- After 20 Years, It's Time For American To Leave Iraq
After 20 Years, It’s Time For American To Leave Iraq
Authored by James Durso, op-ed via The Hill,
It seemed like a good idea at the time…
On Jan. 4, 2024, the U.S. assassinated Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari, a commander in an Iran-linked Iraqi militia. The Pentagon press release called the militia a “terrorist group” and claimed the strike was in “self-defense.” But it neglected to mention the militia was also part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an Iraqi government body that falls under the Ministry of Defense.
Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, criticized the killing and announced that Iraqi and U.S. representatives would soon meet to discuss the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying the justifications for the existence of the coalition “have ended.”
In 2020, Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution demanding the expulsion of U.S. troops after the U.S. killed Iran Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and PMF leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
In 2024, will Sudani deliver on that demand?
Jawari’s death comes just weeks after Israel’s counterattack on Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. The region is enraged over Israel’s treatment of Palestinian civilians; the killing of an Iraqi official, in the city of Baghdad, no less, will undoubtably worsen relations between Baghdad and Washington at a time when the U.S. is busy in Gaza and the Red Sea.
U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked over 100 times since October 2023. Retaliation by the Americans is fair enough, but killing a senior Iraqi commander near the anniversary of the assassinations of Soleimani and Muhandis is professional malpractice, as it looks like the killing was approved with no concern for the consequences (though some may think it was a clever warning to others).
The Pentagon produced no “ticking bomb” rationale for the killing and would have shouted it from the rooftops if it existed. The Pentagon killed Jawari because it could.
America’s action will increase pressure inside Iraq’s government, as it must deal with popular outrage over Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip and the afront to its sovereignty by the Jawari killing.
So, will the Americans finally leave Iraq?
If the two sides eventually do talk, the Americans will very likely delay and delay — and then threaten Baghdad by increasing restrictions on Iraq’s foreign currency reserves held by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The Iraqis may push past that and demand a publicly announced schedule, though Washington will want to keep the details secret for “operational security” (i.e., to avoid mocking TikTok videos of the evacuation).
Evacuating Iraq will threaten support for the U.S. troops in Syria, which the Pentagon claims are there to ensure the “enduring defeat” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In reality, with ISIS being defeated in 2019, the troops are really there to someday support a coup against the Bashar al-Assad government in Damascus, and to provide security for the extraction of oil, natural gas and wheat from Syria’s northeast. The American looting of Syria’s wealth – what the Bolsheviks called “expropriation” – recalls Gen. Smedley Butler: “I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism.”
Thank you for your service, indeed.
If the Americans refuse to leave, the Iraqis cannot do much to force them out, other than declare the U.S. forces are in the country illegally and that it has no host nation obligation to protect them. The militias will attack the American bases, but the real threat may come from patriotic Iraqi truckers who will refuse to deliver food, water and fuel to the U.S. outposts. If the U.S. attempts resupply by air, Baghdad can close the airspace to foreign military aircraft. The Kurds may try to cooperate with the U.S., as there is an American facility at Erbil airport, but they were brought to heel by a previous airspace closure and will be again.
If the supply line to the U.S. bases in Iraq is severed, the U.S. presence in Syria is threatened; this will please Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, as the U.S. troops there are the cause of local instability, not a preventative. Washington will carp about increased Iranian influence in the region, but it was the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq that handed Iraq to Iran on a salver.
U.S. restraint would have kept Jawari alive, and may have allowed troops to stay in the country a little longer, but his killing will likely strengthen Sudani, as he will claim he was the Iraqi leader who saw the Americans off. He won’t show any gratitude as he does so.
Removing troops from Iraq won’t save much money but will reduce tensions, as they are there as justification for American intervention when they inevitably draw fire. Washington’s dream of a coup in Damascus will hopefully vanish; a coup would invite intervention by Russia, Turkey, Iran and Islamist forces, which would then increase pressure on Washington’s client, Israel.
It has been 20 years since America disrupted the region by attacking Iraq based on lies: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was cooperating with al-Qaeda. America is still respected in the region for its many achievements, even though it brings violence and chaos in its wake — but in this case, its absence may help local hearts grow fonder.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 23:40 - These Are America's Worst Drivers (By Car Brand)
These Are America’s Worst Drivers (By Car Brand)
Car insurance costs are up 30% since the pandemic but some drivers are getting hit with even higher premiums because of bad, or reckless, driving.
But who are America’s worst drivers? And what do they drive?
LendingTree analyzed “tens of millions” of insurance quotes between November 14, 2022 and 2023 in a bid to answer these polarizing questions.
As Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu shows below, the researchers calculated the number of driving incidents (accidents, speeding tickets, DUIs, citations) per 1,000 drivers sorted by vehicle brand in every state.
The Top Car Brands With America’s Worst Drivers
LendingTree’s logic is simple: The higher the incident count per brand, the more bad drivers behind the wheel of said brand.
At the top of the list, drivers of Rams (formerly Dodge Ram, spun off on its own since 2009) had 33 driving incidents per 1,000 drivers, making them the worst drivers in America.
A quick google search reveals the internet feels the same way, and LendingTree’s category analysis reveals that Ram drivers had the most speeding tickets, and second-most accidents and DUIs of all 30 brands in the dataset.
Here’s the full list of analyzed U.S. car brands, ranked from worst to best drivers.
Rank Car Brand Driving Incidents/
1,000 Drivers1 Ram 33 2 Tesla 31 3 Subaru 30 4 Volkswagen 28 5 Mazda 28 6 BMW 27 7 Lexus 27 8 Infiniti 27 9 Hyundai 25 10 Toyota 25 11 Jeep 25 12 Kia 25 13 Honda 25 14 Audi 24 15 Nissan 24 16 Mercedes-Benz 24 17 Chevrolet 23 18 Ford 22 19 Mitsubishi 22 20 Volvo 22 21 GMC 22 22 Dodge 21 23 Acura 20 24 Chrysler 19 25 Lincoln 19 26 Buick 19 27 Cadillac 18 28 Saturn 17 29 Pontiac 16 30 Mercury 16 But what makes Ram drivers so bad? There’s a mix of factors here, which may not necessarily be the drivers themselves. Rams are the cheapest entry for pickup truck enthusiasts, and modern pickup trucks are one of the most dangerous vehicles to drive because of their design. They’re taller than most other vehicles on the road, creating blindspots for the driver, heavier, making them more likely to injure and kill, and generally bigger, making them harder to handle.
It is interesting to note however that drivers of other famous pickup truck brands, Chevrolet, Ford and GMC—which together with Rams, account for the best-selling vehicle in nearly every U.S. state—rank somewhere at the bottom of the top 20, far below Ram drivers.
Tesla and Subaru Also Have Some of America’s Worst Drivers
Only two other car brands, Tesla, and Subaru joined Ram in having 30 or more incidents per 1,000 drivers in the year.
Incidentally, Tesla drivers also had the highest accident rate (23.5/1000) in the analysis period. Last month the company announced a massive recall in the U.S. following a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report that said the use of Autosteer, a driving assistance software, may lead to “increased risk of collision.”
Meanwhile, BMW drivers (6th in worst drivers overall) had the highest DUI count (3.13/1,000) amongst the lot.
On the other hand, Pontiac and Mercury drivers were some of the best on the road registering only 16 incidents per 1,000 drivers, about half of their Ram counterparts.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 23:20 - US Officials Concerned About Tense Split Between Zelensky & Military Chief
US Officials Concerned About Tense Split Between Zelensky & Military Chief
Via The Libertarian Institute,
As the Ukrainian war effort has faltered, fractures have begun to emerge in Kiev between top officials. The most significant is the division between President Zelensky and the head of Ukraine’s military, General Valery Zaluzhny. The split is alarming US officials.
“Officials in Washington are concerned differences between Zelensky and his army chief, Zaluzhny, are slowing efforts to crystallize a new strategy,” Bloomberg reports.
“With a decisive breakthrough unlikely in the coming months, Kiev’s allies say designing a clear military strategy for how to defend current positions and then break through Russian lines is crucial,” the report continues.
The fractures emerged between Zaluzhny and Zelensky late last year when the general said that the war had become a stalemate. The admission means that Zelensky’s stated goal of reconquering Ukraine is impossible.
The president and his military are also at odds over Ukraine’s conscription policy. Zaluzhny is unhappy with the slow pace at which Zelensky has expanded Kiev’s draft.
The conflict between Zelensky and the Ukrainian armed forces has been brewing for some time. In October, Time Magazine reported that troops had ignored orders to advance even when those orders came from Zelensky.
Videos of Ukrainians kidnapped on the streets by military recruiters are all over Ukrainian telegram channels.
– As the public becomes increasingly angry with the government, Zelensky will become cautious about arming the angry masses pic.twitter.com/Ggp90jzm2v— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 6, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The military personnel are not the only Ukrainians to break with their president. Last year, an aide to Zelensnky said the president was deluding himself into thinking the war was winnable. The mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, has warned that Zelensky is turning Ukraine into an authoritarian state.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 23:00 - Visualizing The Top Global Risks In 2024
Visualizing The Top Global Risks In 2024
What is the global risk landscape in 2024?
Record global temperatures are leading to increasingly harmful impacts, a cost-of living crisis is making everyday life harder for people around the world, and escalating tensions in the Middle East have the potential to widen into a broader regional conflict.
Meanwhile, in 2024 it’s expected to be the world’s biggest election year ever with 4 billion people casting a vote across 60 countries. Will threats such as misinformation and polarization loom large as people head to the polls?
