Today’s News 18th August 2024

• New York Times' 'Distorted' Coverage Of CCP Abuses Likely Cost Lives, Report Says
  New York Times’ ‘Distorted’ Coverage Of CCP Abuses Likely Cost Lives, Report Says

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

  At critical moments over the past 25 years, the New York Times has aided the interests of a power faction within the Chinese Communist Party responsible for atrocities against practitioners of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong.

  On top of implicating itself ethically, the paper has also, as a result, distorted its China coverage and misled its readers, as revealed by an analysis of The New York Times’ China coverage as well as interviews with half a dozen experts on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politics and geopolitics.

  

  Due to the paper’s disproportionate influence on policy, its skewed coverage has likely led to a loss of life and treasure that is difficult to quantify, some experts said.

  The New York Times has for decades positioned itself as a global newspaper, insisting on a necessity of access to China, according to former staffers. That meant convincing the communist regime that the paper’s presence would benefit it.

  The paper has never explained what price it has paid for access to the country.

  “There’s always the issue of, if you want to be a global newspaper, what do you have to do to keep China happy and stay in business there?” Tom Kuntz, a former editor at the paper, told The Epoch Times.

  “There’s always been tensions, and I know they’ve, like a lot of companies, tried to maintain access to China.”

  Bradley Thayer, a former senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, expert on strategic assessment of China, and a contributor to The Epoch Times, was more blunt.

  “If they don’t cover the regime the way the regime wants to be covered, they’re going to be blackballed. They’re not going to be able to return,” he told The Epoch Times.

  “So all of these individuals have a vested interest, if you will, in toeing the Party line.”

  Covering Chinese politics, The New York Times has ascribed sincerity where deception is expected and glossed over where it should have dug deeper, all in a pattern of affinity with the interests of a CCP clique aligned with former Party leader Jiang Zemin, multiple experts affirmed.

  Jiang’s influence has waned since 2012, when incoming CCP leader Xi Jinping exhibited an unexpected dexterity in eliminating his opponents. Only a minority of Jiang’s acolytes have maintained influence since his death in 2022. Despite the shift in power, however, The New York Times has maintained the pro-Jiang pattern.

  The New York Times did not respond to a detailed list of emailed questions for this article.

  Privileged Position

  The paper developed a special connection with Jiang in 2001, when its then-publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and several editors and reporters were granted a rare audience with the dictator.

  The paper ran a flattering interview headlined “In Jiang’s Words: ‘I Hope the Western World Can Understand China Better.’”

  Within days, the CCP unblocked access to The New York Times’ website in China.

  A month later, the CCP unblocked several other Western news sites, including those of The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the BBC. The sites were blocked again within a week.

  The New York Times, on the other hand, remained accessible. Users then reported that content on the site was being blocked selectively, giving the paper a chance to benefit from access to the Chinese market to the degree that it kept within bounds acceptable to the CCP.

  The interview came at a sensitive time for Jiang. He had only a little more than a year left before he was supposed to hand over Party control to Hu Jintao, fulfilling the succession line stipulated by Deng Xiaoping, his predecessor.

  But things weren’t going well for Jiang. His persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, a political campaign that was supposed to whip the Party and the nation into conformity under his control, was failing to reach its goals. Even worse, foreign media, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, were taking apart the CCP’s anti-Falun Gong propaganda and highlighting accounts of wrongful detention and torture.

  The New York Times, by contrast, appeared most helpful to Jiang’s campaign. By the time of the 2001 interview, the paper ran several dozen articles on Falun Gong, almost all of them profusely parroting the propaganda portraying the practice as a “cult” or a “sect.”

  Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline consisting of slow-moving exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was introduced to the public in China in 1992, and by the end of the decade, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people were practicing it.

  

  When in January 2001 CCP state media claimed that several people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing were Falun Gong practitioners, The Washington Post dispatched a reporter to fact-check the story. The New York Times, on the other hand, immediately took the CCP line as fact.

  If the paper employed its much-touted investigative acumen, it would have discovered, as others have, that the incident was staged. After the first man allegedly set himself alight in the middle of the square, four policemen somehow managed to obtain several fire extinguishers, rush to the scene, and put out the fire, all in less than one minute.

  Given the distances involved on the giant square, that wouldn’t have been physically possible—unless the officers already had the fire extinguishers ready and knew in advance where on the square they would be needed that day, several independent investigations concluded, pointing out dozens of other inconsistencies.

  Even without any investigation, the incident made little sense. The victims supposedly followed a belief that burning themselves alive would bring them to heaven. But Falun Gong includes no such belief. In fact, its literature treats suicide as killing a human life, which it explicitly prohibits.

  The New York Times didn’t even find it strange that since Falun Gong’s public introduction in 1992, of the tens of millions of people practicing it, none of them had publicly set themselves on fire until that day, and none had done so since.

  Even after The Washington Post investigation traced several of the alleged victims back to their hometown and found that none had ever been seen practicing Falun Gong, The New York Times continued to parrot the CCP’s propaganda.

  Jiang was apparently pleased with The New York Times, calling it during the 2001 interview “a very good paper.”

  Getting in Jiang’s good graces on the Falun Gong issue would have been particularly critical, as it struck at the heart of a core principle of CCP politics, several experts affirmed.

  Partners in Crime

  One of the bedrocks of the CCP’s internal politics is ensuring one’s own safety, particularly upon retirement. Cadres are well aware of the pitiful fate of many high-ranking comrades. Infamously, Liu Shaoqi, once No. 2 to the CCP’s first leader, Mao Zedong, was purged during the Cultural Revolution, arrested, and tortured to death.

  When Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, looked for somebody to helm the CCP after him in 1989, he picked Jiang Zemin, the Shanghai Party secretary who supported the CCP’s deployment of military to crush the 1989 student protests.

  “Because Jiang was implicated in the repression of the students, Deng could trust Jiang to be his successor. Jiang could not in the future use the massacre against Deng without implicating himself,” explained Matthew Little, a senior editor of The Epoch Times, in a 2012 analysis.

  The persecution of Falun Gong played much the same role for Jiang, who encouraged his cronies to build “political capital” by backing the campaign. Some did so with fervor, escalating the persecution to a point of unspeakable barbarity, particularly in encouraging torture to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith, The Epoch Times previously reported.

  These officials, tied by shared complicity in the atrocities, were at the core of Jiang’s power faction, sometimes called the “Shanghai gang.”

  In exchange for their support, Jiang let the gang abuse their offices and plunder state-owned assets, setting the tone for a nationwide culture of corruption.

  That culture served a dual purpose for Jiang. On one hand, it allowed him to buy supporters, especially in the 1990s, when he struggled to form a power base among CCP cadres, who generally saw him as incompetent, according to an unofficial biography of Jiang published by The Epoch Times.

  On the other hand, he could eliminate his rivals in the name of “anti-corruption.”

  But the sword of anti-corruption cuts both ways. As Xi later demonstrated, it could be applied selectively against the Jiang faction, too.

  The bond through culpability in the Falun Gong repression was more solid. The crimes became so extensive that none of the culprits would have risked their revelation, some China experts said.

  There was a problem, though: Jiang’s designated replacement, Hu Jintao, showed little enthusiasm for the Falun Gong campaign.

  “Jiang tried to push Hu to persecute Falun Gong and found he was quite reluctant,” said Li Linyi, a China commentator, expert on CCP internal politics, and Epoch Times contributor.

  “Their relationship started to deteriorate after that. Jiang just felt more and more concerned about Hu.”

  Just as the CCP under Deng redressed some victims of the Cultural Revolution, Hu could, at least theoretically, redress Falun Gong, blame Jiang, and purge his faction.

  

  In reality, this was unlikely to happen, Li said.

  “There was a huge price for redressing the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “Not only did some top CCP leaders get purged, but the CCP admitted they made a big mistake. That is not good for them in order to hold power in China in the long term. The CCP is still criticized for what they did during the Cultural Revolution.”

  CCP leaders would only backtrack on Falun Gong as a last resort, if they felt it would save the regime, he said.

  That didn’t mean, however, that Hu and his supporters couldn’t use the Falun Gong issue to endanger Jiang and his faction in other ways. Indeed, there’s evidence that they have.

  “All [Jiang’s] policies could have continued to be carried out by Hu Jintao, except this one. … The only thing Jiang Zemin worried about was the policy of persecuting Falun Gong,” said Heng He, a veteran China commentator with NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times.

  Jiang was thus extremely motivated to constrain Hu and prop up his own image, several experts confirmed.

  The New York Times proved helpful in this pursuit.

