economics

Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics,

On an Oct. 13 MSNBC broadcast with anchor Jen Psaki, Democratic strategist – and former political advisor to President Bill Clinton – James Carville denounced Donald Trump for putting “the entire Constitution in jeopardy.” Carville offered a concrete example of the right’s subversion of American freedom and democracy: “The Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas have totally greenlighted the idea that you could round up, use the military to round up your political enemies.” A former political advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Psaki replied with a smile, “We love the truth telling.”

Carville and Psaki are typical. The left often portrays itself as the rigorous defender of truth against relentless right-wing disinformation while resolutely promoting progressive disinformation, including the falsehood that disinformation is a distinctively right-wing phenomenon.

Small wonder that Carville did not elaborate on his extraordinary accusation, and that Psaki did not ask why he singled out Justice Thomas or how the Supreme Court authorized the rounding up of political enemies. Perhaps Carville had in mind the court’s holding last July in Trump v. United States “that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” But the Constitution does not give the president authority to round up political enemies.

Did Carville glibly attack Trump and did Psaki politely play along? Did partisan rage distort Carville’s judgment as well as Psaki’s? Did Carville resolve to assert – and Psaki to endorse – whatever it takes, including nightmare scenarios, to protect democracy from Trump?

It is hard to read hearts and minds. But one can confidently affirm that deceiving about politics is as old as politics.

Circumstances change. Regimes come and go. Empires rise and fall. Parties win and lose. Yet even as modernization and technology revolutionize human affairs by generating material abundance, destabilizing settled expectations, and eroding inherited understandings, human beings remain social and political animals. Individuals need one another’s company and cooperation while – given diverse backgrounds, disposition, abilities, and interests – differing over what is useful, just, and good. Some strive to exercise power over others while most try to minimize the power that others exercise over them. Through it all, passion and prejudice constantly buffet everyone’s reasoning, and auspicious opportunities and dire predicaments tempt even the virtuous to portray the facts as other than they are.

No doubt novel opportunities abound today for promulgating lies and disseminating the family of departures from the truth that human beings routinely produce, distribute, consume, and rail against. In particular, the Internet, digital communications, and social media have facilitated the acquisition and transmission of immense amounts of information. This has greatly increased the quantity and accelerated the velocity of casual errors, self-deceptions, well-meaning half-truths, fraudulently marketed opinions and ideas, and outright lies that swirl through political culture.

Both right and left in America partake of the free-for-all of duplicity – often crude, occasionally artful – that plagues American politics. There is, however, an asymmetry.

Both sides insist that the other is exclusively at fault for the decay of public discourse. But the left controls the commanding heights of education, mainstream and social media, and government bureaucracy.

The left’s false contention that the right exercises a monopoly on manipulation, deceit, and falsehood is particularly damaging because the left amplifies its accusation through domination of the nation’s communication, elite opinion formation, and rule-making and law-enforcement institutions. This substantial advantage in the struggle to shape public opinion encourages the left’s sense of superiority while blinding progressives to their own intellectual subterfuges and ideological swindles. It also foments outrage on the right. Conservatives justify their extreme statements and outrageous claims as playing by progressives’ rules.

Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel recently illustrated the left’s propensity to wrongly present disinformation as a specifically right-wing pathology. Author of “Galaxy Brain,” The Atlantic’s newsletter “about technology, media, and big ideas,” Warzel argues in “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” that an unprecedented assault on truth has “been building for more than a decade.” The crisis stems, he maintains, from a calamitous combination of right-wing extremism and digital technology that breaks reality into two – a world of truth inhabited by the left and a world of “dark” falsehoods that the right creates, outfits, and calls home.

“This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity,” writes Warzel. “This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world.”

Warzel would have placed his analysis of just how badly political discourse in America has deteriorated on much sounder footing if he had recognized that the left also employs digital technology to fabricate and maintain a separate world. In the left’s alternative reality, the remorseless siege of systemic racism, sexism, and other sinister forms of oppression obliges progressives to abandon basic requirements of evidence and argument to rally the faithful and save the nation and the world.

Responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, maintains Warzel, have set a new low. “Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories,” he writes, “the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism.” He gives chilling examples careening around the Internet of harebrained conspiracy theories about government malfeasance and implausible stories of official neglect, or deliberate disregard, of storm victims that have delayed the delivery of essential government services. These remind that people can easily dupe others and be duped, especially when hurricane season coincides with election season, and individuals are armed with smart phones and social media accounts, and distrust elite institutions.

Warzel is rightly alarmed that “Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality – or desire one at all.” But his one-sided analysis inadvertently underscores that fault for the splintering of America does not lie solely with Trump and his backers.

Or even primarily.

Yes, Jan. 6, 2021, was a disgrace. Yes, right-wing rhetoric can be ridiculous, ominous, and vile. And yes, right-wing activists also exploit the Internet to stoke grievance and stir up resentment and rage.

Still, progressives tend to neglect that Trump and his voters have reasons, accumulating for decades, for distrusting institutions fundamental to the nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom and dominated by progressives: universities, the mainstream media and social media, and the federal bureaucracy.

Contrary to the common view on the left that Trump inaugurated a war on truth, our universities have for at least two generations sought to emancipate students from the traditional understanding that higher education’s purpose is to pursue knowledge and cultivate independent minds. Instead, through a succession of intellectual fashions and fads – including positivism, relativism, postmodernism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, identity politics, and intersectionality – universities have fostered the incoherent and partisan belief that since moral values are socially constructed, progressive policies must prevail.

Meanwhile, our progressive media – mainstream and social – and our progressive federal bureaucracy have collaborated to promote progressive national narratives by censoring opinions that challenge the progressive perspective and weaponizing the law against those who oppose progressivism’s hegemony.

