Today’s News 19th August 2023

• These Are The World's Ten Busiest Airports
  These Are The World’s Ten Busiest Airports

  Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, U.S., was the world’s busiest airport in 2022, with an annual footfall of some 93.7 million passengers.

  The figure is 24 percent higher than in 2021, but 15 percent lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic.

  It is followed by Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, with 73.4 million travelers, and Denver Airport, with 69.3 million, according to data released by Airports Council International (ACI).

  After 22 years leading the charge as the number one airport for passenger volume, Atlanta’s airport was pushed to second place in 2020 by Canton Baiyun International Airport, China.

  However, the Chinese airport fell to eighth place a year later and the U.S. airport once again topped the list.

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following infographic, five of the top ten airports with the highest passenger traffic last year were in the United States.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  ACI highlights that all ten, representing 10 percent of global traffic, have a significant share of domestic traffic – the segment that has led the global recovery.

  The total number of passengers worldwide in 2022 was estimated to hit nearly 7 billion, representing an increase of nearly 54 percent over 2021.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 23:20

• "The End Is Nearing" – Seymour Hersh Slams The White House's "Wishful Approach" To Ukraine War
  “The End Is Nearing” – Seymour Hersh Slams The White House’s “Wishful Approach” To Ukraine War

  Authored by Seymour Hersh via Substack

  It’s been weeks since we looked into the adventures of the Biden administration’s foreign policy cluster, led by Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland. How has the trio of war hawks spent the summer?

  Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently brought an American delegation to the second international peace summit earlier this month at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The summit was led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, who in June announced a merger between his state-backed golf tour and the PGA. Four years earlier MBS was accused of ordering the assassination and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, for perceived disloyalty to the state.

  

  As unlikely as it sounds, there was such a peace summit and its stars did include MBS, Sullivan, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. What was missing was a representative of Russia, which was not invited to the summit. It included just a handful of heads of state from the fewer than fifty nations that sent delegates. The conference lasted two days, and attracted what could only be described as little international attention. 

  Reuters reported that Zelensky’s goal was to get international support for “the principles” that that he will consider as a basis for the settlement of the war, including “the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the return of all Ukrainian territory.” Russia’s formal response to the non-event came not from President Vladimir Putin but from Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov. He called the summit “a reflection of the West’s attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts” to mobilize the Global South behind Zelensky. 

  India and China both sent delegations to the session, perhaps drawn to Saudi Arabia for its immense oil reserves. One Indian academic observer dismissed the event as achieving little more than “good advertising for MBS’s convening power within the Global South; the kingdom’s positioning in the same; and perhaps more narrowly, aiding American efforts to build consensus by making sure China attends the meeting with . . . Jake Sullivan in the same room.” 

  Meanwhile, far away on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia continued to thwart Zelensky’s ongoing counteroffensive. I asked an American intelligence official why it was Sullivan who emerged from the Biden administration’s foreign policy circle to preside over the inconsequential conference in Saudi Arabia.

  “Jeddah was Sullivan’s baby,” the official said. “He planned it to be Biden’s equivalent of [President Woodrow] Wilson’s Versailles. The grand alliance of the free world meeting in a victory celebration after the humiliating defeat of the hated foe to determine the shape of nations for the next generation. Fame and Glory. Promotion and re-election. The jewel in the crown was to be Zelensky’s achievement of Putin’s unconditional surrender after the lightning spring offensive. They were even planning a Nuremberg type trial at the world court, with Jake as our representative. Just one more fuck-up, but who is counting? Forty nations showed up, all but six looking for free food after the Odessa shutdown”—a reference to Putin’s curtailing of Ukrainian wheat shipments in response to Zelensky’s renewed attacks on the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland. 

  

  Enough about Sullivan. Let us now turn to Victoria Nuland, an architect of the 2014 overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine, one of the American moves that led us to where we are, though it was Putin who initiated the horrid current war. The ultra-hawkish Nuland was promoted early this summer by Biden, over the heated objections of many in the State Department, to be the acting deputy secretary of state. She has not been formally nominated as the deputy for fear that her nomination would lead to a hellish fight in the Senate. 

  It was Nuland who was sent last week to see what could be salvaged after a coup led to the overthrow of a pro-Western government in Niger, one of a group of former French colonies in West Africa that have remained in the French sphere of influence. President Mohamed Bazoum, who was democratically elected, was tossed out of office by a junta led by the head of his presidential guard, General Abdourahmane Tchiani. The general suspended the constitution and jailed potential political opponents. Five other military officers were named to his cabinet. All of this generated enormous public support on the streets in Niamey, Niger’s capital—enough support to discourage outside Western intervention.

  There were grim reports in the Western press that initially viewed the upheaval in East-West terms: some of the supporters of the coup were carrying Russian flags as they marched in the streets. The New York Times saw the coup as a blow to the main US ally in the region, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who controls vast oil and gas reserves. Tinubu threatened the new government in Niger with military action unless they returned power to Bazoum. He set a deadline that passed without any outside intervention. The revolution in Niger was not seen by those living in the region in east-west terms but as a long needed rejection of long-standing French economic and political control. It is a scenario that may be repeated again and again throughout the French-dominated Sahel nations in sub-Saharan Africa.

  …

  So the White House’s wishful approach to the war, when it comes to realistic talk to the American people, will continue apace. But the end is nearing, even if the assessments supplied by Biden to the public are out of a comic strip.

  Read the full post at Seymour Hersh’s Substack and subscribe to it here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 23:00

• Athletes Vs Animals… Not Even Close
  Athletes Vs Animals… Not Even Close

  The world’s fastest and fittest have descended on the Hungarian capital of Budapest to compete in the 2023 World Athletics Championships, taking place August 19-27. 

  

  Sporting events like these show just what humans are capable of.

  But, out of interest, Statista’s Anna Fleck wondered how do the best of our kind compare to the mightiest of the animal kingdom?

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, not that well.

  For example, the fastest man in the world, Usain Bolt, ran at a top speed of 44.72 kilometers per hour in his world record 100-meter sprint in Berlin in 2009. Even such a pace pales next to that of a cheetah, the fastest animal in the world, which can reach speeds of around 114.5 kilometers per hour while hunting.

  In this rather odd hypothetical race, Olympian Michael Phelps too would have to bow out. On his top form, Phelps reached a speed of 7.08 kilometers per hour in an Olympic swimming pool. But as the following chart shows, a sailfish can reach speeds of 110 kilometers per hour under water.

  Meanwhile, a contest between human and animal jumpers is at least somewhat in the same ballpark. Where a snow leopard can cover distances of up to 15 meters in a single jump, world record holder Mike Powell set the best mark of 8.95 meters in the long jump in 1991.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  …yeah, but we can kick their ass at Chess or Minecraft or Pool or Beer-pong or Cornhole…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 22:40

• After Years In The Wilderness, Conservative Christian Education Is Being Born Again Post-Pandemic
  After Years In The Wilderness, Conservative Christian Education Is Being Born Again Post-Pandemic

  Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClear Wire,

  Conservative Christian education is being born again.  

  

  Arcadia Christian Academy, which opened in Arizona on Aug. 8, is one of dozens of Christian micro-schools popping up across the country, offering a hybrid in-class and at-home education to keep costs down and the odds of survival up in an increasingly competitive K-12 sector. What’s more, many long-established Christian schools are growing their enrollment after years of stagnation. 

  The recent post-pandemic rebound in Christian education, prompted by parental anger over public school shutdowns and the expansion of school choice programs, comes after a prolonged period of plunging enrollment and shutdowns since the mid-2000s. Behind that decline were dismay over unaccredited schools and an emphasis on preaching the gospel over teaching rigorous courses, according to interviews with Christian school leaders, parents, and national associations, as well as religious education scholars and consultants. 

  They tell the story now of a Christian school movement with about 700,000 students in 8,000 schools that’s striving to leave behind its reclusive evangelical roots and reinvent itself for today, with STEM programs, AP classes, and classical “great books” curriculums. 

  The revamp, demanded by millennial parents and embraced by leaders of accreditation associations, is propelled by a combination of push-and-pull forces. 

  The push started with COVID. Public schools lost an estimated 1.2 million students during the pandemic. Upset over the long-term closure of classrooms, some parents also objected to what they observed their kids being taught during remote learning at home: Schools with a progressive tilt were teaching that gender is a fluid concept and that America is an inherently racist nation. 

  Evangelical schools have taken in a fair share of these public school refugees by appealing to the conservative views of parents. In their statements of faith, schools not only stress classic doctrine, such as the Bible as the word of God and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The statements also include the conservative Christian take on hot-button issues, such as it’s a sin to deny one’s biological sex.  

  “Alarmed that schools are embracing gender neutral ideology?” Arizona’s Dream City Christian School asks parents rhetorically on its homepage. 

  The pull factor – a major expansion of school choice programs – is now adding to the appeal of Christian schools. In addition to programs in 32 states that mostly provide taxpayer funding for the private education of low-income and special needs kids, eight states recently approved universal laws that make all students eligible for scholarships, regardless of family wealth. At Christian schools, these state-funded scholarships typically cover most if not all tuition, providing a powerful incentive for families that’s boosting enrollment. 

  But after the growth spurt, scholars and school leaders are asking a big question: Does it have legs or will it soon burn out? 

  New-wave Christian schooling faces plenty of headwinds. There’s competition for students from well-established Catholic schools, which have a superior academic track record, as well as rapidly expanding charter networks and homeschooling, says David Sikkink, a prominent scholar of religious education at Notre Dame. And there are the old-guard fundamentalist schools that resist accreditation and refuse to accept school-choice funding. 

  “Are Christian schools going to retain those parents who came at the end of COVID and continue to grow?” says Vance Nichols, head of Alta Loma Christian School in southern California. “That’s the question of the moment.”

  Flocking to Christian Schools 

  In Florida and Arizona, the answer to that question seems to be yes, thanks to new universal choice laws. 

  By removing income and other restrictions on receiving school choice funding, the universal laws have expanded the eligibility pool nationwide by about 4 million students, bringing the total to more than 13 million, according to the advocacy group EdChoice. 

  But the sweeping laws have also sharply divided school choice advocates, with prominent players like Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute objecting to ultra-wealthy families getting taxpayer dollars to send their kids to private schools. 

  Florida was already a wellspring of Christian education, with about 800 schools, when it approved a universal choice program in March. The new law is expected to dramatically boost the number of choice scholarships by as much as 40% to 350,000 students for the 2023-24 school year, says Doug Tuthill, president of Step Up For Students, which administers Florida’s five choice scholarship programs. 

  “A lot of bigger Protestant schools with middle- and upper-middle class students are definitely going to benefit from this expansion in demand for scholarships,” Tuthill says. 

  To meet demand in states like Arizona, where many Christian schools are full, educators are setting up micro-schools that enroll only about a hundred students. With students learning both in formal classrooms for a few days a week and at home for the rest, these hybrid schools keep operating costs down. To access a steady revenue stream, they are setting tuition below the choice scholarship maximum amount, allowing them to attract students with the enticing offer of a free ride. “Historically, the amount is able to cover all of our tuition costs,” which top out at $5,950, Arcadia Christian says on its website. 

  The new wave of micro-schools is enabled by entrepreneurial consulting groups like Soaring Education Services, which provides a one-stop shop of educational models and coaching for the Christian startups. The group, which is part of the Christian nonprofit Open Sky Education in Wisconsin, is helping launch seven micro-schools in seven states by 2024, says Jack Preus, Soaring’s national director. 

  “Demand for Christian schools is high,” Preus says. “Most of the growth in new schools is in micro and hybrid space.” 

  But traditional Christian schools are starting too. The Minneapolis-based Spreading Hope Network, which focuses on bringing a God-centered and rigorous liberal arts education to low-income urban youth, will have assisted 19 new schools and campuses get started through this year with the goal of opening 100 startups by 2032. Most of these schools are in states with choice programs, making it easier for students from poor families to afford the tuition, says Executive Director Dan Olson. 

