- C.S.Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" Matches Orwell's "1984" As A Prognosticator Of The Perils Of Progressivism
C.S.Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength” Matches Orwell’s “1984” As A Prognosticator Of The Perils Of Progressivism
Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times,
Many commentators have pointed out – correctly – that current “progressive” trends are reminiscent of George Orwell’s classic novel, “1984.” The parallels include manipulation of the English language, rewriting of history, suppression of dissent, and the omnipresence of administrative central government.
In addition to which, there are the lightning-swift changes in the party line: For example, behavior traditionally deemed morally wrong or perverted suddenly becomes a theme for celebration. You’re a bigot if you don’t change instantly!
Orwell wasn’t the only mid-20th century British writer to forecast those trends. Another was C.S. Lewis—particularly in his brilliant dystopia “That Hideous Strength.”
Lewis is best known for his works of popular Christian theology and for the allegorical fantasies for children called the “Chronicles of Narnia.”
On the other hand, “That Hideous Strength” is subtitled “A Modern Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups.” It isn’t entirely a fairy tale, but the subtitle’s warning is appropriate: This book has some disturbing content, and it certainly isn’t for children.
“That Hideous Strength” is the third in Lewis’s science fiction space trilogy. The action in the first, “Out of the Silent Planet,” takes place mostly on Mars. (Yes, you get to meet real Martians!) The second is “Perelandra,” which centers on Venus. In “That Hideous Strength,” the action is entirely on Earth—although beings from higher (and lower) regions also participate.
The phrase “that hideous strength” derives from a 1555 poem by the Scottish writer David Lyndsay. The term “strength” denoted a fortress or stronghold. In the poem, the hideous strength is the Tower of Babel. In Lewis’s book, it’s the massive, modernistic headquarters of the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments.
“N.I.C.E.,” for short.
‘Progressives’ Then and Now
The authoritarians who control most major American institutions today aren’t the first to claim the label “progressive.” Italian fascists, German National Socialists (Nazis), communists, and other socialists all appropriated the same label. And like today’s “progressives,” they tarred advocates of freedom and tradition as reactionaries.
“That Hideous Strength” was published in 1945. In that year, the free world, newly victorious over one kind of “progressive” tyranny, came face-to-face with another. Lewis’s book applies to both kinds.
The Story
“That Hideous Strength” has no single protagonist. The nearest thing is Mark Studdock, a young instructor at Bracton College. Lewis located this fictional institution in a (likewise fictional) idyllic English college town. Lewis modeled the college and the town somewhat on Oxford and Cambridge, but Bracton is much smaller. On its grounds is an ancient forest, wherein there are reputed to lie the remains of the Dark Age English magician, Merlin.
Unfortunately, Bracton College has been invaded by the self-styled “progressive element”—a group of academics very much like many I encountered during my university years: obsessed with process and intellectual fads, driven by lust to destroy, mouthing circumlocutions in place of plain speech, and enlisting “community” in the service of political power.
Bracton’s progressive element is enthusiastic to learn that N.I.C.E. has selected their town for its new headquarters. N.I.C.E., after all, is the national leader in experimenting with the raw material of humanity. N.I.C.E. will show how to fashion mankind into the automatons who populate progressive fantasy.
Mark Studdock is only modestly talented, but is ambitious and unencumbered by firm religious beliefs. He also has a strong desire to fit in with the right sort. Hence, he’s seduced by the progressives—almost, but not entirely, for there’s a slight extenuation in his character. This is Mark’s love for his wife, Jane, and his admiration for what he thinks she represents. Ultimately, this becomes the entry point for his salvation.
Anti-Values
Throughout the book, present trends resound backward. I mentioned Lewis’s devastating portrayal of the academic type so common in campus life. There’s also the familiar manipulation of language and the desire to conform.
Then there’s Lewis’s depiction of the soulless administrative apparatus. Lewis doesn’t tell us that England has lost its democratic form of government, but if it hasn’t, then only the form remains. Because N.I.C.E. imposes what it wants with impunity.
Just as our “progressive” mobs destroy and vandalize historical monuments, N.I.C.E. levels the ancient forest on the Bracton College grounds, replacing it with a sterile and sinister pile. The placid old town is swamped by vulgarian bullies slinging four-letter words. You’ll encounter their analogues today in any “progressive”-run city. (Lewis thinly disguises the words, but you know what they are.)
Orwell’s “1984” depicts a world in which, except for periodic hate sessions, sensuality is suppressed. I think Lewis’s depiction is more accurate: In “That Hideous Strength,” the objective is discarded in favor of the subjective. Beauty and balance yield to the ugly and perverted. To condition Mark for their purposes, N.I.C.E. operatives place him in a distorted room:
“[T]he room was ill proportioned, not grotesquely so but sufficiently to produce dislike. … The point of the arch was not in the centre; the whole thing was lop-sided. Once again, the error was not gross. The thing was near enough to the true to deceive you for a moment and to go on teasing the mind even after the deception had been unmasked. … He had a look at the pictures. … There was a portrait of a young woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgrown with hair … you could almost feel that hair; indeed you could not avoid feeling it however hard you tried. There was a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis, and a man with corkscrews instead of arms bathing in a flat, sadly coloured sea …. And why were there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium?
“Long ago Mark had read somewhere of ’things of that extreme evil which seems innocent to the uninitiate,’ and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew.”
Conclusion
Mark (and the reader) finally learn that behind the pretensions of “progressivism” lurks Satan. For a Christian of Lewis’s stripe, there’s a literal Satan. But one need not believe in a literal Satan to appreciate the point: Just remind yourself that, “If there were a Satan, he would be just like N.I.C.E.”
At one level, “That Hideous Strength” is a gripping and instructive story with a viscerally rewarding finish. On another, it’s a work of speculative theology.
Lewis was a scholar who taught both at Cambridge and at Oxford. If you have an academic background (or if you recently attended college), you will chuckle at how he characterizes the “progressive” mediocrities that have undermined universities that are supposed to convey “truth and tradition” and perverted them into institutions that act quite differently.
Lewis’s vast learning produced a myriad of historical and literary allusions. You don’t need to recognize them to appreciate the story. But recognizing some or all of them makes reading the book richer and more fun. For a guide, I recommend Arend Smilde’s “Quotations and Allusions in C. S. Lewis, ‘That Hideous Strength.’”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 23:40 - Visualizing 150 Years Of Exports From Top Economic Superpowers
Visualizing 150 Years Of Exports From Top Economic Superpowers
Historically, the biggest economies in the world have also been those that dominate international trade overseas.
Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte and Bruno Venditti created the following graphic, using data from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the World Trade Organization, to show how global export shares by value have changed over the last 150 years for some of the world’s top powers.
Merchandise Exports Share 1870-2022
During the 19th century, Britain was the world’s richest and most advanced economy. The economy was the most industrialized globally, with one-third of the population employed in manufacturing.
As a result, the UK’s finished goods were produced so efficiently and cheaply that they were widely traded worldwide, and were easily found in almost any other market.
Additionally, the British Empire benefited from its colonies, with India representing 42% of its exports by the end of the century.
During that period, Britain dominated merchandise exports, followed by Germany:
Year UK Germany U.S. Japan China ROW 1870 24.3% 13.4% 5.0% 0.1% 2.8% 54.4% 1913 18.5% 18.0% 9.0% 0.8% 2.0% 51.7% 1929 12.2% 13.3% 11.5% 1.7% 2.4% 58.9% 1948 11.3% 1.4% 21.6% 0.4% 0.9% 64.4% 1950 13.3% 4.5% 14.6% 1.2% 2.1% 64.3% 1953 9.0% 5.3% 14.6% 1.5% 1.2% 68.4% 1963 7.8% 9.3% 14.3% 3.5% 1.3% 63.8% 1973 5.6% 11.5% 10.3% 5.6% 0.7% 66.3% 1983 5.0% 9.2% 11.2% 8.0% 1.2% 65.4% 1990 5.3% 12.0% 11.3% 8.2% 1.8% 61.4% 1993 4.9% 10.3% 12.6% 9.8% 2.5% 59.9% 1998 5.0% 9.9% 12.4% 7.0% 3.3% 62.4% 2000 4.4% 8.5% 12.1% 7.4% 3.9% 63.7% 2003 4.2% 10.2% 9.8% 6.4% 5.9% 63.5% 2010 2.7% 8.2% 8.4% 5.0% 10.3% 65.4% 2012 2.6% 7.6% 8.4% 4.3% 11.1% 66.0% 2019 2.4% 7.8% 8.6% 3.7% 13.2% 64.3% 2022 2.2% 6.8% 8.5% 3.1% 14.8% 64.6% After World War II, the U.S. overtook British and German export leadership.
Unlike Europe and many other parts of the world that experienced devastation and economic hardship due to the war, the U.S. emerged relatively unscathed in terms of physical destruction and with a significantly strengthened industrial base.
Asian Growth from the 1980s to the Present
During the 1980s and 1990s, Japan experienced rapid export growth, driven by electronics-related goods, and became one of the largest trading partners of the United States.
Today, China dominates the trade market, accounting for almost 15% of all merchandise.
China’s manufacturing industry has become a leader in producing almost anything from commonplace household items to integral pieces in automotive manufacturing. Some staples of Chinese manufacturing are:
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Precision instruments
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Semiconductors
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Industrial machinery for computers and smartphones
Since 1948, global merchandise exports have grown from $59 billion to $24.3 trillion in 2022.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 23:20 -
- Cultural Replacement: Why The Immigration Crisis Is Being Deliberately Engineered
Cultural Replacement: Why The Immigration Crisis Is Being Deliberately Engineered
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
There is absolutely no doubt – Elements of our own government are deliberately encouraging the acceleration of illegal immigration across the southern border and they are actively sabotaging any attempts to stop the madness.