Visual Capitalist’s Dorthy Neufeld created the visualization below to show the biggest risks for 2024, based on the World Economic Forum’s annual survey of leaders around the globe.
Global Risk Profile in 2024
Here are the top 20 risks to the global economy, based on a survey of 1,490 leaders.
Leaders were asked to choose up to five risks that are likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2024:\
Extreme weather poses the biggest risk according to leaders surveyed. It also ranks second overall in terms of severity over the next two years.
Global economies are widely unprepared for the consequences of acute weather, from shocks to food systems to large-scale infrastructure damage. In fact, some research shows that potentially irreversible changes to the planet could be reached by the 2030s if temperatures continue to rise.
Misinformation and disinformation is the second-biggest risk, which could diminish trust and deepen political divides. It also has the potential to undermine global elections, which are slated across the U.S., Russia, India, Mexico, and dozens of other countries.
The threat of misinformation is especially clear given advancements in AI-generated content. It ranks first overall in terms of risk severity across the list.
Interlinked with misinformation is the risk of societal polarization. In the post-pandemic era, political divides have worsened, and these have been exacerbated by economic hardship and a lack of economic opportunity.
Additionally, the conflict in the Middle East is severely impacting the livelihood of millions of people, and the recent attack in Lebanon raises questions about the outbreak of a wider war. The escalation of interstate armed conflicts ranks as the eighth-highest risk for the global economy in 2024, and the fifth-most severe.
Future Global Risks
How will global risks transform over the next decade?
By 2034, leaders surveyed believe that environmental risks will be most concerning, making up five of the top 10 risks, by severity:
We can see that technological risks of misinformation and the adverse outcomes of AI technologies also remain fairly dominant.
AI has the potential to be highly destabilizing to society, presenting some existential risks due to its role as a “force multiplier”, which means that it can increase the effect of a country’s military systems, data analytics, and other capabilities.
From a broader perspective, key structural forces are influencing global risks looking ahead. They include technological acceleration, climate change, shifts in geopolitical power, and a widening demographic divide.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 22:40 - The Orwellian Assault On The Past Continues
The Orwellian Assault On The Past Continues
Authored by Roger Kimball via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
That line from George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” might serve as a sort of motto for the woke apparatchiks who run our lives today.
Perhaps it’s because they have, as one wag put it, mistaken Orwell’s stern admonition about the dangers of totalitarianism for a how-to manual.
In any event, the present’s attack on the past by those holding the reins of power continues apace.
And the goal, just as in Orwell’s novel, is to revamp the future by redefining the past.
John Calhoun was an apologist for slavery, so the college named for him at Yale must be renamed.
Never mind that he was valedictorian at Yale, a member of the House of Representatives, a senator, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and vice president.
Never mind, too, that he was one of the most powerful minds and greatest orators of his day.
He had beliefs that the beautiful, pampered people of today find objectionable.
So he had to go.
It was the same with the great mining magnate Cecil Rhodes.
He made a stupendous fortune in what’s now South Africa, endowed Oriel College, Oxford, with part of his fortune, and established the Rhodes scholarship program.
He too was insufficiently enlightened, so a campaign to besmirch his memory and remove all traces of his presence from Oriel College has been underway for years.
From 1924 to 2021, a large equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee stood in a place of honor in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter riots, the statue was removed. Last fall, in a sort of pyromaniacal ritual, it was cut apart with a blow torch and then melted down.
Last month, President Joe Biden had the 109-year-old Reconciliation Monument removed from Arlington National Cemetery.
Just a few days ago, the Biden administration announced that it was removing a statue of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, from a park that had been his home.
That spot will undergo a “rehabilitation” and, in place of Penn, the administration will place a statute of an American Indian in order, to provide a more “inclusive … interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia.”
The attack on the past is proceeding apace.
Its goal is to efface the contributions of white Europeans, especially white male Europeans, to the formation of Western civilization.
Over the past several years, we have seen a rising tide of assaults on statues and other works of art representing our nation’s history by those who are eager to squeeze that complex story into a box defined by the evolving rules of political correctness.
A vocal minority, claiming victim status, demands the destruction, removal, or concealment of some object of which they disapprove.
Usually, the official response is instant capitulation.
It’s worth noting that the monument controversy signifies something much larger than the attacks on the Old South.
Indeed, the attack involves not just artworks or commemorative objects.
Rather, it encompasses the resources of the past writ large.
It’s an attack on the past for failing to live up to our contemporary notions of virtue.
In the background is the conviction that we, blessed members of the most enlightened cohort ever to grace the earth with its presence, occupy a moral plane superior to all who came before us.
Consequently, the defacement of murals of Christopher Columbus—and statues of later historical figures such as Teddy Roosevelt—is perfectly virtuous and above criticism since human beings in the past were by definition so much less enlightened than we.
The psychopathology behind these occurrences is a subject unto itself.
What has happened in our culture and educational institutions that so many students jump from their feelings of being offended—and how delicate they are, how quick to take offense!—to self-righteous demands to repudiate the thing that offends them?
The more expensive education becomes, the more it seems to lead, not to broader understanding, but to narrower horizons.
The iconoclasm that accompanies this existential narrowing takes different forms.
The disgusting attacks on the past and other religious cultures carried out by the Taliban, for example, are quite different from the toppling of statues of Saddam Hussein by liberated Iraqis after the Gulf War.
Different again was the action of America’s own Sons of Liberty in 1776, who toppled a statue of the hated George III and melted down its lead to make 40,000 musket balls.
It’s easy to sympathize with that pragmatic response to what the Declaration of Independence called “a long train of abuses and usurpations.”
It’s worth noting, however, that George Washington censured even this action for “having much the appearance of a riot and a want of discipline.”
While such attacks on the past depend upon a reservoir of iconoclastic feeling, they represent not the blunt expression of power or destructiveness but rather the rancorous, self-despising triumph of political correctness.
The exhibition of wounded virtue, of what we now call “virtue-signaling,” is key.
Of course, impermissible attitudes and images are never in short supply once the itch to stamp out history gets going.
At Charlottesville it was a statue of Robert E. Lee.
But why stop there?
Why not erase the entire history of the Confederacy?
There are apparently some 1,500 monuments and memorials to the Confederacy in public spaces across the United States.
According to one study, a majority of them were “commissioned by white women, in hope of preserving a positive vision of antebellum life.”
A noble aspiration, inasmuch as the country had recently fought a civil war that devastated the South and left more than 700,000 Americans dead.
These memorials were part of an effort to knit the broken country back together.
As at Arlington, our leaders have set about obliterating them in earnest.
What they want isn’t reconciliation but capitulation.
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and James Madison have all been queued up for “rehabilitation” if not ostracism.
After all, they all owned slaves, as did 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.
As I say, many of our politically correct culture warriors seem to regard “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as a how-to manual.
Orwell saw clearly where it ends.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified,” Orwell wrote, “every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 22:20 - Where Cocaine Is Produced (And Where It's Consumed)
Where Cocaine Is Produced (And Where It’s Consumed)
Although cocaine is consumed in every part of the world, its base, the coca plant, is mainly cultivated in three Latin American countries: Peru, Bolivia and Colombia.
The latter made headlines in the fall of 2023 due to a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claiming that the area used for coca crop in 2022 grew to 230,000 hectares, a 13 percent increase compared to 2021, according to Reuters reporting.
As Statista’s Flrian Zandt shows in the chart below, this further cements Colombia’s spot as the top coca producer in the world.
You will find more infographics at Statista
According to figures by UNODC and the Peruvian government, Colombia was responsible for almost two thirds of the total coca cultivation area in 2022. Peru came in second with 95,000 hectares, while Bolivia ranked third with 30,000 hectares. To combat the increase of land dedicated to coca plantations, Colombian President Gustavo Petro advocated for the recognition of drugs as a “health problem for society” instead of it being viewed as a “military problem” at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs this past September.
Following the conference, Petro presented a new national anti-drug plan in October 2023. Reuters summarized the underlying policies of the ten-year plan as aiming to “reduce the size of coca crops, cut potential cocaine output and prevent deforestation linked to drug trafficking, while helping transition small farmers to the legal economy.”
When looking at the cocaine market from the users’ perspective, the Americas, excluding the United States, also have the highest estimated share of people claiming to have consumed cocaine in 2021, with 6.6 million or 30 percent of total global users of the drug.
The United States, whose government has continued putting pressure on the leaders of the countries mentioned above to step up their efforts to combat coca cultivation for decades, saw 4.8 million people using the drug in the corresponding year, according to data aggregated in the UNODC’s World Drug Report.
Overall, the Americas made up around half of estimated cocaine users worldwide.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 22:00 - The Homeless Camps' Disease Trifecta
The Homeless Camps’ Disease Trifecta
Authored by Charlotte Allen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Portland, Oregon, area is currently experiencing an explosion of shigellosis, a highly infectious, often antibiotic-resistant intestinal disease caused by contact with human feces.
Activists help protect homeless from being displaced by street cleaning and power washing from the Los Angeles Sanitation service in Hollywood, Calif. on Feb. 8, 2021. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images) Most of the outbreak—at least 218 cases in 2023, 45 of them reported in December—has taken place in Old Town, a once-lively restaurant and shopping destination near downtown Portland that’s now the site of numerous homeless encampments whose residents often use sidewalks as restrooms.
