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Mini stories:
- The infamous Alaska Airlines flight was supposed to have a SAFETY CHECK the EXACT day the panel FLEW OFF the plane mid-flight. So scary, I REALLY hope this whole situation makes them take these safety precautions much more seriously.
- A top Navalny aid was attacked in Lithuania… He was sprayed in the face with tear gas and beaten as he was pulling up to his home… Yet again, proving that the Kremlin has very far reaching, international arms.
- The US will be sending another $300 million in weaponry to Ukraine… That said, the Republican nominee for President, former President Donald Trump, has reportedly told Hungary’s leader that if he were elected Ukraine QUOTE “would not be getting another penny.” END QUOTE. Further strengthening Trump’s ties to Putin.
- And SPEAKING of President Trump… a Judge in the President’s Georgia case actually tossed out six of the charges against Trump. Those tossed out, were ones related to Trump pressuring public officials… He claimed there was not enough evidence or that the charges were not “specific” enough. But given that Trump initially had 41 charges against him, he is still facing 35 charges in Georgia.
- Congressional Tiktok ban
So legislation has been officially passed in the House, to ban the TikTok app in the United States. Both sides of the aisle came together on this one. They want to prove they are cracking down on China going into the election season, and this is their current method of doing so.
The bill is called The Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act… And what the legislation actually DOES is that is would require Tiktok to SELL their app to a US based company, in order for TikTok to continue operating in the United States. It was voted in at 352 votes to 65 in the House. Next it will head to the Senate.
The thing is, this bill DOES face an uphill climb in the Senate, according to the New York Times, because Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not committed to bringing the bill to a vote in the Senate. Obviously the app has been under fire for YEARS now, since the pandemic when lawmakers tried to ban it for the first time. Then, the state of Montana banned Tiktok in their state specifically… But that didn’t hold up in court. So I wouldn’t go deleting your TikTok app just yet… There are still a number of hurdles to jump before this ban would go into affect. And even then, it’s possible the Chinese parent company will comply and sell the company, as the bill demands, and it will never be fully banned. We will definitely keep you guys posted.
- Jay Shetty
OK so while we have been on a celebrity, conspiracy train… I thought I would keep it going with allll of the dirt coming out about Jay Shetty. Sometimes these days, it feels like we just build people up to watch them fall. That once someone reaches a certain level of fame, we inevitably find a chink in the armor and they come tumbling off their pedestal. So what happened with the beloved Jay Shetty, specifically?
Well, a searing expose came out in The Guardian, entitled “Uncovering the Higher Truth of Jay Shetty.” The page displayed a black and white figurine of Jay, with cascading prayer hand emojis enveloping him as you scroll down. It opens with the detail that Jay Shetty officiated JLo and Ben’s wedding in Georgia… And pinpointed this as almost a pinnacle of Jay Shetty’s success – a coronation of sorts – officiating the ultimate A-List wedding of the ages. He has also modeled for Coach. He has hosted Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, and one of Kobe Bryant’s final interviews before his untimely death. He has garnered over 15 million followers on Instagram. He has a smoothie Erewhon named after him for God’s sake – with the likes of Hailey Bieber and Kourtney Kardashian! His “Love Potion” drink a not-so-subtle promotion of his book on love and romance. He was named in the infamous Forbes 30 under 30. He’s been on Ellen and at the Red Table Talks. Will Smith took him on a spiritual advisor.
The author explains that he was perturbed when assigned to cover Jay Shetty for Esquire… He attended a show of Jay’s that was… Cringeworthy, to put it lightly. And the author, John McDermott, was scratching his head wondering how this man rose to the heralded position he finds himself in. So he dove into it… And was shocked at his own findings.
