Cornpop Hopped Up On Drugs, Reading The Teleprompter And Slurring His Words

WSJ  |  As explosions rang out and bullets flew over Tamir Erez’s home in Mefalsim near the Gaza Strip border, he said he kept asking himself, “Where is the Israeli military?” He fled town with his children holding their heads down so they couldn’t see the bodies of dead Israelis killed by Palestinian militants.

“It will take a long time for us to recover from this day,” Erez said. 

Israel’s failure to anticipate an attack Saturday that left hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead and militants rampaging through villages punctured a sense of invincibility built on its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus. It left the world questioning what went wrong and Israel’s leaders facing pressure to retaliate with overwhelming force.

The assault came as Israel faces its most difficult series of threats in the decades since what remains the country’s greatest security failure, the Yom Kippur War, the surprise attack launched 50 years ago this week by Egyptian and Syrian forces.

Iran has provided unprecedented coordination among the forces of several militant groups, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and stoked deadly conflict in the West Bank, putting Israel at risk on three fronts.

Using rockets, paragliders, motorcycles, pickup trucks, and boats, Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip launched a coordinated attack that showed an unexpected level of sophistication. 

Israeli forces appeared to be caught completely by surprise as Hamas militants in Gaza used bulldozers to tear down the security fence with Israel and streamed into the country.

How Israel’s Iron Dome works

Interception

The missile destroys the incoming rocket by exploding near it.

Launcher

Each has 20 interceptor missiles

with an in-built radar seeker

Mobile control Unit

Analyses trajectory, estimates impact point and commands launch of interceptor missile

Radar

Identifies rocket shell

Source: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems

“Clearly this was a well-planned operation that didn’t just emerge overnight and it’s surprising it was not detected by Israel or any of its security partners,” said Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “It’s hard to think of a security failure of this magnitude in Israel’s recent history.”

Israeli security leaders had played down the threat from Hamas in recent months, as the group abstained from conflicts started by its smaller ally in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There was a sense that Israel, with its Iron Dome air defense systems, had rendered ineffective Gaza’s main threat of short-range rockets. 

Last month, the Israeli military confidently characterized Gaza as being in a state of “stable instability,” suggesting that the dangers posed by Hamas militants were largely contained. 

Recent Israeli intelligence assessments of Hamas were that the militant group had shifted its focus to trying to stoke violence in the West Bank and that it was looking to avoid launching major attacks from Gaza in an effort to avoid the kinds of punishing Israeli military responses that have devastated the isolated area in the past.

 

When Russell Brand Was A Degenerate He Was "All Good", Now That He's All Good He's A "Degenerate"?

.@RobertKennedyJr talks to Russell Brand about how the NSA was in charge of Operation Warp Speed, the history of the United States bioweapons program, and why Anthony Fauci is the highest-paid government official in history:

"The weird thing about the pandemic was this constant… pic.twitter.com/qunw3Bn6pP

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) September 18, 2023

nydailynews  |  YouTube has demonetized Russell Brand’s channel, and the BBC pulled some of his shows from its online streaming service, after several women accused the comedian-turned-wellness guru of rape and sexual assault in an investigative report published over the weekend.

In a statement on Tuesday, YouTube said they took action against Brand’s account — which has 6.6 million subscribers — to “protect” users in light of “serious allegations against the creator.” It means 48-year-old Brand will no longer be able to profit from the ads that run within and alongside his videos, which have titles like “What REALLY Started the Hawaii Fires?” and “Covid Tsar Admits Lockdowns Were NEVER About Science.”

Other channels associated with the funnyman’s main YouTube page also include Awakening With Russell, which has 426,000 subscribers, Football Is Nice, which has some 20,000 subscribers, and Stay Free With Russell Brand, which has 22,200 subscribers.

“This decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by Russell Brand,” the Google-owned video service said.

While Brand has not been charged with any crimes, YouTube said he violated its “creator responsibility policy.”

“If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the statement read.

BBC echoed the sentiment, saying Brand’s content “now falls below public expectations” of iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

Over the weekend, the Times of London, The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches published a joint investigation in which several women accused Brand of sexual assault and rape between 2006 and 2013 — a period during which Brand also became married to and subsequently divorced from pop star Katy Perry.

