and to encourage a
love of learning within them were other
big reasons for choosing to homeschool.
We want to teach them about entrepre-
neurship, and to encourage and facilitate
their individual interests and passions.
We wanted to homeschool so that we
could set the curriculum, rather than
the state. There are so many great
resources to choose from that we think
are far richer than what is offered in the
school system.
Education shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-
all approach, as many state-run systems
make it. We can tailor our curriculum
to the child and emphasize those areas
they really enjoy and excel at.
The Epoch Times: There are a number of
PARENTING
gether to complete it. You’re all on the same
team working toward the same goal. De-
pending on the size of the puzzle, this is
an activity that can stretch over days and
weeks. This fun activity teaches children
perseverance and patience and ends with
great satisfaction.
Choose a challenging
puzzle and work together
to complete it. You’re all
on the same team working
toward the same goal.
Enjoy an Audiobook
No screen necessary—the visuals are all in
your imagination if you curl up together to
listen to a family-friendly audiobook. The
simplest of activities, enjoying a story to-
gether as a family is a delight. There are so
various styles of homeschooling that are
popular. How would you describe your
homeschool approach?
Ms. Morris: We love the Charlotte Mason
approach to learning and use a curricu-
lum that is inspired by that method. With
that approach, we include a lot of art
and crafts, poetry, language, and nature
study in the early years.
Inspired by the Charlotte Mason meth-
od, we love to read “living books” aloud
to the kids. We love the natural learning
that takes place through reading a lot of
different, rich literature.
As we live on a hobby farm in the
country, our children are often outside
in nature. They play alongside us as we
work to take care of our large garden,
animals, and land.
We want them to have plenty of time
and freedom to play, be creative, and
make up all kinds of imaginary games.
We also really love incorporating a lot of
Montessori inspired, hands-on activities
as part of our homeschool curriculum.
The Epoch Times: What have you found to
be the biggest benefits of homeschooling?
Ms. Morris: The biggest benefit is being
able to spend a lot of time together as a
family and do life together. I love being
with my kids and seeing them experi-
ence and learn about the world. Our
daughters are each other’s best friends!
It is a joy to learn alongside them and
see their curiosity and interest in differ-
ent subjects. I love that I can give them
the resources and time needed to sup-
port and facilitate their interests.
We really appreciate the freedom of
homeschooling—to travel when we
want, to spend more time with extended
family and friends, to explore any subject
that captures the children’s interest.
many to choose from, but “The Chronicles of
Narnia” by C.S. Lewis remains my family’s
long-standing favorite. Pair your listening
sessions with snuggly blankets, cozy candles
or a fire, and delightful snacks.
Cook Together
Of course you’ve eaten many meals together,
but how many have you made together as a
family? Rather than seeing “make dinner” as
a job that needs to be done and one person’s
duty, make this a family activity in which
everyone participates. Involve everyone in
different aspects: Choose a recipe, gather
the ingredients, prepare the meal, set the
table, enjoy the meal (of course!), and clean
up after the meal. There are so many lessons
inherent in cooking that your children will
benefit from, not the least of which is self-
sufficiency.
Camp Out (In)
Who says camping is just for the outdoors?
Pitch your tent and make some s’mores! Per-
fect for a weekend night, delight in this break
The Morris family.
We enjoy being part of our local home-
school community and meeting up with
other homeschool families each week for
sports, field trips, play dates, and dinners.
We love that we can encourage and
foster a love of learning in our kids.
The Epoch Times: What challenges have
you faced along this journey?
Ms. Morris: One of the challenges we’ve
faced is that not everybody is going to
be on board with our decision to home-
school, and we must be OK with other
people not being OK with it. It comes
with the territory.
Another challenge early on was being
overwhelmed by homeschool curricu-
lum choices. But after envisioning what
style we really wanted for our home-
school, it wasn’t hard to find a curricu-
lum that matched that vision.
The only resource we struggled to find
was a kindergarten-level French work-
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
Game night
is a classic
standby and
perfect for
wintertime.
in the routine by camping out together in
your very own living room. For added effects,
use only your flashlights for lights and find
some outdoor woodsy sound effects to play
in the background.
Play Games
This list would be incomplete without the
old standby—game night. It’s a standby for a
reason. It’s so much fun! Set out some snacks
and crack open a classic board game to play
as a family. Some of my family’s favorites
include Scrabble, Monopoly, Quirkle, Pic-
tionary, and Blokus. Each of these games is
fun and educational.
Create Something
Follow the lead of recent interests that may
have emerged in your family and dive into
a project together. Whether you’re painting,
sewing, baking, woodworking, sculpting,
writing, knitting, photographing, or video
recording, gather some learning resources
and get to work. Start and finish a project
together. Who knows where this may lead!
COURTESY OF THE MORRIS FAMILY
book for beginners. The answer was to
make the product ourselves! (OurKiwi-
Homeschool.com/product/kindergar-
ten-french-workbook/)
The Epoch Times: What advice would
you give to a parent who is considering
homeschooling their children?
Ms. Morris: My advice would be to try
not to feel overwhelmed or pressured by
the decision. First just focus on enjoying
time with your kids, reading with them,
and going for walks. Give them time to
explore their own interests, to be cre-
ative, and to just “be.”
You will be able to provide the learning
environment and type of education tai-
lored to each of their needs. Figure out the
goals for your homeschool and what you’d
like it to look like. Then find a homeschool
curriculum to match those goals.
You want your kids to love learning, so
above all, have fun and enjoy the process.
 FOR KIDS ONLY
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

This
Week in
History
Puppy I met a horse as I went walking;
We got talking,
Horse and I.
I met some Rabbits as I went walking;
We got talking,
Rabbits and I. PUBLIC DOMAIN

and I
“Where are you going to, Horse, today?”
(I said to the Horse as he went by).
“Down to the village to get some hay.
by A. A. Milne Will you come with me?” “No, not I.”
PLANE
“Where are you going in your brown fur coats?”
(I said to the Rabbits as they went by).
“Down to the village to get some oats.
Will you come with us?” “No, not I.”
LANDS ON

I met a Man as I went walking:
We got talking,
Man and I.
“Where are you going to, Man?” I said.
(I said to the Man as he went by).
SHIP
I met a Woman as I went walking; I met a Puppy as I went walking;
We got talking, We got talking,
Woman and I. Puppy and I.
“Where are you going to, Woman, so early?” “Where are you going this nice fine day?”
(I said to the Woman as she went by). (I said to the Puppy as he went by).

O
“Down to the village, to get some bread. “Down to the village to get some barley. “Up to the hills to roll and play.” n Jan. 18, 1911, American pilot
Will you come with me?” “No, not I.” Will you come with me?” “No, not I.” “I’ll come with you, Puppy,” said I. Eugene Ely landed his aircraft on
the battleship Pennsylvania in San
ALL IMAGES BY SHUTTERSTOCK
Francisco Bay. This marked the first
time an aircraft landed on a ship.
A cheering crowd watched as Ely
successfully landed on and later took
off from the Pennsylvania. This exciting
event marked the birth of naval aviation.
WHY DON’T I am fond of pigs.
DOGS
PUBLIC DOMAIN

Dogs look up to us. Eugene Ely landing

Cats look down on us. his plane on
MAKE Pigs treat us as equals.
board the USS
Pennsylvania on

GOOD Jan. 18, 1911.

DANCERS?
THEY HAVE TWO LEFT FEET. WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965),
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER

NINA BUDAY/SHUTTERSTOCK ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK

By Aidan Danza, age 14

ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK

BEAVERS (PART II)

B
Most beavers eat “green” The beaver’s process of
wood. Green wood is the inner felling a tree makes you
bark of fresh-cut trees, usually appreciate its intelligence.
deciduous trees such as aspens, Usually, when their tree is about
cottonwoods, and willows. to fall, they slap their tail on
eavers are These are usually less than six the ground a few times (like a
large, aquatic rodents inches in diameter, and wherever lumberjack yelling “Timber!”)
there are small saplings to be to alert any other beavers to get
that live in forested found they almost always eat out of the way. They will often
rivers, marshes, and these easy-to-cut ones first. float the tree downstream, with
They store these trees in the the current, to exert the least
streams of Canada bottom of their pond in the effort possible; they often divert
and the United States. autumn, to prepare for the lean water to form canals to their
They are very unique in that months of winter. favorite logging places.
Beavers live in ponds, in The beaver’s lodge is also
they build dams, changing their which they build small houses demonstrative of the beaver’s
environment to fit their needs (to called lodges. These are made mind power. It has two
deepen water near their lodge) of sticks, twigs, branches, entrances, both of which are
grasses, mud, and whatever underwater, but the actual
while also helping other animals else the beaver can find. There, living area is above the water.
by providing a sort of bridge over the beaver raises young, called The underwater entrances
a river, as well as creating a lush kits, which are usually born in allow the beaver to get at their
April. They are raised by both underwater food stores, while
wetland for aquatic animals. parents as well as their brothers the above-water living area
and sisters born the year or allows the beaver to breathe
two before. Most commonly, and live in comfort and
a mother beaver will have four relative warmth. The
kits, but this number can range beaver is like the engineer
from one to eight. of the animal world.

aMazing Escape Maze January 20th is Inauguration Day!

1 2

4
3
Down
1 Via the Internet (6)

AMAZING
5
2 The Vice President is the president of
6 the _____ (6)
3 Promise (5)

ESCAPES!
START
7 8 9 10 4 Head of the Executive Branch of the
U.S. Government (9)
5 On radio and TV as it happens (9,4)
11 12
8 Formal event (8)
13
9 Where Congress meets (7)
10 Course (4)
11 Believer’s confidence (5)
USE THE FOUR NUMBERS IN THE CORNERS, AND THE OPERANDS
(+, - AND X) to build an equation to get the solution in the middle. There may be
14 15 12 Way to listen to the inauguration
more than one “unique” solution but, there may also be “equivalent” solutions. ceremony (5)
For example: 6 + (7 X 3) +1 = 28 and 1+ (7 X 3) + 6 = 28
15 Time of all Presidential Inauguration
ceremonies (4)
Easy puzzle 1 Medium puzzle 1 Hard puzzle 1 16

2 10 15 19 13 31
60 15 14
Across T R A D I T I O N
O
E
V
Across
1 6 2 16 9 6 13Loyalty (10) Y O I

6 Loyalty (10)
H N A T I O N A L M A L L

7 Selecting with ballots (8)

T O I O T

7
I M T D T S

+ − × ÷
Selecting with ballots (8)
+ − × ÷ + − 11×Presidential
÷ term length (4-4)
A E N A F F I R M A
F O U R Y E A R P R C
11 Presidential term length (4-4)
13 Promise publicly (6)
E D A E D
E L E C T I O N C T A

Solution For Easy 1 Solution for Medium 1 Solution for Hard 1

N T S R O
13 Promise publicly (6)
14 Area in Washington D.C. (8,4)
I A L L E G I A N C E R

14 Area in Washington D.C. (8,4)

(10 + 2) × (6 − 1) L N R E B
16 Custom (9)
(2 − 1) × 10 × 6 (19 − 16 − 2) × 15 31 + 9 − 13 − 13
N E P W

16 Custom (9)
O S S

Down
15 Time of all Presidential Inauguration ceremonies (4)
12 Way to listen tot he inauguration ceremony (5)

1 Via the Internet (6)

11 Believer's confidence (5)
10 Course (4)
9 Where Congress meets (7)
B12 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

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 PAPA WOR/SHUTTERSTOCK DANIEL JEDZURA/SHUTTERSTOCK
WEIGHT LOSS SUPERBUGS

Korean Superfood May Children’s Hospitals and

Reduce Body Fat the Superbugs Kids Face
Iconic side dish has therapeutic benefits Antibiotic misuse remains widespread and even
to go along with its delicious flavor. children are at risk as germs develop resistance.

See C4 See C5

WELL-BEING|DIET|FITNESS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 C1

OSTILL IS FRANCK CAMHI/SHUTTERSTOCK

Research
suggests
running is one
way to minimize
disease. 

MADE TO MOVE

Vigorous
Exercise Brings
Additional
Health Benefits
Your daily patterns will
Even short bursts of exercise can
create future physical
functioning or pain.
boost metabolism, counteract
Regular exercise is an
important pattern.
risk of sedentary lifestyle
JOSEPH MERCOLA tions, namely SARS-CoV-2. A recent paper in

T
here are lifestyle choices you make
each day that are foundational to
your overall health and wellness.
Exercise is one of those choices.
Data from two recent studies
showed even short bursts of exercise can af-
fect your metabolism, and vigorous exercise
could reduce your risk of all-cause mortality.
Our ancestors naturally stayed fit as they
engaged in physical labor each day. How-
ever, as society moved through the Industrial
Revolution and into the current digital revo-
lution, fewer people find time to move and ex-
ercise. That’s unfortunate because including
movement throughout the day helps protect
your physical and mental health.
This is especially important as we are in flu
season and dealing with other viral infec-
Clinical and Experimental Medicine points
out that most communicable diseases the
world faces are acute viral respiratory infec-
tions, of which COVID-19 is only one.
The scientists concluded that regular ex-
ercise of adequate intensity could be “an
auxiliary tool in strengthening and pre-
paring the immune system for COVID-19.”
Physical exercise stirs an important bio-
chemical response, with the body releasing
pro-and anti-inflammatory cytokines and
increasing lymphocyte circulation.
“Such practice has an effect on the lower
incidence, intensity of symptoms, and mor-
tality in viral infections observed in people
who practice physical activity regularly,”
write the researchers.
Continued on C2

MINDSET MATTERS

How to Use Immediate Gratification to Reach Long-Term Goals

ANDREY YURLOV/SHUTTERSTOCK
CHRISTINE CARTER

If you’ve made some New Year’s resolutions

New Year’s or set some annual goals for yourself, you
resolutions don’t have might be wondering, “Will I succeed this
year?” The real test will come when you’re
to be painful. Here’s stressed, tired, or just plain unmotivated.
Here’s the plain truth: If your annual
how to feel good goals or New Year’s resolutions feel like
about your 2021 goals. chores, or if they feel overwhelming, or if
they feel even a little difficult, you likely
won’t do them over the long run. If they
are something you feel like you “should” Sometimes the
do, but that you don’t actually want to do, best way to keep
eventually you won’t do them at all. your resolution, is
All is not lost. Consider rewriting your an- to keep it small and
nual goals into something more fun. Many pleasurable.