The Portland City Council, alarmed at a surge in the area’s homeless population, now estimated at about 6,000, in June 2023 passed severe restrictions on camping in public places. Tents and campsites are now technically banned during daytime hours and limited to certain designated areas at night. But no one in famously progressive Portland tried to enforce the legislation until the fall, when this latest infestation of shigella bacteria (there had been a similar outbreak among the homeless in 2021) began to generate headlines.
No sooner did Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announce that the city would begin limited enforcement of the camping ban on Nov. 13 than homeless advocates rushed to court and obtained a preliminary injunction that keeps the disease-infested tent cities in place pending a full trial that could take place years from now. Their lawyers had argued that the daytime camping ban was impossible to comply with and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment of people who couldn’t afford permanent housing.
So now, what’s Portland supposed to do about a nasty infection directly spread by the filthy and unsanitary conditions that prevail in homeless encampments?
Already, tourists and locals alike have been shunning Old Town over public drug use, aggressive panhandling, used needles, trash, and feces littering the sidewalks, and rampant street crime, including a spate of homicides. Now, it’s also a disease vector—a disease vector that Portland can do little to control.
Welcome to the homeless encampment disease trifecta: the unhygienic sidewalk camps themselves, the infectious illnesses they spawn and spread, and the rulings from liberal judges at the behest of homeless advocates that prevent local officials from taking basic steps to halt the diseases, such as getting rid of the camps and cleaning the sidewalks—all in the name of solicitude for the homeless themselves.
Portland is far from the only city to be cursed by the homeless disease trifecta. Minneapolis is another. On Dec. 7, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring unsheltered homelessness to be a public health hazard. The resolution noted recent outbreaks of such “preventable” diseases as hepatitis A, typhus, tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia, and diphtheria. Hepatitis A, a liver infection that spreads through fecal contamination, has afflicted Minneapolis’s homeless camps for years.
But when the city made repeated efforts to close down one of the most noxious of the tent cities, Camp Nenookaasi, as it was called, housing about 150 people without running water or sewage control, and plagued by alleged drug use, trafficking, and at least one fatal shooting as well as the death of a newborn infant, activists fought back. On Jan. 2, they filed a class action suit in federal court against Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to block an eviction scheduled for Jan. 4.
This time, though, the judge, Eric Tostrud, declined to accept the activists’ argument that the residents of Camp Nenookaasi had been denied due process of law or subjected to cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Constitution. The camp-clearing proceeded apace, although many of the residents simply moved to other encampments.
And then there’s San Francisco, whose downtown has become a homeless mecca abandoned by once-flourishing retailers and tech companies. In 2018, an infectious disease expert at the University of California–Berkeley deemed San Francisco’s filthy and needle-contaminated streets potentially worse health hazards than those of some of the world’s poorest Third World countries.
More recently, an October 2023 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine reported that homeless San Franciscans were 16 times more likely to die suddenly than their housed counterparts. Causes included infectious diseases as well as drug overdoses and cardiac arrest.
Yet city officials are mired in federal litigation over whether it can legally conduct sweeps that would clear out the tents and disinfect the sidewalks. In December 2022, a judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the clean-up efforts on the grounds that San Francisco’s ordinances barring lying and sitting on public streets conflicted with a 2018 ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that localities can’t criminalize street-camping unless they can offer sufficient shelter beds to the “involuntarily” homeless. (The Ninth Circuit encompasses the nine Western states, where 42 percent of the nation’s homeless live.)
Since then, San Francisco has struggled to work out a compromise with homeless advocates over whether “involuntarily” includes people who refuse shelter offers. It has joined about 50 other cities, including such liberal enclaves as Los Angeles and Seattle, in asking the Supreme Court to review a 2020 decision by a federal judge in Medford, Oregon, that a local anti-camping ordinance amounted to “criminalizing the underlying status of being homeless.” A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld that ruling in 2022, and in July 2023, a full Ninth Circuit declined to reconsider.
Advocates for the homeless use such words as “cruel” and “barbaric” to describe municipalities’ efforts to demolish homeless encampments in urban public spaces. But who is actually being cruel and barbaric? Public health officials have described the crowded, unsanitary conditions in the tent clusters as a “crisis” marked by the return of such “medieval” diseases as typhus and bubonic plague, both spread by rats sharing living spaces with humans. These are diseases that abated in the West only during the 19th century, when cities became able to provide clean running water and sewage disposal.
When living quarters are allowed to turn into disease vectors, the chief victims aren’t tourists or even locals, who can usually avoid contaminated parks and sidewalks with relative ease. The chief victims are the homeless themselves, sick and dying. True compassion would recognize this. But instead we have the homeless disease trifecta. Its most deadly component is the courts that let this public health disaster continue.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 21:40 - "If Truth Shall Prevail, Here Is How History Will Remember 'January 6'…"
“If Truth Shall Prevail, Here Is How History Will Remember ‘January 6’…”
Authored by Paul Ingrassia via American Greatness,
The following commentary was adapted from remarks I delivered at an event held in Toms River, New Jersey, by the Patriot Freedom Project, an organization, founded by Cynthia Hughes, committed to shedding light on the plight of January 6 defendants and their families.
Today we commemorate the third anniversary of one of the darkest days in our country’s recent history—though not for the reasons the Left believes.
The tragedy of January 6, 2021, was not that it was an “attack on our democracy,” let alone an “insurrection.”
But rather, it was an opportunity for the deep state to finally remove its mask and begin the persecution and imprisonment of American citizens, innocent patriots labeled domestic terrorists merely for exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble on public property, the vast majority of whom did not commit any acts of violence on Capitol grounds. As we later found out, through the disclosures of footage from Capitol grounds that day, many of these peaceful demonstrators only entered the Capitol after being waved on by Capitol police, who actively enabled them to make the alleged breach, only to later turn around and scapegoat them as trespassers and insurrectionists when it became politically convenient to do so.
As we have also found out in the months and years since that fateful day, federal agents were seeded throughout the crowds, both outside and within the Capitol, tasked with openly inciting the demonstrators to violence. Despite that irrefutable fact, an exceptionally small number of them did commit any violence. Absolutely zero engaged in the act of insurrection, which is a legal term of art with a very specific meaning: namely, the Framers of the 14th Amendment, from where that term originates, had in mind preventing Confederate War Generals from returning to government, who took up arms and literally waged war against the Union. Nobody who showed up on the Capitol steps on January 6 engaged in a rebellion—hardly any of them were even armed, and those who were armed were, at most, carrying around pepper spray. Show me an example in the entire history of the world of a successful armed insurrection done with pepper spray.
The tragedy of January 6 continues through the present moment, on the third anniversary, and will remain a tragedy so long as innocent Americans remain locked up, every single one of them denied due process of law. This will likely continue until Donald Trump is reelected this November. As you all know, many January 6 prisoners continue to languish behind bars—many still in the DC Gulag, and some in the most horrific conditions of solitary confinement. The media has constantly demonized these political prisoners (which President Trump refers to as “hostages” of our government) as domestic terrorists. And the treatment they are currently getting is, unsurprisingly, that of a domestic terrorist: cruel and inhumane, deprived of fundamental rights, including the right to meaningful legal assistance, food in some cases, and the bare minimum necessities to stay alive. All for merely showing up on the Capitol, a public forum on which Americans have long enjoyed their rights to assemble and speak for centuries, to contest an election whose results were tainted by the stain of illegitimacy—something that history has vindicated, overwhelmingly, in the months and years since that day.
If the truth shall prevail, here is how history will remember January 6: peaceful demonstrators were finally fed up with a government that had become outwardly tyrannical (and I’m not talking about President Trump).
They saw violence all throughout the previous summer, committed by rogue, militant left-wing organizations such as BLM and ANTIFA. These organizations were allowed to commit untold billions of dollars of damage to public and private property, but the entire regime, including both party establishments and the mainstream media, excused them for every action and even designated them as “peaceful protests,” asking television audiences to deny observable reality, as churches were broadcast literally burning to the ground while businesses were looted and ransacked, and anarchy was unleashed in virtually every major city from coast to coast. This again was the backdrop against which, on January 6, a comparatively tame counter-response took place.
The 2020 presidential election observed all sorts of unprecedented rule changes, late-night ballot drop-offs, conveniently timed “water main” breakages that obstructed the electioneering process, not to mention rampant, government-instigated, top-down censorship of both stories like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal that would have been outcome-determining on the results of the general election, and political candidates, like the President of the United States himself, who was forced off every major social media platform—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it—thereby censoring his voice in the weeks before he left office.
So, the regime took away the President’s First Amendment right to speak and the people’s First Amendment right to peacefully demonstrate. The people who arrived at the Capitol on January 6 did so not out of retribution towards their government but out of desperation for their political situation—what felt like a last-ditch effort to have their voices heard.
The cause of January 6 is therefore ultimately the cause of the American republic: will it survive or will it too be relegated to the dustbin of history? That cause will be determined, ultimately, by whether President Trump is re-elected this November. So far, we have reason to be cautiously optimistic. He has never polled this well before in his entire political career. The momentum behind him seems to be growing stronger by the day, even as the weaponized justice system gets more and more belligerent, a sign of desperation for sure, with each successive indictment.
We are living through truly historic times, not just for the history of America but for the history of the world, because the 2024 presidential election will have world-historic consequences, for where America goes, so goes Western civilization.
Whether that dwindling light of freedom, which America long stood for, ever gets rekindled will largely come down to what happens in several months from now. It is our duty to continue to spread the truth, the perennial enemy of tyranny, in the lead-up to the election. We need to continue to expose the utterly fake narrative about J6, which was completely discredited for the garbage propaganda it always was by the (partial) release of January 6 footage.
