sHoTs fIReD!!!! or not, dorks CHRIS BRAY JAN 26

During the Great Depression, the Midwestern farm states witnesses a series of serious farmer rebellions, in some cases led locally and in some cases led by a firebrand named Milo Reno. Facing widespread foreclosures, farmers held “penny auctions” in which hundreds of men showed up to offer the bank a single penny when the auctioneer opened the floor for bids — the implied threat of hundreds of massed farmers preventing other people from bidding. In Plymouth County, Iowa, a judge who ignored the very large crowd of farmers in his courtroom and went ahead with a foreclosure order was dragged to the crossroads, beaten unconscious or close to it, and left in the road without his pants. And then, finally, we come to the great Iowa Cow War of 1931. State agricultural officials contained an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis by testing cows — and killing cows that tested positive. Farmers got partial reimbursement for the destroyed cattle, taking financial losses during a period when they were already in financial crisis. State veterinarians arriving at cattle farms with test kits were…not greeted warmly. At one farm, “Assistant Attorney General Oral Swift was threatened to be thrown into a horse tank. He did sustain cuts from being pushed into a barbed wire fence but was able to avoid taking the bath.” Facing vigorous resistance, the governor called out the Iowa National Guard, and the troops set up machine gun nests to control the movement of farmers. Infantrymen patrolled farm roads with fixed bayonets. And then: pretty much nothing. Read this account of the Cow War in Cedar County: “…the Cedar County Cow War of 1931 ended without bloodshed.” Because if you call out the Iowa National Guard in 1931, who is that? Where does the Iowa National Guard get troops? The most detailed account of the whole series of events that are collectively called the Cornbelt Rebellion describes Midwestern “rebel” farmers going down to the machine gun nests to drink coffee with their sons and brothers, the troops sent to put down their rebellion. The Iowa National Guard and the Nebraska National Guard suppressed farm rebels; the Iowa National Guard and the Nebraska National Guard were…Iowa and Nebraska farmers. No one was dumb enough to shoot anybody. So. There’s a bunch of dramatic wishcasting in the news and in social media this week about “Fort Sumter,” and I nominate Will Bunch for the Dumbest Columnist prize. But then there’s this, from actual Border Patrol agents: The people who wear Border Patrol uniforms at the Texas border don’t fly in from Brooklyn every morning to work their shifts. They live in Texas border towns, have families in Texas border towns, and know people who wear the uniform of the Texas National Guard. They’re not going to shoot their neighbors because halfwit figurehead Joe Biden bumblefucks up a totally preventable crisis. All the grunts on the alleged Second Civil War battlefield are on the same side. The gravest danger between them is a backyard cookout. If there’s shooting at Eagle Pass, somebody check on the location of the FBI jackasses who brewed up the “Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping.” I assert with confidence that no Texans want or intend to shoot each other over this crap. See also this comment on my last post. If a civil war starts, this probably isn’t the Fort Sumter. It’s probably where we see that the President of the United States wears adult diapers and should take a nap. Tell Me How This Ends is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Tell Me How This Ends. © 2024 Chris Bray 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

US vax rates dropping overall; US public trusts no "scientist" or group promoting "vaccination"; military officers…

US vax rates dropping overall; US public trusts no "scientist" or group promoting "vaccination"; military officers call for DoD accountability; 2/3 of Germany backs farmers; more states stand w/ Texas These and other signs of mass RESISTANCE have the WEF and WHO and "our free press" bemoaning the "disinformation" that they claim is putting all of US "at risk" (when that's what THEY'VE been doing) MARK CRISPIN MILLER JAN 26

Kari Lake Just Blew Up The Arizona GOP

A GOP state chairman admitted that if he exposed the corruption of GOP members "back East" he would likely be murdered by car bomb The former Arizona GOP Chairwoman, Kelli Ward, joined my TV show yesterday to discuss the bombshell audio leak that appeared to show current Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit trying to bribe popular political candidate Kari Lake from running for U.S. Senate. This audio was leaked to British media outlet Daily Mail and made headlines around the world. A day later, Jeff Dewit resigned as Arizona GOP Chairman. Michael Patrick Leahy told Steve Bannon that the National Republican Senatorial Committee, controlled by Mitch McConnell, was the group that had sent Jeff DeWit as a messenger. Leahy also said that Steve Daines was the senator in charge of that committee, and that Daines did not repond to a press request to confirm his involvement. Meanwhile, the fantastic journalist Rachel Alexander covered Kari Lake’s press conference on Rumble in a separate article you can find here. Finally, a very important detail missed in this story is that the GOP Chairman of Arizona was caught on audio admitting to Kari Lake that, if he went public with the corruption of high-ranking party members, he would likely be murdered by a car bomb. There’s a reason that this particular form of murder might resonate with my readers, and the name you’re looking for right now is: Harrison Deal. Harrison Deal was a young aide to U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, who died in a traffic crash on December 4th, 2020. Deal was dating Lucy Kemp, the daughter of Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, at the time of his death. The offical story of the accident is that “a flatbed truck hauling black plastic tubing struck his (Deal’s) vehicle from behind.” The problem with that story is that numerous witnesses to the accident have said that Deal’s car actually exploded. To add to the suspicious circumstances of Deal’s death, an agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation named James O’Sullivan died two weeks later — and he was thought to be involved in the Harrison Deal investigation. Was Jeff DeWit talking about Harrison Deal in the leaked audio? Was Jeff DeWit admitting to Kari Lake that Harrison Deal was killed by a car bomb? We may never know. One thing is for certain: the leaked audio of the GOP Chairman of Arizona trying to bribe Kari Lake proves beyond all doubt that high-ranking party members are installed through corruption, and that they fear being murdered if they conduct themselves honestly. The Arizona GOP is in big trouble. Support The Last Fearless Journalist! “Emerald Robinson is one of the most fearless and accurate reporters in America today.” — Gateway Pundit “She’s got balls made of titanium.” —Steve Bannon “There are a handful of heroes and heroines right now in history — and Emerald Robinson is one of them.” —Dr. Naomi Wolf “Emerald is truly one of the great conservative writers of our times. As funny as Mark Twain and as astute as Steve Bannon.” — Viktor K. “Some journalists write with pens, she writes with knives.” — Vicchus “You are the female version of Tucker Carlson. You have been prescient about so many things it's almost scary.” — F. Lawrence Coleman “You and Glenn Greenwald are the best in terms of current journalism. You and Lara Logan in terms of fearlessness!” — Mac T. “When all is said and done, Emerald is going to be hailed as this century's Edward R. Murrow.” - Don Reed Get 20% off for 1 year Emerald Robinson’s The Right Way © 2024 Emerald Robinson PO BOX 5222, Arlington, VA 22205 Unsubscribe