Continued on C6
C2 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

MADE TO MOVE

Vigorous Exercise
Brings Additional
Health Benefits
Even short bursts of exercise can
boost metabolism, counteract
risk of sedentary lifestyle
Continued from C1 called glutamate, which is linked to
heart disease and a shorter life span, fell
While exercise strongly supports your by 29 percent. Another metabolite, di-
immune system, lockdowns and fear methylguanidino valeric acid (DMGV),
have created an environment in which also associated with diabetes and in-
more people are ignoring physical activ- creased risk of liver disease, dropped
ity as a strategy to protect their health. by 18 percent. Nitric oxide, associated
For many, recent months have been with mitochondrial health, rose by 29
marked by an expanding waistline and percent.
higher levels of anxiety and stress. Ex- “Intriguingly, our study found that dif-
ercise can help with all these problems ferent metabolites tracked with different
and strengthen your everyday health. physiologic responses to exercise, and
might therefore provide unique signa-
Bursts of Exercise Help Metabolism tures in the bloodstream that reveal if
Despite eating the same food you did a person is physically fit, much the way
before March 2020, you may find your current blood tests determine how well
waistline expanding and the numbers the kidney and liver are functioning.
on the scale growing. That’s because Lower levels of DMGV, for example,
while you can’t out-exercise a bad diet, could signify higher levels of fitness,”
eating the same amount and moving notes co-first author Matthew Nayor,
less will slowly pack on the pounds. with the Heart Failure and Transplanta-
Additionally, some people are emo- tion Section in the Division of Cardiol-
tional eaters and others have changed ogy at Massachusetts General Hospital.
their eating habits as the pandemic
raises their stress level. Researchers How to Gauge Physical Activity
from Massachusetts General Hospital The link between physical exercise and
used data from the Framingham Heart better health has been known for a long
Study participants to evaluate how short time. The Centers for Disease Control
bursts of exercise may lower cardiovas- and Prevention advocates for consis-
cular risk and mediate health benefits. tent physical activity each day, saying:
They measured 588 metabolites in the “Regular physical activity is one of the
participants at rest and after approxi- most important things you can do for
mately 12 minutes of exercise. They your health. Everyone can experience
found there were changes in 502 of the health benefits of physical activ-
those metabolites, some of which ity—age, abilities, ethnicity,
were involved in insulin resis- shape, or size do not matter.”
tance, fat metabolism, the Staying fit In 2018, the Department of
availability of nitric oxide, during lockdown Health and Human Services
and the development of isn’t hard and released the second edition
brown fat. can even of their Physical Activity
In a separate sample, they be fun. Guidelines for Americans.
evaluated 177 metabolites In it, they recommend adults
and observed some of the same should have at least 150 min-
changes in 164 of them. Interest- utes and up to 300 minutes a week
ingly, they found that changes to the of moderate-intensity exercise.
metabolites depended on the amount Alternatively, the CDC recommends
of exercise, gender, and body mass index including 75 to 150 minutes of vigor-
of the individual. The higher the body ous aerobic physical activity. Muscle-
mass index, the greater the changes in strengthening activities involving major
cardioprotective metabolites. muscle groups on two or more days a
The researchers identified four sepa- week are also recommended.
rate signatures in metabolite responses The intensity of a given exercise is
to exercise. They concluded that in this measured by the metabolic equivalent
sample of 411 participants, short acute of task (MET), in which one MET is how
bursts of exercise could elicit metabolic much energy is spent while you’re at
changes associated with cardiovascular rest. Comparatively, moderate activi-
health. Dr. Gregory Lewis, from Mas- ties range up to 5.9 MET. Walking three
sachusetts General Hospital and lead miles per hour is equivalent to 3.5 METs,
researcher, commented: which falls under moderate-intensity
“Much is known about the effects of activity. Vigorous activities are more
exercise on cardiac, vascular, and in- than six MET. For example, running a
flammatory systems of the body, but our 10-minute mile measures 10 MET.
study provides a comprehensive look
at the metabolic impact of exercise by Exercise Lowers Mortality Risk
linking specific metabolic pathways to The second study was released in the
exercise response variables and long- Journal of the American Medical Asso-
term health outcomes. ciation Internal Medicine. Researchers
“What was striking to us was the ef- sought to discover if there is a difference
fects a brief bout of exercise can have in all-cause mortality between people
on the circulating levels of metabolites who engage in vigorous activity com-
that govern such key bodily functions pared to those who are moderately active.
as insulin resistance, oxidative stress, The researchers gathered informa-
vascular reactivity, inflammation, and tion from 403,681 participants and
longevity.” compared their level of activity against
The researchers found the metabolite all-cause, cardiovascular, and can-
ELDAR NURKOVIC/SHUTTERSTOCK

We may be stuck inside but that doesn’t mean we should get too comfortable. Exercise is
important to physical health and mental well-being. 
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
cer mortality. Participants were from
the National Health Interview Survey
ending in 2013, in which researchers
gathered self-reported data on physi-
cal activity that was then linked to the
National Death Index through Decem-
ber 31, 2015.
After analyzing the data, they con-
cluded people who had a higher pro-
portion of vigorous activity during the
week as compared to moderate activ-
ity had lower all-cause mortality. They
suggested public health interventions
should include recommendations for at
least 150 minutes of moderate physical
activity a week, but also advised offi-
cials to include guidance on the benefits
linked to vigorous activity.
The study was only one of several
published in the past two years that
has demonstrated the significant health
benefits for people who remain active.
One paper published in August 2019 re-
ported data presented at the European
Society of Cardiology Congress. It found
that living a sedentary lifestyle for 20
years was associated with double the
risk of mortality compared to those who
were active.
A second study published in the BMJ
during the same month found people
who were more physically active, regard-
less of intensity, had a lower risk of dying
prematurely. The World Health Organi-
zation (WHO) also recently updated its
recommendations for physical activity.
The WHO noted the significant con-
tribution exercise makes to managing
non-communicable diseases, reducing
depression and anxiety, and enhancing
learning and judgment. According to
the WHO, up to 5 million deaths every
year could be prevented if people were
more active and, importantly, more than
80 percent of adolescents worldwide
don’t get enough exercise.
Most recently, a large retrospective
study was done on 6.1 million people in
South Korea in which the researchers
measured moderate-to-vigorous physi-
cal activity against the risks of a major
cardiovascular event or all-cause mortal-
ity in people with metabolic syndrome.
The data showed people who engaged in
moderate to vigorous physical activity
had significantly lower risks of both.
Inactivity Another
Pandemic Health Risk
One of the potential long-term
health impacts of the coronavirus
lockdown in 2020 that was recog-
nized early in the pandemic was the ris-
ing number of mental health conditions
reported. Ongoing unemployment, loss
of income, and the fear of the unknown
all contribute to depression, stress, and
anxiety.
Another long-term health risk
from the pandemic is the im-
pact that stay-at-home mea-
sures may have had on
your exercise habits.
These in turn have a
significant impact on
your mental health. A pa-
per published in the Journal
Our ancestors
naturally
stayed fit as
they engaged
in physical
labor each
day.
of Sport and Health Science cautioned
that the recommendation to restrict
your movements doesn’t mean reducing
the amount of physical activity you get.
Stuart Phillips, a professor at McMas-
ter University in the department of kine-
siology, is concerned that the prolonged
stay in place orders may lead to unantici-
pated health issues from inactivity. He
led a team that published a paper in the
Journals of Gerontology in which they
evaluated the effect of just two weeks of
inactivity on insulin sensitivity.
The participants were pre-diabetic and
limited their activity to 1,000 steps each
day to mimic the level of activity a per-
Walking is fantastic son who is hospitalized or housebound
exercise, and may experience. They found just two
easy to squeeze in weeks of limited activity led to a lower
throughout the day. rate of protein synthesis and a deteriora-
tion of blood sugar control.
Other health risks that are associated
with inactivity include the risk of high
blood pressure, rising inflammation,
bone loss, and potential hormonal imbal-
ances. Added to this, inactivity increases
your risk of lower back pain, which is one
of the most common health complaints
and a major cause of disability.
In older adults with arthritis, lower
levels of physical activity are associated
with a measurable decline in their ability
to perform activities of daily living, such
as grocery shopping, meal preparation,
and managing money. In other words,
lack of activity can affect the health of
everyone across the age span.
Tips to Stay Active and Exercise at
Home
Staying or working at home can create
poor movement routines. People who
LJUPCO SMOKOVSKI/SHUTTERSTOCK
previously had the habit of getting out
of their chair at the office every 20 to 30
minutes, or those who had a job that re-
quired movement throughout the day,
may find binge-watching television or
working all day at the computer throws
a wrench in those habits.
Even just a little bit of exercise is bet-
ter than nothing, and sitting all day can
increase your risk of heart disease. There
are a variety of ways to simply and
easily exercise at home that can
reduce your potential exposure to
viral infections and can help prevent
C3
GORAN BOGICEVIC/SHUTTERSTOCK
ESB PROFESSIONAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
There is plenty of room
outside to go exercise
even with social dis-
tancing requirements.
And it can help com-
pensate for bad habits
that come with working
from home. 
mental and physical health problems.
Here are several suggestions to help you
move throughout the day.
Activity Snacks
Phillips suggests that “prolonged peri-
ods of sitting should be broken up with
‘activity snacks’ like a little walk or going
up and down a flight of stairs. A short
daily walk has amazing properties from
not just a physical, but a psychological
perspective. We don’t have to run a
marathon.”
In other words, small movements may
have big benefits. Consider taking a walk
in the morning and another in the after-
noon as the weather permits. Getting
outdoors has additional benefits for your
immune system, specifically from your
exposure to the sun that may boost your
vitamin D production.
Nonexercise Movement
This type of activity may be as impor-
tant as exercise. Make it a point to get
up from your chair at least every 30
minutes to stretch and move around.
If you are working from home or spend-
ing more time in front of a computer
or television screen than what is con-
sidered healthy, opt for using a Swiss
ball. These large, inflatable balls can
be ordered online and most come with
a pump. Sitting on one at your desk or
while watching television encourages
movement and helps strengthen your
core muscles.
Strengthening
With inactivity, you can lose muscle
mass and strength. You don’t need a
gym or fancy equipment to get a work-
out. You don’t even have to leave home. Dr. Joseph Mercola is the
Bodyweight exercises such as pushups, founder of Mercola.com.
squats, planks, and lunges are great An osteopathic physician,
ways to strength train from home with- best-selling author, and re-
out equipment. cipient of multiple awards
in the field of natural
Indoor Exercise health, his primary vision
Getting some aerobic activity and exer- is to change the modern
cise at home isn’t nearly as challenging health paradigm by pro-
as you might imagine. If you don’t have viding people with a valu-
a favorite aerobic workout video, con- able resource to help them
sider climbing the stairs or purchasing a take control of their health.
stationary bike, which can be delivered This article was originally
straight to your door. published on Mercola.com
C4
FOOD AS MEDICINE
Korean
Superfood
May Reduce
Body Fat
Iconic side dish has
therapeutic benefits
to go along with its
delicious flavor
F
ermented foods such as kimchi
may be one key to prevent-
ing obesity. A June 2020 study
evaluated whether the Lacto-
bacillus sakei bacteria derived
from the Korean side dish can cause
weight loss in obese individuals, with
promising results.
Obesity is one of the most visible public
health problems around the world today,
yet it also seems to be one of the most
neglected. The World Health Organiza-
tion has described obesity as a global
epidemic. The increased prevalence
of obesity has been linked to increased
death from Type 2 diabetes, high blood
pressure, heart disease, and some forms
of cancer.
Data suggested that
L. sakei might be
helpful in reducing
body fat mass in obese
individuals without
serious side effects.
For those who are
overweight or obese,
diet is always one of
the best places to start.
And when it comes to
food, one of the best
places to improve your
diet is ingesting more
fermented foods that
contain healthy bacteria
called probiotics. A 2016
clinical trial found a probi-
otic product with or without
dietary fiber controlled body
fat mass, with some bacteria
strains reducing waist circumfer-
ence and food intake.
Now, a June 2020 study has provided
insight on how Lactobacillus sakei
(L. sakei) bacteria derived from kimchi, a
staple food in Korea, can aid in
weight loss.
L. Sakei Influence
on Obesity, Gut Microbiota
L. sakei, commonly found in meat and
fish, is used to ferment meat in Western
countries. A previous study showed that
eating it from Korean kimchi for eight-
weeks slashed body weight and fat mass
in animal models with high-fat diet-
induced obesity.
The new randomized, double-blind,
R AN
TA IM AG
E S /S H U T T E R S T
OCK
Kimchi is usually eaten as
a side dish but can also be
eaten on its own and is also
often used in soup. There
are many varieties made
from different vegetables.
placebo-controlled clinical trial involved
114 obese individuals, or those with a
body mass index (BMI) of more than 25
kg/m2. The participants were randomly
assigned to the L. sakei or placebo group
for 12 weeks. The researchers then mea-
sured changes in body fat, weight, and
waist circumference.
After 12 weeks, the researchers saw
a 0.2 kg reduction in body fat mass in
the L. sakei group while finding a 0.6
kg increase in the placebo group. Waist
circumference was also 0.8 centimeters
(cm) smaller in the L. sakei subjects than
those in the placebo group. BMI and
body weight didn’t change, and adverse
events were mild and similar between
the groups.
Data suggested that L. sakei might
be helpful in reducing body fat mass
in obese individuals without serious
side effects.
While recognizing limitations in
their study, including the need to probe
significant body fat and weight changes
beyond 12 weeks of treatment, the
researchers cited evidence that food
changes the human gut micro-
biota, the collection of microbes
(mainly bacteria) that live in
the human gut and pro-
vide a myriad of services,
including aiding with
immunity and diges-
tions. Diet plays an im-
portant role in the gut’s
bacterial environment
and the progression of
obesity. The gut micro-
biota is an extremely
complex, abundant
group of microbes that
colonize the human body
and radically influence
health.
“Changes in the composi-
tion of the gut microbiota may
contribute to alterations in body
weight and composition,” the research-
ers wrote.
Gut-derived short-chain fatty acids
(SCFAs) have been previously found to
cause weight regulation through their
stimulatory impact on anorexigenic
(appetite-suppressing) gut hormones
and in the increase in the synthesis of
the satiety hormone leptin.
Kimchi and Overall Wellness
Kimchi has been consumed by Koreans
as a salted and fermented vegetable side
dish for about 2,000 years. As a probi-
otic, it packs many health benefits into
its tasty form. All of kimchi’s traditional
ingredients are health-boosting foods
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
NATASHA BREEN/SHUTTERSTOCK
Kimchi is a staple of
Korean cuisine and jam-
packed with probiotics
that make it especially
healthy.
in their own right: cruciferous
vegetables, garlic, ginger, and red
pepper, to name a few. Previous re-
search had already begun to identify
some of its health benefits.
A 2019 study published in Food Science
and Biotechnology concluded that the
probiotic Lactobacillus plantarum (L.
plantarum) 200655 isolated from kimchi
has antioxidant and immune-enhancing
properties. This makes the strain ideal
for older people.
Korean researchers also developed a
kimchi recipe boosting its anticancer
action, adding mustard leaf, Chinese
pepper, and Korean mistletoe extract.
Lab tests on human colon cancer cells
revealed that the mistletoe extract in-
creased the inhibition rate to 80 percent
from 62 percent.
In another study, exopolysaccharide
obtained from L. plantarum offered
protection against rotavirus-induced di-
arrhea and regulated inflammatory re-
sponse. The probiotic strain was one
among 263 strains found in 35 samples
of kimchi.
In a study of 102 healthy Korean men
aged 40 to 64 years, researchers associ-
ated eating up to 453 g of kimchi a day
with higher HDL cholesterol and lower
levels of LDL cholesterol.
In the GreenMedInfo.com database,
you’ll find nearly 50 abstracts with
kimchi research for a further look into
this fermented food for healthy weight
management and other health benefits.
Obesity is one of the most
visible public health
problems around the
world today, yet it also
seems to be one of the
most neglected.
The GMI Research Group is dedicated
to investigating the most important
health and environmental issues of the
day. Special emphasis will be placed on
environmental health. Our focused and
deep research will explore the many
ways in which the present condition
of the human body directly reflects the
true state of the ambient environment.
This work is reproduced and distrib-
uted with the permission of GreenMed-
Info LLC. Sign up for the newsletter
at GreenmedInfo.health
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 C5