We need to keep the momentum going strong behind President Trump and remain vigilant of left-wing fraud and scheming, which will surely get more desperate as they lose control of the narrative and see all their lawfare prove ineffective.
We must pray for the country, for the President, and for each other—and especially for the victims, including those still locked up—and for the wives and children of many victims, who continue to endure unspeakable hardship—financially and emotionally—each and every day.
We must also, and this is important, remain unified as a movement. Together, we are much stronger than if we merely proceeded individually. A strong, happy, and united front is what the Left fears most about President Trump and his supporters, which is why they are doing everything in their power that they possibly can to bring him down once and for all.
Let us send a clear and unwavering message to them that they cannot break our resolve whatsoever. We are stronger than ever before. They will be met with resistance unlike anything they have ever experienced if they so much as dare attempt to stop our momentum or strike any one of us down. We should accept nothing less than victory, because out of that victory will come true justice—the justice all these political hostages and their families have long waited for and so much deserve.
Thank you.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 21:00 - Yellen Boasts About Clean Energy Tax Break Success Despite $1.7T Deficit And $34T In Debt
Yellen Boasts About Clean Energy Tax Break Success Despite $1.7T Deficit And $34T In Debt
Despite the fact that the country is running record deficits, has just passed $34 trillion in debt and is, for all intents and purposes, on the precipice of a debt spiral “point of no return”, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen still seems awfully cavalier about spending.
This past week Yellen said that she “welcomed” larger than expected uptake of tax breaks under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, despite the fact that the country doesn’t have any way to pay for it, according to Bloomberg.
Yellen said this week: “What that reflects is the effectiveness, the tremendous response rate, that we’re seeing from the private sector, from cities and states, to these incentives. So you’re clearly having a very major effect on take-up for clean energy investments.”
The 2022 IRA aims to boost clean energy, including electric vehicles, mainly via unlimited tax incentives, ironically producing the opposite result of “inflation reduction”.
While the Congressional Budget Office projected a $238 billion deficit reduction over 10 years, the Brookings Institution warns costs could reach $1 trillion due to higher demand, the Bloomberg article noted.
Since this is a topic we have covered more or less daily for our 15 year existence, we don’t need to say much suffice to show a chart of total US debt since Zero Hedge launched in Jan 2009, when total US debt was only $10.6 trillion. We sure have come a long way since then.
As we noted a couple of days ago, at this point everyone knows how this ends – certainly the CBO does…
As we wrote about a week ago, at best, one may only prepare for the inevitable hyperinflationary outcome, which would be good news to what is now over $1 trillion in interest expense: after all, someone has to devalue the currency all that interest is payable in.
And since there is no longer a way out, we may as well joke about it so consider this: in the third quarter when US GDP supposedly grew at a 4.9% annualized rate – hardly the stuff of recessions – rising $547 billion in nominal (not real) dollars, the US budget deficit increased by a whopping $622 billion.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 20:40 - O, Wonder! Take A Moment To Smell The Roses
O, Wonder! Take A Moment To Smell The Roses
Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,
Ever since Henry Ford worked his wonders, most Americans have been able to afford a car, but chauffeured rides long remained the exclusive province of the uber-rich. “Jeeves, have the car ready at 6 to take me to the club.”
Over the holidays I was a regular Rockefeller. Using a handheld computer that astrophysicists could only dream about a few decades ago, I summoned Ubers and Lyfts that arrived lickety-split to take me anywhere I desired. One stop was the airport, where I was whisked across the empyrean like a Greek god (or Santa Claus).
High in the sky, I recalled the late great Tom Wolfe’s observation that the average American enjoys material comforts that would be the envy of the Sun King himself, Louis XIV.
Gen X, Y, and Zers may find it hard to believe, but a mere century ago, there was no air conditioning or television, let alone smartphones. Boomers who are shocked when anybody dies before their 90th birthday – what happened? – may vaguely recall that the few people who made it to a ripe old age in the olden days were often confined to wheelchairs because they couldn’t swap out their hips and knees. Obesity was not a crisis because few people had too much to eat. And they didn’t smile in pictures because their teeth were a horror show. Worst of all, almost everyone had to drink bad coffee.
And yet, even as I marveled in the blue yonder, annoyance seeped into my bean. I was stuck on an older plane that didn’t offer Wi-Fi service and figured dollars to donuts I’d have to wait a half hour for my checked bag to hit the carousel – assuming it hadn’t been shanghaied to Oshkosh. The pretzels were stale, of course.
Like most people, I am often an ingrate. God or nature seems to have wired us to take the good things for granted. We’re like squirrels who spend less energy appreciating our fat store of nuts than worrying about threats to the stash. This instinct has an immense upside. Dissatisfaction drives far more progress than contentment. Concern is more likely to keep us alive than complacency.
But it also comes at a cost. It engenders a lack of gratitude and a sense of entitlement, which has only grown with our prosperity. The more we have, the more we expect.
Our world is, of course, far from perfect. Everyone suffers, many are in need. Even billionaires have problems. But if our ancestors could see us now they would be confounded by our disgruntlement. They would say: You are living at the apex of human achievement; you enjoy food, shelter and clothing, devices and doo-dads given to you like manna from the heavens. Our lives were short, nasty, and brutish – we ate squirrels and dandelions for goodness sake – while even the poorest among you have comforts our rulers would have envied.
We are not the greatest generation, but we are certainly the most fortunate. We stand on the shoulders of the giants who created the plenty that defines modern American life. As much as we harp on inequality, the history of the last century has largely seen the erasure of the truly consequential differences between rich and poor in this country – who can travel, see a doctor, get enough food, and have sufficient shelter. Gone, too, are most of the legal constraints placed on minorities and women.
As we enter another ugly election year, focus will be placed on the many forces fueling our rampant pessimism and anger, including the rise of political tribalism, demagogic leaders, and the media’s divisive partisanship. But as we dissect the estranging forces that lead us to demonize our fellow citizens, we should not ignore the mindset that makes so many of us susceptible to darkness: a lack of appreciation.
Right, center, and left, few of us ever take a step back and give thanks for our dumb luck. All of us are getting our one go-round in the halcyon days of human history. It might have been cool to live at the time of Plato, Jesus, or Ben Franklin, but I think I’d rather have clean water, antibiotics, and Starbucks. Our inability to acknowledge and actuate this reality has almost become a form of psychosis, as the way we see the world is light years away from the facts on the ground.
Human beings, of course, do not live by bread alone. In many ways we are in the grip of a spiritual and moral poverty. We have plenty of things, but many of us are searching for meaning. The roots of this malaise are deep. During the 19th century, Nietzsche linked it to the death of God. In the 1950s Norman Mailer wrote about the “psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb upon the unconscious mind of almost everyone alive in these years.”
For us, today, more recent events have played havoc with our minds: The collapse of Soviet-style communism stripped America of much of its Cold War moral standing, the belief that the United States was a force for good in the world. The 9/11 attacks and 21st century crises ranging from the economic meltdown of 2007-2009 to the plethora of mass shootings reinforced our collective sense of vulnerability, introducing the abiding fear that we can lose all in an instant. This is a prime driver of the mental health crisis exploding across the country.
These feelings are real, but they do not reflect reality. Our pessimism and unease are not hard facts, but reflections of how we choose to see things – through a glass, darkly. Part of this stems from our growing sense of entitlement.
The bold opening words of the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, a democratic society does not, as totalitarian regimes claim to do, bear responsibility for our psychic happiness. It is up to each of us – through family, friends, faith, pastimes, work, and our own inner resources – to find meaning in our lives. Yet, we, who have been given so much, believe this should be somehow handed to us as well.
We cannot solve all our problems with a change of mind. But we can begin to become a happy, healthier people if each of us works to be a little more grateful. Even as we struggle with our own very real challenges and suffering, let’s each of us, each day, intentionally recall, through a sacred (or secular) prayer, all that we have to be thankful for. It can start healing our broken world and ourselves.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 20:20 - Turkey, Russia Condemn Strikes On Yemen: West Turning Red Sea "Into A Bloodbath"
Turkey, Russia Condemn Strikes On Yemen: West Turning Red Sea “Into A Bloodbath”
The international reaction to the Thursday night US-UK coalition bombing of Houthi positions in Yemen continues to come in, with the more interesting of the statements being issued by Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Friday statements to the press in Istanbul said that the attack would turn the Red Sea into a “bloodbath”. He also condemned the Western coalition operation as “disproportionate” despite the previous over two dozen attacks on commercial shipping of the last months by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
“First of all, they are not proportional. All of these constitute disproportionate use of force,” Erdoğan told journalists. “It is as if they aspire to turn the Red Sea into a bloodbath.”
The Turkish leader has lately been outspoken in support of Gaza, and condemnation of Israel’s military operation, but it remains somewhat surprising that the man who leads the second largest military within the NATO alliance would say things that are actually supportive of the Houthi side. Watch:
BREAKING — Erdogan says US and UK strikes in Yemen targeting the Houthis are disproportionate uses of force.
“They are eager to turn the Red Sea into a bloodbath. We see that the Houthis are making very successful defenses against the strikes”
— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) January 12, 2024
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He also praised South Africa for taking Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), underscoring that Turkey is assisting with this as well: “All the documents we have given are seriously working in The Hague and we will continue to provide these documents… I believe Israel will be found guilty,” he said. “Netanyahu no longer has a hole to run to, no means to defend.”