 

Mexico Once Again Showing The World Why It's F*cking Mexico...,

reuters  |  Mexican lawmakers heard testimony that "we are not alone" in the universe and saw the alleged remains of non-human beings in an extraordinary hearing marking the Latin American country's first congressional event on UFOs.

In the hearing on Tuesday on FANI, the Spanish acronym for what are usually now termed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), politicians were shown two artifacts that Mexican journalist and long-time UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials.

The specimens were not related to any life on Earth, Maussan said.

The two tiny "bodies," displayed in cases, have three fingers on each hand and elongated heads. Maussan said they were recovered in Peru near the ancient Nazca Lines in 2017. He said that they were about 1,000 years old.

Similar such finds in the past have turned out to be the remains of mummified children.

"This is the first time extraterrestrial life is presented in such a form and I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that any scientific institution can investigate it," Maussan said.

"We are not alone," he added.

Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, Director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican navy, said X-rays, 3-D reconstruction and DNA analysis had been carried out on the remains.

"I can affirm that these bodies have no relation to human beings," he said.

Lawmakers also heard from former U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who has participated in U.S. Congressional hearings about his personal experience with UAP and the stigma around reporting such sightings.

In recent years, the U.S. government has done an about-face on public information on UAP after decades of stonewalling and deflecting. The Pentagon has been actively investigating reported sightings in recent years by military aviators, while an independent NASA panel studying UFOs is the first of its kind by the space agency.

NASA is set to discuss findings from the study on Thursday.

 

 

 

Dirty Cop Gideon Cody Raids Newspaper Causing Death Of 98 Year Old Owner...,

boing boing  |  The Marion County Record was raided by local police, who took all of its equipment and even confiscated the personal cellphones of workers there, they claim. The newspaper's co-owner, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, died within hours of the smash-and-grab, and journalistic organizations are sounding the alarm about a shocking attack on the press.

The Marion County Record's co-owner and publisher, Eric Meyer, believes Friday's raid was prompted by a story published Wednesday about a local business owner. Authorities countered they are investigating what they called "identity theft" and "unlawful acts concerning computers," according to a search warrant.

"Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search —particularly when other investigative steps may have been available — and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement's ability to conduct newsroom searches," the letter said.

Turns out the police chief, Gideon Cody, thought that the paper was about to publish a story about him leaving his last job after allegations of sexual misconduct.

Meyer said that, before the raid, his newspaper had investigated Cody's background and his time at the Kansas City Police Department before he came to Marion. He declined to provide details of the newspaper's investigation of Cody. "I really don't think it would be advisable for me to say what it was we were investigating, other than to characterize the charges as serious….," Meyer said. He told The Star the newspaper didn't publish a story about the allegations. "We didn't publish it because we couldn't nail it down to the point that we thought it was ready for publication," he said. "He (Cody) didn't know who our sources were. He does now." Meyer said the newspaper told city leaders they had received information about Cody but could not confirm it.

Another factor in the raid appears to be the anger of a local politically-involved restauranteur:

He and his reporter Phyllis Zorn were kicked out of an August 2nd meeting at a local establishment with US Congressman Jake LaTurner (R-KS) by the City of Marion Police Chief after restaurant owner Kari Newell demanded they leave. Meyer and Zorn published a subsequent story about the hostile encounter, which infuriated Newell and prompted angry Facebook posts. 

The paper then received a tip about Newell having her license suspended in 2008 after a DUI, checked it out, decided not to publish it, and ultimately shared it with the local police because they believed it might've been shared with them as part of Newell's ongoing divorce battle. The police then told Newell what the newspaper shared, and she attended Monday's City Council meeting to make outrageous claims about the newspaper and one of the council members (who had also obtained the letter) violating her rights. She also called Meyer later that evening and erroneously accused him of identity theft. Not even four days later, police arrived at the newspaper office, Meyer's home and the council member's home with search warrants signed by a judge

 Lots of things about to be tried in this small town.

Zelensky Has Blackmail Leverage Over Biden

thegatewaypundit  |  Author Peter Schweizer went on with Jesse Watters on Monday night where he proceeded to drop another bomb on the Biden Crime Family.