RNC Considering Draft Resolution to Declare Trump the Presumptive Nominee

Article by Arjun Singh from Daily Caller News Foundation cross-posted with permission. (DCNF)—The Republican National Committee (RNC) is considering a draft resolution that would declare former President Donald Trump the presumptive nominee of the party for the 2024 presidential election, according to The Dispatch. Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and recently won the first two primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Due to the large margin of his victory in those contests, as well as his significant lead in advanced polling in future contests ahead of his primary opponent, several members of the RNC are considering passing a resolution to declare him the presumptive nominee of the party, thereby enabling the party infrastructure to support his candidacy, according to The Dispatch. Pledge your support “RESOLVED that the Republican National Committee hereby declares President Trump as our presumptive 2024 nominee for the office of President of the United States and from this moment forward moves into full general election mode welcoming supporters of all candidates as valued members of Team Trump 2024,” reads the resolution, a copy of which was obtained by The Dispatch. The resolution is reportedly being proposed by David Bossie, an RNC Committeeman representing Maryland who recently endorsed Trump’s 2024 candidacy and served as his 2016 deputy campaign manager. The RNC will convene for its winter meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada from Jan. 30 to Feb. 4, where the resolution may be discussed. Trump’s primary opponent is former Republican Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, whose campaign dismissed the significance of the measure. “Who cares what the RNC says? We’ll let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who should be our party’s nominee, not a bunch of Washington insiders,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokesperson for Haley, in a statement reported by The Dispatch. “If Ronna McDaniel wants to be helpful she can organize a debate in South Carolina, unless she’s also worried that Trump can’t handle being on the stage for 90 minutes with Nikki Haley.” Were Trump to be declared the presumptive nominee, he would benefit from several resources usually available for general elections, such as voter data, fundraising opportunities with the party and ground operations support to turn out voters, CNN reported. Haley, by contrast, would not gain access to these resources, unless she were to obtain the nomination. The declaration does not obviate the requirement for Trump to obtain at least 1,215 pledged delegates across all 56 jurisdictions to win the nomination in a vote at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which will occur between Jul. 15 and Jul. 18. Trump currently has 32 pledged delegates from his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, while Haley has 18. Pledge your support All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The Liberty Daily is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell The Liberty Daily that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments. © 2024 The Liberty Daily 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe Get the appStart writing

Lawmaker who think it's OK to pass on AIDS wants to crack down on speeding TOM KNIGHTON JAN 26

When I was in the Navy, I was stationed for a time at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. I don’t remember most of my patients because, well, there were a lot of them, but one stood out. She changed my views on HIV and AIDS. See, before then, I always figured if you got it, you probably did something to get it. Sure, I knew about Ryan White getting it from a blood transfusion, but that had been addressed. Those cases weren’t happening anymore. Upgrade to paid Then I met a patient whose “sin” was to have sex with her husband. He’d screwed around on her while deployed on a Med cruise, then brought HIV home and passed it on to his wife. This young woman was dying, suffering in ways that were absolutely heartbreaking. Treating her was the toughest thing I did, and not because she was a bad patient. She wasn’t. Which is why a bill introduced by California state Sen. Scott Wiener bothered me so much. It removed a law making it a felony to knowingly pass HIV on to someone else. It became law, so people infected with the disease don’t have to tell potential partners, making it basically legal to infect someone with such a horrible ailment. Yes, that was back in 2017, but it pissed me off then and it still pisses me off. While people can live a long time with HIV today, it’s expensive and difficult. It negatively impacts your entire life, sidetracking many goals one might have including starting a family. But Wiener figures screw all that. Yet while he pushed through that, he’s now thinking that cars shouldn’t be allowed to speed. California Senator Scott Wiener is introducing a new set of bills to make streets safer across the state, including one that would change how you drive. It would require any new car or truck made or sold in the state in 2027 or later to have special technology installed in the car called "speed governors." The device would make it physically impossible for vehicles to go 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limits. "I don't think it's at all an overreach, and I don't think most people would view it as an overreach, we have speed limits, I think most people support speed limits because people know that speed kills," Wiener said. So does AIDS, you vacuous little toad, but you had no problem with a law enabling people to destroy others’ lives. But Wiener isn’t done there. Another part of the measure would require large trucks to install side guards to prevent pedestrians, cyclists, or other vehicles from getting sucked underneath the truck during a crash. Sen. Wiener says the bills are "commonsense actions" to protect public safety. "I think if you ask anyone, do people need to be driving more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, assuming you're not an emergency vehicle which are exempt from the bill, I think most people would say no, I don't want people driving more than 10 miles an hour in my neighborhood," he said. Actually, yeah, there are times people need to drive more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. That’s sort of beside the point, though, because all this will really do is drive up the costs of cars in California, push more people to buy used cars which are also likely to be less fuel efficient, or have people disable those governors as soon as they drive off the lot. I assure you, they can do it. Now, understand that speeding isn’t exactly a good practice, though I do plenty of it myself. But there are laws against such things. If they’re insufficient to prevent it, well, that’s the nature of laws. You punish people for violating the law, but since speeding comes with fines and higher insurance premiums, what you’re saying is that it’s legal for a price. And this bill won’t change that. It won’t make it so you have to decide if speeding is worth it. It simply puts a governor on your car that won’t let you speed. But which actual speed limit are we talking about? The interstate speed limit, for example, is completed different than the speed limit in a residential school zone. Or are the governors going to be dictated by some remote system, which is what it sounds like since it limits over the posted speed limit. I’m sorry, but that’s where any possibility of me not getting worked up about this ends. See, if they can control your maximum speed, then they can decide no one can drive anywhere for any reason. They can essentially post the speed limit at whatever they want and shut down your cars remotely. (And I’m wondering what happens when you’re on private land that has no posted speed limit.) That might not be what’s in the bill, but if the capability exists, someone will want to use it, and I find it unlikely the capability wouldn’t exist if the governors can detect posted speed limits somehow. And let’s remember how stupid California got during the pandemic. You know they’d shut down cars if they thought it was a way to make people stay home. Meanwhile, this is someone who seems to think that this is important legislation, that your need should be determined by the state but is totally OK with someone infecting another with a disease that is, at best, life altering without having to disclose that disease. The only thing consistent in the politics of someone like Wiener is their inconsistency. Tilting at Windmills is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for 15% off the first year or making a one-time donation here. Your support is greatly appreciated. Tilting At Windmills. © 2024 Tom Knighton 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