The most egregious such collaboration revolved around the charge – widely presented as established fact by the press, defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, and elected Democratic officials and progressive intellectuals – that Donald Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election. This weighed down President Trump and hampered his administration. Yet after a two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose team contained several experienced and high-powered Democratic lawyers, issued a lengthy report stating that the investigation “did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Another disreputable collaboration to advance progressive ends sought to push Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over the finish line in November 2020. A few weeks before the election, the New York Post accurately reported that a laptop containing incriminating evidence belonged to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The mainstream media, social media, and the FBI censored the Post’s reporting while disseminating the falsehood that the computer was a product of Russian disinformation.

A third major collaboration occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York Times and the Washington Post derided the notion that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab, which it likely did, and government officials, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, suppressed the lab-leak hypothesis. In addition, the mainstream media, social media, and federal government teamed up to discredit and silence those who raised questions about the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines.

To do their share to arrest the splintering of America, progressives must do more than profess their love of the truth. They must act like they mean it.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.

This morning, the Supreme Court rejected former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s appeal to bring back his civil rights claim against the former president.

Cohen alleged former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and other federal officials put him back in prison as retaliation for promoting a book critical of Trump.

“[A]s it stands, this case represents the principle that presidents and their subordinates can lock away critics of the executive without consequence,” Cohen’s petition states.

As Sam Dorman reports for The Epoch Times, Cohen had argued that two lower courts wrongly dismissed a claim that former President Donald Trump violated his rights by ending his prison furlough during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Cohen’s petition, he had objected to a federal form that probation officers asked him to sign, which prohibited him from engaging with the media, including posting on social media.

At the time, he was writing a book critical of the former president.

Cohen’s attorney, Jon-Michael Dougherty, said the ruling “signals a dangerous moment in American democracy,” and raises questions about free-speech rights.

Both Trump and the Justice Department filed briefs opposing Cohen’s petition.

Cohen had attempted to claim a private right of action under the Supreme Court’s 1971 precedent in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents.

While that case upheld a cause of action related to unlawful search and seizures, Cohen asked the Supreme Court to consider whether it should apply to his circumstances.

He alleged that he faced “retaliation for his refusal to waive his right to free speech.”

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar similarly raised concerns about separation of powers and argued that Cohen could have pursued alternative remedies such as the Bureau of Prisons’ Administrative Remedy Program.

Trump told the court that Cohen’s attempt to expand the precedent under Bivens would disrupt the constitution’s separation of powers. He added that the doctrine of presidential immunity presented an “insurmountable obstacle” to Cohen’s claim.

Trump attorney Alina Habba said the Supreme Court had correctly denied Cohen’s petition, and “he must finally abandon his frivolous and desperate claims.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The FBI and a federal agency dedicated to cybersecurity issued a warning on Oct. 18 about efforts by foreign actors trying to “spread disinformation” regarding the upcoming Nov. 5 election—with just over two weeks ago before the contest.

The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they have “no information suggesting cyber activity against U.S. election infrastructure” that has “compromised the integrity of voter registration information, prevented an eligible voter from casting a ballot, impacted the integrity of any ballots cast, or disrupted the ability to count votes or transmit unofficial election results in a timely manner.”

But the two agencies said that foreign adversaries still might promote “false or misleading narratives” to sway the election or to undermine American confidence in its election systems and processes.

Specifically, the two agencies warned of election-related content produced by artificial intelligence (AI) that has lowered the guardrails for malicious or foreign actors to create more advanced schemes to influence the election.

“We are seeing foreign actors use these tools to develop and distribute more compelling synthetic media messaging campaigns and inauthentic news articles, as well as synthetic pictures and deepfakes (video and audio) at greater speed and scale across numerous U.S.- and foreign-based platforms,” their joint bulletin said.

“These efforts to develop content are designed to undermine voter confidence and to entice unwitting consumers of the information to discuss, share, and amplify the spread of false or misleading narratives.”

In one example of AI-aided content produced by foreign actors ahead of the election, the agency said that Russian groups have “created and deliberately designed” web pages “to look like legitimate mainstream news websites” such as The Washington Post or Fox News.

“Russian malign influence actors also created fake social media profiles posing as U.S. citizens to direct users to these fake news websites and purchased social media advertisements to drive traffic to the specific fake articles on the fake news site,” the two agencies cautioned.

The PSA highlights specific examples of tactics we have seen used by Russia and Iran during the 2024 election cycle to target all Americans. These include things from mimicking national level media outlets like The Washington Post and Fox News and creating inauthentic news sites posing as legitimate media organizations to using paid influencers to hide their hand.

In late September, three Iranian government employees were charged and identified by the Department of Justice for a wide-ranging hacking conspiracy that targeted both current and former U.S. officials as well as political campaigns.

The bulletin was referring to an indictment that was returned last month that accused Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yasar Balaghi of trying to hack the campaign of a presidential candidate, without providing names. But in a news conference last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that they were targeting the campaign of former President Donald Trump.

Iran-backed hackers who breached the Trump campaign in June and July sent emails with hacked campaign materials to people associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign as well as various media outlets, said the FBI, CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month.

But the agencies said that the the campaign of Biden, who suspended his presidential bid in late July, was not interested in the hacked materials. There is also no evidence the Biden campaign even responded to the emails, which were described by the intelligence and cybersecurity agencies as unsolicited.

“It is important for voters to critically evaluate information sources, particularly as disinformation campaigns evolve to use AI-generated content,” both CISA and the FBI said in a news release accompanying the bulletin. “Both agencies urge the American public to rely on trusted information from state and local election officials and to verify claims through multiple reliable sources before sharing them on social media or other platforms.”

Authored by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer via Americvan Greatness,

Vice President Kamala Harris’s disastrous performance in her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier was notable for two reasons.