According to Schweizer, who wrote a best-seller “Secret Empires” on the Biden Family crimes, told Jesse that one of Vlodomyr Zelensky’s top officials was sitting in the room when they were discussing bribing the Bidens, Joe and Hunter.

Ukrainian President Zelensky has a top official who was sitting in on meetings where they talked about bribing the Bidens.

Schweizer suggests Zelensky is using this as leverage over the Biden regime for weapons and billions in US dollars.

Peter Schweizer: We’ve been at this since 2018.
** They initially said there were no foreign deals.
** Then they shifted and said there were. There might have been foreign deals, but the Bidens made no money.
** Then it became Joe Biden didn’t know about any of the deals.
** Then it became Joe Biden didn’t participate in any of the deals.
** And now it’s that he was not in business with his son.

Look, the implications for this are huge, Jesse.

If you look at that 1023 form that the FBI released, if that document is true, that document reveals that one of the people that was at those meetings that heard the conversations about bribing the Bidens worked for – President Zelensky. Who really wants to believe, if that meeting took place and that document is accurate, that that individual did not go and report to President Zelensky what he heard?

And again, if that document is true, who wants to believe that President Zelensky and his administration have not used that as leverage over Joe Biden when it comes to negotiations on Ukraine policy?

We may all have to start learning the Ukrainian word for compromise because this is a very clear indication of how this has shaped this administration’s policy towards Ukraine and also towards China.

It is also convenient for Zelensky that there is not a team of US auditors in his country tracking where all of this money went.

 

 

Serial Liar Biden Tryan Change Up His "Dindu Nuffin" Storytelling

jonathanturley  |  Starting with his campaign for the presidency and continuing until this week, President Joe Biden has maintained one clear and consistent position on his son’s influence peddling schemes. As a virtual mantra, Biden — and the White House staff — have categorically maintained that he had no knowledge of any foreign dealings of his son. That has been proven to be a lie, but Biden continued to maintain the position. Yet, on the eve of the testimony of a key Biden associate, the White House has changed its position. Now the President is only claiming that he was “not in business” with his son.Some of us have written multiple columns over the last four years arguing that the President was clearly and knowingly lying in his denials of knowledge and discussions of these deals. Even when he made the statement, it was clearly untrue but most of the media shrugged and happily walked away.

Then the evidence began to mount.

The laptop includes pictures and appointments of Hunter’s foreign business associates with Joe Biden. There is also a recording of Joe Biden discussing a Times report on Dec. 12, 2018, detailing Hunter’s dealings with Ye Jianming, the head of CEFC China Energy Company. He assures his son that “I think you’re clear” after lawyers worked on the New York Times before the story ran.

There is also a recording of his uncle James assuring Hunter that he and his father were going to arrange for “safe harbor” for him as his world began to collapse.

Then there is the July 30, 2017 Whatsapp message from Hunter Biden to one of his Chinese associates, Henry Zhao, the director of Harvest Fund Management and Communist Party official. Zhao was funneling money to Hunter’s firm BHR Partners. Hunter is quoted as writing:

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Nevertheless, the White House has maintained the total denial . . . until this week before the testimony of Devon Archer.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked by Fox News journalist Gillian Turner:

“Chairman James Comer today says that the Oversight Committee has evidence that the president in the past communicated directly with foreign business associates of his son Hunter Biden many times. Curious if the White House and the president still stand behind his comment that he’s never been involved and has never even spoken to his son about his business?”

The response from Jean-Pierre was surprising:

“So, I’ve been I’ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same. The president was never in business with his son. I just don’t have anything else to add.”

It takes an utter contempt for the intelligence of the public to insist that “the answer remains the same” and then give an entirely new answer. However, that is only if most of the public is informed of the contradiction. None of the media in the White House press corp followed up on Turner’s questions when Jean-Pierre immediately moved on.

Alissa Heinerscheid Gets That Richly Deserved Foot In Her Silly Ass...,

adage  |  Anheuser-Busch InBev has changed marketing leadership for Bud Light in the wake of controversy over the brand sending a can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney with her face on it.