brutal, baby

brutal, baby this thing, this life is pretty brutal nothing’s certain, you know nothing that’s totally terrible and nothing that’s joyful as fuck nothing… uncertainty, baby is the rule so get your love on drip get it where you can wait a while till you can get your little sip … I heard there was this scientist up in Ottawa who tried to teach an octopus how to read —  he thought he could get it to communicate like how people do… well, no surprise, this ’pus went crazy, (well crazy for an octopus anyway, whatever that means) and used its newly developed cognitive ability to bust out of its own tank and set the lab on fire, nearly killing the scientist …later on they said it had developed a sort of telepathy, and the damn doctor knew about it and said nothing—it was like a sort of mind control ability trained into its highly complex distributed nervous system, all based on reinforcement and scheduled operant conditioning, you know, like stimulus-response B.F. Skinner-type shit, except like way more powerful—anyway, this is how it figured out how to get the lab’s artificial intelligence system to activate the Bunsen burners and blow the whole shit up… yeah, I know brutal, baby life is brutal even the cephalopods want to set it all aflame This poem is a little strange—it’s basically a rumination on the uncertainty of life punctuated by an absurd science fiction premise. Often when I’m free writing I’ll pull in references from a variety of media that I’m consuming at any given time. Whether it’s books, magazines, records, tv shows—you name it. It’s like cooking. Whatever ingredients you have on hand, you throw them in and see what happens. What must have happened here is I started a poem on how brutal and unpredictable life could be (you know, standard Franco Amati fare), and then I began reading this really retro science fiction story published in a very old issue of Galaxy Magazine. See, a while back I bought a stack of old back issues of random speculative fiction mags that are no longer in print. I sift through them from time to time. Sometimes for ideas. Sometimes to get a feel for how far we’ve come as genre writers. Anyway, it would take me forever to dig up the actual issue among my stacks of books and other useless shit. I’ll add an addendum later with the actual reference. But suffice it to say, I do remember this was a very pulpy story about a maniacal developmental psychologist who was trying to increase the intelligence of babies. And what ended up happening was one of the babies somehow became more than just intelligent—they gained some sort of telepathic-telekinesis or something. And then they began destroying the lab and getting revenge on the wicked scientist. So in this poem baby got substituted with octopus (because they’re way cuter, right?). What follows is the question of what would happen if you’re trying to expand the cognition of an already fairly intelligent animal. Octopi are already pretty smart. We just underestimate their intelligence because they look so different than us. And they live underwater, which necessitates a very different sort of cleverness than what we might express. Anyway, in my brutally twisted version, the Octopus goes all Stranger Things on papa scientist and chaos ensues within what would otherwise be a fairly standard Garbage Notes poem on the precariousness of life. We never know what’s going to happen when we try something. Whether we’re intentionally mucking around in places we shouldn’t or whether we’re playing it safe, going about our daily lives. You’re never immune to chaos. But if you’re good, you might just have a decent shot at writing about it. Franco Amati 2024 If you enjoyed this piece, a paid subscription would be the best way to show your support. But if you aren’t ready for that sort of commitment yet, you can always send me a one-time donation on my Ko-fi page. Garbage Notes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Garbage Notes. © 2024 Franco Amati 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

What is the Lighthouse

Hey friends and readers, I’ve been told that a post such as this is essential and I’ve been missing it, so here we go, let me tell you what you are in for when you sign up for my publication. First, a little bit about me. I grew up in Ukraine. My parents were both journalists and in our home all of the walls were literally bookshelves all the way up to the ceiling. From an early age I fell in love with books and writing. Upon moving to US in 2001 I faced some difficulties when it came to writing. A new language. After about 4 years here, I started my first ever novel in English. It was a medieval fantasy. Sadly the computer died and I lost it all. However, in the end I see this was part of building a stronger character of perseverance. During college years there was some turmoil and only after that I was back to writing again. In 2011 my first novel, Love in Ashes, came out. I had unrealistic expectations and learned another good lesson. Several books later, I was finally back to the medieval novel, The Last Wolf of Iralith. It was a work of labor, and my longest book, finishing it was like closing a certain chapter in my life. It was not until my 8th book that a real breakthrough happened. Paradise Harbour and its sequels got a traditional contract and became a fan favorite. Since that time I have reached total of 20+ books. There have been times when I thought I was done, but inspiration strikes suddenly and then I’m back at it. Now, writing is worth talking about in detail like that because this is a blog after all and I am a writer, but let me also tell you about what are the things actually most important to me as a person. Things I’m passionate about and what I love. I love my family and God above all else and that is my prime focus. At the end of the day, I could give up anything for them. I also love seeing small towns, going into nature, sitting in cafes, and running. I used to do professional photography and you can expect to often find photos I share in my Notes section. My other personal passion is Formula 1. That is pretty much the main thing on TV/Sports that I get excited to watch and to learn about. I also read a lot. These days it’s mostly books on faith, spirituality, psychology, society and wellbeing. Does all of this connect to the topics that you’ll see on the blog? Absolutely. I write about faith, relationships, spirituality, society, psychology and I also share my fiction works on here. Another thing I love to do is promote other writers and if you sign up you can sometimes expect to see me cross posts other people’s work. I believe helping others is an absolute must for me as an individual. If you like variety of works as described above, and to explore yourself and your relationships with the Divine, world and others, then this blog will be for you. My main goal on my blog is to make others think, become uplifted, defeat fears, find peace and confidence. I am a human being just like you and I share openly. Blessings and thanks for reading! Invite your friends and earn rewards If you enjoy Lighthouse , share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. Invite Friends © 2024 Alexander Semenyuk Yu2shine whole being center, 9269 Old Keene Mill Rd, Burke VA 22015 Unsubscribe

"The Situation is Hopeless but not Serious" A bit of Friday levity

The Viennese have an old saying: “Die Lage ist hoffnungslos aber nicht ernst.” This translates as “The situation is hopeless but not serious.” The origin of this saying has apparently been lost in the mists of time. I’ve heard it originated in the late spring of 1945, when the American and British armies were closing in from the west, the Soviet army was closing in from the east, and the city was bombed to smithereens. The government in Berlin sent a cable to a government office in Vienna, asking for a report on the situation (Lage). “Die Lage ist hoffnungslos aber nicht ernst,” came the droll reply. Bombing of Schönbrunn Palace, which had no military value. I was reminded of this old saying this morning after I posted an essay on the subject of RFK, Jr.’s 70th birthday celebration in Los Angeles. I proposed that Kennedy offered the prospect of moving forward, out of the dark chasm of partisan rancor in which our country has been stuck for many years. Judging by the reader comments, the political culture of the American Republic is now largely shaped by hot button issues. These are the following: 1). Gun control. 2). Abortion. 3). Israel Palestine conflict. 4). Environmentalism. 5). Hatred and desire for revenge against political opposition. The battle lines over these issues have been drawn, and there doesn’t seem to be much space for compromise or even civil discussion. The situation is hopeless but not serious. Share Upgrade to paid Courageous Discourse™ with Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake. © 2024 Peter McCullough MD MPH 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

IMPACT: The China Audit – Now Mandated Through The National Defense Authorization Act U.S. Senator Joni Ernst drafted and championed the China Audit, quantifying taxpayer dollars into China and virology labs.

