- Ukraine's Sneak Attack Against Russia's Kursk Region Might Be Its Last Hurrah
Ukraine’s Sneak Attack Against Russia’s Kursk Region Might Be Its Last Hurrah
Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,
Russia is fighting to fend off Ukraine’s sneak attack its Kursk Region, though conflicting reports have emerged about the location of these clashes. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that all the fighting has taken place on the Ukrainian side of the border, while Rybar – which boasts nearly 1.2 million subscribers and functions as a think tank of sorts – said that it’s taking place inside of Russia’s borders.
Whatever the truth may be, this latest development is still immensely important.
Simply put, it might be Ukraine’s last hurrah since it represents a massive gamble to open up a new front inside of Russia’s pre-2014 borders with the intent of having its foes redeploy some of their troops to Kursk from Donbass, where they’ve continued gradually gaining ground this year. Russia had hitherto braced for yet another attack against neighboring Belgorod Region, ergo the difficult but necessary decision to impose a strict security regime there late last month, so it was taken by surprise.
Prior to that, there was serious concern that Ukraine might be preparing to launch an offensive into Belarus, which could have expanded the conflict and possibly served as a pretext for Polish involvement. Taken together in light of what just happened in Kursk Region, Ukraine’s moves in those two directions might have been meant in hindsight to “psyche-out” Russia, thus facilitating its latest attack. Unlike prior cross–border raids, this one also involves uniformed Ukrainian troops, not terrorist proxies.
Nobody took Ukraine seriously when it announced that it plans to launch another counteroffensive by sometime later this year, though what’s presently unfolding might be what its policymakers had in mind. That said, the scale isn’t anywhere near what last year’s failed counteroffensive was, and it’s not truly a counteroffensive since Russia wasn’t attacking Ukraine from Kursk. Nevertheless, it’s still the largest cross-border attack so far, and it was clearly planned for some time instead of being an impromptu raid.
These observations don’t imply that it’ll succeed, however, since the military-strategic dynamics have been trending in Russia’s favor for the entire year. After all, Ukraine is diverting limited troops and equipment from the Donbass front to the Kursk one, and this could easily backfire by creating an opening that Russia could exploit. Furthermore, they’re unlikely to hold whatever they might have captured in Kursk, thus precluding the possibility that they can “trade it back” during peace talks.
Even so, the very fact that what’s turned into a two-day-long battle at the time of this analysis’ publication could even happened in the first place shows that Ukraine still has some tricks up its sleeve, namely its continued ability to evade Russia’s surveillance, intelligence, and reconnaissance. Russia didn’t detect any notable buildup near Kursk’s border ahead of time, only Belarus’ and Belgorod’s, otherwise it would have launched preemptive strikes and imposed a security regime along the border.
That’s not to knock Russia but to draw attention to NATO’s impressive tactical capabilities in being able to successfully disguise its proxy’s sneak attack. This contributed to the growing number of civilian casualties that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova condemned as proof of Kiev’s terrorism. It might get a lot worse than even that before it gets better too if Ukraine is able to achieve a breakthrough in Kursk Region that leads to it threatening the eponymous nearby nuclear power plant.
The odds of that happening are low though according to Major General Apty Alaudinov, who’s the deputy chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ military and political department and commander of the Akhmat special forces unit according to TASS. Another point to make though is that Rybar’s earlier hyperlinked report claimed that Ukraine seized control of a gas pipeline transit station, which if true, could end up seeing that facility destroyed and thus cut off Russian gas to its Central European clients.
Kiev has an interest in punishing Hungary and Slovakia for their anti-war positions, hence why it recently sanctioned a Russian oil company that had an EU waiver to continue supplying those two, so it might accordingly want to inflict maximum damage against them by destroying the aforesaid gas facility. To be clear, Rybar’s report hasn’t been confirmed and might be untrue, but its importance and Alaudinov’s remarks about the nearby nuclear power plant rest in highlighting the huge stakes involved in Kursk.
For these reasons, it can be concluded that this was in the works for a while and is therefore likely to be Ukraine’s last hurrah, which it’s only attempting now out of desperation to receive some relief along the Donbass front where Russia continues to gain ground and might be on the brink of a breakthrough. Russia will likely soon regain its lost territory, if any has really been captured by Ukraine that is, and then make Kiev pay for this dastardly sneak attack.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/08/2024 – 02:00 - American Theocracy: Politics Has Become Our National Religion
American Theocracy: Politics Has Become Our National Religion
Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
– The Ten Commandments
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
– Donald Trump
Politics has become our national religion.
While those on the Left have feared a religious coup by evangelical Christians on the Right, the danger has come from an altogether different direction: our constitutional republic has given way to a theocracy structured around the worship of a political savior.
For all intents and purposes, politics has become America’s God.
Pay close attention to the political conventions for presidential candidates, and it becomes immediately evident that Americans have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into worshipping a political idol manufactured by the Deep State.
In a carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” have become victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.
Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and 6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.
In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.
In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.
Terrorist attacks, pandemics, economic uncertainty, national security threats, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.
No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.
Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.
When it comes to the power players that call the shots, there is no end to their voracious appetite for more: more money, more power, more control. Thus, since 9/11, the government’s answer to every problem has been more government and less freedom.
Yet despite what some may think, the Constitution is no magical incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed, it’s only as effective as those who abide by it.
However, without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard it and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like.
Unfortunately, the courts and the police have meshed in their thinking to such an extent that anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism.
Consequently, America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government’s interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.
The rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, once the map by which we navigated sometimes hostile government terrain, has been unceremoniously booted out of the runaway car that is the U.S. government by the Deep State.
What we are dealing with is a rogue government whose policies are dictated more by greed than need. Making matters worse, “we the people” have become so gullible, so easily distracted, and so out-of-touch that we have ignored the warning signs all around us in favor of political expediency in the form of electoral saviors.
Yet it’s not just Americans who have given themselves over to political gods, however.
Evangelical Christians, seduced by electoral promises of power and religious domination, have become yet another tool in the politician’s toolbox.
For instance, repeatedly conned into believing that Republican candidates from George W. Bush to Donald Trump will save the church, evangelical Christians have turned the ballot box into a referendum on morality. Yet in doing so, they have shown themselves to be as willing to support totalitarian tactics as those on the Left.
This was exactly what theologian Francis Schaeffer warned against: “We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way, ‘We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag.’”
Equating religion and politics, and allowing the ends to justify the means, only empowers tyrants and lays the groundwork for totalitarianism.
This way lies madness and the certain loss of our freedoms.
If you must vote, vote, but don’t make the mistake of consecrating the ballot box.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it doesn’t matter what religion a particular candidate claims to subscribe to: all politicians answer to their own higher power, which is the Deep State.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 23:25 - USA Has More Millionaires Than The Entire Population Of Ireland
USA Has More Millionaires Than The Entire Population Of Ireland
The world’s total millionaire count comes in at 15 million, more than all of Rwanda, the 28th most populous African country.
In this visualization, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao shows the top 10 countries with the largest millionaire populations and compare each to a country with a similar total population.
Data for this graphic is sourced from Henley & Partners and the World Bank, current to 2024. Importantly, a millionaire is someone with liquid investable wealth of $1 million or more.
Millionaire Populations vs. Countries
At the top of the list, the U.S. has the most millionaires in the world, at nearly 5.5 million. For comparison, this is more than the entire population of Ireland.
Note: Figures rounded.
In just 10 years, the number of U.S. millionaires has jumped 62%, and in 2024, it accounts for more than one-third of all millionaires worldwide.
As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. draws millionaires from other countries, looking for opportunities in further wealth creation.
While no other country has such a high millionaire count, it’s interesting to contextualize just how many millionaires there are all over the world.
For example, China has 860,000 millionaires, more than the people in the South American nation of Guyana. And Germany has slightly over 800,000 millionaires and they could single-handedly replace all of Bhutan’s population.
Perhaps most interesting is Switzerland, whose millionaire population (428,000) could replace Iceland. Switzerland’s population itself comes in at around 8 million, which means one out of every 20 Swiss residents has over $1 million of investable wealth.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 23:00 - A Tale Of Two Diagrams
A Tale Of Two Diagrams
Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,
Are Local Police Deflecting Blame for Assassination Attempt?
Ahead of Tuesday’s Senate grilling of acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe, local Pennsylvania police released a curious diagram from the July 13 rally in Butler that ended in an assassination attempt of former President Trump, the death of rally-goer Corey Comperatore, and injuries of two others.
The aerial photo of the event site, the Butler Farm Show, contained labels for the locations of Butler County and Beaver County police assets, including two local law enforcement “snipers” assigned to cover the American Glass Research building, where shooter Thomas Crooks perched with his AR-15 rifle about 150 yards from Trump’s onstage performance and fired eight bullets at the former president and the crowd.
The diagram includes a narrow red triangle, clearly labeled “Beaver Sniper Line of Sight.” That line of sight is narrowly conscribed between the location of the snipers inside the AGR building to the stage and pointedly does not cover any area of the rooftop where Crooks ran across and then stopped to open fire.
A diagram released by Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe shows an aerial view of the event site. United States Secret Service The narrow scope of the red triangle’s purported “line of sight” immediately stood out to some sources within the Secret Service community as purposefully narrowly constructed so as to try to prove that the local snipers never had any portion of the AGR building rooftop in their line of sight and therefore were not at fault for failing to monitor that rooftop.
“Either the red vector was drawn deliberately to avoid responsibility, or it does not include any part of the roof by sheer accident,” one source told RealClearPolitics. “Either way, no one had eyes on the [AGR] roof.”
The shooter likely moved to his left to put a tree between himself and the Secret Service counter snipers who were positioned behind the stage, the source suggested after watching a recently released cell phone video from a rallygoer showing Crooks – in plain view from the stage – running along the rooftop before stopping and firing the eight shots.
But the narrow nature of the red-triangle line of sight doesn’t sit well with many law enforcement sources who asserted that a local police sniper would have had a much wider line of sight perspective that included most of the AGR roof, if sitting close to the window’s edge and constantly looking out.
In other words, he would have seen Crooks, if he had properly done his job, the sources argued.
“If you are handling your window post properly, you would have seen and maybe heard him on the tin roof,” one source remarked. “If local snipers weren’t supposed to cover the roof, then what could possibly have been their role? Covering grass?”
