This Is A Test Of The Emergency Broadcast System, This Is Only A Test...,

 reuters  | Summary

• Russia holds public warning tests
• Russia says: Please remain calm
• United States also to hold public warning test

MOSCOW, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Russia tested its emergency public warning systems across the country on Wednesday, blaring out sirens and interrupting some television and radio broadcasts to warn the population to stay calm.

The test, first conducted in 2020, is part of a new initiative that requires authorities to conduct tests twice a year, starting from Sept. 1.

It comes, though, amid the war in Ukraine that has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

At around 10:40 a.m. Moscow time (0740 GMT), sirens wailed across some parts of Russia and stern announcements demanded "Attention everyone!".

"The readiness of warning systems is being checked, please remain calm," speakers said in a stern male Russian voice.

"When you hear the sound of a siren, you need to remain calm and not panic, turn on the TV - any publicly accessible channel or radio - and listen to the information message," the Ministry of Emergency Situations said in a statement.

"The warning system is designed to timely convey a signal to the population in the event of a threat or emergency of a natural or man-made nature."

The United States was also conducting a large-scale test of its public warning systems on Wednesday, via U.S. mobile phones and TV and radio stations.

The purpose of the U.S. test is to ensure that the systems "continue to be effective in alerting the public to emergencies, particularly at the national level", the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said in a press release.

Many other countries have also conducted alert system tests for crises and disasters in recent years.

The Russian test falls on the 91st anniversary of the creation of Russia's civil defence system and follows nationwide educational drills in August on practicing actions and procedures in emergency situations, Russian media reported.

The goal of Russia's tests is to assess the warning systems, the readiness of personnel responsible for launching them and raise public awareness, the emergency ministry said.

 

 

Bought And Paid For By The CIA: International Fascism And Anglo-American Foreign Policy

cynthiachung  |  [This is a chapter from my newly released book ‘The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set: the Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy.’ For further details on different formats and how to purchase click here.] The audio version of this chapter is available here.

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However, this is not the only blunder that the Canadian government has made recently and has blamed “ze Russians” for.

On February 27, 2022, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland held a scarf bearing the slogan “Slava Ukraini,” meaning “Glory to Ukraine,” with the “Blood and Soil” colors of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) (who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and massacred Jews and Poles).

According to Freeland’s press secretary, this was just another case of a “classic KGB disinformation smear… accusing Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Canadians of being far right extremists or fascists or Nazis,” which is a confusing statement on multiple levels.

It is not clear how this was a case of “Russian disinformation,” since the picture is indeed authentic, Freeland did not deny this. And she was indeed holding a “Blood and Soil” emblem, which originated with the Nazis, clear for everyone to see. Lastly, it is confusing as to why the Canadian government seems to be unaware that the KGB no longer exists. Are they also under the impression that the Soviet Union still exists?

Not irrelevant in all of this is the fact that Freeland’s grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper during WWII in Galicia and that she is indeed aware of this and apparently unapologetic. Whenever she is questioned about this, she does not deny anything, but simply blames such a focus of inquiry on Russian disinformation with the intent to “destabilize Western democracies.”

Interestingly, it was the Canadian newspaper “The Globe and Mail” who reported this story, titled “Freeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper,” thus, not a Russian publication last time I checked. And upon whom did they base such information? None other than Freeland’s own uncle, John-Paul Himka, who was at the time professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.

 

THEY Take A Deep Dive Into The Ukro-Canadian Nazi's Family And Background

forward  |  After the Forward article about Hunka’s past was picked up by news outlets around the world, Canadian lawmakers and Jewish groups rushed to condemn House Speaker Rota for inviting him. In his mea culpa, Rota made it sound like Hunka was a constituent from his district (called a “riding”) whom he did not know much about. “This initiative was entirely my own,“ Rota said, “the individual in question being from my riding and having been brought to my attention.” 

But Rejean Venne, an independent Canadian journalist, wrote in his Substack newsletter this week that Rota and Hunka family members have had numerous chances to cross paths over the years. Among Venne’s examples:

• One of Hunka’s sons, Martin, was chief financial officer of Redpath Mining, a multinational corporation headquartered in Rota’s district. Redpath has contributed to Rota’s campaigns and Rota has provided government funding for recreational facilities operated by Redpath. (The company did not respond to inquiries from the Forward made Thursday.)
• Martin Hunka has also served as chair of the board of trustees for North Bay Hospital, which is located in Rota’s district and which Rota has supported. Hunka’s name can no longer be found on the hospital’s website and social media posts. (The hospital did not respond to a request for comment emailed Thursday.) 
• North Bay Pride, an LGBTQ+ organization, gave an award to Rota nine months after Yaroslav’s granddaughter Leshya Lecappelain joined its board of directors. In 2022 and 2023, North Bay Pride received more than $100,000 in funding from Rota. (Asked about this, a spokesperson for North Bay Pride said Lecappelain had not been on its board for several years.)

“Rota’s response that this was a last-minute request doesn’t add up,” Venne said in an email interview. “The Hunka family appears well connected in Rota’s district.” 

The Forward could not determine whether Hunka and Rota met before he was honored at Parliament. Rota and others at the House of Commons did not respond to several requests for comment sent Wednesday and Thursday. 