More predictably, Russia too condemned the strikes on Yemen, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying Friday, “We strongly condemn these irresponsible actions by the United States and its allies.” She further told reporters that Moscow has called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
“A large-scale military escalation in the Red Sea region could strike out the positive trends that have emerged recently in the Yemeni settlement process, as well as provoke a destabilization of the situation throughout the Middle East,” she warned.
Notably, Russia and China had on Wednesday abstained from a UNSC resolution demanding that the Houthis immediately halt all attacks on international shipping.
Via NY Times, showing places targeted in Thursday night strikes. Below is a round-up of the Middle East regional reaction to the major Thursday night strikes on Yemen, as cited in various sources including Al Jazeera,, Daily Mail, and Reuters…
Iran’s Foreign Ministry:
“These attacks are a clear violation of Yemen’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a breach of international laws. These attacks will only contribute to insecurity and instability in the region.”
Lebanese Hezbollah:
“The American aggression confirms once again that the U.S. is a full partner in the tragedies and massacres committed by the Zionist enemy in Gaza and the region.”
“Hezbollah strongly condemns the blatant American-British aggression against brotherly Yemen, its security and sovereignty, and its free and honorable people, which stood with all strength, courage and responsibility alongside the Palestinian people and their valiant resistance, and did their utmost to break the siege on it by all available means and capabilities.”
Iraq’s Shia militias:
“Today’s aggression against Yemen has doubled the solidarity of the peoples with the Axis of Resistance and the right of its sacred cause to stand against tyranny.”
Saudi Arabia
“The Kingdom is following with great concern the military operations in the Red Sea region and the raids on sites in Yemen. We stress the importance of maintaining the security and stability of the Red Sea region and call for restraint and avoiding escalation.”
* * *
And China is urging calm, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning saying, “China is concerned about the escalation of tensions in the Red Sea.” She added: “We urge the relevant parties to keep calm and exercise restraint, to prevent the conflict from expanding.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 20:00 - Wisconsin Judge Rules Use Of Mobile Vans In Absentee Voting Violates State Election Law
Wisconsin Judge Rules Use Of Mobile Vans In Absentee Voting Violates State Election Law
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A Wisconsin judge ruled this week that the use of a mobile van to facilitate absentee voting violates state election laws, marking a win for Republicans who had challenged the city of Racine after the vehicle drove to various locations throughout the city and collected absentee ballots in 2022.
Ballots as seen as workers count mail-in and in-person absentee ballots at the Wisconsin Center on in Milwaukee, Wis., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Racine County Circuit Court Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz said in his ruling that the city’s use of a mobile van for absentee voting not only violated state law but also unfairly benefited Democrats in a primary election in August 2022.
In his 17-page ruling, the judge noted that while no statute of state law expressly prohibits the use of mobile voting vans, it also does not explicitly authorize their use.
“The absence of an express prohibition, however, does not mean mobile absentee ballot sites comport to procedures specified in the election laws,” the judge wrote.
“Nothing in the statutory language detailing the procedures by which absentee ballots may be cast mentions mobile van absentee ballot sites or anything like them. Such an interpretation was and is contrary to law.”
The judge further noted that state law “clearly and unequivocally indicates that chosen alternate absentee balloting sites ‘cannot afford an advantage to any political party’” but that the filings in the case “clearly indicated that the alternate sites chosen clearly favored members of the Democratic Party or those with known Democratic Party leanings.”
Van Granted ‘Advantage’ to Democrats
Judge Gasiorkiewicz’s ruling centered on a lawsuit bought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), a nonprofit conservative law firm based in Milwaukee, on behalf of Racine County Republican Party Chairman Ken Brown, following the 2022 primary.
The lawsuit listed Racine City Clerk Tara McMenamin and the Wisconsin Elections Commission as defendants.
In their lawsuit, plaintiffs argued that using the “election van” as an alternate absentee ballot site violated state law and that the locations the van visited afforded an advantage to citizens who are members of the Democratic Party or have a history of voting Democratic.
The van was purchased with grant money the city of Racine received from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, the nonprofit funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, according to The Associated Press.
It was sent to nearly two dozen sites in the two weeks before the primary, where it would stop by for several hours of in-person absentee voting before moving to another site over the course of two weeks.
However, plaintiffs argued the van was only sent to Democratic areas in the city and claimed it increased the chances of voter fraud.
They further claimed that the locations the van visited were not as close as possible to the City Clerk’s office and violated the “shall be located as near as practicable to the office of the municipal clerk or board of election,” clause of state law.
People cast their ballots on the first day of in-person early voting for the Nov. 3, 2020, elections in Milwaukee, Wis., on Oct. 20, 2020. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images) Ruling Bolsters Election Security
Additionally, the plaintiffs claimed city officials had further violated state law by allowing absentee voting in the same physical building (City Hall) where the Office of the City Clerk is located and failed to have alternate site designations in effect for the requisite mandatory statutory time period.
The judge, however, rejected claims that in-person absentee ballot sites should be located as near as possible to the office of the municipal clerk or board of election commissioners, noting that the term “as near as practicable” encompasses “consideration beyond a pure geographic standard.”
“In fact, treating this legal term of art as purely distance-based would be an ‘erroneous concept of law,’” the judge wrote.
The Democratic National Committee, Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities had all joined in seeking to rebuke the claims in the lawsuit and defend the legality of the van, arguing there was no cause shown to believe the law had been broken and no specific prohibition against using it.
In a statement following the ruling, WILL deputy counsel, Lucas Vebber, said the ruling ensures government actors are held accountable to the rule of law at all levels.
“Wisconsin voters should know that their elections are secure, and that election administration does not favor one political party over another. This decision does just that,” he said.
WILL research director, Will Flanders, added, “Every citizen should have an equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process. We are grateful the Court recognized that the City of Racine broke the law. WILL is proud to provide sound research and to help ensure fair elections for all.”
The Epoch Times has contacted the Wisconsin Elections
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 19:40 - Houthis Undeterred After US Coalition Pummels Over 60 Targets With Tomahawk Missiles, Airstrikes
Houthis Undeterred After US Coalition Pummels Over 60 Targets With Tomahawk Missiles, Airstrikes
The Thursday night US and UK-led major strikes on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, while posing a significant risk for escalating the Gaza war into a regional conflict, still apparently have not deterred the Iran-backed rebel group’s resolve to attack Red Sea shipping and even Western naval vessels.
Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree released a videotaped address saying “The American and British enemy bears full responsibility for its criminal aggression against our Yemeni people, and it will not go unanswered and unpunished.” Houthi sources have tallied over 70 strikes across five regions of Yemen, indicating that at least five people died in the attacks. The Pentagon indicated over 100 missiles of a variety of types were used.
The US Air Force’s Mideast command said in a statement that a combination of jets, destroyers, and a submarine were used, hitting Houthi “command-and-control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, production facilities and air defense radar systems” in the operation which followed repeat Houthi attacks on Red Sea vessels. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary,” President Biden had said in a written statement.
US CENTCOM/Reuters “These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea—including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” the US Commander-in-Chief had added.
According go more details of the variety of weapons systems and platforms used:
More than 15 F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters operating from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower were involved, according to Fox News, citing unnamed Pentagon sources. Unspecified Air Force fighters operating from a base in the Middle East were also part of the attack. Newsweek has yet to verify these reports.
The USS Florida guided missile submarine and U.S. surface ships launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. It is not clear what other vessels took part in the bombardment, but American Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers have been operating in the Red Sea in recent months.
But though intense, it was a relatively brief attack, likely lasting not more than 30 minutes, or definitely less than an hour. Videos of large fireballs lighting up the night sky flooded social media as key cities like Saana and the port city of Hodeidah were hit, where there also remain large population centers.
But again, the key takeaway here is that after these brief fireworks which many officials have complained comes much too belatedly (though some US lawmakers have already highlighted there was no Congressional approval), the Houthis are likely soon to resume their attacks. Also likely is that there will eventually be more rounds of coalition strikes on Yemen as the crisis endures. Thursday night’s attack is likely to actually result in further reduced commercial shipping traffic in Red Sea waters now visited by war:
- MILITARY ADVISES SHIPS TO AVOID BAB EL-MANDEB: INTERTANKO NOTE
- OIL TANKER FIRM HALTS RED SEA TRIPS AFTER US STRIKES: BBG
- Hafnia has stopped all southern Red Sea shipping, according to a statement from a spokeswoman for the company.
- Tanker Carrying Saudi Crude to Suez U-Turns Before Gulf of Aden: BBG
Videos (unverified) of large fireballs on the horizon have been widely circulating…
🚨🇬🇧🇺🇸🇾🇪#BREAKING: The scenes in Yemen CURRENTLY. pic.twitter.com/aOtc0dQMx1
— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) January 12, 2024
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A Foreign Ministry statement by a Houthi spokesman, Hussein al-Ezzi, acknowledged “a massive aggressive attack by American and British ships, submarines and warplanes” before going on to say that “America and Britain will undoubtedly have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences of this blatant aggression.”
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator and spokesperson, additionally said the Western powers have “committed foolishness with this treacherous aggression.”
“They were wrong if they thought that they would deter Yemen from supporting Palestine and Gaza,” he said in an online statement, vowing further that “targeting will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”
Yemenis remain defiant, attending large Friday anti-US demonstrations…
Massive protest in Yemen after Biden and the Brits conducted air strikes. pic.twitter.com/7dmJ9SeXGV
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 12, 2024
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The Pentagon has said that it has no plans to send more troops or assets to the region for now, and will monitor the situation, also as all eyes are on US bases in Iraq and Syria, as American forces brace for potential retaliatory attacks from Iran-backed militias.