Acting Secret Service Director Rowe, during his Senate testimony on Tuesday, put out a more simplified diagram showing a direct line of sight, or view of the entire AGR rooftop from where the local snipers were positioned.
“Why was the assailant not seen when we were told that building was going to be covered?” Rowe angrily demanded during his Tuesday testimony. “That there had been a face-to-face that afternoon – that our team leads met.”
“This was the view,” Rowe said, pointing to a photo of the AGR building’s rooftop. “These were discussions that were had between the [Secret Service’s] Pittsburgh Field Office, the local counterparts, and everyone supporting that visit that day.”
Rowe went on to describe his visit to the Butler rally site and said he laid down on the AGR rooftop to recreate the line of sight that Crooks had.
“That’s why when I laid in that position, I could not, and I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roofline when that’s where they were posted.”
Lawmakers and Secret Service officials and sources have repeatedly traded accusations over the failure to man or surveil the AGR rooftop in the 20 days since a bullet pierced Trump’s ear and killed Comperatore. Headlines have criticized Rowe for blaming local partners and not fully explaining whether the Secret Service assigned the local snipers to the AGR rooftop, instead of inside the building.
The Secret Service’s shifting narrative for that failure has been the butt of viral memes and jokes after former Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle told ABC News in her only media interview that it wasn’t manned because it was sloped and too dangerous to place Secret Service or local law enforcement on it. Instead, she said, “the decision was made to secure the building from inside.”
In her testimony before the House Oversight Committee nearly a week later, Cheatle was ridiculed over that explanation and several members of Congress said it was the final straw leading to their calls for her resignation, which she submitted one day after the hearing.
Local law enforcement officials have also cited a complete breakdown in communications, with local police who were tracking Crooks siloed from the Secret Service when they are supposed to have interoperability and coordinated communications through a joint command post. (They are never on the same radio frequencies because synchronizing them is technically impossible, but communications are supposed to be coordinated through the command post.)
It’s unclear if that joint command post with representatives from local law enforcement paired with senior Secret Service agents existed that day in its typical form.
Sources in the Secret Service community have privately brushed off accusations from the local police that senior special agents never showed up for a briefing for all local officers assigned to the Farm Show grounds that day. The sources told RCP that they don’t usually provide briefings for every local police officer but the top agents in charge of the site security do conduct a detailed walk-through with top supervisors of local police.
It wouldn’t hurt, some sources suggested, if the Secret Service starts to utilize a written legal agreement signed between the agency and local law enforcement laying out legal liability if one side or the other fails to properly carry out responsibilities.
The agency simply doesn’t have the manpower to fully staff the events themselves, and even if Congress were to immediately provide more funding for additional hires, it takes nearly a year for an agent to get hired and minimally trained.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, engaged in a heated exchange with Rowe during his testimony last Tuesday, demanding to know why no one at the agency had been fired yet over the failures.
Rowe, however, did confirm to Hawley that the Secret Service refused drones from local law enforcement, a detail brought to light by whistleblower allegations brought to Hawley’s office. Hawley also has said that whistleblowers told him that local police snipers were assigned to the AGR rooftop but abandoned their post and went inside because it was too hot.
Videos of alarmed rally-goers near the building pointing to Crooks and shouting that he was on the roof several minutes before the shots rang out have only heightened criticism of the Secret Service and law enforcement failures that day.
Pennsylvania State Police Col. Christopher Paris testified before Congress on July 23 that in a meeting before the shooting, “We were told that Butler ESU was responsible for that area, by several Secret Service agents on that walk-through.” Paris was referencing the AGR building.
Paris also said it was his understanding that ESU officers left their post to look for a suspicious person. He added that he was not sure if those officers could have seen Crooks if they had stayed at their post.
Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger, who would be responsible for defending at least one of the local snipers’ actions that day if criminal charges were ever brought against the police department, pushed back against Paris’ testimony amid the ongoing finger-pointing between local law enforcement and the Secret Service.
Goldinger said that Paris’ testimony “misstated” local law enforcement’s response after snipers first spotted Crooks 20 minutes prior to the shooting. He said the two local snipers snapped a photo Crooks, who was seated outside the AGR complex, and circulated it along with noting that he was a “suspicious individual” to the “command center” for the Secret Service and the local police.
Goldinger asserted that “at some point,” Crooks got up and moved to the other side of the building, spurring local law enforcement to move within the building in an “attempt to keep eyes” on the suspect.
One of the local snipers, from his location inside the building, noticed Crooks was sitting on a picnic table with a backpack in front of the building. It was only then that one of the officers ran outside to look for Crooks after seeing him run away. The other officer remained in his position on the second floor of the building, according to Goldinger.
The other sniper returned to their post inside the building after failing to locate Crooks outside.
“Neither officer could see Crooks on the other building due to the visual angle they had from their location to Crook’s location,” Goldinger said.
Both officers, he added, were at their predetermined posts when Crooks opened fire.
“Their post was the building,” Goldinger stressed. “While one of the officers did leave the building briefly, it was in response to a suspicious person who had not encountered law enforcement despite them notifying other law enforcement of the suspicious person. Even so, that officer returned to the post, and the post was never left vacant as the other officer remained in the building.”
“To say that these officers left their post is a misstatement,” he added.
“These ESU officers and all of the other ESU officers, volunteered their time to be present for the rally to assist the Secret Service. They performed the duties to which they were assigned.”
Yet, the Pennsylvania State Police told Fox News that the agency stands by Paris’ testimony.
According to a partially redacted timeline in an after-action report from the Beaver County police, the police first observed Crooks at 5:10 p.m., then took photos of him at 5:14 p.m., and then spotted him looking at news feeds on his cell phone, and getting out a range finder. The Butler police then called into “command” about a suspect, communicating the description and the range finder and reporting that Crooks was “lurking around the AGR building.”
At 5:45 p.m., there was a text sent to a Beaver ESU command about the suspect, and the person who sent it was told to relay it to “command,” although it’s unclear whether that means the Secret Service command. It wasn’t until 5:55 p.m. that someone on the local team acknowledged sending it to “command.” In a redacted section of the timeline, there’s mention of a redacted individual or entity asking for the direction of the suspect’s travel at 6 p.m., and it wasn’t until 6:05 p.m. that someone spied Crooks at picnic tables and moving with a backpack on.
Then in line with the timing from 6:06 p.m. to 6:12 p.m., one of the local snipers stationed at the AGR building went downstairs to meet “a patrol” and let them know the suspect was “around the building on the side of the fairgrounds.”
At 6:12 p.m., Crooks fired off the shots, and then at an “unknown time” the shooter was “down,” according to the timeline.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 22:35 - Israel Vows To Eliminate New Hamas Chief Sinwar, Seen As Even Closer To Tehran
Israel Vows To Eliminate New Hamas Chief Sinwar, Seen As Even Closer To Tehran
Israel has vowed to “eliminate” new Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who just yesterday was announced as the new political leader of Hamas, replacing the slain Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran by an Israeli covert assassination operation on July 31st.
Among some alernative possible options for the top leadership spot were candidates deemed ‘moderate’ by comparison, but Hamas’ choosing Sinwar is intended to send a firm message that the Gaza-based organization will “continue its path of resistance,” according to a statement.
Sinwar, who was Hamas military leader in Gaza since 2017, is considered the mastermind behind the Oct.7 terror attack on southern Israel. He is also seen as closer to Tehran compared to the late Haniyeh, who had lived in Qatar. Few outsiders have laid eyes on Sinwar in years, and it’s widely believed he’s been commanding operations from tunnels deep below Gaza throughout the war which is now in its 11th month.
New Hamas Yahya Sinwar, AFP Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said late Tuesday that Sinwar being named to the Hamas top leadership spot is “yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organization off the face of the earth.”
A statement from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has already blamed Sinwar for lack of progress in Qatar-mediated ceasefire talks:
American and Israeli officials have accused Hamas of intransigence over the deal, and they say Mr. Sinwar has always had the power to veto any proposal, given his leadership of the group in Gaza. Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said the announcement on Tuesday would reinforce that role.
The choice of Mr. Sinwar “only underscores the fact that it is really on him to decide whether to move forward with a cease-fire,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference in Annapolis, Md., late Tuesday, shortly after the appointment was announced. “He has been and remains the primary decider when it comes to concluding a cease-fire.”
Sinwar had spent two decades in an Israeli prison – a long stint which began in 1988 for murdering four Palestinians on suspicion of collaborating with Israel.
He reportedly spent much of that time not only learning Hebrew, but closely studying Israeli culture and politics in order to ‘understand the enemy’. The NY Times writes of his background:
When he was released from Israeli prison in a prisoner swap in 2011, Mr. Sinwar said that the capture of Israeli soldiers was, after years of failed negotiations, the proven tactic for freeing Palestinians incarcerated by Israel.
“For the prisoner, capturing an Israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him,” Mr. Sinwar said at the time.
Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar In His Own Words 2018-2022 #Hamas #Sinwar pic.twitter.com/X6cxtt4x0l
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 7, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
During his time in prison, Sinwar tried to escape several times, and once told an Italian newspaper that “Prison builds you” as it allows a person to understand the level of sacrifice needed to achieve their goals.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 22:10 - Whack-A-Fallacy: A Game For The Election Season
Whack-A-Fallacy: A Game For The Election Season
Authored by Jeff Minick via The Epoch Times,
In Whack-a-Mole, an arcade game invented by the Japanese nearly 50 years ago, moles or other figures pop up from different holes mounted on a playing cabinet while players use a soft mallet to try and knock them back into place. Search online for “whack-a-mole game,” and you’ll find lots of variations based on the original.
With that model in mind, and with the election season fast upon us, now seems a good time to have a go at Whack-a-Fallacy, my own addition to this genre of sport. For equipment, you need a screen for watching speeches and press conferences, a pen or pencil, a pad of paper, and a timer. The rules are just as simple. Before beginning play, write down the fallacies you are looking to detect on the pad of paper. On your television or phone, find the event you’ve selected, a politician delivering a public address, engaging in debate, or holding a press conference. Start the timer, and every time a fallacy on your pad pops up, jot down a hash mark beside it.
To help you get started, below are some common logical fallacies by which politicians—and the rest of us, for that matter—slip illogical arguments into their verbal punches.