OVERTREATMENT

Children’s Hospitals Are Partly to Blame

as Superbugs Increasingly Attack Kids
Antibiotic misuse remains widespread and now threatens to make antibiotics useless as germs develop resistance
MATTHEW MATLOCK

LAURA UNGAR
A memory haunts Christina Fuhrman: the
image of her toddler Pearl lying pale and
listless in a hospital bed, tethered to an
IV to keep her hydrated as she struggled
against a superbug infection.
“She survived by the grace of God,”
Fuhrman said of her eldest child in this
central Missouri city almost five years ago.
“She could’ve gone septic fast. Her condi-
tion was near critical.”
Pearl was fighting Clostridium difficile,
or C. diff, a type of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria known as a superbug. A growing
body of research shows that overuse and
misuse of antibiotics in children’s hospi-
tals—which health experts and patients
say should know better—helps fuel these
dangerous bacteria that attack adults and,
increasingly, children. Doctors worry that
the COVID-19 pandemic will only lead to
more overprescribing.
A study published in the journal Clinical
Infectious Diseases in January found that 1
in 4 children given antibiotics in U.S. chil-
dren’s hospitals are prescribed the drugs
inappropriately—the wrong types, or for
too long, or when they’re not necessary.
Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatrics professor
at Washington University in St. Louis who
co-authored the study, said that’s likely
an underestimate because the research
involved 32 children’s hospitals already
working together on proper antibiotic use.
Newland said the nation’s 250-plus chil-
dren’s hospitals need to do better.
“It’s irresponsible,” Fuhrman said. Cou-
pled with parents begging for antibiotics
in pediatricians’ offices, it’s “just creating
a monster.”
Using antibiotics when they’re not need-
ed is a longstanding problem, and the pan-
demic “has thrown a little bit of gas on the
fire,” said Dr. Mark Schleiss, a pediatrics
professor at the University of Minnesota
Medical School.
Although fears of COVID-19 mean fewer
parents are taking their children to doc-
tors’ offices and some have skipped rou-
tine visits for their kids, children are still
getting antibiotics through telemedicine
visits that don’t allow for in-person ex-
ams. And research shows that more than
5,000 children infected with COVID-19
were hospitalized between late May and
late September. If symptoms point toward
a bacterial infection on top of the corona-
virus, Schleiss said, doctors sometimes
prescribe antibiotics, which don’t work on
viruses, until tests rule out bacteria.
Christina Fuhrman contracted a C. diff infec-
tion in 2012, and her daughter Pearl con-
tracted one in 2015. C. diff, a bacterium caus-
ing diarrhea and colitis, is a superbug fueled
by the overuse of antibiotics.
At the same time, Newland said, the
demands of caring for COVID patients
take time away from what are known as
“stewardship” programs aimed at mea-
suring and improving how antibiotics
are prescribed. Often such efforts involve
continuing education courses for health
care professionals on how to use antibiotics
safely, but the pandemic has made those
more difficult to host.
“There’s no doubt: We’ve seen some ex-
tra use of antibiotics,” Newland said. “The
impact of the pandemic on antibiotic use
will be significant.”
Habits Drive Superbug Growth
Bacteria most susceptible to an antibiotic
die quickly, but surviving germs can pass
on resistant features, then spread. This is
how antibiotic resistance develops. The
process is driven by prescribing habits that
lead to high levels of antibiotic use.
A March study in the journal Infection
Control & Hospital Epidemiology found
that the rates of antibiotic use on patients
at 51 children’s hospitals ranged from 22
percent to 52 percent. Some of those medi-
cations treated actual bacterial infections,
but others were given in hopes of prevent-
ing infections or when doctors didn’t know
what was causing a problem.
“I hear a lot about antibiotic use for the
‘just in case’ scenarios,” said Dr. Joshua
Watson, director of the antimicrobial stew-
ardship program at Nationwide Children’s
Hospital in Ohio. “We underestimate the
downsides.”
Newland said each specialty in medicine
has its own culture around antibiotic use.
Many surgeons, for example, routinely
use antibiotics to prevent infection after
operations.
Outside of hospitals, doctors have long
been criticized for prescribing antibiotics
too often for ailments such as ear infec-
tions, which can sometimes go away on
their own or can be caused by viruses that
antibiotics won’t counter.
Dr. Shannon Ross, an associate profes-
sor of pediatrics and microbiology at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham, said
not all doctors have been taught how to use
antibiotics correctly.
“Many of us don’t realize we’re doing it,”
she said of overuse. “It’s sort of not knowing
what you’re doing until someone tells you.”
All this drives the growth of numerous
superbugs in the very population served
by these hospitals. Numerous studies, in-
cluding one published in the Journal of
Pediatrics in March, cite the rise among
kids of C. diff, which causes gastrointesti-
nal problems. A 2017 study in the Journal
of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society
found that cases of a certain type of mul-
tidrug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae rose
700 percent in American children in just
eight years. And a steady stream of research
points to the stubborn prevalence in kids
of the better-known MRSA, or methicillin-
resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
Superbug infections can be extremely
difficult—and sometimes impossible—to
treat. Doctors often must turn to strong
medicines with side effects or give drugs
intravenously.
“It’s getting more and more worrisome,”
Ross said. “We have had patients we have
not been able to treat because we’ve had
no antibiotics available” that could kill the
germs.
Doctors say the world is nearing a “post-
antibiotic era,” when antibiotics no longer
work and common infections can kill.
A Monster Unleashed
Superbugs spawned by antibiotic overuse
put everyone at risk.
Like her daughter, Fuhrman also suffered
through a C. diff infection, getting sick after
taking antibiotics following a root canal in
2012. While killing harmful germs, anti-
biotics can also destroy those that protect
against infection. Fuhrman cycled in and
out of the hospital for months. When she
finally got better, she tried to avoid using
antibiotics and never gave them to her
daughter.
That’s because antibiotics affect your mi-
crobiome by wiping out bad germs and the
good germs that protect your body against
infections.
Pearl’s first symptoms of C. diff arose
about three years later, at around 20
months old. Fuhrman noticed her daugh-
ter was having lots of bowel movements.
The mom eventually found pus and blood
in her daughter’s stools. One day, Pearl
was so pale and weak that Fuhrman took
her to the emergency room. She was dis-
charged, then spiked a fever and returned
to the hospital.
Doctors treated Pearl with Flagyl, a
broad-spectrum antibiotic. But two days
after the last dose, she went downhill.
The infection had returned. She recov-
ered only after going to the Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minnesota, for a fecal mi-
crobiota transplantation, in which she
received healthy donor stool from her dad
through a colonoscopy.
Since her family’s ordeal, Fuhrman has
been trying to raise awareness of superbugs
and antibiotic overuse. She serves on the
board of the Peggy Lillis Foundation, a C.
diff education and advocacy organization,
and has testified before a presidential advi-
sory committee in Washington, D.C., about
superbugs and antibiotic stewardship.
In March, the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services began requiring all hos-
pitals to document that they have antibiotic
stewardship programs.
One approach, Schleiss said, is to restrict
antibiotics by “saving our most magic bullets
for the most desperate situations.” Another
is to stop antibiotics at, say, 72 hours, after
reassessing whether patients need them.
Meanwhile, doctors are calling for more re-
search into antibiotic use in children.
Fuhrman said hospitals must do all they
can to stop superbug infections. The stakes
are enormous, she said, pointing toward
Pearl, now a 7-year-old first-grader who
likes to wear a pink hair bow and paint her
tiny fingernails a rainbow of pastel colors.
“Antibiotic are great, but they have to be
used wisely,” Fuhrman said. “The problem
of superbugs is here. It’s in our backyard
now, and it’s just getting worse.”
Laura Ungar is the midwest editor/cor-
respondent and she covers health issues
out of Kaiser Health News’ St. Louis office.
This article was originally published on
Kaiser Health News.

A Natural Treatment for Antidepressant-Induced Sexual Side Effects

70 percent of people taking common antidepressants suffer side effects that may be treated, or avoided, with saffron

MICHAEL GREGER
Years ago, I covered a head-to-head
comparison of saffron versus Prozac for
the treatment of depression and saffron
seemed to work just as well as the drug.
In the years since, five other studies
have found that saffron beat out placebo
or rivaled antidepressant medications.
It may be the spice’s red pigment, crocin,
since that alone beat out placebo as an ad-
junct treatment, significantly decreasing
symptoms of depression, symptoms of
anxiety, and general psychological distress.
Perhaps, its antioxidants played a role in
“preventing free radical-induced damage
in the brain.” The amount of crocin the re-
searchers used was equivalent to about a
half teaspoon of saffron a day.
If the spice works as well as the drugs,
one could argue that the spice wins, since
it doesn’t cause sexual dysfunction in the
majority of men and women like most pre-
scribed antidepressants do. SSRI drugs like
Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft cause “adverse
sexual side effects” in around 70 percent
of people taking them. What’s more, phy-
sicians not only significantly underesti-
mate the occurrence of side effects, but
they also tend to underrate how much they
impact the lives of their patients.
Not only is this not a problem with saf-
fron, the spice may even be able to treat it,
as I explore in my video Best Food for An-
Five other studies
have found that saffron
beat out placebo or
rivaled antidepressant
medications.
SMRITIS/SHUTTERSTOCK
ized to saffron or placebo for a month. By
week four, the saffron group “resulted in
significantly greater improvement in erec-
tile function … and intercourse satisfac-
tion,” and more than half of the men in
the saffron group regained “normal erec-
tile function.” The researchers concluded
that saffron is an “efficacious treatment”
for Prozac-related erectile dysfunction. It
has all been found to be effective for fe-
male sexual dysfunction as well. Female
sexual function increased by week four,
improving some of the Prozac-induced
sexual problems but not others. So, it may
be better to try saffron in the first place
for the depression and avoid developing
these sexual dysfunction problems, since
they sometimes can persist even after stop-
ping the drugs, potentially worsening one’s
long-term depression prognosis.
This includes unusual side effects, such
as genital anesthesia, where you liter-
ally lose sensation. It can happen in men
and women. More rarely, antidepressants
can  induce  a condition called restless
genital syndrome. You’ve heard of rest-
less legs syndrome? Well, this is a restless
between-the-legs syndrome. These PSSDs,
or Post-SSRI sexual dysfunctions, meaning
dysfunctions that appear or persist after
stopping taking these antidepressants, can
be so serious that “prescribing physicians
should mention the potential danger of the
occurrence of genital (e.g., penile or vagi-
laser irradiation. After 20 laser treatments
to his penis, one man, who had lost his pe-
nile sensation thanks to the drug Paxil,
partially regained his “penile touch and
temperature sensation.” However, he still
couldn’t perform to his girlfriend’s satisfac-
tion, and she evidently ended up leaving
him over it, which certainly didn’t help his
mood. But, before you feel too badly for
him, compare a little penile light therapy
to clitoridectomy, clitoris removal sur-
gery, or another Paxil-related case where
a woman’s symptoms only improved after
six courses of electroshock therapy.
Pass the paella!
In folk medicine, there
is a widely held belief
that saffron might have
aphrodisiac effects.
Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM, is a physi-
cian and New York Times bestselling
author. He has lectured at the Conference
on World Affairs, the National Institutes
of Health, and the International Bird Flu
Summit, testified before Congress, ap-
peared on “The Dr. Oz Show” and “The