Now, it’s the law of the land. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more IMPACT: The China Audit – Now Mandated Through The National Defense Authorization Act U.S. Senator Joni Ernst drafted and championed the China Audit, quantifying taxpayer dollars into China and virology labs. Now, it’s the law of the land. ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI JAN 26 architectural photograph of lighted city sky Photo by Li Yang on Unsplash In April 2023, my organization at OpenTheBooks.com partnered with U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) to quantify $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds flowing into the adversarial nations of Russia and China. Now, the research has informed a new law. Senator Ernst inserted language into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which was signed by President Joe Biden on December 22, 2023. The new law mandates an audit of China, its virology labs, and other dangerous labs from around the world. The study and report to Congress must be completed within 180 days. The law now directs the Pentagon to go back ten years and count all taxpayer money that flowed into the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party of China (CCP), EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, any labs similar to Wuhan that are run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and any other entities owned or controlled – officially or unofficially – by these groups. Then, the law goes a step further. The NDAA directs the Pentagon to quantify the dollars spent doing research on other dangerous viruses that have pandemic potential – not only in China, but also around the world. The result should be a list of viruses – think Ebola, Nipah, or influenza – and the countries we’re paying for dangerous research. Pledge your support Victory Following the endless controversy over the origins of the Covid pandemic, the new law is a dramatic victory. While Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health officials hemmed and hawed about the extent of their knowledge of such research, and played coy about how it’s defined, Americans were left in the dark. How much of this research is going on, who are we paying, and where is it happening? This law offers the chance for real answers. Transparency. A rare, concrete step toward understanding what may have happened with Covid, what the risks are going forward, and what we need to know about the costs and benefits of dangerous research. Share Background It’s amazing how fast federal agencies lose track of taxpayer money. Back in April 2023, OpenTheBooks auditors teamed up with Senator Ernst to find $1.3 billion flooding into China and Russia since 2017. However, those were only the funds that we could follow. After the government awards grants and contracts, recipients can pass funds to other entities – which are called subawards and subcontracts. Only some of these transactions are routinely reported, and any further sharing among the recipients disappears entirely. In fact, the Government Accountability Office concluded it would be impossible to create a full accounting of U.S. government cash going to Chinese entities. FURTHER READING: Washington has sent more than $1.3 billion to China and Russia. Who's following the money? | USA TODAY | U.S. Senator Joni Ernst & Adam Andrzejewski | June 28, 2023 In our audit of Russia/China monies, we found the usual silly spending of American tax dollars abroad. For example, there was an exhibition of New Yorker cartoons that promote gender equity in Communist China of all places. The National School Lunch Program inexplicably gave $1.6 million to Chinese grain exporters. But then there were more troubling things. The NIH spent $300,000 on ethics training for Chinese scientists through the Chinese equivalent of our Centers For Disease Control (CDC) – because Chinese scientists have a reputation for “research misconduct,” “neglect for human subjects” and “publication fraud.” Chinese vendors received $6 million to provide tech support for our military “deployment and distribution command” software. This mission critical software delivers equipment and supplies to anywhere around the world. These contracts happened despite warnings from the Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) about using Chinese IT companies on projects. Impact The Pentagon audit is a step toward finally getting answers as it relates to our national security. Secretary Lloyd Austin himself has called the pandemic a “national security threat.” If our tax dollars are currently funding more “gain of function” research in China, or elsewhere, that’s a revelation we as a country need to grapple with immediately. By producing a ten-year look-back, we’ll be able to follow the money, which projects and subagencies need greater oversight, and other actionable insights. Today, Senator Ernst and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) sent a letter to the DODIG, laying out exactly what’s now expected of the Pentagon. It’s time to get moving. NOTE: In 2023, Congress voted on seven amendments resulting from cited OpenTheBooks investigations. Five of those amendments passed and only two were defeated. Share Additional Reading Ernst, Gallagher Launch Investigation into U.S. Defense Dollars Diverted to China or Risky Research | Press Release, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst | January 25, 2024 Ernst, Gallagher Launch Investigation/Oversight Letter To DODIG | Sen. Joni Ernst & Rep. Mike Gallagher | January 25, 2024 Washington has sent more than $1.3 billion to China and Russia. Who's following the money? | USA TODAY | U.S. Senator Joni Ernst & Adam Andrzejewski | June 28, 2023 $1.3 Billion In U.S. Taxpayer Money Funded The Dragon (China) And The Bear (Russia) Since 2017 | OpenTheBooks.Substack | Adam Andrzejewski | July 31, 2023 Pledge your support About Us OpenTheBooks.com – We believe transparency is transformational. Using forensic auditing and open records, we hold government accountable. In year 2023, we filed 55,000 FOIA requests and successfully captured nearly all federal spending; 50 state checkbooks; vendor checkbooks from 17,000 municipal level governments; and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America. Our works have been featured at the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, C-SPAN, The New York Times, NBC News, FOX News, Forbes, National Public Radio (NPR), Sinclair Broadcast Group, Chicago Tribune & many others. Our organization accepts no government funding and was founded by CEO Adam Andrzejewski. Our federal oversight work was cited twice in the President's Budget To Congress FY2021. Andrzejewski's presentation, The Depth of the Swamp, at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar 2020 in Naples, Florida posted on YouTube received 4+ million views. NOTICE: We reserve the right to remove comments that deemed offensive to our organization, staff, and audience. Pledge your support You’re a free subscriber to OpenTheBooks. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. OpenTheBooks is a project of American Transparency, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Pledge your support © 2024 OpenTheBooks.com 3 Grant Square, #355, Hinsdale, IL 60521

Breaking News: South Africa (and Gaza, hopefully) Victorious at International Criminal Court ICJ'S Interim Ruling on the Ongoing Gaza Genocide

- Israel must halt attacks on Palestinians - Ensure humanitarian aid - Preserve evidence - Submit response to the court within 1 month Good for South Africa for boldly facing off to powerful and vicious Zionist forces! Obviously there are two powerful satanic enemies that don’t give a hoot about “law,” but, it seems international pressure is growing! We’ll see what happens, next. And protect the babies! Leave a comment Upgrade to paid It’s never too late to become a paid subscriber to support our work, or for a one time donation: We have different tiers of support: $5/month; $50/year, or $100 as a founding member. Upgrade to paid Checks/money/orders/cash/etc can be SNAIL-mailed to: Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, LLC PO BOX 6264, VACAVILLE, CA 95696 PayPal: cindysheehanssoapbox@gmail.com You’re currently a free subscriber to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Newsletter. © 2024 Cindy Sheehan PO Box 6264, Vacaville, CA 95696

The Anti-Democratic Movement Targeted Ralph Nader First.