The Ad Hominem Attack
This one is quite common, particularly in heated political arguments, and easily spotted. The user ignores the argument and the issue at hand to personally attack an opponent. Ad hominem assaults can also be delivered against entire groups of people united by similar ideas or goals.
Name-calling or innuendo are the weapons of choice here. “You’re no scientist, so why don’t you stick to what you know?” is an ad hominem tactic to avoid a debate. “Senator X wants to send our troops to the Middle East, but he’s never served in the military.”
Keep your eye out for this one, and you’re sure to rack up points.
Red Herring
This fish fry fallacy occurs when the speaker attempts to slide away from the original topic. A person losing an argument may try to change the topic by bringing up the weather or pointing out some extraneous detail from last night’s party. One woman I know can deflect attention from the matter at hand just by saying, “Interesting,” and then telling an anecdote from her workplace.
Under fire at a press conference about the shape of the American economy, a candidate for reelection to the Senate may suddenly reply, “Look, this isn’t the main issue of our day. The main issue is climate change,” and he continues on from there with his concerns about melting polar caps and gas-powered vehicles. Down that rabbit hole he scurries, and the issue of the economy disappears.
The False Dilemma
Most of us frequently resort to either/or propositions, seeing only two possible choices when there may in fact be several. “We can go bowling or go to the movies,” a teen says to friends, but they could also play video games, take a long walk, or study for Monday’s math test. “Would you rather become a sculptor or keep working your 9-5 job?” leaves out the possibility of doing both.
Politicians love false dilemmas in part because they create fear. “Vote for me or America will become a dictatorship.” “Vote for my opponent, and you are condemning your children to a life of ignorance.” “If you don’t vote for me, you are a bigot.”
Appeals to Celebrity Authority
This is a subdivision of an appeal to a false authority, and is both common and easy to spot, as may be seen when a movie star endorses a particular car or a sports figure gives her stamp of approval to a brand of toothpaste.
We’ll see this fallacy at work everywhere this fall. A film personality will appear on a talk show or a podcast to appeal to voters to support a candidate. A pop musician will pause on stage to attack a politician, often knowing less about that candidate or the issues of the day than the ordinary citizen.
Listen up for this fallacy, and you can run up that tally faster than you’d ever imagine.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Anyone raising teenagers is familiar with this one. “But Mom, everybody’s going to the concert!” “But Dad, nobody does well in Mr. Caldwell’s math class!” If everyone is on the bandwagon, goes this fallacy, then it’s surely the place to be.
Watch out for politicians who claim to speak for all Americans. That bandwagon doesn’t exist except in his or her mind. Watch out for politicians who speak about being on the wrong side of history. Beware of anyone who uses the phrase “science says.” These are attempts to get you to leap aboard the bandwagon.
If you want to add other fallacies to your list, simply explore online for “logical fallacies,” and you’ll find such classics as the straw man fallacy, circular reasoning, and slippery slope, along with examples of each.
Of course, my point here isn’t my made-up game of Whack-a-Fallacy. My point is that we should listen carefully to what our politicians are saying. We may not be playing a game, but we may well be getting played.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 21:45 - Coming Clean On Clean Energy: It's A Dirty Business
Coming Clean On Clean Energy: It’s A Dirty Business
Authored by Kristen Walker via RealClearEnergy,
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are probably aware of the massive push to transition to green energy. The goal is to have wind and solar replace coal and natural gas; the electric vehicle (EV) will supposedly replace internal combustion engines. Directives are coming from the highest office in the land; the current administration has made green energy a large part of its agenda.
We are being told that these technologies are clean and will save the planet from climate change. However, these alternative forms of energy being espoused are riddled with their own problems.
Hidden behind the solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries are some dirty secrets that get swept under the rug and ignored by climate enthusiasts. Fossil fuels are constantly put under a microscope and condemned as an evil destructive polluter; green energy is typically put on a pedestal. Green energy, however, is not as perfect and wonderful as we are made to believe. Yet, we are putting a lot of trust into these energy sources, without considering their ramifications.
The American Consumer Institute just released a report detailing many of the environmental impacts associated with the so-called green energy forms being heavily promoted. The life cycle of all three—the wind turbine, solar panel, and EV battery—involve significant environmental consequences that should not be overlooked and need to be part of the discussion when implementing energy policies.
One of the biggest issues involved with these forms is the extraction and manufacturing processes of various critical minerals that are required for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries. Many underdeveloped nations, where there’s an abundance of minerals, are at risk. The operations and procedures not only overtake land but contaminate surrounding soil and water sources. In the worst cases, this work is accomplished through slave labor.
Various toxins and other greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, where workers and even nearby communities are potentially affected. Landscape is tarnished and various animal habitats are shrinking and/or experiencing stress. The massive amount of land occupied by both wind and solar may never be recoverable.
China dominates the green energy supply chains, but their environmental standards are subpar. CO2 emissions associated with refineries in China are 1.5 times greater than those in the EU or U.S.
All three energy sources are also creating a huge waste problem. Since any kind of recycling is very limited on a large scale, more than 90% wind turbine blades, solar panels, and EV batteries end up in landfills. By 2050 it is predicted that used turbine blades will exceed 43 million tons of waste worldwide. Solar waste is predicted to be close to 80 million tons. And with the U.S. projecting 33 million EVs on the road by 2030, that is a lot of batteries to end up in landfills.
Ironically, the same folks who want to charge customers for every plastic bag they use at the grocery store, out of fear of single-use plastics ending up in landfills, don’t seem to have a problem with potentially toxic machinery filling that space instead.
In a penchant for trying to solve one crisis, we are creating others.
Some of the environmental impacts and hazards posed by green energy are far more detrimental than fossil fuels, and yet the latter is often dismissed. Such risks associated with green technologies should actually be an argument against vigorous pursuit of them.
Each energy source, including fossil fuels, should be considered as part of an all-of-the-above strategy for supplying the necessary energy to power homes, businesses, and the U.S. economy at large. All of them come with some degree of environmental concerns, and each should be weighed and measured—along with costs, logistics, reliability, and geopolitical factors—when developing public policy. Instead of completely trying to phase out fossil fuels, a robust and healthy energy mix ought to be established; we need a balanced approach that does not breed additional problems.
It is past time to come clean on so-called clean energy. The real-life consequences and detrimental effects of it demand more honest conversations and a thoughtful course of action.
Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 20:55 - Copper Slumps As China Dumps Base Metal Into Asian Warehouses
Copper Slumps As China Dumps Base Metal Into Asian Warehouses
Copper inventories in Asian warehouses are swelling at an incredibly fast pace as the base metal that led the ‘Next AI Trade’ is under pressure once again, hitting the lowest levels in four months. The refined metal is flowing out of China into neighboring warehouses in South Korea and Taiwan, indicating that more downside for prices is ahead.
This chart is probably not what Taiwan wants to see pic.twitter.com/OCbAdWeCrz
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 24, 2024
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Goldman’s Adam Gillard told clients this AM that the copper “surplus continues to build; think price grinds lower despite the recent positioning cleanse until the State Grid return.”
Gillard highlighted that copper stockpiles at the London Metal Exchange in Asia have surged to their highest levels since mid-2018. Since peaking at $10,889 in mid-May, LME 3-month rolling forward copper prices have declined by over 18%, currently hovering around $8,928.
Although Asian inventory builds from legacy Chinese tolling exports are not new, today’s 40k MT delivery was a surprise basis July Chinese exports (because we thought most of what China exported had become visible already). The bull stock-out thesis was in part predicated on a tight supply chain given negative carry and high rates. Said another way, there shouldn’t be this much metal left in the woodwork to become visible.
Asian LME inventory is the highest since mid-2018.
Gillard observed that the surge in stockpiles at warehouses is now showing up in global inventory levels:
Global visible inventory: Taking 40k MT from July US imports (difference vs trend) and adding to CMX inventories results in total visible copper inventory of 794k MT vs 262k MT a/o January 1.
An abrupt surge…
“Whilst we concede it’s sketchy data BBG are reporting July US imports at 76k MT, an ATH (in response to May CMX / LME arb blowout),” Gillard noted about US imports of the base metal.
Rising warehouse inventories indicate a continued slowdown in China. Bloomberg reported that the world’s second-largest economy has started “exporting in unusually high volumes in recent months,” effectively exporting deflation. Additionally, concerns about a slowdown in the US have surfaced in recent days.
However, Chinese smelter production is still running above average.
Gillard also noted, “LME spec length has dropped to $4bn vs $19bn at the highs during the recent sell off.”
And he said CTAs are still shot.
In mid-May, around the time copper prices peaked, Jeff Currie, who led commodities research at Goldman Sachs for nearly three decades and now serves as the chief strategy officer of the energy pathways team at Carlyle Group, stated that the copper trade was the “most compelling trade” he has seen in his “30 plus years of doing this” because it’s “got green CapEx, it’s got AI, remember AI can’t happen without the energy demand and the constraint on the electricity grid is going to be copper.”
On May 15, The Market Ear penned a note to subs about an “overheated” copper market.
On June 8, Trafigura Chief Economist Saad Rahim said, “Prices of non-ferrous metals have moved much higher than fundamentals in the physical spot market might indicate or justify, especially for copper.”
Hmm.
Hey Grok, why is China stockpiling copper as if it is preparing for war pic.twitter.com/gKXEmDweCE
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 7, 2024
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What’s clear is that the AI theme has run its course for now, overshadowed by China exporting deflation to the world.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 20:30 - National Security In A Second Trump Administration
National Security In A Second Trump Administration
Authored by Dan Greenwood via RealClearPolitics,
After a tumultuous and nearly life-ending July, Donald Trump narrowly retains his lead in the polls. Business leaders would be wise to prepare for a second Trump administration.
As someone detailed to serve in the White House during my time in the Marine Corps, I know firsthand what national security policy means to President Trump. The 2017 National Security Strategy, Trump’s first-term policies, and his words in and out of office are the best indicators of what a second Trump administration agenda would entail. This amounts to a more expansive view of national security, one that stresses U.S. economic and technological primacy. Great power competition with China would dominate.
A Trump administration would no longer permit China to steal U.S. intellectual property or undercut our industries. Rather, the U.S. would aim to blunt Chinese control of critical minerals and commodities, and end exports here at fire sale prices. Pervasive Chinese misconduct would be met with a vigilant response. Protecting our technological advantages and economic interests would become paramount.