tidepressant-Induced Sexual Dysfunction. nal) anesthesia to every patient prior to any Colbert Report,” and was invited as an
“In folk medicine, there is a widely held SSRI treatment.” If you’re on one of these expert witness in defense of Oprah Win-
belief that saffron might have aphrodisiac drugs, did your doctor warn you about that? frey at the infamous “meat defamation”
effects.” To test this, men with Prozac-in- All hope is not lost, though. Evidently, trial. This article was originally published
duced sexual impairment were random- penile anesthesia responds to low-power on NutritionFacts.org
C6
FIZKES/SHUTTERSTOCK
The soothing
motions of knitting
create more than
beautiful sweaters.
Keep Your
Hands Busy
for Heart
Health
Meditating can
melt away stress but
some people need
another option
MAT LECOMPTE
Mindfulness meditation may
help ease stress and promote a
healthier heart, but it’s not always
easy to do. Stopping everything
you’re doing and sitting in silence
is a learned skill.
Getting engaged
in the rewarding
labor of a hobby can
offer a meditative
experience that
combats stress.
I’m sure you can relate. It’s
easy for your mind to start rac-
ing once you’re alone with your
thoughts. Sitting in a comfort-
able, quiet space can get un-
comfortable and loud inside
your head. It can serve as a per-
fect platform for overthinking,
which can boost stress.
Too much stress is no good for
your heart, especially if you’re
feeling it all day, every day.
Stress can boost heart disease
risk by setting off a chain of physi-
ological reactions that can have
some dangerous effects.
Your body releases adrenaline
when you feel stressed. Adrena-
line increases your heart rate and
breathing and boosts blood pres-
sure. When it continues, it strains
the heart.
There are also indirect effects.
Stress may lead you to engage
in behavior that boosts the risk
of heart disease. Research links
stress to bad food choices that
include fat and sugar, which
can boost cholesterol and blood
pressure. Stress can also zap your
energy and limit your physical
activity.
So, if mindfulness meditation
doesn’t work for you, try keeping
your hands busy. Sitting down
with some knitting, woodwork-
ing, jigsaw puzzles, or cooking
can all help take your mind off
your stressful thoughts, help you
relax, and offer something enjoy-
able to think about.
Sometimes just the repetitive
motion of knitting is enough to
reduce stress and take your mind
off any troubles.
If you’re struggling with stress
and really can’t sit quietly in med-
itation, try putting your hands to
work. It can ease the burden on
your heart and mind.
Mat Lecompte is a freelance
health and wellness journalist.
This article was first published
on Bel Marra Health.
Focus on what
drives you this
moment to take
a better-than-
nothing step
toward a long-
term goal.
How to Use
Immediate Gratification to
Reach Long-Term Goals
New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be painful.
Here’s how to feel good about your 2021 goals.
Continued from C1
people feel like doing something that is fun
and easy doesn’t count, especially if it is sup-
posed to be good for you. You want some-
thing impressive, right? Maybe something
that will make you immediately look better
in a bathing suit. No pain, no gain, right?
Wrong. You have a choice: Do something
hard and ambitious for a short period of
time and then quit it, or do something that
makes you feel something you want to feel
for the rest of your life. I promise the people
who know about these things (like your
doctor, therapist, or coach) want you to pick
the healthy or productive habit that you are
going to stick with, no matter how unambi-
tious. This is about hardwiring a good habit
into your brain that you can build on later.
If your new habit is
something you feel like
you ‘should’ do, but don’t
actually want to do,
eventually you won’t do
it at all.
If we want our habits to stick, we need
to start really, really small. It is hard for us
humans to make lots of behavior changes
all at once. Creating a new habit or routine
can take a great deal of energy and focus,
and we have only so much self-control in
a given day to work with. Also, you might
have noticed that the global crisis that
we are in is pretty distracting these days,
which makes piling individual change on
top of massive societal change even harder.
So, the first step is to break your desired
habit down into its most simple behavior,
something you can do in less than five
minutes from start to finish. Do this know-
ing that you are starting to carve a neural
pathway in your brain that will eventually
become an unshakable habit.
The first few steps of establishing any
new habit can be hard, though, so you
need to do something really, really, really
easy—something that requires so little
effort that your brain doesn’t put up any
resistance when you start it, and you can
feel successful for completing it. The idea
is to create a habit that doesn’t depend on
effort or willpower, so this first extraordi-
narily unambitious habit is about initiating
the neural pathway—starting to form the
groove—and nothing else.
MINDSET MATTERS
Once you have a routine or resolution so
easy you have no excuse not to do it, this
will be your “Better Than Nothing” (BTN)
habit or resolution. Mine was to change
into my walking shoes and walk our dogs
to the end of the block. You will be able
to do your BTN routine when you are ex-
hausted, when you have no time, when you
are a little under the weather, and when you
really feel like staying on the couch. For
me, this means a teeny little bit of physical
activity that is better than not moving at all.
Every few days, you can expand this rou-
tine if you want to, but only if you are itch-
ing to do more, and only if the expansion
feels really easy.
If, at any time, you feel any resistance
to your BTN routine, you’ll know it isn’t
yet easy enough. Start by cutting it in half
in terms of time and effort. Many people
need to start with something that takes less
than 30 seconds—say, putting your shoes
on and walking out the door. This sounds
ridiculous, I know. Remember, we are all
about establishing the neural pathway at
this stage in the game, and to do that, all
we need to do is associate your anchor or
trigger with something that will someday
become a habit.
Even after you start expanding, you’ll
need to hang on to some form of a BTN
routine: something you can still do even
when you aren’t feeling great, when you
don’t have time, and when the unexpected
happens. We can do this by making the ac-
tivities themselves more rewarding—more
fun—by pairing them with things we enjoy.
For example, I love reading, so I listen to
audiobooks while I clean up at the end of
each evening. My husband watches TikTok
while he takes his huge pile of supplements
in the morning. Remember that when you
are first building a new habit, any action
is better than none. Once you’ve started,
there are tricks to help you stay on track—
little things that make your effort feel re-
warding. Here are three of them.
Tricks to Stay on Track
Use B.J. Fogg’s “Yay me!” reward: When
you finish doing what you intend to do,
congratulate yourself. I’m a huge fan of
this one because it’s easy and it works.
Even something as small as a short men-
tal victory dance can trigger a little hit of
dopamine, enough to tell your brain to re-
peat whatever you just did. So, when I find
myself outside walking around in the fresh
air, I congratulate myself.
Really relish the positive emotions that
your new habit elicits. Be intentional about
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
KER_VII/SHUTTERSTOCK
this. “Take in the good” of them, as psychol-
ogist Rick Hanson would say. For example,
I tend to feel happiest when I’m exercising
outside and I consciously look up at the
trees (rather than down at the trail, as I am
inclined). When I look up at the trees, I tend
to feel a warm, relaxing sense of awe spread
over me. I try to do this each time I’m out,
so that I can really feel the calm.
Add something to your new habit that
you’ll look forward to when you think
about it. I supercharged my desire to get out
on the trail with my dogs by letting myself
listen to audiobooks while I walk. Because
I’d read about the incredible benefits of
mindfulness, I felt like I “should” make my-
self just walk quietly in nature, undistracted,
when out on a hike. But then I noticed that I
most wanted to get outside and walk when I
had something I couldn’t wait to get back to
listening to ... and I decided to give myself
permission to do something I really enjoy.
This means that I’m even more commit-
ted to my hikes, because, as Michelle Segar
compellingly writes, “We approach what
feels good and avoid what feels bad.”
Christine Carter, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at
the Greater Good Science Center. She is the
author of three books including this year’s
“The New Adolescence: Raising Happy
and Successful Teens in an Age of Anxiety
and Distraction.” A former director of
the GGSC, she served for many years as
the author of its parenting blog, Raising
Happiness. This article was first published
on the Greater Good online magazine.
NDAB CREATIVITY/SHUTTERSTOCK
If we want our habits to stick, we need to start
really, really small.
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 C7
TRAVEL MAN/SHUTTERSTOCK

LEGACY
Remembering our mortality

Living in the can help us better mind how

we use the hours and days
life gives us.

Shadow of Death
We treasure what we know to be finite,
which includes our time in this life
JOSHUA BECKER

My grandfather passed away over Christmas.

At his funeral, I delivered the eulogy. Here
is a portion of what I said:
“What can I say about this man? What can
I say about a man I’ve always wanted to be
just like? What can I say about a man who
shaped my worldview and understanding
of God more than anyone else? What can I
say about a man I named my own son after?”
During one of my last conversations
with my grandfather, before he got sick on
Thanksgiving, he made a statement to me
that I found to be incredibly profound.
He said, “We live our entire lives under
the shadow of death.”
While I didn’t tell him at the time, I found
the statement to be deep and life-enhancing
when understood correctly. In fact, merely
hearing it brought about further resolve of We live every day with
my desire to live a minimalist life. the understanding
Consider its weight: We all live under the that it may be our last.
shadow of death. ANNA_KIM/SHUTTERSTOCK

That statement has been true in 2020

maybe more than any other year as lo-
cal and national media regularly report
death counts from all over the world and
daily public service announcements can
be heard over the airwaves asking us to
act responsibly.
But death is not new to us—despite the
unprecedented times we live in.
In fact, we live every day with the under-
standing that it may be our last. Not in a
morbid, depressing way (shockingly so),
but in the awareness and reality of under-
standing life.
Every time I get in my car to drive to work
or the grocery store, I know, instinctively,
something tragic could happen to me or an-
other driver. I also know, full-well, that even
if I don’t leave my house, a medical emer-
gency could befall me or someone I love. I
am not immune from a cancer diagnosis, a
heart attack, a stroke, or a brain aneurysm.
I have plenty of loved ones who unexpect-
edly received life-changing news, or were
tragically stricken.
As Grandpa said, “Life is lived under
this shadow of death.” The reality of it sur-
rounds us every day of our lives. And even
if we don’t have a close, loved one who re-
cently passed away, we almost certainly
know someone who has.
Nobody escapes life alive.
But somehow it seems, human beings are
able to both live with the knowledge of death
Somehow it and somehow function apart from it.
Death is inevitable. And yet, I am able
seems, human to live wholly today, focused on the pres-
beings are ent and the future, as if it won’t happen to
me. I am aware of coming death, but not
able to both paralyzed by it. It is a fascinating paradox
live with the and ability of the human mind when you
think about.
knowledge While the shadow of death does not para-
lyze me, in the quiet moments of life, the
of death and shadow motivates and sharpens the wisest
somehow among us.
Only a fool lives as if their life will never end.
function apart We receive one life to live, with a limited
number of days and a limited number of
from it. resources with which to accomplish our
purpose. Almost all of the resources we
consume during our journey are limited:
money, time, energy, space, focus, capacity,
even the relationships we are able to pursue.
This reality of our finite nature is an
incredibly important truth. It is one we
should intentionally choose to focus on
each day. Because when we do, it changes
our actions, our motivations, and our pur-
suits. It changes us:
Because life is finite, we make better
choices.
Because time is finite, we spend our days
on things that matter.
Because money is finite, we spend it on
pursuits that will outlast us.
Because our energy is finite, we choose
carefully where we focus our passions.
Because our days are finite, we value re-
lationships and love.
Because I live under the shadow of
death, I will choose a minimalist life and
reject the empty promise of consumerism
and what this world offers. I will live for
greater pursuits.
Life will end—indeed. And that realiza-
tion should affect the decisions I make each
day. But rather than causing me to throw in
the towel and give up on life, this shadow
of death will spark hope and resolve and
passion to spend each remaining day of my
life making the most of it.
Joshua Becker is an author, public
speaker, and the founder and editor of
Becoming Minimalist, where he inspires
others to live more by owning less. Visit
BecomingMinimalist.com

RAWPIXEL.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK
lisher agreed to print 5,000 copies. While
MINDSET MATTERS “A Time to Kill” was a bit of a dud when it
launched, Grisham kept writing, and his

Challenges Beat second book, “The Firm,” achieved massive

success. He has since gone on to sell more
than 300 million books.