Importantly, CENTCOM had called out the Iranians specifically. “We hold the Houthi militants and their destabilizing Iranian sponsors responsible for the illegal, indiscriminate, and reckless attacks on international shipping that have impacted 55 nations so far, including endangering the lives of hundreds of mariners, including the United States,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, USCENTCOM Commander.
The strikes in Yemen (🇾🇪) were carried out or supported by (at least) the following aircraft:
🇺🇸 RC-135 Rivet Joint
🇺🇸 P-8 Poseidon
🇺🇸 E-2C Hawkeye
🇺🇸 15+ F/A-18 Super Hornets🇬🇧 Voyager tanker
🇬🇧 4 Typhoons(Thread will be updated with photos/videos)
1/x pic.twitter.com/G50YROcD3z
— Aerospace Intelligence (@space_osint) January 12, 2024
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Meanwhile, Dave DeCamp at AntiWar.com provides the following brief backgrounder of the history of the war which raged in Yemen going back to 2015. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia was quick to distance itself from Thursday night’s major Western coalition operation…
* * *
The US and its allies have a history of killing civilians in Yemen, as the UN estimated in 2021 that about 377,000 people were killed by the US-backed Saudi/UAE war against the Houthis that started in 2015. More than half died of starvation and disease caused by the blockade and the coalition’s brutal bombing campaign.
The strikes risk shattering a fragile truce between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition that’s held since April 2022, although the Saudis have distanced themselves from the US anti-Houthi activity in the Red Sea.
Some members of Congress have criticized President Biden for launching the strikes in Yemen without congressional authorization. “The President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle east conflict. That is Article I of the Constitution,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) wrote on X.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 19:35 - "Disinformation Doomsday Scenario": AI-Powered Propaganda Is The Latest Threat To Humanity (That Must Be Censored)
“Disinformation Doomsday Scenario”: AI-Powered Propaganda Is The Latest Threat To Humanity (That Must Be Censored)
The Trump-Russia hoax was one of the most notable disinformation operations in modern history. A major component of the hoax was the notion that Russia had influenced the 2016 US election through disinformation, and tricked the American public into electing Donald Trump.
In the fullness of time of course, it was revealed that the Clinton campaign, Obama administration, and their allies in corporate media had peddled fabricated information themselves. Yet, the threat of ‘disinformation’ has blossomed into an entire ecosystem of collaboration between governments and private think tanks which has been used to censor free speech around the globe.
To that end, the World Economic Forum from has now declared “Disinformation” to be the world’s greatest threat according to their 2024 “Global Risks Report,” which will obviously require more control over free speech.
WEF founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab As Jonathan Turley writes in a Friday note;
The report shows just how engrained this anti-free speech movement has become among the world elite from media to business to politics.
The absurd finding is consistent with the warning of other international figures and groups. We previously discussed how WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has supported censorship to combat what he calls the “infodemic.”
So “1,490 experts across academia, business, government, the international community and civil society” looked at all of the world’s military, economic, and environmental threats and concluded that the greatest threat to humanity is too much free speech. A “global risk” is defined as “the possibility of the occurrence of an event or condition which, if it occurs, would negatively impact a significant proportion of global GDP, population or natural resources.”
Turley points to how “experts” supported censorship and blacklisting (ahem) during the Covid crisis, and points to several examples.
Yet, we’ve now gone beyond simple ‘disinformation.’ The world is now under threat from ‘AI-Powered’ Disinformation!
According to the Financial Times, disinformation created via artificial intelligence is on the horizon. The outlet points to an incident during the September elections in Slovokia – in which a mysterious recording of the liberal opposition candidate, Michal Šimečka, could be heard plotting with a journalist to buy votes and rig the result. Yet, the recording was fake. The Slovokian police warned voters to be cautious online of nefarious actors with “vested interests.”
image via AmolThorat Šimečka lost the election to a populist “pro-Russia rival,” which of course the FT uses to imply Russia was behind the recording, and the threat to democracy is greater than ever before!
Online disinformation has been a factor in elections for many years. But recent, rapid advances in AI technology mean that it is cheaper and easier than ever to manipulate media, thanks to a brisk new market of powerful tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, AI art start-up Midjourney or other text, audio and video generators. At the same time, manipulated or synthetic media is becoming increasingly hard to spot.
Already, realistic deepfakes have become a new front in the disinformation landscape around the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine conflicts. Now, they are poised to muddy the waters in electoral processes already tarnished by dwindling public trust in governments, institutions and democracy, together with sweeping illiberalism and political polarisation.
“The technologies reached this perfect trifecta of realism, efficiency and accessibility,” said Henry Ajder, an expert on AI and deepfakes and adviser to Adobe, Meta and EY. “Concerns about the electoral impact were overblown until this year. And then things happened at a speed which I don’t think anyone was anticipating.”
Authorities warn
In November, UK officials raised the prospect of “AI-created hyper-realistic bots” and increasingly advanced deepfake campaigns that could influence the country’s election. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of US Senators recently proposed legislation which would ban “materially deceptive AI-generated” political ads.
This has put pressure on social media platforms, including Meta, Google’s YouTube, TikTok and X, to censor deepfakes and ramp up ‘moderation’ (censorship) when it comes to ambiguous media.
The report then warns that said social media giants are ‘less equipped to do so than in previous big elections.’
Some, including Meta, trimmed their investment in teams dedicated to maintaining safe elections after the tech stock downturn in early 2023. In the case of Elon Musk’s X, content moderation resources have been cut back drastically as he vows to restore what he dubs free speech absolutism.
The efforts of the US-based tech groups to invest in fact-checking and tackling misinformation have also become politicised, as rightwing US politicians accuse them of colluding with the government and academics to censor conservative views. -FT
So – to recap, big tech is now afraid to censor because conservatives have accused them of censorship, and “Multiple left-leaning disinformation experts and academics warn this dynamic is forcing the platforms, universities and government agencies to pull away from election integrity initiatives and collaborations globally for fear of retribution.”
Now, with the ‘rising threat of AI deepfakes,’ the Financial Times warns of a ‘disinformation doomsday scenario’ (not kidding, their words), in which “a viral undetectable deepfake will have a catastrophic impact on the democratic process — is no longer merely theoretical.”
“I think that the combination of the chaos that the generative AI tools will enable and the drawback of the programmes that the platforms had in place to ensure election integrity is this unfolding disaster in front of our eyes,” says one anonymous head of a digital research non-profit. “I’m extremely concerned that the victim will be democracy itself.“
FT then goes on for thousands of words, describing examples and scenarios of the digital scourge and what we should do to stop it.
Bottom line, censorship isn’t going away anytime soon.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 19:20 - State AGs Blast Biden, Wall Street Plan To Sell Rights To America's Public Lands
State AGs Blast Biden, Wall Street Plan To Sell Rights To America’s Public Lands
Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The current plan by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to create Natural Asset Companies (NACs), which would buy up land rights throughout America, faced heavy criticism from 25 state attorneys general, who in a Jan. 9 letter urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reject the concept.
“What is happening here is clear,” the AGs wrote. “The Commission and the NYSE are seeking to implement a radical environmental agenda through the rulemaking process (and outside the legislative process).”
“This type of decision, particularly given its vast economic consequences, must be left to Congress and not the Commission or the NYSE,” they stated.
Hikers walk beside the Delicate Arch at sunset in the Arches National Park near Moab, Utah on April 21, 2018. – The park which has over 2000 arches that were formed over 100 million years by a combination of water, ice, extreme temperatures and underground salt movement. (Photo by Mark Ralston / AFP) (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images) The idea for NACs was developed by an activist eco-organization called the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with the NYSE. NACs would pool investors’ money from around the world to buy the rights to public and private land in the United States and limit its use to “sustainable” endeavors.
Currently, much of the land under federal control is intended for public use, which includes farming, ranching, hunting, fishing, drilling, mining, hiking, and camping, according to its designation by Congress. In many western states, including Idaho, Alaska, and Utah, more than 60 percent of the land is government owned. About 85 percent of the land in Nevada is government owned.
“On the spectrum of serious ESG threats, this is one of the most concerning, and least understood,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, who co-authored the letter, told The Epoch Times. “I don’t think most people in America even know about it; it was done very quietly.
“There are a number of interests—big government, extreme environmental activism,” he said. “It’s about power, money, and who controls what can happen on these lands.”
The proposal to alter the NYSE’s governing rules to allow this new type of company on the exchange currently sits with the SEC, awaiting approval. The original public comment period was set at an unusually short 21 days, running through the Christmas holiday until Jan. 2.
After protests from 32 Republicans in Congress and 22 red-state financial officers, the SEC extended the comment period until Jan. 18. Anyone wishing to comment can do so at https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/sr-nyse-2023-09.
$100 Trillion Per Year
Flowers bloom at the Carrizo Plain National Monument in Calif. in 2017. (Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management) In its SEC filing, the NYSE explained the concept of monetizing the value of America’s natural assets.
“Healthy ecosystems produce clean air and water, foster biodiversity, regulate the climate, and provide the food on which our existence depends,” the NYSE stated. “These and other benefits derived from ecosystems are called ecosystem services, and in the aggregate, economists estimate their value at more than US$100 trillion dollars per year.”
According to a statement from IEG CEO Douglas Eger, cited in a Rockefeller Foundation press release, “this new asset class on the NYSE will create a virtuous cycle of investment in nature that will help finance sustainable development for communities, companies, and countries.