  Shoring Up a Dictator’s Legacy

  By 2002, The New York Times was in pro-Jiang mode. Parroting the Party propaganda, the paper declared that Falun Gong had been successfully “crushed.”

  Citing CCP sources, it suggested that Falun Gong was already passé and that it only ever had 2 million practitioners. It went as far as claiming that the figure cited by Falun Gong sources, 70 million, was baseless.

  Yet a few years earlier, before the persecution began, multiple Western and Chinese media, including The Associated Press and The New York Times, provided figures of 70 million or 100 million, generally attributing them to estimates by the Chinese State Sports Administration, which had the best insight due to a massive survey of Falun Gong practitioners it conducted in the late 1990s.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 23:20

• Here's Why The US Is Playing Dumb About Ukraine's Plans To Invade Kursk
  Here’s Why The US Is Playing Dumb About Ukraine’s Plans To Invade Kursk

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the US didn’t know about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia’s Kursk Region, but that’s unbelievable since there’s no way that its intelligence services didn’t even catch a hint of it, not to mention likely participate in the preparations.

  

  Putin even reaffirmed during a meeting on Monday with high-ranking government officials about this crisis that Ukraine is the West’s proxy for waging war on Russia. Here are the five reasons why the US is still playing dumb:

  1. Maintain Plausible Deniability For Escalation Control

  Admitting complicity in Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s universally recognized territory would make the US a direct participant in these unprecedented hostilities and thus place enormous pressure upon Moscow to respond against it and/or other NATO countries like Poland. The US doesn’t want that to happen, ergo why it also forced Ukraine to call off its reportedly planned assassination of Putin last month as explained here, so dishonestly denying knowledge of its proxy’s plans is par for the course and not unexpected.

  2. Avoid Embarrassment & Responsibility Once Ukraine Fails

  It’s unlikely that Ukraine will be able to indefinitely hold the territory that it captured inside of Russia so it’s a question of when and not if it fails. Accordingly, the US wants to avoid the embarrassment associated with that once it happens and also reduce the chances that Russia feels pressured to respond against it and/or other NATO countries as written above. The US is basically letting Ukraine hold the bag after everything inevitably fails apart so that Russia’s full fury is directly solely against its proxy.  

  3. Propagate David-vs.-Goliath Optics For Boosting Morale

  By pretending to be caught off guard by what just happened, the US is lending false credence to the optics that the latest phase of the already decade-long Ukrainian Conflict that began almost two and a half years ago is a modern-day David vs. Goliath story. This is meant to boost morale inside of Ukraine amidst its drastic slump caused by the ramping up of forcible conscription there and increase support among the Western public for continuing to fund this proxy war in the face of growing fatigue.

  4. Keep Up The Charade Of A “Gentlemen’s Agreement” Gone Bad

  RT’s Sergey Poletaev introduced an intriguing theory into the global information ecosystem earlier this week when he wrote that “The relative calm along the 1,000-kilometer border for two and a half years likely wasn’t coincidental. We can suggest there were agreements between Moscow and Washington, specifically with the administration of US President Joe Biden.” If there’s any truth to that, then lying about not being aware of Kiev’s plans could be an attempt by the US to try to hoodwink Putin yet again.

  5. Troll Russia After It Previously Denied Supporting Donbass

  Russia always denied militarily supporting Donbass throughout the eight years between “EuroMaidan” and the special operation, but the US insisted that this was a lie and that Russia had “invaded” Ukraine, albeit at a limited scale. Whatever the truth may be, playing dumb about its support for Ukraine’s indisputable invasion of Russia is also an attempt to troll Russia for denying the dubious claim that it “invaded” Donbass before 2022.  

  There’s no truth to the US’ denial that it knew nothing about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia, but claiming otherwise advances its escalation control and soft power interests.

  Those who play along with this are insulting the intelligence of their targeted audience, some of whom might feel pressured not to call them out though due to fear of being aggressively harassed online and “canceled”.

  All objective observers know the truth, especially those in the Global South, which is all that matters for Russia.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 22:45

• Sen. Scott Urges Commerce Department To Investigate Chinese-Owned Temu
  Sen. Scott Urges Commerce Department To Investigate Chinese-Owned Temu

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is calling on the Commerce Department to open an investigation into the business practices of Chinese budget online retailer Temu.

  In a letter dated Aug. 14 to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Scott warned that the fast-growing Temu represents “a new challenge” to efforts to ensure fair trade practices in the United States.

  

  “To protect our nation’s economic interests and the well-being of our citizens, I believe it is imperative that we address this issue promptly,” Scott wrote.

  Temu’s platform, which began in the United States in September 2022, is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, which also operates the Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo. In January, the research firm Marketplace Pulse estimated that more than 100,000 China-based sellers were operating on Temu.

  Scott identified five areas of concern surrounding Temu—product safety and quality, labor practices, unfair competition, data privacy, and counterfeit goods—as reasons why the Commerce Department must take action against the shopping platform.

  The Florida senator warned that products sold on Temu “are not subject to the rigorous safety tests and inspections that other competitor products made elsewhere around the world undergo.”

  “There are concerns that Temu may be a conduit for counterfeit products,” he added.

  South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Aug. 14 that toxic substances were found on women’s accessories, such as hats and sandals, being sold on three Chinese online platforms, including Temu, citing the South Korean city government of Seoul.

  “There are reports of unsafe working conditions, labor abuses, and human rights violations associated with [the] production of products for Temu,” Scott wrote. “We need to ensure that the products sold on Temu are not manufactured using forced labor or other unethical practices that violate international labor standards.”

  In June last year, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published a report warning consumers that “there is an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labor.”

  “Temu does not have any system to ensure compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA),” the report reads.

  The law bans imports from China’s far-western region of Xinjiang—where the Chinese regime has been accused of committing genocide against Uyghurs—unless companies can prove products weren’t produced with forced labor.

  Scott also questioned Temu’s ability to sell products at lower prices than U.S. retailers, suggesting that it could result from “unfair trade practices or the exploitation of loopholes in our import regulations.”

  In February, Scott and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking his administration to end the “de minimus” trade rule because it’s a loophole that “unfairly benefits foreign companies and overseas e-commerce platforms such as Temu.” Under the rule, imports under $800 in valuation can enter the United States without paying duties and taxes and with little or no customs inspection.

  “De minimis shipments, now numbering 3 million a day, are at an elevated risk of violating UFLPA, containing counterfeit goods, exacerbating the fentanyl crisis, or posing a serious health danger to consumers,” the two senators wrote in their letter.

  Scott pointed out in his Aug. 14 letter that data security should be another concern.

  “Given Temu’s Chinese ownership, we must investigate potential risks to American consumers’ data privacy and security,” Scott wrote. “Concerns regarding exploitation of Temu application users lead U.S.-based companies to announce warnings and ‘how-to’ guides on removing the Temu application from its application purchasing platform and user devices.”

  In China, there are different laws, including the National Intelligence Law, that can compel Chinese companies to hand over data collected within China and elsewhere to Beijing’s intelligence agencies.

  Scott asked the Commerce Department to “launch a comprehensive investigation” into Temu, work with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to assess potential risks, evaluate the need for new regulations, and submit a detailed report to Congress on its findings.

  The Florida senator also requested a meeting with Raimondo to discuss the issue.

  The Commerce Department and Temu officials didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 22:10

• Oakland Neighbors "Take Matters Into Their Own Hands" To Fight Reckless Driving Sideshows
  Oakland Neighbors “Take Matters Into Their Own Hands” To Fight Reckless Driving Sideshows

  Neighbors in Oakland have had enough with reckless driving and, since their years of complaints are going unnoticed, they’re banding together and doing something about it.

  Frustrated by years of reckless driving, Oakland homeowners took action by placing dirt- and rock-filled tires on busy streets.

  On Tuesday, city crews faced hecklers while removing the tires from East 21st Street, according to Fox KTVU.

  Odelson Souza said his 2 year old son was almost hit by a speeding car on the sidewalk, telling Fox: “Look, please help us. Who else we gonna call? Superman?”

  

  Three months ago, neighbors created makeshift roundabouts with reflective tape on 18th Avenue. On Tuesday, they illegally parked two cars to prevent city crews from dismantling one.

  Neighbor Lauren Blanchard said: “Well, we are protesting this. It feels crushing. We want the city to pay attention to our neighborhood.”

  One neighbor said: “They almost killed someone. There’s a school up there. Kids have been hit on this street. There are people whose cars have been crashed into and totaled.”

  He continued: “Enough of the performative, you know, making everyone feel better, renaming streets after dead rap artists. Do your [expletive] job.”