• First, to the degree that there was any discussion of foreign national security threats to America, Harris only mentioned Iran. She failed to mention the disastrous war in Ukraine, where more than a million are dead, and the threat of nuclear war exists. Harris failed to reconcile her administration’s billions in dollars of military and civilian aid to Ukraine and policy actions against Russia for the most significant military threat in Europe since the end of World War Two. Worse though was her failure to make any reference to the existential threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

• Second, her performance in response to salient questions—ones that had the chance to inform American voters—was an amalgamation of incoherence, anger, and deception that revealed a candidate who is uniquely unsuited to be president of the United States. The fact that she is the Democratic candidate and might become president is alarming to America’s friends, as it is welcomed by America’s enemies.

In the interview, she had the opportunity to discuss her analysis of threats to America. While Iran is certainly a regional danger and a threat to the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, it pales in comparison to the existential threat of the CCP. Indeed, Iran and Russia would be far less of a concern if the CCP were not given a free hand to back these aggressor nations. That the PRC is a grave and fundamental threat is revealed by its hyper-aggressive policies against the American people, U.S. allies like Japan and the Philippines, and partners like India and Taiwan.

An example of the CCP’s threatening military posture was put on display when Exercise Joint Sword 2024B launched on October 14, in which People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces encircled Taiwan to coerce its new leader, President Lai Ching-te, into a posture of subservience to the PRC. Thus far, those coercive attempts have failed. But Joint Sword 2024B revealed three aspects of the growing PRC threat. First, it showed the increasing capabilities of the PRC. Second, it demonstrated the ever-increasing penetrations of Taiwanese air and seaspace in an effort to normalize those violations and mask the actual invasion when it comes. Third, the first participation of the Chinese Coast Guard in the encirclement of Taiwan occurred.

• First, with respect to the increased capabilities of the PLA Navy, it should be noted that their first aircraft carrier, Chinese Navy Ship (CNS) Liaoning/CV-16, conducted 90 fixed-wing take-offs and recoveries and 50 more from their embarked helicopters during their operations in the exercise. That is 140 sorties from a PLA Navy aircraft carrier in just one day. By any measure, the PLA Navy’s carrier aviation capabilities are now approaching U.S. Navy aircraft carrier air wing levels in terms of the number of sorties. It is the case that PLAN aircraft have a more limited range and weapons capacity than their U.S. Navy counterparts, due to the Liaoning’s ski-ramp launch, but the fact remains that within just two years, the Liaoning has gone from launching an average of just 30 sorties a day in 2022 to a 140 today. That is a real strategic trendline that presidential candidate Harris demonstrated no awareness or strategy to counter.

• Second, regarding PLA incursions into Taiwan’s air and seaspace, exercise Joint Sword 2024B provides another inflection point in the PRC’s dramatic transformation of the military status quo in the cross-strait environment. During the exercise, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that it detected a total of 153 PLA aircraft, 14 PLAN ships, and 12 Coast Guard ships operating around Taiwan and that 111 of those aircraft crossed the centerline of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zones from the west, southwest, and east. To put that into perspective, from 1954 to 2020, PLA aircraft only crossed the centerline four times. This pattern of PLA air force incursions across the centerline began in earnest in 2022 when the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the PRC no longer recognized the centerline—a clear violation of the previous agreements between Beijing, Taipei, and Washington to not forcibly alter the status quo. Yet since then, and now with exercise Joint Sword 2024B, the Biden-Harris administration has made no mention of this hyper-aggressive behavior by Beijing or taken any actions to rectify it.

• Third, the Joint Sword 2024B exercise was unique in that it demonstrated the use of non-PLA ships from the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) in this PLA-led exercise. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reported up to 17 CCGs were detected operating in the waters off Taiwan, or as the PRC’s Global Times noted, the “CCG conducted multi-unit, multi-formation, and multi-subject drills around the island of Taiwan, focusing on strengthening the control network around the island.” The implications of these unprecedented actions by the CCG are to demonstrate that the CCP’s strategy to bring Taiwan under its control, either by blockade or an outright invasion, will use the entirety of the PRC’s assets—a whole of government effort. These facts at sea demonstrate that the PRC’s 2019 declaration of a “People’s War” against the United States is not just propaganda but is advancing in tangible ways.

Americans need to understand the scope and scale of the CCP’s grand strategy as evidenced by the PLA Navy and the CCG’s demonstrated actions during exercise Joint Sword 2024B. The evidence is undeniable: the CCP intends for the PRC to become the dominant naval force, not just in Asia but across the globe.

This reality comes against the backdrop of a Biden-Harris administration that keeps downsizing the size and capabilities of the U.S. Navy.

So, when Bret Baier asks candidate Harris what America’s number one foreign adversary is and there is no mention of the PRC, Americans know this candidate is not competent to assume the office of the Presidency. Americans need to pay attention because U.S. national security is on a knife’s edge—to the U.S., the CCP is a hyper-aggressive regime that is determined to realize its grand strategic objective of dominance. Yet Harris displays no strategic gravitas. She evinces no evidence of the seriousness of the situation or of an understanding that deterrence of the CCP’s hyper-aggression is on her shoulders—let alone having a plan to address this threat.

Deterrence of the CCP is everything. If it fails, this country will be at war with the PRC. Harris appears oblivious to the demands and requirements of deterrence. Accordingly, before the PRC blockades or invades Taiwan or launches an attack against the Philippines in the South China Sea, Americans must have a president sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office who has the knowledge, experience, and courage to prepare our nation for the demands of deterrence of the CCP’s aggression. It must have a president who signals in stark and no uncertain terms to the CCP that their aggression is certain to fail—and so they had better not try it in the first place. A president who not only can talk tough but has the wherewithal to rebuild the U.S. deterrent. The catechism of deterrence is straightforward: weakness invites aggression; strength deters it. Americans must elect a president who understands this catechism and so defends our nation from all threats—most especially from the existential threat of the PRC.