Alissa Heinerscheid, marketing VP for the brand since June 2022, has taken a leave of absence, the brewer confirmed, and will be replaced by Todd Allen, who was most recently global marketing VP for Budweiser.

Heinerscheid did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

The brewer has also streamlined its marketing function to reduce layers “so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brand’s activities,” a company spokesperson said in a statement, adding that “these steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.”

The statement noted that “we communicated some next steps with our internal teams and wholesaler partners,” adding that “we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority.”

Snopes/MSNBC Pretended That Annheuser Busch Didn't Fail With Dylan Mulvaney Promotion

Snopes-MSDNC  |   There was no evidence to support the claim of a causal link between the calls for a Bud Light boycott in April 2023 and the company's financial standing. Snopes reached out to Anheuser-Busch's but we did not hear from the company as of this writing. We will update this story when, or if, that changes.

There was no demonstrable connection between the above-outlined statistics and conservative calls to stop buying Bud Light, just one of Anheuser-Busch's many products. As with all stocks, multiple factors affect market changes, such as political climate, competition, etc. – not just consumer behavior.

Experts said that such market declines are common. For example, the value of AB InBev BUD shares was $58.05 on Feb. 10, 2023, went up to $62.08 on March 3, and then declined to $59.78, on March 7. "[Such] declines are historically not unusual," wrote Dan Hunt, senior investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. 

Similarly, Nicole Goodkind of CNN Business explained companies make more comebacks from declines than the other way around. "The 14 bull markets since 1932 have returned 175% on average, while the 14 bear markets starting in 1929 have resulted in an average loss of 39%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices data," Goodkind wrote.

In reality, as of this writing, the financial impact of the protest remains unknown. There was no financial data to determine if, or to what extent, the calls to stop buying Bud Light had impacted Anheuser-Busch's market value. A MarketWatch piece explained:

For now, there's no hard data on the financial fallout of the Bud Light protest. But the brand, analysts say, had already become less relevant in the U.S. to both beer drinkers and to Budweiser's parent company, Belgium-based AB InBev BUD.

The MarketWatch piece said "the impact of any right-wing backlash could be eclipsed by a broader slowdown in the beer industry as inflation cuts into consumer purchases, craft beer becomes a barroom staple and brewers crank out a seemingly endless rotation of sours and hazy IPAs that more or less taste the same."

Meanwhile, a satirical and demonstrably false assertion surfaced online that another Anheuser-Busch beer, Budweiser, had lost $800 million in one day. Snopes fact-checked other satirical claims that surfaced about the alleged effects of the boycott on Anheuser-Busch, as well.

 

Brandon's About The Only Thing More Expendable Than Airman Incel-Nerd-Patsy

sonar21  |  Until I saw the document labeled, CIA Operations Center Intelligence Update, I was inclined to believe that the leaked documents were the work of a frustrated whistleblower. But I have changed my mind. This looks like a controlled, directed leak by individuals who manipulated the 21 year old National Guard troop into taking certain documents and posting them on a public server.

The CIA Operations Center Intelligence Update is a document produced by analysts in the Operations Center to be delivered to the regular CIA analysts. When I worked in the Ops Center I was responsible for monitoring traffic from Latin American posts and flagging items that the analysts in the Latin American Division need to know. I would write up summary paragraphs just like the ones in the documents leaked on line. This was an internal CIA document. It was not broadcast to the other intelligence agencies. In my 23 years working with U.S. military commands around the world, I never saw a copy of this type of report circulating among those with the highest clearances. Never. How did a 21 year old kid get his hands on at least two of these?

The classified documents now in the public domain are focused primarily on Russia and Ukraine. The CIA Ops Center docs now floating around the internet are only partial copies. For example, there are three pages, all classified Top Secret, from an eight page document. If you’re a goofy 21 year old gamer simply intent on impressing your young proteges, why not take all eight pages. My guess is that the other five pages contained no intelligence information on Ukraine or Russia.

