Today’s News 14th September 2023

• Where Is Rugby Popular?
  Where Is Rugby Popular?

  The 10th mens Rugby World Cup has kicked off in France and is running until October 28.

  A total of 48 games will take place over seven weeks in nine venues across the country, with the final match in the Stade de France, north of Paris.

  

  To mark the occasion,Statista’s Anna Fleck created the following chart taking a look at how the sport’s fanbase compares across six of the competing nations.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to the latest wave of Statista’s Consumer Insights survey, 33 percent of sports fans in France follow rugby competitions and/or teams.

  This figure is fairly similar to that of Australia (34 percent), but significantly higher than in the UK (25 percent).

  Among the nations analyzed, rugby is most popular among South Africans, with 51 percent of respondents saying they watched it.

  No data was available for New Zealand and Ireland… but we suspect it was even higher.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/14/2023 – 02:45

• Ukraine Plays Key Role In Biden Impeachment Inquiry, Just As It Did With Trump
  Ukraine Plays Key Role In Biden Impeachment Inquiry, Just As It Did With Trump

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Both the newly announced impeachment of President Joe Biden and that of President Donald Trump center on the same incident in Ukraine, but from different sides.

  

  The impeachment inquiry announced by House Republicans against President Joe Biden centers on his involvement with Ukraine, just as the Eastern European country figured prominently in the first impeachment of President Donald Trump. In fact, both impeachments touch upon the same incident, but from opposite sides.

  House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 12, summarizing the results of the investigations to date, including nearly $20 million in alleged payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and associates, the president’s past communications with his son Hunter Biden about his overseas business dealings, as well as whistleblower allegations that the Department of Justice extended special treatment to the Biden family.

  “These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” Mr. McCarthy said.

  The centerpiece of the allegations goes back to 2016, when then-Vice President Biden used a $1 billion loan guarantee as leverage to have Ukraine fire prosecutor Victor Shokin, who was investigating Ukrainian energy company Burisma. At the time, the vice president’s son Hunter Biden was collecting $1 million a year to sit on the company’s board and Burisma associates were pressuring him to ensure any investigations into the company’s owner were quashed.

  It was President Trump’s requesting assistance from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in investigating this matter during a 2019 phone call that prompted House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry of him and later voting to impeach him. President Trump was acquitted by the GOP-led Senate at the time.

  Ukraine has long been a crucible of geopolitical tensions, culminating in Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022. Hunter Biden was given the Burisma position in 2014, three months after Vice President Biden was designated by President Barack Obama as “point-man” for Ukraine.

  Mr. Shokin was appointed Ukraine’s prosecutor general in February 2015 and later that year started preparing a money laundering case tied to Burisma.

  On Nov. 2, 2015, Hunter Biden received an email from Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky’s adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi, demanding “deliverables” and saying that the “ultimate purpose” was to “close down any cases or pursuits” against Zlochevsky.

  Several weeks later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine and, among other things, demanded the removal of Mr. Shokin.

  

  While there were some accusations that Mr. Shokin was corrupt, the U.S. government seemed satisfied with his performance.

  Just weeks before the vice president’s visit, a joint task force of U.S. State, Treasury, and Justice Department officials deemed Ukraine’s progress on anti-corruption sufficient to earn it another $1 billion loan guarantee.

  In addition, Victoria Nuland, then-assistant U.S. secretary of state, wrote to Mr. Shokin in June 2015 that “we have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government.”

  When Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko didn’t initially act on Vice President Biden’s demand, the latter threatened to withhold the $1 billion loan guarantee. He later boasted about the incident during a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event.

  On July 25, 2019, when President Trump called President Zelenskyy to congratulate him on winning a majority in the Ukrainian parliament, he mentioned that he would like Ukraine to examine the circumstances of Mr. Shokin’s firing and former Vice President Biden’s role in the matter. He said then-Attorney General Bill Barr would call to discuss the matter.

  “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great, Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me,” he said.

  Democrats interpreted it as President Trump’s abusing his power to have his political opponent investigated.

  President Trump has insisted the call was nothing wrong with the call and that Democrats were trying to cover up the Biden family’s corruption.

  Republicans now say there indeed was corruption worth investigating. In addition to the money Hunter Biden received in Ukraine, they also point to payments from Elena Baturina, the wife of a former mayor of Moscow, as well as money from companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

  They also capitalize on evidence that contradicts President Biden’s claims that he never discussed with his son his overseas business and that there was a “wall” between those business dealings and his official position.

  “Not only did they discuss business, they discussed strategy, they discussed when they were going to meet with these people, they discussed what the narrative was going to be, how they were going to lie to the American people when word got out that they were being investigated for corruption in Ukraine and being investigated for tax crimes and things like that,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight committee, recently told Newsmax.

  “There was never a wall between Joe Biden and his family’s shady business dealings, and I think what we’re going to find is that Joe Biden not only knew about them, but Joe Biden was the ringleader in all of the crimes that his family’s committed.”

  Mr. McCarthy put Mr. Comer in charge of the inquiry together with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), head of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), head of the House Ways and Means Committee.

  “Regardless of your party or who you voted for, these facts should concern all Americans,” Mr. McCarthy said.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/14/2023 – 02:00

• Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11
  Death By A Thousand Cuts: The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

  – Abraham Lincoln

  Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

  

  Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

  In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

  The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

  The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

  The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

  This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

  Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

  The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

  In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

  The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

  In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

  We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

  In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

  The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

  A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

  What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

  Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, with the nation still suffering blowback from the permanent state of emergency brought about by 9/11 and COVID-19.

  The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

  Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.

  The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.

  The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

  The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

  The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

  The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

  The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

  The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

  As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

  Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

  It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution, which was adopted 236 years ago on Sept. 17, 1787, opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:

  We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

  In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

  We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.

  We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

  Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

  As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”

  Americans are constitutionally illiterate.

  Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

  Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.

  Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

  So what’s the solution?

  Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties”  is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.

  From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

  Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

  Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

  A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.

  As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.

  The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.

  Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.

  Tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 23:40

• Hunter Biden Sues Former Trump WH Aide Who Published Laptop Contents
  Hunter Biden Sues Former Trump WH Aide Who Published Laptop Contents

  Hunter Biden is suing a former Trump White House aide for publishing the contents of his infamous ‘laptop from hell,’ which contains all sorts of evidence against the Biden family, along with private photos, emails and text messages between the first son and his associates.

  

  Yes, the same laptop that 51 former intelligence officials said had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and which Antony Blinken (then a top Biden campaign official) had a ‘central role‘ in discrediting after the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden exploited his father’s position as then-VP foer personal gain.

  According to a Wednesday night filing, Hunter Biden’s legal team is suing Garrett Ziegler, who operates the website Marco Polo.

  The 13-page lawsuit alleges that Ziegler and others violated federal and California privacy laws by “accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data” gathered from Hunter Biden’s purported laptop and iPhone cloud storage without consent.

  The lawsuit details how Ziegler and unnamed defendants allegedly obtained sensitive materials by hacking into encrypted data on Hunter Biden’s devices and uploading them to Ziegler’s website, where it remains public. In the lawsuit, Hunter Biden’s lawyers assert that the defendants had refused requests to “cease their unlawful activity” and return private data belonging to the president’s son. –CBS News

  In response, Ziegler told CBS News: “I nor the nonprofit, Marco Polo, have been served with a lawsuit — but the one I read this morning out of the Central District of California should embarrass Winston & Strawn LLP. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on,” adding “Apart from the numerous state and federal laws and regulations which protect authors like me and the publishing that Marco Polo does, it’s not lost on us that Joe’s son filed this SLAPP one day after a so-called Impeachment Inquiry into his father was announced. The president’s son is a disgrace to our great nation.“

  Earlier this year, Hunter Biden sued a Delaware-based computer repairman, John Paul Mac Issac, with whom Hunter abandoned his now-infamous laptop – the contents of which have been featured in multiple Congressional hearings.

  

  Last year Mac Isaac recalled to the New York Post about how Hunter Biden arrived at his shop in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2019.

  “I’m glad you’re still open,” Hunter Biden allegedly told him. “I just came from the cigar bar, and they told me about your shop, but I had to hurry because you close at seven.”