  “So disappointed with the city’s inability or unwillingness to respond to clear and present danger,” another neighbor, Wendy Jung, said.

  Sean Maher, Oakland’s Citywide Communications and Engagement Director responded: “We all want safer streets, but increasing the risk to the public by installing hazards is not the solution. The city will be promptly removing these unauthorized, dangerous installations.”

  The report says neighbors have committed to installing more barriers until the city acts.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 21:35

• CIA Awards Qatari Intel Chief Top Medal For Cooperation With US
  CIA Awards Qatari Intel Chief Top Medal For Cooperation With US

  Via The Cradle

  In a ceremony earlier this week, CIA Director William Burns awarded the head of the Qatari State Security Agency the George Tenet medal for his work on strengthening intelligence cooperation between the US and Qatar, Axios reported Thursday. The two intelligence agencies especially during the decade-long proxy war to oust Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

  Both Burns and Al-Khulaifi have played important roles in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas for a potential ceasefire in Gaza and prisoner exchange.

  

  One reason for the award is Qatari efforts to release the remaining 111 Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza, one source with knowledge of the issue told Axios.

  Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in its prisons and detention camps, where recent reports suggest that torture and rape is common.

  Another source said Burns gave the award to his Qatari counterpart in “appreciation of his role in maintaining national and regional security, and the exceptional support he provided to the CIA in preserving the interests and security of the US and Qatar.”

  Another important reason for the award was the cooperation between the CIA and Qatari intelligence in counterterrorism and the ability of the Qatari State Security Agency to prevent and foil threats and attacks in West Asia, the source told Axios.

  

  Both the US and Qatar have long been known for their support of terrorist groups in the region.

  Starting in 2011, the US and Qatar worked closely with other regional states to support Al-Qaeda in Syria.

  Saudi & Qatari governments funded and gave logistical support to ISIS confirms email from Hillary Clinton to the man who was to become her campaign chair, John Podesta https://t.co/tlWxkEZ8FN pic.twitter.com/mpyIb7QchL

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 22, 2018

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

  The Syrian branch of the terror group, the Nusra Front, led a jihadist insurgency against the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad under the cover of US-sponsored anti-government protests.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 21:00

• Kevin Plank's Race Farm Listed For $22 Million Amid Under Armour Troubles
  Kevin Plank’s Race Farm Listed For $22 Million Amid Under Armour Troubles

  Baltimore-based Under Amour has been undergoing a broad multi-year restructuring plan. Earlier this year, founder Kevin Plank returned to the helm, hoping to reverse the sales slump and boost profits.

  Given that UA shares have been a trainwreck since the company was accused of defrauding shareholders about revenue growth in a bid to beat Wall Street’s forecasts in 2017, Plank, the third largest shareholder, has seen his paper wealth evaporate. 

  In June, UA agreed to pay $434 million to settle the lawsuit that accused Plank of intentionally deceiving investors about the company’s financial health between Sept. 16, 2015, and Nov. 1, 2019. UA will use cash and a revolving credit facility to pay the settlement. 

  With UA in the dumps, about 21 miles north of the company’s headquarters in Baltimore City, situated in some of the best steeplechase country in the US, Plank’s 530-acre horse farm, called “Sagamore Farm,” was “briefly listed for $22 million,” according to local media Baltimore Banner. 

  

  Here’s more from the local media outlet: 

  The listing by the real estate firm Compass was publicly available online on Monday morning. Denie Dulin, the listing agent, said the Glyndon estate might be sold privately and declined to comment further.

  “It’s not publicly being marketed yet,” Dulin said.

  Plank bought Sagamore Farm from a developer in 2007 through an LLC. It’s unclear how much he paid. Property records do not disclose a sale price.

  In 2010, several years after Plank bought the race farm, he told the Baltimore Sun paper that he planned to win a ‘Triple Crown.’ 

  

  The real estate agent did not explain why Plank decided to sell the race farm. Plank has been locked in a zoning dispute with local conservation groups after he proposed building a whiskey distillery on the historic farm. The timing of the sale also comes amid UA restructuring efforts.

  Meanwhile, Plank, who previously supported former President Trump, hosted a closed-door fundraiser for far-left Democrats at Sagamore’s main house in mid-May.

  See Gov. Wes Moore clapping on the right side of the image. And no, this is not a deep fake. 

  

  The nearly two-decade partying at the Plank family’s ‘frat house’ at Sagamore is coming to an end—better start focusing on turning around the sinking UA ship.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 20:25

• California Officials Ask Schools To Construct Housing For Teachers, Students
  California Officials Ask Schools To Construct Housing For Teachers, Students

  Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  California officials are pushing for school districts to convert available property into housing for teachers, school staff, and, in some cases, students.

  State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond hosted a summit on Aug. 14 featuring state leaders to address what his office called the “critical need for affordable housing and workforce housing, and exploring strategies for accelerating access to homeownership for working and middle-class Californians,” according to a news release.

  

  Thurmond’s housing initiative, announced on July 30, was officially launched at the summit. The initiative’s objective is to use 75,000 acres of surplus land owned by school districts throughout the state to construct 2.3 million housing units.

  “California is facing a housing crisis—and it doesn’t have to be. … This initiative [is] all about: activating the resources and expertise that we all have within our great state, so we can make sure that our community members from all walks of life have access to the California Dream.”

  The superintendent previously announced financial incentives for districts that take necessary steps to build staff housing, and the California Department of Education has sponsored a workshop for education officials to learn about real estate development.

  Thurmond’s program is in accordance with the Teacher Housing Act of 2016, which permits school districts to seek out housing project funding sources, such as federal and state tax credits. Additional legislation, such as a 2022 law that became effective in January, provide added benefits.

  Schools could also use the $10 billion school facilities bond, known as Proposition 2, to construct teacher housing and fix classrooms and other buildings if it succeeds this fall.

  Some districts have already started working on housing for school employees. Among the properties owned by Los Angeles Unified are a 26-unit building set aside for low-income families and a 90-unit complex that just opened in April.

  A 135-unit building is set to debut this fall by San Francisco Unified. A 70-unit development has been held by Santa Clara Unified for almost 20 years.

  The San Mateo County Office of Education is working with a nonprofit dedicated to public-private housing to purchase an existing apartment complex for local teachers. The Marin County Office of Education collaborated with the state and the county to construct housing for educators on property held by the state, close to San Quentin Prison.

  The Epoch Times has reached out to the California Teachers Association for comment.

  This is just one of the changes taking place in California schools. The state introduced a number of new laws governing safety, health, and inclusivity for the upcoming school year.

  Among those laws is a recess requirement, which requires public schools to provide at least 30 minutes of recess on regular days and 15 minutes on shortened days to allow students time for physical activity.

  Another law prohibits school staff from disclosing a student’s gender identity, sexual orientation, or gender expression to parents without the student’s consent. Additionally, climate change education is now required in science curricula for grades 1–12.

  K–12 schools must integrate media literacy into their curricula, helping students critically evaluate media content to help them combat misinformation. Schools serving grades 7–12 must also educate students on the dangers of opioids, including fentanyl, and include this information in their safety plans.

  Another change affects suspension policies: Schools can no longer suspend students in grades K–12 for disruptions or defiance. Instead, school administrators must provide in-school interventions or support. Meanwhile, students are now allowed a full day per semester to attend religious events, up from the previous four-hour limit.

  The Associated Press and Sophie Li contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 19:50

• Rogan And Quaid Ask: Who's Really Running The Country?
  Rogan And Quaid Ask: Who’s Really Running The Country?

  Joe Rogan and actor Dennis Quaid recently sat down for an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, where among other things – they questioned who’s actually running the country.

  

  “They’re emboldened by the fact they’re essentially running the country without a president for the last three years,” said Rogan, adding “Because he [Biden] is not there. And since he’s decided that he’s not going to run again, he’s gone. He’s vanished.”

  To which Quaid replied: “It makes [you wonder]. Who’s running it now?“

  Watch Via The Burning Platform,

  Joe Rogan and Dennis Quaid Raise SERIOUS Questions About Who’s Really Running the Country

  “It [president] is a figurehead. That’s all it is.”

  “They’re essentially running the country without a president for the last three years.”

  JOE ROGAN: “They’re emboldened by the fact… pic.twitter.com/CG3bkIWwH6

  — The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 16, 2024

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

  WATCH: Joe Rogan Goes After Kamala Harris for Stealing Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” Idea

  “Here’s the problem: In 2022, she was one of the deciding votes to go after people that were not reporting their tips.”