The kid reportedly was a cyber analyst assigned to the 102 Intelligence Wing, which reports to the U.S. 16 Air Force:

The 102nd ISS provides intelligence systems maintenance, integration, and operations for the AN/GSQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system, as part of the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (AF-DCGS) Enterprise, enabling near real-time Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (CPED) of

The Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, focuses on information warfare in the modern age.  Information Warfare requires integrating: Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance; Cyber Warfare; Electromagnetic Warfare; Weather; Public Affairs; and Information Operations capabilities. 16th Air Force ensures that our Air Force and Nation are fast, resilient, and fully integrated in competition, crisis, and conflict by incorporating Information Warfare at operational and tactical levels, capitalizing on the value of information by leading the charge for uniquely-21st century challenges in the highly dynamic, seamless, and global information domain..

I do not believe it is a coincidence that he served in an information warfare unit. Remember, he was a low ranked enlisted guy. He had a chain of command. He did not show up to work and decide what duties he had to perform while on the job. He reported to and worked at the direction of Non-Commissioned Officers and Commissioned Officers. He did not just waltz into a SCIF and print documents at his leisure. A guy at his level would attract attention if he was printing off a document like the CIA Ops Center report.

I believe that the alleged leaker did have access to Top Secret intelligence by virtue of his job. I don’t know if there was a polygraph requirement for him and his cohorts. Regardless, all of the intelligence that has been leaked was on a Top Secret computer net and could only be accessed inside a SCIF.

Let me explain why I think the story currently being sold to the public about this young man is too good to be true and, in my view, is a smoke screen.

The first problem is BELLINGCAT. Bellingcat is an Open Source Intelligence outfit that has been funded by U.S. and British intelligence. BELLINGCAT is “credited” with sleuthing out the identity of the site where the classified documents were posted and the name of the leaker.

SMDH...., Airman Teixeira - You Gone Learn Today!!!

 NYTimes  |  The F.B.I. on Thursday was preparing to enter the home of a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who is linked to an online group at the center of a trove of leaked classified U.S. intelligence documents that have upended relations with American allies and exposed weaknesses in the Ukrainian military.

The national guardsman, who was first identified by The New York Times as Jack Teixeira, oversaw an online group named Thug Shaker Central, where about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.

On Thursday, an armored vehicle and about a dozen uniformed officers, most wearing tactical gear and holding weapons, were outside the cordoned-off home.

Two U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman Teixeira about the leak the government documents to the private online group. One official said he might have information relevant to the investigation.

Starting months ago, the authorities say, one of the users of the online group uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of the pandemic, on the importance of staying abreast of world events.

The New York Times spoke with four members of the Thug Shaker Central chat group, where Airman Teixeira served as group administrator.

While the gaming friends would not identify the group’s leader by name, a trail of digital evidence compiled by The Times leads to Airman Teixeira.

Here’s what else to know:

• The Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of the Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other records. Details of the interior of Airman Teixeira’s childhood home — posted on social media in family photographs — also match details on the margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents.

• Members of Thug Shaker Central who spoke to The Times said that the documents they discussed online were meant to be purely informative, and started to get wider attention only after one of the teenage members took a few dozen of them and posted them to a public online forum. The person who leaked, they said, was no whistle-blower, and the secret documents were never meant to leave their small corner of the internet.

• On Thursday, President Biden told reporters that the United States was “getting close” to finding answers about the leak. Senior law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expect an arrest in the case over the next day or two.

• The leaked documents reveal sensitive material — maps of Ukrainian air defenses and a review of South Korea’s secret plans to deliver ammunition to Ukraine — but it is the immediate relevance of the intelligence that most worries White House and Pentagon officials: Some of the documents appear to be barely 40 days old.

Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid YKYDFU When You Take Down Your Linkedin Profile....,

ICE COLD PISSY LAGER PRETTY MUCH SELLS ITSELF DUMB ASS!!!  

WHAT KIND OF CATEGORICAL FUCKTARD INCOMPETENT MUST YOU BE TO FUCK UP A GIG AS EASY AS THIS ONE????

NYPost  |  In 2018, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who oversees assets worth $8.6 trillion and has been called the “face of ESG,” wrote a now-infamous letter to CEOs titled “A Sense of Purpose” that pushed a “new model of governance” in line with ESG values.

“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.

How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu

— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023

Fink also let it be known “that if a company doesn’t engage with the community and have a sense of purpose “it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.”