  “I need the data recovered off these, but they all have liquid damage and won’t turn on,” Mac Isaac recalled him saying.

  Mac Issac maintains that he obtained the information from Hunter’s laptop legally, and that Biden himself dropped it off in April 2019, never returning to claim it. In fact, says he walked into the Albuquerque FBI office, where he explained what he had, but was rebuffed by the FBI. He was told basically, get lost. This was mid-September 2019.

  Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John Paul’s business. He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached. Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device.

  Eight months later, Isaac provided a copy to then-President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the hard drive to The Post.

  Last year, several FBI whistleblowers told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that agents investigating Hunter Biden “opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” adding that his office received “a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers” regarding the investigation.

  Grassley added that “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” according to the Washington Examiner.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 23:20

• Rothschild Admits ESG Failure As Globalists Shift To "Inclusive Capitalism" Agenda
  Rothschild Admits ESG Failure As Globalists Shift To “Inclusive Capitalism” Agenda

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  In July of last year as the hype surrounding the covid pandemic was finally dying out I published an article about a barely publicized project called the “Council For Inclusive Capitalism.”

  The group, headed by Lynn Forester de Rothschild who now seems to be the public face of the notorious Rothschild dynasty, is the culmination of decades of various globalist agendas combined to represent the ultimate proof of “New World Order” conspiracy.

  

  Remember when people used to say that global governance by elitists was a paranoid fantasy? Well, now the plan is an openly admitted reality.

  The CIC is intimately tied to institutions like the World Economic Forum, the UN and the IMF, but it is primarily an attempt to link all these organizations more closely to the corporate world in an open display of collusion. The group pushes the spread of what they call “Stakeholder Capitalism” – The idea that international corporations have a responsibility to participate in social engineering, and that they are required (in the name of the greater good) to manipulate civilization through economic punishments and rewards.

  We witnessed this agenda in action during the covid lockdowns and the rush to enforce vaccine passports. These efforts would not have been possible without the participation of major corporate chains working hand-in-hand with national governments and the World Health Organization. Luckily, the strategy failed as local governments and the public fought back.

  We have also seen the ugliness of stakeholder capitalism in the push for ESG rating systems among major companies. Most readers are probably familiar with ESG at this point; just keep in mind that the public was oblivious to the terminology until the past 2 years. Globalists have been developing ESG rules since 2005. What is ESG?  As Klaus Schwab of the WEF notes:

  “The most important characteristic of the stakeholder model today is that the stakes of our system are now more clearly global. Economies, societies, and the environment are more closely linked to each other now than 50 years ago. The model we present here is therefore fundamentally global in nature, and the two primary stakeholders are as well.

  …What was once seen as externalities in national economic policy making and individual corporate decision making will now need to be incorporated or internalized in the operations of every government, company, community, and individual. The planet is thus the center of the global economic system, and its health should be optimized in the decisions made by all other stakeholders.”

  ESG was intended to be the tool that globalists and governments would use to force companies into the stakeholder capitalism model. It is much like the Chinese communist social credit system, but for businesses rather than individuals. The higher a company’s ESG score, the more access lending and government funding they would have (easy money). It started out in 2005 focused on climate controls (influencing corporations to accept carbon credits and taxation). But, by 2016 it became something else; ESG widely adopted woke politics including Critical Race Theory, feminism, trans ideology, various elements of Marxism, etc.

  This was the modern ESG that all of us are aware of today.  The goal was to incentivize corporations into bombarding the public with woke messaging 24/7.  Every movie, every TV show, every book, every comic, every children’s cartoon, every commercial, every product, every major social media site, every employee handbook, every social interaction would be tainted with the poison of woke propaganda.  There would be nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape the messaging.  And it worked, for a little while…

  The exposure of ESG is perhaps one of the greatest triumphs of the alternative media. It was proof that the “wokification” of our economy and society was not the result of some grassroots activist movement or the natural evolution of civilization. No, everything woke was a rigged agenda, an astroturf movement forced into existence by corporations and globalists using ESG as the vehicle.

  It is with some disappointment I’m sure that Lynn Forester de Rothschild recently admitted the defeat of ESG at the B20 Summit in India. Though, Rothschild also suggests that the goal will be to replace the term “ESG” with something else that the public is not as privy to.   In other words, the globalists have been forced to abandon ESG but will continue to look for other methods to trap companies into the far-left hive.

  It is typical for globalists to re-brand their projects whenever they get exposed as a way to throw the public off the scent. However, I don’t think this tactic is going to work anymore. Researchers are locked onto the ESG dynamic and changing the name will not help the establishment avoid scrutiny.

  Interestingly, I have noticed a dramatic shift by globalists towards a defensive posture, rather than the offensive posture they held a couple years ago. I can only conclude that something went very wrong for them during covid. They were brazen with their rhetoric in 2020, basically admitting their intentions to enforce a global authoritarian system. Now they are sheepish and much more careful in the things they say.

  To this end, most of the honest discussion on globalism is no longer found in the statements of the WEF or the halls of the Davos forums. People like Klaus Schwab are fading into the background.  The true agenda is now discussed at more obscure climate change events such as B20 in India or the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris which I covered in July. These are the events where globalists feel more free to talk about what they REALLY want.

  One interesting comment from Rothschild at B20 was her claim that Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” is one of the best models for incentivized climate controls. This confirms what we already suspected:  The Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with inflation. Rather, it was a way to divert taxpayer funds into government subsidies for carbon taxation and green tech. That is to say, Rothschild and the CIC want to dictate global business and force companies to adopt ESG-like policies using trillions of dollars in climate funds ($7.5 trillion per year, to be exact).

  Look at it this way: Any company that “volunteers” to use less efficient green tech and to promote climate ideology gets access to government subsidies – they get rewarded. Any company that refuses to go along with the plan will ultimately face heavy taxation while trying to compete with their subsidized peers – They are forced out of business. This is, essentially, the early stages of a global communist/collectivist economic regime.

  And this is where we get to the crux of the issue.

  There is no “inclusive capitalism.” There is no “stakeholder capitalism.” There is no “ESG.”

  Climate change as an existential threat is a farce, just as covid was never a legitimate threat to the vast majority of people. All of these issues represent smoke and mirrors, a way to distract the populace from the root intent – To create total financial centralization in the hands of a select few elites.

  It’s not about the environment.  It’s not about public health.  It’s ALL about the economy. 

  The end game for them is to convince the public to embrace economic micromanagement.

  Once the economy is locked into an ideological prison where businesses are forced to virtue signal, once access to private trade can be denied by a handful of bureaucrats working with corporations, the establishment then has the means to dictate every other facet of society.

  Our behaviors, our beliefs, our principles, our morals; everything is up for grabs. 

  For if the oligarchy has the power to determine if you and your family eat or starve, they then have the power to make you do anything they want you to do.

  *  *  *

  If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 22:40

• "AI Crusades Have Begun": Robo-Taxi Involved In Hammer Attack In San Fran Following 'Coning' Incidents
  “AI Crusades Have Begun”: Robo-Taxi Involved In Hammer Attack In San Fran Following ‘Coning’ Incidents

  A viral video with over a million views on X shows a person dressed in all-black striking a driverless car repeatedly with a hammer on the streets of crime-ridden San Francisco. 

  X user “(((BrokeAssStuart)))” said, “Someone seen destroying a RoboTaxi in San Francisco this weekend.” 

  Someone seen destroying a RoboTaxi in San Francisco this weekend.

  What do you think, hero or villain?

  🎥: @caterywta on IG pic.twitter.com/KTdwGKrgWF

  — (((BrokeAssStuart))) (@BrokeAssStuart) September 11, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  They asked: “What do you think, hero or villain?” 

  Back in July, we pointed out that members of Safe Street Rebels, a group that states cars are “polluting, dangerous & murderous,” were coning driverless cars across the city, which disables the vehicle and forces it to stop. 