“Together, IEG and the NYSE will enable investors to access nature’s store of wealth and transform our industrial economy into one that is more equitable,” Mr. Eger said.
The NACs would require accounting and reporting systems regarding the assets they possess, which would be provided by IEG under license. The NYSE would acquire a stake in IEG as part of the agreement to establish NACs on the exchange.
According to the NYSE filing, the intention of the NACs is to buy land management rights, including farming rights, mineral rights, water rights, and air rights, and that “NACs are expected to license these rights from sovereign nations or private landowners.” The question remains, however, how the federal government would sell such rights to a private company.
According to state AGs, the answer lies in a current effort within the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to sell “conservation leases” on public lands.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Midland Long-Term Visitor Area is another camping spot for people who’ve fallen through the financial cracks of society and prefer to live off grid, on Feb. 13, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times) “The proposed [NYSE] rule plainly is intended to serve as the funding mechanism for the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) recent proposed rule, ‘Conservation and Landscape Health,’ which would authorize BLM to grant ‘conservation leases’ for public lands,” the letter states. “The BLM rule provides that ‘once the BLM has issued a conservation lease, the BLM shall not authorize any other uses of the leased lands that are inconsistent with the authorized conservation use.’
“This means that once BLM issues a conservation lease, productive economic uses such as grazing, logging, or mining will no longer be allowed unless they are consistent with the lease’s environmental purposes,” the AGs wrote.
“Now you have a seller—BLM created that,” Mr. Reyes said. “And now you have a buyer, or a vehicle to use private money to buy what the BLM couldn’t do through proper legislation and couldn’t do at the ballot box.
“They’re quietly, almost secretly, trying to bypass all of that,” he said, “and funnel the money directly into owning these sovereign lands and imposing their own political agenda on them.”
Biden’s 30×30 Plan
The plan to create NACs coincides with efforts by the Biden administration to block access to public lands by farmers, ranchers, hunters, and most particularly, oil and mining companies. President Biden’s 30×30 plan, according to which 30 percent of the United States’ land and freshwater areas and 30 percent of U.S. ocean areas would be set aside for conservation by 2030, was announced in a January 2021 executive order.
A coal mine in Wyoming in a file photo. (Bureau of Land Management) One of the issues facing the NACs is how their assets would be valued, given that for the most part the requirement of “sustainability” would preclude many economically productive uses. One of the reasons the NYSE is seeking an exception to its rules from the SEC is that NACs would not use standard audited GAAP accounting for their investors, but rather see the American institution adopt the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting.
Coincidentally, in January 2023, the Biden administration created its U.S. System of Natural Capital Accounting, which adopts the same U.N. environmental accounting standards. The Biden administration says that this effort is a “system to account for natural assets—from the minerals that power our tech economy and are driving the electric-vehicle revolution, to the ocean and rivers that support our fishing industry, to the forests that clean our air—and quantify the immense value this natural capital provides.”
Critics of this effort say that it violates the Constitution because only elected officials in Congress have the authority to transfer rights for public lands.
The Bundy family and their supporters fly the American flag as their cattle were released by the Bureau of Land Management back onto public land outside of Bunkerville, Nev. on April 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jason Bean) “The attorneys general are absolutely correct when they say that the SEC and the NYSE are trying to implement a radical environmental agenda outside of the legislative process,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumer’s Research, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times. “This is the great scam of ESG that is being foisted on the American people, regardless of the harm it does to consumers or entire sectors of the economy.”
The Epoch Times requested comment from the SEC, the NYSE, and the Intrinsic Exchange Group regarding this article. The NYSE declined to comment. The SEC and IEG did not respond as of press time.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 19:00 - Zelensky Hails 'Unprecedented' $3BN+ Arms Deal With UK As US Supplies Have Stopped
Zelensky Hails ‘Unprecedented’ $3BN+ Arms Deal With UK As US Supplies Have Stopped
White House national security spokesman John Kirby in a Thursday briefing confirmed that at this point US military supplies to Ukraine have stopped. The aid dried up after the very final aid package of $250 million was authorized by President Biden at the end of December based on the Presidential Drawdown Authority, and as Congress blocked his $100 billion supplemental budget request.
Kirby explained in a press briefing Thursday, “We have issued the last drawdown package that we had funding to support, and that’s why it’s critical that Congress move on that national security supplemental request.” That’s when he confirmed the reporters for the first time: “the assistance that [the US had] provided has now ground to a halt.”
Ukraine’s Zelensky has this week been touring Baltic countries to shore up support while urging that things like advanced anti-air missiles are desperately needed.
More importantly, on Friday Ukraine and Britain have announced a breakthrough deal that will see the UK provide over $3 billion in new military assistance amid the war with Russia. Sunak was in the Ukrainian capital for the big announcement.
“Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain visited Kyiv on Friday to announce that he would send more than $3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine in the next financial year, his country’s largest annual commitment since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” reports the NY Times.
According Sunak’s statement:
The British aid for the coming year represents an increase of 200 million pounds, about $255 million, compared with the country’s annual commitment for the past two years. Much of the increase will go toward the production and procurement of thousands of military drones that are crucial for Ukraine. Britain will also deliver long-range missiles, air defenses and artillery ammunition.
“For two years, Ukraine has fought with great courage to repel a brutal Russian invasion. They are still fighting, unfaltering in their determination to defend their country,” Mr. Sunak said in the statement. “I am here today with one message: The U.K. will also not falter. We will stand with Ukraine, in their darkest hours and in the better times to come.”
This marks a continuation and expansion of prior British PM Boris Johnson’s policy, given also London was among the first and biggest supporters of Kiev, flying cargo planes full of aid there even within the opening weeks of the war.
In this video posted on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Telegram channel on Jan. 12, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seen arriving in Kyiv for a meeting. “Today we stand side by side as friends and allies,” reads the post. “This is a signal to the world: Ukraine is not alone.” pic.twitter.com/o1BjaH64mf
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) January 12, 2024
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The Biden administration will certainly welcome this unprecedented UK aid deal, given Washington has been urging Europe to pick up the slack after Biden’s massive defense supplement budget request was blocked by GOP Congressional holdouts.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 18:40 - Watch: Bill O'Reilly's Epic "Get Out Of My House" Rant Goes Viral
Watch: Bill O’Reilly’s Epic “Get Out Of My House” Rant Goes Viral
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A rant about the state of Joe Biden’s America by Bill O’Reilly has gained massive traction online, as everyday people relate to the former Fox News host’s admission that he has ditched all his left leaning friends, telling them to “get out of my house” for tolerating the destruction of the country.
“These other progressive things, we’ve got to stop this NOW,” the rant begins, as O’Reilly adds “I’m telling you, I don’t have any progressive friends anymore. They’re GONE because I can’t stomach them.”
“Criminals running wild murdering people?” O’Reilly continues, adding “progressive DAs funded by George Soros don’t want to punish the violent criminals.”
“That’s what you’re giving me? You support that? GET OUT OF MY HOUSE. OUT. I’ve had it.” the host booms.
He further explains “Biden is not going to get any better, and the Democratic party has to get DESTROYED next November. I don’t care whether you like Trump or not, Trump governed this nation in a responsible way where everybody prospered. And if you don’t believe that you’re a moron.”
“Every single indicator was on positive territory. All the working people, no matter what colour they were, were making more money and there were more jobs,” O’Reilly continues, adding “We didn’t have inflation or supply problems, we didn’t have any of it and now we got all of it, in addition to an open border.”
Epic.
O’Reilly: “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.” This is up there with the “F*CK IT, WE’LL DO IT LIVE” clip! https://t.co/8KsBnJJTv9 pic.twitter.com/OJgp07YPpq
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 12, 2024
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As far as viral moments go, it’s definitely up there with this alpha meltdown where the teleprompter breaks as O’Reilly is trying to intro “a new cut” from Sting in the 1980s. Glorious stuff.
The funniest part of this previous viral Bill O’Reilly meltdown is when he intros the “new cut” from Sting’s latest album. https://t.co/8KsBnJJTv9 pic.twitter.com/xd22x4rU9D
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 12, 2024
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Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 18:20 - SETI Overtaken By Woke Ideologues More Interested In Debating Transphobia & Whiteness Than Searching The Stars
SETI Overtaken By Woke Ideologues More Interested In Debating Transphobia & Whiteness Than Searching The Stars
Authored by Steven Tucker via DailySceptic.org,
Last time around, we considered NASA’s recent attempts to build outer space communications systems, and the strange belief of contemporary Left-leaning scientists and academics affiliated with astronomical organisations like SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) that any aliens we did manage one day to contact would inevitably talk in a language every bit as impeccably woke as they themselves do.
A classic illustration of such delusion came in the newly ideologically-captured journal Scientific American in 2022. Under the headline ‘Cultural Bias Distorts the Search for Alien Life’ appeared an interview with Rebecca Charbonneau, a young SETI-linked cultural historian whose paper ‘Imaginative Cosmos: The Impact of Colonial Heritage in Radio Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ had brought her to the attention of the editors.
Rebecca Charboneau
According to Charbonneau, within sci-fi shows like Star Trek, space being “the final frontier” demonstrated how space exploration itself was filled with innate colonialist assumptions, with “first contact with aliens [acting] as a stand-in for [Western] first contact with Indigenous peoples”.