In December, Florida pulled $2 billion worth of state assets managed by BlackRock. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the time.

Fink has denied that ESG is political, but key staff managing his ESG operations worked in the Obama administration and donate to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

In his first veto, President Joe Biden last month rejected a GOP-backed bill that sought to block ESG investing — especially in pension funds where, critics say, American retirement funds will be sacrificed to a radical left-wing agenda.

Protesters in Paris targeted BlackRock’s office there this week due to the company’s role in managing and privatizing pensions, which are at the heart of the French government’s recent retirement-age reforms.

ESG and CEI proponents say that adhering to socially conscious values when investing and managing a company will make the world a better place. Not everyone agrees.

Derek Kreifels is the co-founder and CEO of State Financial Officers Foundation, one of several financial officers fighting ESG on a national level.

He calls ESG itself a “highly subjective political score infiltrating all walks of life, forcing progressive policies on everyday Americans [and] resulting in higher prices at the pump and at the store.”

The Corporate Equality Index is an ominous cog in ESG’s wheel, Kreifels told The Post.

“The problem with measures like CEI, and its big brother ESG, is that it introduces an incentive structure outside of the bounds of business, often in ways contradictory to fiduciary duty,” Kreifels said. “Whether Anheuser-Busch was trying to cash in on Dylan Mulvaney’s TikTok following or chasing higher CEI ratings for inclusivity, the backlash has been significant, and the stockholders to whom the company is obligated will feel the pinch.”

 

 

Mexican Cartel Apologizes For Taking And Killing American Hostages

 

RT  |  A faction of the drug-trafficking Gulf Cartel on Thursday apologized for what they called a rogue operation, which resulted in the deaths of one Mexican and two US citizens near the city of Matamoros. Mexican police found five handcuffed men in a vehicle, along with a note explaining the situation.

“We have decided to turn over those who were directly involved and responsible in the events, who at all times acted under their own decision-making and lack of discipline,” said the note, provided to media by a police source in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The five men broke the cartel’s rules, which included “respecting the life and well-being of the innocent,” it added.

The letter was signed by the ‘Scorpions’ cartel faction, which controls drug distribution in Matamoros, right across the Rio Grande from the US state of Texas.

Four Americans who traveled to Matamoros last Friday were taken captive by the cartel, after a firefight that killed a local woman. They were identified as Latavia McGee, Zindell Brown, Eric Williams, and Shaeed Woodard. Another woman, Cheryl Orange, was denied entry because she did not have the proper documents, according to local media reports.

Orange told AP that the group traveled from South Carolina to Mexico so that McGee could have a “tummy tuck” cosmetic surgery procedure. However the Daily Mail reported on Thursday that the four who entered Mexico had a history of drug charges. 

When Tamaulipas authorities tracked them down on Tuesday morning, in the nearby town of El Tecolote, Brown and Woodard were dead, McGee was “barefoot and covered in dirt,” while Williams had a gunshot wound in the left leg. 

Police arrested a 24-year-old Mexican they say was guarding the prisoners. He was identified only as “Jose N.”

Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios thanked the public for sharing the images of the abduction online, saying that they helped with the investigation. He added that the authorities initially did not know the victims were Americans, but reached out to the US once they identified the license plates on their minivan.

You Know You Done Fucked Up If William Saletan Roasts You For Racism!!!

thebulwark  |  Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the comic strip Dilbert, has been canceled for racism. In a video livestream last Wednesday, he declared:

• “I resign from the hate group called black Americans.” (Adams is white.)
• “The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the fuck away.”
• “It makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore. . . . It’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying.”

Adams wasn’t done. The next day, he continued:

• “I’ve designated that to be a hate group—black Americans—a hate group.”
• “If you’re white, don’t live in a black neighborhood. It’s too dangerous.”
• “White people trying to help black America for decades and decades has completely failed. And we should just stop doing it. [Because] all we got is called racists.”

Most Americans would consider these statements vile. But Adams swears he’s preaching practicality, not hate. “It wasn’t because I hated anybody,” he pleaded in his daily livestream on Monday. “I was concerned that somebody hated me.” That somebody, he argued, was black people. “The whole point was to get away from racists,” he insisted.