Resolutions—Every Day Focus on a Better Future Self

of the Week
Set yourself a task with
a clear completion,
however small, and
start your streak
JAY HARRINGTON
As a young comedian, Jerry Seinfeld hung a
big calendar on his wall. He began writing
jokes every day. After he wrote, he put a big
red X over that day.
According to Seinfeld: “After a few days
you’ll have a chain. ... Your only job is to
not break the chain.”
Seinfeld didn’t resolve to become a great
comedian. He challenged himself to write
every day.
See the difference? It’s not just semantics.
Challenges are action oriented, whereas
resolutions are outcome oriented. With a
resolution, you think about who you want
to become. With a challenge, you become
that person through the consistent action
you take.
If you challenge yourself to write, or paint,
or work out every day, you need to write,
paint, or work out. The action is clear, spe-
cific, and deadline driven.
On the other hand, if you resolve to “be-
come a better writer,” there’s less urgency to
get moving. What does “better” even mean?
Resolutions can also be limiting—
we’re poor judges of our potential. Why
set an arbitrary aspirational outcome for
yourself when you can’t possibly know
how much farther your daily action can
take you?
Don’t Fixate on Outcomes
Consider the example of John Grisham.
Approaching the age of 30, Grisham was
busy with his legal career, working 60 to 70
hours a week at a law firm in Mississippi.
Grisham wanted to write a novel but
couldn’t afford to stop practicing law to
pursue his dream.
He created a challenge for himself. Ev-
ery day, Grisham would wake up at 5 a.m.
sharp and hustle to his office. He would
be at his desk, coffee, pen, and legal pad
in hand, by 5:30 a.m.
He challenged himself to write at least
one page per day. Sometimes he wrote
more. Three years later, by sticking to his
rigorous daily writing routine, Grisham
finished writing and editing his first novel,
“A Time to Kill.”
Twenty-eight publishers rejected “A
Time to Kill.” Eventually, a small pub-
The real benefit of challenges is that they
lead to sustainable behavior change.
If you write for 30 days straight, it will
become habitual. The action will become
ingrained. You’ll start seeing benefits from
your work, and you’ll want to engage in
more of the behavior that created the re-
sults.
The thing that stops people from becom-
ing a better version of themselves is them-
selves. We harbor limiting beliefs about
what we’re capable of.
Resolutions can be vague and easy to According to Harvard psychologist Dr.
procrastinate on. Walking 15 minutes a Daniel Gilbert, most people assume that
day, however, is a challenge you can put a their current self is their forever self.
checkmark beside. “Human beings are works in progress
that mistakenly think they are finished,”
he says.
The best way to overcome this limiting
belief is to envision a better version of
The thing that you—and start taking action to become
stops people your chosen future self.
What do you want to achieve? What ac-
from becoming tions will lead to the result?
Research shows that more than 80 per-
a better version cent of people abandon their New Year’s
of themselves is resolutions by the second week of February.
Buck the odds. Take action every day.
themselves. Don’t break the chain.
Jay Harrington is an author, lawyer-turned-
entrepreneur, and runs a northern Michigan-
inspired lifestyle brand called Life and Whim. 
He lives with his wife and three young girls
in a small town and writes about living a
purposeful, outdoor-oriented life.
C8
Cafes are lively with the warm energy of people.
Why Being Stuck at Home
Drains Our Creativity
Cafes offer far more than caffeinated beverage according
to our history—and ongoing research
KORYDON SMITH, KELLY HAYES
MCALONIE & REBECCA ROTUNDO
A well-designed
While the pandemic has caused thou- coffee shop
sands of small businesses to temporarily
close or shutter for good, the disappear- can facilitate
ance of the corner coffee shop means
more than lost wages.
creativity—where
It also represents a collective loss of cre- the unplanned
ativity.
Researchers have shown how creative friction between
thinking can be cultivated by simple hab- people can
its such as exercise, sleep, and reading. But
another catalyst is unplanned interactions ignite sparks of
with close friends, casual acquaintances,
and complete strangers. With the closure innovation.
of coffee shops—not to mention places
like bars, libraries, gyms, and museums—
these opportunities vanish.
Of course, not all chance meetings result
in brilliant ideas. Yet, as we bounce from
place to place, each brief social encounter
plants a small seed that can gel into a new
idea or inspiration.
By missing out on chance meetings and
observations that nudge our curiosity and
jolt “a-ha!” moments, new ideas, big and
small, go undiscovered.
It’s Not the Caffeine, It’s the People
Famous artists, novelists, and scientists
are often seen as if their ideas and work
come from a singular mind. But this is
misleading. The ideas of even the most
reclusive of poets, mathematicians, or
theologians are part of larger conversa-
tions among peers, or are reactions and
responses to the world.
As author Steven Johnson wrote in
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“Where Good Ideas Come From,” the “trick
to having good ideas is not to sit around
in glorious isolation and try to think big
thoughts.” Instead, he recommends that
we “go for a walk,” “embrace serendipity”
and “frequent coffeehouses and other liq-
uid networks.”
Just as today’s freelance writers might
use coffee shops as a second office, it was
the tea- and coffeehouses of London in
the 18th century that spurred the Age of
Enlightenment. Then, as now, people in-
tuitively knew they were “more produc-
tive or more creative when working from
coffee shops,” according to David Burkus,
author of “The Myths of Creativity.” As
research shows, it’s not the caffeine; it’s
the people. Simply being around other
people who are working can motivate us
to do the same.
In other words, creativity is social.
It’s also contextual. The built environ-
ment plays a hidden but crucial role.
Architectural researchers in the United
Kingsom, for instance, found that class-
room design impacts the speed at which
students learn. They found that classroom
features, such as furniture and lighting,
have as much impact on learning as teach-
ers. Similar aspects of cafe design can en-
hance creativity.
Designing for Creativity
Buildings influence a wide range of human
functions. Temperature and humidity, for
example, affect our ability to concentrate.
Daylight is positively linked to produc-
tivity, stress management, and immune
functions. And air quality, determined
Order
d
der
Online!
in
ne!!
www.Puritang.com
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
by HVAC systems as well as the chemical
composition of furnishings and interior
materials like carpet, affects both respi-
ratory and mental health. Architectural
design has even been connected to hap-
piness.
Likewise, a well-designed coffee shop
can facilitate creativity—where the un-
planned friction between people can ig-
nite sparks of innovation.
Philosopher Michel de
Certeau said that the
spaces we occupy are a
backdrop on which the
‘ensemble of possibilities’
and ‘improvisation’ of
everyday life occur.
Two newly completed coffee shops,
the Kilogram Coffee Shop in Indonesia
and Buckminster’s Cat Cafe in Buffalo,
New York, were designed with this kind
of interactivity in mind.
Each has open, horizontal layouts that
actually encourage congestion, which
fosters chance encounters. Lightweight
and geometric furniture enables occu-
pants to rearrange seating and accom-
modate groups of various size, such as
when a friend unexpectedly arrives.
There are views outside, which promote
calmness and offer more opportunities to
daydream. And there is a moderate level
of ambient noise—not too high or low—
which induces cognitive disfluency, a state
of deep, reflective thinking.
Restoring the Soul of the Coffee Shop
Of course, not all coffee shops have closed.
Many shops have reduced indoor seating
capacity, limited patrons to exterior seat-
ing, or have restricted services to takeout
only as a means to stay open. All of them
have faced the difficult task of imple-
menting safeguards while retaining the
atmosphere of their establishments. Some
design elements, like lighting, can easily
be retained amidst social distancing and
other safety measures. Others, like mov-
able seating for collaboration, are harder
to achieve safely.
While these tweaks allow businesses to
stay open and ensure the safety of custom-
ers, they sap spaces of their souls.
Philosopher Michel de Certeau said that
the spaces we occupy are a backdrop on
which the “ensemble of possibilities” and
“improvisation” of everyday life occur.
When social life fully transitions into
the digital realm, these opportunities
become limited. Conversations become
prearranged, while the side chats that take
place before or after a meeting or event
have been quashed. In video meetings,
participants speak to either the whole
room or no one.
For cafe owners, employees, and cus-
tomers, the post-pandemic era can’t come
soon enough. After all, while customers
ostensibly stop by their local coffee shop
for a jolt of caffeine, the true draw of the
place is in its haptic and hectic spirit.
Korydon Smith is a professor of
architecture and co-founder of Global
Health Equity at the University at Buffalo,
Kelly Hayes McAlonie is an adjunct
instructor of architecture at the University
at Buffalo, and Rebecca Rotundo is an
associate director of instructional design
at the University at Buffalo. This article
was first published on The Conversation.
Natural Purity for All

A GREENER VIEW
Planning Your Garden
for the New Year
Winter is a great time to start planning your
vegetable garden and your landscape, as well as
to check in on your plants.
See D2
HOME IMPROVEMENT | FOOD | MONEY
Bunches and
heads of chicory are
prolific throughout
winter, difficult to miss
with their with dramatic
frilly, spiky, and cone-
headed leaves.
Taming the
Chicory
LYNDA BALSLEV
W
inter is chicory season.
Chicories are the of-
ten-labeled bitter greens,
which include radicchio,
endive, puntarelle, and
escarole. Bunches and heads of chicory
are prolific throughout the season, dif-
ficult to miss with their with dramatic
frilly, spiky, and cone-headed leaves. And
while their bitterness can be off-putting
ZI3000/SHUTTERSTOCK
COMFORT FOOD
Potato Pierogi
Are the Best Pierogi
ABRAMOVA ELENA
SHUTTERSTOCK
But however you fill or cook them, these Polish
dumplings are little bites of comfort.
See D7
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 D1
HOME
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
YOD67/SHUTTERSTOCK
There are plenty of ways to save on pet
care while making sure your pets are well
looked after.
Smart
Ways
to Save
Money on
Pet Care
MARY HUNT
Recently, I read about a family who
spent $1,000 to cat-proof their back-
yard so their two cats, who they con-
sider full-fledged family members,
could roam outside without escaping
to the outside world.
And that’s not all. Their felines also
have lots of cat furniture, and they
regularly dine on cat food that costs
north of $7 per pound.
Perhaps you spoil your pets, too.
There are plenty of ways to save money
on pet care.
For example, you can feed them ex-
pensive food, but make sure you buy
it on sale. And then buy enough to last
until the next sale. Instead of paying
the big bucks for furniture or beds,
make them yourself. There are plenty
of how-tos online for those willing to
make the effort.
Here are some more ways to save
money on your pets.
Frugal Choices
When selecting a pet, it’s wise to think
beyond cuteness or breed. Accord-
ing to the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a
large dog will likely require an average
yearly food allowance of $225, while a
bird’s diet is only $75 per year. Rabbits
and guinea pigs like fresh bedding,
which adds up to $415 per year, while
a self-cleaning cat will cost you only
$165 a year for litter, on average.
Here’s another surprising fact when
considering which pet you’ll adopt:
Recurring yearly exams and vacci-
nations range from $210 to $265 on
average for dogs and $160 on average
for cats.
Adopt Instead of Buying
Breeder prices for dogs are many times
higher than the cost of adopting from
a shelter. Sure, there will be expenses
When cooking and fees involved with adopting—but
they will be so much less, plus you’ll
be saving a life.
with winter’s
Loyalty Clubs
bold, bitter greens, Stores such as Petco, not unlike every
supermarket on earth, have loyalty re-
balance is key wards programs. And they have sales.
You need to be a loyalty club member
to get in on the goodies. It’s worth the
effort to join. In fact, join several of
these programs so you have options.
Then watch the sales, and take full ad-
to some, at winter’s peak, chicories are vantage of every savings opportunity.
crisp, juicy, nutty, and mildly sweet—all
qualities that pleasantly balance their Human Food
natural bitterness. Feed your pets all the human food
And they are healthy to boot. Fiber-rich your vet or other pet professional
and loaded with vitamins C, B, and K, and approves and or recommends. Ani-
nutrients such as iron, zinc, copper, and mal Planet says that baked carrots,
potassium, chicories are the cold season steamed broccoli, and eggs are safe
warriors that will fight to keep you healthy and healthy for cats to eat—and much
throughout the winter. cheaper than cat food.
Continued on D2 Continued on D3
D2
Taming
the Chicory
When cooking with winter’s bold,
bitter greens, balance is key
Continued from D1
The best way to approach these robust
greens is to pair them with equally asser-
tive yet balancing ingredients. A general
rule to building good flavor is to strike a
balance between bitter, sweet, sour, and
heat. So check those other flavor boxes
when smoothing chicory’s bitterness, and
be confident that it can handle it.
For instance, when eating fresh chicory
leaves, mound them in salads with equally
hefty greens and crucifers, such as kale,
red cabbage, and spinach. Garnish them
with dried fruit, nuts, and seeds, and fin-
ish with sweet and sharp dressings such
as a rich balsamic-Dijon vinaigrette or a
lemony-anchovy dressing.
When cooking chicories, sauté, roast,
or braise them to temper their bitterness.
Cook and season them with flavorful
stocks, vinegar, or citrus, and a little sugar
or honey for a rounded and flavorful effect.
This is my favorite way to cook purple-
A GREENER VIEW
Planning Your Garden for the New Year
Give your indoor plants a winter grooming; rotate them and clean up dead leaves.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Don’t Let Budgeting Myths Sabotage Your Finances
DAVE RAMSEY
Dear Dave,
I made a resolution to start following your
plan in 2021. I talked to my parents about
this, and while they like some parts of your
teaching, they don’t think living on a bud-
get is necessary if you make good money.
They also said budgeting is extremely dif-
ficult. Are they right?
—Jensen
Dear Jensen,
For whatever reason, I’m afraid your par-
ents are way off base on this one. A lot of
people trash talk the idea of budgeting, and
make up all kinds of excuses for not liv-
MICHAEL
A. BUSER/
SHUTTERSTOCK
and red-leafed radicchio. Radicchio’s
sturdy head holds up well to braising (and
grilling and sautéing; you get the picture).
The balsamic vinegar is a great foil. It’s
fruity, rich, and sharp, and, when cooked,
the vinegar reduces to a rich sweet-and-
sour syrup that shellacs the wilted radic-
chio wedges.
Choose deeply colored, firm heads that
have a little weight to them, and try to pur-
chase similarly sized heads for this recipe
to ensure even cooking.
Lynda Balslev is a cookbook author, food
and travel writer, and recipe developer
based in the San Francisco Bay Area,
where she lives with her Danish husband,
two children, a cat, and a dog. Lynda
studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole
de Cuisine in Paris and worked as a
personal chef, culinary instructor, and
food writer in Switzerland and Denmark.
Copyright 2020 Lynda Balslev. Distrib-
uted by Andrew McMeel Syndication.
SYDA PRODUCTIONS/SHUTTERSTOCK
ing on one. The truth is a written, monthly
budget is essential when it comes to beat-
ing debt and winning with money—pe-
riod. It’s the map you need to get where
you want to go in your financial journey.
There are lots of myths, and just some
bad information, out there where living
on a budget is concerned. Making a bud-
get isn’t rocket science. If you can do ba-
sic math, you can create a budget. Your
income minus your outgo needs to equal
zero. That’s it! You might spend a couple
of hours tallying all your expenses when
you first start, but the process soon be-
comes faster and easier. All it takes is a
little practice.
If you think doing a budget is only for
BALSAMIC BRAISED RADICCHIO
PREP & COOKING TIME
Active Time: 40 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
SERVES 3 TO 4 AS A SIDE DISH
4 medium-large heads radicchio
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus
more as needed
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup chicken stock, mushroom stock, or water
2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
3 to 4 thyme sprigs
Halve the radicchios top to stem. Using a paring
knife, cut out the white stem at the bottom of each half.
Then halve each half lengthwise so that you have
16 wedges.
Heat the oil in a large skillet with a lid over medium
heat. Arrange the wedges, cut sides down, snugly in
the skillet. Cook until slightly colored, 2 to 3 minutes.
Using tongs, turn the wedges so that the other cut
side is down in the skillet. Season with the salt and
black pepper and cook until slightly colored, about 2
minutes more.
Pour the balsamic vinegar over the radicchio and then
pour the chicken stock over it. The pan should be about
1/2-inch full of liquid. Top off with additional balsamic
or stock if needed. Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly
over the radicchio and then scatter the thyme sprigs in
the skillet.
Partially cover the skillet and simmer over medium-low
heat until the radicchio is crisp-tender when pierced
with a knife through the base, 12 to 15 minutes,
carefully turning the wedges once or twice. Remove
the cover and continue to simmer until the radicchio
JEFF RUGG
They say that hindsight is 20/20, and that
is what we want to do this year: put 2020
in our hindsight. As I wrote in my first “A
Greener View” column for last year: “In
our mind’s eye, we see ourselves healthier,
happier and leading more productive lives.
The pursuit of gardening can help with all
of those visions.” I didn’t realize how many
people would have so much time to pursue
gardening.
Let’s look ahead to gardening in the
new year. Winter may have only officially
started recently, but the mid-December
nor’easter that socked the East Coast has
many people ready to be done with winter.
Winter is a good time to plan your veg-
etable garden and your landscape. A good
way to do that is to look at seed and plant
catalogs. Go to MailOrderGardening.com
for a list of companies that offer catalogs of
seeds, plants, and gardening tools. If you
decide to order seeds, order them early, as
some will be in limited supply.
If you need more help in planning your
landscape, winter is a good time to enlist
the help of a landscape architect or land-
scape contractor. Both professions are of-
ten less busy in the winter and might offer
discounts to do the design now and instal-
lation in the spring.
To remedy your cabin fever, go outside
and inspect your landscape. Check for
signs of deer, rabbit, and rodent damage
to landscape plants. They especially like
chewing on the trunks and stems of berry-
and fruit-producing trees and shrubs.
If you live in an area that has not had
much snow or rain this winter, check your
landscape for dry soil and plants that need
to be watered. This is especially important
for new landscapes and evergreens. Give
people who have trouble making ends
meet, think again. My wife and I have lived
by a written, monthly budget every single
month for about 30 years. It doesn’t matter
whether you’re a multi-millionaire, or if
you have just $100 to your name, knowing
exactly how much money you have—and
where it’s going—is an essential part of
managing your finances accurately and
successfully.
Believe me, I hear dozens of other ex-
cuses, too. You’d be amazed at how many
people don’t make a budget every month
because they think it’s “boring.” Others
claim they can do their budgets in their
heads. I don’t think so! For a budget to re-
ally work, it needs to be something you
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
LYNDA BALSLEV FOR TASTEFOOD
As the radicchio braises, the balsamic vinegar
will reduce to a rich sweet-and-sour syrup
that shellacs the wilted wedges.
is soft, 5 to 7 minutes more, turning once or twice to
evenly coat and cook.
Using tongs, transfer the radicchio to a serving dish,
gently squeezing any excess liquid back into the skillet.
Continue to simmer the braising liquid until reduced
to a syrupy consistency, 5 to 6 minutes. Discard the
thyme sprigs and taste for seasoning. You may need to
add a little more salt and black pepper. There should
be a balance of sweet, salt, bitter, and the kick of black
pepper in the flavor.
Drizzle the syrup over the radicchio and serve warm.
them water on the soonest day that is above
freezing, and hopefully they will take in
enough to survive.
If you are one of the millions of people
who started growing houseplants this year,
congratulations. It is a fun and healthy
thing to do. You may not realize that house-
plants can develop insect and mite prob-
lems in the winter. In fact, these problems
can be worse indoors than out since there is
no rain to wash the tiny pests off the plant.
So, turn off the reruns of “Tiger King,” and
check your plants for insects and mites.
Most can be washed off in the shower or
sink. There are insecticides on sticks or in
solutions that the plants soak up to kill the
pests without spraying in the house.
Many houseplants need a winter groom-
ing, so clean up the dead leaves, and rotate
them so more leaves will get some sun.
Don’t store extra firewood indoors. Many
insects hide in the bark, and as they warm
up, they may move into your plants.
During the growing season, birds eat
many insect pests on your plants. Do them
a favor over the winter, and put out a bird
feeder and a birdbath heater. Suet and
black-oil sunflower seeds give the most
calories so the birds have enough energy
to stay warm. Water and shelter are also
necessary, so don’t forget them when you
design your landscape. A birdbath heater
is designed to keep the water liquid and
available for drinking during cold weather;
it won’t turn the birdbath into a spa.
Email questions to Jeff Rugg at info@
greenerview.com. To find out more about
Jeff Rugg and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoon-
ists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at
Creators.com. Copyright 2020 Jeff Rugg.
Distributed by Creators Syndicate.
can track down to the last penny. And if
you’re married and saying you can do a
monthly budget in your head, that means
only one of you is involved in the decision
making. That’s a recipe for disaster in your
finances and your relationship.
A budget represents your financial game
plan for the upcoming month and years
ahead. As Benjamin Franklin said, “If you
fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
—Dave
Dave Ramsey is CEO of Ramsey Solu-
tions, host of The Dave Ramsey Show,
and a best-selling author, including “The
Total Money Makeover.” Follow Dave at
DaveRamsey.com
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 D3
ALL IMAGES BY SHUTTERSTOCK