Weren’t these ideas just fictional literary metaphors upon behalf of the scriptwriters, though? No, because according to the doctrine of Critical Theory that contemporary young pseuds like Rebecca all slavishly subscribe to, words create reality: “Words and socially constructed things are real because we are a verbal, social species. Things that are socially created still have a real-world impact; they’re not imaginary.”
Two particularly damaging social constructs are the words “intelligence” and “civilisation”, these being mere fictional Western concepts which were “tightly bound with the histories of racism, genocide and colonialism”. When Westerners made contact with metaphorically ‘alien’ beings like Australian Aborigines in the past, they just enslaved or wiped them out, Charbonneau argued. “Intelligence”, she warned, is “certainly a dangerous word”, hence her principled complete lack of any such quality herself.
Un-Scientific American
Rebecca was deeply worried. What if SETI found some E.T.s who didn’t seem terribly civilised or intelligent to us, and just treated them like the British once had the Aborigines? Yet the traditional accepted mission of SETI was indisputably to search for alien intelligence, or alien civilisations. This very idea was dangerous and laden with “intellectual colonial baggage” too, so could easily be “weaponised” by genocidal astronauts, feared the oversensitive academic: she seems to have confused NASA with NSDAP.
For Charbonneau, it was disappointing that so many of her fellow exobiologists “start their research from a technical search perspective” rather than by asking random Andaman Islanders what they think about all this. Some more traditional SETI scientists objected to her criticism, pointing out that the only off-planet lifeforms humans are likely to discover locally are bacteria and “you can’t offend a germ” by talk of ‘colonising’ Mars – a protestation she dismisses by saying that particular harmful word “might not hurt an alien, but using [it] will hurt people on Earth”. She even appears to disapprove of an old NASA space-shuttle being called Columbus; doesn’t Mission Control know he was an evil genocidal white maniac?
Henceforth, the whole point of SETI should be completely reformed, from listening to unknown groups on Mars, to listening to marginalised groups here on Earth instead: “SETI is designed to listen outward, but… it’s not always so great at listening inward.” It would be hard to imagine a statement better illustrating the levels of self-indulgent solipsism that have now successfully been imposed upon hitherto politically neutral sciences like astronomy. Where would Rebecca like SETI scientists to begin pointing their space-antennae instead, exactly? Up their own arseholes, like where she lives?
Game, SETI and Match?
According to science writer Lawrence M. Krauss, Dr. Charbonneau’s ilk now dominate SETI every bit as much as Daleks now dominate the Planet Skaro. He points out that she is a Jansky Fellow at the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a fellowship supposed to fund “the most promising researchers in radio astronomy”, not woke witch-hunting ideologues. Recent SETI conferences, Krauss observes, have been dominated not by actual science, but endless debates about transphobia, homosexuality and whiteness.
Krauss has been told many proper SETI scientists despair that it is consequently growing “harder and harder to actually carry out [meaningful] SETI research”, and they fear being pushed out due to being politically incorrect. What’s more, Charbonneau seems to have got her wish, with the very word “intelligence” now allegedly banned by SETI, as it is “a white construct”. Here’s an angry Richard Dawkins, tweeting about it:
Why hasn’t it changed its name to SET, then?
Safe-Space Invaders
The American Association for Science (AAAS – soon to be renamed ASSS, ‘Astrophysicists Subverting Science Systematically’) has also been captured. During a March 2023 conference concerning “the ethics of space exploration”, a Dr. Pamela Copeland stated that future Western astronauts should endeavour to become “gentle explorers” as, thanks to our worthless colonial history, the very word “exploration” was now “almost synonymous with exploitation”.
Another conference attendee, Dr. Hilding Neilson, a Mi’kmaq Indian scientist, said that, before landing on the moon, white astro-Nazis should first consult indigenous Canadian Indians, as the moon played an important role in native folklore, and Indians possessed “other ways of knowing” about it than purely scientific ones. Already, light pollution from streetlamps originally facilitated by the Industrial Revolution of the West had blotted out the night stars which played such a crucial role in many native mythologies, something some academics claim is a form of “cultural genocide” – see this academic abstract:
Whitening the Sky: light pollution as a form of cultural genocide
Duane W. Hamacher, Krystal de Napoli, Bon Mott
Light pollution is actively destroying our ability to see the stars. Many indigenous traditions and knowledge systems around the world are based on the stars, and the peoples’ ability to observe and interpret stellar positions and properties is of critical importance for daily life and cultural continuity. The erasure of the night sky acts to erase indigenous connection to the stars, acting as a form of ongoing cultural and ecological genocide. Efforts to reduce, minimise or eliminate light pollution are being achieved with varying degrees of success, but urban expansion, poor lighting design,and the increased use of blue-light emitting LEDs as a cost-effective solution is worsening problems related to human health, wildlife,and astronomical heritage for the benefit of capitalistic economic growth. We provide a brief overview of the issue, illustrating some of the important connections that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia maintain with the stars, as well as the impact growing light pollution has on this ancient knowledge. We propose a transdisciplinary approach to solving these issues, using a foundation based on indigenous philosophies and decolonising methodologies.
Was man landing on the moon not just yet another manifestation of this same unthinkingly destructive mindset? Dr. Neilson furthermore explained that various tracts of so-called “treaty land” in North America truly belonged to his indigenous kin thanks to legal agreements signed with the Canadian Government. Such property-deeds may have delineated their land’s limits in length and breadth, but had been carelessly drafted with the “absence of a height limit”, meaning the Mi’kmaq actually owned everything directly above their treaty lands, including outer space and the moon, at least imaginatively speaking. Therefore, if NASA or anyone else Western and colonialist ever decided to go up there and start rocket-raping it, this would be technically illegal.
Today, the West’s chief geopolitical rivals in China and Russia are making serious plans to begin mining vast areas of the moon in search of rare minerals to help them achieve global domination down here on terra firma. Meanwhile, NASA and the European Space Agency appear much more concerned with self-righteously landing the first woman on the moon, sending disabled people spinning out of their wheelchairs into orbit and celebrating lesbian astronauts on stamps (Jeremy Corbyn once wanted to put this last highly pressing issue on the U.K. National Curriculum). Which side do you think most likely to end up dominating tomorrow’s globe?
Blank Space
To be fair to the likes of Rebecca Charbonneau, I do agree with them on one thing; in her interview, the SETI-woman called outer space “a mirror” which reflects human observers’ pre-existing beliefs straight back down at them.
I once wrote a book called Space Oddities which makes this very same argument; a large portion of it was about communist humans who expected one day to meet communist aliens. Later, I wrote another book, The Saucer and the Swastika, about white supremacist Nazi humans who expected one day to meet white supremacist Nazi aliens. Now, my latest book, Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science, features a section about contemporary black supremacist humans who likewise expect one day to meet black supremacist aliens. And so it goes, as I believe they say on Tralfamadore.
So, I do think Ms. Charbonneau and her woke crowd are sort of correct in one specific limited aspect of what they are saying: namely, that ideologically biased humans often treat outer space as a blank canvas upon which to project their own personal political neuroses. The only question I would ask is: why on Earth do they think this exact same principle doesn’t also apply to them?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 17:40 - Journalist Gonzalo Lira Reported Dead In Ukrainian Custody
Journalist Gonzalo Lira Reported Dead In Ukrainian Custody
Journalist Gonzalo Lira has died while in Ukrainian custody, according to his father.
“Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments,” wrote Tucker Carlson on X. “Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture.”
Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments. Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several… https://t.co/F0nOG9qGvv
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 12, 2024
In May, Lira was arrested by Ukrainian authorities because he “publicly justified” the Russian invasion, according to a press release by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
The statement from Kiev said that Lira “has the citizenship of one of the countries of Latin America” but omitted that he is also California-born U.S. citizen, as ZeroHedge contributor Space Worm reported at the time.
Gonzalo’s final video before attempting to legally cross the border — there is some irony in that, speaks to the type of man he was. pic.twitter.com/T6rXLnpsxV
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) January 12, 2024
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Following his release, Lira said he was tortured in a Ukrainian prison, explaining that “two thugs held my head and used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one.” Lira informed followers that he was making a mad-dash via motorcycle towards the Hungarian border:
Right now, I’m about to try to get out of Ukraine, and seek political asylum in Hungary.
Either I’ll cross the border and make it to safety, or I’ll be disappeared by the Kiev regime.
This is what’s happened to me over the past three months.
1/25
— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) July 31, 2023
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According to journalist Alex Rubernstein, Lira said that he had double pneumonia (both lungs), which was ignored by the Ukrainian prison holding him.
“I have had double pneumonia (both lungs) as well as pneumothorax and a very severe case of edema (swelling of the body). All this started in mid-October, but was ignored by the prison. They only admitted I had pneumonia at a Dec. 22 hearing,” reads the letter. “I am about to have a procedure to reduce the edema pressure in my lungs, which is causing me extreme shortness of breath, to the point of passing out after minimal activity, or even just talking for 2 minutes.”
In response to Lira’s reported death, his father allegedly wrote: “I cannot accept the way my son has died. He was tortured, extorted, incommunicado for 8 months and 11 days and the US Embassy did nothing to help my son. The responsibility of this tragedy is the dictator Zelensky with the concurrence of a senile American President, Joe Biden.”
BREAKING: It is with great sadness I must announce that Gonzalo Lira @GonzaloLira1968, passed away in a hospital according to his father, who has been fighting to get his son much-needed medical attention for the past weeks.
Here is a hand-written note from Gonzalo which I… pic.twitter.com/jY8Mh0xQV3
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) January 12, 2024
We’re sure this asshole is happy.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/12/2024 – 17:20
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