There are two questions we need to ask:
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Why are they doing this?
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And, what can be done to stop them?’
In a move that I think debunks any claims that the Biden Administration wants a secure border, the federal government recently challenged Texas efforts to install border fencing and barbed wire to prevent the massive influx of foreigners raiding the US. This is after several incidents in which convicted criminals and terrorists have been identified among migrant groups. The measures were working, so obviously, Biden felt the need to intervene.
A majority of the Supreme Court has also taken Biden’s side, forcing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to declare the situation an invasion that threatens the security of his state and America at large. The conflict is leading to a showdown between federal agencies and Texas. I would argue that it is a showdown that NEEDS to happen, the sooner the better.
The expulsion of unwanted or destructive groups of people has been an emergency measure used by civilizations for thousands of years.
The cultures that don’t protect their own gates end up being erased or absorbed into a completely different population that may not hold the same values and principles.
The majority of nations on the planet today have strict immigration rules, yet, America and the EU are the only regions attacked for wanting to limit the flow of illegals.
Why is that?
The open borders propaganda common to the corporate media and Hollywood movies is part of a larger establishment agenda that has been active for many years in the US, but it has been accelerating since 2021. The Biden Administration in particular has overseen the largest spike in illegal migration in US history, with over 300,000 border violations in December alone (that we know of). To put this in perspective, that’s the equivalent of a city the size of Pittsburgh moving across the US border and demanding welfare, subsidies, housing, jobs, free food, etc., every single month.
This is unsustainable and the establishment knows it. In fact, Biden has actively tried to hide the crisis from the view of the American people for years, denying that there is any threat and claiming that the border is more rigid today than ever before. Anyone who questions the validity of this claim is immediately accused of racism, white supremacy and conspiracy theory.
Border states have become so angered over leftist denials that they’ve started busing thousands of migrants into blue “sanctuary cities” like New York, Washington DC and Chicago. The result has been a calamity for their welfare programs and local economy. Even progressive voters in these areas are enraged by the flood of migrants into their neighborhoods.
Schools in New York are being emptied and shut down to make room for migrant housing. Homeless shelters in DC have been inundated with migrants begging for handouts and the citizen homeless had far less food over the holidays because the illegals ate it all. The Chicago O’Hare Airport is being turned into a migrant shelter and the city is trying to prevent the media from documenting the situation.
Democrat mayors are finally calling the event a national emergency; funny how they refused to admit to the problem until they were directly affected by it. Of course, they blame conservative governors instead of their own sanctuary city policies. In other words, Democrats are indignant because they are being forced by red states to suffer the consequences of their warped ideals. Leftists have a rule: Never admit when they are wrong, even if it means self destruction.
And though low level progressive politicians are made to look foolish in their continued defense of sanctuary status, there is the greater issue of engineered crisis. Why have establishment elites and the Biden Administration been lying despite the clear and present danger? And why is it considered particularly wrong for western countries to defend their borders?
Perhaps because certain groups of people within the centers of power benefit greatly from the continued migrant invasion.
We’ve all heard of the Cloward-Piven Strategy by now, and it’s not all that difficult to understand – Create social destabilization by using migrants as a weapon. But there’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Cloward-Piven is almost too simplistic an explanation; it doesn’t really define the bigger picture. There are a few ways that this strategy could open the door to authoritarianism in the US. Lets examine these scenarios to better comprehend why…
Operation Garden Plot And Martial Law
In 1968 the US Department of Defense at the request of the government drafted a civil disturbance plan called ‘Operation Garden Plot’ which outlined what was essentially a martial law response to large scale social breakdown. One of the main factors listed in the plan as a trigger for martial law was the uncontrolled mass migration of minorities into the US, as well as riots by minorities in light of economic uncertainty.
Garden Plot has provisions designed to install a long lasting domestic military presence in the US if deemed necessary, and was even tied to programs like REX 84 which planned out the installation of “FEMA camps” or detention facilities meant to hold large numbers refugees during a mass migration crisis. These programs were accidentally exposed during the Iran/Contra hearings of 1987 and were kept secret from a majority of representatives in Congress.
In other words, political elites designed a set of operations to swiftly impose martial law if a migrant disaster occurred. But were these measures meant to solve the crisis? Or were they meant to use the crisis as an excuse to put boots on the ground in the US and permanently end whatever constitutional protections we have left? That is to say, it may very well be the plan of the establishment to keep the borders open until illegals overwhelm the system and the public is willing to accept martial law.
Amnesty And Creating An Illegal Immigrant Military
Democrats have fielded multiple bills including legislation in 2022 to give illegal immigrants the option to serve in the US military and gain citizenship as a reward. Representatives mention the growing shortfall in military recruitment as a rationale for the policy (a shortfall which they created after allowing woke cultism into armed forces curriculum).
I have mentioned this in previous articles and I continue to believe that one of the main purposes for the establishment to leave borders open and entice illegals to enter is to create a migrant army; a situation in which millions of illegals will be offered easy citizenship in exchange for service. I also believe that this migrant army will be used against the American public (the real citizenry) to impose martial law measures in the wake of a national disaster.
Look at it this way: With the current military around 70% conservative and independent it is far less likely that the armed forces will follow orders to subjugate the populace, especially in the name of an increasingly unpopular leftist/globalist president like Joe Biden. It is much easier for the elites to use foreigners with no inherent regard for American culture or the American people as a suppressive force.
Cultural Replacement Theory
“Replacement Theory” is often denigrated by the media as a racist conspiracy held by white people who are “afraid to lose power.” This is nonsensical for a number of reasons, including the fact that if “white people” were a monolith and we had all the power, then we would simply snuff out any threats to that power and lock down our borders. There would be nothing anyone could do to stop us.
The truth is, there is no white monolith, there is no patriarchy and there is no such thing as systemic racism. Do some leftist activists clamor for mass migration to replace white people in the US and Europe? Absolutely. They call it “decolonization.” Is this the real purpose of mass migration? Probably not.
The replacement going on is not so much about replacing white people as it is about replacing western culture. The goal, I believe, is to open the floodgates to foreign elements because most of them come from more socialist systems that have no understanding of individual freedom. In this way, the establishment can dilute the American culture of independence and use the tyranny of the majority (democracy) to erase our values and principles forever.
This is why you will hear Biden and his ilk constantly pontificate on “democracy” and the “defense of democracy’ and the conservative “threat to democracy.” This is very deliberate terminology. When they say “democracy”, they are talking about the rule of the mob; the tyranny of the majority. They are talking about collectivism, socialism and ultimately authoritarianism for the “sake of the greater good.”
Migrants are being used to phase out the pillars of western civilization. This is why the borders must be secured now and illegals must be kicked out of the country with haste. No martial law, no FEMA detention facilities, no amnesty, no asylum, no welfare and no subsidies. They just need to be removed and sent back to where they came from and if they return illegally they should be severely punished.
In order for this to happen it would appear that southern states will have to enforce their own border security. But how to do this without federal interference? The American public will have to step in and step up to help states like Texas. The movement will have to be so overwhelming that the federal government is afraid to intervene.
The shape of this secure border action will require trial and error, but as long as Texas is willing to continue arresting illegals and shipping them out of the country, all that is needed is a contingent of deputized Americans to help watch the border and catch people trying to cross. There may also be a need for people to defend border walls and fences from federal sabotage.
Some will argue that this constitutes a violation, a defiance of federal authorities, and I would say yes, it is, and that’s a good thing. The Biden Administration is in dereliction of its duty to keep the country safe from foreign invasion. Doing nothing and leaving borders undefended from mass immigration is no different from refusing to defend the border from a foreign military.
If the current trend is allowed to continue, the stage will be set for a host of emergencies that will be exploited to give elites the excuse to erase what constitutional protections we have left. This cannot be tolerated. It’s time to end it.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 23:00 -
- The GDP Number Was Great… There Is Just One Huge Problem
The GDP Number Was Great… There Is Just One Huge Problem
Earlier today we reported that according to Biden’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, in the fourth quarter US GDP grew at a torrid 3.3% pace, which was a 5-sigma beat to consensus estimate of 2.0% and also came in well above the highest Wall Street forecast. We also laid out the components that accounted for the growth: mostly the lack of inventory destocking (which means growth will be subtracted in Q1 instead), a bizarre jump in exports despite the soaring dollar, and last but not least, a jump in healthcare spending and a surge in RV purchases.
Yes, bizarre, but whether the GDP growth number was realistic or not (spoiler alert: the latter) is less important than what funded said growth. And it is here that we reveal something shocking: the chart below shows the Q4 change in GDP in nominal dollars as well as the corresponding increases in the US budget deficit (because the last time the US actually had a surplus was last century) and the increase in debt.
The result, for better or worse, speak for themselves: while Q4 GDP rose by $329 billion to $27.939 trillion, a respectable if made up number, what is much more disturbing is that over the same time period, the US budget deficit rose by more than 50%, or $510 billion. And the cherry on top: the increase in public US debt in the same three month period was a stunning $834 billion, or 154% more than the increase in GDP. In other words, it now takes $1.55 in budget deficit to generate $1 of growth… and it takes over $2.50 in new debt to generate $1 of GDP growth!