  “It’s hilarious that two years later, she’s acting like this is… pic.twitter.com/kAVCmp978N

  — The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 16, 2024

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 19:15

• Many Countries Turning To A "Stateless Currency"… Gold
  Many Countries Turning To A “Stateless Currency”… Gold

  Authored by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals,

  Many central banks are opting for a “stateless currency” – gold.

  

  That’s how a recent article published by Nikkei Asia put it, noting that “central banks are diversifying away from the dollar and yuan.”

  The article notes that the proportion of greenbacks in foreign reserves has dropped significantly from over 70 percent in the early 2000s to a historic low of around 58 percent today.

  Meanwhile, central banks are loading up on gold. Central banks globally added a net 483 tons of gold through the first six months of this year, 5 percent above the record of 460 tons in H1 2023.

  Last year, central bank gold buying fell a mere 45 tons short of 2022’s multi-decade record.

  Last year, central banks’ net gold purchases totaled 1,037 tons. It was the second straight year central banks added more than 1,000 tons to their total reserves.

  Central bank gold buying in 2023 built on the prior record year. Total central bank gold buying in 2022 came in at 1,136 tons. It was the highest level of net purchases on record dating back to 1950, including since the suspension of dollar convertibility into gold in 1971.

  A Stateless Currency 

  Why are so many countries turning to gold? 

  Because it is a stateless currency. In other words, gold isn’t controlled by any government. That means countries holding gold maintain a higher level of independence than those holding dollars or other government fiat currencies. 

  The U.S. has hastened de-dollarization by aggressively using the greenback as a foreign policy tool.

  The United States projects power around the world with its mighty military, but that’s not America’s only source of strength. It also uses the dollar to achieve foreign policy goals.

  The U.S. government utilizes a “carrot-stick” approach. It showers billions of dollars of foreign aid on its friends. But enemies can have access to their dollars cut off, as Russia recently learned.

  As the Nikkei Asia article pointed out, the U.S. and other Western countries aggressively sanctioned Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. America and her allies locked Russia out of the SWIFT financial system and froze around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets. The U.S. even threatened to sell frozen Russian assets and give the money to Ukraine.

  Other countries were paying attention. Nikkei Asia said U.S. policy persuaded emerging economies to “accumulate gold, and “the shift from currency holdings reflects global fragmentation.”

  This is a classic example of people responding to incentives.

  Think about it; if you recognize something makes you vulnerable, what do you do?

  You take steps to eliminate or at least minimize the vulnerability.

  So, if you’re worried that the U.S. and its allies might cut off your access to dollars, what would you do?

  Minimize your dependence on dollars.

  In other words, if you are concerned that the U.S. could pull the “dollar rug” out from under you, why not pull out from the dollar system first?

  As a stateless currency, gold is the perfect reserve asset. Its value is recognized around the world, it’s liquid, and most importantly, it exposes the owner to very little counterparty risk.

  What exactly is counterparty risk?

  In simple terms, it is the possibility that the party on the other side of a transaction might not fulfill its obligation or will change the terms of the deal.

  For instance, if I loan you $200, there is always a chance that you won’t pay me back. That possibility represents the counterparty risk that I’m taking on.

  When you own physical gold and store it safely at home, there isn’t another party involved. Nobody can default on gold. Its value will never go to zero. It remains liquid under virtually any market conditions. And gold will likely increase in value if there is a significant economic collapse because it is real money.

  This is precisely why so many countries are turning to this stateless currency and bringing their gold home.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 18:40

• Zelensky Says Ukraine 'Strengthening' Positions Kursk, Boasts Of Many POWs Captured
  Zelensky Says Ukraine ‘Strengthening’ Positions Kursk, Boasts Of Many POWs Captured

  On Saturday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that his forces are “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region. The invasion into Russian territory shocked the world and has left Kremlin officials shocked, with some expressing frustration that the border was apparently so poorly guarded.

  “As of this morning, we have replenished the exchange fund for our country,” Zelensky said, after his army reportedly captured hundreds of POWs since the Aug.6 invasion of the southern Russian oblast.

  

  “I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer,” he added, according to official government social media channels.

  Zelensky acknowledged that the Russian side is responding with a fierce fight: “(There were) dozens of Russian assaults on our positions over the last day. But our soldiers and units are doing everything to destroy the occupier and repel the attacks,” he continued.

  Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrsky simultaneously “reported on the strengthening of the positions of our forces in the Kursk region and the expansion of stabilized territory” in a public statement.

  Kiev is also presenting that its forces are in better shape along the eastern front in the Donbass, after in prior days asserting that Russia was forced to remove some its front line fighting forces in order to defend Kursk and Belgorod. 

  In Ukraine’s Sumy, there are Saturday reports of a large blaze after a fresh Russian missile attack:

  A Russian missile sparked a blaze in the city of Sumy that injured two people and also damaged cars and nearby buildings, said Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. It said that the hit had involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.

  Ukraine’s air force also said it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv region.

  Likely Russia’s aerial assaults on other major cities, including the capital of Kiev, will only increase as a way of retaliation. 

  Harrowing videos of the fighting in Kursk reveal that the Ukrainians have already established trenches and physical defenses in the region, planning for an attempt to indefinitely occupy Russian territory…

  As for Zelensky’s claim of having captured large masses of Russian troops during the Kursk incursion, the AP observed, “On Friday, the AP visited a detention center in Ukraine, the location of which cannot be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of POWs were seen, some of them walking with their hands tied behind their backs while a guard led them down a corridor. Some had rations of a thin soup with cabbage and onions.”

  Regardless of all the current pro-Kiev optimism, many analysts warn there are real limits and the likelihood Ukraine forces will soon be in worse shape than before due to this ultra-risky cross-border operation…

  A very good analysis with several important points here. Among them: “There is a limit to how successful Ukraine can be. It was suffering from a shortage of troops to rotate and hold the line prior to its operation in Kursk. Now it has pulled together what was available as an… https://t.co/gqGvQefDwJ

  — Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) August 17, 2024

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  The Zelensky government has been touting that it plans to hold onto a “buffer zone” in Kursk, to prevent Russia from launching cross-border mortar and missile strike on Ukraine. The Kremlin’s retaliation is expected to grow big at some point soon.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 18:05

• As US Coal Plants Shutter, A Renewed Focus On Nuclear Emerges
  As US Coal Plants Shutter, A Renewed Focus On Nuclear Emerges

  Authored by By Kevin Stocklin & Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As the United States continues its rush to shutter the nation’s remaining coal plants, energy analysts are debating what should fill the gap to meet the growing need for electricity. Increasingly, many are pointing to nuclear energy as the solution.

  According to the Department of Energy (DOE), nearly one-third of existing U.S. coal plants are scheduled to be shut down by 2035.

  

  This is happening as demand from data centers, electric vehicles, electric home heating, and other products are pushing ever more consumption onto the grid.

  A regulatory agency charged with assessing grid reliability stated that its key measures of electricity peak demand “are rising faster than at any time in the past five or more years.”

  The agency, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), cited “clear evidence of growing resource adequacy concerns over the next 10 years” in its December 2023 Long-Term Reliability Assessment.

  The rapid retirement of functional coal plants, which generated more than 16 percent of U.S. electricity production in 2023, is projected to leave large gaps in the country’s ability to meet projected demand for electricity, leaving most regions of North America at high or elevated risk of shortages and blackouts, according to the NERC .

  How can the U.S. electricity industry fill this ever-widening hole? The options on the table are wind, solar, natural gas, and nuclear energy—each with its advantages and shortcomings.

  Many who consider climate change to be an existential threat have pushed wind and solar energy as the best alternatives, arguing that they are the cheapest, cleanest option.

  The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted in January that “wind and solar energy will lead growth in U.S. power generation for the next two years.”

  Critics say adding ever more wind and solar capacity could be paying more for less, as additional weather-dependent capacity falls short of producing electricity when consumers need it.

  “We built a heck of a lot of wind capacity in 2023 in the United States, but the actual amount of wind electricity produced went down, simply because you have wind droughts,” energy economist Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), told The Epoch Times.

  “The windiest spots have been hit pretty hard with wind turbines, so now they’re going to places that are less prolific in terms of wind, and the result is you’re getting less wind per installed megawatt of wind power than you did before.”

  According to the EIA, while overall “renewable” energy production grew by 2 percent in 2023, largely because of increases in biofuels and solar energy, consumption of wind energy declined for the first time in 25 years.

  “Our entire grid has been built with the goal of moving power to people when they need it,” Kish said, but noted that, increasingly, this is shifting to providing electricity “whenever the wind blows or the sun shines.”