Efforts to reach Yaroslav, Martin and Peter Hunka, Lecappelain and other members of the family for comment were also unsuccessful.

Endowments honoring Hunka and others tied to the SS

On Wednesday, the University of Alberta said it would return the CA$30,000 endowment that Hunka’s sons donated in 2019 in their father’s honor. The money was intended to fund research at the school’s Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies.

But Per Anders Rudling, a university alumnus and expert on Ukrainian nationalism who teaches at Sweden’s Lund University, said the Hunka fund is just “the top of an iceberg.” 

In an email to the Forward, Rudling said the University of Alberta has “much larger endowments” honoring other figures connected to the Waffen SS unit. The “most problematic,” he said, is the Volodymyr and Daria Kubijovych Memorial Endowment Fund. At CA$450,000 — about $334,000 — it’s 15 times larger than the Hunka fund the university is returning.

Rudling described Kubijovych as Ukraine’s chief collaborator with Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of occupied Poland. Kubijovych played a crucial role in convincing the Third Reich to create SS Galichina. He also lobbied for Ukrainians to seize Jewish property and advocated for ethnic cleansing. 

In comparison to Kubijovych, Rudling said, Hunka is “small fry.” 

In a Facebook post Thursday, Rudling also questioned university endowments named for other Galichina Division veterans, including Roman Kolisnyk, Levko Babij and Edward Brodacky.

Pointing to research he published in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Rudling said, “I have tried to raise this issue in the past, to no avail.” 

Asked about Rudling’s concerns, Michael Brown, a spokesperson for the University of Alberta, reiterated a statement in which interim provost Verna Yiu said the school is “reviewing its general naming policies and procedures, including those for endowments, to ensure alignment with our values.” Yiu also expressed the school’s “commitment to address anti-Semitism in any of its manifestations, including the ways in which the Holocaust continues to resonate in the present.” 

The honors given to SS Galichina fighters extend beyond academia. One of the University of Alberta’s endowments is for its former chancellor Peter Savaryn, another SS Galichina member. In 1987, Savaryn was awarded the Order of Canada, among the nation’s highest honors, bestowed by Canada’s governor general, the representative of the British Crown. Mary Simon, the current governor general, has condemned the Hunka scandal as “a shock and an embarrassment.”

Controversial church leaders 

When the Hunka endowment was announced in 2020, the university said it would fund research on two “leaders of the underground Ukrainian Catholic Church,” Cardinal Josyf Slipyj and Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. (A metropolitan is akin to a bishop.)

Slipyi was a deputy in Ukraine’s 1941 self-proclaimed government, which pledged to work closely with Germany under Hitler’s leadership. Slipyi also assigned chaplains to SS Galichina and celebrated the unit’s inaugural Mass. After the war, the Soviets sent him to gulag prison camps.

But Sheptytsky’s legacy is layered. He helped “dozens of Jews find refuge in his monasteries and even in his own home,” according to Yad Vashem, while also supporting “the German army as the savior of the Ukrainians from the Soviets.” 

Harvard University also houses a Ukrainian Research Institute. Asked, after Alberta’s announcement, whether that institute’s funding would be scrutinized for Nazi ties, the university said in a statement that the institute had never received money from the Hunkas, nor had it received donations designated for research related to SS Galichina. 

Harvard did, however, in 1974 establish a fellowship and faculty position in European studies with money from a foundation named for Alfred Krupp, who was convicted of war crimes for using slave laborers from Auschwitz to build and work in a factory.

NYTimes Still Out'Chere Peddling Utterly Discredited Russiagate Burraschidt...,

Mary Katharine Ham tries to cure Bill Maher and Sam Harris from their Trump derangement syndrome. pic.twitter.com/J51lcATOxO

— Turncoat Don (@TurncoatD) October 1, 2023

NYTimes  | Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West.

But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that?

American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies.

The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with the ultimate goal of stopping international military assistance to Kyiv.

Russia has been frustrated that the United States and Europe have largely remained united on continued military and economic support for Ukraine, American officials said.

That military aid has kept Ukraine in the fight, put Russia’s original goals of taking Kyiv and Odesa out of reach and even halted its more modest objective to control all of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

But Mr. Putin believes he can influence American politics to weaken support for Ukraine and potentially restore his battlefield advantage, U.S. officials said.

Mr. Putin, the officials said, appears to be closely watching U.S. political debates over Ukraine assistance. Republican opposition to sending more money to Kyiv forced congressional leaders to pass a stopgap spending bill on Saturday that did not include additional aid for the country.

Moscow is also likely to try to boost pro-Russian candidates in Europe, seeing potential fertile ground with recent results. A pro-Russian candidate won Slovakia’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. In addition to national elections, Russia could seek to influence the European parliamentary vote next year, officials said.

Russia has long used its intelligence services to influence democratic politics around the world.

U.S. intelligence assessments in 2017 and 2021 concluded that Russia had tried to influence elections in favor of Donald J. Trump. In 2016, Russia hacked and leaked Democratic National Committee emails that hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and pushed divisive messages on social media. In 2020, Russia sought to spread information denigrating Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Though many Republicans in Congress argued Russia’s goal was to intensify political fights, not support Mr. Trump.)