  That’s true at the new campus at Pusch Ridge Christian Academy, serving mostly Latino students on the south side of Tucson. Latino pastors convinced Pusch Ridge to open the new campus after the public school district in 2020 approved a sex education program starting in the 5th grade over the objections of conservative parents, says Jonathon Basurto, principal of the new campus. 

  With all its low-income students certain to qualify for one or more of Arizona’s choice scholarship programs to cover the $13,000 tuition, the new Pusch Ridge campus has ambitious plans to grow from K-2 today to K-12 in 10 years. 

  “We are looking at a minimum of 500 students and up to 900,” Basurto says. “We have families driving 45 minutes to come to this Spanish-speaking school because it is Christian.”

  Christian Schools in Crisis 

  The growth in Christian education is a remarkable turnaround for a movement that suffered thousands of school closures in the 15 years before the pandemic. It was a period of “crisis” for the community, says Nichols, the school leader, who wrote his dissertation at the University of Southern California on the rash of failures. 

  The mid-2000s were the high-water mark for Christian schools. In 2006, the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), the largest of many Protestant education associations, counted almost 4,000 schools as members, or about half the U.S. total. Membership plummeted to 2,094 by 2022 amid the shutdowns before increasing by 45 schools this year, says Nichols, who is also an ACSI commissioner overseeing accreditation. 

  For Christian schools, which tend to enroll several hundred students, it was the biggest decline in their modern history. Nichols’ research shows that poor leadership, particularly by school boards, lackluster academics that didn’t meet the rising expectations of families for a rigorous education, and financial pressures from the Great Recession were major causes of the closures. 

  Many of the schools that shuttered in the last decade were the old-timers that remained attached to the original separatist ideology of Christian education. This took root in the 1950s when Baptist and other Christian churches began setting up hundreds of schools in response to sweeping changes in public education from Supreme Court orders that ended racial segregation and banned prayer in classrooms, according to studies of the period. 

  The main priority of these fundamentalist schools has been the cultivation of Christian morality and faith for the benefit of their communities. As for academics, they have practiced “good enough-ism,” or an education that’s good enough to get by in the real world, says Patrick Wolf, who studies private schools at the University of Arkansas.  

  “The churches were sold on the concept that all they had to do is to buy a curriculum in packets and parents could run the school without professionals,” says Howard Burke, executive director of the Florida Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, an accreditation agency. “They believed a godly mother could teach a child a Christian curriculum.” 

  Since then, many Christian schools have made big academic leaps forward. The best of them send students to Harvard, M.I.T., Vanderbilt, and West Point. 

  Alta Loma Christian, the school Nichols heads, is an example. In 2016, Nichols began introducing a serious STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program, where students learn computer coding in early elementary grades. That’s partly why Alta Loma’s enrollment has grown from 240 to more than 300 students in a highly competitive private school market in San Bernardino County. 

  When Paul and Nuria Koszut were looking for a Christian school for their oldest son, they rejected several that seemed like a continuation of Sunday school until they found Alta Loma. “We did want a Christian foundation at a school but also a very strong academic program,” says Paul Koszut. “Alta Loma has both parts.” 

  Hundreds of Christian schools are also adopting a demanding classical liberal arts program, a rapidly growing trend in private education that focuses on fundamental truths and virtue through the reading of great works of literature and philosophy. In Illinois at the K-12 Classical Consortium Academy, a Christian hybrid school, seventh graders read Dante’s “Inferno,” one of a long list of classics in the middle and high school curriculum that includes “The Republic,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Augustine’s “Confessions,” “Don Quixote,” and “The Communist Manifesto.” 

  “The academic bar has been lowered so significantly that students think they can’t read these great works,” says Jennifer Burns, who founded the school and is helping launch seven more classical Christian academies nationwide for Turning Point Academy. “We offer rigor not to break their spirit but to show them they can handle it.”

  Fundamentalist Education Lives On 

  But a smaller number of Christian schools continue to abide by orthodoxy. They criticize bigger and academically driven schools for “being not very Christian and tempted by worldly standards of success,” says Sikkink of Notre Dame. 

  The fundamentalist schools also don’t see the need for accreditation – a big priority for leaders in the movement – because it brings outside oversight and standards. As a result, these schools struggle to attract students and revenue and can’t afford to offer higher-level classes like calculus and physics. “Fundamentalist schools could use some financial help,” says Sikkink. 

  No one knows how many Christian schools are accredited, but only 39% of more than 2,100 ACSI schools have this stamp of academic approval by the association, which is making efforts to expand that number. In Florida, where Christian schools have had more state support to develop and improve, almost 80% are accredited by independent associations.  

  The unaccredited schools are more likely to use the overtly patriotic Christian textbooks from Bob Jones University Press and Abeka, which were mainstays in Christian education several decades ago. School leaders now criticize the textbooks for sugarcoating America’s transgressions, such as the treatment of America Indians and black slaves. While many schools have ditched these materials in favor of more politically balanced readings, the Bob Jones and Abeka brands continue to be used at about 40% of Christian schools, estimates Sikkink, who says the textbooks remain “an issue.” 

  The infusion of faith-based politics into the classrooms of evangelical schools is also concerning to education leaders. They aim to steer clear of accusations that Christian schools are a conservative training ground for America’s culture wars. 

  A Christian school in New England blurs the line between education and activism, according to research that kept the school anonymous as a condition of access to its classes. In a lesson on transgender issues, several articles given to students all concluded that the practice of gender reassignment is wrong and harmful to teens, a position in keeping with Christian dogma about the God-given sexual identities of men and women, according to the study of the school by Jeremy Alexander of Boston College. At the end of the lesson, the teacher stressed to students the importance of voting, particularly in local school board elections, where candidates who hold anti-Christian views on issues like gender identity can be defeated. 

  Scholars differ on whether just a handful or a significant chunk of schools are encouraging students to be political activists guided by the conservative Christian playbook. But they agree that schools shouldn’t tell students how to think and should instead present a range of views, on everything from economics to evolution, to prepare them for the debates and compromises that are essential to a democracy. 

  “I don’t think the overwhelming majority of Christian schools are trying to groom culture warriors, but some of them are,” says Alexander, who published a 2022 paper on this topic. “This isn’t how students should be taught to live in a pluralistic society.”

  Schools Built on Choice  

  Most schools benefiting from school choice are not Christian traditionalists. They shun the programs in fear that the government will try to control them despite a hands-off approach in most states. Instead, college-prep schools like Little Rock Christian Academy in Arkansas are opening their doors to state funding. 

  The PK-12 academy has steadily grown since 1977 to about 1,600 students, luring them with at least 18 AP classes and an average ACT test score well above the national average. The strong academic program in a Christian academy also brought Justin Smith, who holds a doctorate in education, to the school six years ago. 

  Smith, who heads Little Rock, says his board decided to participate in the state’s recently approved universal choice program after concluding it wouldn’t compromise the school’s Christian values with requirements other than accreditation, an award the school has already earned. As the program rolls out, increasing numbers of currently enrolled and new students will get $6,600 in funding for tuition and other expenses, reaching all students in the state by 2025. 

  The funding makes it easier for hardworking families to afford the tuition and stay enrolled, providing Little Rock with more stability. “It strengthens our families, and in turn, our school,” says Smith. 

  States like Arkansas that are just starting to expand choice programs can look to Florida to see what decades of taxpayer support for private schools can do. 

  So far, the biggest impact is in poor communities, where black and Latino churches have used the state funding to build and expand more than 200 schools over two decades, says Tuthill of Step Up For Students. The payoff has been the improved academic performance of underprivileged students, almost all of whom are on choice scholarships, and job growth that the schools generate in these communities. 

  “Show me a better anti-poverty program anywhere,” says Tuthill. “The churches are essentially running small businesses and the schools are thriving.” 

  Florida’s new universal program is now expanding scholarships to the middle and upper classes, benefiting schools like the high-performing Rocky Bayou Christian Academy in Niceville. It educates students from military, law enforcement, and wealthier families with a college prep curriculum inspired by the Dutch Reformed idea of schooling. “You worship God by learning,” says Superintendent Mike Mosley, who holds a Ph.D. in history. “We have 11 AP classes, including calculus BC and physics.” 

  Rocky Bayou has expanded from 730 students in 2021 to 1,100, partly because choice scholarships have made the tuition of about $10,000 affordable. With universal choice, the number of students on a state-funded scholarship will rise to 80%, which will allow Mosley to reduce his own school’s financial aid and redeploy it to upgrade the facilities and boost low teacher salaries. A new high school building is in the works that will push enrollment up to about 1,400. 

  Katie Williams, whose husband works in law enforcement, has four children at Rocky Bayou. During the pandemic, she pulled her two boys out of public school to teach them at home using a Christian curriculum that won her over. She now sends the boys and her two young daughters to Rocky Bayou to continue their Christian education. 

  “We would never be able to send our four children to Rocky without the choice scholarships,” says Williams, who pays only $400 a month in total tuition. 

  What will be the impact of more school choice funding on Christian education nationwide? Sikkink estimates that enrollment could grow by about 20% over time despite resistance from the fundamentalist wing and competition from other private schools. 

  “Christian schools have been reinventing themselves and it needs to continue to prepare our kids for their future,” says Nichols. “If we do this, we can prevent another downturn in the number of Christian schools.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 22:20

• Which Country Consumes The Most Oil?
  Which Country Consumes The Most Oil?

  Even with the share of renewables in electricity production rising continuously over the past years, oil remains the world’s most important energy source when factoring in transport and heating.

  As Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA), 29 percent of the world’s energy supply in 2020 came from oil.

  As Zandt shows in the below, based on the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2023, two countries were particularly heavy oil consumers in 2022.

  The United States consumed 19 million barrels of oil per day, followed by its fiercest economic and political competitor, the People’s Republic of China, with 14 million barrels per day this past year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The usage of other countries pales compared to the two superpowers: The rest of the top 8 consumers combined only amounted to two thirds of the amount used by the U.S. and China.

  When looking at the change in oil consumption between 2012 and 2022, the picture changes significantly.

  U.S. oil usage only increased by about nine percent, with China and India emerging as growth leaders with 42 and 41 percent consumption growth, respectively.

  All in all, four out of the five BRICS countries are featured in the top 8 oil-consuming countries, and three out of four have shown a considerable increase in appetite for fossil fuel over the past decade.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 22:00

• Researchers Discover Concerning Cancer Trend In Young Adults
  Researchers Discover Concerning Cancer Trend In Young Adults

  Authored by Mary Gillis via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The number of people under 50 getting cancer is on the rise, leaving scientists puzzled about the concerning uptick, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open.

  

  After analyzing a diverse group of 562,142 people between 2010 and 2019, data showed the rise in overall early-onset cancer was most pronounced in young people between the ages of 30 and 39. Other groups affected were women and several ethnic groups, with Asian or Pacific Islander people being affected the most, followed by Hispanic and American Indian or Alaska Native people.

  Gastrointestinal cancers grew the fastest, averaging a 2.6 percent increase in incidence rate per study year. When gastrointestinal cancers were teased out and analyzed by type, data showed appendix, bile duct, and pancreatic cancer increased by 15 percent, 8.1 percent, and 2.5 percent, respectively. Incidence refers to the measure of the number of new cases that develop in a population over a specific period.

  Additional analyses revealed breast cancer made up the highest number of early-onset disease cases, followed by thyroid and colon cancer.

  In contrast, rates decreased among black and white people during the same 10-year period. Rates also declined in older adults over 50—a group typically hit hardest by cancer.

  “This nationwide study provides updated evidence that the incidence of early-onset cancers in the U.S. is increasing and highlights several disparities,” the authors wrote in the paper.

  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates 2 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in 2023. Breast cancer is the No. 1 cancer affecting women. An estimated over 300,000 women will be diagnosed this year. Prostate cancer is the leading cancer diagnosis among men. Similarly, the NIH estimates nearly 300,000 cases. Cancer costs the United States more than $156 billion annually, and the total cost of cancer globally is on pace to reach $25.2 trillion by 2050.