  

  Natural Gas Steps Up, Falls Down

  Wind and solar require expensive backup power generation, typically gas or batteries, to fill the gaps when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, driving up costs to consumers.

  Coal plants, while emitting more carbon dioxide (CO2), have provided an affordable, reliable, and flexible supply of “dispatchable” electricity, which can be ramped up or down to meet demand.

  To date, while installed wind and solar capacity have increased, natural gas has been the prime beneficiary of the transition away from coal—both as a supplier of base-load power and as a backup to wind and solar when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

  U.S. natural gas consumption reached a record 89.1 billion cubic feet per day in 2023 and has increased by an average of 4 percent per year since 2018, according to an April report by the EIA.

  The EIA reported that natural gas consumption set new records every month between March 2023 and November 2023, as coal-fired electric-generating capacity declined.

  “The combination of [artificial intelligence] and increased reliance on intermittent renewables means more natural gas—both because solar and wind can’t easily provide electricity with low harmonic distortions that delicate data center kit needs—but also because unreliable power sources infiltrate the grid, assuring 24×7 supply relies ever more on dispatchable, traditional energy, which is gas,” Simon Lack, founder and managing partner of SL Advisors LLC, told The Epoch Times.

  Unlike coal, however, gas is not stored onsite at power plants but rather delivered just in time via pipelines. During winter storm Uri in Texas, for example, freezing temperatures and electricity outages disrupted gas deliveries, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported, exacerbating the crisis that ended with widespread blackouts and the deaths of an estimated 246 people.

  While natural gas is abundant, affordable, and burns cleaner than coal, it doesn’t satisfy net-zero goals of “decarbonizing” energy and reducing global emissions by at least 43 percent by 2030, 60 percent by 2035, and reaching net-zero by 2050.

  Given that, nuclear energy is increasingly being touted as the ideal solution.

  

  A Nuclear Renaissance?

  The 54 U.S. nuclear plants and 93 U.S. nuclear reactors, located across 28 states, currently generate about 19 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the EIA.

  A nuclear plant’s capacity factor, which measures the amount of usable energy it produces as a percentage of the maximum it could potentially produce, is the highest of all power sources, averaging more than 92 percent, according to the DOE.

  By comparison, the capacity factors for wind and solar are the lowest of all major U.S. energy sources, at 35 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

  Nuclear power plants are designed to run 24 hours per day, seven days per week, making them ideal for reliable, base-load electricity.

  Energy economist Ryan Yonk, a director at the American Institute for Economic Research, said the safety of nuclear plants has improved with time, and although risk has not been completely eliminated, this leaves nuclear as the “no-carbon energy” of the future, provided that the industry can build plants that address risk concerns and regulatory concerns.

  “If you really care deeply about CO2 and view it as a substantial problem, we have an established technology that doesn’t produce CO2, that produces large amounts of low-cost energy at relatively low risk,” he said.

  The Biden administration appears to have also come around to that point of view, and the Inflation Reduction Act enacted by the administration offers a 30 percent federal investment tax credit for new nuclear projects.

  The White House announced in March that it was “signing on to last year’s multi-country declaration at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050; developing new reactor designs; extending the service lives of existing nuclear reactors; and growing the momentum behind new deployments.”

  Among the government initiatives was $6 billion in new loans, grants, and tax credits for nuclear facilities to keep aging plants up and running and restart some that had been shut down. This included $1.5 billion in loan guarantees to Holtec Palisades, LLC, to bring the shuttered 800 MW Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township, Michigan, back online through 2050.

  “Alongside renewable power sources like wind and solar, a new generation of nuclear reactors is now capturing the attention of a wide range of stakeholders for nuclear energy’s ability to produce clean, reliable energy and meet the needs of a fast-growing economy,” a White House fact sheet reads.

  This comes on top of new legislation to streamline the approval process for nuclear plants, specifically the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act (ADVANCE Act) of 2023.

  The bill includes more staffing for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which would theoretically speed the licensing process, reduce fees for plant applicants, and update the NRC’s mission statement, stipulating that it will not “unnecessarily limit” the production of nuclear energy.

  

  Partnering With Nuclear Industry

  The DOE is also working to ease the conversion of existing coal plants to nuclear.

  According to the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, “we’ll need an additional 200 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and some of that could take place at or near retiring coal plants.”

  The agency stated that more than 300 existing and retired coal plants could be converted to nuclear energy, and this would increase the U.S. nuclear capacity by more than 250 gigawatts, nearly tripling its current capacity of 95 gigawatts.

  Borrowing land, plant, transmission connections and roads from existing coal plants could save up to 35 percent of construction costs for new nuclear plants, the DOE predicted.

  States that are considering replacing coal plants with nuclear include Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

  The DOE is also collaborating with private industry through an initiative called the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN), which provides government support to commercialize nuclear energy technologies and to “educate those new to nuclear on its benefits, applications and role in our clean future energy transition,” the organization’s website states.

  “By 2030, the U.S. nuclear industry will be equipped to lead the world in the deployment of innovative nuclear technologies to supply urgently needed abundant clean energy both domestically and globally,” GAIN reads.

  Some analysts say it amounts to one government agency spending money to try to get another government agency out of the way.

  “We’ve got the NRC that can’t seem to issue a permit or give a thumbs up to a project, and to compensate for that, we’ve got the Department of Energy pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into helping them get a permit,” Kish said.

  The U.S. fleet of nuclear plants is approaching retirement age, raising questions about how much longer existing plants can continue to operate. The average life of a nuclear power plant is about 40 years, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

  As of April, the average age of U.S. commercial nuclear reactors was 42 years old. The oldest operating reactor is Nine Mile Point Unit 1 in New York state, which started operating in 1969.

  The U.S. nuclear construction industry, having been shunned for decades, appears now to be showing new signs of life.

  Based on its annual assessment at the end of 2023, the IAEA stated that, worldwide, it “now sees a quarter more nuclear energy capacity installed by 2050 than it did as recently as 2020, underscoring how a growing number of countries are looking to this clean and reliable energy source to address the challenges of energy security, climate change and economic development.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 17:30

• X 'Immediately' Shuts Brazil Office After 'Darth Vader' Threatens Lawyer With 'Secret' Censorship Orders
  X ‘Immediately’ Shuts Brazil Office After ‘Darth Vader’ Threatens Lawyer With ‘Secret’ Censorship Orders

  Elon Musk on Saturday announced that effective immediately, X will be shuttering operations in Brazil due to what it called “censorship orders” from Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes (aka ‘Darth Vader’).

  

  According to the company, Moraes secretly threatened an X layer if he did not comply with legal orders to remove content from the platform.

  “Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders. He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions,” reads a Saturday post from X’s Global Government Affairs account. “Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process.”

  “As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately.”

  pic.twitter.com/LeL7gQRKXY

  — Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) August 17, 2024

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  Musk replied to the post, saying “Due to demands by “Justice” @Alexandre in Brazil that would require us to break (in secret) Brazilian, Argentinian, American and international law, 𝕏 has no choice but to close our local operations in Brazil.

  “He is an utter disgrace to Justice,” Musk continued.

  Due to demands by “Justice” @Alexandre in Brazil that would require us to break (in secret) Brazilian, Argentinian, American and international law, 𝕏 has no choice but to close our local operations in Brazil.

  He is an utter disgrace to justice. https://t.co/yAvX1TpuRp

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2024

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  According to Musk, X remains available to the people of Brazil.

  Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts while he investigated so-called “digital militias” accused of spreading fake news. Moraes also opened an inquiry into Musk after he said he would reactivate X accounts that the judge had ordered blocked.

  Musk has called Moraes’ orders “unconstitutional,” and called Moraes himself “Brazil’s Darth Vader.”

  Brazil’s Darth Vader!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 7, 2024

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  In an April post to X, Musk said that Moraes had “brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” and should “resign or be impeached.”

  De Moraes said that as part of his decision to open an inquiry, that “X shall refrain from disobeying any court order already issued, including performing any profile reactivation that has been blocked by this Supreme Court,” Reuters reported at the time.

  The justice said that Musk would face a fine that equates to approximately $20,000 each time an account is reactivated on X.

  For an overview:

  BRAZIL IS ON THE BRINK

  I’m reporting to you from Brazil, where a dramatic series of events are underway.

  At 5:52 pm Eastern Time, today, April 6, 2024, X corporation, formerly known as Twitter, announced that a Brazilian court had forced it to “block certain popular accounts in… pic.twitter.com/GjdAgmkCBo

  — Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) April 7, 2024

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  The TWITTER FILES BRAZIL, reported by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, and colleagues David Ágape and Eli Vieira, reveal that “Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.”