Racist American Transexual Is Ukraine's Defence Spokes_____....,

Ukraine's official English-language spokesperson/ propagandist, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo [she/ her]:

"The reality is Russians are not European...Russians have a different culture. Russians are Asian and ultimately they do come from the Moguols. They come from a grouping of people… pic.twitter.com/6kCnmH30Dp

— Jeremy Loffredo (@loffredojeremy) September 27, 2023

DW  |  If you are an English speaker keeping up with the news of the Ukraine war, you have probably heard of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo. The US national arrived in Ukraine shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February last year. A freelance journalist, Ashton-Cirillo wanted to report from the front lines. Not long after arriving in Ukraine, she developed close ties with the army before deciding to join Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces (TDF), where she was wounded on the battlefield in February 2023. Following her recovery, Ashton-Cirillo was assigned to work on English-language media for the TDF and was later appointed one of their spokespeople. Her firebrand statements, combined with her transgender identity, made her a favorite target of Russian propagandists and pro-Russian trolls online.

In an interview with DW, Ashton-Cirillo said that the hate directed at her on social media is a sign her work is effective.

"The words of Russian haters are meaningless," she told DW's Anna Pshemyska. "I've been at the front lines, all of my colleagues have been at the front lines, and I don't just mean as journalists. We have fought at the front.  And we have seen life and we have seen death."

"Words don't matter when you are understanding that your actions will help contribute to not just the liberation of Ukraine, but the saving of Ukrainian lives as well as Russian lives."

But Ashton-Cirillo's words do matter. Evidenced by the ongoing controversy which was sparked after she posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which she said that Russia's "war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down."

Last week, the former journalist vowed to hunt down a "Kremlin propagandist" saying, "next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, their rabid mouths will foam in an uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes," Ashton-Cirillo added, without naming the person in question.

"And this puppet of Putin is only the first," she said, addressing the public from a TDF studio. 

Pressure from US senator

Ashton-Cirillo's comments reached Washington. US Senator J. D. Vance, who opposes further US military aid to Ukraine, said the former journalist "threatens physical violence to anyone who circulates 'Russian propaganda.'"

"I worry American resources could be supporting violence or the threat of violence against people for speaking their mind," the senator added. "Notably, any critic of America's incoherent policy in Ukraine has been slandered as propagandists, including multiple presidential candidates and American journalists. While we can debate the merits of these accusations, engaging in protected speech should not invite threats of violence," he added.

 Although the TDF did not specify which comments made by Ashton-Cirillo resulted in her immediate suspension pending an investigation, it did say her recent remarks "were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the [Armed Forces of Ukraine]."

Ashton-Cirillo told DW she stood behind her words and pointed to a peace plan put forward by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which foresees all criminals brought to justice.

"That includes the war criminal propagandists," she said. "War criminals must be hunted down and be brought to justice. We have the international tribunals ready."

She denied she was talking about targeting journalists and was instead focusing on Russia's "information warriors."

What's Driving Oakland's Crime Wave?

public  |  Last May, Oakland police arrested nine teenagers for a string of almost three dozen robberies throughout the East Bay. In one of the robberies, the juveniles brutally attacked a 63-year-old woman in a busy upscale Oakland shopping district, beating her in the head and dragging her by her hair across the sidewalk. Then, they attacked a bystander who tried to intervene.

Within days, the perpetrators were set free with no charges.

When you share stories like this one on social media, by far the most common refrain you hear is, “They voted for this.” And that’s true: Last year, Pamela Price, the far-left District Attorney for Alameda County, won her election by a decisive 53%. Sheng Thao, the current Mayor of Oakland, who once called to defund the police, won by a sliver.

But even the most ardent criminal justice reform voters never imagined they were voting for what Oakland has become. Crime has become a fixture of daily life in the East Bay, and nowhere more than in Oakland. In the most recent crime report available, crime was up 28% in the city over the same week last year, which was itself a huge crime year. Violent crime has increased by 19%, robbery is up 30%, burglary by 44%, and auto theft by 52%. Oakland has had 10,000 car burglaries so far this year, which is about one for every 43 residents.

Now, the explosion of crime, which has impacted just about every Oakland resident’s day-to-day life, is transforming the politics of this famously ultra-progressive city.

“She is on the criminals’ side,” an Oakland resident said of the District Attorney at a town hall meeting on public safety. “To any of you who voted for her: Shame on you, and elections have consequences. She told us what she was going to do, and somehow, the majority of people in this town voted for her anyway.” 

The room exploded in applause.

Price ran on a decarceration platform. She defends her policies as the right thing to do and says she is being unfairly blamed for rising crime. At a recent community meeting, Price said she had let the kids who committed the robbery spree go free because the youths were masked, and her office could not discern which of the thieves was responsible for which of the attacks. 

She went on: “All counties across the state have been asked to decriminalize young people. And so our county has adopted that as a policy.”

The line was not a crowd-pleaser. A friend of the 63-year-old victim, who had witnessed the crime, described putting her friend in an ambulance and sending her to the emergency department. “I just want to say that there must be consequences,” she told Price. The audience clapped and cheered.