Needless to say, this is unsustanable, and is why even the St Louis Fed FRED database now admits that total Federal interest payments have surpassed $1 trillion for the first time ever (and are about to go exponential).
So the next time you read something like this from the imposter in the White House…
Today we learned that our economy grew 3.1% last year – all while adding another 2.7 million jobs and with core inflation moving back down towards the pre-pandemic benchmark.
That means wages, wealth, and employment are now higher now than they were before the pandemic. https://t.co/SOPzcJn1Of
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 25, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
… respond that today we also learned that our debt grew by $2.581 trillion last year. This means that every dollar in GDP growth cost $1.69 in new debt, and also means that every new job cost futures generations of Americans $957,100.48.
Oh, and before we forget, a reminder that all US jobs created since 2019… have gone to foreign born workers.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 22:40 - Trump Is Not The Cause Of The Chaos
Trump Is Not The Cause Of The Chaos
Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Politics,
Supercharging their efforts to gaslight America, Donald Trump’s enemies are denying the law of physics.
At least since Isaac Newton formulated his laws of motion, we’ve understood that every effect can be explained by its cause. This insight was a radical break from more primeval beliefs that things just happened or resulted from the will of often inscrutable deities and phantasmatic beasts.
Trump opponents reject this foundation of science and logic. Going beyond their grotesque comparisons of him to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, they now cast Trump as a mythical beast – like Golem, Leviathan, or Kraken – who wreaks whirlwinds of destruction without prodding.
Trump’s chief primary opponent, Nikki Haley, says that “chaos” accompanies him. Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan argues that “impeachments, embarrassments, scandal, [and] 1/6” follow in his wake. Democrats and their stenographers at once-great news organizations say Trump’s description of his enemies as “vermin” upon whom he will seek “retribution” is proof that he plans to rule as a murderous dictator.
In their telling, all of this has come out of thin air – the uncaused cause and inevitable result of Trump’s movement across the landscape. Like the winds and thunderclaps of yore, he unleashes himself upon an innocent people. The tumult is solely a reflection of his evil nature. This is superficial to the point of being laughable, but it’s the story they’re telling.
Trump is not the cause of this uproar. The behavior they deem beyond the pale and disqualifying is largely the effect of the vicious and dishonest attacks they have leveled against him since he announced his candidacy in 2015.
Donald Trump is the greatest victim not felled by an assassin in the history of the presidency. No one has more of a right to express grievance than this man whose enemies have sought retribution against him for the sin of winning an election. He is not a cosmic force determined to impose his will, but a man under siege who largely lashes out in self-defense.
Trump’s enemies have memory-holed the ways they have caused the behavior they denounce: the unfounded abuse they hurl at him, the myriad ways they have corrupted our institutions to undermine him, the chaos they have unleashed because of their hatred of him. They want us to forget that they:
- Cast him as a Russian agent who colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.
- Branded him a racist by falsely claiming he praised white supremacists and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.
- Portrayed him as a nincompoop by insisting that he had instructed Americans to inject bleach to fight COVID.
- Helped swing the 2020 election by enabling Joe Biden and 51 former high-ranking intelligence officials to dismiss the evidence of his son Hunter’s shady foreign business dealings as likely “Russian disinformation.”
The calumny did not stop when Trump left office. They call him a criminal because highly partisan prosecutors, some of whom ran on the promise to “get Trump,” have brought 91 felony indictments against him while other states are working to keep him off the ballot. They call him a kleptocrat because foreigners stayed at his family’s hotels while he was president.
None of these efforts – and there are plenty more examples – were grounded in reality; all were demonstrable falsehoods. Yet when Trump responded to their baseless depiction of him as a treasonous, racist thief, they cited it as proof that he is unfit for high office.
What does this say about them? That is the question that is almost never asked. Neither is the great what-if: What would a Trump presidency have been like if his enemies had not engaged in relentless personal attacks against him? Trump is no Reagan; he is not sunshine and hope but preternaturally combative and often insulting. Still, we don’t know what aspects of Trump’s character would have come to the fore absent the daily bludgeoning. They never gave him a chance. Would Trump and his supporters have been so aggrieved by his 2020 loss if the establishment hadn’t spent four years using every dirty trick in the book to deny him power – and spent the five months before the election justifying the political violence of the BLM-inspired riots?
He lost, but he also had plenty of reason to believe he was shafted.
Nothing – not even Trump – happens in a vacuum. The laws of cause and effect abide. This raises a conundrum for voters as we head toward November. Trump’s enemies will only ratchet up their attacks. Trump, rightfully angered by his mistreatment, seems likely to double down on his oft-intemperate responses (even though it is not in his, or the country’s best interest). He can’t seem to help himself. Who could?
I understand why many Americans recoil at the prosect of four more years of tumult. But they need to ask themselves: Who caused the problems? By defeating Trump, they will only be rewarding the real cause of the chaos.
J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 22:20 - Israel Attacks Hezbollah Airstrip Believed Built By Iran To Launch Drones
Israel Attacks Hezbollah Airstrip Believed Built By Iran To Launch Drones
In the latest development along Israel’s war-torn northern border with Lebanon, new Israeli strikes have taken out an airstrip which served Hezbollah’s aerial unit, described as having an Iranian built runway used to launch drones.
It’s located in the Qalaat Jabbour mountain region, and the IDF says it was responding to a drone attack on Israel earlier Thursday. Additionally, Hezbollah has continued raining down a “large number” of missiles on Israel’s Mount Meron surveillance base. Israel said the base suffered minor damage.
Illustrative via Rtrs According to Israeli media, “Hezbollah has been trying to harm Israel’s aerial defenses, with a projectile attack this week that caused damage to a sensitive IDF air traffic control base in northern Israel. It was the second such attack on the Mount Meron base in recent weeks.”
As for the Hezbollah military airport, Israel’s defense chief has previously claimed that paramilitary group flew an Iranian flag over the small drone base, indicating possible IRGC support on the ground:
The IDF on Thursday attacked a key Hezbollah-Iran airstrip at Kilat Jaber for launching aerial attacks against Israel in a major escalation between the sides.
In September 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed pictures showing the joint Hezbollah-Iranian terror base in southern Lebanon only 20 kilometers from the border with Israel.
Gallant said at the time that at the airport, one can see Iran’s flag flying on the runways from which the ayatollahs’ regime is using to plot against Israel.
Hezbollah has said these attacks are a legitimate response to “recent assassinations and repeated attacks on civilians” in Lebanon and Syria. The tit-for-tat fire from both sides has been daily and slowly intensifying, but still hasn’t broken out into the kind of all-out runaway war that many have feared.
Though Hezbollah has a small to medium-sized drone arsenal, still its bedrop weapon of choice is drawn from its literally tens of thousands of sophisticated surface-to-surface rockets.
JPost/Maariv Online: Aerial footage of the Iranian-Hezbollah joint airstrip in southern Lebanon Hezbollah also possesses missiles which can lock onto targets, something typically only possessed by militaries of sovereign states.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-air defense system has been very busy to say the least, also given that small drones are hard for it to intercept, as it’s designed primarily for larger inbound rockets.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 22:00 - To Get US Residency Still Requires The COVID Jab
To Get US Residency Still Requires The COVID Jab
Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
It’s helpful to think of a COVID experience as a never-ending house of horrors, with room after room of scandal and outrage, so much so that you never quite get through it. There simply are not enough researchers or column inches to cover it all.
(Bist/Shutterstock) In the past, any one of these outrages would be enough to call forth enormous public debate. Introduce them all at once—starting March 2020—and gradually unfold and codify them over a few years and many features slip through the cracks.
Consider, for example, the continued requirement that any legally immigrating person coming to the United States from another country and seeking residency is absolutely required to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a shot widely admitted not to protect against infection or spread and is associated with injury on a scale without pharmaceutical precedent.
And yet the U.S. government requires it.
The evidence is here from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Note the language: “to prevent the following diseases.”
That is completely untrue. You cannot make it true simply by claiming that it prevents something. It does nothing of the kind, despite its moniker of being a vaccine. All the others are indeed vaccines that generally prevent the disease because they are sterilizing shots. The COVID-19 shot is not. And yet there it is, riding the coattails of public-health valor from past ages.
It is generally not possible to avoid the requirement. You can appeal for a religious exemption, which involves several rounds of correspondence and documentation. They have variously been granted after much headache, bureaucracy, and expense. Very few will go to the trouble.
Meanwhile, the United States is currently experiencing a wave of immigration from asylum seekers which this country has never seen in raw numbers before. There is no requirement that these people coming across the Southern border and then shipped around the country face any such requirement of COVID vaccination. That only kicks in if you seek to immigrate the old-fashioned way, which is to say, by seeking legal permission.
Based on reports from Archive.org, it appears that the addition of the COVID-19 shot was in the first week of October 2021. It was not there and then it was, by pure bureaucratic edict. Edit file, submit, done.
This was long after it was well known that the vaccine did not stop infection or transmission, and long after the CDC was aware of the health risks of the vaccine. It was also a time when vaccine uptake was dramatically dropping from the levels of the initial enthusiasm from earlier that year.
By this time, vast numbers had grown skeptical and were willing to take their chances. The market for shots was headed south. It appears that immigrant populations—who had not been required to get it for the first ten months of 2021—were roped into the market as mandates began to invade private workplaces and cities. In other words, this was a forced recruitment of immigrant populations to boost the demand for the shots.
The Biden administration attempted to impose such mandates on the whole of the private sector. The Supreme Court blocked that measure in January 2022. So most were repealed. But the one for legal immigration stayed, and has not been challenged in court.