Via Common Dreams

“We have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon.” That sentence is the concluding line from an allegedly leaked (or hacked) U.S. intelligence document posted online this week and later reported on by Axios, CNN, and other outlets.

As Axios reported on Saturday, “U.S. officials are extremely concerned about a potentially major security breach after two alleged U.S. intelligence documents about Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran were published by a Telegram account affiliated with Iran.”

The Associated Press and independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein both cited government sources who said the documents appeared to be authentic. While U.S. officials have yet to comment publicly on the material, reporting confirmed an investigation into their authenticity and how they came to be in the public domain was underway.

Since a barrage of missile strikes aimed at military targets in Israel by Iran on Oct 1, a retaliatory strike in response to Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other attacks, the world has been waiting for Israel’s promised military response.

Assuming the documents are authentic, what they show is that U.S. intelligence—as is well known and despite being close allies—keeps a close and clandestine eye on Israeli military operations.

CNN cited an unnamed U.S. official who called the documents being made public “deeply concerning,” though the outlet did not publish the documents in full. The documents, according to CNN,

are marked top secret and have markings indicating they are meant to be seen only by the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

They describe preparations Israel appears to be making for a strike against Iran. One of the documents, which says it was compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says the plans involve Israel moving munitions around.

Another document says it is sourced to the National Security Agency and outlines Israeli air force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, also believed to be in preparation for a strike on Iran. CNN is not quoting directly from or showing the documents.

NEW: A set of classified U.S. intelligence documents purporting to show information about Israel’s plans to strike in Iran have been confirmed as authentic in a report by CNN (https://t.co/8AVOexA1Y8).

Drop Site News has also been reviewing these documents since they were posted… pic.twitter.com/VKOEq9qcbo

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 19, 2024

It has long been known that Israel has a nuclear weapons program and maintains a nuclear arsenal, but it remains both Israeli and U.S. government policy never to acknowledge or confirm the existence of either. In one of the documents, the U.S. specifically references Israel’s ability to deploy a nuclear weapon, though it categorizes the threat of doing so in this case as low.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, recently banned from X for posting an internal opposition research dossier that the Trump campaign had compiled on JD Vance, posted images of both documents to his substack page, as he excoriated major outlets for refusing to do.

“As with the J.D. Vance Dossier, which the entire media knew about but refused to publish, it appears the media has once again lost its nerve – and its sense of what’s news,” Klippenstein wrote.

According to Klippenstein’s assessment:

The intelligence report includes a rundown of the various aspects of Israeli military activities that the U.S. is monitoring to inform its judgments and conclusions: weapons handling, air defense, ground forces, Navy, Air, Special Forces, and even Israel’s Nuclear Forces. But even then, only the weapons handling and special forces categories are identified as having a “medium” predictive ability in regards to determining Israel’s action; the rest are designated “low” predictive ability.

The second intelligence report is titled “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran and Conducts a Second Large-Force Employment Exercise.” The document details Israeli activities during an evident “mission rehearsal” (in U.S. lingo) that could be indicative of how Israel will strike Iran. Citing imagery analysis and other sources, the NGA report notes that the Israeli Air Force is already conducting covert drone operations over Iran (evidently doing its own spying), and how, as part of Israeli Air Force activity, has been handling air-launched ballistic missiles and other weapons.

From the leaked US intel documents: “we did not observe any Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles … we have not observed any indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon”. Notice the NF – no foreigners – marking for that paragraph. https://t.co/Bkfq9KtWew pic.twitter.com/YE9IFKN301

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 20, 2024

Defending release of the full documents, he explained that both provide “insight of enormous public interest as we stand at the precipice of a broader conflict” and contained “information that directly bears upon U.S. obligations and actions. It is for that reason that I’ve decided to publish the basic documents.”

It’s a disturbing trend that has been spreading over the past few years:  Gay and Trans couples buying off surrogate mothers to have babies for them, then taking those babies and using them as fashion accessories for social media clout.  The trend includes bizarre newborn baby photo ops in which the couples (usually gay or trans men) pose in a hospital bed with the baby as if they just gave birth to it. 

While legal in many countries, the practice has some unsettling implications in terms of cultural respect for motherhood, the future life stability of children being used as props, and the normalization of gender identity mental illness.

Transgender man lies in a hospital bed as his newborn baby is handed to him after he paid a surrogate to have a baby for him.

Do you agree or disagree with surrogacy?

pic.twitter.com/B3c8L2noOM

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 8, 2024

Transgender man feeds newborn surrogate baby with milk bottle during a TikTok live stream.

The man used the baby to promote his hair products:

“You can go order some shampoo and conditioner and that’s the best gift of all.”

🎥 @SarahisCensored

pic.twitter.com/McDZiUKqu3

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 10, 2024

The Italian government under Georgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, has closed the overseas loophole in the LGBT baby market.  It is one of the first governments to finally address and block the practice of IVF for surrogacy (in place since 2004), and they have now extended that ban to include the recruitment of surrogate mothers outside of the country.  In other words, it’s a complete ban on surrogate pregnancies.  Those who break the law face fines of up to $1 million and 2 years in prison.

Critics are calling the law a “monstrous attack” on the LGBT community and their ability to have a family.  Keep in mind, the law applies to all Italians, not just those that identify as gay or trans.  However, it is likely that the restrictions were specifically designed to stop the explosion of the LGBT baby trade and trans surrogacy.  Meloni has has described herself as a Christian mother and believes children should only be raised by a man and a woman.

Because the practice of surrogacy for gay male couples in particular has been limited until recently, there is scant data on the effects of the practice on children as they grow up.  There are multiple scientific studies that do show that children in gay households fare worse as they grow up than those in homes with a traditional mother and father. 