We Should Have Paid More Attention The recent ballot access challenges, political investigations, and canceled primaries are just an extension of a phenomenon we should have seen coming twenty years ago In the summer of 2004 Theresa Amato, campaign manager of presidential candidate Ralph Nader, took out a notebook in preparation for an important phone conference. Her candidate, Nader, had already been subject to an extraordinary — and extraordinarily underreported — campaign of litigious harassment at the hands of the Democratic Party. John Kerry told Nader he had 2,000 lawyers at his disposal and would do “everything within the law” to win. In Arizona, Nader opponents filed a 650-page challenge to his attempt to get on the ballot, forgetting social justice concerns long enough to complain that one of Nader’s petition-circulators was a felon. They demanded ten samples of Nader’s own signature, hired a forensic examiner to call others into question, and challenged residents of a homeless shelter. The Democratic state chairman, Jim Pederson, said outright, “Our first objective is to keep [Nader] off the ballot,” because “we think it distorts the entire election.” Now, Amato’s candidate was set to talk with Democratic National Committee chairman (and future Virginia governor) Terry McAuliffe. A high-energy, Clintonesque schmoozer in public, McAuliffe in private was curt and to the point: he didn’t mind Nader running in noncompetitive places, but had an “issue” with 19 states where “a vote for you is a vote for [George] Bush.” He shifted with impressive nonchalance to offer a bribe. “If you stay out of my 19 states,” he said, “I will help with resources in 31 states.” McAuliffe then made a show of pretending to ask an assistant about other ballot challenges against Nader, saying he “supported them” but wasn’t funding them, a statement ultimately contradicted in court testimony by Maine’s State Democratic Party chair. This was just one of countless instances in which Democrats hurled billable hours at anyone deemed a “threat” to votes they considered theirs. In 2004, a third party needed to collect 634,727 valid signatures in about six and a half months to get on the ballot. If you’ve ever wondered why so few third-party candidates run, it’s because this is an extraordinarily difficult logistical task, and expensive, requiring services of companies that even then charged between $1.00 and $1.50 per signature. (Ross Perot reportedly spent $18 million to get on the ballot in 1992.) The process gets more cumbersome when you’re forced to account for “spoilage,” i.e. how many signatures you’ll lose in the face of challenges from a determined opponent, in Nader’s case from Democrats and affiliated groups. Nader lost signatures that were allegedly signed in the wrong county (an irony given recent events, as we’ll see), due to “unwritten rules” that a collector’s signature must be legible even if his or her name is printed underneath it, because signatories no longer lived at the addresses where they were registered, because signatures were printed instead of signed, because additional information like the date was included next to signatures, and so on, and so on, and so on. “We had more than two dozen lawsuits complaints filed against us in a massive effort to disenfranchise the people who wanted to see him on the ballot,” Amato says now. Amato later wrote a book, Grand Illusion, documenting the Democrats’ plan to keep Nader’s meager resources “tied up mentally, emotionally, and financially in courtroom after courtroom,” violating rules themselves while using the press to smear Nader as the cheat. “I wrote a whole book precisely because I didn’t want the history to be lost, of what the Nader campaigns went through,” she says now. A subtext of Grand Illusion is how Democrats showed great creativity when seeking ways to keep Nader off the ballot, but almost none when it came to examining possible reasons it might be underperforming. Kerry in 2004 was fatally flawed because he had no position on this central issue of the campaign, the Iraq war. He tried simultaneously to be against it (“Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions”) and for it (pledging to “hunt down and kill the terrorists”), while running all year from the fact that he voted for Bush’s war resolution. This complex non-position not only created a clear rationale for a third-party run in a year when support for the war dropped as low as 45%, it was a major factor in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 general election loss, when Donald Trump won 57% of military households vs Clinton’s 39%. Had the party shown a fraction of the backbone on the Iraq issue during the crucial October 2002 vote that it showed in bollocking Nader all through the 2004 cycle, it’s possible Trump never would have been president. Twenty years and multiple political upheavals later, the Democrats are taking the sabotage game it played in 2004 up a notch or ten. It’s taken the position that all of Joe Biden’s potential challengers within the party and without are, in effect, new Naders, whose presences are “distorting” the real election. The major difference between 2004 and now is that thanks to major changes in both the Democratic and Republican parties, current Democrats have the money and institutional capacity to attempt a legal campaign to “Naderize” even the likely GOP nominee, Trump, essentially seeking to ballot-block their way to victory. Democrats first disenfranchised internal party challengers like Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips, and (initially) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. through tactics like declaring the New Hampshire primary “non-compliant” and “meaningless” and canceling the Florida primary. Then, when Dr. Cornel West, Kennedy, and a new party called “No Labels” decided to seek third-party ballot access, money from LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, former “Right-wing hit man” turned Clintonian organizational assassin David Brock, and a group fronted by former presidential candidate Dick Gephardt was quickly deployed, leading to a meeting of Biden advocacy groups in which one of the participants warned potential third party entrants, “If you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it… We are going to come at you with every gun we can possibly find.” Lieberman on January 16th sent a separate letter to his former Senate colleague Biden, saying, “I respectfully ask you to help put an end to this shameful attempt to silence voters and prevent choice and competition in the upcoming