  Risk Factors

  Up to 50 percent of all cancers are preventable. Several lifestyle risk factors for preventable cancers include the following:

  • Smoking.
  • Being overweight or obese.
  • Drinking too much alcohol.
  • Eating a poor diet.
  • Lacking physical activity.
  • Being stressed.
  • Exposures to radiation.
  • Infections.

  “There is a need to inform health care professionals about the increasing incidence of early-onset cancer, and investigations for possible tumors need to be considered when clinically appropriate, even in patients younger than 50 years,” the authors continued in the paper. “These data will be useful for public health specialists and health care policy makers and serve as a call to action for further research into the various environmental factors that may be associated with this concerning pattern.”

  The authors pointed out the possibility that cancer statistics are underreported, and study results may not apply to other areas outside the United States. Therefore, they should be interpreted with caution.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 21:40

• Total Ukraine War Troop Deaths, Injuries Approaching 500,000: US Officials
  Total Ukraine War Troop Deaths, Injuries Approaching 500,000: US Officials

  A surprisingly blunt and revealing Friday report in The New York Times cites US officials who estimate that total war casualties in Ukraine among both sides are at nearly 500,000 dead and wounded. 

  “The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops,” the Times wrote based on the unnamed officials. “The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.”

  To put these grim and tragic figures in perspective, the United States military involvement in Vietnam over the course of a nearly two-decade period resulted in about 58,000 Americans killed.

  

  Given Kiev doesn’t release official casualty numbers, the US officials cited in the Times report are estimating, but it generally lines up with the immense numbers of Ukrainian losses the Kremlin has presented in evaluating the counteroffensive. But Western sources have consistently said that Russian losses are more staggering.

  The NY Times has characterized the now largely stalemated conflict as a war of attrition, with Russia having the manpower and supply lines keep the upper-hand and to far outlast: 

  Ukraine has around 500,000 troops, including active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops, according to analysts. By contrast, Russia has almost triple that number, with 1,330,000 active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops — most of the latter from the Wagner Group.

  As for Russia, the West has accused it of habitually undercounting its own casualty rates. Last January, US Chief of the Joint Staff Mark Milley asserted that Russian forces had suffered losses at “significantly well over 100,000”. 

  Likely many of the recent casualties on each side were from the months-long battle for the city of Bakhmut. President Zelensky has come under recent criticism for pouring so many resources and manpower into what was a losing battle. That’s when many reports emerged of large amounts of completely untrained and underequipped Ukrainians being shipped to the frontlines. 

  The military analysis source 19fortyfive.com has assessed that the defense of Bakhmut was an incredible risk and gamble which didn’t pay off, and led to a very poor start to the now faltering counteroffensive:

  However, Zelensky chose to press the fight anyway. For months, senior U.S. leaders warned the Ukrainian president the battle was unwinnable and to move to other defensive positions. Not only did he refuse to withdraw to a superior fighting position, he ordered his men not to give up so much as a single building, forcing them to fight to the death. Month after month, Zelensky sent brigade after brigade to reinforce Bakhmut in an effort to reverse the tide. 

  Not only was it painfully obvious that military fundamentals made clear there was little rational hope of stopping Wagner’s drive to capture Bakhmut, but many of those brigades Zelensky sent in futile aid to help Bakhmut were also urgently needed in the upcoming spring and summer offensive. Two days after Bakhmut’s fall, Zelensky was still defiant, claiming the city had not fallen. In 2022, Zelensky’s tenacity and unwillingness to compromise resulted in blunting Russia’s invasion and then inflicting two major operational defeats. 

  This is an interesting article which argues that Zelensky made serious mistakes in the fight over Bakhmut when the conventional wisdom at the time was that Russia was the side acting stupidly. https://t.co/M5Wq7NQfgb

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) August 17, 2023

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

  While Ukrainian forces held out for longer than most predicted, it was a very costly loss, and at the same time it’s anything but clear that it put a significant dent in Russian force strength. 

  19FortyFive concludes that it’s certainly not Washington’s fault (despite the persistent complaint to this end of Zelensky officials)… “No one can claim the United States didn’t give Ukraine every chance to find out if it could succeed on the battlefield, as we provided literally thousands of armored vehicles, millions of shells, missiles, and bombs, and training and intelligence support – along with scores of billions in other aid.” And the publication emphasizes, “But that help did not produce a Ukrainian victory.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 21:20

• "This Is Unacceptable": Biden's DOJ Attempts To Silence Journalist In Firearms Case
  “This Is Unacceptable”: Biden’s DOJ Attempts To Silence Journalist In Firearms Case

  Submitted By Gun Owners of America,

  In April, the Department of Justice convicted two men, Matthew Hoover & Kristopher Ervin, of conspiring to transfer unregistered machine gun devices known as “Auto Key Cards.”

  The case known as United States of America v. Kristopher Ervin & Matthew Hoover has been regarded as controversial. ATF employees involved in the case admitted to taking classes on convincing a jury of their testimony, among other interesting developments.

  As such, the case has been subject to much discussion and coverage by firearms-related news outlets. One of those outlets, AmmoLand News & their journalist, John Crump, was recently the subject of an attempted gag order by the DoJ due to his reporting on the case.

  The gag order was specifically in relation to a Presentencing Investigation Report given to Crump by Hoover to aid in his coverage of the court case. Unbeknownst to Crump, after this report was given to him, the DoJ filed a motion to silence Crump and have his copy of the Presentencing Investigation Report destroyed.

  In the motion, the Justice Department refers to Crump as a “YouTube personality” in an attempt to discredit his status as a journalist and the free speech protections he is entitled to as a member of the press.

  Distasteful YouTube comments are cited in the motion as well as the reason for the gag order, with many of the comments taking a critical tone against the State’s Attorney.

  When we learned about this situation, Gun Owners of America stepped in to defend Crump and his First Amendment rights. Our legal team filed an Emergency Motion to Intervene on the gag order placed on him.

  🚨BREAKING🚨

  The US gov is attempting to silence pro-gun journalist and content creator, @crumpyss.

  This is unacceptable & we will not stand for this blatant disrespect for our constitutionally-protected rights. We are stepping up to help John beat this attempt to silence him. pic.twitter.com/6b9JpqDfCQ

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 9, 2023

  While the Judge agreed with our motion, it seemed that the DoJ saw the writing on the wall, withdrawing their motion and mooting the challenge.
  Either way, GOA is proud to help block the Government’s attempt to silence a journalist’s First Amendment rights.

  *  *  *

  Today on the Minuteman Moment, Ben details the current situation between John Crump, a reporter for AmmoLand news and OAN Contributor, and his coverage of the CRS Firearms case being placed under a gag order by an overzealous federal prosecutor.

  *   *   *

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 21:00

• Another One? Boeing Dreamliner Pilot Suffers "Fatal Cardiac Arrest" Shortly After Takeoff
  Another One? Boeing Dreamliner Pilot Suffers “Fatal Cardiac Arrest” Shortly After Takeoff

  In late January, US Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sent a letter to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acting Administrator Billy Nolen and Office of Aerospace Medicine Federal Air Surgeon Susan Northrup shedding light on a concerning trend of individuals in the aviation industry who experienced medical events after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine. 

  “What steps has FAA taken or will FAA take to investigate whether Cody Flint, Hayley Lopez, Greg Pierson, Bob Snow, Wil Wolfe, and other pilots experienced COVID-19 vaccine adverse events?” Johnson asked. 

  The senator wrote, “Based on data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, the whistleblower reported that the total number of diseases and injuries in pilots across DoD was 265 in 2016; 252 in 2017; 164 in 2018; 223 in 2019; 2,194 in 2020; 2,861 in 2021; and 4,059 in 2022. These increases in disease and injuries in pilots across the DoD over the last three years, and particularly over the last year, raise questions as to whether FAA has seen similar increases in disease and injuries in individuals in the aviation industry.”

  This leaves us with the latest incident: a pilot in command of a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner suffered a fatal cardiac arrest in the bathroom of a commercial flight from Miami to Chile on Monday. 

  “Flight LA505 (Miami – Santiago) diverted to Tocumen International Airport in Panama due to a medical emergency of one of the three members of the crew in command,” according to CBS News, which obtained a statement from LATAM Airlines.

  The airline continued, “Unfortunately, after landing and receiving further medical assistance, the pilot passed away.”

  … and remember this? 

  HERE’S MORE CHAOS

  Bombshell Finding About the FAA Loosening It’s EKG Range for Pilots While Offering No Explanation as to Why to the Public

  Army Flight Surgeon Theresa Long: “DMED reportable events (death, perm harm, or severe temp harm) on pilots across the….👇👇Part 2 pic.twitter.com/Q1brKaxXkk

  — Freedom (@MassAdi15176401) January 31, 2023

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

  Here are the latest headlines of pilots suffering medical emergencies:

  • Two Indian Pilots Die In 2 Days, 1 At Airport, Another On Flight

  • Shocking Moment Pilot Suffers Cardiac Arrest In Virginia Airport

  • BA pilot dies shortly before he was due to captain Airbus flight to Heathrow

  • Southwest pilot suffers medical emergency on flight, off-duty pilot helps land plane

  In Feb., Captain Robert Snow revealed he suffered a cardiac arrest on the final approach of an American Airlines flight. He said he was vaxxed in order to maintain his employment status with the airlines. 

  Will the FAA or the Biden administration even be willing to investigate the surge in disease and injuries in pilots after the Covid shot?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 20:40

• Genes May Explain Why 20% Of People Who Get COVID-19 Are Asymptomatic: Study
  Genes May Explain Why 20% Of People Who Get COVID-19 Are Asymptomatic: Study

  Authored by Megan Redshaw, JD via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Scientists recently discovered a gene variant that may explain why 20 percent of people who get COVID-19 never develop symptoms.

  

  In a recent study published in Nature, researchers theorized that human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes may be the reason some people are asymptomatic when they test positive for COVID-19.

  According to the authors, HLA genes play a significant role in viral infections by helping the immune system recognize infected or foreign cells and are the most medically important region of the human genome.

  To determine whether HLA gene variants are associated with asymptomatic COVID-19, researchers enrolled 24,947 bone marrow donors over a nine-month study period, as gene sequencing is a prerequisite for being a tissue or organ donor and recipient, and genetic information was already available.

  Participants used a smartphone app to track positive COVID-19 tests and daily symptoms, including fever, chills, and mild symptoms such as scratchy throat or runny nose. Each week volunteers noted whether they had taken a COVID-19 test, and each month reported whether hospitalization had occurred.

  During the study period, 1,428 unvaccinated individuals reported a positive COVID-19 test, with 20 percent of individuals reporting no symptoms. Further analysis revealed a specific HLA-B*15:01 variant was “significantly overrepresented” in asymptomatic individuals compared to symptomatic individuals.

  Those who carried two copies of this variant—one passed down by each parent—were more than eight times more likely to remain asymptomatic than those carrying other genotypes. Researchers confirmed their findings in two other groups of people.

  The authors then examined the effect HLA-B*15:01 had on T cells—a type of white blood cell that helps the immune system recognize germs and fight disease, including SARS-CoV-2.

  Analyzing T cells donated by HLA-B*15:01⁺ people before the pandemic, researchers discovered that T cells in asymptomatic participants reacted to a specific piece of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, enabling the virus to enter the cells as if they had previously encountered the virus. Additional experiments showed that T cells with the specific HLA variant responded aggressively to an almost identical spike protein fragment from two seasonal coronaviruses associated with common colds.

  “The findings suggest that T cells in many people with HLA-B*15:01 could already recognize SARS-CoV-2 because of their prior exposure to seasonal coronaviruses,” according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This ability to recognize SARS-CoV-2 allowed their immune systems to respond rapidly to clear out the virus before it caused symptoms of infection.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 20:20

• China's Housing Slump Far Worse Than Reported; Half Of State-Owned Builders Warn Of "Widespread" Losses
  China’s Housing Slump Far Worse Than Reported; Half Of State-Owned Builders Warn Of “Widespread” Losses

  Earlier today, Goldman’s head of hedge fund sales Tony Pasquariello observed that “to this point in the sequence, I’d argue the slowdown in China had been a net positive for US equities — with specific regard to the disinflationary impulse and the flow of capital. That said, coming out of a week that featured another disappointing set of data — and another dose of CNH weakness — it now feels like China growth fears can provoke a more global risk-off dynamic.“

  Well, if Tony is right, then watch out below, because the bad news out of China has become a firehose that is only getting more powerful with every passing day, especially if one ignores the fake official data and looks at the truth beneath the surface.