These problems include whether a child had grown up to need public assistance like welfare, were more likely to have anxiety or depression, were more likely to be abused, or were more apt engage in unhealthy habits such as having more sexual partners, smoking or using drugs.

Whenever such unbiased and non-political studies are released, they are immediately attacked by gay activist groups for “bigotry”.  Today, it is unlikely that these kinds of studies will ever be funded, let alone released to the public.  The science on the social effects of the gay and trans lifestyle is fully suppressed in the 2020s. 

Common arguments against the surrogacy ban include claims that surrogacy is necessary in order to counter Italy’s population decline.  But leftist organizations exploit the western population drop as a rationale for many of their agendas, including their mass immigration agenda. It’s not enough for a society to simply have more babies, they need stable homes for those babies where the children are not merely there to satisfy the narcissism of LGBT activists.  

Italy, it seems, has decided to err on the side of caution.

Authored by Jeremiah Hosea via Substack,

A dignified life, or dehumanized technocracy — which would you prefer for your children?

As you may have noticed, I do enjoy lists. I suppose they appeal to my sense of order. The following is a list of fundamental principles that were strangely, as if by hypnosis, abdicated during the Convid Scamdemic.

I hope you enjoy, as do I, the novelty (at least for this Substack) of presenting this particular list in countdown format!

8. Do Not Trust the Government — how anyone could not understand this principle by now is beyond me. You don’t need to refer to ancient history to reach this conclusion. You don’t even need to have read Machiavelli (although I highly recommend you do). Just look at recent history and you will be provided with numerous examples indicating that no private citizen should ever trust the government.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was even invoked by some of the poison pushers during Covid in patronizing efforts to assuage vaccine hesitancy. It was mentioned dismissively as though it were something that happened a million years ago and would never happen again. Yet every thinking person should take stock of this nightmarish event. It was medical torture that transpired over the course of 40 years and was presided over by the CDC. Yes — the same CDC.

Politically, since the turn of the new millennium, we have been treated to a continuous barrage of psyops and wars, wars and psyops. The dubious nature of the 2000 election, the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11, the lies about WMDs that resulted in catastrophic war in Iraq, the total bailout of the banks in 2008 with not as much as a life-raft for the people, the Flint Michigan water crisis, the annihilation of Libya — we could go on and on and on in reciting examples of negligence, malfeasance and heinous actions carried out by our government irrespective of which political party held the presidency at the time. (I insist they are one party pretending to be two.)

How could one claim to have observed history and then fail to notice that virtually every major government project done in opposition to an enemy whether literal or abstract, from all the senseless catastrophic wars against regimes to the fruitless and counterproductive “War on Drugs” and then “War on Terror”, have been entirely negative in both nature and results?

Whenever the government announces (or doesn’t announce) it is embarking on some grand new endeavor, usually something catastrophic is underway.

During Covid, I didn’t just see people fail to be suspicious of a government that had thoroughly earned our distrust, I had the even more harrowing experience of witnessing people I had known previously to be “critical thinkers” suddenly devolve into people incapable of any critical thought whatsoever.

7. Don’t Trust Major Corporations, Especially Big Pharma aka Big Harma — what is a corporation? It is an instrument designed to maximize profit in the marketplace. In capitalism ruthlessness, relentlessness and an amoral approach are all considered admirable traits.

The willingness of a corporation to poison, pollute, injure or even kill is requisite to compete in the upper echelons of the market place. Major corporations do not have a track record of admitting fault or confessing guilt. They do not have the tendency of “taking things down a notch” for the sake of the environment, or human dignity or being reasonable. The ends absolutely justify the means and therefore, nothing is off-limits in the pursuit of maximizing profits. If there is collateral damage, or if a few fines need to be paid along the way — so be it. That will all be neatly filed and tucked away under the label of “the cost of doing business.” This description shouldn’t shock anyone — I am merely describing the spirit of capitalism and the spirit of corporatism.

Big industry from the military industrial complex to Big-Agra is thoroughly out of hand, but there’s something particularly disturbing about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry as it pertains immediately to our health, the health of our children and the health of our families and communities. We should all be more than concerned that the oath stating, “first do no harm” has been jettisoned entirely.

Giving legal indemnity to corporations (especially ones with felony backgrounds) is a recipe for guaranteed disaster. There should be a law against making such laws. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which gives liability protection to vaccine manufacturers needs to be overturned immediately and put in its historical place as an anathema to the proper drafting and passing of laws.

6. The Right to Question — the right to question should be unquestionable. We claim to value education and up until recently intellectual curiosity was considered a good attribute. When Covid came along all the sudden “doing your own research” aka reading was suddenly being demonized. Who has ever heard of such a thing? And how can the people discouraging critical inquiry consider themselves to be the intelligent ones? It’s adjacent to the question, “when were the censors the good guys in history?”

Questioning is good. Robust dialogue is good. The notion of sterilizing mistakes or incorrect ideas out of discourse is totalitarian. In fact, clarifying and the correcting of mistakes usually offers a great opportunity for education and enlightenment. Moreover, to attempt to gain an understanding even to venture into the taxonomy of an unfamiliar field or discipline does not mean that the inquirers suddenly become professionals in that field — no reasonable person would suggest that. It is simply to have gained some understanding in a new area. This is a good process and not a negative one.

As my friend Ryan Cristian of Last American Vagabond ( TheLastAmericanVagabond.com ) says at the end of every program, “Question everything.”

5. Freedom to Associate — the government has no right whatsoever to prevent us from seeing our families or friends when we are not engaged in criminal actions and are not meeting to engage in criminal conspiracies. Lockdowns (which varied in severity from country to country and county to county) were a flagrant violation of our natural rights. Just as the government cannot protect us from any act of God — the notion that they can protect us from a respiratory ailment by restricting our movements is not only blatant overreach, it’s medically and scientifically without merit.