Inventory Shrinkage Continues To Grow

WSJ  | You may have heard that a mob of teenagers looted stores in downtown Philadelphia on Tuesday night, and Target said the same day it is closing nine stores in four states because of rampant crime. Rack up more victories for progressive prosecutors.

The mobs in Philly hit Apple, Lululemon and Foot Locker stores in Center City, which ought to be a safe space for civilized commerce. The Foot Locker store was “ransacked in a coordinated attack,” said police. Police have made more than 50 arrests and are investigating property damage and theft elsewhere in the city. Some 76 incidents have been reported.

Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford said police are looking into whether “there was possibly a caravan of a number of different vehicles that were going from location to location.” He added, “Everyone in the city should be angry.”

Anger is justified in particular toward District Attorney Larry Krasner, who waves away property crime. His office reports 424 retail theft charges so far in 2023—compared to more than 1,500 by the same date in 2017, the year before he took office. Reports of retail theft in Philly have increased by more than 30%—to 13,330—compared to a year ago, according to the city’s latest weekly crime report.

Retail theft is a nationwide epidemic, according to a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey released Tuesday. For the 2022 fiscal year, retailers reported a “shrink” rate of 1.6%, mostly from theft, which as a percentage of all retail sales would be a $112.1 billion loss for the industry, says NRF.

“We cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance,” Target said in explaining its decision to close two stores in Seattle, three in Portland, Ore., three in San Francisco and Oakland, and one in New York. Target said the closures are despite efforts to prevent theft by “adding more security team members, using third-party guard services, and implementing theft-deterrent tools across our business.” CEO Brian Cornell said in May that Target could lose $500 million from shrink.

More than a quarter of retailers in the NRF survey reported closing stores because of violence and crime, and 45% reduced operating hours. Of the cities in Target’s closure list, all but Portland make the NRF survey’s top-10 cities for organized retail crime in 2022.

George Soros and the progressive DAs he finances claim to be helping the poor and minorities, but those communities are the main victim of rampaging theft. The Target store shutting down in New York is in Harlem, which staged a renaissance during the Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg mayoralties. It is now sliding back into crime and disorder.

Time To Declare War On Urban Disorder

thephiladelphiacitizen  |  In the post-mortem press conference of Tuesday night’s looting throughout the city, Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford went to great pains to make clear that those who broke into stores to steal and destroy property had nothing to do with the protest that preceded the marauding mob. That was a peaceful gathering in reaction to Judge Wendy Pew’s mystifying dismissal of all charges for the shooting and killing of Eddie Irizzary by police officer Mark Dial. What followed, Stanford said, was committed by “criminal opportunists” who were “taking advantage of a situation” and trying “to destroy our city … This had nothing to do with the protests.”

He’s no doubt right, on one level. But on another, his analysis begs some deeper context. Judging by the social media chatter, it was anger over the judge’s ruling that at least prompted some chatter about an anti-social response: “WHAT TIME WE GOING SHOPPING?” read one post.

But let’s widen our lens even further. There’s plenty of evidence, which we’ll get to, that civic disorder is viral in nature. Citizenship is, after all, a social compact. We live together voluntarily, and when messages get sent time and again that our once agreed-upon rules no longer apply, or that they only apply to some, we know what happens: The compact breaks. We get anarchy. We get nihilism. We get streets that feel unsafe, even if crime rates are coming down.

We are in a crisis of disorder

Make no mistake: Philadelphia, like other cities, finds itself in a crisis of disorder — the bigger picture Stanford didn’t touch on. Think about the messages Philadelphia sends out every day: Shoplifting under $500 is all but legal now. ATVs can menacingly roar through city streets with impunity, despite a law signed by former Mayor Michael Nutter banning the same. So-called drag racing “meet-ups” are hijacking city roads and highways in the dead of night. In Kensington, police practice a policy of containment when it comes to perhaps the most dystopian scene in the nation. And now, a municipal court judge extends a special privilege and lets a police officer walk for an act that certainly warranted a full hearing in a court of law.

“Our clients never get to argue a justification defense at a preliminary hearing,” Keisha Hudson of the Defender Association of Philadelphia wrote in a statement after Pew’s stunning dismissal of the charges against Dial. “Instead, our clients — all of whom are poor and almost exclusively Black and Brown people — have their cases held for trial, and they sit in jail for months awaiting their day in court.”

Obviously, this is no excuse for looting and rioting and other antisocial acts. But how many times do we have to see that law-breaking is contagious when laws are not enforced? Which brings us back to the broken windows theory of policing, which I’ve written about before.

“We found that when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate even other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.” — researchers in a Science study.

Oh, no, he didn’t. Isn’t broken windows discredited? No. A Northeastern University study — which was essentially a study of studies — tried to debunk it, but unwittingly validated it. (“Disorder does not encourage crime, but makes it easier to commit crimes” essentially parrots the theory.) But wasn’t broken windows racist? Hells, no. In the popular debate, broken windows has often erroneously gotten lumped in with stop-and-frisk tactics — and the concomitant legitimate concerns of racial profiling.

Broken windows, which legendary former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton employed to turn around crime rates in both New York and Los Angeles, is a theory of policing that mitigates against the virus of disorder. That’s much needed in a city where a judge refuses to hold a cop accountable, where kids are drag racing at 2am, where shots ring out on crowded streets, and where shoplifters are effectively playing The Price Is Right in retail outlets every day.