  Consider China’s official housing market statistics, which despite falling sequentially for the first time in 2023 in July, have first been remarkably resilient in the face of tepid economic growth and record defaults by developers. New-home prices have slipped just 2.4% from a high in August 2021, government figures show, while those for existing homes have dropped 6%.

  

  Of course, China’s official data is almost as credible as that of the Biden Department of Labor; and indeed, the picture emerging from property agents and private data providers is far more dire.

  As Bloomberg notes, these figures show existing-home prices falling at least 15% in prime neighborhoods of major metropolitan areas like Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as in more than half of China’s tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

  • Existing homes near Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou have dropped about 25% from late 2021 highs, according to local agents.
  • In Lianyang, a downtown area popular with expats and financiers in Shanghai, residential prices have slid 15% to 20% from record highs in mid-2021.

  Even as of March, before the latest property market crisis, more than half of tier-2 and tier-3 cities saw existing-home prices fall more than 15% from peaks, Guolian Securities economists wrote in a report citing data by existing housing transaction services provider KE Holdings Inc. Actual declines from peaks could be sharper, as the agency only compiles data starting November 2018, the economists cautioned

  

  Top-tier cities, once considered resilient against a housing downturn, are also not immune. Prices of existing homes in at least five popular districts of Shenzhen have slumped 15% in the past three years, according to a July report by property research institute Leyoujia. The southern hub is the country’s least affordable housing market.

  It’s hardly rocket science what is going on here: industry insiders and economists say China’s official home-price indexes are understating the depth of the downturn (by a lot) in part because of longstanding methodologies that struggle to capture market turning points, in part because – well – all of China’s data is propaganda.

  That’s heightening concern among investors about the availability of timely economic data in China, where access to some information has become increasingly restricted under the government of President Xi Jinping. It also raises questions about whether policy makers themselves have an accurate understanding of the market as they devise measures to prop up demand. Another risk is that wary homebuyers stay on the sidelines, waiting for price declines to show up in the data before they step in.

  Analysts say the methodology, which partly relies on surveys rather than price data from transactions, helps authorities to smooth the trend and to avoid large swings. By contrast, in the US, the widely cited S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller indexes use home-price data collected at local deed recording offices across the country.

  For Henry Chin, who’s spent more than 20 years researching global real estate markets, the data’s source and accuracy are critical.

  “Home-price data in many countries are based on total market transactions, yet China uses selective samples,” said Chin, the head of research for Asia Pacific at CBRE Group Inc. “When a market goes down, the true market condition is hard to be reflected in such data.”

  China’s statistics bureau has said in an online explanation that raw data on new-home prices is based on all sales and purchases registered in local housing transaction bodies. Existing-home prices, though, are based on both sales of key projects and surveys, it said. The NBS uses the Laspeyres price index, a common formula used worldwide, to calculate its 70-city home-price gauge, the statistics bureau told Bloomberg. Market watchers say the methodology on sampling and index calculation remain ambiguous.

  

  Survey-based data “serves a purpose avoiding extreme fluctuation,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis SA in Hong Kong. “But when people are wary that prices are falling even more, thus not buying, such data defeats its own purpose.”

  This partly explains why home price changes implied by official and private sources appear inconsistent with market perceptions on some occasions, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists said in a July report called “Understanding differences in China’s home price measures.”

  Translation: nobody believes Chinese data any more.

  Which is very bad for Beijing, since nobody will buy real estate – China’s biggest asset by orders of magnitude – if there is zero confidence in what the accurate price is, and until there is some comfort that the price drops are over.

  What is worse is that even China’s state-owned property developers are now warning of widespread losses, fueling concerns that the housing crisis is expanding from the private sector to companies with government backing.

  In a separate Bloomberg report, we learn that 18 out of 38 state-owned enterprise builders listed in Hong Kong and the mainland reported preliminary losses in the six months ended June 30, up from 11 that warned of full-year losses in 2022, according to a Bloomberg tally based on corporate filings. Two years ago, only four firms with controlling or major state shareholdings posted losses.

  Some of the state-owned developers have cited declining profit margins and heavier provisions to write down asset values stemming from the housing woes. Companies seeing losses include some of the biggest developers owned by the central government. Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town warned of a loss of as much as 1.7 billion yuan ($233 million), partly due to a marketing strategy to speed up home sales. That followed a loss in the second half of last year, which was its first since its 1997 listing.

  Players in economically stronger cities are also suffering. Everbright Jiabao Co., operated by a local state asset manager in Shanghai’s Jiading district, said it expects its first ever half-year loss since its listing.

  The warnings signal state builders are no longer immune from the two-year housing slump that has weakened the economy and triggered dozens of defaults by private peers, with speculation that Country Garden Holdings may be next, a collapse which would be more devastating than the Evergrande collapse two years ago. Authorities have in recent weeks stepped up pledges to support the property sector, though analysts are skeptical that the measures will be enough to revive the market anytime soon.

  

  “China’s property slowdown is already hurting all developers, including the large government-linked ones,” said Zerlina Zeng, senior credit analyst at CreditSights Singapore. “We do not expect the situation to materially improve in the second half.”

  That said, according to Bloomberg Intelligence credit analyst Andrew Chan, the loss warnings aren’t necessarily all doom and gloom for state developers – it’s natural that they would write down their inventories to reflect the slump in values, he notes.

  “SOEs could be kitchen-sinking their results for better years ahead,” Chan said. “The key is whether they can still receive liquidity support from banks. For smaller SOE developers, it will be a case-by-case situation.”

  But losses will reduce their scope to take on unfinished projects left by defaulted private-sector firms, further denting homebuyer sentiment. Chinese regulators see asset sales as a key step to easing the debt crisis, as President Xi Jinping’s government largely steers clear of direct bailouts.

  “Sector consolidation anyhow takes time,” CreditSights’ Zeng said. “Especially in a property downturn when acquirers, such as SOEs and asset management firms, are demanding better valuations and sellers are not willing to dispose at a deep discount.”

  One policy tool being used to revive the housing market and the broader economy is interest-rate cuts. In a surprise move, the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday made the steepest cut in three years on the rate on its one-year loans. The central bank has also encouraged lenders to lower mortgage rates, Jingyang Chen, Asia FX strategist at HSBC Holdings Plc, said earlier this month.

  As of June, 100 out of 343 Chinese cities have lowered the rate floor of new-home mortgages or removed the minimum required, the PBOC said in its quarterly monetary policy report on Thursday. That has brought the nation’s average mortgage rate to 4.11% in June, down 0.51 percentage point from a year earlier.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 20:00

• Growing Warnings: Biden Could Get Scorched By Green Dependency On Red China
  Growing Warnings: Biden Could Get Scorched By Green Dependency On Red China

  Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire,

  President Biden’s stance toward China hardened this month when he issued an executive order prohibiting American investment in Chinese companies developing advanced technologies that could be used by the military. 

  

  But a growing chorus of critics, including some Democrats, argue that the administration’s effort to grapple with America’s foremost adversary is contradictory, illustrated in the White House’s Beijing-empowering pursuit of ambitious climate change goals. 

  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, as the White House has called for, will almost assuredly make the United States dependent on China while enriching it. 

  China currently holds a commanding position in the clean energy industry, controlling the natural resources and manufacturing the components essential to the Biden administration’s desired alternative energy transition. Energy experts believe that its dominance will become more entrenched in the years ahead because of domestic environmentalist opposition to perceived “dirty” mining and refining operations, and the Biden administration’s “clean energy” spending blitz – which could provide Chinese companies and subsidiaries billions in subsidies. 

  The Biden administration also considers it imperative to get buy-in from Beijing on dramatically reducing emissions, given it produces more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. 

  This too gives critics of the Biden administration’s green agenda pause. They see China as an unreliable partner that will leverage the Biden administration’s desire for it to go green to its own advantage. 

  “China,” says Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.), the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, “is playing us for suckers.” 

  Red China’s Green Dominance 

  China’s alternative energy clout comes from its command over supply chains that culminate in the production of wind turbines, solar panels, and lithium-ion batteries on which the net zero transition depends. 

  On top of its own large domestic reserves, it has invested in mines worldwide, and grown into a global hub for raw material refining and processing. China underscored this point on the eve of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit last month, when it imposed export restrictions on gallium and germanium, rare earth metals not only critical to the manufacture of semiconductors, but also found in electric vehicles and solar panels.  

  According to the U.S. Geological Survey, China is the leading producer of 30 of 50 minerals, including among them rare earth metals, that the U.S. government deems critical, particularly for their usage in energy technologies.  

  Rare earth metals are integral to the magnets key to electric vehicle motors and wind turbines. America is 95% net import reliant on such materials, which China produces 70% of globally. According to the International Energy Agency, the PRC dominates “across the [rare earth] value chain from mining to processing and magnet production.”  

  Other critical minerals for clean energy technologies include: copper, key to solar cells, wind turbines, and electric vehicles; cobalt, key to lithium-ion batteries; nickel, also key to such batteries and in renewable energy storage; and lithium itself. China is the world’s largest refiner of all these minerals and produces 50-70% of all lithium and cobalt globally. The U.S. has no refining capacity for many of the same materials. 

  In analyzing the International Energy Agency’s authoritative “Net Zero by 2050” roadmap, the Energy Policy Research Foundation concluded, in a report supported by the RealClearFoundation (which also funds RealClearInvestigations), that “replacing oil and gas with metal-intensive renewables and batteries risks further reinforcing China’s dominance in these critical minerals, at the expense of the energy security of most of the world.” 

  Research shows that: 

  • Ten of the top 15 global wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese. 

  • China’s share in each of the five key manufacturing stages of solar panels exceeds 80%. 

  • China dominates in every aspect of the lithium-ion battery value chain – the batteries that power electric vehicles and battery storage power stations. 

  To put China’s clean energy dominance in perspective, as BloombergNEF reported, while “Saudi Aramco pumped some 11% of the world’s crude in 2021 … [t]hat pales before the 70% of production capacity in 11 clean energy segments nestled within China’s borders.”   

  “By cultivating leadership in clean energy technologies,” the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has assessed, “Beijing is seeking to profit from a global clean energy transition while further deepening its geoeconomic leverage.” 

  Some lawmakers are concerned China might hold such leverage over President Biden himself. In 2021 the New York Times reported that Hunter Biden had “helped secure cobalt for the Chinese” in 2016, while his father was vice president. House Republicans were reportedly investigating this matter as of March, and the issue could resurface in connection with a potential impeachment inquiry into the Biden family’s alleged international influence peddling. 

  Biden’s Green Energy Blitz – and its Limits 

  Acknowledging China’s alternative energy prowess, and therefore America’s dependence on Beijing to hit its green targets, the Biden administration has pushed legislation – including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which allocates $369 billion in green subsidies and incentives, as well as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which commits still billions more – and sought to use its executive authority and regulatory power to build America’s alternative energy infrastructure. 

  The White House touts $3 billion in federal grants for expanding the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the grid; $50 million in funding for wind energy research and development; and $35 million more in funding for Las Vegas, Nevada-based MP Materials to establish an end-to-end magnet supply chain. 

  All told, the Biden administration says it has committed some $22 billion in grants, rebates, and other initiatives “to accelerate the deployment of clean energy, clean buildings, and clean manufacturing.” It also takes credit for private sector investments of $133 billion in electric vehicles and batteries, and $103 billion in clean energy. Still, experts say these measures leave America lagging behind China, and that the aggressive goals set by the administration therefore require reliance on the Communist power. 

  Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and energy-tech venture capitalist, said the Biden administration’s efforts are “window dressing – maybe there’s a new term equivalent to ‘green washing’ along the lines of ‘mineral washing’ – since there are no commensurate necessary regulatory changes for large-scale, chemically-difficult industries,” like mineral refining, necessary to meaningfully ramp up the onshoring of clean energy. 

  Republican lawmakers likewise have criticized the Biden administration for imposing environmental restrictions they see as hamstringing the president’s stated agenda by blocking domestic projects that would unleash key natural resources. 

  The U.S. Army Corps revoked a key permit for a major domestic nickel mining project in Minnesota, as recommended by the EPA, on grounds that it might not comply with the water quality requirements of a sovereign tribe downstream of the project. The Biden administration has also been reticent to engage in seabed mining, with U.S. Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry indicating the administration is “very wary of procedures that could disturb the ocean floor.” 

  Even if America overcame these environmental concerns and fast-tracked mining projects, it is not clear it could sustain a wholly domestic clean energy industry. Echoing an emerging consensus among experts from the right and the left, Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and nonresident senior research fellow at the Center for Climate & Security, said, “The idea that you can have a truly made-in-America supply chain for all of these minerals is a fiction.” 

  Certainly, says Dr. Victoria Coates, it cannot do so on the aggressive schedule the Biden administration has set, which would require the creation of vast supply chains during the next few years. The former deputy national security adviser, and later adviser to the Secretary of Energy during the Trump administration, Coates told RCI that home-sourcing desired clean energy technology not only would be “cost prohibitive,” but “I don’t know that we’d even be up and running by 2050, let alone implementing a transition that would impact carbon emissions.” 

  Therefore, says Coates, now helming the Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, America “can’t decouple from China in this process to get to that target on that time frame.” 

  RCI contacted trade groups representing the solar, wind, and electric industries present at a Treasury-led clean power generation roundtable to ask them about the feasibility of decoupling from China, and whether and to what extent meeting the White House’s green goals would redound to China’s benefit, but did not receive any responses. 

  Mills said that the massive increase in wind/solar/battery utilization required by the Biden administration would serve China’s “direct benefit.”  

  Asked by RCI in an email whether it was concerned the clean energy transition would increase America’s dependence on, and otherwise redound to the benefit of China, a State Department spokesperson replied: “No,” adding that that the Biden administration’s policies “are all intended to revitalize American leadership in emerging technologies and supply chains, protect our national security, advance American competitiveness, and create well-paying, high-quality jobs at home.” 

  Neither the White House, Treasury Department, nor Kerry’s office responded to a series of related inquiries. 

  Conflicts and Contradictions 

  The fundamental question for the Biden administration, Dr. Coates asks, is “How much China is too much China?” White House Clean Energy Czar John Podesta hinted that the bar may be high. In March, he told a renewable energy advocacy group that China would be a “big player” in the clean energy transition. 

  Podesta drew a rebuke from fellow Democrat Joe Manchin. The West Virginia senator, who chairs the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, released a statement saying that “It is beyond irresponsible for someone speaking on behalf of the White House to not only condone but also advocate for sending American tax dollars to Chinese companies.” 

  Manchin added: “These words are especially concerning as rumors circulate about the Administration thoughtlessly considering opening up the EV credit’s eligibility beyond our free trade agreement partners and allowing the laundering of Chinese minerals and materials through Trojan horse agreements.” 

  While the White House seeks to go green in a way that reduces dependency on China, there also appear to be loopholes in Biden administration policies, and its enforcement of them. One question is whether Chinese companies can benefit from subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act despite the bill’s purported focus on building the American clean energy industry. 

  Critics such as the Coalition for a Prosperous America have highlighted six Chinese companies that have announced plans to partner with American outfits to assemble solar panels and other components domestically, making them eligible for an estimated $1 billion in U.S. tax credits.  

  This is also happening in the auto industry, where Ford recently announced a partnership with Chinese company CATL to build a domestic $3.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant. There are also growing concerns that the Treasury Department will loosely interpret provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at limiting such credits to electric vehicles and solar panels comprised of components and minerals from America or its friends. 

  In March, the Treasury Department released the proposed regulations on electric vehicle credits, which included provisions that critics saw as skirting the IRA’s intended domestic sourcing requirements for such cars. Manchin called the guidance “a pathetic excuse to spend more taxpayer dollars as quickly as possible,” that “further cedes control to the Chinese Communist Party in the process.” 

  When Treasury issued guidance in May indicating that solar project developers would receive a 10% bonus tax credit for using solar panels manufactured in America – even if they contained foreign silicon wafers, some 97% of which are produced in China – it drew stern rebukes from several populist Democrats. 

  This was not the first time Biden had run afoul of some in his party over solar panels. Weeks earlier, Congress sent a veto to the president desk calling on him to rescind a two-year moratorium on solar tariffs from Southeast Asian countries Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia. This was seen as a boon to Beijing, as Chinese entities had been found to be circumventing more onerous tariffs by shifting their solar panel production to the neighboring countries. 

  After a dozen Democrats voted with Republicans to pass a resolution disapproving of the moratorium in the House, nine Democrats in the Senate did the same. “The president got this one wrong,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.  

  “You can’t say you want American manufacturing to lead the world and then allow Chinese companies, subsidized always by their government, to skirt the rules and dump solar panels into the U.S,” Brown  added.  

  After Biden vetoed the resolution. Congress failed to muster the votes to override the veto. 

  Democrats and Republicans alike have also raised concerns about how rigorously the administration is enforcing sanctions aimed at keeping Chinese solar panels from America’s shores under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The polysilicon pivotal to solar panels is largely produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where forced labor camps are prevalent.  

  Another issue raised by critics is that because of the amount of money the administration is doling out, and the speed at which it is dispensing it, it is not carefully scrutinizing who the recipients might be – potentially to China’s benefit. 

  Republicans point to a $200 million grant made under the Energy Department’s Battery Manufacturing and Recycling Grants Program, a creation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to a company called Microvast, as an example of this problem. Microvast’s battery production largely takes place in China, and by the company’s own admission China “exerts substantial influence over” the firm. Facing a firestorm from Republicans, the Energy Department ultimately scrapped the grant – with Secretary Jennifer Granholm admitting it had been subject solely to a “post-selection” review under a pilot vetting process, drawing their ire. 

  The Department of Energy’s inspector general noted that the Biden administration had appropriated about $84 billion to stand up over 70 new programs in recent legislation – more than two times the Department’s total fiscal year 2022 budget. 

  New programs, the inspector general warned “push funding through untested processes and newly designed and untested internal controls.” Combined with the speed at which the funds are moving out the door, the general warned that this creates “risks of fraud, waste and abuse.” 

  “The IRA – and, generally, intensified government support for domestic production – risks opening the door to a wave of Chinese efforts to coopt that support and the domestic players benefiting from it,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Emily de La Bruyère recently argued in written testimony prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission. “Those efforts,” she stated, “are particularly potent considering China’s existing industrial dominance in the sectors being prioritized by government action.” 

  Climate and the U.S.-China Rivalry

  “There’s simply no way to solve climate change without China’s leadership,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a May 2022 speech unveiling the Biden administration’s approach to China. As John Kerry has stated, “We could go to zero [emissions] tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved.”

  Thus, the Biden administration has repeatedly stressed that as the world’s largest polluter, China must go green, and that cooperation on climate is essential. For its part, China has not only dramatically ramped up its production of coal plants, but also serves as the largest underwriter of fossil fuel infrastructure globally, by way of its Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping insists that the “method, pace and intensity” for China to achieve carbon neutrality – which the country claims it intends to hit by 2060 – “should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others.” 

  “China is not a partner on the environment,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has said. “It is the No. 1 threat, globally.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 19:40

• Watch: Alarming Video Shows Chinese Troops Rehearsing For Taiwan Invasion
  Watch: Alarming Video Shows Chinese Troops Rehearsing For Taiwan Invasion

  The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command has released a provocative video showing troops practicing a coastal invasion of Taiwan. The video first appeared on the social media site WeChat Thursday, and features waves of PLA soldiers storming beaches, including armored vehicles and tanks driving into attack positions.

  The clip didn’t specifically name Taiwan, but given the Eastern Theatre Command oversees the Taiwan Strait area, it’s being widely interpreted as a warning and threat aimed at the self-ruled island which is backed by the West. Watch:

  The Daily Mail in highlighting the video on Friday, commented: “Meanwhile, the song featured in the video and the accompanying WeChat post were littered with evocative lyrics and phrases like ‘go over the city gate and the high wall’ and ‘no matter how dark it is, don’t be afraid… chase and win the warmest years’.”

  At the same time, new joint Russia-China naval drills near Japan’s waters have alarmed Tokyo and its Western allies. Russia’s defense ministry (MoD) have confirmed the major exercises which rehearse ‘interoperability’ in the Pacific Ocean.

  Russian state media summarized of the MoD statements: 

  A Chinese vessel supplied a Russian warship with fuel and water as the two kept moving on parallel courses.

  In a post on Telegram on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the crews of the Admiral Tributs anti-submarine warfare ship and China’s Tayhu supply ship practiced synchronizing the two vessels’ speed while maintaining the right distance.

  Russian military officials added that the two navies are currently conducting joint patrols in the East China Sea, covering more than 6,400 nautical miles (11,853km, or 7,365 miles) since the start of the maneuvers in the Pacific in late July.

  The two navies have also been conducting anti-submarine and anti-aircraft drills, which have been closely monitored from Japan. 

  Russia and China conduct series of naval drills in East China Sea pic.twitter.com/0lbEyzVShv

  — TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) August 18, 2023

  The Japanese government on Friday expressed “grave concern” given the close proximity of the Russian-Chinese naval grouping, consisting of nearly a dozen warships, having passed near Japan’s southern islands on Thursday. 

  While the ships did not breach Japan’s territorial waters, the particular passageway used off the southern islands marked a first for the Russian and Chinese navies.

  All of this comes just as President Biden is hosting his Japanese and South Korean counterparts at Camp David on Friday…

  President Joe Biden opened a historic summit with Japan and South Korea at Camp David on Friday focused on strengthening security and economic ties at a time of increasing concerns about North Korea’s persistent nuclear threats and China’s provocations in the Pacific.

  “Our countries are stronger and the world will be safer as we stand together. And I know this is a belief that all three share,” Biden declared at the start of the meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the presidential retreat in Maryland.

  Addressing his fellow leaders at what he called the first standalone summit of the three nations, the American president said, “I want to thank you both for your political courage that brought you here.”

  

  The three leaders are reportedly putting in place long-term joint naval exercises in Pacific waters as a response to regional provocations, including from North Korea and China. Beijing has been alarmed at deepening Washington-Tokyo defense relations in particular.

  China has also warned that NATO must not seek expansion east into the Pacific arena, after months ago there was talk of NATO opening a liaison office in Japan, but which didn’t materialize. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 19:20

• What If There Had Been No COVID Coup?
  What If There Had Been No COVID Coup?

  Authored by Debbie Lerman via The Brownstone Institute,

  In discussions about the military and national security coup during the Covid pandemic, people often ask me:

  Would it really have been so different if the NIH and CDC had remained in charge of the pandemic response?

  What if the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Council had never taken over? 

  Wouldn’t the public health agencies have done basically the same things?

  

  It is absolutely essential that everyone understand the answers to these questions.

  They impact not just our awareness of what happened during Covid, but also our assessment of how to handle all viral outbreaks in the future.

  In this article, I will describe how the response to the pandemic would have proceeded if normal public health guidelines had been followed, not just in the US but around the world, without interference from national security authorities or covert biowarfare experts. 

  Public health guidelines

  Before Covid, the guidelines for dealing with a new outbreak of a flu-like virus were clear:

  • avoid panic, 

  • search for cheap, widely available early treatments that may reduce the risk of serious illness,

  • plan to increase healthcare capacity if necessary, 

  • help local and state medical personnel to identify and treat cases if and when the virus causes serious illness, 

  • and keep society functioning as normally as possible. 

  This was the approach used in all previous epidemics and pandemics. The guidelines are detailed in the planning documents of the WHO, HHS, and EU countries.