The threat posed by China is already a bipartisan concern. This is one area where Republicans and Democrats have previously cooperated across the aisle.
Trump will prioritize sustaining and growing America’s technological and innovative edge. Expect him to leverage the power of government to the advantage of U.S. workers and industry, especially in manufacturing. Here, a second Trump term will likely build upon first-term tariffs and export controls.
The past stands as a prelude. In March 2018, President Trump exercised his authority under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. He set a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum. His administration also imposed Section 301 tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of goods from China.
A Trump second term would likely double down on these actions. Many observers project increased tariffs on Chinese goods. A second Trump administration would also likely pressure our European and Indo-Pacific allies to mirror our export control and sanctions regimes vis-à-vis China. President Trump understands that technological supremacy is key to national security.
During his first term, he made a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) a strategic imperative. In 2018, he signed into law the expansive Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), the most comprehensive CFIUS reform since 2007. Among many CFIUS actions, in early March 2020, he directed a Beijing company and its Hong Kong-based subsidiary to divest their interests in StayNTouch, Inc., a U.S. mobile technology and property-management systems company.
Looking forward, a second Trump Administration would increase CFIUS investigations and declarations while expanding CFIUS oversight to include real estate near military bases and installations. As Trump sees things, China cannot be permitted to endanger national security through seemingly innocuous transactions.
Beyond that, Trump 2.0 will likely focus on Chinese efforts at intellectual espionage and influence at American universities. In 2020, Trump issued his Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry as Nonimmigrants of Certain Students and Researchers from the People’s Republic of China, aiming to prevent U.S. campuses from becoming incubators for the next generation of our adversaries. Future actions will seek to secure our national laboratories and national security-related research programs.
Trump’s America First vision isn’t isolationism. Rather, it is a rational course of action for advancing U.S. interests while securing the country’s economic and national security priorities, and those of our allies.
If reelected, Trump will likely demand that NATO’s members increase their defense spending. But directing Europeans to take a greater role in defending themselves is different than abandoning a historic alliance, something Trump won’t do.
A Trump administration would look to build on the 2021 Trilateral agreement between Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. (AUKUS). This would bolster U.S. interests in the Pacific as we seek to stand toe-to-toe with China across a broad range of issues. The Pacific is not a Chinese lake. Expanding AUKUS to include Japan and South Korea, even if through bilateral agreements, would be likely.
AUKUS illustrates Trump’s focus on foreign military sales (FMS) and their positive impact on the economy, the defense industrial base, and allied interoperability.
President Trump will likely demand record defense spending. Restoring America’s strength comes first; deficit hawks must take a backseat.
During his first term, President Trump stabilized and added predictability to defense spending with the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act. Subsequent years saw ever-increasing defense funding, and this would continue in a second Trump term with particular emphasis on shipbuilding, aircraft, autonomous systems, and long-range weapons.
During his final year in office, Trump sought $34.7 billion to grow and modernize the Navy’s fleet, the largest request of its kind in more than 20 years. Trump’s America First philosophy will both continue to expand our naval capacity and reinvigorate our shipyards for defense and commercial purposes.
Trump’s defense budgets will also include robust investments in artificial intelligence and quantum sciences, areas vital for both U.S. economic and national security. A new Trump administration will invest heavily in funding critical technology research and development at the Pentagon, national laboratories, and private industry. Losing the AI and quantum races to China carries grave national security implications.
Hyperbole and rhetoric will dominate the airwaves for the final three months of the presidential campaign. But business leaders who anticipate the policy-rich national security landscape a second Trump administration promises will be well-positioned to reap the benefits.
Dan Greenwood served as deputy assistant to President Trump and deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs from 2017-2019. He previously served as the senior director for Legislative Affairs at the National Security Council. He is a principal at the BGR Group, a Washington, D.C.–based lobbying and communications firm where he leads the Defense and Critical Technologies practice.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 20:05 - FBI Raids NY Home Of Ex-UN Weapons Inspector & Anti-War Pundit Scott Ritter
FBI Raids NY Home Of Ex-UN Weapons Inspector & Anti-War Pundit Scott Ritter
On Wednesday the upstate New York home of Scott Ritter was raided by the FBI and state police. The FBI has since confirmed in a statement that this is part of an ongoing federal investigation into Ritter.
Agents were seen entering his house in Delmar, NY in widely shared photographs and local media footage in the afternoon. It was unclear if Ritter was at home at the time and the allegations at the center of the investigation remain unknown.
WNYT Channel 13: FBI search ex-UN weapons inspect Ritter’s home. “I can confirm FBI personnel are at a home on Dover [Drive] conducting law enforcement activity in connection with an ongoing federal investigation,” a statement from the FBI’s Albany office confirmed. “As the investigation is ongoing, [Department of Justice] policy prevents me from commenting further.”
Ritter became a prominent figure as the chief UN weapons inspector in the 1990s in Iraq and ex-intelligence official (Marine Corp intelligence) who publicly opposed the George W. Bush administration’s drive to take the United States into war with Iraq.
He subsequently became a popular anti-war pundit and leading critic of US foreign policy. For an example of his ongoing criticisms of the US government and foreign policy, he wrote in 2019, “I love my country, but the collective ignorance of the American people empowers so-called public servants who abuse their positions of trust to push policies that further individual agendas at the expense of the nation they ostensibly serve. Fact-based logic no longer matters.”
More recently he has been a fierce critic of US policy related to the war in Ukraine, having also made several trips to Russia during the course of the war which began in February 2022.
Interestingly, just the day prior to the FBI’s raid on his home, Ritter posted a photo of himself eating a burger with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Burgers with Bobby!” the caption reads…
Burgers with Bobby! pic.twitter.com/J5fF2MepKd
— Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) August 7, 2024
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Ritter recently explained during a series of podcast appearances that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had seized his passport when he was about to board a flight for Russia on June 3rd. This was first revealed by him days later, and he said the State Dept. had no warrant, nor did it offer an explanation upon taking the passport. A report at the time stated:
Scott Ritter, a retired intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector best known for his correct assertion ahead of the Iraq War that Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction, as well as for his conviction for sex offenses in 2011 and the lengthy subsequent appeal, has asserted that his passport was seized on the orders of the State Department.
The American Conservative subsequently approached the State Department for comment, and it responded: “We cannot comment on the status of the passport of a private U.S. citizen.”
Ritter has offered the following comment in the wake of the Wednesday FBI raid…
Scott Ritter @RealScottRitter explains what he knows about the FBI raid on his home
“This has a chilling effect on freedom of speech” pic.twitter.com/gPcWoESFQk
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) August 7, 2024
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 19:40 - Kentucky Governor Plans To Collect Sales Tax On Gold And Silver Despite New Law
Kentucky Governor Plans To Collect Sales Tax On Gold And Silver Despite New Law
Authored by Mike Maharrey via Money Metals,
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has decided he’s going to continue collecting sales tax on the sale of gold and silver despite a new law repealing the levy and an attorney general opinion calling his line-item veto of the provision unconstitutional.
Only five other states levy a sales tax on gold and silver.
Initially, Rep. Steven Doan and Rep. John Hodgson introduced a standalone bill to repeal the sales and use tax on gold and silver bullion. The provisions were later inserted into House Bill 8 (HB8), an omnibus revenue and tax bill.
The provisions in HB8 define “bullion” as “bars, ingots, or coins, which are made of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or a combination of these metals, valued based on the content of the metal and not its form and used, or have been used, as a medium of exchange, security, or commodity by any state, the United States government, or a foreign nation.” Currency is defined as “a coin or currency made of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or other metal or paper money that is or has been used as legal tender and is sold based on its value as a collectible item rather than the value as a medium of exchange.”
The House passed the bill 87-9 and the Senate approved the measure 34-0.
Gov. Beshear signed the bill but used a line-item veto to strike out the sales tax exemption for gold and silver.
“If you own gold, you can afford to pay sales tax,” Beshear wrote in his veto message. “Tangible goods are the primary basis of the sales tax.”
Unconstitutional Veto?
House and Senate leadership deemed the veto unconstitutional. Under Sec. 88 of the Kentucky Constitution, “The Governor shall have the power to disapprove any part or parts of appropriation bills embracing distinct items, and the part or parts disapproved shall not become a law unless reconsidered and passed, as in case of a bill.”
In other words, the governor only has line-item veto power on appropriation (spending) bills. A line-item veto power does not exist for revenue bills.
Instead of simply overriding the veto, Republican leadership decided to make a political statement and try to give Beshear a black eye. It asked Attorney General Russell Coleman to issue an opinion on the constitutionality of the veto, and he agreed with the legislature’s assessment.
“Because the Governor’s veto power must be strictly construed, and because House Bill 8 is not an ‘appropriation bill,’ Section 88 does not empower the Governor to use his line-item veto on it. The Governor’s attempted line-item vetoes of House Bill 8 were nullities, as they exceeded his constitutional authority.”
Based on the AG’s (non-binding) opinion, the legislature directed the secretary of state to ignore the veto and enroll the statute. It went into effect on August 1.
Beshear Begs to Differ
Gov. Beshear rejected the AG’s opinion and has directed the Department of Revenue to collect the sales tax despite the law technically being on the books.
Beshear spokesman James Hatchett called the AG’s opinion “incorrect.”
“The very title of the bill at issue says it makes an appropriation. The governor properly exercised his constitutional authority to veto parts of the bill, and previous legal opinions have upheld similar line-item vetoes.”
Hatchett was referring to the first line of HB8: “AN ACT relating to fiscal matters, making an appropriation therefor, and declaring an emergency.” [Emphasis added]
The legal question boils down to whether or not a single appropriation in a revenue bill makes the bill an “appropriation bill.”
The National Coin and Bullion Association issued a statement highlighting the dilemma for gold and silver dealers and buyers in Kentucky.
“Retailers are now faced with a challenging decision. Collecting sales tax could result in consumer backlash and potential class action lawsuits for overcharging, while not collecting it might lead to penalties or interest from the Kentucky Department of Revenue. Given the rapidly evolving situation, each dealer must decide whether to charge sales tax on transactions involving bullion and currency starting August 1.”
Until there is a legal resolution, which will likely require a lawsuit, Money Metals plans to charge sales tax to Kentucky customers.