Broken windows grew out of an Atlantic magazine article written in 1982 by Harvard’s James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, a criminal justice professor at Rutgers University. At a time when policing was mostly reactive, they argued that small things matter in communities, and that when nothing is done about the small things, they grow to become big things. Prior to his passing a few years ago, Kelling explained in Politico:

We expressed this in a metaphor. Just as a broken window left untended in a building is a sign that nobody cares, leading typically to more broken windows — more damage — so disorderly conditions and behaviors left untended in a community are signs that nobody cares and lead to fear of crime, more serious crime, and urban decay. Good broken windows policing seeks partners to address it: social workers, city code enforcers, business improvement district staff, teachers, medical personnel, clergy, and others. Arrest of an offender is supposed to be a last resort — not the first.

Here’s what’s critical: They came to this conclusion by actually listening to those in poor, mostly minority, communities who were most proximate to the problem. Even in neighborhoods with high murder rates, residents would list comparatively minor transgressions like graffiti, teens drinking beer in public parks, and subway turnstile jumping as their top concerns. Why? Because they’d seen the degree to which, once those conditions ran rampant, gun violence was not far behind. Add drag racing and judges who make up the rules as they go along to that list, right?

 

Everything's Free In Center City Philadelphia With Promo Code: “The Big Guy 2024.”

Everything in Center City Philadelphia is free with promo code: “the Big Guy 2024.”
pic.twitter.com/Ogd8gIFTGg

— Charles R Downs (@TheCharlesDowns) September 27, 2023

endoftheamericandream  |  It can be difficult to believe that the wild scenes that we are witnessing on the streets of America are actually real.  Earlier this week, I wrote an article entitled “What Life Is Really Like In America’s Hellish Inner Cities”.  I wrote that article before the widespread looting that just erupted in Philadelphia.  Just when I think that conditions in our core urban areas have reached a low point, they seem to find a way to get even worse.  Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of this crisis.  As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, countless numbers of people will become very desperate.  And when countless numbers of people become very desperate, our society will descend into a permanent state of chaos.

On Tuesday night, dozens of young people went on a rampage in the city of Philadelphia.

It is being reported that “stores in several areas of Philadelphia” were hit…

Dozens of people faced criminal charges Wednesday after a night of social media-fueled mayhem in which groups of thieves, apparently working together, smashed their way into stores in several areas of Philadelphia, stuffing plastic bags with merchandise and fleeing, authorities said.

A total of 52 arrests have been made so far, police said Wednesday.

Burglary, theft and other counts have been filed so far against at least 30 people, all but three of them adults, according to Jane Roh, spokesperson for the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.

he largest group consisted of approximately 100 young people, and there was violence when the police finally confronted that group outside of a Lululemon store…

Police in the city said that a large group of around 100 juveniles kept moving from store to store and looting them.

Videos shared on social media show officers attempting to grab thieves, some of whom are wearing Halloween masks, as they run riot through a Lululemon store.

One officer manages to hit one of the looters with a punch after tackling them to the ground.

Many on social media seem to be quite entertained by videos of the looting, but the truth is that this footage should break all of our hearts.

Come 2024 - Democrats Are Stuck With Biden

nueburger  |  Silver piece is titled: "It's probably too late not to nominate Biden". A bit of an awkward title, but you get the idea. In it he answers the question: Do Democrats have a better chance of winning in 2024 with a different nominee?

• With medium confidence, I think the risks of a serious primary challenge to Biden at this point in time would outweigh the benefits for Democrats.

• With low confidence, I think the risks of Biden volunteering not to run for a second would also outweigh the benefits for Democrats, but this is closer.

• With low confidence, and taking full advantage of hindsight bias, I think Democrats probably would have been better off if Biden had announced 6-12 months ago that he wouldn’t seek a second term.

• I think Biden’s situation is somewhat unprecedented and that these are hard questions for Democrats. Almost no matter what happens, people in 2025 will treat the answers as having been more obvious than they actually were. [emphasis Silver's]

In other words, Silver thinks the Democrats — meaning Biden at this point, since other Dem leaders seem totally deferential — have lost their window to change horses. Here's why he thinks that matters:

[L]et’s imagine that one of the candidate’s on Chris Hayes’s list —Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker, Raphael Warnock and Gavin Newsom — announces tomorrow that they’re challenging Biden. ... What would happen?

Well, for one thing there would be an absolute media shitstorm. It would displace everything else from the news cycle — yes, even the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce news. Every critique of Biden would be highlighted and validated.

Still, the challenge probably wouldn’t work. The opposing candidate would be very much at a standing start — none of the candidates I mentioned have run for national office before, and a presidential campaign typically takes six months to a year to get up to speed. The value of optionality would be considerably diminished if voters and party elites didn’t have enough time to fully evaluate all their options. So the most likely outcome would be Biden being nominated anyway, but with battle scars that were probably harmful to him in the general election. [emphasis mine]

That's scenario 1. Here’s scenario 2:

Let’s say Biden calls a surprise press conference tomorrow — and he announces that he’s had second thoughts and won’t run for a second term.