election.” Obviously, this fell on deaf ears. Two days later word came out that American Bridge hired former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias to help “thwart” third-party bids. In essence, Democrats first prevented politicians or interest groups from attempting to influence their platform by running in primaries, then used scorched-earth tactics to head off potential third-party runs, leaving only the Republicans an alternative —except of course they’re using Death Star tactics to try to disqualify that party’s candidate, too. Amato’s Grand Illusion described the evolving hypocrisy, cynicism, and ruthlessness of the Democratic Party a dozen years before Trump. It’s a story to which we should have paid more attention, because the Sun Tzu tactics unveiled against Ralph Nader are now clearly the strategic model for the whole party. Had the Republicans not suffered a major intramural collapse in 2016, Grand Illusion today might read like a cautionary tale about the anti-democratic tendencies baked into the two-party system. The Republicans, after all, have their own history of ballot-pruning tactics, for example working behind the scenes to suppress the candidacy of Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2012. But since Trump steamrolled the GOP clown car in 2016, establishment politics has increasingly consolidated under the umbrella of the one party that (just barely) succeeded in fighting off its populist challenger, the Democrats. The return to the Democratic tent of once-hated neocons like Bill Kristol (who was reportedly in attendance at the anti-No Labels meeting described by Semafor) has helped revamp the blue-party institutional space into something like a permanent Washington-against-the-world war council, fueled by an aristocratic contempt whose intensity is almost beyond comprehension. These people reordered the geography of the world, blithely moved whole manufacturing sectors from one continent to another, started moronic wars that pointlessly killed millions and created millions more refugees, bailed out corrupt banks while whole regions went into foreclosure, and failed to accomplish much but a growing sense of foreboding and decline despite decades of promises to the contrary. Still, they feel sincere rage at the idea that they should have to earn votes. The special anger Nader inspired came from his refusal to just “send a message,” saying things like “Isn’t that what candidates try to do to one another—take votes?” when Democrats suggested he stop “taking” votes from Al Gore or John Kerry, and run in “safe” states only. Again, never mind that they could have altered their own fortunes easily by prioritizing voters over donors just a little more. In their minds, this was not Nader’s call to make. In the minds of early 2000s Democrats, voters never elected Republicans. Ralph Nader did. Headlines like “Ralph Nader Was Indispensable To The Republican Party” (HuffingtonPost) and “Ralph Nader Still Refuses to Admit He Elected Bush” (the indispensable Jon Chait of New York, who recently insisted Joe Biden’s 2020 election inspired the “greatest outpouring of joy since V-J day”) still trickle out, as reminders that such grudges are never forgotten. The hyper-combative, winning-is-everything mindset of the new “lawfare” era was probably born in that 2000 loss, a “direct outcome of the 2000 Nader campaign,” as Amato puts it. This is true even though, as Amato notes, there were eight minor candidates on the 2000 Florida ballot, and all eight got more than the infamous “margin of difference” of 537 votes. In the age of Nader, the rage was directed at anyone who suggested the Democrats should have to face competition from more than one direction. The updated idea in the Trump era is that they should not have to face competition at all. Back in 2016, when I disliked Trump enough to write Insane Clown President, I was still naive enough to puzzled by the stream of headlines describing his win as a “failure of democracy.” It was anything but. The presidency had long been stage-managed to absurdity, with candidates needing the backing of one of the two parties, the press, and corporate donors to gain the White House. The whole idea of this oligarchical ADT system was to guarantee the president arrived in the Oval Office a political debtor, while keeping anyone with aspirations to independence out. This was the clear lesson of the Nader episode. Trump broke through all these barriers as an unapproved “fringe” candidate, making his win an extraordinary blow for democracy, or so I thought, even though I couldn’t stand him. If he could win, anyone could, and this was good news for those of us who thought the system’s corrupt features might never be fixed. Looking back, it’s clear Trump’s unsanctioned run and win were the violations of “norms” Washington insiders were most furious about. Now, when politicians talk about protecting “democracy,” what they really mean is restoring those old barriers of entry. The problem is, voters are wise to the game now, forcing insiders to resort to ever-cruder mechanisms of control, like the ten million criminal indictments and the recent ballot disqualification attempts. If those efforts fail, even more extreme action is surely coming, and “protecting democracy” is the pitch they’ll use to sell it. All of this is will be justifed based on the idea that the Trump threat is so grave that taking so much as one vote from Democrats is criminal irresponsibility, not really morally different from marching for Hitler. Everything is permitted in the fight against Hitler, which is why the aforementioned Hoffman is the quintessential modern Democratic backer: loaded, thin-skinned, and eager to color outside lines. Vox in 2020 profiled him: Myopically focused on collecting the 270 electoral votes needed to defeat Trump… to win those votes, critics feel, Hoffman is willing to play dirty. Hoffman’s defenders see this agitation as worth it — and if Democrats win, it could validate a more provocative form of political combat. Of course no one goes into politics to lose, but if you don’t believe in letting voters decide, and winning becomes about something other than making the best argument or boasting the best record, you got lost somewhere along the line. We cheat when we think we deserve to win, no matter what, and our leaders have spent decades now talking themselves into this frame of mind. The entitlement disease was there all along. We should have seen the chaos of this year coming. Racket News. © 2024 Matt Taibbi 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Is the Electoral Fix Already In?