  Here is some of the footage of coning incidents:

  Week of Cone – Night One was a hit! Keep sending in your coning submissions 🦄 pic.twitter.com/c4KZLbFvhy

  — Safe Street Rebel (@SafeStreetRebel) July 6, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  One X user said, “The AI crusades have begun.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 22:20

• The Death Of Informed Consent
  The Death Of Informed Consent

  Authored by Stella Paul via AmericanThinker.com,

  Here’s what never happened in the hospital during COVID:

  …a doctor sat down next to a patient and said,

  “You have a choice.  

  We can give you Remdesivir, which killed 53% of the patients in an Ebola trial.  It was so bad the trial had to be shut down.  And you’ll notice here in Remdesivir’s fact sheet, it says, ‘Not a lot of people have used Remdesivir.  Serious and unexpected side effects may happen.’  

  Or we can give you ivermectin, a safe and effective drug that’s been successfully used for decades, and send you home.  Which do you prefer?”

  The reason that conversation never happened is that it would have cost the hospital too much money.  If the hospital gave you ivermectin and sent you home, the federal government paid the hospital $3,200.  If the hospital gave you Remdesivir, the federal government paid the entire hospital bill, plus a 20% bonus.  So the hospital executives’ choice was to receive $3,200 or $500,000, which was the average hospital bill.  No contest.  Patients were going to get Remdesivir — whether they wanted it or not.

  Informed consent died a grotesque death in the hospitals during COVID, and we need an autopsy.  There was no information, and there was no consent, and without them, patients are reduced to helpless victims, exploited for corrupt financial gain and immoral experiments.

  Informed consent has been enshrined in numerous judicial rulings as the foundation of ethical medical practice and seared into the public’s conscience from the Nuremberg trials.  Seven Nazi doctors were hanged in Germany by an American military tribunal for “murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science.”  Yet murders, tortures, and other atrocities are exactly what was committed by medical staff in the hospitals against thousands of Americans during COVID.

  Take, for example, Ray Lamar, who arrived in the emergency room with a message written with a black sharpie pen on his arm: “NO VENT NO REMDESIVIR.”  On his other arm, he wrote the same message and added his wife’s name and phone number.  Yet the doctors gave him Remdesivir anyway, without ever informing him.  His widow Patti told me she constantly wonders what she could have done to save him.

  

  Image via Patti Lamar.

  Christine Johnson told the doctors that she discussed all her medications with her daughter, who is a nurse, and she concluded that she didn’t want Remdesivir.  It didn’t matter.  Christine was given Remdesivir while she was sleeping, and now her daughter Michelle doesn’t have her mother.

  Rebecca Stevens was an avid reader of Epoch Times, where she learned about Remdesivir’s dangers.  She declined Remdesivir on five separate occasions, as her hospital records confirm.  But the medical staff didn’t care what Rebecca wanted.  She was given Remdesivir without her knowledge, and now Rebecca’s five grandsons are bereft.

  I asked Michael Hamilton how it’s possible to give Remdesivir to patients without them knowing.  Hamilton is a lawyer for several families who are suing California hospitals for the murder of their loved ones, and he’s heard thousands of victims’ stories. 

   “They would lie right to your face,” he said.  

  “You’d tell the nurse that you didn’t want Remdesivir and she’d say, ‘Fine.  But you’re a bit dehydrated, so let’s get some fluids in you.’  And she’d hook up the IV, but it wasn’t fluids.  It was Remdesivir.”

  Hamilton told me that another favored tactic was to knock out patients with sedatives like morphine and fentanyl.  While they lay there in a stupor, they were injected with Remdesivir.

  If secret injections of Remdesivir weren’t enough to kill you, the hospitals had more torture lined up.  After all, the federal government paid hospitals a big bonus to ventilate patients — so patients were going to get ventilated, whether they wanted to or not.  A lot of patients turned down being vented, because the whole process is a nightmare.  You’re painfully intubated, rendered unable to talk; your lungs start shredding, and you may acquire bacterial pneumonia, which the hospital will refuse to treat.

  But “no” is not an acceptable answer when the hospital has money at stake.  The medical staff’s preferred method for gaining “consent” was relentless bullying, screaming, coercion, and threats until the patient finally caved.  Patti Lamar, Ray’s widow, told me that when she refused to let them ventilate her husband, the doctors screamed at her over and over, “You’re killing him!  You’re killing him!  You’re killing him!”  When she couldn’t take it anymore, she reluctantly gave in.  Ray died shortly thereafter, and Patti lives with the trauma of that moment.

  

  Image via Dayna Stevens.

  Michael Hamilton told me the fate of his friend who was a nurse, hospitalized in the place where she had worked for 26 years.  When she refused ventilation, the doctor shrieked,

  “You’re refusing medical advice!  Now your insurance company won’t pay your hospital bill when you die!  Do you want to bankrupt your family?  Do you?  Do you?”  The nurse panicked, and to protect her family, she “consented.”  

  Two days later, she died.

  “This was a very common technique,” Hamilton said.  

  “I’ve heard it hundreds of times.  You tell the patient that unless they do what the doctor says, they’ll bankrupt their family because insurance won’t pay the hospital bills.  Nobody wants to do that to their family.”  

  Does this sound like informed consent to you?  It sounds more like medical battery to me.

  The entire hospital environment was a hellscape of abuse in which informed consent wasn’t even a distant memory.  Hamilton told me that patients were routinely denied all access to food and water, stupefied with 50 medications that included drugs contraindicated for each other, tortured with oxygen machines set at such high levels that they couldn’t breathe, and zip-tied to the bed till their wrists bled and their hands turned black.  His stories align with 1,000 collected testimonies of the COVID-19 Human Betrayal Memory Project, which documents the victims’ fates.

  The ultimate denial of informed consent was the hospitals’ refusal to allow the patients to leave. 

  “Patients lost all rights when they went in the hospital,” Senator Ron Johnson told Patty Myers in her documentary, Making A Killing.  

  “They became prisoners.”  

  A cottage industry of hospital rescues cropped up, as desperate family members hired lawyers to try to spring their loved ones out of hospital “care.”  Ralph Lorigo, a lawyer in Buffalo, told me that in every case when he succeeded in getting a patient’s case before a judge and the judge ruled in the family’s favor, the patient went home and survived.  In all cases where the judge refused to hear the case or ruled against the family, the patient died.

  

  Every American is a sovereign individual with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not a sack of meat to be treated as a profit opportunity.  Informed consent must be revived from the grave if Americans are to have a fighting chance against powerful financial interests allied against them.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 22:00

• Will Hurricane Lee Have A 'Maine Event'? 
  Will Hurricane Lee Have A ‘Maine Event’? 

  Hurricane Lee remained a Category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Lee is “beginning its northward turn” with potential landfall impacts as soon as Friday night across New England or Nova Scotia, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.

  “Satellite images suggest that Lee seems to be beginning its northward turn on the western side of a subtropical ridge situated over the central Atlantic,” NHC said, adding the system should “gradually increase in forward speed while moving northward on the west side of the ridge during the next couple of days, taking the core of the system to the west of Bermuda Thursday and Thursday night.”

  

  Then, on Friday, the storm’s crosshairs are focused on New England or Nova Scotia: 

  “The combination of a shortwave trough and a building ridge extending into Atlantic Canada could cause Lee to turn slightly to the left Friday night and Saturday, which will likely bring Lee close to southeastern New England before it reaches Maine and Atlantic Canada later in the weekend.”

  Spaghetti models of Lee’s path are messy, but some ask: “Will Lee have a Maine Event?” 

  Will #Lee have a Maine Event? pic.twitter.com/eRcHM22lMT

  — Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 (@MikeZaccardi) September 13, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Local media outlet WGME 13 warned, “The significant impacts of Hurricane Lee will be felt along the immediate coastline and into Downeast Maine.” 

  WGME 13 said Maine’s largest electricity transmission and distribution utility, Central Maine Power, with over 620,000 customers and about 80% of the state’s customer base, has put line crews on standby.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 21:40

• The Reported Russian-North Korean Military Deal Is All About Geostrategic Balancing
  The Reported Russian-North Korean Military Deal Is All About Geostrategic Balancing

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

  Russia and North Korea’s complementary balancing acts at the global and national levels vis-a-vis China coupled with China’s reluctance to burn all bridges with the West as it begins building alternative global institutions are the real driving forces behind the first two’s reported military deal.