This at least eliminates the possibility of primary-challenge-damaged-Biden being the party nominee anyway. However, it creates other issues for Democrats. The main one is what the hell happens to Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris consistency polls worse than Biden does against Trump. But Biden would be under pressure to give her a full-fledged endorsement. Even if Biden believed deep down that she wasn’t the best nominee, a non-endorsement or half-assed endorsement would make for another huge media shitstorm, without the party having little time to navigate out of it.

What if that process did start now? What would be required to maximize the chance of success?

You’d need Biden to stand down, you’d need party leaders to send a clear message that they wanted an open nomination process and not just Harris by default, and you’d need to make sure that Whitmer and/or other candidates the establishment liked were actually interested in running and the choice didn’t feel force-fed to voters. Ideally you’d also want to do all of this without someone leaking to Politico or the Washington Post and upending the process.

Silver dryly concludes "that’s probably too much to ask for." Too much indeed.

I'd Wager That Official Estimates Only Count 1-in-4 Homeless

NYTimes  | Garbage, feces and needles run through the rivers in Missoula, Mont. On the streets of San Francisco, tents are so thick that sidewalks in the Tenderloin neighborhood have become “unofficial open-air public housing.” In Portland, Ore., a blaze shut down an on-ramp to the Steel Bridge for several days in March after campers tunneled through a cinder block wall and lit a campfire to stay warm.

In a surge of legal briefs this week, frustrated leaders from across the political spectrum, including the liberal governor of California and right-wing state legislators in Arizona, charged that homeless encampments were turning their public spaces into pits of squalor, and asked the Supreme Court to revisit lower court decisions that they say have hobbled their ability to bring these camps under control.

The urgent pleas come as leaders across the country, and particularly in the West, have sought to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic and restore normalcy in cities. In more than two dozen briefs filed in an appeal of a decision on homeless policies in a southern Oregon town, officials from nearly every Western state and beyond described desolate scenes related to a proliferation of tent encampments in recent years.

They begged the justices to let them remove people from their streets without running afoul of court rulings that have protected the civil rights of homeless individuals.

“The friction in many communities affected by homelessness is at a breaking point,” the attorneys for Las Vegas, Seattle and more than a dozen other cities, as well as national municipal organizations, wrote in one brief. “Despite massive infusions of public resources, businesses and residents are suffering the increasingly negative effects of long-term urban camping.”

Homeless rights advocates agreed that tent encampments were unsafe both for their vulnerable occupants and the communities around them. But they said the gathering legal campaign was merely an attempt to fall back on timeworn government crackdowns rather than pursue the obvious solutions: more help and more housing.

“They’re seeking to blame and penalize and marginalize the victims rather than take the steps they haven’t found the political will to take,” said Eric Tars, the senior policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center.

Homelessness has increasingly overwhelmed state and local governments across the country. In California alone, more than 170,000 people are homeless, accounting for about one-third of the nation’s homeless population. More than 115,000 of those homeless Californians sleep on the streets, in cars or outdoors in places not intended for habitation, according to a federal tally of homelessness conducted last year.

Five years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in case from Boise, Idaho, that it was unconstitutional for cities to clear homeless camps and criminally charge campers unless they could offer adequate housing. In the nine Western states covered by the circuit, that ruling has since prompted billions of dollars of public spending on homelessness.

 

 

One Way Or Another, Critical Mass Will Bring About Changes

tomsdispatch  |  Today, more than 38 million people officially live below the federal poverty line and, in truth, that figure should have shocked the nation into action before the coronavirus even arrived here. No such luck and here’s the real story anyway: the official measure of poverty, developed in 1964, doesn’t even take into account household expenses like health care, child care, housing, and transportation, not to speak of other costs that have burgeoned in recent decades. The world has undergone profound economic transformations over the last 66 years and yet this out-of-date measure, based on three times a family’s food budget, continues to shape policymaking at every level of government as well as the contours of the American political and moral imagination.

Two years ago, the Poor People’s Campaign (which I co-chair alongside Reverend William Barber II) and the Institute for Policy Studies released an audit of America. Its centerpiece was a far more realistic assessment of poverty and economic precariousness in this country. Using the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure as a baseline, which, among other things, measures family income after taxes and out-of-pocket expenses for food, clothing, housing, and utilities, there are at least 140 million people who are poor — or just a $400 emergency from that state. (Of that, there are now untold examples in this pandemic moment.)

As poverty has grown and spread, one of the great political weapons of politicians and the ruling elite over the past decades (only emphasized in the age of Trump) has been to minimize, dismiss, and racialize it. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” coded it into Republican national politics; in the 1980s, in the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the fabricated image of “the welfare queen” gained symbolic prominence. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s welfare “reforms” enshrined such thinking in the arguments of both parties. Today, given the outright racism and xenophobia that has become the hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency, “poor” has become a curse word.

It is, of course, true that, among the 140 million poor people in the U.S., a disproportionate number are indeed people of color. The inheritance of slavery, Jim Crow, never-ending discrimination, and the mass incarceration of black men in particular, as well as a generational disinvestment in such populations, could have resulted in nothing less. And yet the reality of poverty stretches deep into every community in this country. According to that audit of America, the poor or low-income today consist of 24 million blacks, 38 million Latinos, eight million Asian-Americans, two million Native peoples, and 66 million whites.