  When the military and national security agencies took over the response, these guidelines were replaced by a biowarfare paradigm: Quarantine until vaccine. In other words, keep everyone locked down while rapidly developing medical countermeasures. This is a response intended to counter biowarfare and bioterrorism attacks. It is not a public health response and is, in fact, in direct conflict with the scientific and ethical underpinnings of established public health principles.

  Had we adhered to the public health protocols that were initially followed in the early months of 2020, life in the United States and around the world would have looked like life in Sweden during the pandemic, with even less panic: no masks, no school closures, no lockdowns, very low excess deaths. 

  No panic

  The reasons not to panic were apparent in early 2020 from the data we had gathered from China: the virus was deadly mainly to elderly people with multiple serious health conditions, did not cause life-threatening illness in children or in most people under 65, and did not seem poised to cause more of an increase in hospitalizations or deaths than a very bad flu season. 

  It can be difficult at this point – after years of unrelenting censorship and propaganda – to remember that, at the beginning of 2020, the new virus emerging in China was not front and center in most people’s minds. The US media was busy covering election campaigns and economic issues, and the general attitude was that what was happening in China would not happen elsewhere.

  Here are some examples of what medical and public health experts were saying in January, February and early March 2020:

  January 30, 2020, CNBC: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama’s White House health advisor declared that “Americans are too worried about the new coronavirus that’s spreading rapidly across China.” He added: “Everyone in America should take a very big breath, slow down and stop panicking and being hysterical.” And he explained: “I think we need to put it into context, the death rate is much lower than for SARS.”

  February 27, 2020, CNN: The CNN website reported that CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield “has a simple message for Americans: No, you shouldn’t be afraid.” The website also quoted NIH Director Dr. Alex Azar saying that “most people who get coronavirus will have mild to moderate symptoms and will be able to stay home, treating it like the severe flu or cold.” And it reported that the CDC “does not recommend Americans wear surgical masks in public. Surgical masks are effective against respiratory infections but not airborne infections.”

  February 28, 2020, New England Journal of Medicine: Drs. Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield wrote that “the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%” and “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%).” They cited Chinese data showing that “either children are less likely to become infected, or their symptoms were so mild that their infection escaped detection.”

  March 4, 2020, Slate : Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust, Harvard emergency physician reassured readers that all the evidence available at the time “suggests that COVID-19 is a relatively benign disease for most young people, and a potentially devastating one for the old and chronically ill, albeit not nearly as risky as reported.” He said the mortality rate was “zero in children 10 or younger among hundreds of cases in China” and that it was important to “divert our focus away from worrying about preventing systemic spread among healthy people—which is likely either inevitable, or out of our control.”

  No censorship or propaganda

  If we had continued down the road of a regular public health response, opinions like these from our national public health leaders would have continued to be published and discussed openly. There would have been open discussion of the virus’s potential harms, and expert debates about various response measures. There would have been no need to censor any particular opinion or disseminate propaganda supporting any other. 

  If some experts thought we should shut down the entire country (or world), they would have debated this position with those experts who thought this was a gross and dangerous overreaction. The media would most likely have taken the side of the less draconian measures, because it would have been common knowledge that the virus was not lethal for most people, and that the case fatality rate (how many people died after getting sick) was, as Fauci and Redfield reported in February 2020, around 0.1 percent in the general population, and much lower for anyone under 65.

  If anyone had published a model showing millions of potential deaths based on a 2 or 3 percent or higher estimated fatality rate, their assumptions would have been openly questioned and debated, and most likely easily debunked using available data and observed fatality rates from the real world.

  Here are other important topics the media would have been able to report on (as they were doing without censorship before the middle of March), had there been no intentional suppression of traditional public health guidelines, and no panic-fomenting propaganda:

  China

  Scientific and medical data from China was never considered reliable before Covid, because in a totalitarian regime it is assumed that the data must always conform to the regime’s agenda. Without censorship or propaganda, this would have remained true for everything related to Covid. The videos of people falling dead in the streets, the draconian lockdowns of millions of people, and the obviously absurd claims that the lockdowns in one area of the country had eradicated the virus everywhere for years on end, would all be openly questioned and debunked in the media.

  Testing and quarantines

  Without censorship or propaganda, the media would be able to invite top epidemiologists to explain to the public that once an airborne virus is widely disseminated in a population, you cannot stop it from spreading. You can use tests to help guide treatment. You can also use tests to figure out who has been exposed to the virus and is likely to have acquired immunity so they can interact safely with vulnerable populations. It would be common knowledge that it is not necessary or useful to test the entire population repeatedly or to quarantine healthy people.

  Early spread 

  It would have been reassuring for people to know that the virus probably started spreading before December 2019. This would mean that more people had already been exposed without getting sick or dying, which would support the low fatality estimates. It would also mean that since the virus was already widely disseminated, containment (using testing and quarantines) was not a viable or desirable objective, as experts were already stating (see Dr. Faust above).

  Cases

  Without unnecessary testing, the definition of a “case” would have remained what it had always been before Covid: someone who seeks medical care because they have serious symptoms. Thus, the media would report only on clusters of actual cases, if and when they emerged in different locations. There would be no ticker tapes with running numbers of asymptomatic people who tested positive. Instead of millions of positive “cases” (i.e., positive PCR tests), we would hear about hundreds or thousands of people who were hospitalized with serious symptoms, as in all previous epidemics and pandemics. This would happen in different places at different times, as the virus spread geographically. The vast majority of the population would never be counted as cases.

  Natural immunity and herd immunity

  Virologists and epidemiologists would be featured in the news, explaining that if you have been exposed to a virus you develop natural immunity. So, for example, if there were nurses at a hospital who had been sick with Covid, they could go back to work and not worry about getting seriously ill or spreading the virus. The public would also learn that the more people developed natural immunity, the closer we would get to herd immunity, which would mean the virus would have nowhere else to spread. Nobody would consider either of those terms a reckless strategy or a sociopathic plot to let the virus “rip” and kill large swaths of the population.

  Early treatment

  Doctors in China had several months experience treating Covid before observable clusters of cases emerged in other countries. They had developed treatment protocols with available drugs that they could have shared with the international medical community. The media would have reported on the efforts of researchers and doctors all over the world to find available treatments that could lower the risk of patients’ hospitalization or death. 

  Vaccines

  Without the quarantine-until-vaccine agenda, investments in vaccine development in 2020 would have been modest, and might have led to some clinical trials, although by the time they got to Phase III trials (on large numbers of patients), most people would already have natural immunity. The media would have been able to report in January 2020, as Anthony Fauci did in January 2023, that “viruses that replicate in the human respiratory mucosa without infecting systemically, including influenza A, SARS-CoV-2, endemic coronaviruses, RSV, and many other ‘common cold’ viruses” have never been “effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines.” 

  With a focus on early treatments and keeping most people out of the hospital and in a normally functioning society, no one would have been holding their breath waiting for a “safe and effective” vaccine to emerge after only a few months’ trials. 

  Variants

  Nobody would have cared about – or even heard of – variants. The discussion would have centered around who was getting seriously ill and dying, and how they could be treated to lower the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. There would be no need to know whether someone was seriously ill with Alpha, Delta or Omicron XBB1.16, because the variant would have no impact on treatment. 

  Long Covid

  Every viral infection brings with it the potential for long-term symptoms, yet we’ve never talked about “long flu” or “long herpes.” There was no data back in 2020 suggesting that Covid was radically different and was more likely to result in troublesome symptoms once the initial infection was resolved. Thus, the topic probably would not even have come up. If it had, experts would have explained that feeling fatigued or depressed many months after a viral infection is probably not related, and that if you did not have a serious case of the illness you were very unlikely to have any serious long-term symptoms. 

  Origins of the virus

  If the biodefense experts had been honest with the public, they could have explained that the virus might have leaked from a lab, but that everything we knew about it – low fatality rate, steep fatality age gradient, no ill effects for children, etc. – was still true.

  At this point, there could have been open and honest public debates about the most important topics relevant to the outbreak: What is gain-of-function research, why are we doing it, and should we continue?

  There would have been no cover-ups or propaganda about the virus coming from an animal source. We would never know that pangolins or racoon dogs even existed.

  Why this sounds like a fantasy

  Once the biowarfare cartel took over the pandemic response, there was only one objective: scare everyone as much as possible to gain compliance with lockdowns and make everyone desperate for vaccines. Public health experts, including the leaders of the NIH, CDC, and NIAID, were no longer authorized to make their own pandemic policy decisions or public announcements. Everyone had to stick to the lockdown narrative.

  The forces of panic and propaganda, in the service of enormous profits for pharmaceutical and media companies, once unleashed could not be contained.

  It didn’t have to be that way.

  The more people understand this, the less likely they are to go along with such devastating madness in the future.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 19:00

• Which States Are Contributing The Most To US GDP?
  Which States Are Contributing The Most To US GDP?

  With 50 states in the Union and 100 percent to go around, the average state’s contribution to U.S. GDP would technically be two percent.

  While a lot of states are in that percentage range, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, there are some economic powerhouses that surpass that goal easily.

  The seven most populous states, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio are also the seven biggest contributors to U.S. GDP, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. 

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Yet, California is way ahead of the competition as far as per-capita contribution goes. While 11.7 percent of Americans live in California, the state contributed 14.2 percent to GDP in Q1 of 2023.

  New York state, where 5.9 percent of Americans live, had a share of 8.1 percent of GDP that quarter.

  Florida, which has a 6.7 percent share of population, only contributed 5.5 percent of GDP.

  As far as regions go, the Southeast, including populous states Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, contributed the biggest share of just over a fifth to U.S. GDP.

  The Far West held the second largest share of almost exactly one fifth, largely driven by California.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 18:40

• The Right Can't Beat The Left At Its Own Game
  The Right Can’t Beat The Left At Its Own Game

  Authored by Matthew Boose via American Greatness,

  The phrase “our democracy” has become a pervasive cliche in American politics. But who is the subject in this presumptuous expression?

  Although never defined explicitly, the answer is implicit in what it does not include.

  To a greater and greater extent, American politics revolves around black people, women, and immigrant populations from the Third World, which together form the core of the Democratic party.

  The remnants of the old country are now facing obsolescence, with only a weak and ambivalent vessel, the Republican party, to defend them.

  

  The right, whether out of denial, cowardice, or a lack of imagination, has failed to grapple with the deep roots of its demise.

  Republicans ostracized “nativists” and helped facilitate the demographic replacement of their own voters with the delusion that cheap Third World day laborers are “natural conservatives,” overlooking the most naturally conservative constituency of all: white men. The right failed to conserve gender roles, as women left the home and became angry foot soldiers of a socialist revolution.

  Now we observe the results.

  Consider abortion. The right keeps losing on this issue, with the latest setback coming in Ohio, a red, pro-Trump state. The American people, it is now clear after 50 years of Roe, regard abortion as basically another form of contraception. There is nothing Republicans can really say to disabuse the masses of this belief. It would require a fundamental revolution in thinking, a rejection of everything the population now takes for granted.

  The left isn’t wrong when they paint conservatives as natural enemies of “our democracy.” There is nothing conservative about the radically egalitarian system that governs the country, which turns politics into a race to the bottom, a game at which the left naturally excels. The left, in all times and places, has thrived on destruction and decay. The muddled, obese, foreign mass that is today called “the American people” has only a faint connection to the sturdy, adventurous Anglo-Saxons who founded the nation. Their values – freedom of speech, property rights, religious toleration, free enterprise – it is not surprising to find, are being trampled by the government we now have, which imposes tyranny from above with the support and legitimacy of “we the people,” or what has become of the people, below.

  As the country degenerates, the left grows more and more extreme without ever paying a price at the polls. On the other hand, the right is under constant pressure to moderate an already liberal agenda in a futile effort to delay extinction. What passes for conservatism has retreated to the slippery redoubts of “parental rights,” platitudes about women’s sports and “nation of immigrants” pablum.

  Even still, there are some who argue the right is not persuasive or inclusive enough.