There is a darker way to understand this policy move too. It serves as a filtering mechanism. Many people around the world were fleeing shot mandates from their home countries. Adding this one to the list of required injections was a way to signal to the world: the United States would not provide any sanctuary to shot refuseniks, so don’t bother even trying.
It also operates as a culling mechanism against anti-lockdown and anti-mandate opinions. It assured that the United States would not be allowing people to work here who think for themselves, look at evidence, or otherwise refuse to bow to the pharma agenda.
The CDC further elaborates on the regulation: it must be within 12 months and it does pertain to children too. There is a narrow range of exemption for repeated shots but that requires additional paperwork.
There is simply no basis for this mandate at all. The vaccine is not efficacious in the normal sense of that term. Nor is it necessary for healthy adults, much less children, who face a near-zero risk of medically significant outcomes. There is the additional peculiarity that whatever immune response occurs from the shot fades quickly, and ever less pertains to the existing strain in the community of this fast-mutating virus.
In other words, there is nothing defensible about this policy at all. It is keeping untold families apart and preventing U.S. citizens from moving to the United States with children and spouses from other countries who decline the shots. They have worked to get back but the vaccine mandate here bars them from doing so. Sadly, there are few in Congress willing to take up the causes and do something about this.
It’s the sort of rule that is enforced with no rationality at all but which benefits powerful pharmaceutical companies. The issue has been barely covered in the media at all, and there are currently no real efforts ongoing to push back because the victims are powerless and much of the world has moved on.
Meanwhile, this COVID vaccine is being gradually added to every list of requirements that is available, from immigration to the childhood schedule to school attendance. This is despite how the shot has completely failed to perform up to the promise of the first year. This is fully known by vast swaths of the world’s population, and yet U.S. bureaucracies persist in their impositions without the slightest sense that they ought to acquiesce to the reality that everyone knows.
From the Brownstone Institute
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 21:40 - It's Still 90 Seconds To 'Midnight'
It’s Still 90 Seconds To ‘Midnight’
Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been tracking world events and assessing how close we are to “destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making”.
Originally focused on the threat posed by nuclear weapons, the scope has since been broadened to include the effects of climate change (first considered in 2007).
As Statista’s Martin Armstroing notes, the Doomsday Clock metaphor is used to “warn the public” about how close we are thought to be to the worst-case scenario.
In 1947, the clock was started at 7 minutes to midnight – midnight being the point at which it is all too late and the world being destroyed.
This assessment was driven mainly by “the prospect that the United States and the Soviet Union were headed for a nuclear arms race”. By 1953, this had been reduced to just two minutes, with the publication proclaiming, somewhat dramatically:
“The hands of the clock of doom have moved again. Only a few more swings of the pendulum , and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western Civilization.”
Seven years later though, the clock had turned back to 7 minutes again and the hands were not to tick as far as in 1953 again until 2018.
Then, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists wrote:
“Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals.”
Since then, however, the global situation has apparently become even more dire.
The assessment for 2022 kept the clock in the same threatening position that it had been in since 2020 – at just 100 seconds to midnight.
Now though, in 2024, the clock ticked even further, to just 90 seconds – the same position it found itself in at the start of last year.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The main reasoning is as follows:
“Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe. The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation.”
Of course, they couldn’t help but also claim that the climate also played a role in the assessment:
“The world in 2023 entered uncharted territory as it suffered its hottest year on record and global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise. Both global and North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures broke records, and Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest daily extent since the advent of satellite data.”
Which leaves us wondering… what happens if The Doomsday Clock reaches midnight – because ‘climate-something’ – and the world doesn’t end?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 21:20 - FBI Seizures From Safe Deposit Boxes Violated US Constitution: Federal Court
FBI Seizures From Safe Deposit Boxes Violated US Constitution: Federal Court
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The FBI’s seizure of contents from safe deposit boxes during a raid on a Beverly Hills vault in 2021 violated the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled on Jan. 23.
FBI director Christopher Wray testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington, on Nov. 15, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times) Agents raided U.S. Private Vaults, a business that allowed people to rent safe deposit boxes anonymously, based on the belief that criminals were using the service. The search warrant stated that agents could only open the boxes to inventory their contents and identify the owners for the return of their property.
However, agents brought drug-sniffing dogs and planned to set aside cash worth more than $5,000, with the intent to seize the money.
The FBI searched the contents of about 700 safe deposit boxes.
When people who rented boxes asked the FBI for their belongings back after the raid, the bureau refused, saying it was going to file for forfeiture or transfer ownership to the government. The renters of the boxes then sued.
A U.S. district judge previously ruled in favor of the government, finding the search was covered by what’s known as an inventory exception to the requirement for a warrant in the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.
That exception, though, doesn’t apply to the raid on U.S. Private Vaults, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled.
The ruling hinged largely on how the exception requires searches to operate on standardized instructions and highlighted how the FBI, in the Beverly Hills raid, used supplemental, customized instructions.
“Once the government begins adding a set of ‘customized’ instructions to a ’standardized‘ inventory policy—particularly the type of custom instructions presented by this case—the entire search stops being conducted pursuant to a ’standardized’ policy,” U.S. Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote in the ruling.
‘No Probable Cause’
During oral arguments, the appeals court panel compared the search to the “writs of assistance,” or unlimited searches executed by British authorities in pre-founding America.
“What you’ve got is a declaration or an understanding that from the beginning, the authorities intended to search all the boxes, all of them,” Judge Smith said at the time. “There was not probable cause available with respect to all of the boxes, but they did it anyway. Now, how do we distinguish that from what the colonists were upset about, and which led to the Fourth Amendment?”
In response, a government lawyer said the raid was “a unique situation” that involved “rampant illegal conduct.” U.S. Private Vaults has acknowledged in a plea agreement to recruiting criminals and conspiring to launder money.
“We note that it is particularly troubling that the government has failed to provide a limiting principle to how far a hypothetical ‘inventory search’ conducted pursuant to customized instructions can go,” Judge Smith said.
Many of the plaintiffs have already had their belongings returned by the FBI but pressed forward with the case for an opinion in their favor.
The ruling remanded the case back to U.S. District Judge Robert Klausner, who previously dismissed the case, for a ruling that directs the FBI to destroy records the bureau collected on the box renters who are members of the class-action case.
The opinion “draws a line in the sand, to ensure something like this never happens again,” Rob Johnson, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which was representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “If this had come out the other way, the government could have exported this raid as a model across the country. Now, the government is on notice its actions violated the Fourth Amendment.”
“This is a good day for our country and the principle that the government’s power to search our property has limits,” added Jennifer Snitko, who was among the box renters.
The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
‘Significant Privacy Interest’
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles told news outlets that the office is “prepared to destroy records of the inventory search.”
The ruling also said the government went outside the authority outlined in the search warrant.
U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke concurred with the ruling in full, while U.S. Circuit Judge Carlos T. Bea, agreeing that the search violated the Constitution, found the second finding regarding the warrant scope to be unnecessary.
Judges Smith, Bea, and Klausner were appointed by President George W. Bush. Judge VanDyke was appointed by President Donald Trump.
Judge Smith also wrote a separate, concurring opinion that addressed the plaintiffs’ argument that the inventory exception, typically applied to automobiles, shouldn’t extend to stationary locations such as apartment buildings or safe deposit boxes.
“Plaintiffs do have a significant privacy interest in their safe deposit boxes, given that their conduct indicates they intended their items to be ‘preserved … as private,’ and society generally views the privacy expectations of items in safe deposit boxes as reasonable,” Judge Smith wrote.
“Ultimately, given the greater privacy interests at stake and the implication of the rights of third parties,” he added, “I would hold that the inventory search doctrine does not extend to searches of box contents in a locked vault.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 21:00 - Nikki's Haley Mary: Begging Democrats For Money After Trump Threatens Donors
Nikki’s Haley Mary: Begging Democrats For Money After Trump Threatens Donors
Following news that Billionaire Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman withdrew support for ‘Republican’ presidential candidate Nikki Haley, Donald Trump pounced, threatening to kick Haley donors out of the MAGA tent.
“Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley is very bad for the Republican Party and, indeed, our Country. Her False Statements, Derogatory Comments, and Humiliating Public Loss, is demeaning to True American Patriots,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Her anger should be aimed at her Third Rate Political Consultants and, more importantly, Crooked Joe Biden and those that are destroying our Country – NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL SAVE IT.”
“I knew Nikki well, she was average at best, is not the one to take on World Leaders, and she never did. That was up to me, and that is why they respected the United States,” Trump continued. “When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate’s ‘Donors’ would immediately come to me, and want to ‘help out.'”
“This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me. Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp,” the note continues. “We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!”
Nikki Makes Lemonade
In response to Trump’s threat, the Haley campaign has resorted to texting registered Democrats to tattle on the bad Orange Man™.
“Hey, it’s Nikki Haley,” reads the text, submitted to ZeroHedge by a registered Democrat. “Donald Trump said if you support me, he will permanently bar you from the MAGA camp.“
“I will not be intimidated,” the note continues.
“This isn’t a coronation. This is an election,” the note continues, using well-worn Democrat talking points suggesting Trump would be… elected royalty?
Haley, a former UN Ambassador, closes by saying she’s “always been the underdog,” which only makes sense if her nickname for all the men she allegedly cheated on her husband with was “dog.”
And what’s this? Paid X ads?