  

  Many observers believe that Russia and North Korea have decided to strengthen their military ties due to shared threats from the West. Reports claim that they’re exploring a swap whereby Russia would share hypersonic, nuclear, satellite, and submarine technology with North Korea in exchange for Soviet-era ammunition and artillery. The first part of this deal would balance the emerging US-South Korean-Japanese triangle while the second would keep Russia’s special operation going into next year.

  There’s likely a lot of truth to this assessment since it makes sense for them to help each other against their shared opponents in the New Cold War, but there’s more to it than just that. For starters, the preceding report about their impending swap doesn’t account for Russia’s growing edge in its “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO that’s responsible for defeating Kiev’s counteroffensive. Even without North Korea’s Soviet-era supplies, Russia is still impressively holding its own against all of NATO.

  This proves that Russia’s military-industrial complex (MIC) already meets its needs in the present and beyond, thus raising the question of why Russia would countenance a military deal with North Korea in the first place, let alone such a seemingly lopsided one. A cogent explanation is that Russia’s MIC might struggle in that scenario to meet its military-technical obligations to third parties, ergo the need to purchase lower-quality supplies so that production facilities can prioritize higher-quality exports.

  Even if that’s the case, then it doesn’t answer the question of why Russia would be willing to share such potentially game-changing military technology with North Korea for these supplies instead of simply paying for them with hard currency, nor why it either can’t or won’t try to get them from China. Likewise, one might also wonder why North Korea can’t receive the aforesaid military technology from China and would have to request it from Russia as part of their reported swap.

  The answer to those three questions concerns China’s reluctance to burn all bridges with the West as well as Russia and North Korea’s shared interests in preemptively averting potentially disproportionate dependence on the People’s Republic. Beginning with the first balancing act, while President Xi arguably envisages China leading the creation of alternative global institutions as strongly suggested by his decision to skip last weekend’s G20 Summit in Delhi, he’d prefer for this to be a smooth process.

  Any abrupt bifurcation/”decoupling” would destabilize the global economy and therefore sabotage his country’s export-driven growth, but the US might force this scenario in response to China’s large-scale arming of Russia and/or transfer of game-changing military technology to North Korea. For that reason, President Xi likely wouldn’t agree to either of those two deals except if they were urgently required to prevent their defeat by the West, but neither is facing that threat so China won’t risk the consequences.

  As for the second part of this balancing act, even if President Xi offered to meet Russia’s and North Korea’s military needs, those two would still probably prefer to rely on one another for them instead of China in order to not become disproportionately dependent on the People’s Republic. Both regard that country as one of the top strategic partners anywhere in the world, but each would feel uncomfortable if they entered into relationship where Beijing plays too big of a role in ensuring their national security.

  From Russia’s perspective, it’s a matter of principle to never become disproportionately dependent on any given partner since such ties could curtail the Kremlin’s foreign policy sovereignty even if its counterpart doesn’t have any nefarious intent. In the Chinese context, relations of that nature might make some policymakers less interested in maintaining their country’s balancing act between China and India, thus leading to them subconsciously favoring Beijing and pushing Delhi closer to Washington.

  Should that happen, then the global systemic transition to multipolarity would revert back towards bipolarity (or rather bi-multipolarity) as Russia turbocharges China’s superpower trajectory in parallel with India helping the US retain its declining hegemony. The result would be that only those two superpowers would enjoy genuine sovereignty while everyone else’s would be greatly limited by the natural dynamics of their competition. Russia obviously wants to avoid this scenario at all costs.

  Unlike Russia’s global interests, North Korea’s are purely national, but they’re still complementary to Moscow’s. Pyongyang had been disproportionately dependent on Beijing since the end of the Old Cold War after the USSR collapsed, but China later leveraged this relationship to expand ties with the West by approving UNSC sanctions against North Korea. Russia did the same for identical reasons, but North Korea wasn’t dependent on Russia so Pyongyang didn’t hold a grudge against Moscow like it did Beijing.

  It was this growing distrust of China that inspired Kim Jong Un to seriously explore Trump’s ultimately unsuccessful de-nuclearization proposal in order to rebalance his country’s relations with the People’s Republic. The same motivation was why Myanmar agreed to a rapprochement with the US under Obama that also ultimately failed. Both countries felt that their disproportionate dependence on China was disadvantageous and accordingly sought to rectify it by rebalancing ties with the US.

  Since the American dimension of their balancing acts didn’t bear any fruit and is no longer viable, each is now looking towards Russia to play that same role in helping them relieve their disproportionate dependence on China. Russian-Myanmarese relations were explained here while Russian-North Korean ones will now be elaborated on a bit more. From Pyongyang’s perspective, even if Beijing gave it game-changing military technology, this could always be cut off one day if China reached a deal with the US.

  In fact, China probably wouldn’t consider giving North Korea such technology anyhow since that could make it more difficult for Beijing to ever leverage its influence over Pyongyang again in pursuit of such a deal with Washington, thus limiting China’s own foreign policy sovereignty. The likelihood of Russia reaching a major deal with the US anytime soon is close to nil after all that’s unfolded over the past 18 months, so North Korea believes that Russia will be a much more reliable long-term military partner.

  Russia and North Korea’s complementary balancing acts at the global and national levels vis-a-vis China coupled with China’s reluctance to burn all bridges with the West as it begins building alternative global institutions are the real driving forces behind the first two’s reported military deal.

  This grand strategic insight enables one to better understand the true state of relations between these countries and therefore helps objective observers produce more accurate analyses about them going forward.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 21:20

• "Resign Today": Maryland Republicans Voice Outrage Over Superintendent's Education Scandal
  “Resign Today”: Maryland Republicans Voice Outrage Over Superintendent’s Education Scandal

  Last weekend, Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore asked Maryland Governor Wes Moore about the massive grade scandal and alleged cover-up in Baltimore City Public Schools, which ranks as the country’s fourth most funded school system. Moore went on to say that he has transparency concerns about Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury over an encrypted messaging app to do official state business. 

  “I want transparency, I want accountability, and I want a superintendent that believes in it and can deliver it. The results we are seeing right now are not satisfactory results, and I demand better, and we need to make sure we are getting better results for our kids,” Moore said. 

  Over the weekend, @FOXBaltimore asked
  Governor Wes Moore if he supports giving Maryland
  State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudhury a new contract. Here’s what Moore had to say after telling us it’s not his decision.@chrispapst https://t.co/KIZXyoazhL pic.twitter.com/39waMJPith

  — Project Baltimore (@Project_Bmore) September 12, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Superintendent Choudhury’s contract is set to expire in June 2024. The state board was scheduled to vote on a new contract in July but postponed it for two months due to ‘transparency issues.’ Now, the vote is set for later this month. 

  However, the odds of the top Maryland education official receiving a contract extension from the state board wanes. That’s because lead investigator journalist Chris Papst of Fox45 News reported Wednesday that calls for Choudhury’s resignation are growing: 

  “Two MD Delegates & one Senator calling on @MdPublicSchools State Superintendent to RESIGN TODAY! They cite Project Baltimore reports concerning Mohammed Choudhury using a hidden email account, deleting texts on his phone and using an encrypted messaging App for work.”

  BREAKING: Two MD Delegates & one Senator calling on @MdPublicSchools State Superintendent to RESIGN TODAY! They cite Project Baltimore reports concerning Mohammed Choudhury using a hidden email account, deleting texts on his phone and using an encrypted messaging App for work. pic.twitter.com/BxSqY6n31e

  — Chris Papst (@chrispapst) September 13, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Papst previously spoke to Sean Kennedy from the Maryland Public Policy Institute. Kennedy said, “I see this as an unfolding scandal where the superintendent is going to have to resign. It’s just a matter of when.”

  “There cannot continue to be scandal after scandal after scandal,” Kennedy said, adding, “The drip, drip, drip has become a downpour, and the State Board of Education is going to be forced to act.”

  Last week, Papst revealed that corruption at the Baltimore City Public Schools level extends all the way up to the Maryland State Superintendent of Schools. 