Though gift cards are

convenient to give, they come
with some downsides. One
is that the amount is seldom
spent exactly; either the
difference remains on the card,
or you’ll need to supplement
with your own money.
Smart Ways
to Save Money
on Pet Care
Continued from D1
Pet Food Storage
Some pets are picky about what they’ll eat.
I don’t have a cat, but I’ve learned that fe-
lines are known to refuse food if it’s too old
because it’s been left out. No matter which
pets you have, keep an eye on those expi-
ration dates. Refrigerate as necessary, and
even look into freezing pet food, especially
if you are able to stock up when the good
stuff goes on sale.

Spay and Neuter

The decision to spay or neuter has a number

The Dark Side of Gift Cards of implications, according to blogger and

MARY HUNT
These days, you can buy gift cards (the
modern replacement for the gift certifi-
cate) from just about every store imagin-
able. They are convenient, and for many
people, gift cards appear to be the perfect
gift solution. They’re not. I am so opposed
to gift cards that I’m this close to declaring
an all-out boycott. Why? Oh, please let me
count the ways.
But first, let me define “gift card.” This is a
card with the name of a retailer on it, such
as Target, Walmart, Kohl’s, or Honey Baked
Ham. I am not referring to a prepaid debit
or gift card with Visa or Mastercard. Here’s
why I don’t recommend them as gifts:
No. 1: It’s impossible to spend a gift card
exactly. Either you lose the difference be-
cause they leave that last amount on the
card, or you have to dig into your pocket
to supplement the cost of your gift. Try to
tell that to a child.
No. 2: We don’t give plastic the same re-
spect as cash. The fact that millions of gift
cards are never redeemed is proof. But do
you think millions of $20 bills are lost or go
mysteriously missing? Kids don’t lose cash
the way they lose gift cards.
No. 3: You may assume that, while it is
unsafe to send cash through the mail, a
gift card is OK to mail. No way. Gift cards
are stolen all the time, and unless you have
been careful to keep the receipt and the
card’s identification number, you are out
of luck. Even then, you or your recipient
loses if the thief has spent the balance or
the store decides to not honor your docu-
mentation. They don’t have to.
No. 4: Gift cards are most major retailers’
bestselling products. They make a huge for-
tune from this runaway craze. And just try
to find out how many cards are redeemed
or what they do with all the money from
gift cards that aren’t redeemed.
No. 5: According to California law, gift
cards cannot expire, nor can the retailer
charge handling fees for inactivity, but the
same is not true of other states. A gift card
is subject to the state laws where it was pur-
chased. Do you know what that state’s laws
are regarding that gift card? You could get
a big surprise.
We don’t I can hear all of you Starbucks card lovers
give plastic screaming in horror. You adore the Star-
bucks gift cards (or Target or Bloomies) you
the same get from students, parents, and co-workers.
You are a regular customer; you combine
respect as your cards; you see them as more precious
cash. The fact than cash. You are more likely to lose your
youngest child than your gift cards. Your
that millions gift cards give you permission to be frivo-
lous and buy something for yourself you
of gift cards would never buy with cash.
are never OK, OK. I’m not saying there are no ex-
ceptions here.
redeemed This is a compromise I can live with: Give
is proof. a gift card because that is at the top of your
recipient’s wish list, not because it’s an easy
default for you.
Some people believe there is an unwrit-
ten rule that giving cash is impersonal and
inappropriate. But that is not true. There
is nothing wrong with giving cash. Fold it
into an imaginative origami animal. Take
a stack of $1 or $5 bills and have them “pad-
ded” at a local copy shop. Get creative. Cash
is cool.
When you give cash, you give your recipi-
ent many options—to spend it anywhere or
to save part or all of it. And if he or she uses
it to buy food or to pay the utilities, so what?
A gift should have no strings attached.
And for the record, let me state that I have
never lost a gift card. I prefer to think of it
as indefinitely misplaced. OK, now I feel
better.
Mary Hunt is the founder of Everyday-
When you give cash, Cheapskate.com, a frugal living blog and
you give your recipient the author of the book “DebtProof Liv-
many options—to ing.” Mary invites you to visit her at her
spend it anywhere or website, where this column is archived
to save part or all of it. complete with links and resources for all
recommended products and services.
Mary invites questions and comments at
EverydayCheapskate.com/contact, “Ask
Mary.” Tips can be submitted at Tips.Ev-
erydayCheapskate.com. This column will
answer questions of general interest, but
letters cannot be answered individually.
Copyright 2020 Creators.com
pet owner Len Penzo. Spaying or neutering
is better for your pet’s health, which saves
you money in the long run.
Neutered male dogs live 18 percent lon-
ger than unneutered ones, while spayed
female dogs live 23 percent longer than
their intact counterparts.
Unspayed cats have been known to dam-
age furniture and carpet by spraying urine
on them to attract males. Unneutered dogs
can be violent, resulting in injuries or even
lawsuits, if they attack people.
There’s also the obvious huge cost of not
fixing those pets: puppies and kittens.
Pet Insurance
Unexpected vet bills can be the most ex-
pensive part of owning a pet. Insurance is
certainly an option, but choose wisely. Like
all insurance, pet insurance is a gamble.
It’s likely that you will spend more over the
course of your animal’s life on monthly
premiums, if your pet remains healthy.
Unexpected vet bills can
be the most expensive
part of owning a pet.
Can’t quite pony up to those big monthly
premiums? Create your own insurance.
Determine to deposit a set amount of mon-
ey each month into a special savings ac-
count you create for pet health care. Never
miss. Should your pet require expensive
care, you’ll have the money to cover the
cost. And if not, you will have built up a
nice nest egg.
Mary Hunt is the founder of Everyday-
Cheapskate.com, a frugal living blog and
the author of the book “DebtProof Liv-
ing.” Mary invites you to visit her at her
website, where this column is archived
complete with links and resources for all
recommended products and services.
Mary invites questions and comments at
EverydayCheapskate.com/contact, “Ask
Mary.” Tips can be submitted at Tips.Ev-
erydayCheapskate.com. This column will
answer questions of general interest, but
letters cannot be answered individually.
Copyright 2020 Creators.com

Worried You Might Lose Your Job?

MARY HUNT
Before the pandemic hit, employment in the
United States was reaching historic highs.
Now, in the wake of the coronavirus, many
who are fortunate enough to have a job are
suffering from lingering anxiety about the
future.
Worried about layoffs? You’re not alone.
Millions of Americans are worried that they
will lose their jobs due to the current state
of the economy.
Losing a job can be a terrible blow, esp
espe-
cially if you were already living paycheck
payche
to paycheck. But if that loss comes without
witho
warning, the emotional toll on top of the fi-
Become the rare
person that the
company cannot
afford to lose.
SIRTRAVELALOT/SHUTTERSTOCK
nancial loss can be devastating.
No matter your situation—whether you
have suffered a recent layoff, are worried
that you might, or believe there isn’t the
slightest possibility that you could find your-
self unemployed—don’t become a passive
victim by default.
Become the CEO
Take charge. Promote yourself to chief ex-
ecutive officer of your life. Develop strength
and confidence in your ability to take con-
trol of your life. That means having contin-
gency plans in place.
For example, know exactly what you will
do if you are laid off next Friday.
Give Yourself 6 Months’ Notice
If you found out that you would lose your job
six months from today, what would you do?
That’s the question I asked a group of people
recently. While the answers ranged all the
way from, “Panic!” to, “Celebrate because
I hate my job anyway,” overall, there was
a sense of calm. Most respondents said six
months would be more than enough time to
extended period of unemployment. Give
yourself six months’ notice to get prepared.
Build an Emergency Fund
You need a pool of money that will keep you
afloat in the event you and your income part
company. You need enough money in the
account to pay the bills and keep food on
the table for at least six months in case of a
severe financial challenge. Losing your job
qualifies as a severe financial challenge.
Consume Less
Many of those who responded to the six-
month question said that if they knew they
would be unemployed in six months, they
would start slashing expenses like crazy in
anticipation of a dry spell. Curbing spend-
ing and paying down debt is good advice for
anyone. Start living as though you are in a
dry spell right now.
Shield Yourself
It’s a rare occurrence that everyone in the
company gets a pink slip. Develop yourself
into one of the employees the company
and troubleshoot situations, you’ll increase
your value. Stop watching the clock. Do
more than is expected. Make self-discipline
and reliability your outstanding qualities.
Accept extra work without being asked.
Make sure you are an employee the boss
doesn’t have to babysit, and you’ll become
that rare person the company can’t afford
to lose.
Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best
There’s no time like today to get a plan in
place. Simply knowing the steps you will
take in the face of an emergency or unex-
pected turn of events will give you peace
now and confidence then.
Being prepared is a great antidote for
anxiety and stress.
Mary Hunt is the founder of Everyday-
Cheapskate.com, a frugal living blog and
the author of the book “DebtProof Liv-
ing.” Mary invites you to visit her at her
website, where this column is archived
complete with links and resources for all
recommended products and services.

figure out the solution and find another job.
That’s a nice thought, but in reality, a
six-month notice of termination is highly
unlikely. Most job layoffs come with little
advance notice, if any.
In your new role as the CEO of your life,
make it your top priority to get ready for an
cannot afford to lose. Learn to do more
than one job. You’ll be more valuable to
a company than those workers who are
single-task oriented.
Problem-Solve
If the boss counts on you to solve problems
Mary invites questions and comments at
EverydayCheapskate.com/contact, “Ask
Mary.” Tips can be submitted at Tips.Ev-
erydayCheapskate.com. This column will
answer questions of general interest, but
letters cannot be answered individually.
Copyright 2020 Creators.com
D4 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021

CROSSWORD CONSTRUCTED BY TOM HOUSTON

EPOCH TIMES STAFF 6. Like a French twist
CHESS CHALLENGE DAILY BRIDGE CLUB
7. Headline If I only had a brain
BY MICHAEL GIBBS
8. Scrabble piece BY FRANK STEWART, TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY
White to move & win, a race to who can
9. Advanced be checkmated first! ©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10. Finish
11. “I intend to live ___. “So you and Wendy are at odds again?”
I asked Cy the Cynic in the club lounge.
So far, so good”: Steven Wendy, our feminist, and Cy, a shameless
Wright chauvinist, are constant adversaries.
12. Delivery man of yore “I misdefended in the penny game,” Cy
told me, “and Wendy said it’s like every man
13. Enumerate on earth has to share the same brain.”
14. Computer conve- Wendy led her singleton diamond against
niences four spades, and Cy took the Q-A and led a
third diamond. South ruffed, drew trumps
15. Shows contempt and led a club from dummy.
20. Tide competitor “Whether I took the ace or ducked, he
had 10 tricks,” the Cynic said. “He could
24. Kind of blocker WORK SPACE pitch a heart on dummy’s high diamond.”
26. Twilled silk
28. Wood shaper LOW DIAMOND
“Wendy was mad. She said I should lead a
31. Prohibited thing low diamond at Trick Two. She would ruff
32. Former and lead a club, and I could win and lead
another low diamond. South would have
34. Gasp to ruff, and he wouldn’t get a heart discard
35. Shakespearean and would lose a heart for down one.”
pismire “That would have been an exceptional
defense,” I observed. “Did you have
37. “___ a bird...” anything to say for yourself?”
38. Kind of instinct 4NUMBERS CONSTRUCTED BY C. CHANG
AT 4NUMS.COM
“I would have,” Cy growled, “but it
wasn’t my turn to use the brain.”
40. Pitch Use the four numbers in the corners, and
41. Bumbling sort the operands (+, - X, and ÷) to build an DAILY QUESTION
equation to get the solution in the middle. You hold: k 6 2 j K 10
42. With reckless aban- There may be more than one “unique” so- i A Q 9 8 4 2 h A 10 7. Your partner
don lution but, there may also be “equivalent” opens one spade, you bid two diamonds
43. “...all that wealth ___ solutions. For example: 6 + (7 X 3) +1 = 28 and he rebids two spades. What do you
and 1+ (7 X 3) + 6 = 28 say?
gave”: Gray ANSWER: In a “two-over-one” style,
Across 37. ‘The Night of the ___’ 72. It holds water 44. Aspen activity where your two diamonds forced to
46. Put on the books game, you could bid 2NT, forcing. That
1. Harass (Tennessee Williams 73. Most senior member style might gain here but has drawbacks
5. Bum steer? play) in a field 47. Geneva’s river as well. In a “Standard” style, bid 3NT or,
11. Groups that mean 39. “Little Women” 74. Jesus’ parable about 48. Trophy if you prefer not to take the bull by the
52. Beefs about tail, bid three clubs to let partner make
business woman a wayward youth another descriptive bid.
16. Ireland, in song 41. Cows and sows 76. Raised 53. Greek vowels East dealer
17. Choice 45. An eye for an eye, but 77. About whom 55. Better dressed N-S vulnerable