  Sitting members of Brazil’s Congress and journalists were among those named by Brazil’s highest court for censoring, Mr. Shellenberger said of his findings, which he has shared on X.

  He named lower house members Carla Zambelli of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and Marcel van Hattem of the NOVO party as targets of orders targeting posts the court deemed misinformation.

  According to the internal files Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the Congress members’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance.

  The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for things posted on social media.

  According to Mr. Shellenberger, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes allegedly made demands to Twitter to allow access to its internal data, in violation of Twitter’s own policies on the handling of user data. –Epoch Times

  The “Twitter Files” also show that the justice “sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president @jairbolsonaro,” Mr. Shellenberger said—a similar trend to what the “Twitter files” revealed was happening to former President Donald Trump and conservative voices in the United States.

  The origin of the order to censor Brazilians’ posts was also revealed in the internal Twitter files, Mr. Shellenberger said.

  Brazilian Attorney General Jorge Messias backed de Moraes, saying in a post on X: “We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities.”

  As Shellenberger notes in response to today’s action:

  Global elites have made clear that they believe that freedom of speech on a single social media platform, and one that is far smaller than Facebook or Google, is intolerable. This desire for total control is the central characteristic of the totalitarianism that is presently emerging from elites at the corporate and political levels around the world.

  In addition to pushing censorship, these leaders and global elites are seeking to overturn liberal democracies and impose a radically different system of iliberal rule in the Western world. Rather than meritocracy and equal justice for all, elites are seeking to impose a Woke racialist hierarchy that gives preferential treatment to some groups and prejudicial treatment to other groups supposedly based on historic oppression.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 16:55

• Secret Service Agent Abandoned Her Post To Breastfeed
  Secret Service Agent Abandoned Her Post To Breastfeed

  Authored by Robert Arvay via American Thinker,

  According to a news report, a Secret Service agent, assigned to protect President Trump, abandoned her post to breastfeed her infant.  

  Okay, enough with the jokes.  

  This is some kind of anti-feminist fabrication, or some falsehood designed to impugn DIE.

  What next?  Women are unreliable when they are menstruating?  Was it a “take your child to work” day?  Here, my baby, let us shield the president with our bodies.  It’s Mommy’s job.

  

  Oh, wait.  It’s not a joke.  

  The report is real.  Women in law enforcement, apparently, are allowed to take their infants into potential gunfights.

  The Secret Service will, no doubt, claim that the woman acted against regulations.  But at what point?  When she showed up at the Trump rally in North Caroline with her baby?  When she accepted the assignment?  When she holstered her pistol, hopefully on the first attempt?  Heck, she might even get a medal for dereliction of dedication to duty.

  What about the Service itself?  Is it normal policy to assign mothers of newborns to potentially violent, even deadly situations?  Did it not occur to the supervisors when she returned from maternity leave that, hey, she now has a baby?  What accommodations should be made?  Should we take her pistol?  Rifle?  Should she be at a desk job?  And above all, keep her away from gently sloping rooftops.

  Or should we revisit the entire idea that women in certain jobs can be hired and assigned without any reference to their sex?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 16:20

• The Beginning Of The End? Germany To Ban All New Ukraine Military Aid
  The Beginning Of The End? Germany To Ban All New Ukraine Military Aid

  Three days ago, in the aftermath of the WSJ report seeking to radically shift the narrative over the Nordstream sabotage, where instead of the CIA being blamed for the explosion of the critical gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, unnamed “intelligence” sources forged on with a hilarious script according to which a top Ukraine general (operating initially under the instructions of Zelensky but then going rogue wen Z got “cold feet”) was responsible for coordinating the sabotage using a handful of rank amateurs who somehow managed to sneak to the bottom of the Baltic sea and conduct an unprecedented military operation, we said that – no matter the laughable veracity of the report – relations between Germany and Ukraine are “about to turn ugly”, and we asked why this story is coming out just now?

  Looks like relations between Germany and Ukraine are about to turn ugly: Zelensky was behind the Nordstream sabotage (even if he allegedly got cold feet at the end, but was unable to halt it). The question: why this story coming out now. pic.twitter.com/Zo4GBGECaF

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 15, 2024

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  We didn’t have long to wait to get the answer: as German media reports, this U-turn in the narrative (which according to some meant that NATO should now unleash its full military power against…. Ukraine, which had single-handedly attacked German assets by blowing up the Nordstream) was meant to soften the blow from Germany’s decision to finally cut off Ukraine’s – and Zelensky’s – unprecedented grift.

  According to a Saturday report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the German government will stop new military aid to Ukraine as part of the ruling coalition’s plan to reduce spending. The report, which cited non-public documents and emails as well as discussions with unnamed sources, goes on to note that the moratorium on new assistance – which is already in effect – will affect new requests for funding, not previously approved aid,

  In a letter sent to the German defense ministry on Aug. 5, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said that future funding would no longer come from Germany’s federal budget but from proceeds from frozen Russian assets, according to the German newspaper. And since we already know that recent attempts to liquidate Russian assets crashed and burned over fears of escalating Russian retaliation, this effectively means no more aid for Ukraine.

  Berlin, which is Europe’s main supplier of military aid to Kyiv, had previously signaled a change in course on Ukraine last month, when the governing coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals adopted a preliminary deal on a draft budget for 2025. The compromise detailed plans to slash future assistance to Ukraine by half to €4 billion to fulfill other spending priorities. And, it now appears, that even this token amount is about to be cut to zero.

  As we reported in June, the G7’s decision to extend a USD 50 billion loan to Ukraine, backed by immobilized Russian assets, was this summit’s most significant step forward. This loan structure reflects a typical compromise between the US and Europe. While the straightforward solution would involve seizing all of Russia’s frozen assets (estimated at USD 280 billion) to directly fund Ukraine’s war efforts, European countries – particularly France, Germany, and Belgium – aggressively shied away from this, viewing it as too aggressive and fearing Russian reciprocation. Instead, they opted for using the interest on matured assets, which amounts to only a few billion dollars per year. The first option would be a game changer, we said, “whereas the second option falls embarrassingly short.”

  The G7 pic.twitter.com/IBaSo7UR4f

  — Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 (@ryangerritsen) June 13, 2024

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  And now Ukraine will have to be satisfied with receiving whatever meager interest seized Russian funds generate.

  Meanwhile, the primary source of funding for Ukraine – the Biden family and various deep state operatives – is about to dry out, after Biden finally leaves the White House and quit politics forever in three months.

  Speaking after the Cabinet approved the draft budget in mid-July, Germany FinMin Lindner said Ukraine would have to rely more on funds from “European sources” as well as the frozen Russian assets. But it’s still unclear if, and when, that money will flow.

  According to Politico, contentions over Ukraine aid reportedly deepened the rifts in the ruling coalition in Berlin, already tattered by weeks of internal fights over a series of issues from the budget to welfare. Green leader and Economy Minister Robert Habeck said this week he plans to run for chancellor as the Greens’ candidate in the 2025 federal election, casting doubt on the survival of the governing alliance of which he is a member.

  “It’s quite obvious that this coalition has major problems finding common ground,” Habeck said regarding the recent disputes.

  “The ideas are falling apart.”

  Which is also why Zelensky will have no choice but to resort to ever-more-desperate and shocking provocations and diversions to keep the money flowing, as the alternative is complete devastation for Ukraine and its Western backers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 15:45

• Kamalanomics Blowback Begins As Food Prices Hit Record Highs
  Kamalanomics Blowback Begins As Food Prices Hit Record Highs

  “KamalaCosts” and “Kamalanomics” are trending on X on Friday afternoon as Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her strategy to address the crushing economic environment faced by the working poor and middle class during her tenure as vice president in the Biden administration. 

  

  Recall that VP Harris was the biggest ‘Bidenomics’ cheerleader. 

  Kamala Harris 367 days ago: “That is called Bidenomics! Ha ha ha! That is called Bidenomics and we are very proud of Bidenomics!” pic.twitter.com/gOxPZvxTCk

  — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 5, 2024

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  It makes very little sense why VP Harris has recently admitted at campaign rallies there’s an ongoing inflation storm and affordability crisis, yet it appears she is throwing President Biden under the bus. However, she is second in command and trying to deflect accountability for nation-killing, out-of-control government spending that stoked the inflation storm.

  Shortest political ad I’ve ever seen 🤣 pic.twitter.com/l8T2pHU4Cz

  — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 16, 2024

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  Americans are beyond frustrated with inflation that the Biden-Harris administration has fueled over the past 3.5 years while VP Kamala Harris travels across the country, avoiding ‘unscripted’ press conferences and trying to convince voters at highly scripted campaign rallies that she’s not responsible.  