  Messages sent through an encrypted cell phone app and never meant to be seen by the public are now shedding light on what’s happening at the Maryland State Department of Education.https://t.co/VTfLOVrIFT

  — FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) September 10, 2023

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And earlier this year, Papst’s team released this shocking report in February: ‘Education Crisis’: 23 Baltimore City Schools Have No Students Proficient In Math. 

  This year, 23 Baltimore public schools had 0 students test at grade level in math. But the corrupt Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury remains in charge, even though he’s been caught forging test scores and deleting incriminating messages.https://t.co/H9u6q5o0dX

  — Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) September 11, 2023

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  One must wonder why taxpayers aren’t more furious about the massive education scandal in a state governed by out-of-control progressives. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 21:00

• How Deep Is The Deep State?
  How Deep Is The Deep State?

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

  We received some seemingly excellent news over the weekend. The appellate court of the 5th Circuit has reimposed the restrictions on the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FBI to stop bullying social media companies to censor content.

  

  This has taken place ahead of the actual trial because two judges found that the practice was so egregious that it needed to be stopped right now before more damage is done to the First Amendment.

  “The officials have engaged in a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social-media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government,” a three-judge panel wrote in Missouri v. Biden.

  “The harms that radiate from such conduct extend far beyond just the Plaintiffs; it impacts every social-media user.”

  That’s all excellent news so far.

  But there’s a fly in this ointment.

  The lower court’s injunction included restrictions on a whole host of agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (and its sub-unit, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA), and the State Department and its relationships with other third-party agencies.

  I was personally disappointed that the initial injunction didn’t name the CIA and all of its thousands of proxies, to say nothing of the other 400-plus agencies in the administrative state of the federal government.

  What’s strange and disappointing is that the appeals court stripped all of this out of its ruling.

  It vacated the most devastating parts of the injunction, including that which hit the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. It specifically stripped out the list of defendants.

  I’m not a lawyer or an expert in administrative law, but the decision is packed with hints and suggestions that this injunction might be mostly cosmetic. It stops the most aggressive and overt censorship but also offers a road map for how they can do this in other ways, simply by burying the mechanisms of control one layer more deeply.

  In short, the initial injunction didn’t go nearly far enough. The renewed injunction, with its careful carve-outs, is far more toothless still.

  What are the next steps? There will eventually be a trial and decision. That’s likely to be settled for the plaintiffs in some measure and will imply certain policies. That could be appealed to the Supreme Court, which might take years to unfold. In the meantime, it’s unclear as to whether and to what extent the true Deep State does face much of a restriction on its activities.

  One way that we will know could come in a matter of days.

  • If the White House appeals this injunction to the Supreme Court for an emergency ruling, it would suggest that some people at the top are very worried, even to the point of panic.

  • If they do nothing, which is very possible, it means that they can live with the current ruling. That would be a very bad sign.

  There’s very little public knowledge of the extent of the problem here. Over the weekend, at a scholars and fellows retreat for Brownstone Institute, we heard a presentation by Andrew Lowenthal, one of the journalists who was given access to the Twitter files after Elon Musk took over. Mr. Lowenthal and his colleagues found vast evidence of an extensive and complex network of censorship that reaches every part of mainstream social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Reddit, Wikipedia, and beyond.

  The controlling parties are the Department of Homeland Security and all of its agencies, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, all of their contractors in universities and state and local governments, media organs including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and all major technology companies, especially Google and Microsoft. Looking at what he calls the “Censorship Industrial Complex” on the screen during his presentation was truly ominous.

  Talking with Mr. Lowenthal afterward, I pointed out to him that CISA wasn’t just censoring. This agency on March 19, 2020, issued an edict to the country that defined every U.S. worker as either essential or nonessential. It created a techno-feudal structure that gave rights to the elites and those who serve them, while excluding the vast middle layer of the U.S. workforce as unessential.

  CISA issued the kind of edict that no free and civilized society would or should ever tolerate. It was incredibly egregious. And yet there has been little to no public discussion of this outrage, and hence no awareness of how this came to be. Exactly who decided to do this? What was its impetus? Keep in mind that there are deep links between CISA and Big Tech, which suggests that this central plan was hatched in cooperation with the companies that benefited from it.

  Mr. Lowenthal naively asked why the Department of Labor wasn’t consulted. I explained that the department is an old-time civilian bureaucracy packed with old-fashioned public servants with no interest in high-tech hijinx. They’re there just to assemble data. What happened in March 2020 was a coup d’état by a new generation of techno-despots from the intelligence community. They have their own agencies and methods of control—all suited toward the 21st century.

  As I further pointed out to him, this isn’t only about censorship. The censors do what they do for a bigger purpose. What they’re really seeking is complete control of society itself; that is, human beings. And they don’t just work on a national basis but an international one, which is why most countries on the planet Earth had exactly the same policies. The intelligence community that’s ruling this machinery is truly global at this point.

  In other words, this isn’t just a Censorship Industrial Complex. It’s a totalitarian hegemon that wants total control of our bodies, lives, and communities. The purpose of the censorship is to keep this from being debated and protested by the public. The censorship is bad, but its purpose points to something far worse than merely controlling the flow of information.

  And there’s another layer of control that wasn’t even on the chart: the money-laundering machinery of, for example, FTX. There’s little doubt that this crypto-exchange was set up to launder funding from venture capitalists to nonprofits and political candidates. That was the whole point. It was a ruling-class pump and dump. There’s no political or legal process ongoing that will prevent something such as this from happening again.

  It’s easy to look at such realities, realize the depth of the Deep State, and get discouraged. Sometimes, it feels as if we’re just a tiny band of writers and podcasters with zero influence or power. But Mr. Lowenthal was careful to point out that this isn’t true. The bad guys in this story feel very much outgunned and under vast pressure from all sides. They’re right now under the impression that they’re losing badly. That’s because public opinion keeps shifting in the direction of freedom and democracy and against control and compulsion from the centralized despots.

  I hope that he’s right because it’s hard to think of a struggle more important than this one.

  “There can be little doubt that man owes some of his greatest successes in the past to the fact that he has not been able to control social life,” economist F.A. Hayek wrote more than 60 years ago in “The Constitution of Liberty.”

  “His continued advance may well depend on his deliberately refraining from exercising controls which are now in his power.

  “In the past, the spontaneous forces of growth, however much restricted, could usually still assert themselves against the organized coercion of the state. With the technological means of control now at the disposal of government, it is not certain that such an assertion is still possible; at any rate, it may soon become impossible. We are not far from the point where the deliberately organized forces of society may destroy those spontaneous forces which have made advance possible.”

  We can’t have freedom and democracy with a deep state run by the intelligence community, in league with all the major universities and corporations, running our lives, elections, and communications. Something has to give. And without public understanding of the problem, there will never be a fix.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 20:40

• 30 Detainees Remain At Guantánamo
  30 Detainees Remain At Guantánamo

  In April, transfers decreased the Guantánamo prison population to 30 bringing President Joe Biden closer to his stated goal of finally closing the notorious prison camp while large obstacles persist with remaining high-profile prisoners and their cases.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As Staista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, just last week, Biden refused to approve some conditions of a plea bargain that is being brokered by lawyers of five of the 10 remaining detainees which have been charged in the military commissions system.

  Biden declined to guarantee no post-conviction solitary confinement as well as trauma care for torture victims. The potential deal would see the five defendants plead guilty to terrorism charges and serve life sentences in exchange for being spared the death penalty.

  On top of the 10 charged detainees, 16 have already been recommended for transfer, which means that they have not been charged and are no longer recommended to remain in confinement for national security reasons.

  There have already been 750 other detainees with the same fate that were transferred back to their home countries or in the case of this being deemed unsafe or not possible, a third country that accepted them.

  Detainments for these prisoners ranged from just a few years to more than two decades.

  Many men have endured torture at the hands of guards that have been extensively documented. 

  One more detainee at Guantánamo is serving a life sentence.

  Three others have been deemed unfit for release, yet have not been charged, according to The New York Times.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 20:20

• Fox Corp Sued By New York City Pension Funds, Oregon Over 2020 Election Coverage
  Fox Corp Sued By New York City Pension Funds, Oregon Over 2020 Election Coverage

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  New York City Pension Funds and Oregon have filed a lawsuit against Fox Corporation’s board related to alleged false narratives in post-2020 election coverage.