For some real fun, read the replies…
This is just getting embarrassing.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 20:40 - Government Suppressed, Censored Concerns Over Mail-In Voting In 2020: Documents
Government Suppressed, Censored Concerns Over Mail-In Voting In 2020: Documents
Authored by Autsin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Newly released documents allege that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) knew it was wrong to censor concerns about the security of mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 election, yet it proceeded to do so anyway.
Empty envelopes of opened vote-by-mail ballots for the presidential primary are stacked on a table at King County Elections in Renton, Wash., on March 10, 2020. (Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images) On Jan. 22, a tranche of documents published by America First Legal (AFL) alleged the Department of Homeland Security’s CISA was aware that mail-in ballots were less secure than in-person voting ahead of the 2020 election.
Nevertheless, it undertook an “unprecedented censorship campaign to mislead the American people about the truth,” according to Gene Hamilton, AFL’s vice president and general counsel.
“Common sense dictates that ballots submitted via mail are inherently less secure than verified, in-person voting by a citizen who shows identification before casting his or her ballot,” Mr. Hamilton said in a press release.
“The American people were lied to, and there must be accountability.“
AFL lawyer Michael Ding told The Epoch Times that the new documents were produced after AFL sued the CISA in November 2022.
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, then-National Trade Council adviser Peter Navarro, senior adviser Jared Kushner, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and chief strategist Steve Bannon watch as President Donald Trump signs an executive order at the White House, on Jan. 23, 2017. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo) Mr. Ding said AFL’s suit called for CISA to disclose documents it did not provide under an April 2022 Freedom of Information Act request. Under a court-managed process, Mr. Ding said, documents are gradually materializing.
“As we get closer to election day this year. I do hope that the election meddling and censorship that this agency engaged in during 2020 does not happen again,” Mr. Ding said.
“But ultimately, I think Americans need to hold these government officials accountable for trampling on their constitutional rights.”
The recently released documents detail how CISA acknowledged that mail-in voting carried more significant risks than in-person elections, yet it coordinated with technology companies to censor what it called misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation regarding the 2020 election.
Ahead of the 2020 vote, a wave of legislative changes were made in 23 states and the District of Columbia allowing Americans to vote by mail due to the supposed risks posed to voters by the COVID-19 virus.
By the fall of 2020, only voters in Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas needed to report a reason to cast an absentee ballot by mail, according to internal CISA documents obtained by AFL. As early as September 2020 CISA knew mail-in voting would create significant problems, according to the documents.
An email replied to by Matthew Masterson, a senior cybersecurity advisor at CISA, on Sept. 24, 2020, revealed that the agency was aware of “three major challenges” with mail-in voting, observed during the primary elections.
Physically mailing and returning the ballots would be difficult, high numbers of ballots would be incorrectly completed, and there would likely be a shortage of personnel to process ballots, the email said.
Mr. Masterson’s email, referencing Wisconsin, said the state was short 700 poll workers and had to deploy 675 Wisconsin Army National Guard members to fill the gap.
That same email said the agency “could not conclude that voting … increased the spread of COVID.”
Christopher Krebs, then-head of the Department of Homeland Security’s CISA, speaks to reporters in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 6, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) By October 2020, CISA had created an internal chart expanding on those risks. The chart, published by AFL, said, “For mail-in voting, some of the risk under the control of election officials during in-person voting shifts to outside entities, such as ballot printers, mail processing facilities, and the United States Postal Service.”
Also, in October 2020, CISA shared information about mail-in voting with members of the press during so-called unclassified media tours, according to newly-released emails.
Media outlets “covered up the evidence,” AFL said, choosing instead to report on statements made by then-CISA director Chris Krebs that downplayed the election integrity concerns raised by President Donald Trump.
At the time, the CISA ran a “rumor control” page reassuring Americans of the safety of mail-in balloting. Simultaneously, the CISA was watching social media for any commentary on the integrity of mail-in voting. It allegedly went so far as to contract multinational professional services company Deloitte to aid monitoring efforts.
Copies of “Elections Daily Digest” reports obtained and published by AFL showed Deloitte was preparing “daily social media trends” reports on the topics of voter suppression, COVID-19, vote-by-mail, election technology, and removed/flagged social media posts. These reports included the number of daily mentions of each topic and assessments of “change in sentiment.”
“Deloitte’s reports provided CISA with confirmation that its social media monitoring and censorship apparatus was working,” AFL said in a release.
“CISA interfered in the 2020 presidential election. CISA knew that in-person voting did not increase the spread of COVID. CISA knew mail-in voting was less secure. CISA nevertheless supported policy changes to encourage unprecedented widespread mail-in voting.”
CISA formed the Election Integrity Partnership 100 days before the 2020 election “to censor narratives relating to mail-in voting,” AFL said.
The Election Integrity Partnership, which involved CISA and Stanford University’s Global Engagement Center, aimed to “censor Americans’ speech in the lead-up to the 2020 election,” according to a report published on Nov. 6, 2023, by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Election officials count absentee ballots in Milwaukee, Wis., on Nov. 4, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) ‘Pre-Bunking’ Stories
Washington-based AFL is led by Stephen Miller, who was a senior adviser to President Trump. On its website, Mr. Miller calls his organization an “answer to the ACLU” referring to the American Civil Liberties Union.
AFL, Mr. Ding said, first became interested in potential government censorship of electronic speech in July 2021.
At the time, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a press briefing that the White House was “flagging” posts, which they considered to be misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, for Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook to remove.
In an email, CISA’s public affairs adviser Scott McConnell said the agency will not comment on the situation.
AFL also expressed alarm when the DHS issued a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin in February 2022. The bulletin declared “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis-, dis-, and mal-information, introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors,” as a “terrorism threat.”
That bulletin said the CISA was working with “public and private sector partners—including U.S. critical infrastructure owners and operators—to mitigate risk.”
AFL published the first round of documents in May 2023. Those, according to AFL, detailed how CISA employees created both formal and informal partnerships with technology companies to monitor and flag accounts as well as delete posts. Moreover, the CISA employees, with official approval, allegedly set up back-channel electronic communications with private companies via Signal, a self-deleting messaging app.
Most notably, in the May round of documents, Brian Scully, a member of the CISA’s Countering Foreign Interference Task Force, detailed how the agency was working to both debunk unfavorable ideas and “pre-bunk” specific stories before they spread online.
The U.S. Supreme Court. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Missouri v. Biden
Mr. Ding said AFL’s CISA investigation is closely related to, but not directly involved with, the Missouri v. Biden First Amendment case, which is due to be considered by the Supreme Court as soon as March.
Missouri v. Biden, filed by the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, alleges the federal government coordinated with major technology companies to suppress social media posts that were politically disagreeable to the candidacy of then-candidate Biden in 2020.
For now, the Supreme Court has stayed an injunction—previously confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—that directly prevents the government from engaging in similar activities.
Mr. Bailey, a Republican, previously told The Epoch Times he wishes to restore the national injunction and move ahead with his effort to “unroot and dismantle” what he called a “vast censorship enterprise.”
AFL will continue to publish more documents related to its suit against CISA as they are released.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 20:20 - Sullivan Dispatched To Politely Ask China To Pressure Iran On Halting Houthi Attacks
Sullivan Dispatched To Politely Ask China To Pressure Iran On Halting Houthi Attacks
The Biden administration, despite trying to flex US military muscle in the Middle East as an imperium in decline, is asking China to do its bidding when it comes to solving the Red Sea crisis.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will soon meet with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in Thailand to discuss halting Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. It should be recalled that the Houthis declared they would give safe passage to all Chinese and Russian vessels in the Red Sea. “As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” a Houthi statement declared earlier this month.
AFP/Getty Images The US has long accused Tehran of supplying the Shia Yemeni rebel movement – an accusation that goes all the way back to 2015 and the start of the Yemeni civil war and subsequent years-long Saudi-led bombing campaign.
The Biden administration wants Beijing’s mediation toward getting Tehran to halt the weapons flows, given its friendly and closer ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby earlier this week (Tues.) said: “China has influence over Tehran; they have influence in Iran. And they have the ability to have conversations with Iranian leaders that—that we can’t.”
He continued: “And so, what we’ve said repeatedly is: We would welcome a constructive role by China, using the influence and the access that we know they have, to try to help stem the flow of weapons and munitions to the Houthis.”
So far, China has merely issued blanket appeals for all sides to exercise restraint: “China calls for a stop of causing disturbance to civilian ships, and urges relevant parties to avoid adding fuel to the fire in the Red Sea and jointly safeguard the safety of the Red Sea shipping route in accordance with the law,” a statement said.
The foreign ministry stressed that there’s been no UN authorization for use of force against Yemen, in a swipe at US-UK coalition attacks on the Houthis, which have come in some eight missile and airstrike waves so far.
China and Russia have been foremost among Washington’s powerful rivals to criticize Israel’s mass bombing of the Gaza Strip. They both have close ties with Iran, as well as with Assad’s Syria, and China is busy inking multi-billion dollar infrastructure and energy deals with Iraq. Of course, these ‘defiant’ countries are under US sanctions as well.
Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism pointed to the obvious absurdity and dilemma when it comes to asking for Chinese help:
“Before we go to war with them, or after?”
Meanwhile…
Raytheon CEO Explains Why China Has US Military By The Balls https://t.co/ZhosLrVZAE
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 21, 2023
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 20:00 - Maryland Library Event Rolls Back Scheme Charging White People More
Maryland Library Event Rolls Back Scheme Charging White People More
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
An event being held at a public library in Maryland is no longer charging different rates for white men and others after backlash from county officials.