Here is the official position from Money Metals:
“Despite the new tax exemption in state law, the Democrat Kentucky governor and his Department of Revenue are threatening dealers and citizens with legal action if they refuse to pay/remit sales taxes on gold and silver purchases. However, you can avoid taxes if your order is delivered to a state without sales taxes OR when you store your precious metals in your secure account at the Idaho-based Money Metals Depository.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 19:15 - NASA Head Considers Elon Musk's SpaceX To Save Stranded Boeing Starliner Crew At ISS
NASA Head Considers Elon Musk’s SpaceX To Save Stranded Boeing Starliner Crew At ISS
On Wednesday, Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, informed reporters that mission control still needs to confirm a return date for the crew of the stranded Boeing Starliner spacecraft at the International Space Station. He mentioned that officials are carefully considering their options, including using SpaceX’s Crew-9 Dragon to rescue the two astronauts.
“Our primary option is to return Butch and Sunny on Starliner. However, we have done the requisite planning to ensure we have other options open. We have been working with SpaceX to ensure they are ready to respond with Crew-9 as a contingency,” Stich told reporters.
The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were initially supposed to spend just a few days on the ISS. That has since turned to two months and could stretch to eight months, with a possible return date in February 2025, according to News Week.
Stich pointed out, “We have not formally committed to this path, but we wanted to ensure we had all that flexibility in place.”
The big story here is that, after two months, Boeing has yet to publicly ask Elon Musk’s SpaceX for help. Optically, this would be a significant blow to Boeing’s image, especially considering the series of mid-air mishaps involving its 737Max commercial jets. Additionally, it’s an election year for the Biden administration, which has been on a crusade against Trump and his supporters, but also is very anti-Musk. Any rescue mission by SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is undesirable news flow for Democrats.
Last Saturday, we cited a report from Ars Technica, which said there was a “greater than a 50-50 chance that the crew would come back on Dragon.”
Meanwhile, the stranded Starliner spacecraft has created a logjam on the ISS, delaying SpaceX’s planned Crew-9 mission, which has been pushed from Aug. 18 to no earlier than Sept. 24, “allows more time for mission managers to finalize return planning for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test,” NASA wrote in a blog update.
Imagine that… Trump’s wealthiest supporter could save the day on the ISS.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 18:50 - Words, Words, Words
Words, Words, Words
Authored by John Maxwell Hamilton via RealClearPolitics,
Words everywhere. Words in laws passed by Congress, words in instructions for the devices that make our lives easier, words in novels and newspapers that edify us, words we use to convey our heartfelt sympathies, words we use to debate what course of action is good for our families and our country.
We rely on words all of the time. Rarely, however, do we consider their intrinsic importance in holding our society together. Rarely do we recognize the ways we corrupt words.
We live in a time of fuzzy, destructively inaccurate, and phony words. This chips away at political and economic democracy and trivializes the most basic human interactions, such as love.
One of the great celebrations of words came from Stephen Vincent Benet in his poem “American Names.” It begins:
I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.Benet’s poem was a reminder that authentic words are loaded with meaning.
Sadly, piles of synthetic words litter American landscapes. All day long, cable television runs ads for medicines whose names cannot be found in dictionaries, such as Rinvoq, Jardiance, Caplyta, Xgeva, and Xanax. Their pronunciation is equally elusive.
Names like these are the inspiration of marketing experts – let’s call them corporate crooners – who want you to swoon over their medicine. The feeling usually is vertigo. Viagra and Levitra, for erectile dysfunction, are onomatopoeic. But what feeling does Jardiance convey? It sounds like a synonym for yellowing of the skin.
Corporate crooners also dream up names for banks – Citibank, Flagstar Bank, Synchrony Financial, and Synovus Financial – that are neither real words nor always grammatical. Amusingly, bank executives keep telling me their fondest wish is for a more literate workforce.
A good word for errant naming is gobbledygook. When Texas congressman Maury Maverick ran the Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II, he directed his staff to “use plain English” instead of vague, pompous words that sounded like a strutting Turkey gobbling nonsense.
Public philosopher Harry Frankfurt had another down-to-earth term: As he wrote in a pithy book titled “On Bullshit,” bullshitters want to evoke feelings about themselves – for instance, politicians want to appear patriotic – or about a product they are selling, like a pill to curb diarrhea. They are not necessarily liars, Frankfurt wrote. They are simply “indifferent to how things really are.”
The devaluation of words can be traced to many sources. One of them is Hallmark, the ubiquitous greeting card conglomerate. Once upon a time, people wrote their most genuine feelings on pieces of paper. This required time and thought. Now their deepest sentiments are mass-produced and stuffed in racks in CVS. Meanwhile, Hallmark has become “a portfolio of businesses.” One of its subsidiaries is Crayola, which makes crayons and markers that are good for primitive communication.
Nothing is more primitive than emoticons, which lie on the top of the slippery slope where we reside today. The generally recognized inventor of this form of communication – which is less creative than the bison our ancestors painted on cave walls – is computer scientist Scott Fahlman. In 1982, he suggested that his Carnegie Mellon University students put a happy face on jocular email messages because people sometimes failed to understand they were supposed to be funny. How much better the world would be today if he had, instead, taught his students to better understand irony.
In the 17th century, scientists, political philosophers, and other Enlightenment thinkers worried about the inadequacy of words to convey complicated thought. Members of the newly founded Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge toyed with the idea of creating a new, more precise language. This did not happen. But existing languages became standardized. Universal education cemented the rules by emphasizing disciplined writing.
Today we are moving backward. A survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, carried out just before COVID struck, found that only 9% of 15-year-old students in industrialized countries were “able to successfully distinguish facts from opinions.” The pandemic, of course, only made matters worse.
As for the United States, it currently ranks sixth in reading among industrialized countries in the OECD. But before any backslapping ensues, consider that by other measures, one-fifth of all American adults are illiterate or border on illiteracy.
We can blame “digital distraction” for some of this. Young people spend their days emailing, twittering, and snapchatting. Communicating in tiny information bites is as intellectually nourishing as subsisting on marshmallows. Equally problematic, social media sites are a rule-free zone. They are ephemeral, not ink-on-paper, so what the heck. Don’t worry about complete sentences, with commas in the correct places, any more than you worry about producing a well-rounded thought.
Automated writing will make matters worse. For some years, students have relied on auto-correct programs to cover up their ignorance of spelling and punctuation. The worry now is that artificial intelligence will ease them into Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where people take happy pills and let someone else worry about gathering and communicating information.
We also can blame traditional guardians of words for degrading them. Editors, for instance.
Elite book publishing houses were famous for nurturing authors and their manuscripts. Editors helped make writers like Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner better than they already were. As the venerable publishers have morphed into corporate behemoths, however, editors have become “more managerial, less editorial,” says Dan Sinykin in his book “Big Fiction.” They focus on the “business and marketing side” of the enterprise. Agents often tell authors to hire an editor before submitting their book to a publisher. That might, indeed, help secure a contract, but, in any case, authors can’t count on the publisher to put much effort into simple line editing.
Newspaper book reviewing is diminished, too. The number of stand-alone Sunday book reviews has dwindled. The New York Times’ review, which started in 1911, is the most influential. But it has squandered its power by using up valuable space on such trivialities as interviewing Bruce Springsteen about his favorite books. Publishers Weekly, which once was a good guide to forthcoming books, overlooks so many important ones I’ve given up my subscription.
Up to this point, I have skirted around politics and the English language, which happens to be the title of one of George Orwell’s most famous essays. Written in 1946, it argued that we undermine democracy by letting politicians get away with “euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
“If thought corrupts language,” Orwell wrote, “language can also corrupt thought.”
In a later column, I will describe the origins of “fake news,” which is a peculiar kind of debasement of political communication.
Suffice it to say here that former President Trump did not invent the term as he claims he did, or the concept. It was widespread in the 19th century. Trump’s contribution to this field of lexicography is that he has perfected use of the term to discredit accurate reports that he finds inconvenient. We can give him credit for naming his hotels after himself. At least they have a real name, although the name is not so majestic as Lost Mule Flat. But the political bad habit of fighting truth by calling it lies is the worm in the apple of democracy.
“Words! Words! Words! – I’m so sick of words,” an exasperated Liza Doolittle cries in the popular 1960s Broadway musical “My Fair Lady.” “I get words all day through; first from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?”
But we would be more exasperated without all the words. Democracy, wrote John Dewey, one of the 20th century’s greatest public intellectuals, “implies tools for getting at the truth.” Sound words, soundly written are the most basic. These are the hammers and chisels that enlighten and move us.
This gets us back to the example set by Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem. He used a common racial signifier that passed muster then and would not today. But at the end of the poem, he showed the genuine evocative power of words with a reference to the slaughter of some 300 Lakota people in 1890.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.John Maxwell Hamilton is an RCP columnist, a professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, and an award-winning author of eight books, including The French 75.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 18:25 - Kamala Harris Donated To 'Defund Police' Group Pushing For 'Permanent' DC Sanctuary City
Kamala Harris Donated To ‘Defund Police’ Group Pushing For ‘Permanent’ DC Sanctuary City
Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff donated to a progressive legal group last year that pushed to defund the police, and wants to make Washington DC a permanent “sanctuary city” for illegals, the Washington Examiner reports, citing a copy of their joint tax return.
Harris and Emhoff donated $1,000 to Legal Aid DC, a nonprofit that works on housing law and represents low-income clients in multiple areas. The pair also donated $1,000 to the nonprofit in 2021, according to the report.
News of the donations, which have not been reported on until now, comes as Harris faces scrutiny on the 2024 campaign trail over her support in 2020 for defunding the police and her handling of the border crisis. Harris has reversed course on a variety of her left-wing policy positions after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. But the vice president’s willingness to fund Legal Aid DC as recently as 2023 could raise questions about her ties to controversial progressive activists — including after Harris selected Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who has been widely criticized over his response to the 2020 riots in Minnesota, as her running mate. -Washington Examiner
Legal Aid DC was founded in 1932, and brands itself as “the district’s oldest and largest civil legal services organization” helping to “make justice real in individual and systemic ways.”
In 2020, Legal Aid DC published a statement in the wake of George Floyd’s death noting that it “stands in solidarity with those speaking out, demonstrating, and demanding a country and society that will treat every one of its residents with dignity and respect.”