But a lot of us may not even be aware of Jay Shetty’s rise to fame or his background… And this is where the fault lines lay… the enormous chasms that are too wide to stretch across. You see, Jay Shetty purported himself to be a Hindu monk for THREE YEARS. He wrote about it with specific dates cited in his book. He has written AND spoken about this publicly many times. His book is literally entitled Think Link a Monk… He said he spent those years in an ashram “near Mumbai.” But it was discovered that the vast majority of this time, was actually spent in London and at a Manor in Watford, England… giving lectures and posting to social media about his spiritual pursuits… A former girlfriend of his said he spent no longer than two weeks in India, to her memory. And he has never mentioned specifically WHERE he stayed and became a monk… What town? What Ashram? This would have beea place pretty central to his story, no? What’s also SUPER disheartening, is that renowned publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and British GQ, have all amplified this storyline, without bothering to double check it.
Jay said on The Morning TV show in Britain QUOTE “That was the hardest point in my life. I feel like I experienced depression for the first time. I had forgotten how to do small talk. I didn’t know who the prime minister was, I didn’t know who won the World Cup. I didn’t even know how to have a conversation that wasn’t deep and meaningful.” END QUOTE… Meanwhile, he was blogging about traveling Europe and attending festivals, and YouTubing throughout that entire time he was supposedly only have deep conversations and cut off from the world.
There were also many plagiarism allegations against Jay. The man who trademarked the term “Urban Monk” had even sent him a cease and desist for plagiarizing his content. A woman named Nicole Arbor published a video back in 2019 entitled “Jay Shetty is Full of Shit” where she shows examples of him plagiarizing other creators’ content. Students who had paid over $7,000 per term with Jay, had said that his courses had accreditations with UK schools such as The Universities of Chester, Buckingham, and Derby… But when John called the schools up, none of them had any kind of affiliation with Jay’s school. John began to notice contradictions in the timeline of Jay’s life as well… He seemed to tell the story of becoming a monk in different ways, at different times. Sometimes he was 18 when he heard the call, other times he was 22. If this was an EARTH SHATTERING moment, when you decided to change your life entirely become a monk… Wouldn’t you remember when that happened? At least within a year or so?
John also points out the innate contradictions within Jay Shetty’s platform generally… He’s a spiritual guide, but does not tell viewers which religion or sect or practices he affiliates with. He positions himself as a mental health or romance expert, with no known background in mental health or relationship counseling. From what I can tell online, he has a degree in Business Management. Which would make a lot of sense… Given how he ran this “spiritual effort”…
He had many unpaid young people doing his bidding within the spiritual movement, again, for free. They would pump out his content to their friends and family as part of their “spiritual quest”… when in reality, it smells more like spiritual manipulation. Jay was being paid for these pieces of content, per view. So telling dozens of young people that it was their spiritual duty to promote him for free? Sketchy, if we are being generous. Many people who previously worked for Jay, have now come out likening his business practices as “cult like.” Women are also exposing him online for attempting to profit off of their trauma and promising them he would teach them how to make the income they had always desired, through his spiritual teachings. At the end of the day, Jay Shetty is not a spiritual leader or a mental health coach… He’s a content creator and a businessman. And if we were to believe the allegations against him, a potentially predatory one.
His “Certification School,” is structured very similar to an MLM. A life coaching, service. He is the ultimate spiritual life coach at the top of the pyramid, and he recruits people to the school who pay thousands of dollars to ALSO find out how to become a life coach, and then recruit people underneath them. We ALL know someone – or more than one person – who does this for a living online. Whatsmore, Shetty seeks out people who are struggling with their mental health already, to try to recruit… He uses the mental health angle (which again, he is NOT trained in) to help him get people to open up, and then uses the specifics of their struggles, to try to recruit them.
In the end, Esquire didn’t want to turn the tables on Jay, transforming a spotlight piece into an investigation… So John took his findings to The Guardian for publishing.
And I MUST say, I was disappointed by this. I really enjoyed his presence, his interviews and they way he dove deeper than skin deep with his guests. But it’s safe to say, Jay has been debunked… And it would be difficult to imagine him recovering from lies and allegations of this magnitude.
And that, is the News Du Jour!
Today, I wanted to leave you guys with the quote:
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.”