  

  The state of Oregon joined New York City Pension Funds in filing a stockholder derivative lawsuit on Tuesday against the board of Fox Corporation, the corporate parent of Fox News, accusing it of a breach of fiduciary duty by opening it up to defamation lawsuits by “peddling known falsehoods” in its post-2020 election coverage.

  The lawsuit was filed under seal in Delaware Chancery Court. In a statement Tuesday, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum accused Fox Corporation’s board of allegedly knowingly exposing the company and its shareholders to significant risks by perpetuating allegedly false narratives about the 2020 elections for profit.

  Ms. Rosenblum claimed Fox Corporation’s board “took a massive risk in pursuing profits by perpetuating and peddling known falsehoods.

  “The directors’ choices exposed themselves and the company to liability and exposed their shareholders to significant risks,” said Ms. Rosenblum. “That is the crux of our lawsuit, and we look forward to making our case in court.”

  The corporation’s board comprises media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the chair, and his son Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and CEO. Other members include William Burck, Chase Carey, Anne Dias, Roland Hernandez, Jacques Nasser, and Paul Ryan.

  The Oregon attorney general is representing the Oregon Public Employee Retirement Fund (OPERF), an investor in Fox Corporation, which holds 150,146 shares of Class A stock and 76,169 shares of Class B stock, with a total approximate value of $5.2 million.

  The lawsuit stems from a joint investigation carried out by the Oregon Department of Justice and the Oregon Treasurer’s Office earlier this year, the attorney general’s office said. Her office said the joint investigation revealed that Fox Corporation’s management, acting on behalf of the company, allegedly harmed investors, including Oregon’s public employees.

  The complaint alleges that Fox Corporation’s board was fully aware that Fox News’ promotion of political narratives, irrespective of the underlying factual accuracy, created substantial exposure to defamation charges.

  “Furthermore, by pushing narratives that appealed to their audience regardless of the facts, Fox’s Board should have been especially sensitive to risks of defamation,” the attorney general’s office stated.

  “Yet, Fox’s business model is to promote false claims.“

  Tuesday’s lawsuit, which includes the New York City Pension Funds as a co-plaintiff, further alleges that Fox Corporation made no genuine efforts to monitor or mitigate the risk of defamation, setting it apart from nearly every other major media organization in the country.

  New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who oversees the pension funds, accused the Fox Corporation board of failing to ensure journalist standards.

  “Fox’s board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation,” Mr. Lander said in a statement on Tuesday. “A lack of journalistic standards and a proper strategy to mitigate defamation has clearly harmed Fox’s reputation and threatens their bottom line and long-term profitability.”

  Treasurer Tobias Read, who is also a member of the Oregon Investment Council, said that safeguarding the retirement investments of Oregon’s public servants is of the “utmost importance.”

  “We aim to hold Fox’s board of directors, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, accountable for their decisions,” Mr. Read said. “We believe that this action is necessary in fulfilling our obligation to our beneficiaries.”

  Fox Corporation declined to comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 20:00

• Jailed Proud Boy Leader: Feds Tried To 'Coerce Me' Into Implicating Trump
  Jailed Proud Boy Leader: Feds Tried To ‘Coerce Me’ Into Implicating Trump

  Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said in a jailhouse interview that federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating former President Donald Trump in the Capitol riot.

  

  “They weren’t trying to get the truth,” Tarrio told the Washginton Post. “They were trying to coerce me into signing something that’s not true.“

  Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison last week by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, despite the fact that he wasn’t at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

  “I was looking and seeking what the plea offer would look like, right?” Tarrio said. “They didn’t want to give me a number. I need a number. To me, the most important thing is when I get home to my family.”

  …prosecutors asked him what role then-President Donald Trump played in getting the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. He said the prosecutors, accompanied by FBI agents in the Miami jail where Tarrio was being held at the time, showed him messages that he exchanged with a second person, who in turn was connected to a third person who was connected to Trump. Tarrio said he told the investigators that he didn’t know the third person. He refused to name the people who prosecutors said allegedly connected him to Trump. -WaPo

  

  He also told the Post that “there was never an open-ended question after” the feds tried to get him to implicate Trump.

  Tarrio said prosecutors in Miami last fall did not ask him about Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant who was an acquaintance of Tarrio’s, or Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” rally. He said the federal visitors did not ask him questions about his knowledge of Jan. 6 beyond the theorized connection to Trump. “There was never an open-ended question after that,” Tarrio said.

  Prosecutors did later offer Tarrio a deal: nine to 11 years in prison if he pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, according to court records. Tarrio declined.

  During his sentencing hearing, Judge Kelley said Tarrio was the “ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal.”

  There have been 370 individuals sentenced to prison in connection with the Capitol riot out of 1,100 people charged in the incident.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 19:40

• UAW Boss Says 'Targeted Strikes' On Standby As Talks With Automakers 'Far Apart'
  UAW Boss Says ‘Targeted Strikes’ On Standby As Talks With Automakers ‘Far Apart’

  Update (1930ET): 

  “For the first time in our history, we may strike all of the Big Three at once,” United Auto Workers boss Shawn Fain told members in a Wednesday evening Facebook Live event. 

  Fain said General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis increased their wage offers but rejected some of the union’s other demands. 

  “We do not yet have offers on the table that reflect the sacrifices and contributions our members have made to these companies.

  “To win we’re likely going to have to take action. We are preparing to strike these companies in a way they’ve never seen before.”

  He said if no deal is reached by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, then “standup strikes” will be unleashed at different auto plants to keep the automakers guessing. “We will not strike all of our facilities at once” on Thursday,” he added. 

  Targeted strikes will help the union sidestep ‘strike pay,’ which amounts to $500 a week per member. 

  Fain said the goal of the targeted strikes is to reach a fair labor deal for members, “but if the companies continue to bargain in bad faith or continue to stall or continue to give us insulting offers, then our strike is going to continue to grow.” 

  With 24 hours left in labor talks, UAW and the automakers are still far apart. 

  *    *    * 

  Talks between United Auto Workers and Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, appear stalled on Wednesday morning as the deadline for a new four-year labor deal with automakers quickly approaches.

  UAW boss Shawn Fain is set to speak to the 146,000 members during a Facebook Live event at 1700 ET regarding the ongoing labor negotiations with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. According to Bloomberg, Fain is expected to discuss a potential strike strategy.

  

  AP News reports the Facebook Live event could have the union boss shed more light on “targeted strikes at a small number of factories run by each of Detroit’s three automakers if they can’t reach contract agreements by a Thursday night deadline.” 

  Strikes at parts plants could spark production halts at multiple assembly factories. We detailed Tuesday a large enough strike could plunge Michigan’s economy into a recession. 

  Last week, automakers submitted contract offers to UAW. Fain quickly threw those in the trash, calling General Motors “insulting.” 

  Bank of America Securities warned clients a “strike is almost guaranteed” because UAW demands and automaker offers are so wide apart.  

  Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, told AP if UAW strikes later this week — it would be the largest in decades. 

  

  Labor actions will likely occur at part factories for pickup trucks and big SUVs, according to Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. 

  

  “They’re trying to impose some hardship on the companies and apply an accelerating level of pressure to encourage them to make an offer which will be acceptable to the rank and file and goes further toward meeting the demands that they have on the table,” Masters said. 

  He said it would make sense for UAW to target the weakest point of the supply chains: 

  “You would go after the components that would shut down as many of those product facilities as possible.

  “The tactic would force the companies to lay off workers at assembly plants, and they would get unemployment benefits rather than money from the union strike fund.” 

  Meanwhile, pro-union President Biden and his administration appear unconcerned about imminent strike threats across America’s manufacturing automobile hub. 

  

  It appears the president likes spending time more time at his liberal white-elitest Rehoboth Beach house than actually working. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 19:30

• Growing Maze Of State And Local Laws Challenging Biden's Energy Push
  Growing Maze Of State And Local Laws Challenging Biden’s Energy Push

  Authored by Steve Miller via RealClear Wire,

  Grassroots resistance to the Biden administration’s ambitious push for a “zero-carbon” economy is coalescing in varied new state laws and local ordinances that threaten to bog down solar and wind development in a multi-front legal and regulatory war on a scale not seen before. 