The Germantown Library in Germantown, Md. (Google Maps) The event was charging white male vendors $275 or $325 and businesses owned by women or minorities $225 or $250, according to a vendor application reviewed by the Washington Times.
The event, MoComCon 2024, is slated to be held at Germantown Library and BlackRock Center for the Arts.
County officials initially defended the decision and promoted the event widely on social media.
The vendor pricing scheme is “a specific push to especially attract that type of vendor so that attendees who were also focused on trying to reach minority, black and brown communities, that they have vendors as well,” Mary Anderson, a spokesperson for Montgomery County, told the Washington Times. “Many minority vendors and younger startups and that sort of thing. They generally are in a financial position that it may benefit them if there is a reduction in price.”
The event is being organized by Friends of the Library, Montgomery County, a nonprofit.
“The vendor pricing reflects our joint commitment to promote inclusivity in library programming and expand opportunities for groups who have been underrepresented in this industry,” Ari Brooks, executive director of the group, said in a statement.
But the county is now saying the scheme is not allowed.
“The disparate pricing on vendors that has occurred between the Friends of the Library Montgomery County, Inc. (FOLMC) and BlackRock Center for the Arts is not permitted,” Scott Peterson, another county spokesperson, told The Epoch Times via email on Jan. 23. “The County did not approve nor condoned this decision. FOLMC corrected the situation as soon as they were made aware by the Montgomery County Public Libraries.”
The vendor application listing the different rates is no longer on the FOLMC website. The current version lists rates of $125 or $175, depending on whether vendors need access to electricity. There is no mention of race or gender.
Mr. Peterson did not respond when asked whether Ms. Anderson was misquoted and, if not, how her comments were not in support of the scheme.
County Executive Marc Erlich, a Democrat, was among the officials who promoted the event in press releases and social media posts. Laurie White, another county spokeswoman, also posted a promotion of the event that included the different vendor rates, according to a screenshot captured by the Montgomery County Republican Party.
Mr. Erlich told reporters in a press conference he did not know about the scheme.
“If they’re doing it, I can’t see how that’s not illegal. We’re pretty clear that we don’t have different rates for different races,” he said.
Federal law says that “all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every state and territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”
FOLMC did not respond to an inquiry. Ms. Brooks told a local blog that the group was told by Montgomery County Public Libraries (MCPL) that it could not charge different rates based on race or gender.
“Our efforts to support MCPL’s goals for promoting inclusivity inspired our initial pricing and, under updated county advisement, the vendor pricing has been adjusted,” Ms. Brooks said.
FOLMC describes itself on its website as a group of concerned citizens that has a mission of strengthening, promoting, and championing the county’s public libraries “to better serve the learning interests and needs of the diverse and changing communities of the county.” In a statement on its site, the nonprofit says that the group “has long supported the pursuit for racial equity and social justice in Montgomery County,” in part by “regularly review[ing] all programming and assess[ing] efficacy through a racial equity lens.”
The group is primarily funded through the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, which itself receives funding from the county government.
The BlackRock Center, another non-governmental organization (NGO), also receives funds from the county government.
The county Republican party (MCGOP) said that the promotion of the county of the event, including the post from Ms. White, showed “this was clearly a county policy issue with an event by county-sponsored NGOs in a county building promoted by the county.”
“What would happen if this situation were reversed? What if the pricing had blacks and minorities paying more? The media would be up in arms,” it said. “This time, equal opportunity won. The MCGOP stood firm in the commitment that pricing by race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation is wrong, and the county has instituted equal pricing for all vendors at the new date.”
The event was supposed to happen on Jan. 20 but, due to inclement weather, was rescheduled for March 2.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 19:40 - Another Russian Oil Refinery Engulfed In Fire After Drone Attack From Ukraine
Another Russian Oil Refinery Engulfed In Fire After Drone Attack From Ukraine
Ukraine government sources have continued to boast of launching drone and missile strikes deep into Russian territory, targeting especially the country’s energy infrastructure.
Reuters on Thursday cited an unidentified Ukrainian source to say that a successful drone attack was carried out against a Rosneft-owned oil refinery in southern Russia on the Black Sea. Local authorities acknowledged the fresh attack, describing that it set off a fire which though appeared very large, was reportedly quickly extinguished.
Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai, the Russian Rosneft oil refinery is currently burning. pic.twitter.com/zXAs9awYQ0
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) January 24, 2024
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The export-oriented unit in the town of Tuapse was impacted in the strike, with the head of Tuapse district describing, “The vacuum unit was on fire. According to preliminary information, there were neither casualties nor injured.” The attack also appeared confirmed by widely circulating social media images.
The Ukrainian source said it was the work of Ukraine’s security services (SBU), which has alongside the military launched probably literally of hundreds such cross-border attacks since the war began nearly two years ago.
The Tuapse plant has an annual capacity of 12 million metric tons (or averaging 240,000 barrels per day) and supplies fuel chiefly to China, Turkey, Malaysia and Singapore, Reuters noted.
Ukraine kicked off the week with an earlier significant attack on Russia’s energy infrastructure, resulting in Novatek having announced it was forced to suspend some operations at its huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal on Sunday due to a fire started by what Ukrainian media said was a drone attack at the PJSC gas-condensate plant in the port Ust-Luga.
That had also been the result of a special operation carried out by the SBU, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency emphasized.
These spate of attacks in recent days and weeks targeting Russian energy facilities, raise questions about the quality of Russian air defense systems around key infrastructure facilities, or if they are present at all for that matter.
Russian oil exports made up about 30% of the country’s budget revenues. As of 2023, Russia became China’s number one oil supplier, taking the top spot long held by Saudi Arabia.
“The current attacks are still small in size, using a handful of drones, but already caused considerable damage. When Ukraine starts mass-hitting those ports, then the Russian air defense will not be able to stop the outcome.”https://t.co/rXR0nyPYF0
— Janusz Bugajski (@JBugajskiUSA) January 25, 2024
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Kiev is actively seeking to impose a cost on this vital Russian industry needed to fuel its ongoing military operations in Ukraine:
A source in Ukraine’s Security Service told the Kyiv Post that the successful assault on the oil terminal in Ust-Luga “not only inflicts substantial economic harm on the enemy, disrupting their revenue streams for the war in Ukraine, but also disrupts the logistical chain of fuel essential to the Russian military.
“This move strategically hampers the occupiers’ ability to sustain their forces, marking a significant setback in their ongoing aggression,” the source added.
However, there are little to no signs of setback along the frontlines, and in the Donbass, where Russia’s military grip over territory hasn’t really changed over the past six months to a year.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 19:20 - In The Biggest Cases, Big Law Tilts Decisively Left
In The Biggest Cases, Big Law Tilts Decisively Left
Authored by Ryan Bangert via RealClearWire,
In a rigorous and important study that should surprise no one, University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller has found that of over 3,200 amicus briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in cases filed and decided between 2018 and 2022 by lawyers at the nation’s largest law firms, 64% favor liberal causes.
The pronounced tilt by America’s elite lawyers toward the political left is a well-known phenomenon. As someone who practiced in “Big Law” for over a decade, I and many of my colleagues came to view that tilt as a given. Studies have since shown that the American legal profession overall tilts politically liberal.
What I found particularly notable about Muller’s study, however, was the revelation that elite firms have monolithically advanced leftist positions in five cases since 2018 that Muller describes as possessing “high salience.” These are cases in which exceptionally large numbers of amicus briefs were filed – at least 60 in each case – an indication of their real or perceived significance. These cases, in Muller’s words, “touch on some of the most divisive areas of political controversy” in America today.
These high-salience cases include Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade; Bostock v. Clayton County (consolidated with Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), which found that employment actions taken solely because of sexual orientation or gender identity violate Title VII’s ban on “sex” discrimination; and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which involved a challenge to a city ordinance requiring a Catholic foster and adoption service to violate its beliefs by placing children with unmarried and same-sex couples. Also included are another abortion case, June Medical Services v. Russo, and a Second Amendment case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Abortion, religious freedom, gender identity, and Second Amendment rights – these are the flashpoint social issues within American society. And in the five high-stakes cases studied by Muller, in which Big Law lawyers filed 98 merits amicus briefs, elite firms sided with the liberal position a staggering 94.9% of the time.
This data point provides a unique, and troubling, window into an elite stratum of American culture. As Muller notes in his study, large law firms very frequently file amicus briefs concerning cultural issues with the Supreme Court on a pro bono – i.e., free of charge – basis. These are projects of choice. They more closely reflect the personally held values of the drafters than do paid briefs in a run-of-the-mill commercial case, for instance.
Muller’s study suggests that many of the elite members of the law profession hold views that are anathema to approximately half of all Americans. They seem at one with another lawyer, President Barack Obama, who once said of rural voters dislocated by rapid economic change that “they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”
And much like the former president, these denizens of elite firms frequently turn up in positions of great influence, including the general counsel suites of Fortune 500 companies, on the bench in state and federal courtrooms, and in key posts in presidential administrations. Moreover, much like the former president, they are the products of elite law schools and often return to those schools in varying capacities as professors.
Even more significant than the disconnect between many elite attorneys and the vast numbers of conservative Americans, however, is the willingness of those attorneys to use the machinery of the law to impose their views. One may object that this accusation is unfair – don’t all attorneys briefing critical cases before the Supreme Court share the goal of imposing their views on the nation? Wouldn’t that apply to me and my employer, Alliance Defending Freedom, which regularly advocates before the Supreme Court, including in four of Muller’s five high-salience cases?
In a word, no.