Days later, the group’s housing law attorney Amanda Korber was quoted in an article pushing for fewer police officers in DC. Legal Aid DC shared the article on social media, writing “As Legal Aid’s Amanda Korber noted in the article, we are concerned, especially given the ongoing protest movement, about any solution that involves more police and policing in DC public housing. #BlackLivesMatterDC.”
As Legal Aid’s Amanda Korber noted in the article, we are concerned, especially given the ongoing protest movement, about any solution that involves more police and policing in DC public housing. #BlackLivesMatterDC https://t.co/EX73qgZGmM
— Legal Aid DC (@LegalAidDC) June 10, 2020
As the Examiner notes further, Legal Aid DC shared an article in 2021 glorifying BLM, and amplifying a quote by Minneapolis City Councilman Jeremiah Ellison declaring “I think the police will view a leftist protester with a gas mask as more dangerous than a right-wing protester with a semiautomatic rifle.”
Of note, Ellison – the son of Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, helped lead the charge in 2020 to “dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department.
Legal Aid DC also supported a since-approved law in DC that to make it a “permanent” sanctuary city – legislation which restricts cooperation between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local agencies. Legal Aid’s Adam Jacobs said aat the time that the law “could lift some of the terror our immigrant neighbors and their families have faced for many years.”
“It also restricts the city’s prisons from functioning as immigration detention centers and amends a loophole used by ICE and the U.S. Marshals to detain immigrants outside of D.C. Superior Court,” reported NBC4 Washington in 2020 upon the City Council’s approval of a permanent version of the then-temporary law.
Meanwhile, Harris running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), has supported similar “sanctuary state” policies in the past, as well as a law allowing illegal immigrants to obtain a driver’s license.
Dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and Tim Walz support “sanctuary” cities that protect criminal illegal aliens pic.twitter.com/isKk8pgbbk
— GOP (@GOP) August 6, 2024
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Tim Walz 🤝 Driver’s Licenses For Illegals
Weak. Failed. Dangerously Liberal. Just like Kamala. pic.twitter.com/kuPSGpfjVB
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 6, 2024
Meanwhile, Legal Aid DC also submitted testimony in 2023 in support of a bill to “create a reparations task force and fund to address the impacts of slavery and institutional racism in Washington, D.C.,” according to documents.
The organization’s policy counsel, Jen Jenkins, told the DC City Counsel that it’s essential for the district “to acknowledge that slavery, colonialism, and systemic racism have left deep scars in D.C. and to begin rectifying those impacts for black D.C. residents through enacting this bill.”
Also, Walz’s wife is ‘weird’…
Here is a bizarre clip from an interview with Gwen Walz stating that she left her windows open during the Minneapolis Riots so she could smell the burning tires.
Her daughter also coordinated with rioters to let them know that the National Guard would not be activated one night. pic.twitter.com/ityW100Z4y
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) August 6, 2024
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 18:00 - Global Government Is No Conspiracy Theory
Global Government Is No Conspiracy Theory
Authored by Dr. David McGrogan via DailySceptic.org,
We live in an age that is gesturing towards global government. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is something which perfectly respectable politicians, academics, policymakers and UN officials routinely talk about. What is crystallising is not exactly a single world Government, but rather a complicated mixture of aligned institutions, organisations, networks, systems and fora which has sometimes been given the fancy name of a ‘bricolage’ by international relations theorists. There is no centre, but rather a vast and nebulous conglomeration.
This does not mean, though, that global government (or ‘global governance’, as it is more commonly known) is emerging organically. It is being purposively directed. Again, this is no conspiracy theory; it is something that the people involved openly discuss – they hide their plans in perfectly plain sight. And this has been going on for a long time. In the early 1990s, when the Cold War had drawn to a close, the UN convened something called the Commission on Global Governance, which released a final report – called ‘Our Global Neighbourhood‘ – in 1995. It makes for fascinating reading as a kind of ‘playbook’ for what has followed in the field in the 30 years since – establishing as it does a clear rhetorical and argumentative pattern in favour of the global governance project that is repeated to this day.
The basic idea is as follows. In the olden days, when “faith in the ability of Governments to protect citizens and improve their lives was strong”, it was fine for the nation-state to be ‘dominant’. But now the world economy is integrated, the global capital market has vastly expanded, there has been extraordinary industrial and agricultural growth and there has been a huge population explosion. Ours is therefore a “more crowded, interdependent world with finite resources”. And this means we need “a new vision for humanity” which will “galvanise people everywhere to achieve higher levels of cooperation in areas of common concern and shared destiny” (these “areas of common concern” being “human rights, equity, democracy, meeting basic material needs, environmental protection, and demilitarisation”). We need, in short, “an agreed global framework for actions and policies to be carried out at appropriate levels” and a “multifaceted strategy for global governance”.
This is not difficult reasoning to parse. The central argument can be summarised as follows: global governance is necessary because the world is globalising, and that brings with it global problems that need solving collectively. And the logic must be impeccable in the minds of those who are engaged in the global governance project, because what they say has remained essentially the same ever since. Hence, if we fast forward from 1995 to 2024, we find world leaders finalising a revised draft of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s proposed ‘Pact for the Future’, a memorandum of guiding principles for global governance which will be the culmination of his ‘Our Common Agenda‘ project, launched in 2021. While there is a bit more meat on the bone in this document than there may have been in Our Global Neighbourhood in terms of policy, we see a more-or-less identical argument playing out.
So, once again, we are reminded in this document that we live in “a time of profound global transformation” in which we face challenges that are “deeply interconnected” and “far exceed the capacity of any single state alone”. Since our problems can “only be addressed collectively” we therefore need “strong and sustained international cooperation guided by trust and solidarity” – stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. Even the substantive concerns at the heart of the ‘Pact for the Future’ are largely unchanged from those cited in ‘Our Global Neighbourhood’: human rights, equity, poverty and sustainable development, the environment, peace and security – the familiar litany. The only thing that has really changed is that in 2024 there has been layered on top a tone of alarmism: “we are confronted by a growing range of catastrophic and existential risks”, the reader is told, “and if we do not change course, we risk tipping irreversibly into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown”. Better get the washing in, then.
To return to my summary from earlier on, the picture being painted by ‘Our Common Agenda’ and the ‘Pact for the Future’ is then just a slightly more elaborate copy of what was sketched out in ‘Our Global Neighbourhood’: globalisation causes certain problems to emerge that have to be governed globally, and therefore we need, so to speak, to be globally governed. And this is presented as a fait accompli; it is indeed “common sense”, as the Secretary-General calls it in ‘Our Common Agenda’. Governing globally is necessary because there are global problems, and that is that – how could one imagine things could be otherwise?
This all brings to mind Michel Foucault’s account of the emergence of the state in early modernity. Foucault describes that emergence as being, in essence, an epistemological or metaphysical phenomenon rather than a political or social one. For the medieval mind, the world’s significance was spiritual – it was a staging post before Rapture, and what mattered was salvation. The world was therefore not so much an empirical phenomenon as a theological one – it was governed not by physics but by “signs, prodigies, marvels and monstrosities that were so many threats of chastisement, promises of salvation, or marks of election”. It was not something to be altered, but was rather a “system of obedience” to God’s will.
However, beginning in the early modern period, there began a great epistemological rupture: it became possible to understand the world as having an existence independent of God, and being organised therefore by what we would nowadays call science. Now, all of a sudden (though obviously the story played out over many generations) the world became something that had temporal rather than spiritual significance, and the people in it began to be seen as not merely souls awaiting the Second Coming, but populations whose material and moral conditions could be improved by action in the world itself. And this meant that people began to imagine that a ruler’s duty was not just to be a sovereign but to ‘govern’ in the sense of making things better in this life rather than the next.
The state as we understand it today, according to Foucault, emerged within these reflections – the apparatus of armies, taxation, courts and so on all existed before this period, but it was only once government was imagined as having the role of governing that it became possible to think about and speak of the state as such; it was only then that it became a “reflective practice”. It thus became:
An object of knowledge (connaissance) and analysis… part of a reflected and concerted strategy, and… began to be called for, desired, coveted, feared, rejected, loved and hated.
The point that Foucault was keen to emphasise, though, was that while states undoubtedly existed and governed, the state was just an “episode” in government and would – the implication obviously follows – some day be superseded. To repeat: the epistemic break ushered in by early modernity, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and so on transformed the world into an empirical phenomenon, not just particular chunks of territory, and it therefore contained within it the seed of a concept of global or world government: a future in which all of ‘creation’, so to speak, could be brought under the same shared project of material and moral improvement.
Government, then, is not something which the State does per se, but rather something which at a particular period of time simply happened to utilise the state as its instrument. Government is in essence an epistemic phenomenon – it is that activity which conceives of the world as its field of action, as something to be known, understood, studied, manipulated and improved, in the absence or irrelevance of God. At one stage its ambition was limited territorially, chiefly because of technological constraint, but there is no inherent reason for that limit, and as technology has improved such that the globe can now be relatively easily traversed physically and communicatively, so that limitation has disappeared and government is free to imagine its project as genuinely global.
That goes a long way to explaining the first part of the conceptual dynamic that plays out in respect of the global governance project: government can now imagine the world, in a very literal sense, to be something that human reason can know and act upon, and thereby improve. As the preamble to the ‘Pact for the Future’ has it, “advances in knowledge, science, technology and innovation, if properly and equitably managed, could deliver a breakthrough to a better and more sustainable future for all… a world that is safe, sustainable, peaceful, inclusive, just, equal, orderly and resilient”. To repeat: governing is that activity which conceives of the world as its field of action, as something to be known, understood, studied, manipulated and improved, in the absence or irrelevance of God.
To understand the second part of the conceptual dynamic underlying global governance – the fact that that there are global problems that make it absolutely necessary for global governance to exist, and act – we only need to carefully read Machiavelli. Foucault puts Machiavelli at the centre of the story he tells in regard to government and the state, because Machiavelli brings the medieval or pre-modern way of thinking to a resounding end; he asks no theological questions but treats ruling as something that is done only in the name of temporal concerns. He is not interested in the next life; he is interested in this one.