  

  Until recently and with few exceptions, squabbles pitted loosely organized local residents against renewable developers, with an average of two major projects a month facing protests and legal action in mostly rural areas, according to a database of renewable rejections compiled by Robert Bryce, a former fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. 

  But the escalation of local protests has gradually drawn more elected officials into the fray, with new laws and regulations auguring ever-varying multi-dimensional contests at the federal, state, and local levels to gain approvals, often involving international players: 

  • Laws passed in Ohio and Kansas in 2021 and 2022, respectively, give stronger input to towns and villages that are often the target of well-heeled power companies seeking to use rural land to construct large-scale renewable energy projects. 

  • In Michigan, a group called Michigan Citizens for the Protection of Farmland plans a ballot proposal that would ban large-scale solar farms on agriculturally zoned land across the state, combating a strong renewable lobby in the Democrat-controlled state. 

  • In Maine, lawmakers heeded the formidable fishing lobby and passed a law in 2021 banning wind farms in state waters off the coast. 

  • In the crucial early primary state of Iowa, where farming interests are powerful, opponents are pursuing legislation halting solar plants on land suitable for agriculture within 150 feet of a neighboring property. The bill was introduced earlier this year but did not move past subcommittee approval. 

  Meanwhile, lawmakers in 12 states, including Republican strongholds Florida and Iowa, have passed measures that limit or remove local control of renewable projects, handing more authority to the state. 

  “States get to set their own energy policy,” James Coleman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told RealClearInvestigations. “For example, New York has left a lot of money on the table with natural gas because it doesn’t like fracking, and the federal government has allowed that.” 

  “We need to replace all fossil fuels plants with renewables … so my suggestion is that we need some kind of federal intervention for that,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “I think it is possible given the magnitude of the need.” 

  There’s little question that states and towns are chafing at the rush to development and full deployment of wind and solar. 

  “Our county is under assault,” Bill Hicks, a resident of Franklin County, population 10,000, in east Texas, said at a March hearing in Austin for a proposed legislative measure that would give more power to Texas landowners who resist renewable energy developers. 

  Hicks noted six pending solar plants, adding: “Folks, one of them is 5,000 acres and stretches for nine miles along a highway.” 

  Opponents of the Texas bill represented interests from as far away as Norway and Spain, with billions of dollars in revenue and investments from multi-national corporations. 

  “This is an anti-renewable energy bill,” one opponent, Jeff Clark, president of the Advanced Power Alliance, an advocacy group for an international consortium of renewable producers, said in written testimony. “Senate Bill 624 is designed to stop renewable energy development … everywhere in Texas.” 

  Conflicts over renewable source placement from Vermont to Nevada have put locals at odds with the Biden administration’s dream of a carbon-free electric sector by 2035 to combat a “climate crisis” that it claims is driven by fossil fuels. 

  Regulations on renewable plant siting vary widely by state, ranging from a hybrid of local and state authority to outright local or state control. State approval is required of most any energy project, be it oil, gas, wind, or solar. Some states require additional scrutiny of projects over a specified size, while others apply uniform standards regardless of scope. 

  While 31 states have adopted requirements that a percentage of electricity come from renewable sources in the future, where the plants for this electric generation are situated largely rests with private developers, noted Gerrard of Columbia University. 

  “They will decide where to buy and rent the land and where it will work the best,” Gerrard said. “Private developers are very good at that, and it is subject to government approval.” 

  Opposition has a strong element of so-called NIMBY-ism, an acronym for “not in my backyard,” and both sides have turned to the courts on some occasions, with mixed results. 

  Local opponents cite some of the same arguments used against the oil industry for decades: Development means the potential loss of farmland, the impact of developing roads and infrastructure on the environment, and water runoff that endangers the water supply. 

  “A big part of this tears communities apart,” said Jack Van Kley, a Columbus, Ohio-based attorney who has represented groups of residents opposing solar and wind developments. “It becomes a green energy civil war in some places.” 

  With the heft of state law giving these citizens broader say in locating projects on large tracts of wilderness or farmland, energy companies will have to be more diligent when selecting locations. 

  The corporations say large tracts are ideal for siting solar and wind farms close to transmission conveyances, and therefore more profitable. 

  “They also want an area with flat ground, which often means farm ground,” said Van Kley, the Ohio lawyer, whose clients are mostly farmers. 

  Connie Ehrlich has staved off solar development in Pulaski County, Indiana, for three years with a tenacious fight that has included lawsuits, social media blitzes, and overtures to state leaders for help. 

  But Indiana’s political leadership has not cooperated. “They’re all in on solar,” she said, including the state’s Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who joined executives from Israeli-owned Doral Renewables at a solar plant groundbreaking last year in Pulaski County. Even the Indiana Farm Bureau, which is supposed to represent farmers in such situations, “has been a real disappointment,” Ehrlich said. “They have been more involved with solar developers than us, hosting events with them. It will cost them membership.” 

  In the state legislature, Indiana Republicans proposed taxpayer-funded payouts to municipalities that allow solar and wind farms. But residents are outspoken against them: “This bill would take our own Indiana taxpayer dollars and offer them back to us as a bribe,” Judith Noll, a resident of rural Whitley County, told legislators during a hearing on the measure. 

  Indiana Farm Bureau President Randy Kron and Vice President Kendell Culp – also a state representative whose political donors include out-of-state solar industry entities – did not respond to interview requests. 

  Utility siting, be it for fossil fuels or renewable energy, is a political art with huge stakes that has yet to be perfected. 

  The issue has been studied for decades, starting with the designation of land for oil and gas exploration, and is decried for the alleged potential of groundwater pollution. Nuclear facilities are disparaged for the possibility of meltdowns and leaks. 

  Today, objectors look at renewables as a danger to the environment from consuming valuable agricultural or recreational land. Solar developers have flocked to the hinterlands of Nevada, with flat tracts of sunny land viewed as the perfect landscape for vast panel arrays. 

  The area is even more attractive because most of it is federal property, controlled now by an administration foisting billion-dollar breaks on the renewables industry. In July, Warren Buffet’s NV Energy bought 7,200 desert acres from the feds for $82 million in an auction. The land, set to be covered with solar panels, is close to the town of Beatty, Nevada, which leverages its proximity to Death Valley National Park as a recreation and tourism draw. 

  The town’s leaders fear that even though Beatty has so far managed to stave off largescale solar development, the new land deal 11 miles south is a dark portent. 

  “When NextEra Energy came to the town and wanted to put a facility in, they asked us, ‘What do you want?’” said Erika Gerling, who chairs the Beatty Town Advisory Board. “They offered to build some big fancy visitor center thing, but we don’t want any of that. We want to have our own economy.” NextEra wanted to build a 3,000-acre solar plant that would go right up to the entrance to Death Valley, on a scenic desert-scape that defines the region’s stark natural beauty. 

  To fight large corporate interests, “people have to stand up and be strong and be outraged,” said Gerling, who has been pleased by the support of two Democratic state senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto. “It’s one thing if I write a letter for the advisory board but another when 100 citizens from the town come out to talk about it.”  

  Several of the major renewable corporations, including NextEra and Invenergy, did not respond to requests to speak about their siting policies.  

  Several communities in Michigan have passed moratoriums on solar development, some under a 1974 law that allowed farmland to be protected by the state for a specified period ranging up to 90 years. But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered the statute amended in 2019, allowing solar panels to be placed on the protected land. A spokeswoman for the state of Michigan did not respond to emailed questions on the Democratic governor’s action. 

  Her order rankles some members of the state’s farming community, who are working on a ballot proposal to protect farmland. 

  “Making sure these renewable projects are done right is about protecting the country, and at the end of the day we have to protect our farmland,” said Erin Hamilton, who is leading an effort to enforce Michigan’s protection of agricultural land. “Look at history, and any civilization that has gone under … One of the things that broke it is that they lost control of their food supply.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 19:20

• UN Agency Crowns Biden's Southern Border As 'Deadliest Migration Route Worldwide' 
  UN Agency Crowns Biden’s Southern Border As ‘Deadliest Migration Route Worldwide’ 

  President Biden and the Democrats’ radical open border policies have sparked the worst US-Mexico border crisis on record. Readers have already known this, but a new report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) revealed the southern border is the most dangerous route in the world on record. 