  • “She’s Literally Running Against Herself”: VP Kamala Harris Admits Families Hit By ‘Cost Of Living’ Crisis 

  After stealing former President Trump’s proposed ‘no tax on tips‘ plan, the geniuses behind VP Harris’ campaign thought it would be brilliant to introduce communist-style government price controls on grocery stores and food companies as their first major economic policy. The move was a complete disaster, and even the leftists at the Washington Post pointed out that it was a poor policy choice… 

  “If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,” maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls.” 

  

  Investment analyst Lyn Alden pointed out on X that grocery stores like Kroger have “razor-thin profit margins.” So the whole ‘corporate price gouging’ narrative by Harris’ team is just ‘malarkey.’

  Grocery stores have razor-thin profit margins and people are talking about them price gouging. 🤷‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/rHpVSB1sWX

  — Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact) August 16, 2024

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  Producers of food products have similar margins in the low double-digit range. 

  Producers of food products typically have margins in the single-digit to low-double-digit range, which is normal for a business, and similar to what they were a decade ago. pic.twitter.com/whKkgscOUo

  — Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact) August 16, 2024

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  House Republicans reminded folks on X today about the sour subject of Biden-Harris’ food price inflation crisis:

  🚨🚨Since Kamala Harris took office:

  📈Eggs are UP 46.8%.
  📈Peanut butter is UP 42.8%.
  📈Crackers are UP 40.3%.
  📈Baby food and formula are UP 30.1%.
  📈 Inflation has skyrocketed by OVER 20%,
  📈Delivery services are UP 29.7%. #KamalaCosts #Kamalanomics

  — House Republicans (@HouseGOP) August 16, 2024

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  Others pointed out that ‘Kamalanomics’ is just an extension of ‘Bidenomics’ and focused on the massive food price surges.

  When Kamala Harris took office inflation was at 1.4%. Nearly four years later it’s at 20.2%. How has #Kamalanomics impacted you and your family? pic.twitter.com/y6ewG1sz08

  — Scott DesJarlais (@DesJarlaisTN04) August 16, 2024

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  This is Kamalanomics. pic.twitter.com/uUuJEdYg03

  — GOP (@GOP) August 14, 2024

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  Just saw that Georgians have paid $27,427 more due to inflation since January 2021.

  At this rate, the only thing growing faster than my grocery bill is my disappointment. #kamalanomics pic.twitter.com/bBQ4aVDFcL

  — Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) August 15, 2024

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  #BREAKING 🚨 🔥
  President Trump is commenting on #Kamalanomics.
  He says this is just beginning, this is disaster.
  Do you agree with him? pic.twitter.com/teF2nM55Bz

  — Frankie™️🦅 (@B7frankH) August 16, 2024

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  Harris prepares to battle Kamalanomics with Stalinist federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries. This woman is a Communist. pic.twitter.com/lbrgFvUA3K

  — JJ Murray (@therealJJMurray) August 15, 2024

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  Americans cannot afford four more years of Kamalanomics. #kamalanomics pic.twitter.com/KMlwM6vdTQ

  — Saint James Hartline (@JamesHartline) July 24, 2024

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  Meanwhile, the latest data shows burger prices at the supermarket are at record highs. 

  If elected, Kamala will work very hard to reverse the record 40% increase in beef prices under the Biden/Kamala admin pic.twitter.com/r0v4V7itWg

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 16, 2024

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  Urner Barry wholesale data shows egg prices are erupting again. 

  

  VP Harris had 3.5 years to save the middle class – yet she focused on wokeism and failed at her ‘Border Czar’ job. 

  

  Food prices have yet to come back down to Earth. 

  

  The latest US CPI Food Prices At-Home index is up 21% since Biden-Harris entered office, while wages for the working poor and middle class are only up 19.8%. 

  

  Food prices at home rose 6.5% during Trump’s term (+1.6% p.a.). During Biden’s term, food prices at home were up over 21% (+5.5% p.a.).

  

  “Inflation is experienced at the grocery store, but always manufactured by the government. It’s the same story every time. The politicians who create it by printing money, villainize and blame companies that have nothing to do with it — to distract from their reckless spending,” Cameron Winklevoss wrote on X. 

  Inflation is experienced at the grocery store, but always manufactured by the government. It’s the same story every time. The politicians who create it by printing money, villainize and blame companies that have nothing to do with it — to distract from their reckless spending. https://t.co/EJkng1004Q

  — Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) August 16, 2024

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  The angle the Trump campaign appears to be taking is to hammer VP Harris and Democrats for their mismanaging of the economy that has financially decimated the working poor and middle class.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 15:40

• "I Mean It": Biden Endorses Violence, Tells Dems To "Beat The Hell Out Of" Republicans
  “I Mean It”: Biden Endorses Violence, Tells Dems To “Beat The Hell Out Of” Republicans

  Authored by Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov via HeadlineUSA.com,

  Joe Biden urged supporters on Aug. 15, 2024, to “beat the h*ll out of” Republicans in the 2024 election.

  

  The Daily Wire reported that the violent rhetoric came during Biden’s first public appearance with Kamala Harris since he dropped out of the 2024 race. Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee to face off against Donald Trump.

  “Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the h*ll out of them,” Biden told the crowd during an event in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

  After the far-left audience cheered for violence, Biden doubled down by saying, “I mean it!”

  Conservatives on social media quickly criticized Biden and leftists who supported him.

  “Disgusting!” the Trump War Room account wrote in a post while also noting that Biden’s remark came just a month after the attempted assassination against Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.

  Biden instructs the audience to “beat the hell” out of Republicans — a month after the assassination attempt against President Trump. Disgusting! pic.twitter.com/MpxSGBsu4h

  — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 15, 2024

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  “Is this a call to violence?” asked the Libs of TikTok account on Twitter, which is operated by Chaya Raichik and has over 3.3 million followers.

  Collin Rugg, who has an X account with 1.4 million followers, also responded to the violent rhetoric.

  “If Trump said this, it would be wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC for the next three weeks,” he wrote, adding that the Washington Post “would be putting the ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ banner up.”

  If Trump said this, it would be wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC for the next three weeks.

  WaPo would be putting the ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ banner up.

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 15, 2024

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  In June, Trump faced Biden in a debate hosted by CNN, and just weeks after the disastrous Biden performance, the leftist establishment removed him as a presidential candidate and replaced him with Harris.

  Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton are expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., are expected to accept their nominations and deliver remarks.

  Biden’s violent rhetoric was just another example of Democrats’ evil nature. It was also recently revealed that Nancy Pelosi issued death threats to pro-Trump Republicans as well.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 15:10

• Ten Killed In Southern Lebanon In One Of The Deadliest Israeli Strikes Since Oct 7
  Ten Killed In Southern Lebanon In One Of The Deadliest Israeli Strikes Since Oct 7

  An overnight airstrike on southern Lebanon by Israel is being called one of the single deadliest attacks since the daily tit-for-tat exchange of fire began last October. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health announced the devastating attack killed at least ten people including “a woman and her two children” – and that five others were wounded, two critically. Some of the deceased were Syrian refugees.

  While Lebanon says that a residential building was hit, Israel’s military maintains that its air force struck a weapons warehouse run by Hezbollah about seven miles from the Israeli border, in Nabatiyeh.

  

  Al Jazeera says that some kind of factory building was struck in the attack, but that there was a residential floor with families and employees living there.

  “We are a well-known family in the area. We have no political affiliation and are not aligned to any political party. We are concerned only with our business and livelihood,” Hussein Tahmaz, the factory owner, told Al Jazeera. He rejected that Hezbollah used it for weapons storage.

  Hezbollah appeared to quickly retaliate, with Israel’s military conforming “approximately 55 projectiles” being fired into northern Israel on Saturday, resulting in no injuries.

  However, a separate attack resulted in a soldier being severely injured and another lightly wounded after a projectile from Lebanon struck 

  Meanwhile, international diplomats have been scrambling, talking to both sides in an effort to avoid all-out war, which still looms. For at least a month now, there has been a greater urgency of countries to get their foreign nationals out: 

  Many foreign nationals are gone, heeding the advice of their governments. Plenty of Lebanese have fled too. Others cannot tear themselves away – like the 30-year-old chef of a hip café (Beirut has too many of these to count). She is tattooed and candid but prefers not to be named.

  “Living in Beirut is like being in a toxic relationship you can’t escape,” she tells me.

  “I am emotionally attached. I have family abroad, and I could leave, but I don’t want to. We live day to day. And we joke about the situation.”