And in particular he is interested in providing advice to a ruler who is taking charge of something new, or afresh – not a ruler who is established but one who has founded, usurped or conquered his throne. Hence, at the very beginning of The Prince, Machiavelli tells us – these are more or less the first words out of his mouth, as it were:
I say, then, that in hereditary states accustomed to the rule of their Prince’s family, there are far fewer difficulties in maintaining them than in new states, for it is sufficient simply not to break ancient customs, and then to suit one’s actions to unexpected events. In this way, if such a Prince is of ordinary ability he will always maintain his state… It is [only] in the new principality that difficulties arise.
So Machiavelli was not interested in providing advice to rulers who were simply maintaining the status quo; his advice was going to be provided to those who set out to rule a new principality. And here the advice is absolutely clear – the new ruler, one who does not inherit his position but somehow comes to occupy it, needs to justify his position somehow; he needs a reason why he should be in charge in the first place, and why he should remain in place. Hence, very simply and straightforwardly:
A wise ruler [in such a position] must think of a method by which his citizens will need the state and himself at all times and in every circumstance. Then they will always be loyal to him.
Governing in modernity, then – in which ‘princes’ will no longer be able to simply point to hereditary or religious justifications for their existence, and are therefore always new in the Machiavellian sense – requires what I once called a “discourse of vulnerability“. It is imperative that it presents its own existence as indeed imperative, so that can maintain its status. It always needs to be making the citizens loyal, through having an account of itself as necessary. And this means discursively constructing the vulnerable population as always in need of government for succour.
You will no doubt have joined the dots already. Since the state is a mere ‘episode’ of government, and since government will necessarily expand its ambition to the entire globe, the same logic underpinning Machiavelli’s discourse of vulnerability in the context of the modern state will also of course hold true in the global arena. It will in short be necessary for global governance to insist precisely on its own necessity at every turn: since we face all sorts of problems that are “deeply interconnected” and “far exceed the capacity of any single state alone”, and since especially we “risk tipping irreversibly into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown” if these problems are not solved, then a global governance framework simply has to come into existence and govern the globe on our behalf. And thus it retains our loyalty and legitimates itself. This is what it governs for: to present government as necessary – globally.
Now that we understand the nature of this discourse, then, we are in a position to subject it to critique.
And we can do this across three axes.
First, we can ask: are the problems identified in global governance circles actually not in the capacity of any single state alone to manage on its own behalf? Or might it be the case that individual states, responsible to their electorates and engaged in the national interest, are better placed to deal with crises that arise than nebulous, unaccountable and opaque networks of global governance actors?
I have on my bookshelf here a collection titled Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes and Consequences, edited by Jonas Tallberg and put out by the University of Lund in 2018; its opening paragraph – absolutely standard in academic work of this kind – lists “climate change, internet communications, disease epidemics, financial markets, cultural heritage, military security, trade flows and human rights” as sources of global problems, and includes “uncoordinated climate policies, a fragmented internet, perennial financial crises, transcultural misunderstanding, arms proliferation, trade protectionism and human rights abuses” as the likely results of failing to set up appropriate institutions of global governance accordingly. Well, we might very well ask – are “trade flows” a “global challenge” requiring global coordination through the WTO, or something that individual elected governments should determine for themselves, acting perhaps through bilateral agreements? Is “transcultural misunderstanding” something that we really need global governance to manage on our behalf? Is “military security” not quintessentially a task which sovereign nation states pursue on behalf of their populations?
Second, we can ask: is it true that the problems which purportedly necessitate global governance would lead to “permanent crisis and breakdown” without it? Or is it perhaps more plausible to say that an interconnected world (and it is doubtlessly true that the world is more interconnected than it has ever been in human history) is simply going to be characterised by insoluble problems that are best dealt with as contingencies by individual states? For example, is the likelihood of pandemic disease something that global governance needs to exist in order to control, or is it just a fact of life in the modern era which is best responded to through the plans of state governments based on their particular needs and resources, on an ad hoc basis?
And third – and most importantly – we can ask: is global governance in itself a risk, or a factor which exacerbates existing risks rather than ameliorates them? On the one hand, there is no doubt that global governance, which has a tendency to crystallise groupthink among a relatively thin sliver of globalised political, academic, third sector and business circles, can lead to the worldwide, or near-worldwide, imposition of very foolish public policy. The Covid lockdowns are of course the paradigmatic example of this. To this extent global governance is inherently fragilising: it puts all of the policy eggs in one basket, and thus massively amplifies the threat of breakage.
But on the other hand, the very project of global government brings with it particular, unique risks which global governance enthusiasts naturally tend to overlook. In a recent interview with the Triggernometry podcast, Peter Thiel makes something like this point, in his observation that the biggest risk of all which humanity faces is probably a totalitarian world government which, precisely because it covers the whole world, cannot be escaped. This is the real threat posed by government as such (remembering that it is the state which is the tool of government and not vice versa), and, in representing the extinction of human freedom, it would be far more damaging than any individual pathogen, trade war, environmental disaster or financial crisis.
The question which we really need to ask, in other words, is not whether there are risks that come into existence as a result of the world becoming more interconnected, but rather what those risks really are. And sensible people would come to the conclusion that they are in fact political rather than genuinely ‘existential’ – they come not from the realm of the exogenous but rather emerge from the very project of managing existential risk through global governance itself. To put things very bluntly, a future of “permanent crisis and breakdown” is much more likely to emerge from authoritarian attempts to stave off such a future than the emergence of particular events (pandemics, financial crises, environmental disaster, etc.) in themselves. Our problem, in other words, is government – understood, at the risk of repeating myself, as that activity which conceives of the world as its field of action, as something to be known, understood, studied, manipulated and improved, in the absence or irrelevance of God – and that is precisely a problem that global governance is uniquely incapable of solving.
* * *
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 17:40 - Kansas Police Chief Who Led Raid Of Newspaper Violated Law: Prosecutors
Kansas Police Chief Who Led Raid Of Newspaper Violated Law: Prosecutors
Marion, Kansas – A recent investigation into a contentious raid on the Marion County Record newspaper has taken a surprising turn, as district attorneys from Sedgwick and Riley Counties have exonerated the newspaper’s staff from any criminal activity – and say the police chief who led the operation broke the law by obstructing their investigation.
A stack of the Marion County Record sits in the back of the newspaper’s building in a file image. (John Hanna/AP Photo) In August, Marion County officers, led by former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, executed search warrants at the Marion County Record’s office, the home of editor Eric Meyer, and reporter Phyllis Zorn’s residence. The warrants were based on suspicions that the newspaper staff had illegally obtained the driving record of a local restaurant owner.
The investigation revealed that the newspaper staff had not broken any laws. The district attorneys’ report highlighted that the driving record, initially provided by a source, was accessed legally through the Kansas Department of Revenue’s website with assistance from a department employee.
“Phyllis Zorn committed no crime under Kansas law when she obtained the driving record of Kari Newell,” the prosecutors stated. They also confirmed that Meyer had committed no criminal acts.
The report further clarified that the estranged husband of restaurant owner and Marion County Councilwoman Ruth Herbel, along with another local woman who passed the driving record to Zorn and Herbel, did not violate any laws. The driving record was publicly accessible, unaltered, and not used fraudulently.
Prosecutors criticized the investigative process leading to the raid, pointing out that Marion County officers misunderstood how the Kansas Department of Revenue website worked. The officers did not wait for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s analysis before proceeding with the warrants.
The warrants were the result of a rushed investigative process that hinged on an apparent misconception by Marion County officers about how the Kansas Department of Revenue website worked, the prosecutors determined. The process included not waiting for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which had been consulted by Cody, to analyze the allegations before seeking and carrying out the warrants.
Prosecutors said there was no evidence that Cody or the officers committed crimes in crafting and executing the warrants because they thought that the law had been broken. –Epoch Times
“Put another way, it is not a crime under Kansas law for a law enforcement officer to conduct a poor investigation and reach erroneous conclusions,” prosecutors wrote.
That said, they did conclude that Cody obstructed justice – for which he could be charged with either a felony or a misdemeanor.
Seth Stern, director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, argued that Cody should face additional charges. “The raid itself was criminal,” Stern stated. “And Cody is far from the only one at fault here.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 17:20 - The GOP Plan To Handle Tim Walz, 'Ideological Soul Mate' Of Harris
The GOP Plan To Handle Tim Walz, ‘Ideological Soul Mate’ Of Harris
Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,
Democrats are eager to introduce Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the country. He is a veteran who used the GI Bill to get to college, a former public-school teacher who coached high school football, and a two-term governor of a midwestern state with a record of accomplishments on behalf of working-class families.
Republicans are just as excited. Despite his Rust Belt resume, they say Vice President Harris has selected a radical as her running mate. In an interview with RealClearPolitics, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said, “Tim Walz is really, truly her ideological soulmate.”
The emerging Republican plan to beat the Harris-Walz ticket? Just roll the tape, replied Whatley: “Our opposition research is going to be video clips of Tim Walz.”
More specifically, Whatley said the GOP would point to Walz’s previous comments about wanting to invest in a “30-foot-ladder factory” to help migrants scale former President Trump’s border wall, his support for giving undocumented individuals healthcare and driver’s licenses in Minnesota, and his handling of the 2020 riots in Minneapolis that followed the death of George Floyd.
Kamala Harris VP hopeful Tim Walz said he would invest in a “ladder company” to help people get over a border wall.
I think he would make an excellent radical left VP pick for Harris. pic.twitter.com/75i3E1k3L2
— Cryptid Politics (pro-DeSantis) 🇺🇸🐊 (@CryptidPolitics) August 6, 2024
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Fun Fact: Kamala Harris’ VP pick Tim Walz signed a law to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, paving the way for them to unlawfully vote in electionspic.twitter.com/kWPlLg0vpd
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 6, 2024
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Republicans have already been hitting Harris over illegal immigration and the border, inflation and the economy, and crime. Walz just presents a new wrinkle and new video clips. One immediately began circulating online.
Conservatives were quick to criticize Walz for not deploying the Minnesota National Guard sooner in the summer of 2020 as rioters looted and burned through Minneapolis. “I could smell the burning tires, and that was a very real thing,” Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz told a local news reporter in an interview making the rounds online Tuesday. “I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”
According to the GOP, this is more evidence of the weak-on-crime radicalism of Democrats.