The falsehood of the “asymptomatic carrier” was the fraudulent basis for movement restricting policies. It should be accepted, however, that policy makers have no influence, no sway whatsoever in regard to the virome. Even if they did, a declared emergency should not be grounds for the suspension or removal of our rights. Yet what transpired during Covid and the lack of resistance from the public that went along with it, has set the stage for future abuses.

4. Freedom of Religion — I feel an enormous spiritual feeling but I do not identify with any particular religion or religious text. My beliefs, however, as well as the beliefs or non-beliefs of every individual are irrelevant — our country, like every free society, allows for freedom of religion. It is not the job of the mayor, governor, president or any appointed or elected official to arbitrarily suspend the fundamental right to worship and practice one’s religion.

It makes no sense to impose policies to protect a religious person from illness, when most religions are rooted in the concept of preparing the practitioner for death. For most religious people their religious practices are part of their well being. It is not up to power brokers to determine when devout persons can practice their religions or when congregations can congregate.

Allowing liquor stores to remain open while churches and mosques were ordered closed, highlights the perfectly baseless and arbitrary nature of lockdown policies. (I cringe when I use the word “allow” because We The People should have never “allowed” the state to have as much as an impression that they could impose any of this unfounded rubbish.)

Just prior to Covid, religious exemptions for vaccines required to attend school were overturned in New York and California. (Looking back, that was a red flag and helped set the stage for the bio security State that was about to emerge.) How is that possible? How can the government arbitrarily decide that their rule is more powerful than your religious belief and conviction to God Almighty? Who do they think they are? Religious exemptions should never be overturnable.

3. Haste Makes Waste — Haste makes waste is a truism. It is well known that it is better to be well prepared than rushed. It’s a principle also known as the 6 P’s — proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.

It’s better to be a well-rehearsed band than an under-rehearsed band. It’s better to be a well practiced basketball team (like the Spurs) than a team that hasn’t practiced enough. It’s better to be a well-prepared actor than an unprepared actor. It is better to have an experienced surgeon and not a medical student. Everyone knows that haste makes waste, yet somehow this axiomatic principle was disregarded in the case of “Operation Warp Speed.”

“Warp speed” implies mistakes. It implies lack of regulation and oversight. More than imply, it means — no long term safety data. It means rushed-to-market. It means “safe and effective” is inherently a lie because they didn’t have sufficient time to confirm its safety or effectiveness.

It’s mind numbing that not only did supposedly intelligent people insist that such a massive undertaking (Operation Warp Speed) could be executed without any noticeable reduction in quality, but then proceeded to aggressively insult and gaslight those who raised this most obvious concern.

Despite the notion that anyone who refused the experimental injections was doing so based on elaborate conspiracy theories, I spoke to many people who told me firsthand that their hesitancy or outright refusal was based on the simple fact that the whole thing was done too damn fast.

2. Body Sovereignty — sovereignty over one’s own body is the most fundamental of fundamental rights. It is the right from which all other rights emanate. If your body sovereignty is compromised, you are a compromised individual and you are not a free person. You may aspire to freedom, but you are not free.

Mandating Covid “vaccines” (products falsely marketed as such) was a violation of the Constitution†, the Nuremberg Code†† and first and foremost natural law. No person should be forced to eat anything, watch anything, participate in anything — least of all an invasive medical procedure — against their will. It’s incredibly sad that this has to be discussed or debated whatsoever in the United States or any modern society for that matter.

1. No means No — I have most certainly emphasized this in previous articles. I will exercise here the literary technique known as sufficient redundancy and reiterate that — No is the most important word in the dictionary. No is sacrosanct.

We teach our children, and rightfully so, that they always have the right to say No. If something doesn’t feel right — No. If you don’t feel safe — No. If you are being asked to compromise your dignity — No. The word — No — by itself, is a complete sentence. This principle, of always having the right to say No, does not have an expiration date. It’s not just for children. It is fundamental to human dignity.

It is an abomination, that the right to say No was violated across the whole of society. What a terrible example for our children, and if we don’t change things now — what a terrible inheritance for them as well.

Authored by James Bovard,

Blindfolds and systemic deceit are the death of self-government…

President Biden has been derided for being a Potemkin president, a figurehead in a vast charade portraying him actually running the government.  Biden was forced to withdraw from the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in June.   But is a Potemkin presidency being followed by a Potemkin election?

Biden’s expulsion from the presidential race did not herald the arrival of truth. Most of the media still tolerates pervasive secrecy on prime issues of the 2024 campaign.

In bygone times, elections were about self-government.  Nowadays, voters merely have a cameo role to sanctify the nearly boundless power of officialdom.  Every year, the federal government slaps a “secret” label on trillions of pages of information – enough to fill 20 million filing cabinets.  And since the government is automatically benevolent (if a Democrat is president), there is no need to trouble citizens with the grisly details of how they are being served.

At the same time Special Counsel Jack Smith is racing to fling all possible dirt at Trump before Election Day, each week we learn of new cover-ups designed to deceive Americans about how badly they have been misgoverned:

1. Biden administration has mostly succeeded in covering up the crime wave by illegal aliens ushered into the nation since 2021. Former Border Patrol Sector Chief Aaron Heitke testified to Congress last month that the Biden administration hid the adverse impact from deluging U.S. cities with illegal aliens, including those with terror ties.

2. The National Archives announced on Wednesday that it would delay until after the election the release of potentially damning records on Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings with his son and foreign wheelers-dealers – records that have been sought for more than a year by conservative lawyers and activists.