A week after his original rant, Adams still claims that nobody has disagreed with his main point: that to steer clear of people who dislike you, it’s sensible for white people to avoid black people, and vice versa.

Adams is wrong. Not just morally, but practically. His advice is empirically unfounded and would make everything worse. 

Every time one of these racially incendiary arguments comes along, the cycle repeats itself. The offender gets canceled. His opinion is dismissed as unthinkably repellent. He and his allies seize on that dismissal as evidence that the establishment is suppressing dissent. Nothing should be unthinkable, the dissenters argue. There’s some secret truth, some taboo insight, that the cancel culture is hiding from you.

Sorry, but there’s no great insight here. You can watch hour after hour of Adams’s livestreams, as I have, and you won’t find that nugget of forbidden truth. His reasoning is as sloppy as his research. In every way, he’s just wrong.

 

 

34 Negroes -Joking On A Shitty Rasmussen Poll - FUBAR'd Scott Adams Whole Situation

slate |  I cannot overemphasize how dumb it is that Adams finally filleted his reputation in full over a trolly Rasmussen poll. If you’re not familiar, Rasmussen is a right-leaning pollster that produces semi-mainstream polls but is noted for its murky methods and what the New York Times has called “dubious sampling and weighting techniques.” Rasmussen’s results are often an outlier when it comes to, say, presidential approval numbers, as when Donald Trump famously cited a Rasmussen poll when it claimed to show a 50 percent job approval rating, more than 10 points higher than Gallup’s report at the time.

We don’t know the exact methodology used for the poll. In a press release touting its results, Rasmussen teased “additional information” behind a paywall. I signed up for a platinum membership, but I found only a brief text summary of the findings.

Rasmussen said it presented 1,000 respondents with a two-question prompt to quantify “the ‘woke’ narrative” in America: “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘It’s OK to be white’ ” and “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘Black people can be racist, too.’ ” Respondents were asked to choose between “strongly agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” “strongly disagree,” and “not sure.” The results, as shared on Twitter once the firestorm began:

Update: Since we’re now making the Sunday political talk shows here are the Ok To Be White? summary crosstabs.

Handy link to report our offense in asking Americans their views on this topic is below - https://t.co/958loKUqO2 pic.twitter.com/OT1vhEEaaH

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) February 26, 2023

Rasmussen said 13 percent of poll respondents were Black, so about 130 people. If we take the results entirely at face value—which I’d discourage—that means it found about 34 Black people who answered “disagree” or “strongly disagree” with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” We have no more information about why. (Adams got to his figure by also including Black respondents who answered “not sure.”)

If you have any doubt about what Rasmussen is doing here, I encourage you to take in the big doofus energy in the video below, this time featuring Rasmussen’s head of polling, Mark Mitchell:

"It's okay to be white."
72% of Americans agree, 12% disagree
69% of Democrats agree, 12% disagree

"Black people can be racist, too"
79% of Americans agree, 12% disagree
71% of Democrats agree, 19% disagree

Mitchell, who until a couple of years ago worked on Walmart e-commerce, assumes the posture of a wannabe truth-telling media personality: “We tell you what America really thinks. And I can tell you that increasingly the reality of American public opinion does not match what you’re being told in the news.” He says the “Is it OK to be white?” question “would literally melt the brain of a mainstream journalist if they try to put these numbers to ink.”

 

Who's Winning And Who's Losing The Economic War In Ukraine

commondreams |  With the Ukraine war now reaching its one-year mark on February 24, the Russians have not achieved a military victory but neither has the West achieved its goals on the economic front. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and its European allies vowed to impose crippling sanctions that would bring Russia to its knees and force it to withdraw.

Western sanctions would erect a new Iron Curtain, hundreds of miles to the east of the old one, separating an isolated, defeated, bankrupt Russia from a reunited, triumphant and prosperous West. Not only has Russia withstood the economic assault, but the sanctions have boomeranged–hitting the very countries that imposed them.

Western sanctions on Russia reduced the global supply of oil and natural gas, but also pushed up prices. So Russia profited from the higher prices, even as its export volume decreased. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that Russia’s economy only contracted by 2.2% in 2022, compared with the 8.5% contraction it had forecast, and it predicts that the Russian economy will actually grow by 0.3% in 2023.