Take Muller’s high-salience cases. In Bostock, the liberal position successfully sought to use the power of the federal government to force private business owners to make certain employment decisions. In Fulton, the liberal position sought to use the power of local government to force a religious organization to violate its deeply held beliefs. In the gun rights case, the liberal position sought to use the power of government to restrict gun owners’ Second Amendment rights. Even in Dobbs, the liberal position was in favor of government coercion – namely, using the power of the court to prevent elected officials from passing laws to regulate abortion consistent with the will of the voters. In each case, the conservative position advocated for greater self-government and freedom from government overreach and control.
So, the results of Muller’s study are both unsurprising and highly illuminating. Our society is one in which large swaths of elites increasingly function as a monoculture detached from, and at times disdainful of, the deeply held religious, cultural, and social beliefs of many Americans. And they are increasingly willing to use the power of the state to impose those beliefs on dissenters.
But Muller’s study also serves to clarify the power of ideas, even when they run counter to the near-consensus views of those elites. In three of Muller’s five high-salience cases, the “conservative” position prevailed despite overwhelming opposition from Big Law, while a fourth, June Medical, was effectively nullified by Dobbs. And in this fact lies the hopeful message of the good professor’s study – that truth, well-spoken and resolutely defended, can still carry the day against even the longest odds.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Ryan Bangert is senior vice president of strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 19:00 - War? 25 Red States Rally 'Round Texas As Battle Brews With Biden Over Border
War? 25 Red States Rally ‘Round Texas As Battle Brews With Biden Over Border
A coalition of red states has rallied around Texas, after Governor Greg Abbott invoked the state’s constitutional right to self-defense due to the migrant crisis, which he deemed an ‘invasion.’
The Biden Administration has truly abdicated its responsibility to enforce the immigration laws on the books.
Texas has a constitutional right to defend and protect itself.
We will continue to hold the line. pic.twitter.com/LFrTq2MoVY
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 25, 2024
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As End Wokeness notes, a coalition of 25 Republican governors have signed a joint letter in support of the Texas resistance.
Here is the joint letter with 25 governors supporting the Texas Border Resistance against our rogue federal government.
Republican Governors Association link: https://t.co/CPfSLrzGEA pic.twitter.com/w2PDWYjpZd
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 25, 2024
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Wow
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2024
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The support began on Wednesday, with Governor Kevin Stitt tweeting: “Oklahoma stands with Texas.”
Oklahoma stands with Texas. https://t.co/67VzVEfEv1
— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) January 24, 2024
“TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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If the Constitution really made states powerless to defend themselves against an invasion, it wouldn’t have been ratified in the first place and Texas would have never joined the union when it did.
TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it.
FL will keep assisting… https://t.co/qOJY2zT1hG
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) January 24, 2024
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BREAKING: Trump calls for all willing state governors to deploy their national guards to Texas and to remove the illegals back across the border pic.twitter.com/uM4RJ0z5Ug
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 25, 2024
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And of course, the optics couldn’t be worse for the Biden administration – which is now faced with the prospect of going to war with Texas, during an election year, to keep the border open.
And Wall Street Silver pointed out on X, Texas is authorized to engage in war if being invaded according to Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution.
Texas is authorized to engage in War.
Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 … which Texas Gov Greg Abbott cited in his statement today. pic.twitter.com/RAPvIEGPmw
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) January 25, 2024
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Though as X user blueapples points out, Abbott cited the dissenting (losing) position in Arizona v. United States which determined that federal law overrides state laws when it comes to regulating those who are unlawfully present in the US, except when it comes to a state’s right to require officers to verify the citizenship or alien status of detained migrants.
Abbott might want to cite another SCOTUS case considering Arizona v. US set the precedent that states laws can’t preempt federal laws when it comes to immigration.
I get he’s citing the dissent but it’s a dissent because the ruling didn’t affirm that position.
— blueapples (@ashesofacacia) January 24, 2024
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Regardless, Abbott has drawn a line in the sand – and whatever litigation may play out in the courts is secondary to the fact that this is happening now.
As journalist Matt Walsh notes, “Abbott has Biden over a barrel here.”
“What is Biden going to do? Send the military in to forcibly open the border? In an election year?”
Abbott has Biden over a barrel here. What is Biden going to do? Send the military in to forcibly open the border? In an election year? I’m sure he’d like to, and would if he could get away with it, but it would turn the vast majority of the country against him (those who aren’t… https://t.co/8gIFWzzEiE
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) January 24, 2024
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So is it the case that @TheDemocrats are truly ready to go to war with Texas?
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 25, 2024
(h/t Geller Report)
Meanwhile in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told fellow Republicans in a private meeting on Ukraine that time and the political will to pass a bipartisan immigration and border security compromise is running out, Punchbowl News reports.
According to the outlet:
McConnell told GOP senators that before border security talks began, immigration policy united Republicans and Ukraine aid divided them. “Politics on this have changed,” McConnell said of solving the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s because former President Donald Trump wants to run his 2024 campaign focusing on immigration.
“We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said of Trump – effectively backing away from the ‘border-security-for-Ukraine’ construct that Republicans have been clinging to the last few months.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 18:40 - Watchlisted: You're Probably Already On A Government Extremism List
Watchlisted: You’re Probably Already On A Government Extremism List
Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
According to the FBI, you may be an anti-government extremist if you’ve:
a) purchased a Bible or other religious materials,
b) used terms like “MAGA” and “Trump,”
c) shopped at Dick’s Sporting Goods, Cabela’s, or Bass Pro Shops,
d) purchased tickets to travel by bus, cars, or plane,
e) all of the above.
In fact, if you selected any of those options in recent years, you’re probably already on a government watchlist.
That’s how broadly the government’s net is being cast in its pursuit of domestic extremists.
We’re all fair game now, easy targets for inclusion on some FBI watch list or another.
When the FBI is asking banks and other financial institutions to carry out dragnet searches of customer transactions—warrantlessly and without probable cause—for “extremism” indicators broadly based on where you shop, what you read, and how you travel, we’re all in trouble.
Clearly, you don’t have to do anything illegal.
You don’t even have to challenge the government’s authority.
Frankly, you don’t even have to care about politics or know anything about your rights.
All you really need to do in order to be tagged as a suspicious character, flagged for surveillance, and eventually placed on a government watch list is live in the United States.
This is how easy it is to run afoul of the government’s many red flags.
In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.
We’re all presumed guilty until proven innocent now.
It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
For instance, a so-called typo in a geofence search warrant, which allows police to capture location data for a particular geographic area, resulted in government officials being given access to information about who went where and with whom within a two-mile long stretch of San Francisco that included churches, businesses, private homes, hotels, and restaurants.
Thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s sprawling spy network of fusion centers, we are all just sitting ducks, waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.
Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.
Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.
Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.
These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape.
Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.
As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”
These fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censors and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.
It’s a setup ripe for abuse.
For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”
One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”
This is how the burden of proof has been reversed.
Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government has turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head.
Each and every one of us is now seen as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker in the eyes of the government.
Consider some of the many ways in which “we the people” are now treated as criminals, found guilty of violating the police state’s abundance of laws, and preemptively stripped of basic due process rights.
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Red flag gun confiscation laws: Gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats. These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, will put a target on the back of every American whether or not they own a weapon.
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Disinformation eradication campaigns. In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.
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Government watch lists. The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.
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Thought crimes programs. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. It’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted. There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State. It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
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Security checkpoints. By treating an entire populace as suspect, the government has justified wide-ranging security checkpoints that subject travelers to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots.
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Surveillance and precrime programs. Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to warrantlessly identify and track someone’s movements in real-time, whether or not they have committed a crime.
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Mail surveillance. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts.
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Constitution-free zones. Merely living within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States is now enough to make you a suspect, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.
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Vehicle kill switches. Sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, “vehicle kill switches” could quickly become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to put the government in the driver’s seat while rendering null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. As such, it presumes every driver potentially guilty of breaking some law that would require the government to intervene and take over operation of the vehicle or shut it off altogether.
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Biometric databases. “Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age. The government’s presumptions about our so-called guilt or innocence have extended down to our very cellular level with a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.
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Limitations on our right to move about freely. At every turn, we’re tracked in by surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. For instance, license plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars. With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, police can track vehicles in real time.
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The war on cash. Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal. Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have been associated with some criminal scheme.
These programs push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
In this way, the groundwork is being laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen.
What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.
In effect, you will disappear.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our freedoms are already being made to disappear.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 18:20 -
- Ahead Of 'Most Divisive' Election Ever, Here's The New Weapons-Tech Cops Could Use To Retake City Streets
Ahead Of ‘Most Divisive’ Election Ever, Here’s The New Weapons-Tech Cops Could Use To Retake City Streets
Many Americans fear that the coming Fall election season will see a return of BLM-style riots on US streets, and especially in major cities. Corporate media has at times seemed to almost positively encourage this scenario given Trump’s frontrunner status for the Republicans.
Here’s one of a seeming myriad examples of the MSM being not exactly “subtle”:
“Everything will change for European and Asian democracies if a man bent on dictatorship re-enters the White House,” wrote Financial Times.
“If Trump wins, everything changes,” the op-ed continued, with the author at one point suggesting even that nuclear Armageddon is right around the corner the minute Trump returns to office:
“The most worrying hedge against Washington’s exit from Pax Americana would be a rush for the nuclear threshold,” FT wrote.
And for another recent example, The L.A. Times speculates that “election-related violence” is something more likely to target the political right. It’s the “lesson” and supposed legacy of Trump, the publication wrote.