3. Biden’s Justice Department sought to bury all the tax charges against Hunter Biden but were thwarted thanks to courageous IRS whistleblowers.  Hunter’s guilty plea last month to the tax charges confirms that the Justice Department’s offer a wrist-slap plea bargain to Hunter last year was a shameless obstruction of justice.

4. Biden’s FBI last year created “a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers,” Newsweek reported. FBI whistleblowers have exposed the politicization of an agency that even secretly targeted traditional Catholics who prefer to hear mass in Latin. But the vast majority of FBI surveillance and entrapment abuses remain shrouded.

5. Team Biden is covering up both Trump assassination attempts. Biden appointees have stonewalled bipartisan congressional investigations into the abysmal Secret Service failures at Butler, Pennsylvania.  The Justice Department has indefinitely delayed hearings for Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old guy caught waiting to shoot Trump on his Florida golf course.  Delaying proceedings against Routh assures that Americans will not learn before the election whether the would-be assassin had ties to the CIA, Pentagon, State Department or other agencies that assisted Routh with his massively-publicized campaign to recruit foreign soldiers to fight for Ukraine.

6. The Biden administration continues covering up almost everything regarding its support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.  The best info Americans have received was thanks to a young military computer technician who leaked revelations that the Ukrainian military was in far worse shape than Team Biden claimed. Americans have been forced to pay hundreds of billions of dollars but are left in the dark regarding Biden administration machinations that risk pulling this nation into World War Three.

7. The House Oversight Committee this week subpoenaed DHS for its records on Tim Walz’s possible ties to the CCP after being contacted by a whistleblower.  There is zero chance that the Biden administration will release any of those records before Election Day.

8. Political convenience is practically the sole determinant of what Americans are permitted to learn nowadays.  After Biden dropped his re-election bid, the administration disclosed records showing that his son Hunter sought U.S. government handouts for Burisma when Joe Biden was Vice President.  That scandal was buried until Joe Biden was no longer politically relevant.

Is censorship the biggest X factor for this election? Four years ago, the presidential election may have been swung by the coverup of the damning revelations in Hunter Biden’s laptop.  The FBI and the CIA hustled to censor and defuse that story with false rebuttals in October 2020.  According to multiple federal court rulings, federal agencies tampered with the 2020 election by censoring millions of comments by Americans who raised doubts about the trustworthiness of mail-in ballots and other election procedures. Federal judge Terry Doughty noted that  “virtually all of the free speech suppressed was ‘conservative’ free speech.”  A federal appeals court issued an injunction prohibiting federal officials from acting “to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce . . . posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”

But the Supreme Court refused to recognize that the censorship victims had any legal standing and canceled the injunction.   Americans will likely have no idea how many muzzles and blindfolds were secretly attached by federal agencies and federal contractors before Election Day.

Don’t expect journalists to suddenly get hot to thwart those Biden cover-ups. When the media shrouded Biden’s mental debility, it directly endorsed de facto secret rule. How much effort has the New York Times or Washington Post or National Public Radio exerted to reveal who is actually exercising the supreme power nowadays? Exposing that issue could derail Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign so it is ignored. But ​​​​​Biden is as oblivious as ever. When asked by a reporter on Thursday about the situation in the Hurricane Helene storm zone, Biden replied that those states “are getting everything they need. They are very happy across the board.”

Earth to Uncle Joe?!?

But as long as Donald Trump is not elected next month, most of the Washington media doesn’t care who is in control. If the Wizard of Oz was a contemporary political campaign story, the media would overwhelmingly side with the guy behind the curtain.

As long as the Wizard recited “Orange Man Bad,” the media would cover up all his abuses.

But “informed consent” is a mirage if the feds blindfold voters.

As long as Team Biden keeps a lid on its worst outrages until Election Day, Democrats can snare four more year to abuse the Constitution, the law, and the American people. Unfortunately, self-government is not retroactive.

In what promises to be a major milestone in more than two-and-a-half years of war, Russia is closing in on the capture of a vital industrial asset: a Ukrainian coal mine that’s a cornerstone of the country’s steel industry. 

Owned by Ukrainian firm Metinvest, the modern facility — opened in 1990 — is Ukraine’s largest mine for producing coking-coal, a specific grade used to fuel blast furnaces. It’s near the village of Udachne, about 10 kilometers west of the city of Pokvrosk, which is itself a key supply hub in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. Per the latest reports, the Russian army is reportedly just 8 to 12 kilometers east of Pokrovsk. Defensive lines have already been dug to Pokrovsk’s west, so Ukrainian units will have positions to drop back to if Pokrovsk falls.  

In an interview with The Economist, analyst Andriy Buzarov noted that the Russians don’t have to actually occupy the mine to remove it from Ukraine’s economic equation: They can do that by severing its power or destroying the principal road used to haul its product westward.  

Steel is one of Ukraine’s principal industries, accounting for about a third of exports before Russia’s invasion. At that time, Ukraine ranked 14th in global steel production; by last year, it had fallen to 24th place. This year, Metinvest expected to unearth 5.3 million metric tons of coal in the mine near Pokrovsk. 

Oleksandr Kalenkov, the head of Ukraine’s metals and mining industry lobbying group, explained the implications for the country’s steel industry when the mine falls under Russian control, telling Reuters it could slash projected 2025 steel production by upwards of 80%:

“We could make up to 7.5 million metric tons of steel by the end of the year and, for next year, we saw an increase in production to over 10 million, but if we lose Pokrovsk, then … we will fall to 2-3 million tons.”

It’s not just a matter of Ukraine switching to imports of the specialty-use coking coal. “We don’t know where to get coal if Pokrovsk is seized,” Urkraine coke association Ukrkoks head Anatoly Starovoit told Reuters. “It is difficult to bring it in by importing; today it is not so easy to bring it in by sea.” That’s because Ukraine’s ports are geared toward exports, to say nothing of military hazards. 