18. Main Churchill purportedly 56. Become downcast NORTH

also... kK 10 7 5
said “A modest man who 57. Light show jA J 6 5
19. First course thrown 49. Editor’s mark
has much to be modest 58. Leaver’s opposite iK 10 6 5
together 50. Film genre about” h9
59. Cent : dollar :: ___ : Hard 1 - 2 Solutions
21. Reconnaissance 51. Arm bones 78. “If all ___ fails ...” ruble WEST EAST
22. Sustain 52. Grazing spot 79. British stoolies 60. Family life, figura- k4 3 k6 2
j9 8 7 4 2 jK 10
23. Wee warbler 54. Camera or gun holder 80. “___ Playing Our tively i3 iA Q 9 8 4 2
24. Drag through the 56. Biggar’s province Song” hJ 8 6 5 4 hA 10 7
62. Melodious
mud 61. Big pooch 81. Textile worker 63. “Everything Must SOUTH
25. Opener 64. Replace people with kA Q J 9 8
Go!” bearer, perhaps jQ 3
27. Lift robots Down 66. Post-grad deg. iJ 7
29. Tokyo, formerly hK Q 3 2
65. Alternative to oils or 1. Stop working 67. Went white
30. Currency watercolor 2. Pressed 70. Lavish affection (on) East South West North
1i 1k Pass 2i
33. Austere 68. Alternative to blinds 3. It can be full or partial 71. Without purpose Pass 3h Pass 4k
36. Feather “pre-treat- 69. “His exit is our ___” 4. Come to pass 74. Butter serving All Pass
ment” (Tennyson) 5. Towel holder 75. Go right Easy 1 - 2 Solutions Opening lead —i3

WORDSEARCH CONSTRUCTED BY TOM HOUSTON

EPOCH TIMES STAFF SUPER KAKURO CONSTRUCTED
BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF

Help with Today’s Crossword Puzzle? Kakuro puzzles are like crosswords that use numbers instead of words. The goal is to fill the blank squares associated with a clue (called a “run”) with the numbers 1-9
so that the numbers add up to the corresponding clues. Like Sudoku, digits in a run cannot repeat. When the grid is filled, the puzzle is complete.

ARIOSE HUMERI RETIRE

ATTLEE ICEMAN RHONE
AURORA INCUR RUSTLE
BASIN IRONED SADDEN
BEMIRE LATHE SNEERS
DOYEN MACROS SPARTAN
ELEVATOR MONOPOD STAYER
ENACT NARKS SURAH
ENSUE OCEAN TABOO
ERECT ONETIME TEMPERA
FIRMS PALED THEY’RE
FOREVER RECCE THROW
HEARTH RECITE UPSWEPT

SOLUTIONS
CROSSWORD SUPER KAKURO 4NUMBERS

HARD 1

EASY 1

CHESS CHALLENGE
5. Nf7#
4. Qg8+ RxQ
3. Nh6+ Kh8
2. Nf7+ Kg8
1. Qc4+ Kh8
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 D5

SUDOKU CONSTRUCTED
BY KANNAN SANKARAN SUPERSUDOKU CONSTRUCTED
BY KANNAN SANKARAN

Fill in the boxes using numbers between 1 and 9 so that each column, each Fill in the boxes using numbers from 0 to 9 and letters from A to F so that each column, each row, and
row, and each 3x3 square contain all nine numbers only once. each 4x4 square contain all ten numbers and six letters only once.
Hard

FEEDBACK@EPOCHTIMES.COM
Easy
WE HAVE MADE SOME CHANGES TO
OUR PUZZLE PAGE IN RESPONSE TO
PUZZLER’S FEEDBACK. LET US KNOW
WHAT YOU THINK!
FEEDBACK@EPOCHTIMES.COM

CRYPTIC QUOTE
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
23

EPOCH DOKU CONSTRUCTED

BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF

WORK SPACE

KAKURO CONSTRUCTED
BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF JUMBLE BY DAVID L. HOYT
& JEFF KNUREK

Kakuro puzzles are like crosswords that use numbers instead of words. The goal THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME
is to fill the blank squares associated with a clue (called a “run”) with the numbers By David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek
1-9 so that the numbers add up to the corresponding clues. Like Sudoku, digits Unscramble these Jumbles,
in a run cannot repeat. When the grid is filled, the puzzle is complete. one letter to each square,
Get the free JUST JUMBLE app • Follow us on Twitter @PlayJumble

to form four ordinary words.

Easy
TRYID
EPOCH ESCAPE MAZE
TOMOT

ZENEES

LIRPAL
Now arrange the circled letters
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC to form the surprise answer, as
All Rights Reserved. suggested by the above cartoon.
Answer “ -
”
here:

WORK SPACE

SOLUTIONS
SUPERSUDOKU SUDOKU: EASY JUMBLE EASY KAKURO
it’s a — “MINI-SODA”
U.S. state? Because
Pepsi sound like a
Why can a small
Answers:

PILLAR
SNEEZE
MOTTO
DIRTY
SUDOKU: HARD EPOCH DOKU
Jumbles:

CRYPTIC QUOTE
anxious for its welfare.
the public to be the most
the loudest complainers for
It is a general error to suppose

Contact the Puzzle Master @: Feedback@EpochTimes.com

D6
EVERYDAY CHEAPSKATE
A Towel
Is Just a
Towel,
Right?
Wrong!
MARY HUNT
W
hen asked to describe
the perfect bath towel,
most people would in-
clude the words “thick”
and “thirsty.” Cotton Inc., a
research and marketing company, agrees
and goes on to say that the perfect towel
can also stand up to constant use and
laundering for at least a decade.
The secret to buying the perfect towel is
in understanding fibers, loops, and dyes,
because unlike sheets, towels don’t come
with easy measures such as thread counts.
Cotton
A towel’s main duty is to blot water. One
hundred percent cotton does the best
job, because cotton naturally attracts
water. Synthetic fibers such as polyester
repel water, making a cotton-polyester
blend less absorbent and something to
be avoided.
Quality
The quality of a towel is determined by
where the cotton is grown and woven.
Fabric weight is the outcome of how the
fabric is woven. GSM, short for grams per
square meter, is how much one square
meter of fabric weighs. The higher the
GSM number, the denser the fabric will
be, which translates to higher quality and
greater durability.
The highest quality towels are made of
cotton grown and woven in Turkey, with
800 GSM.
Next come Egyptian cotton towels that
have a weight of 300 to 600 GSM.
Pima cotton, grown in Arizona, Cali-
fornia, and a few countries outside the
United States, is exceptionally soft and
absorbent and is typically woven at 300
HERE’S HOW
Tips to Avoid Typical
Bathroom Design Errors
JAMES DULLEY
Dear James: We are in the planning stages to
add a half-bathroom on our first floor for my
elderly mother. What are some basic design
tips to consider and errors to avoid?
—Cathy D.
Dear Cathy: As our population ages, adding
a first-floor full or half-bathroom is becom-
ing a typical home improvement project.
Although this is not a difficult project, it must
be planned properly during the design phase
in order to make the new bathroom most
usable, attractive, and functional.
One of the first considerations when
adding a bathroom, even just a lavatory, is
stealing enough space from another room.
Sometimes, for convenience to water and
drains, the bathroom door is located off the
kitchen area. This definitely is a mistake and
may even violate building codes in some ar-
eas. Sanitation may be an issue, and people
just don’t want bathroom sounds and odors
nearby where they eat.
Another common problem is installing
an inexpensive vent fan in a new bathroom
that does not have a window. You don’t need
a vent fan with a large airflow capacity in a
small bathroom, but you do want a quiet
one. A noisy one will not be used because the
sound can drive you crazy in a small room.
Always follow the vent fan manufacturer’s
installation specifications, particularly for
the vent duct. Exceeding the maximum vent
duct length and/or the number of elbows
and turns can dramatically increase resis-
tance and decrease airflow. Even a good-
quality fan can be virtually ineffective with
poor duct installation.
to 700 GSM. Supima is a trade name for a
particular type of pima cotton grown in
the United States.
Loops
If you look closely at terry cloth, you will
see it is made up of a series of loops. The
length of the loop determines the fabric’s
ability to absorb water. The longer the loop,
the better the absorbency.
If those loops are shaved off or “cropped,”
the result is velour. While velour makes
the towel feel velvety, losing the loops dra-
matically reduces a towel’s ability to soak
up water. A velour towel is pretty, but not
so useful.
The secret to buying
the perfect towel is in
understanding fibers,
loops, and dyes.
Short, dense loops result in a thinner
towel, which some people prefer. Long,
dense loops make the towel thicker, in-
creasing its absorbency and durability.
Color
Dark-colored towels will fade over time,
and that cannot be avoided. If you want
colored towels, opt for light colors. The best
option, however, is always to go for white.
You’ll simplify the laundering process and
never have to worry about colors fading.
Besides, white goes with everything. All
the hand towels and face cloths match all
the bath towels. White bath linens never
go out of style.
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
A common problem is installing an inexpensive
vent fan in a new bathroom that does not have
a window.
Try to incorporate natural lighting if possible.
As our population ages,
adding a first-floor full
or half-bathroom is
becoming a typical home
improvement project.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021
ASK THE VET
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
Ask the Vet:
Adopting ‘Special
Needs’ Cats Can
If you look
closely at terry
cloth, you will
see it is made
Be Rewarding
up of a series
of loops. LEE PICKETT
Q: Ever since my cats died, my home has
felt empty and lonely. The local cat res-
cue is offering for adoption some cats that
tested positive for the feline leukemia vi-
rus and/or the feline immunodeficiency
virus.
I want to share my home with two of
these “special needs” cats, but I don’t know
much about these viruses and what’s in-
volved in caring for infected cats. Please
explain.
A: The feline leukemia virus, or FeLV, and
feline immunodeficiency virus, FIV, are
Price more prevalent than many people think.
The average price of a medium-weight FeLV and FIV suppress the immune sys-
cotton towel is around $7, but it can go tem and can induce diseases that shorten
as high as $30 or more for a high-end life, such as infection or cancer. Unfor-
Turkish towel. tunately, standard antiviral medications
don’t kill these viruses.
Care Often, though, a cat’s immune system
Bath linens are exposed to soil, oil, skin remains strong enough to keep the viruses
cells, and germs. For good health, towels in check, and the infected cat lives a rela-
should be laundered in hot water (at least tively normal life.
120 F) with detergent and a small amount Both viruses are contagious to other
of borax (I use 2 tablespoons per wash cats, so any cat with FeLV or FIV must be
load). Only occasionally and as needed, kept inside.
use chlorine bleach. You cannot do that Indoor living also decreases the risk of
safely with colored towels, but high-quality infection, parasites, and injury.
white towels can take the most vigorous Feed your new cats a diet of high-quality
laundering and keep looking good year animal protein that is low in carbohy-
after year. drates. Don’t feed a raw-meat diet, since
For bath linens, avoid using any fabric many are contaminated with bacteria and
softeners in the washer or dryer as they con- parasites.
tain silicones that will coat the loops and Schedule twice-yearly veterinary exams,
make the towels virtually water repellent. and ask your vet to do annual lab work to
Think of buying towels as a 10-year in- identify problems early, while treatment
vestment. Once you know how to deter- is most effective.
mine the right towel for you, wait for those Keep your new cats’ vaccinations cur-
towels to go on sale. Then buy the most rent to protect them from the most com-
quality you can afford. mon preventable diseases.
Your veterinarian may recommend
Mary Hunt is the founder of Everyday- you apply a medication to the cats’ skin
Cheapskate.com, a frugal living blog and throughout the year to prevent infection
the author of the book “DebtProof Liv- by fleas, heartworms, and two common
ing.” Mary invites you to visit her at her intestinal parasites, roundworms and
website, where this column is archived hookworms, that cause serious disease
complete with links and resources for all in humans. These external and internal
recommended products and services. parasites easily infect even indoor cats.
Mary invites questions and comments at Every month, check your cats’ weight
EverydayCheapskate.com/contact, “Ask and their teeth and gums. Ask your vet-
Mary.” Tips can be submitted at Tips.Ev- erinarian to evaluate any bad breath, red-
erydayCheapskate.com. This column will dened gums, or unintentional weight loss
answer questions of general interest, but or gain.
letters cannot be answered individually. I applaud you for adopting cats with spe-
Copyright 2020 Creators.com cial needs. I am certain the experience will
prove rewarding to you and your lucky
adoptive cats.
Q: A delivery truck’s loud, high-pitched
backup beep spooked my golden re-
triever Tahoe while we were walking in
Inadequate lighting is another common our neighborhood, and now he refuses
design problem. This is particularly true if
your daughters will put on makeup in the
to walk here. I tried an anti-anxiety shirt
and a harness, but they didn’t help. Any
new lavatory. Natural lighting is always best suggestions?
because of its excellent color rendition. If
there is no window in the lavatory, install a
tubular skylight in the ceiling or full-spec-
A: Tahoe’s response is common and un-
derstandable. Backup beeps spook me,
too.
trum, compact fluorescent bulbs. Start by outfitting Tahoe with an Adaptil
Another design idea to improve lighting collar to reduce stress and promote re-
is to use privacy-glass blocks to an adjacent laxation. The collar is impregnated with
room. Just a partial glass block wall, in front a synthetic version of the calming phero-
of the sink, not the toilet area, can add a sig- mone that mama dogs produce as their
nificant amount of light. A partial glass-block puppies nurse.
floor or ceiling is also effective for more light Offering Tahoe praise and small, yum-
by the mirror and sink. my treats he loves will be an important
From a design standpoint, never face the part of retraining him. Reward him each
toilet directly toward the door. It does not look time he remains relatively calm despite
good when one enters the lavatory or from an unusual or loud noise.
inside when in use. It is better to offset the Gradually work up to walking in your
toilet out of the direct view of the door and, neighborhood by starting in a nearby
preferably, perpendicular to it. If at all pos- park or a quiet neighborhood and walk-
sible, install some type of divider panel, even ing home.
a small one, between the toilet and the sink. Consider hiding treats in trees or cub-
Slippery floors are another common de- byholes in your neighborhood and help-
sign problem. Large, glossy tiles can be very ing him find them. Or, if he likes stuffed
attractive, but when wet, they can become animals, hide one for him to discover and
slippery. Even though the lavatory will not carry home.
have a shower or bathtub, just washing Invite a friend with a confident dog to
hands and a face can get some water on the walk with you in your neighborhood for
floor. Use smaller floor tiles with a rougher a couple of weeks. Tahoe’s canine com-
surface. Smaller tiles also require more grout panion should help him regain his self-
lines for better traction. confidence.
Finally, but most importantly, water is used If these ideas don’t work, it’s time to con-
in a lavatory, so make the room waterproof. sult a trainer or behaviorist who uses posi-
Although it is attractive, avoid using exposed tive reinforcement, such as clicker train-
wood. If you do select wood cabinets, raise ing, treats, and praise. Also, talk with your
them slightly off the floor with stainless steel veterinarian or a veterinary behaviorist
or plastic spacers or leveling feet. about short-term anti-anxiety medication.
With your help, Tahoe should enjoy his
Send your questions to Here’s How, 6906 neighborhood walks again soon.
Royalgreen Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45244, or
visit Dulley.com. To find out more about Lee Pickett, VMD, practices companion
James Dulley and read features by other animal medicine in North Carolina.
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, Contact her at AskTheVet.pet. Copyright
visit the Creators Syndicate website at 2020 Lee Pickett, VMD. Distributed by
Creators.com. Copyright 2020 Creators.com Creators.com
 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2021 D7
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK

POTATO AND CHEESE PIEROGI

MAKES ABOUT 30 PIEROGI

FOR THE FILLING
1 cup mashed potatoes
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar
FOR THE DOUGH
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons water
1/2 cup sour cream and/or 2 tablespoons
softened butter (optional)
TO SERVE
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
Prepare the filling first. Add cheese to your mashed
Pierogi can be potatoes while still hot, until you find them cheesy
simply boiled, or boiled enough. Cheddar stands out nicely.
first, then pan-fried in For the dough, mix together the flour and salt.
butter and served In another large bowl, whisk the eggs and water. Stir
with sour cream or in the sour cream and butter, if you choose (it is said
fried shallots to keep the pierogi dough from getting too tough when
or onions. fried, though we’ve never done it). Then mix in half the
flour. Add the rest of the flour gradually until you get
a mass that is elastic and workable. You may need to
adjust the amount of flour based on that consistency.
It should not be too dry; the dough needs to stick
together when you pinch your dumplings shut.
Flour your working surface to prevent sticking, and

Potato Pierogi Are the Best Pierogi

But however you fill or
cook them, these Polish
dumplings are little
bites of comfort
KEVIN REVOLINSKI
Despite having grown up eating these Pol-
ish dumplings, especially around Christ-
mas, I had to re-learn how to say their name
as an adult. Two generations removed from
speaking Slovak at home, we kids had
transformed “pierogi” to “padokee.” And
as with another popular Polish food, pac-
zki, the word pierogi is already plural (who
could eat just one?) from pieróg. So the an-
glicized “pierogies” is a bit redundant.
But the recipe didn’t deviate, I thought:
boiled dumplings with potato and cheese
filling. We’d confronted the occasional
sauerkraut-stuffed pillows, but as kids we
stared those down and relegated them to
the far side of our plates. Potatoes or noth-
ing, Mom.
Sweet, Savory, Holy?
We kids thought kraut was a bridge too far,
but the oldest recorded recipe, from a 1682
Polish cookbook, called for kidney, veal fat,
greens, and nutmeg. In fact, potatoes didn’t
get to Europe until the Spanish and English
brought them from the New World, from
the Incas in present-day Peru.
Fast forward a few decades, and I found
myself in the homeland of pierogi, in Kra-
kow during their annual pierogi festival.
Beets, meats, kraut, and sweets—it didn’t
matter. Dessert dumplings or savory sup-
per fare, sweetened poppy seeds or wild
mushrooms with herbs, there were no
limits. However, by my estimation, what
I considered the standard was indeed the
most abundant.
There’s a patron saint of pierogi, because
of course there is: St. Hyacinth, a Polish
monk, who legend credits with introducing
them in the 13th century. He’s said to have
staved off starvation for the masses after
the Mongol invasion in 1240 with pierogi.
That might have been the kidney variety,
so there’s a mixed blessing there. Regard-
less, the Poles took to invoking the pierogi
patron whenever things were looking grim,
crying, “Swiety Jacku z pierogami!” (“Oh,
St. Hyacinth with pierogi!”) in hopes of di-
vine intervention.
Potato and cheese pierogi became popu-
lar in the last century or so, but has been
known as pierogi ruskie—Ruthenian piero-
gi, often mistranslated as Russian piero-
gi—since World War II. The Ruthenians
are an ethnic group in the region formerly
considered eastern Poland and now within
Ukraine. Poles living in that part of Poland
made them using quark. Ethnic Ukrainians
called them Polish pierogi. When these
Poles relocated west into Poland’s post-war
borders, the dish picked up the Ruthenian
moniker.
My own pierogi-feasting forebears were
actually Slovak, from a village just south of
the border of modern Poland, all of which
would have been part of the Austro-Hun-
garian Empire at that time. But I digress.
How Do You Like ’Em?
While my grandmother made perfect
little tender dumplings, my brother and I
perhaps borrow from Russian brutalism.
Still delicious, but not so beautiful. Often
at Christmas, tired of turkey and ham, we
work up a batch.
Our family always served them boiled,
smothered with browned butter. In some
cases you’ll find them boiled first, then
pan-fried in butter and served with sour
cream or fried shallots or onions. As much
as I am stuck on nostalgia, I admit to enjoy-
ing them this way from time to time. Oven
baking (400 degrees F for 20 minutes) and
deep-frying (3 to 4 minutes in 350-degree
oil) are also options.
Experiment as you wish, but here is a rec-
ipe for the straight-up comfort food variety.
Kevin Revolinski is an avid traveler
and the author of 15 books, including
“The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an
American Teacher in Turkey,” and several
outdoor and brewery guidebooks. He is
based in Madison, Wis., and his website is
TheMadTraveler.com
divide the dough into three parts. Roll each until about
1/8-inch thick. We use a knife to cut the dough in
squares (about 2 1/2- x 2 1/2-inch) to make pillow-
shaped pierogi, but culinary artists and Instagram
chefs may prefer the iconic half-moon shape. In this
case, a 2- to 2 1/2-inch diameter circular cutter—or
the top of a glass—can be used.
Place a spoonful of the filling in the middle of each
dough square/circle. Start small; you may be
surprised how little filling it takes to make closing
them difficult. Then fold the two sides together and
pinch them shut, making sure the seal is complete. Let
them dry a bit on a floured surface. They also freeze
well at this stage.
To cook, use a large pasta pot to boil ample water
and a pinch of salt. Boil the pierogi for about 3 to 4
minutes. They should float when ready, but be sure
they cook until tender. (If you go with alternative
fillings, especially meat, make sure you cook it all first.
The boiling process won’t be long enough to properly
cook fillings.)
To make brown butter, melt a stick of butter in a small
pan over medium heat. Watch it closely as it starts to
turn brown in the pan. If you’ve reached the desired
brownness, pour it out of the pan. We just turned the
burner off early and let the residual heat finish it in
the pan.
Making pierogi.

Chicken Soup for the Sick?

MARY HUNT
CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
Have you ever wondered if chicken soup
really does have medicinal effects against VEZZANI PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK

colds and the flu? Me, too. Recently, I de-
cided to find out.
Here’s what I learned: There is some sci-
entific evidence to suggest that homemade
chicken soup contains several ingredients
that affect the body’s immune system. Dr.
Stephen Rennard of the University of Ne-
braska Medical Center says that chicken
soup has anti-inflammatory properties
that soothe sore throats and ease the mis-
ery of colds and flu. And that’s good enough
for me.
But here’s the problem as I see it: Typi-
cally, it takes a long time to turn out a pot
of homemade chicken soup. And when
you’re sick or someone you love is ailing,
the chances are slim that you’ll find three
or more hours to make soup.
Here’s how to make rich, hearty, and fla-
vorful chicken soup in about 50 minutes—
start to finish.
Mary Hunt is the founder of Everyday-
Cheapskate.com, a frugal living blog and
the author of the book “DebtProof Liv-
ing.” Mary invites you to visit her at her
website, where this column is archived
complete with links and resources for all
recommended products and services.
Mary invites questions and comments at
EverydayCheapskate.com/contact, “Ask
Mary.” Tips can be submitted at Tips.Ev-
erydayCheapskate.com. This column will
answer questions of general interest, but
letters cannot be answered individually.
Copyright 2020 Creators.com
MAKES 6 TO 8 SERVINGS You can make
1 whole chicken, about 3 1/2 pounds a pot of this
comforting
2 tablespoon vegetable oil, divided chicken noodle
soup in under
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
an hour.
2 quarts boiling water
2 teaspoons salt
Pepper to taste
2 bay leaves
2 cups (3 ounces) wide egg noodles
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 rib celery, roughly chopped
Prepare the chicken. Discard giblets and
neck from the cavity. With a cleaver, knife,
or poultry shears, hack off the legs, wings,
and thighs. Don’t worry about being neat.
Cut each of these pieces into two or three
smaller pieces. Cut the back from the
breast; break and cut it into two halves.
Hack the back into several pieces.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large stockpot
or other large pot. Once very hot, drop in
half of the chicken pieces and sauté until
brown on both sides, about 5 minutes. Increase heat to high; add boiling water, from the rest of the chicken, so you’re not
chicken breasts, salt, pepper, and bay being wasteful. Skim fat for later use in
Remove to a bowl and repeat with the rest
of the chicken until all chicken is out and leaves. Bring back to simmer. Cover, and other recipes or discard. Return the clear
in the bowl. barely simmer until breasts are cooked, broth to the pot with the shredded chicken.
about 20 minutes. The dark broth will be Bring back to boil.
Add onion to the pot and sauté over
extra rich and flavorful. In a small skillet, sauté the chopped carrot
medium-high heat until lightly colored
and soft, stirring constantly, 2 to 3 Remove the breasts from the pot and set and chopped celery in 1 tablespoon of
minutes. Find those two breast halves, aside. When cool enough to handle, remove oil. Add to the pot along with the egg
and set them aside. Return the rest of the the skin and shred the breast meat from noodles, and cook until just tender, about
chicken to the pot. Reduce heat to low; the bones. Discard skin and bones. Strain 5 minutes. Adjust with salt and pepper as
cover and cook until chicken releases its broth into a separate pot, and discard the necessary, and serve.
juices, about 20 minutes. solids. All of the goodness has been cooked To your health!
D8
Feeding
Your Family
After the
Holidays
BARBARA DANZA
f your kitchen looked anything like
I mine this holiday season, there was
a constant stream of cookies and
pies, rich sauces and fatty meats,
chips, dips, cheeses, crackers, and can-
dies—oh my!
It was delightful and delicious, but we’ve
had our fill.
Now that the gifts have been unwrapped,
the halls un-decked, and the goodies con-
sumed, it’s time to right this ship and incor-
porate more consistent, nutritious offerings
back into our family meal plan.
You too? Here are five basic steps to take
to get your family meals back on track.
Start Dinner
Wait, what? Trust me, the last thing you’re
going to feel like doing after ordering and
putting away all-new groceries is cook-
ing. Rather than having to order a pizza
later, start dinner early by putting on your
favorite slow-cooker meal or preparing a
delicious casserole dish that only needs to After a treat-filled holiday season, it’s time to get your family meals back on track for
be put in the oven. Your evening self will the new year.
thank you.
Make a List
Take a moment to consider the healthy
options your family members enjoy for
each meal. Children’s preferences tend to
change over time. If you’ve got a list of what
works right now for your family, grocery
shopping will be easy peasy. Finish with a
master list of potential breakfasts, lunches,
dinners, and snacks.
Clean Out
Before you hit the grocery store, howev-
er, give the kitchen a good cleaning. Go
through the fridge, the freezer, and the
pantry. Make sure you’ve got working
spaces that store what you’ll be using, and
Behind the
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PROSTOCK-STUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK
most feasible to prepare).
Think of ways to make meal preparation
as easy as possible for yourself. You may
batch-prepare a number of meals with
similar ingredients in one shot. (Monday’s
chicken cutlets can easily become Wednes-
day’s chicken parmigiana.) If you have a
pressure cooker or a slow cooker, perhaps
a meal or two can be prepared that way.
Get Shopping
Once you’ve got your plan, it’s time to en-
sure you’ve got the ingredients you need to
make it happen. Don’t forget about spices,
condiments, beverages, and pantry ingre-
dients that may have been depleted during
the holiday season.
Especially if this is going to be a large
shopping order, using an online grocery
service is probably your best bet. You
can take your time consulting your plan
to make sure you’re getting everything
you need.
Restock
Once you’ve got your groceries, store them
strategically. Wash and prep fruits and veg-
gies that you want your family to be able to
grab on the go. Store plenty of healthy bev-
erages in your fridge. Put healthy snacks
in places everyone can reach. Consider
the common elements you use for packed
lunches, and ensure they’re easily acces-
sible and ready to be quickly assembled.
Enjoy
As you sit with your family enjoying the
healthy meal you prepared earlier and
looking around at your cleaned and ful-
ly-stocked kitchen, give yourself a pat on
the back and know that you’re all set for a
healthy new year.
create a system for packed lunches, snacks MIROSLAV PESEK/SHUTTERSTOCK
on the go, and beverage storage.
Think of what Get rid of foods that don’t support your
your family’s nutritional aims by donating to a local food
bank. Discard any items that have expired
schedule looks or spoiled.
like in the Plan Ahead
coming days Now that you’ve got a clean kitchen and
functional storage space, create a meal
and what meals plan for the coming week or two ahead.
What will your family eat for breakfast,
would best lunch, and dinner? What healthy snacks
support them. will you have on hand?
Think of what your family’s schedule
looks like in the coming days and what Before you start shopping, give the kitchen a good
meals would best support them (and be cleaning and set up a storage system.
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