  IMO documented 686 migrant deaths and disappearances across the southern border in 2022, accounting for about half of all incidents in the Americas that year. With 1,457 total migrant deaths and disappearances in the region, 2022 stands as the deadliest year since the organization started compiling data in 2014.

  

  Since President Biden took office, more than 5.8 million illegals have flooded the southern border, a number comparable to the population of Denmark. The surge in migrants can be directly linked to Democrats’ far-left open border policies. 

  AZ built a border wall out of shipping crates. TX built a floating wall in the Rio Grande.

  The Biden administration sued both states and forced them to take it down

  It’s not a border crisis, it’s a plot pic.twitter.com/JKkm856jZA

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 7, 2023

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  “Although the data shows that deaths and disappearances in the US-Mexico border decreased by 6 percent from the previous year, the 2022 figure is likely higher than the available information suggests, due to missing official data, including information from Texas border county coroner’s offices and the Mexican search and rescue agency,” IMO said. 

  The IOM Regional Director for South America, Marcelo Pisani, called the border crisis a “grim reality.” At the same time, she said, “The impacts on the families left behind to search endlessly for a lost loved one are profound.” 

  REPORT: The Biden administration is considering, not securing the southern border, but forcing Texas to keep migrants in the state as the crisis spirals out of control in so-called “sanctuary cities.”

  Clown show 🤡

  The news comes as Democrat leaders are losing their minds over… pic.twitter.com/k1EpXnX8xC

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 8, 2023

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  Recall that in Biden’s first 100 days of office, his administration used 94 executive actions on immigration, including halting the border wall construction. 

  Fast forward to the present day, the border crisis has spread to New York City. New York Mayor Eric Adams warned last week the migrant crisis will ‘destroy New York City‘ and slammed the Biden administration for doing nothing about the problem they created.

  And Democrats are turning on each other. 

  Even the liberal women on The View don’t want these migrants. 

  New York City mayor Eric Adams wants to secure the border to stop the inflow of migrants.

  The liberal women of “The View” want to deport migrants from their city.

  Adams now is announcing substantial budget cuts in New York City in response to the migrant crisis.

  In just 2… pic.twitter.com/5DAW2GsqK7

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 10, 2023

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  Democrats own the border chaos spreading like a virus through US cities.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 19:00

• Marching Orders: White House Letter Tells Media To "Ramp Up Their Scrutiny" Of GOP In Response to Impeachment Inquiry
  Marching Orders: White House Letter Tells Media To “Ramp Up Their Scrutiny” Of GOP In Response to Impeachment Inquiry

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  I have previously written how the level of advocacy and bias has created a danger of a de facto state media in the United States.

  It is possible to have such a system by consent rather than coercion.

  Given that long concern, a letter drafted by the Biden White House Legal Counsel’s Office was striking in a call for major media to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans “for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.”

  

  The message is curious and concerning, particularly in the aggressive role being played by the White House Counsel’s office under Stuart Frank Delery.

  First, as I have previously noted, the White House is now actively involved in pushing narratives and denying factual allegations linked to the Biden corruption scandal.

  That could create Nixonian-type allegations of the abuse of office in the use of federal employees to counter impeachment efforts.

  Second, the letter was drafted by Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office. So White House lawyers are now enlisting the media in a counter media campaign against impeachment?

  The letter removes any pretense of separation between the Biden personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s office. Sams has been the most aggressive White House official in actively swatting down allegations of corruption as well as the President’s documents investigation.

  Third, the letter calls for the media to actively support the White House account.

  The draft of the letter is a call for what I have previously criticized as “advocacy journalism” where reporters frame stories to advance their own viewpoints or values.

  Sams wrote “[c]overing impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable.” In other words, media should (and it has for years) decline to give equal attention to allegations against the Bidens and instead tell the public what the truth is.

  It is a call for media to tailor the coverage to push the position of the White House against this effort to ramp up the investigation into corruption.

  It is an approach that is already embraced by many in the media. That was evident in the meltdown of Washington Post columnist Philip Bump recently when he was confronted by countervailing evidence in the Biden scandals.

  Before storming out, Bump chastised the interviewer for not just taking his work as the “putative expert” and said that he had enough “because you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen, and you continue to insist upon things that are, you know, parsing of language.”

  That appears the approach pushed by Sams, who specifically references Facebook and Fox as enemies of the truth:

  “in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth.”

  The letter has an uncomfortable feeling of marching orders to the media. 

  This is a media that followed the lead of Biden associates in spreading the false story that the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.

  This is the media that refused to acknowledge the authenticity of the laptop until only recently — long after the presidential election.

  This was the media that only recently admitted that President Biden has been lying about denials related to his son’s influence peddling.

  Yet, the White House is now calling for the media to again circle the wagons around the President and attack the impeachment effort as it did the laptop and the corruption investigation.

  

  Once again, what is most disturbing is that the White House shows no reluctance or concern in making such an open pitch to the press. There is a sense of license in using the media as an extension of the White House press push. The fact that this is a representative of the White House counsel’s office is particularly chilling. This is not the press office but the counsel for the President calling on media to form a unified front against the Republicans and the impeachment inquiry.

  The letter is an alarming erosion of separation of the White House Counsel’s office from the Biden defense team. It also confirms an active and aggressive role of White House officials in swatting down allegations against the President. While the staff obviously is not expected to be neutral on impeachment, there is a careful line that past White House counsels have walked between fulfilling their duties to the office as opposed to the officeholder.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 18:40

• China Brings Taliban Out Of Total Isolation In Sending New Ambassador
  China Brings Taliban Out Of Total Isolation In Sending New Ambassador

  The Taliban government of Afghanistan is seeking to break loose from its isolation on the world stage, with a little help from Communist China, of all countries. 

  For the first time since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 amid the disastrous and bloody rapid American pullout, Kabul has welcomed a new Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan. 

  

  The Taliban apparently pulled out all the stops Wednesday in creating a lot of fanfare to greet Ambassador Zhao Sheng, with The Associated Press observing that his “car swept through the tree-lined driveway of the Presidential Palace escorted by a police convoy,” after which he was “greeted by uniformed troops and met top-ranking Taliban officials, including Mohammad Hassan Akhund, who heads the administration, and Foreign Affairs Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.”

  “It is the first time since the Taliban takeover that an ambassador to Kabul has been afforded such lavish protocol,” the report noted. 

  While the vast majority of countries around the world, including the US, have not formally recognized Taliban rule, China has remained among the few that have maintained a diplomatic mission in Kabul. 

  China as the globe’s second largest economy has expressed a desire to better ties with Afghanistan, especially on a commercial and investment front, also given the potential for Belt & Road related infrastructural works. But it remains that security and terror attacks have plagued the country. 

  Attempting to put on a new positive face for the world to see of ‘responsible rule’, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had this to say:

  “It also signals to other countries to come forward and interact with the Islamic Emirate,” said Mujahid. “We should establish good relations as a result of good interactions and, with good relations, we can solve all the problems that are in front of us or coming in the future.”

  Once upon time when the Taliban leaders used to be strictly against pictures and videos. They reformed themselves here. China’s new ambassador presented his credentials to Afghanistan’s interim Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund in Kabul. pic.twitter.com/PkhgaEnd57

  — Mushtaq Yusufzai (@MYusufzai) September 13, 2023

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  Within months after the US-NATO pullout from the country, following a more than 20-year occupation, there were widespread rumors that China was eyeing moving troops into abandoned US military bases. This never materialized, but it’s likely Beijing is more interested in the central Asian country’s rare earth minerals.

  One CNN headline noted that the Taliban is sitting on at least $1 trillion worth of rare earth minerals, but extracting this in the long term amid a deteriorated security environment is quite another story. China could be positioning itself to provide the kind of technology and infrastructure needed for such future projects.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/13/2023 – 18:20

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