The 2024 presidential race increasingly looks like it will be decided by lawyers, not voters, as Democrats unveil plans for America's first lawfare election The fix is in. To “protect democracy,” democracy is already being canceled. We just haven’t admitted the implications of this to ourselves yet. On Sunday, January 14th, NBC News ran an eye-catching story: “Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House.” It described “a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers” that is “quietly” making plans to “foil any efforts to expand presidential power” on the part of Donald Trump. The piece quoted an array of former high-ranking officials, all insisting Trump will misuse the Department of Defense to execute civilian political aims. Since Joe Biden’s team “leaked” a strategy memo in late December listing “Trump is an existential threat to democracy” as Campaign 2024’s central talking point, surrogates have worked overtime to insert existential or democracy in quotes. This was no different: “We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, adding that Trump is “a clear and present danger to our democracy.” Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the advocacy groups organizing the “loose” coalition, said, “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy.” Declared former CIA and defense chief Leon Panetta: “Like any good dictator, he’s going to try to use the military to basically perform his will.” Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice and current visiting Georgetown law professor Mary McCord was one of the few coalition participants quoted by name. She said: We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to. The group was formed by at least two organizations that have been hyperactive in filing lawsuits against Trump and Trump-related figures over the years: the aforementioned Democracy Forward, chaired by former Perkins Coie and Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias, and Protect Democracy, a ubiquitous non-profit run by a phalanx of former Obama administration lawyers like Ian Bassin, and funded at least in part by LinkedIn magnate Reid Hoffman. The article implied a future Trump presidency will necessitate new forms of external control over the military. It cited Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s bill to “clarify” the Insurrection Act, a 1792 law that empowers the president to deploy the military to quell domestic rebellion. Blumenthal’s act would add a requirement that Congress or courts ratify presidential decisions to deploy the military at home, seeking essentially to attach a congressional breathalyzer to the presidential steering wheel. NBC’s quotes from former high-ranking defense and intelligence officials about possible preemptive mutiny were interesting on their own. However, the really striking twist was that we’d read the story before. Summer, 2020. The TIP media blitz. For over a year, the Biden administration and its surrogates have dropped hint after hint that the plan for winning in 2024 — against Donald Trump or anyone else — might involve something other than voting. Lawsuits in multiple states have been filed to remove Trump from the ballot; primaries have been canceled or invalidated; an ominous Washington Post editorial by Robert Kagan, husband to senior State official Victoria Nuland, read like an APB to assassins to head off an “inevitable” Trump dictatorship; and on January 11th of this year, leaders of a third party group called “No Labels” sent an amazing letter to the Department of Justice, complaining of a “conspiracy” to stop alternative votes. Authored by former NAACP director Ben Chavis, former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, former North Carolina Governor Dennis Blair, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Iran-Contra Special Counsel Dan Webb, the No Labels letter described a meeting of multiple advocacy groups aligned with the Democratic party. In the 80-minute confab, audio of which was obtained by Semafor, a dire warning was issued to anyone considering a third-party run: Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone — everyone — should send the message: If you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it… If you think you were vetted when you ran for governor, you’re insane. That was nothing. We are going to come at you with every gun we can possibly find. We did not do that with Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, we should have, and we will not make that mistake again. The Semafor piece offered a rare glimpse into the Zoom-politics culture that’s dominated Washington since the arrival of Covid-19. If this is how Beltway insiders talk about how to keep Joe Lieberman or Ben Chavis out of politics, imagine what they say about Trump? We don’t have to imagine. Three and a half years ago, in June and July of 2020, an almost exactly similar series of features to the recent NBC story began appearing in media, describing another “loose network” of “bipartisan officials,” also meeting “quietly” to war-game scenarios in case “Trump loses and insists he won,” as the Washington Post put it. That group, which called itself the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), involved roughly 100 former officials, think-tankers, and journalists who gathered to “wargame” contested election scenarios. The “loose” network included big names like former Michigan governor and current Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and former Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, who in his current role as special advisor to President Joe Biden overseeing the handout of roughly $370 billion in “clean energy” investments is one of the most powerful people in Washington. The TIP was hyped like the rollout of a blockbuster horror flick: In a second Trump Term, No One Will Hear You Scream… Stories in NPR, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and over a dozen other major outlets outlined apocalyptic predictions about Trump’s unwillingness to leave office, and how this would likely result in mass unrest, even bloodshed. A typical quote was from TIP co-founder, Georgetown law professor, and former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks, who told the Boston Globe that every one of the group’s simulations ended in chaos and violence, because “the law is... almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.” Podesta played Joe Biden in one TIP simulation, and in one round refused to accede to a “clear Trump win,” threatening instead to seize a bloc of West Coast states including California (absurdly dubbed “Cascadia”) and secede. Podesta’s “frankly ridiculous move,” as one TIP participant described it, was so over the top that a player leaked it to media writer Ben Smith of the New York Times. The latter in Timesian fashion stuck the seeming front-page tale near the bottom of an otherwise breezy August 2nd story titled, called “How The Media Could Get the Election Story Wrong”: A group of former top government officials called the Transition Integrity Project actually gamed four possible scenarios, including one that doesn’t look that different from 2016: a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat… They cast John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, in the role of Mr. Biden. They expected him, when the votes came in, to concede... But Mr. Podesta… shocked the organizers… he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College. In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr. Trump took office… News that Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief rejected a legal election result, even in a hypothetical simulation, was obvious catnip to conservative media, which took about ten minutes to repackage Smith’s story using the same alarmist headline format marking earlier TIP write-ups. Breitbart published “Democrats’ ‘War Game’ for Election Includes West Coast Secession, Possible Civil War,” and a cascade of further red-state freakouts seemed inevitable. “At that point,” says Nils Gilman, COO and EVP of Programs at the Berggruen Institute think tank, who served alongside Brooks as TIP’s other co-founder, “we decided we needed to be out about having run this exercise, to prevent the allegation that this was a ‘shadowy cabal’ — not that that narrative didn’t take hold anyways.” The final TIP report was released the next day, August 3rd, 2020. Titled “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition,” the full text was, as any person attempting an objective read will grasp, sensational. The Podesta episode was worse than reported, with the secession proposal coming on “advice from President Obama,” used as leverage to a) secure statehood for Washington, DC and Puerto Rico b) divide California into five states to increase its Senate representation, and c) “eliminate the Electoral College,” among other things. TIP authors also warned Trump’s behavior could “push other actors, including, potentially, some in the Democratic Party, to similarly engage in practices that depart from traditional rule of law norms, out of perceived self-defense.” More tellingly, there were multiple passages on the subject of abiding by and/or trusting in the law, and how this can be a weakness. TIP authors concluded that “as an incumbent unbounded by norms, President Trump has a huge advantage” in the upcoming election, and chided participants that “planners need to take seriously the notion that this may well be a street fight, not a legal battle.” They added the key observation that “a reliance on elites observing norms are [sic] not the answer here.” Asked about that passage, Gilman replied that it was “the right question,” i.e. “Why can’t we just rely on elites to observe/enforce norms?” Noting that two-thirds of the GOP caucus voted not to certify the 2020 election, he went on: “If I had had total confidence in the solidity of the institutions, I wouldn’t have felt the need to run the exercises.” This answer makes some sense in the abstract, but ignores the years-long campaign of norm-breaking in the other direction leading up to the TIP simulation. In the eight-plus years since Donald Trump entered the national political scene, we’ve seen the same cast of characters appear and reappear in dirty tricks schemes, many of which began before he was even elected (more on that below). The last time we encountered this “loose-knit group” story, the usual suspects were all there, and the public by lucky accident of the Smith leak gained detailed access to Democratic Party thinking about how to steal an election — if necessary, of course, to “protect the democratic process.” That incident acquires new significance now in light not only of this NBC story, but also the dismal 2024 poll numbers for Biden, a host of unusually candid calls for preemptive action to prevent Trump from taking office, the bold efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in states like Colorado