The handwriting was already on the wall...but Ukraine’s pending loss of this vital industrial asset will only accelerate growing Western resignation to the inevitability of a negotiated end to the bloody, US-led proxy war with Russia. 

Authored by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer via American Greatness,

Ronald Reagan’s query to the American people in his October 28, 1980, debate with incumbent President Jimmy Carter was so simple and so devastating that it is still employed today: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” While most Americans are far worse off today than they were four years ago, with rising prices, inflation, a hollow economy, and unchecked immigration, so too are the U.S., its allies, and its partner’s national security interests, which are far worse off than they were four years ago.

Four years ago, there was stability in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Now Europe’s “long peace,” that is, no major war in Europe since 1945, has been shattered by Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. This war has resulted in the deaths of over one million humans and the displacement of millions more. The Middle East is roiling with conflict due to Hamas’ October 7, 2023, unprovoked attack on Israel and its consequences—the Iranian-backed Houthis interdiction of international shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and ultimately unprecedented attacks from Iran against Israel with drones and missiles. The Indo-Pacific is rife with unrest principally due to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) hyper-aggression against key U.S. allies and partners like India, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and against the American people themselves.

The cause of this instability is the Biden-Harris administration’s ideological obsession to “manage America’s decline” and the subsequent policies they adopted in the last almost four years. The Biden-Harris administration failed to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This war is a humanitarian nightmare for all concerned; it is a stalemated conventional conflict, evincing an intensity of combat not seen in Europe since 1945. The war also entails the risk of nuclear escalation, the tremendous cost of which the U.S. and its NATO allies would not escape. In addition, this administration has fundamentally failed to support Israel by not holding Iran to account—even worse by providing Tehran the funding to expand their terrorism against Americans.

However, in the pantheon of Biden’s failures, it is towards the PRC that the Biden administration has made its greatest foreign policy fiascos. The Biden-Harris administration has continued the failed “Engagement” policies with the PRC that have aided the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at a time of great peril. The Biden-Harris administration ignores the existential nature of the CCP threat because it seeks to continue the Engagement school of thought through what we call the Biden-Harris administration’s “neo-Engagement” policy.

With the exception of the Trump presidency, Engagement has been the dominant U.S. approach to the PRC since Bill Clinton. It asserts that the PRC is not an existential threat to the U.S. Far from it—the Engagement school contends the Sino-American relationship should be cooperative. Any troubles may be addressed by more cooperation with the PRC and accommodation of the interests of the CCP to sustain that cooperation. In essence, the Engagers are appeasers. Unfortunately, their arguments are ubiquitous and dominate U.S. foreign policy toward the PRC. Engagement dominates Wall Street, foundations, think tanks, universities, media, Silicon Valley, K Street, major law firms, and government. Even after the fiasco of allowing a PRC intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance balloon to fly over the entirety of America and the conga line of Biden-Harris cabinet officials traveling to Beijing to kowtow before Xi Jinping, the nadir was the November 2023 meeting between Biden and Xi near San Francisco. Beyond the obsession by Biden-Harris to resume military-to-military exchanges despite the People’s Liberation Army’s increased threatening behavior, 400 of America’s richest business leaders attended a dinner with the PRC’s dictator—Xi Jinping. These “titans” of America’s economy gave the CCP dictator two standing ovations while Xi explained his vision of tyranny—on American soil—and how the American business elite could help him sustain it.

The failed Biden-Harris neo-Engagement policies have allowed the CCP to escape the costs of its many decades of misrule but also provided the window for the CCP’s hyper-aggression over the last four years. Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration has overseen and done nothing as the PRC built over 300 nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) silos in central and western China, upgraded the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) aboard their sea-based leg of their triad, expanded their ballistic missile submarine production facilities, and introduced a new nuclear bomber, the H-20. This aircraft very closely resembles the B-2 stealth bomber.  Additionally, the Biden-Harris regime has sat by as PLA Air Force H-6 bombers have for the first time flown nuclear bomber profiles with their Russian Long Range Aviation counterparts into the Alaskan Air Defense Identification zone.

By every metric, the CCP is flexing its strategic muscles by expanding its nuclear arsenal and strategic reach.  The PRC continues to agress relentlessly against U.S. national security interests. While the pace of their aggression is quickening, the Biden-Harris administration is cutting the size of the Department of Defense. For example, Biden-Harris continues to decommission more warships than it builds, as demonstrated by their Fiscal Year 2025 budget that procures just six warships, the lowest number of any budget submission since 2006.

This degradation of America’s maritime power is especially pernicious as the situation in the South China Sea, near Scarborough Shoal or Sabina Shoal, is dramatically worsening. Likewise, the PLA is increasing its pressure on Taiwan through unceasing operations to prepare for an invasion. In the past month, the PLAAF violated Japanese territorial waters for the first time ever. Moreover, the PLAN and Russian Navy sailed into the Gulf of Alaska, while it has been confirmed that PLA is supplying Russia with military weapons to aid Moscow in its war against Kyiv. There are also credible reports, including from the South Korean Minister of Defense, that the North Koreans are directly aiding the Russian war effort.

In his famous debate with Carter, Reagan also asked Americans if they believed America was as respected and whether America was as strong as four years ago. Once again, the answer to that question today is no. America was far more respected by its foes and was stronger four years ago than today. America was seen by its key allies in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific as a far better, more reliable, and more confident ally than today. The result is that a Harris presidency would continue these neo-Engagement policies to embolden enemies and continue to punish allies and partners. Only a Trump presidency will end failed policies of neo-Engagement and return the U.S. to the Reaganesque certainty of the previous Cold War that “the U.S. wins, the CCP loses.”

***

James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure. The views expressed are their own.