Those staggering numbers, already a deadweight for the nation, are likely to prove a grotestque underestimate in the coronaviral world we now inhabit and yet none of this should be a surprise. Although we couldn’t have predicted the exact circumstances of this pandemic, social theorists remind us that conditions were ripe for just this kind of economic dislocation.

Over the past 50 years, for instance, rents have risen faster than income in every city. Before the coronavirus outbreak, there was not a single county in this country where a person making a minimum wage with a family could afford a two-bedroom apartment. No surprise then that, throughout this crisis, there has been a rise in rent strikes, housing takeovers, and calls for moratoriums on evictions. The quiet fact is that, in the last few decades, unemployment, underemployment, poverty, and homelessness have become ever more deeply and permanently structured into this society.

Please, If You Can, Stay Free....,

thesun  |  The Canada-based platform has come under scrutiny after being used by Brand to share videos as he denies allegations of rape and sexual assault.

He has been posting daily episodes of his Stay Free programme on Rumble since signing a deal with the website a year ago.

It now faces being regulated by UK media watchdog Ofcom under the new Online Safety Bill, which was approved by Parliament last week and is due to become law next month.

Tougher new rules could prompt Rumble's bosses to stop broadcasting to Britain, a tech expert has now suggested.

The new law says internet firms must prevent children from seeing pornography as well as any material promoting eating disorders, self-harm and suicide.

Violent content and material harmful to health, including misinformation about vaccines, will also be barred.

And platforms will also be told to take down illegal material such as videos inciting violence or race hate.

Former Facebook executive Lord Allan of Hallam told The Times a new crackdown could deter Rumble's management.

He said: "You can’t get out of this by saying, 'I’m a crazy American platform, that’s not OK’, and that somehow you get a free pass - they don’t get a free pass.

"Their whole philosophy is freedom of expression, a kind of 'screw you'.

"So when they get a letter from Ofcom saying, ‘Here are all the things you’re going to have to do’, it seems to me the most likely reaction is going to be they’re going to say, ‘Well, we won’t operate in the UK any more'."

Failing to co-operate with Ofcom could put Rumble executives at risk of arrest if visiting Britain, it has been suggested.

Dame Caroline Dineage, who chairs the Commons' Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, wrote to Rumble last Thursday asking whether they would be "suspending Brand's ability to earn money".

The comic and film star has 1.4million followers on Rumble.

Her letter came as YouTube announced it would be demonetising his account on their platform, meaning Brand could no longer cash in on ads accompanying his clips there.

The BBC and Channel 4 also removed content featuring Brand from their streaming sites.

 

 

The U.K. KARENWAFFEN Caroline Dinenage And Mark Lancaster

thegrayzone  |   Caroline Dinenage served as the UK government’s Digital and Culture minister from February 2020 to September 2021, making her de facto chief of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). 

In this capacity, she was personally responsible for overseeing construction of the repressive, World Economic Forum-endorsed Online Safety Bill, which has been criticized by rights groups for threatening the rights to free expression, and privacy. For her leading role in crafting the speech-muzzling bill, Dinenage was honored by Princess Royal with the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire.

Moreover, during this period, the DCMS was home to the shadowy, intelligence official-run Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), which policed “COVID-19 disinformation narratives” online.

Investigations by the civil liberties organization Big Brother Watch have revealed that instead of suppressing content that posed risks to public health, the CDU was preoccupied with censoring and deplatforming reasonable online criticisms of the British government’s Covid-19 response, including opposition to lockdowns and vaccine passports. 

According to an official fact sheet, the CDU’s focus turned to the Ukraine proxy war in 2022, and particularly to targeting content suggesting “the Bucha massacre and the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, were both hoaxes.”

Dinenage’s husband is Mark Lancaster, a fellow information warrior dedicated to advancing the propaganda goals of the British government. Lancaster reportedly left his wife and four-month-old daughter in 2013 when he began dating Dinenage, who was herself married at the time to a British Naval officer.

A former Conservative MP and Armed Forces minister, Lancaster helped lead London’s blitz on pandemic dissent as deputy commander of the British Army’s 77th Brigade between June 2018 and July 2022.

Specialized in “behaviour and attitudinal change,” the 77th Brigade maintains a vast militia of real, fake, and automated social media accounts to disseminate and amplify pro-state messaging, and discredit domestic and foreign enemies.

During the pandemic, the 77th Brigade targeted people within Britain and across the West with advanced psychological manipulation strategies honed on battlefields against enemy militaries. The online profile of a 77th Brigade veteran notes they were deployed straight from a tour of the Middle East – where they “successfully implemented behavioral change strategies against ISIS” – to “countering dis- and misinformation during the Covid-19 crisis.”

However, in January, an ex-Brigade whistleblower revealed how the Ministry of Defence and RRU routinely circumvented British law to advance the government’s crusade against pandemic dissent:

“To skirt the legal difficulties of a military unit monitoring domestic dissent, the view was that unless a profile explicitly stated their real name and nationality, they could be a foreign agent and were fair game. But it is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population…These posts did not contain information that was untrue or coordinated [emphasis added].”