  In the next breath she admits business has suffered, and she has post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s like a cold war for us,” she says. She is expecting a hotter one but hopes it will be short.

  Lebanon’s economy had already for the last couple years been in free-fall, with a severe banking crisis and runaway inflation, and with common Lebanese blocked from accessing their own savings by local banks.

  At least 9 people killed in an Israeli warplane attack on Wadi Al-Kfour in Nabatieh. There are children among those killed. pic.twitter.com/aiuVjumtg2

  — Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) August 17, 2024

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  Israel has warned that if all-out war breaks out it will send not just Hezbollah but all of Lebanon back to the “stone age”. Many Western carriers have for weeks suspended service to both Beirut and Tel Aviv, citing safety concerns.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 14:35

• New Video Appears To Show DC Police Units Planting J6 Pipe Bomb
  New Video Appears To Show DC Police Units Planting J6 Pipe Bomb

  Via the Conservative Treehouse,

  One of the great mysteries about the January 6, 2021, events is the lack of curiosity by the FBI about who planted the pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC headquarters. Amid all of the available CCTV video and surveillance technology exploited by the justice department, their transparent unwillingness to identify the pipe bomber has always been a dog that did not bark.

  The Occam’s Razor explanation for why DC and federal law enforcement have been incurious, points to law enforcement actually planting the bombs.  New CCTV video seems to show exactly that.

  Shortly after 12:51pm a DC police SUV appears next to the park bench where the pipe bomb was discovered. [Video Below] A man with a bag exits the SUV, points to the bench, pulls up his right coat collar to obscure his face from the camera located across the street, then walks to the bench with the bag.  The “pipe bomb” device allegedly was found at 1:05 p.m. by a plainclothes officer from the Capitol Police.

  NEW: Recently discovered video from Jan 6 shows an individual believed to be police carrying a bag toward the location where “pipe bomb” was found at DNC.

  This is about 15 minutes before another officer “discovered” the device.

  Another shady moment in this unsolved “mystery” pic.twitter.com/OeZZsKw1hs

  — Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) August 14, 2024

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  Darren Beattie Reporting HERE – Julie Kelly Reporting HERE

  I am not going to repeat the reporting above, the timelines therein, or the granular details painstakingly outlined.  The research is solid, informative and accurate.  Instead, my focus is about “why” the pipe bombs were planted.

  Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy (House) along with Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence (Senate) did not want the January 6th certification of electors challenged. If you suspect the 85 million votes for Joe Biden might have been manufactured (mail-in ballots), then you understand the DC motive to avoid any electoral challenge that might have resulted in state level legislative inquiry and/or vote counting review.

  To avoid the challenge to the electoral certification process, a lengthy and very formal process where the Senate must separate from the House as each state is formally questioned/challenged and a debate/vote on each state’s set of electors takes place (minimum 2 hours each state), an EMERGENCY process triggered by the House Speaker (Pelosi) was needed. That’s where the pipe bombs come into play.

  

  We have previously detailed the motives HERE.

  The J6 pipe bombs were the insurance policy, in the event the feds (Ray Epps et al) couldn’t get the crowd to comply with the FBI provocations.

  In essence, if no one stormed the Capitol, the finding of the two pipe bombs would have then been the emergency needed to stop the electoral process, evacuate congress and trigger the emergency session.  Which explains why the FBI had/has no interest in the DC pipe bomb suspects.

  As it turned out, the DC crew (Pelosi et al) didn’t need the “pipe bomb emergency” because the manufactured riot (opening the doors to the Capitol building etc.) worked. The J6 emergency need was fulfilled by the “riot” within the Capitol building; the bomb narrative was not needed.

  Julie Kelly – […] Just as the first wave of protesters breached the building shortly after 2 p.m., congressional Republicans were poised to present evidence of rampant voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Ten incumbent and four newly-elected Republican senators planned to work with their House colleagues to demand the formation of an audit commission to investigate election “irregularities” in the 2020 election. Absent an audit, the group of senators, including Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pledged to reject the Electoral College results from the disputed states.

  The Hail Mary effort was doomed to fail; yet the American people would have heard hours of debate related to provable election fraud over the course of the day.

  And no one opposed the effort more than ex-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). 

  During a conference call on December 31, 2020, McConnell urged his Republican Senate colleagues to abandon plans to object to the certification, insisting his vote to certify the 2020 election results would be “the most consequential I have ever cast” in his 36-year Senate career.

  From the Senate floor on the afternoon of January 6, McConnell gave a dramatic speech warning of the dire consequences to the country should Republicans succeed in delaying the vote. He downplayed examples of voting fraud and even mocked the fact that Trump-appointed judges rejected election lawsuits. 

  “The voters, the courts, and the States have all spoken,” McConnell insisted. “If we overrule them, it would damage our Republic forever. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.”

  Roughly six hours later, McConnell got his way. Cowed by the crowd of largely peaceful Americans allowed into the building by Capitol police, most Republican senators backed off the audit proposal. McConnell, echoing hyperbolic talking points about an “insurrection” seeded earlier in the day by Democratic lawmakers and the news media, gloated. “They tried to disrupt our democracy,” he declared on the Senate floor after Congress reconvened around 8 p.m. “This failed attempt to obstruct Congress, this failed insurrection, only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our Republic.”

  Congress officially certified the Electoral College results early the next day. (read more)

  That’s how the whole process happened.

  Everything around the J6 events was set up by a small group of Marxists within government who are intensely ideological and supported by systems of Law and Order they created, purposefully to control the outcomes of their manipulation.

  The group then used the J6 Committee to further the false narrative, manufacture additional false claims, control the information flow and present themselves as victims within an insurrection effort they manufactured out of whole cloth.

  The J6 Committee was to the J6 story, as Robert Mueller was to the Trump/Russia collusion story.   The system controls the outcomes, hides the activity, and engineers false narratives (lies).

  ~ Support CTH Here ~

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 14:00

• Vance's Plane Makes Emergency Landing In Second Trump Campaign Incident
  Vance’s Plane Makes Emergency Landing In Second Trump Campaign Incident

  A charter plane carrying Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) made an emergency landing at a Wisconsin airport on Friday – the second mechanical issue to hit  a Trump campaign plane in a week.

  

  Vance’s plane, dubbed “Trump Force Two,” reported a mechanical issue and made an emergency landing in Milwaukee, according to Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk.

  “The pilot advised there was a malfunction with the door seal,” Van Kirk told several media outlets. “After declaring an emergency, Trump Force Two returned to Milwaukee. As soon as the issue was resolved, the plane returned to its originally planned flight path back to Cincinnati.”

  🚨✈️ Trump Force Two✈️🚨

  with VP Candidate JD Vance, just made an emergency landing in Milwaukee

  Milwaukee County Fire Department (ARFF) responded to the Boeing 737 on the tarmac.

  43 souls on board per traffic scanner scanner

  J.D. Vance’s plane started to turn back near… pic.twitter.com/n8bYqSnwtT

  — Kylie Jane Kremer (@KylieJaneKremer) August 16, 2024

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  Trump Force Two’s door seal issue was quickly resolved, and the plane continued on its intended path to Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airporet, according to a Van Kirk.

  Vance was traveling with his wife, Usha, US Secret Service agents, journalists, and his dog Atlas.

  Can’t really tell in this video, but he was *not happy* about the wet metal stairs.

  He’s doing good on the plane though.

  We’ve had two GSDs, and both of them do this thing where they find the one person who doesn’t like dogs and they suck up to them. https://t.co/Lf0qhOmbWl

  — JD Vance (@JDVance) August 16, 2024

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  The incident comes after Donald Trump’s plane was forced to make an emergency landing Aug. 9 in Billings, Montana – roughly 150 miles from its intended destination of Bozeman.

  As the Epoch Times notes further, Trump traveled to Montana for a rally in Bozeman on Aug. 9, where he sought to rally support for Republican candidate Tim Sheehy, who is seeking to unseat longtime Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.).

  Vance was in Wisconsin on Aug. 16 to give a speech at the Milwaukee Police Association’s headquarters, focusing on crime and law enforcement.

  Vance emphasized the need for supportive law enforcement policies and criticized the current leadership’s policies, in particular around border security while advocating for stronger border control measures.

  “The border policies that we have at the southern border, they make our communities less safe even as far north as Wisconsin,” Vance said. “It means Mexican drug cartels operating in our communities. It means people dying of fentanyl.”

  Fentanyl deaths regularly make up around 70 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the United States. According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 75,000 Americans died from overdosing on synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, in 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 08/17/2024 – 13:25

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