  The release of new data showing young women sprinting to the left led some “conservative” women to blame the right and a supposed failure to police misogyny. This is further evidence of the deep, nigh inescapable influence of feminist thinking. The truth is that the right, which is by nature hierarchical, was never geared to win the arms’ race of universal suffrage. Now, what is left of the country of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is on life support, as conservatives scramble to pander to the descendants of Montezuma, radicalized and unhappy women, and wimpy yes-men. The ridiculous fraud of birthright citizenship allows the children of illegal immigrants, mere economic opportunists thumbing their nose at the nation and its laws, to have a say in its future.

  The ugly beast of socialism, led by the stalking horse of “democracy,” is killing America from the inside.

  Politics and culture revolve around the grievances of the weak and the envious. To speak of great projects, or even the low bar of sobriety in government, is an absurdity amidst the deafening cry for revenge against white men and the civilization they built.

  Our courts have been taken hostage by lynch mobs. Decadent judges showboat for approval from the crowd.

  Power is wielded with a heavy hand against the enemies of the revolution, while violent criminals roam free. No one in authority accepts accountability. The soul of “democracy” is captured well by the obscene spectacle of Donald Trump’s show trial, led by patently unqualified, racially aggrieved prosecutors.

  Those who find the present state of things tolerable, or even good, will never be shaken out of their delusions.

  One cannot feel too sorry for them when they come face to face with the creatures vomited out of the belly of their beloved “democracy.”

  If there is any hope of leaving this cesspool of mediocrity and disorder, it lies not with soft and flabby conservatism, which has utterly failed to yoke its vision to an unwilling, degenerate nation, but a politics that is willing to raise the bar.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 18:20

• North Korea Scrambles Jets After US Spy Plane Enters Economic Zone
  North Korea Scrambles Jets After US Spy Plane Enters Economic Zone

  North Korea’s military scrambled jets on Friday to intercept a US reconnaissance aircraft which Pyongyang says breached the country’s economic zone off the east coast. 

  State-run KCNA called it “a dangerous military provocation” for which the north is preparing further measures to deter incursions, based on a top military command statement. 

  

  The US spy plane reportedly entered as deep as 14km into North Korea’s economic zone (EEZ), which the US sees as international airspace – given an EEZ extends up to 200 nautical miles beyond a nation’s territorial waters.

  This fresh incident comes after the Kim Jong Un government’s ballistic missile test launches have gone relatively quiet in recent days, compared to prior weeks of a series of ramped-up tests warning against the intermittent US-South Korea drills. 

  Also on Friday the White House made a big announcement related to ongoing joint exercises, with Biden national security advisor Jake Sullivan outlining a plant for a new multiyear military exercises between the U.S., Japan and South Korea. He specifically identified the need for readiness in the face of provocations from China and North Korea.

  “We’re opening a new era, and we’re making sure that era has staying power,” Sullivan told reporters ahead of a daylong summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at Camp David.

  “We’re announcing significant steps to enhance trilateral security cooperation in the region in the face of North Korean provocations, including a multiyear exercise plan, deeper coordination and integration on ballistic missile defense, and improving information sharing and crisis communication,” Sullivan said.

  

  All of this is likely to rile Pyongyang further, after it recently ratcheted its nuclear rhetoric in the wake of the Ohio-Class USS Kentucky having docked in the South Korean port of Busan in July, which marked the first time since 1981 that an American nuclear-armed submarine arrived in the country.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 18:00

• Debunking Jack Smith's Latest Indictment Against President Trump
  Debunking Jack Smith’s Latest Indictment Against President Trump

  Authored by Paul and Olivia Ingrassia via AmericanMind.org,

  Efforts to sow confusion and chaos in our election systems must be confronted…

  When the Supreme Court denied the State of Texas’s lawsuit in December of 2020 to challenge the integrity of that year’s general election for lack of Article III standing, there already existed an overwhelming trove of evidence of procedural abnormalities and statistical anomalies that pointed to fundamental questions about the legitimacy of the election. Well over 155 million votes were allegedly cast in that year’s cycle – the most of any vote total in presidential history, surpassing 2016’s previous record-setting high by a whopping 28 million votes. Moreover, the 2020 election not only saw the highest percentage of votes cast either by mail or absentee ballot in modern American history, but it was the first time in which election day voting represented a minority of all methods of casting ballots: fewer than one third of voters who cast their ballots in the 2020 general election did so in person on election day.

  Even if there was absolutely no evidence of election fraud, the fact that more votes were cast than in any other election in American history – the majority of the ballots having been cast prior to the official election day by mail, a method of voting historically recognized as being rife with fraud, not only in the United States but other Western democracies—meant that extreme diligence and precautionary care ought to have been taken to minimize the high probability of outcome determinative error in an election of such complexity.

  

  The winner of the 2020 election was not declared by most mainstream networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as mainstream cable networks like Fox News and CNN, until November 7, four days after polls closed. 

  This was the longest gap in time to declare a winner since 2000, when the outcome in that year’s presidential election was eventually settled by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore.

  Other serious abnormalities arose that, in a normal political climate, would have been cause for concern about overall election integrity.

  

  For example, despite Trump having won 18 of the 19 bellwether counties that have voted for the president in every election from 1980 to 2016, the mainstream media still called the race for Joe Biden.

  Moreover, the three major swing states—Florida, Iowa, and Ohio—which voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1996, all voted for Donald Trump.

  Biden won only 509 counties compared with the 2,500+ won by Trump, or just 16.7 percent of all the nation’s counties, the fewest of any presidential winner in history. On top of everything else, there were high-profile, newsworthy abnormalities that occurred on election night, or in the hours and days immediately following, that plainly did not make sense.

  Obviously, there was the story of the water main break in Georgia, in critical Fulton County, which occurred as vote counters were still tabulating ballots on election night.

  The pipe breakage conveniently bought officials time to delay the counting of nearly 40,000 outstanding, outcome-determinative absentee ballots.

  Then there were the countless stories of “ballot trafficking,” as documented in the now infamous Dinesh D’Souza film, 2000 Mules, whereby thousands of nonprofit hires, or “mules,” dumped fraudulent absentee ballots in critical swing states like Georgia and Arizona overnight, which contaminated the process and likely changed the final result of the election in those states.

  There was also a patent lack of transparency in the days following the election, particularly in Democratic strongholds such as Philadelphia, where major election sites were in some cases unlawfully closed off from the public, violating their fundamental right to transparent elections despite public assurances that ballots were counted consistent with state law and were executed impartially and without political bias. It was impossible to guarantee those assurances in Philadelphia or Fulton County or Maricopa County; indeed, the public’s constitutional rights in these procedures were fundamentally violated, itself sufficient grounds to demand recounts and reforms in at least those select battleground states.

  Recounts, audits, and legal challenges commenced throughout the months of November and December, many extending well beyond the “first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December”—in other words, the codified date on which the electors for president and vice president must meet.

  However, a major caveat existed: not unlike the unprecedented (and, in many cases, unlawful) manner in which certain states’ elections were carried out, the recounts and audits were conducted sloppily at best.

  So as not to belabor this point, here are just a few examples:

  In Georgia, where Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state in nearly 30 years by a minuscule 11,779 votes (or by just 0.23 percent), several audits and recounts were conducted in the weeks after election day. Statewide, the “official” Georgia hand recount resulted in Biden’s lead slimming by 1,274 votes, over ten percent of the margin of victory. It should be noted, however, as a major source of controversy, each audit occurred without signature verification: after the signed envelope containing an absentee voter’s ballot was received, the ballot was removed with no way of reconnecting the two again. 

  While some argued this falls under the Georgia Constitution’s requirement of a secret ballot (though it should be noted that other states with similar secrecy requirements enable the reconnection of ballots), Georgia failed to properly audit the 2020 election and mitigate the legitimate concerns raised. Given that a majority of voters cast their ballots by mail, which led to the heightened scrutiny in the first place, it appears likely that Georgia officials lacked the requisite means to ensure the orderly count, recount, and audit of those votes.

  In fact, the secretary of state’s failure to properly implement a signature verification system led to a complete overhaul of the balloting process. As a result of Georgia’s 2021 election law changes, voters now verify their absentee ballots by providing a driver’s license number or identification card. To add insult to injury, on top of the already dubious “signature verification” scheme which experts agree is a notoriously subjective process to begin with (for instance, what accounted for the general election having only 32.5 percent of the invalid signatures cured, compared to over 60 percent in the 2021 runoff?), votes from Georgia’s 159 counties were audited multiple times, yielding staggering results: an audit of Fulton County on November 16, 2020 (more than a week after the media declared Joe Biden the President-elect) found 2,600 otherwise uncounted ballots as a result of a person “not executing their job properly”; Fayette County failed to count another 2,755 votes; and several other forgotten memory cards carrying hundreds of votes were discovered across the state. The fact that Trump is facing possible federal charges for having inquired about “finding” votes in a state which indeed lost thousands of votes is an indicator of the corruption of the system.

  These challenges continued for weeks on end, such that another audit was announced in Cobb County on December 14, 2020, the day on which the electors were scheduled to meet. This is the backdrop that caused the meeting of the alternate electors in Georgia, which many legal scholars have pointed out that a similar scenario unfolded in Hawaii in 1960. Hawaii had officially certified the election and sent its own electors for Nixon accordingly, but because there was an ongoing legal challenge, an alternate slate of electors was sent by a group of Democrats for Kennedy. In the 1960 case, it was the alternate slate of electors that ultimately were counted and certified.

  In Pennsylvania, mail-in ballots constituted about 40 percent of the ballots cast statewide (up from 4 percent in 2016). The margin of victory was a narrow 1.17 percent, and legal challenges to the election procedures occurred well into December. Following an order by Justice Alito to separate the ballots arriving after election day, a deadline to challenge the state’s mail-in votes was set a day after the “safe harbor” deadline, or the day by which states were required to resolve their election controversies. A September 2020 decision from Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court clarified state law by requiring that ballots be placed in “secrecy envelopes” in order to be counted. “Naked ballots” lacking the envelope were not to be counted, which led to significant confusion during the primary. As a result, Pennsylvania implemented massive voter education efforts to prepare election workers specifically on how to manage these ballots, which were returned without having first been placed in a secrecy envelope. It remains unclear how many “naked ballots” were cast during the 2020 general election. Likely not wholly unrelated, it is noteworthy that the 2020 general election saw a significantly lower mail-in ballot rejection rate.

  In Wisconsin, the hundreds of drop boxes installed during the 2020 election to collect absentee ballots were deemed “illegal under Wisconsin statutes” by the state’s supreme court in 2022. This is particularly troublesome, considering a whopping 40.8 percent of the ballots in the 2020 election were cast by mail, compared to just 4.8 percent in 2016. Because of these illegal election law changes, as explicitly referenced by John Eastman in his memoranda, the country may never know how many votes in Wisconsin were cast and counted in accordance with the state legislature’s procedures, a state that went for Biden by just around 20,000 votes, or a 0.63 percent margin of victory. Wisconsin also saw a record high turnout rate, so much so that many observers have questioned the definition of “turnout rate” itself: 89 percent of registered voters in Wisconsin cast their ballots in 2020.

  

  Election law challenges were not limited to Wisconsin. Several states saw improper changes to election laws by bodies other than the state legislature, in violation of Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution. While some of the lawsuits were successful in the weeks leading up to the election, others after November 3 were dismissed not on the merits but instead due to lack of standing. Regardless, many lawsuits were ongoing at the appointed time at which the electors were scheduled to meet in December. 

  The President of the United States was, in the weeks following the fraudulent election, outright censored, shadow banned, and blacklisted from every major social media platform, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—his influence and reach severely undercut and silenced by a partnership of hostile government agents and private actors in Silicon Valley who harbored well-known political and personal antipathies against him. Even while still on those platforms, however, there has come to light overwhelming evidence that pro-Trump stories, or at the very least, stories perceived as anti-Biden or anti-Democratic, were shadow banned, if not outright censored, by those very same platforms. The Twitter Files shed some light onto what had happened behind the scenes. FBI agents, in collusion with censors who worked at Twitter, conspired surreptitiously to find ways to shut down content-based political speech, which should be protected speech under the First Amendment. The most damning revelation to have come out of the Twitter Files was, of course, the concerted effort to silence the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, as originally reported by the New York Post in the days and weeks leading up to November 3.