As The Grayzone revealed in June 2023, British journalist Paul Mason had attempted to submit a “formal complaint” about The Grayzone to DCMS, believing it would trigger a government investigation into this outlet’s “funding and activities,” and ultimately its deplatforming. Mason’s handler, a British intelligence agent named Andy Pryce, boasted in leaked emails of his personal role in YouTube’s banning of “Russian stuff” in Britain. The CDU has been confirmed as the government body responsible for these censorship demands.

Now, this shadowy, intelligence-linked entity appears to be the spearhead of the campaign to silence Russell Brand.

The Blob REALLY Doesn't Want The American People To Hear Putin's Voice

azerbaycan24  |   The former Fox News host has questioned why ‘you’re not allowed to hear’ the Russian president’s voice Former Fox News television personality Tucker Carlson speaks to guests at the Family Leadership Summit on July 14, 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has alleged in a recent interview that unnamed figures in Washington obstructed his attempts to interview Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the US government stopped me,” Carlson claimed in an interview with Swiss publication Die Weltwoche published on Thursday. He also explained that he felt let down by the lack of support for his situation that he says he received from US news media.

He said: “I don’t think there was anybody who said ‘wait a second. I may not like this guy but he has a right to interview anyone he wants, and we have a right to hear what Putin says’.” The 54-year-old added: “You’re not allowed to hear Putin’s voice. Because why? There was no vote on it. No one asked me.”

The often-controversial media personality didn’t elaborate on the circumstances under which he says there was government intrusion into his plans to interview Putin but it appeared to suggest that it was the current Biden administration which was behind the meddling. Carlson also didn’t mention when the interview with the Russian leader was supposed to take place.

Tucker Carlson blasts ‘creep’ US ambassador

“I’m an American citizen,” Carlson told Die Weltwoche. “I’m a much more loyal American than, say, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, who didn’t even grow up in this country; she grew up in Canada. And they’re telling me what it is to be a loyal American?”

Carlson –previously Fox News’ biggest star– parted ways with the broadcaster in April shortly after the news network settled for $787.5 million a lawsuit with voting-machine company Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News had regularly discussed claims on some of its shows that Dominion’s machines were involved in ‘rigging’ the 2020 US presidential election.

Carlson’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight, during which he frequently discussed issues like gender, race, sexuality and ‘woke’ ideology, was specifically referenced in the Dominion lawsuit.

Since leaving Fox News, Carlson has broadcast abridged versions of his news show on X (formerly Twitter) which regularly draw tens of millions of views.

Meanwhile, Russia TV news channel Rossiya 24 has aired a teaser trailer for a weekend show it says is to be hosted by Carlson. The promo was first broadcast earlier this month and again on September 22 along with the words “at the weekend.” It adds that the “high-profile American presenter is moving to another level. Here.”

Rossiya 24 didn’t state when the show will debut or if it will be original content or translated versions of Carlson’s X broadcasts. (RT)

 

 

 

Tucker Says They're All Afraid

weltwoche  |  When Tucker Carlson departed the Fox News Channel in April, his enemies cheered. But if they thought the happy warrior had finally been defeated, their judgment was as dismal as their approval ratings. With an assist from Elon Musk, Carlson is reaching an even larger, global audience with his new show, “Tucker Carlson on Twitter (now known as ‘X’).”

The veteran newscaster has expanded his mission: to defeat the mainstream media’s suffocating bias and incuriosity not just about critical events at home but in capitals around the world.

When we reach him, Carlson has just returned from the United Arab Emirates where he met with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed. Carlson pronounces the sheikh “the most interesting, wisest leader I've ever spoken to” — a provocative assessment given that the talk show host sat across from Donald J. Trump last month. Of the Arab leader, Carlson enthuses, “I've never met a more humble leader, ever — and I believe humility is a prerequisite for wisdom.”

Carlson is far less kind about his colleagues in the press. “They're all fearful people,” the 54-year-old scoffs. Instead of holding the powerful to account, “they do exactly the opposite.”  Indeed, “they do their bidding.”

Looking ahead to the Presidential elections in 2024, he says: “They're trying to put Trump in prison for the crime of running against Joe Biden … That's what this election's about. Are we going to allow that, or aren't we? And I just don't think we can.”

 Weltwoche: Since leaving Fox and going solo with your new show, “Tucker Carlson On Twitter (now known as ‘X’),” your posts have logged tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of views. You’re taking off like Buzz Lightyear. Are you feeling the freedom? To explore more topics and ideas? To express your views?

Tucker Carlson: Well, definitely. If anything, I've expressed my views less. I haven't done many straight-to-camera scripts where I write the script and give my opinion. I've done what I've wanted to do for a long time but couldn't, which is get on an airplane and go see the rest of the world. I couldn't because I had a daily show I had to do.

I've become convinced over the past several years — particularly since the war in Ukraine began — that the world is changing much more quickly than most Americans understand. And because there's virtually no coverage of the rest of the world in American media, Americans don't have a good sense of it.

What we, in this country, refer to as the "Post-War Order” — the institutions set up in the wake of World War II to keep the world peaceful and prosperous and the United States at the top of the pyramid, and that would include the dominance of the dollar, the SWIFT system, NATO — all of that appears to me to be crumbling. That's my view of it. I've wanted to travel and see if that is, in fact, happening — and it is.