The race is now on for Democrats to introduce their new folksy anti-Trump champion while Republicans rush to define him as more of the same. For his part, Walz has a history of spoiling GOP plans. He punched his ticket to Congress in 2006 by flipping a Republican House seat. After more than a decade, Walz ran and won the governor’s mansion by more than 10 points in 2018, a post he easily held a second time four years later.
Michael Tyler, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said that by picking Walz, Harris has “cemented the fundamental contrast in this race between the Harris-Walz ticket which is fighting for working families and the Trump-Vance Project 2025 agenda that would unleash harm on Americans across the country.” The pair will spend the coming months, he added, traveling the country talking about “building up the middle class instead of cutting taxes for the rich, and fighting for our fundamental freedoms, including reproductive freedom.”
Walz may be an asset particularly in the Midwest. He talks plainly, and his small-town biography explains his appeal. When President Biden announced his retirement, Walz was quick to throw his support behind Harris as many others did. He emerged as a sort of pathfinder for Democrats with his broadsides against Sen. J.D. Vance as soon as Trump named the Ohio Republican his running mate.
“The golden rule” in rural, small-town America, Walz said during a “Morning Joe” interview last month, was to “mind your own damn business.” And then the governor forged the talking point that the left has used with some immediate success to define the GOP ticket.
“We do not like what has happened where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary,” he continued. “Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.”
And in this way, the word “weird” became the Democratic byword for the Republican ticket. Trump, Vance, and all their ideas, Democrats have said on repeat for weeks, aren’t just a threat to democracy, they are unusual and out of touch with America itself.
The left now enjoys rare alignment. Everyone from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to West Virginia independent Sen. Joe Manchin praised the Walz pick. All of it, replied Whatley, is more evidence that Democrats have “shifted so far to the left as a whole that candidates as extreme as Kamala Harris, as extreme as Tim Walz, are now considered mainstream.”
While the party boss said that the GOP playbook remains the same now that Walz has joined the ticket, behind the scenes Republicans expressed giddiness that Walz, instead of a more moderate candidate like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, was selected. One prominent Republican operative accused Walz of “plagiarizing California’s failed far-left liberal agenda for Minnesota.”
Republicans hope to compete in that state, despite Donald Trump’s two narrow losses there. The selection of Walz won’t do anything to change that strategy, Whatley told RCP. He said Republicans are looking forward to “a conversation in Minnesota about how, as the governor, Walz allowed riots to basically burn down Minneapolis, and then Kamala Harris came in and bailed out all those people out.”
That will continue to be, he said, “a conversation we’re happy to have in Minnesota.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 17:00 - 'State Of Emergency' Declared In Russia's Kursk Region After Ukraine Attack, Locals Angry At Security Failure
‘State Of Emergency’ Declared In Russia’s Kursk Region After Ukraine Attack, Locals Angry At Security Failure
Update(1658ET): The governor of the Russian border region of Kursk on Wednesday declared a “state of emergency” – and also tightened security around a nearby nuclear plant – amid a major ground and cross-border incursion by Ukrainian forces, led by fast moving armored vehicles, all of which kicked off early the day prior.
“To eliminate the consequences of enemy forces coming into the region, I took the decision to introduce a state of emergency in the Kursk region from 7 August,” Kursk’s acting Governor Alexei Smirnov said Wednesday evening.
The Russian Defense Ministry has described that “the enemy’s movement further into Russian territory has been prevented” but that “the operation for the destruction of Ukrainian army units is continuing.”
A lot of angry people in #Kursk‘s border villages.
They feel abandoned and the rest of #Russia isn’t being told the truth.Many photos and videos started to appear of the alleged cross border attack by #Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/Ti4gJOsKzZ
— Tim White (@TWMCLtd) August 6, 2024
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The offensive has been ongoing since Tuesday morning, with Russian officials saying that up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops are involved. While few details have been able to be confirmed, some unverified reports have suggested Ukraine forces plunged as deep as 20km into Russia. Other regional reports say it was a few hundred Ukrainian soldiers leading the incursion.
Damage and civilian casualties on the Russian side are significant enough for locals to be openly angry at the border security failure:
A Moscow Times reporter saw residents of border areas in the Kursk region accusing officials of not doing enough to help them on social media.
“Nobody cared about us… the refugees from that ‘country’ [Ukraine] were given everything at once… and [local] people left for nowhere and with nothing,” wrote Lika Ivanova from Sudzha, a town in the Kursk region that came under massive shelling on Tuesday.
“Why did our state allow this? If you can’t protect your people, do an evacuation. As a result, there are victims again,” Kursk resident Andrei Nezlobin posted on the VKontakte social media platform.
Regional governor Smirnov has confirmed that at this point thousands of people have been successfully evacuated from dozens of towns and villages along the border.
As we reported below, as of Wednesday evening Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko announced that the Ukrainian army established control over the Sudzha gas hub, sending EU natural gas prices soaring.
* * *
The Kremlin has announced that its forces thwarted a major ground assault from Ukraine forces into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region. President Vladimir Putin called it a “large-scale provocation” which is being defended against for a second day. While the Ukrainian side has remained silent, that fighting in the area of the incursion has raged for two days straight does indeed suggest an attack which is large in scope.
Putin further described the “indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings, residential houses, ambulances with different types of weapons” amid the assault, and called an emergency meeting of his top defense and security officials. The military is further sending assistance to the Kursk region, which lies over 300 miles from Moscow.
Russian state media has detailed that the cross-border assault began at 5:30am Tuesday morning and involved in initial wave of up to 1,000 militants. Kremlin sources further say that the Ukrainian side suffered at least 315 casualties, including at least 100 killed and 215 wounded.
The chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, in a briefing given to Putin said the goal of the Ukrainian operation was to take over the Sudzhinsky district of Kursk Region.
There are meanwhile breaking reports the Ukrainian Armed Forces have captured the Sudzha gas measurement station, which is in the center of Sudzhinsky district, according to source RybarEU. European NatGas prices jumped on the news (to their highest since Dec 2023)…
EU Natural Gas Throughout the war there have been at least two other significant cross-border ground raids involving Ukrainian paramilitaries, but if the numbers are confirmed, this one is by far the largest.
…And clearly the operation had a specifically geopolitical goal related to Russia’s hold over European gas (and as evidenced by the following chart, European gas prices are surging relative to US gas)…
In this case, the incursion appears to have been launched utilizing Ukrainian army regular forces and heavy equipment, with the possibility that West-supplied weapons systems were used.
“Ukraine also lost 54 armored vehicles, including seven tanks,” Gen. Gerasimov’s briefing noted.
Via AP There does appear to be significant damage and some civilian casualties in the Kursk Region as a result, as Associated Press reports:
The head of the region urged residents to donate blood due to the intense fighting. “In the last 24 hours, our region has been heroically resisting attacks” by Ukrainian fighters, acting Gov. Alexei Smirnov said on Telegram, adding that all emergency services were on high alert.
The same sources is reporting that the Ukrainian shelling has killed at least two people — a paramedic and an ambulance driver — and wounded 24, based on a Russian foreign ministry briefing.
Ukraine attack on Russia’s #Kursk Region
Fifteen people are taking refuge in the Svyato-Nikolaevsky Belogorsky Monastery in the Gornal district of Sudzha. The building is under constant shelling. pic.twitter.com/vSltZDrjqh
— Russian Market (@runews) August 7, 2024
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Thousands of Russians have reportedly fled the assault, and the region is still in chaos and under constant shelling.
Ukraine forces have reportedly seized the gas measuring station “Sudzha” on the western outskirts of the city of the same name. Gas is pumped there for transit to Europe.
developing…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 16:58 - 'Do Not Fly' Alert Over Iran Issued For Airlines During Oddly Specific Night Hours
‘Do Not Fly’ Alert Over Iran Issued For Airlines During Oddly Specific Night Hours
Egypt has just issued a rare and oddly specific NOTAM, or Notice to Air Missions alert, instructing all of its airlines to avoid Iranian airspace for a 3-hour period in the overnight and early morning hours of Thursday. Some other countries have since followed in issuing similar do not fly alerts, including the UK.
“All Egyptian carriers shall avoid overflying Tehran. No flight plan will be accepted overflying such territory,” the notice says. Specifically the instructions are valid from 01:00 to 04:00GMT (or 9pm to 12am US Eastern). Will the big expected Iranian retaliation be tonight? Zero hour may be approaching fast.
Tehran file image NOTAMS alert aircraft pilots to potential hazards along flight paths, and are internationally recognized among aviation authorities.
Reuters has picked up on and reported the NOTAM as well, saying based on Egyptian government sources that Cairo was notified by Iranian authorities that airlines should avoid traversing Iranian airspace due to overnight “military exercises”.
According to the citation in Reuters:
“Based on a report from Iranian authorities to all civil aviation companies, flights over Iranian airspace are to be avoided,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
Many airlines are revising their schedules to avoid Iranian and Lebanese airspace while also calling off flights to Israel and Lebanon as many fear a possible broader conflict after the killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
A flight risk monitor identified as OPSGROUP has further told the same publication that “Such a NOTAM from Egypt is very unusual.”
The aviation industry group explained further that “It is possible that this is an indicator of an Iranian response to Israel, and in turn a potentially large set of air space disruptions – at the same time, there may be another reason.”
BREAKING: IRAN TO ATTACK ISRAEL TONIGHT?
Iran warns all commercial air carriers to avoid its airspace, signaling a possible attack on Israel in the coming hours.
The overflight restriction is effective from 9pm-12am ET
Egypt issued a NOTAM earlier for the exact same time. pic.twitter.com/NX7xC15UnX
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) August 7, 2024
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Iran on Wednesday had called an emergency meeting of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which met in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
An OIC statement said the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil on July 31st risks sparking a wider war. “This heinous act serves only to escalate the existing tensions potentially leading to a wider conflict that could involve the entire region,” the OIC chair said. Haniyeh’s killing “will not quell the Palestinian cause but rather it amplifies it, underscoring the urgency for justice and human rights for the Palestinian people,” it added.
Amid several days of an anticipated major Iranian response against Israel, once it was known earlier in the week that the Islamic Cooperation council meeting had been called for Wednesday, most analysts took that as a sign that ballistic missiles wouldn’t be flying at least until then. But with the meeting now concluded, tonight could be the night.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/07/2024 – 16:40
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