“However, Republicans should recall a cardinal lesson from the events of Jan. 6, 2021: The polarizing forces dividing America place mainstream Republicans in the crosshairs of their more radical brethren.”
And accordingly, “any threat of election-related violence this year may target the political right even more so than Democrats and persons on the left.”
Basically, voices from both sides of the aisle agree: we are headed into an election season which could spark mayhem on a level which could potentially surpass the chaos on city streets of the 2020 George Floyd riots, where whole blocks burned and innocent store owners were shot, and very often police and law enforcement were attacked in between widespread looting, and innocent bystanders brutally jumped and beaten by frenzied mobs.
The trend of an increasingly ‘militarized’ American police force has been rapidly increasing since 2006, with the surplus military gear being spread across every state. Having already documented America’s conversation to a turnkey totalitarian banana republic (confirmed over a year later by Edward Snowden), the armored vehicles and even-more-armored personnel was last most evident in the mostly-peaceful chaos of Ferguson, Missouri; but if the media is stoking the fear once again – given Trump’s lead – we could indeed see the armor and weapons shown below on display every night a 6pm on your evening news over the summer.
As we’ve been chronicling this week, ZeroHedge is here at the SHOT Show with our proverbial “boots on the ground” (though we are quite opposite to the interventionista Neocons of course), which is the world’s largest shooting sports, hunting, and law enforcement industry expo of its kind. The closed-door event is held at the Venetian Expo in Vegas through Friday. It features 500+ suppliers, some of which are defense contractors, offering weapons and gear from Tier 1 operators to law enforcement to civilian markets.
We found that especially among suppliers of law enforcement, first responders, and producers of civil defense tech and products, the open question of whether American cities will be on fire going into November or also into January—when the next president takes office—is foremost on their minds. This theoretical scenario and conversation was “in the air” so to speak.
The BLM riots encouraged the industry to come up with lighter weight, sleek and modern protective gear as opposed to the older, more sluggish and bulky standard of police riot protective gear, which doesn’t help with ease of rapid maneuverability.
Below: Like the ancient Roman phalanx maneuvering, but the 21st century version… companies like Defilade envisions the need for close-quarters rapid engagement fight and then flight speed (if need be) flexibility in their protective gear, also useful for prison guards and rapid response teams.
In general, light-weight and form-fitting protection is a prominent theme at this year’s SHOT. They claim to produce the thinnest, most advanced protection against impact and blunt force trauma.
One interesting and unexpected surprise was the number of European and foreign suppliers of anti-riot measures and high tech crowd control items and gadgets.
Finland defense contractor comes to America, predicting riots
One distributor from Finland (shown), a country widely known as a peace-loving and pretty harmonious Scandinavian society (which obviously sees far fewer full-on riots and mass street unrest), said that they see the American market as ripe and as in need of their police riot response protective suits, which as it turns out can repel knife attacks along with deflecting large bricks (remember the whole rumored piles of bricks phenomenon and fears?) or skull-cracking projectiles hurled at great distances from angry crowds.
The company out of Finland specifically told us “no need to look at our tactical body armor collection—which the US already has in abundance, what American law enforcement really needs is our full body anti-riot gear because that’s what Americans do more of [than Scandinavians for sure]—they riot“…
The Finnish company has seen much more demand in the good ole US-of-A… and not Scandinavia (well Sweden’s Malmö is a big exception in terms of random mass violence perhaps).
More foreign companies worried about safe-guarding American democracy, ironically enough…
A Taiwan firm which focuses on non-lethal riot control measures & gear…
And Pakistan…
America’s firefighters and first responders are increasingly coming under fire, literally
We were not surprised to see that fire departments across the nation have been sweeping up bullet-proof protection, giving the rising number of incidents where first-responders get shot by the very individuals they are seeking to rescue.
Increasingly, firefighters are first through the door in mental distress domestic disturbances or highly unpredictable suicide situations. Extra protection is needed for what first responders call Active Shooter/Hostile Event Response (ASHER) scenarios.
As it turns out the maker of the below is based very close to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
And now for something more on the offense side of riot and hostile crowd control measures… we are assured these (below) won’t kill targets even if fired at close range and with a head shot (unlike 40mm aerial flash-bangs that might score the unfortunate direct hit let’s say)…
No more bulky “beanbag guns”
Alternative Ballistics makes a special nonlethal ball-bearing fired at high velocity with a conventional 9mm round embedded in the projectile’s center which unleashes huge kinetic force on impact. It affixes to various pistol types, making the weapon non-lethal in the slit-second it takes to attach the “alternative” add-on (see video below).
No more bulky so-called “beanbag guns” to incapacitate someone (or more or less a shotgun, which could prove of a somewhat inconvenient size); instead, this fits on the belt. Compact and non-lethal is the name of the game, and this is cutting edge.
See their demo…
A perp thinks they’re merely dealing with a harmless mall cop… is that a toy? what’s in that belt?
Think again…
For something definitely more lethal (and we’re not necessarily talking about the firearm itself)…
We just included this cause it’s tactikool…
Just in case things have to go lethal real quick: a bespoke tactical shotgun…
Let’s just call the below a monster of a multi-task breaching tool, especially good for any unpredictable urban environment where a bad guy could be holed up in an impossible to reach place.
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Below: Penn Arms’ PGR 40mm Pump Multi-Launcher…
There’s increasing overlap involving high quality, lighter weight military grade weaponry with domestic law enforcement utilization cross-over (things tend to go lethal boom on military side vs. things go merely concussed in civilian domestic situations). This particular company has a major contract supplying Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), but sees increasing demand on the domestic police and SWAT side of things.
Not a Pizza Hut worker despite appearances…
The below won’t kill you but it won’t feel too good either…
In a follow-up report, we will later examine the toys that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies have deployed throughout the land (and sometimes in the hands of local or state agencies) as ‘early detection’ for a radioactive dirty bomb, even with the capability to pick up on nasty substances/nuke-related materials being transported across state lines. The public doesn’t know about this. But it certainly reveals the “thinking” of federal bureaucrats. Let’s hope things don’t ever come to that.
Lest this humble SHOT Show review gets mistaken for some kind of simplistic ‘apologetic’ for our increasingly militarized police departments everywhere (a years’-long and very worrisome post 9/11 trend for sure), we leave you with this, which we certainly don’t officially endorse in a literal sense, but just to show that the dominant streak or outlook here remains firmly Libertarian and 2nd Amendment-driven through and through…
Too far?
True castle doctrine has never been tried 🏰 https://t.co/x9DFtDH5Zo
— Ivan (@kommandostore) January 22, 2024
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For our earlier SHOT coverage, see–>
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 18:00 - US Military Build-Up Since Gaza War Began Has Cost $1.6 Billion
US Military Build-Up Since Gaza War Began Has Cost $1.6 Billion
The Senate is planning to add money to upcoming legislation to fund President Joe Biden’s military buildup in the Middle East and war in Yemen. Senator Susan Collins says the legation should be a priority as US Central Command is quickly depleting its funds. Senator Jack Reed believes Congress will need to pass multiple rounds of funding to allow Biden to wage war across the Middle East.
Following the Hamas attack on southern Israel, Biden ordered thousands of troops and multiple aircraft carrier strike groups into the region. Politico reports the Department of Defense informed Congress the deployment of additional troops and warships to the Middle East over the past four months has cost $1.6 billion. The Pentagon estimates the cost will be $2.2 billion over the course of the year.
The cost estimates do not include the price of the interceptors and munitions used in fighting the Houthis. Congress has not authorized Biden’s war in Yemen or the military surge in the Middle East. A growing number of American lawmakers, including within Biden’s party, have voiced opposition to the White House waging a war in Yemen without Congressional authorization.
A Pentagon official said at some point, the holes in the Department of Defense budget will have to be filled by Congress. An official told Politico, “It will be, I think, a hole that we would want to be filled. It is a bill that will be due and we will have to pay for it within a limited amount of resources.”
The Senate is now preparing to fund the conflicts in the Middle East, but there are no plans to authorize the war. Politico reports Congress is considering several options for authorizing the war spending. The outlet explains, “Lawmakers are aware of the unplanned cost and are weighing how to pay for it. Options include adding it to the annual spending bill, adding it to the $111 billion emergency supplemental for Ukraine and Israel, or funding it through a stand-alone supplemental for war costs.”
The White House has been pushing Congress to pass a $111 billion bill that provides funding for the wars in Ukraine and Israel, the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, and border security. The legislation has been delayed for several months over debate on immigration policy.
Sen. Collins, a Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is urging the body to take action. “[US Central Command] needs [the funding] sooner. They’re fast running out of funds,” she said.
Some
delusionalwishful thinking in the Pentagon press briefing room…The US has attacked Yemen nearly every day over the past week and the Pentagon says the “fight between Israel and Hamas continues to remain contained in Gaza.” https://t.co/hTrbBj8kuh
— Kyle Anzalone (@KyleAnzalone_) January 21, 2024
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Senator Jack Reed believes Congress will have to pass multiple rounds of funding to fight wars in the Middle East. He said, “I sense, given the unexpected cost, that there will have to be a separate supplemental. These aren’t routine costs. They’re because of our reaction to the Houthi disruption, to Iranian malign behavior, etc. And I think that’s probably where we would go for it.”
Senators Dan Sullivan, Mitch McConnell, and Mark Kelley have all called for adding money to the supplemental war legislation to replace the interceptors and munitions used to fight the Houthis in Yemen.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/25/2024 – 17:40
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