  The reports of thousands of emails exchanged between Hunter and business associates over a decade-long period strongly hinted at a money laundering scheme involving the Ukrainian company Burisma, for which Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges, and through which the son of Joe Biden profited from his father’s lucrative contacts in foreign governments and other connections afforded by his public office. The FBI granted expedited Top Secret security clearances, normally reserved exclusively to high-ranking government officials, to members of Twitter in order to create a special portal for Twitter staff to counteract “disinformation”—which really meant any reporting that might benefit the Trump campaign at the expense of the Biden campaign. When polled, nearly 4 in 5 Americans believed that but for the censorship of the Hunter Biden story, the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, rigged procedures put to one side, would have been different.

  The greatest anomaly of the 2020 general election was the political context in which the election took place: COVID-19 reset the entire paradigm. One can easily forget that in December of 2019, prior to the first reported outbreak of the pandemic on American shores, the Trump economy was raging, unemployment was at historic lows across every demographic group, global terrorism was at decades lows, and America’s future looked quite bright. Then everything changed. The majority of states radically changed their election procedures—beyond anything previously seen in American history—using the justification of national emergency, which deeply complicated the process of counting votes. Such changes included switching to “universal mail voting”—which the Left sold to the public as a “civil rights issue,” adding a veneer of moral propriety to make it easier for them to affect the outcome of the election.

  The fact that so many states, such as Nevada and Vermont, made these changes permanent proves that civil rights was never the driving issue; these changes were always about maintaining power. The result of these changes meant “that millions more Americans will receive mail ballots in future elections,” as reported by Politico. The influx of new ballots has deeply muddied the waters and sowed permanent doubts about the integrity of all future elections.

  As it stood, prior to the pandemic, the integrity of our elections has been put into serious doubt over years by Democrats and Republicans alike. Before 2020, election integrity was mostly a Democratic boilerplate issue: the results of the 2000, 2004, and 2016 presidential elections, in particular, were seriously undermined by Democratic lawmakers and their media allies who in many cases outright denied the legitimacy of both elections. In 2016, many leading Democrats, incredulous over the thought of Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, also discussed the possibility of sending alternate electors or supporting so-called “faithless” electors, even going as far as signing onto an attempt to sully the electors’ fight on the grounds that the Electoral College is a “deliberative process.” Then, the Left had no shame in sowing doubts about the integrity of the election process and the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, having already conjured a false narrative about Russian influence in the 2016 election, to which the American people were subject nonstop for the entire first half of Trump’s term in office.

  According to the Durham Report, “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community Appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” It was the Crossfire Hurricane investigation launched on July 31, 2016, in the middle of the presidential election, that established the legal imprimatur for the Obama FBI to wiretap the Trump campaign. The 2020 election was carried out in the most polarized political climate since 1860. Because of our deeply polarized state of affairs, the election results were bound to be close, either way. So the fact that Trump’s administration wanted to exercise its due diligence—in light of how close our presidential elections are, including in 2020, which was decided by a mere 50,000 votes spread across a handful of states—was reasonable. 

  Indeed, it would have been an act of grave negligence had Trump not made inquiries into the integrity of the election. His phone calls, for example, to the Georgia governor, and his demands to the Georgia secretary of state, for which he is now being investigated, and state legislatures in critical battlegrounds, like Michigan and Wyoming, is not an impeachable or indictable offense: it is an act of precautionary care, the type of action one would expect a president to carry out to meet his constitutional oath.

  The words President Trump chose to communicate to Brian Kemp are far, far less important constitutionally speaking than the act itself, which was motivated by sincere worries about the legalities of the 2020 election, and out of an abundance of concern to uphold his Article II, Section 3 duty: “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The first line of Article II stipulates that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Donald Trump, as President of the United States, therefore had a constitutional prerogative to ensure the integrity of the electoral process. 

  That dozens of states changed their election procedures during an extraordinarily precarious moment in American history would indeed necessitate the kinds of actions, at a bare minimum, that Trump undertook in the days following the 2020 election, in order to meet his oath. Here are just a handful of examples:

  • Florida’s voter registration deadline was extended.

  • Pennsylvania provided for prepaid postage for mail-in and absentee ballots. The state also extended the deadline for mail-in/absentee ballots, and authorized dropbox access for the collection of such ballots.

  • Arizona’s voter registration deadline was extended.

  • Michigan sent mail-in ballot applications “automatically” to all voters for the general election.

  • Maine extended its voter pre-registration deadline for the general election.

  • Wisconsin automatically sent mail-in ballots to most voters for the general election.

  The above partial list, which names just a handful of prominent swing states, only reflects the tip of the iceberg of the monumental, historic, and unprecedented changes that were unlawfully implemented by state legislatures across the country to make ballot harvesting and voting generally easier (which is to say, more susceptible to corruption) in the lead-up to the 2020 election. And this list excludes deep blue states like California and New York, which made radical changes to its voting laws, including authorizing counties to “consolidate polling places”; extending the eligibility for mail-in ballots to any person deemed unable to personally appear at the polling place because of a risk of contracting COVID; and opening “online portals” to request absentee ballots, among other revolutionary changes that made voting easier and thus significantly more vulnerable to fraud. Indeed, one can reasonably argue that the procedures themselves, of highly dubious legality again, were prima facie fraudulent. And this neglects the hundreds if not thousands of other arbitrary rule changes made nationwide on a state-by-state basis, such as mask-wearing requirements and other unprecedented, last-minute rule changes implemented in numerous states with the  purpose of maximizing Biden voters and minimizing Trump voters. 

  In a country of this size under normal conditions, the changes discussed above would typically require years to implement in order to guarantee their efficacy. But the goal of electioneering in this country is no longer one of minimizing corruption to ensure a fair, orderly, and competent process—producing outcomes that every American can confidently rally around. Instead, its purpose has been reverse engineered to now sow as much confusion in the process as humanly possible, making election procedures so complicated—and the thought of conducting proper discovery in a would-be lawsuit so time consuming and arduous—that it has tragically rendered irreparable damage to the legitimacy of the entire system. 

  Free and fair elections, much like equitable justice, is a foreign concept in a banana republic. The expedited timeline by which the 2020 general election procedures were changed in the name of national security is the ultimate testimony of a society that does not care any longer for competence, or fairness, or democratic governance, or putting its own interests above the voters’. Instead, it is the mark of a regime that is sinking into unmanageable corruption.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 17:40

• DOJ Wants 33-Year Prison Sentence For Proud Boy Leader Over J6
  DOJ Wants 33-Year Prison Sentence For Proud Boy Leader Over J6

  Federal prosecutors want to toss Proud Boys’ leader Enrique Tarrio in prison for 33-years, and slap his associates with prison terms ranging from 20 years to 30 years, for their alleged role in the Jan. 6 breach, which would make it the longest punishment doled out over the incident if imposed.

  

  “The scope of the defendants’ conspiracy is vast. The defendants organized and directed a force of nearly 200 to attack the heart of our democracy,” reads a DOJ sentencing memo filed at the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday. “The government’s evidence showed that all five defendants were motivated to use force to stop the certification proceedings in order to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power.”

  “The government recommends that the Court impose a lengthy sentence of imprisonment on each defendant. Specifically, Enrique Tarrio should serve 33 years in prison; Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, 30 years; Ethan Nordean, 27 years; and Dominic Pezzola, 20 years.”

  Tarrio – who wasn’t even at the Capitol on Jan. 6 – was found guilty of seditious conspiracy in May, along with Biggs, Nodean and Rehl, for which prosecutors have sought to impose the longest prison terms. Pezolla was acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charge, but was found guilty of obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and conspiracy to prevent Congress and federal law enforcement from performing their duties.

  As Julie Kelly wrote via American Greatness in March:

  Five Proud Boys, including the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, are accused of conspiring to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” on January 6, 2021. It is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s most consequential case related to January 6; convictions will help build a similar case against Donald Trump largely based on his infamous “stand back and stand by” remark to the Proud Boys during an October 2020 presidential debate.

  Most of the evidence is nothing more than inflammatory, braggadocious chatter in group texts; Tarrio wasn’t even present at the Capitol on January 6. Another defendant, Ethan Nordean, can be seen on surveillance video walking through an open door as Capitol police stood nearby.

  Similar to other so-called “militia” groups tied to January 6, no one brought weapons to the Capitol that day; no one was charged with assaulting police officers or lawmakers. A key piece of evidence that prosecutors claimed was a road map for the “attack” on the Capitol wasn’t produced by any Proud Boy but by a former intelligence asset who himself sent the plan to Tarrio through a third party.

  The 33-year sentence is almost double that of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, who was sentenced to 18-years in prison in May.

  Informants, informants everywhere

  As Julie Kelly further noted in March:

  At least 10 and possibly up to 15 FBI informants were embedded in the group months before and continuing after the events of January 6. Informants participated in numerous group chats, cozied up to leadership, and even accompanied the Proud Boys to Washington.

  One known informant, according to a September 2021 New York Times report, was involved in the first breach of Capitol grounds and entered the building that afternoon.

  Many have speculated that the harsh treatment of J6 defendants portends how the DOJ is going to treat former President Trump.

  

  As the Epoch Times notes;

  Special Counsel Jack Smith, who filed the Jan. 6 indictment, is accusing the former president of violating Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, arguing that President Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results threatened lawful votes cast by voters for President Biden.

  Violators of Section 241 can be fined and/or imprisoned for up to 10 years. In case the violation results in sexual abuse, kidnapping, or death, the accused can also be sentenced to life imprisonment or death.

  The judge set to preside over the case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, is an Obama appointee who has sentenced at least 38 people involved in the Jan. 6 breach and is known to hand out harsher punishments than what government prosecutors have requested.

  Jan. 6 Defendants’ Lawyers Blame Trump

  In the Jan. 6 case (pdf) against Mr. Tarrio and the four other individuals, prosecutors insist that the defendants “embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution.’”

  “They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals,” the prosecutors argued.

  “The actions of these defendants threatened the bedrock principles of our country—democracy and the rule of law. These defendants sought out and embraced their role as the purveyors of street violence to achieve their political objectives.”

  

  Defense attorneys argued that their clients hatched no conspiracy nor had a plan to attack the U.S. Capitol and sought to characterize the breach as a spontaneous action that was fueled by President Trump’s claims.

  Mr. Tarrio’s lawyers argued that President Trump is to be blamed for asking a crowd outside the White House to “fight like hell” on the day. A lawyer for Mr. Rehl and Mr. Biggs insisted that “believing the commander in chief and heeding his call should yield some measure of mitigation.”

  “The defendants are not terrorists. Whatever excesses of zeal they demonstrated on January 6, 2021, and no matter how grave the potential interference with the orderly transfer of power due to the events of that day, a decade or more behind bars is an excessive punishment,” attorney Norm Pattis stated.

  Two of the charges that Mr. Tarrio and his co-defendants face are the same that President Trump has been charged with—conspiracy to obstruct Congress and obstruction of Congress’ certification of President Biden’s victory.

  Mr. Tarrio and his co-defendants will be subjected to several hearings beginning later this month at a federal court in Washington, the same court where President Trump had pleaded not guilty in his Jan. 6 indictment.

  Meanwhile, President Trump has argued that it is “impossible” for him to get a fair trial in D.C. The place is “over 95 percent anti-Trump,” he said in an Aug. 3 Truth Social post.

  The President Trump expressed hope that the case may be “moved to an impartial venue, such as the politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia!”

  A survey (pdf) by The Economist/YouGov conducted earlier this month asked respondents whether they think “Donald Trump can get a fair trial in Washington, D.C.”

  Only 40 percent replied “Yes.” While 39 percent of respondents said “No,” 21 percent replied that they’re “not sure.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/18/2023 – 17:20

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