On the other hand, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by 35% or more, despite $46 billion in economic aid from generous U.S. taxpayers, on top of $67 billion in military aid.

European economies are also taking a hit. After growing by 3.5% in 2022, the Euro area economy is expected to stagnate and grow only 0.7% in 2023, while the British economy is projected to actually contract by 0.6%. Germany was more dependent on imported Russian energy than other large European countries so, after growing a meager 1.9% in 2022, it is predicted to have negligible 0.1% growth in 2023. German industry is set to pay about 40% more for energy in 2023 than it did in 2021.

The United States is less directly impacted than Europe, but its growth shrank from 5.9% in 2021 to 2% in 2022, and is projected to keep shrinking, to 1.4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024. Meanwhile India, which has remained neutral while buying oil from Russia at a discounted price, is projected to maintain its 2022 growth rate of over 6% per year all through 2023 and 2024. China has also benefited from buying discounted Russian oil and from an overall trade increase with Russia of 30% in 2022. China’s economy is expected to grow at 5% this year.

Other oil and gas producers reaped windfall profits from the effects of the sanctions. Saudi Arabia’s GDP grew by 8.7%, the fastest of all large economies, while Western oil companies laughed all the way to the bank to deposit $200 billion in profits: ExxonMobil made $56 billion, an all-time record for an oil company, while Shell made $40 billion and Chevron and Total gained $36 billion each. BP made “only” $28 billion, as it closed down its operations in Russia, but it still doubled its 2021 profits.

Forget About That Amnesty Shit, I Want To Get Even!!!

amidwesterndoctor  |  One of the things I have come to appreciate as the years have gone by is how much of what people say are not their own thoughts. The current structure of our educational system (discussed here) is largely about replacing critical thinking with the illusion of intelligence, where you are seen as smart if you copy what the most authoritative sources or voices say instead of formulating your own opinion.

Because of this, whenever I hear someone proudly share an argument or train of logic I have already seen numerous times, one of the most common replies I give is “are you sure those ideas are your own?”

If you look at this article within the context of Oster’s previous plea and its response (both of these articles are essentially trying to do the same thing), I believe a strong case can be made that these were tests to see what narrative needs to be pivoted to. Likewise, Germany’s minister of health (and a well-credentialed scientist) finally made a limited apology for the disastrous policies he pushed on the German people without acknowledging the worst mistakes while simultaneously shifting the blame for his decisions to unnamed scientists who gave him bad advice.

Similarly, let’s consider Malcom Kendrick’s recent commentary on another leading advocate of this insanity:

With the resignation of Jacinda Ardern [two weeks ago], my thoughts were dragged back to Covid once more. Jacinda, as Prime Minster of New Zealand was the ultimate lockdown enforcer. She was feted round the world for her iron will, but I was not a fan, to put it mildly. Whenever I heard her speak, it brought to mind one of my most favourite quotes:

‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’  C.S. Lewis

At one point she actually said the following:

“We will continue to be your single source of truth” “Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.’

Yet, there are still many who believe her to have been a great and caring leader. She certainly hugged a lot of people with that well rehearsed pained/caring expression on her face.

In many ways it’s remarkable that we have been able to move the dialogue this far in just a few months, and to be honest, I would have given almost anything for a compromise like what this article presented to have been made any time in 2020 or early in 2021. However, any time a negotiation occurs, you must keep in mind that whatever is initially offered is much less than the party is willing to agree to, and the fact that something like this is being openly offered means we are in a very strong bargaining position.

Any type of promise or apology (especially disingenuous ones) will not prevent what we saw happen over the last few years from happening again. Laws, and ideally constitutional amendments (initially at the state level and ideally at the national level) can prevent such tragedies, and many people I have spoken to feel we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to correct many of the systemic issues within medicine that have poisoned our culture.

In my own opinion, if these people are actually sorry for what they did to us, they would be willing to relinquish some of their power so it could not happen again and I believe moving forward it is critical for us to hold them to that. Anything less should not be considered acceptable for them to be granted amnesty.