and Maine, and those lesser-publicized, but equally important campaign to keep third party challengers like No Labels or Robert F. Kennedy from gaining ballot access in key states. The grim reality of Campaign 2024 is that both sides appear convinced the other will violate “norms” first, with Democrats in particular seeming to believe extreme advance action is needed to head off a Trump dictatorship. Such elevated levels of paranoia virtually guarantee that someone is going to cheat before Election Day in November, at which point the court of public opinion will come into play. The key question will be, who abandoned democracy first? The TIP report provided an answer. It contained long lists of theoretical Trump abuses that sounded suspiciously more like the extralegal maneuvers already deployed against Trump dating back to mid-2016, particularly during the failed effort to prosecute him for collusion with Russia. Interpreted by some as a literal plan to overturn a legal Trump victory, its greater significance was as a historical document, since it read like a year-by-year synopsis of all the home team rule-breaking. In other words, the TIP read like a Team Clinton playbook, only with hero and villain reversed. Bearing in mind that many of the people involved were also Russiagate actors, here’s a abbreviated list of abuses the TIP authors supposedly feared Trump would commit: “The President’s ability… to launch investigations into opponents; and his ability to use Department of Justice and/or the intelligence agencies to cast doubt on election results or discredit his opponents.” It’s true a president so inclined can do these things, and possible a re-elected Trump might, but they were clearly done first to Trump in this case. The FBI’s road-to-nowhere Crossfire Hurricane probe of Russian collusion, which made use of illegally obtained FISA surveillance authority, began on July 31, 2016. Trump opponents have been “launching investigations” really without interruption ever since, with many (including especially the recent Frankensteinian hush-money prosecution) obviously politicized. Likewise, the office of the Director of National Intelligence published an Intelligence Community Assessment in early January 2017, again before Trump’s inauguration, that used information from the bogus Steele dossier to conclude that “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” If that isn’t using intelligence agencies to “cast doubt on election results,” what is? Worse, the trick would be repeated, over and over: “The President and key members of his administration can also reference classified documents without releasing them, manipulate classified information, or selectively release classified documents for political purposes, fueling manufactured rumors.” This phenomenon also began before Trump’s election, notably with the story leaked on January 10, 2017, about four “intel chiefs,” including FBI Director James Comey, who presented then-President-elect Trump with “claims of Russian efforts to compromise him,” including the infamous pee tape. “Selective” release of “classified documents” then continued through the Trump presidency. Other incidents involved the “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” story (February 2017), a Washington Post story about Jeff Sessions speaking to the Russian ambassador (March 2017), the (incorrect) story about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen being in Prague (April 2018), the infamous “Russian bounty” story (June 2020), and many, many, others. Podesta himself participated in one of the first and most damaging “manufactured rumor” episodes, beginning in late 2016, involving the use of the Elias-commissioned Steele dossier to illegally obtain a FISA warrant on former Trump aide Carter Page. Podesta, who of course knew the real source of the story, reacted to it as if it was news generated by government investigators and publicly derided Page as a Russian cutout, before adding that the 2016 election “was distorted by the Russian intervention.” This was a textbook example of using “manufactured rumors” from intelligence agencies to “cast doubt” on election results as you’ll find. “Additional presidential powers subject to misuse include… his ability to restrict internet communications in the name of national security.” As for restricting internet communications “in the name of national security,” Racket pauses to laugh. The growth of state-aided censorship initiatives like the ones we studied all last year in the Twitter Files began well before Trump’s election, for instance with the creation in Barack Obama’s last year of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which later worked with Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership to focus heavily on posts deemed to be attempts at “delegitimization” in the 2020 election. Stanford’s group even flagged a story about the TIP in its final report as “conspiracy theory.” Not to say that these bureaucracies couldn’t be abused by a second Trump administration, but so far they’ve been a near-exclusive fixation of Democratic politicians and security officials. There’s a reason Joe Biden is the only candidate slated to enjoy a censorship-free campaign season, while Trump and third-party challenger Robert F. Kennedy have been repeatedly removed or de-amplified from various platforms. “There is considerable room to use foreign interference, real or invented, as a pretext to cast doubt on the election results or more generally to create uncertainty about the legitimacy of the election.” This may have been the most amazing line in the TIP report, given that the entire Trump presidency was marked by stories like “How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump” (New Yorker) “Did Russia Affect the 2016 Election? It’s Now Undeniable” (Wired), “Russia ‘turned’ election for Trump, Clapper believes” (PBS), “Yes, Russian Election Sabotage Helped Trump Win” (Bloomberg), and a personal favorite, “CIA Director Wrongly Says U.S. Found Russia Didn't Affect Election Result” (NBC). There was so much “Russia hacked the election” messaging between 2016 and 2020, in fact, that our Matt Orfalea made two movies about it. Here’s one: In the 2018 midterm elections, officials warned that Russia was going to “attack” the congressional vote. Stories like “U.S. 2018 elections ‘under attack’ by Russia” (Reuters) and “Justice Dept. Accuses Russians of Interfering in Midterm Elections” (New York Times) were constants, until the Democrats retook the House in a “blue wave,” at which point headlines began saying the opposite (“Russians Tried, but Were Unable to Compromise Midterm Elections, U.S. Says” from the Times was a typical take). The TIP was written during a repeat version, as stories like “Lawmakers are Warned that Russia is Meddling to Re-Elect Trump” (New York Times) were near-daily fixtures in 2020 pre-election coverage. After Biden won, headlines like “Putin Failed to Mount Major Election Interference Activities in 2020” again became fixtures in papers like the Washington Post. This brings us to the last and most controversial angle on the TIP report. When the original TIP text came out, Michael Brendan Daugherty in National Review wrote in an offhand tone that he got the feeling “some progressives are steeling themselves for a Color Revolution in the United States,” because winning a normal election “just isn’t cathartic enough.” To this day, the color revolution idea makes TIP organizers laugh. “The idea that some rando in Los Angeles,” Gilman says, referring to himself, “was secretly planning a color revolution (which he published a report about months in advance, which you gotta admit is a pretty weird move for a guy allegedly plotting a revolution) is a textbook example of Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style.” Brooks is also incredulous, saying the color revolution thesis is a “profound misunderstanding” of the TIP report. “They aren’t plans or predictions, they’re efforts to understand how things might play out,” she wrote, adding that the TIP participants were merely asking, “What could go wrong?” They may have asked that. Still, the group’s final report contained a string of references to “plans and predictions,” with entries like “Plan for a contested election,” “Plan for large-scale protests,” and “Make plans now for how to respond in the event of a crisis.” As for the “profound misunderstanding,” Brooks gave a friendly interview to a New York Times writer who was apparently laboring under the same “profound” delusion. Weeks after the National Review piece, Michelle Goldberg in the Times wrote of Daugherty: “He’s right, but not in the way he thinks.” She explained that Democrats don’t relish the thought of an uprising, but look upon it as something to be dreaded, that “must nonetheless be considered.” She then quoted Brooks. The Georgetown professor, who in her most recent book about life in the Defense Department described getting “a coveted intelligence community ‘blue badge’” to pass into “the sacred precincts of the CIA,” told Goldberg that in the event of a Trump power grab, “the only thing left is what pro-democracy movements and human rights movements around the world have always done, which is sustained, mass peaceful demonstrations.” That did sound like a description of the Eastern European color revolutions, which generally involved mass street actions, sustained negative press pressure, and calls by NGOs and outside countries for the disfavored leader to step down. A major reason the “color revolution” theme struck commentators in connection with TIP had to do with the presence in the TIP simulation of Barack Obama’s former chief ethics lawyer, Norm Eisen. Eisen wrote a manual called The Democracy Playbook for the Brookings Institution that is often referred to as the unofficial how-to guide for America-backed regime-change operations abroad. Anyone who’s been forced to read a lot of “democracy promotion” literature, as I had to in Russia, will recognize familiar themes in the TIP report. One of the controversial features of “color revolution” episodes is that the U.S. has at times supported ousters of perhaps unsavory, but legally elected, leaders. Was the TIP group contemplating the “sustained” protest scenario only in the event of Trump stealing an election, or if he merely won in an unpleasant way, i.e. via the Electoral College with a popular vote deficit? Brooks at first indicated she didn’t understand the reference. “I am not sure what the question is?” she wrote. “Peaceful protests, mass or otherwise, are constitutionally protected.” I referred back to the Times piece and the “movements around the world” quote, noting that while those outcomes might arguably have been desirable, it’d be hard to call them strictly democratic. “I am not an expert on the color revolutions,” she replied. “It is certainly true that on both left and right, in both the US and abroad, there are nearly always... I guess I’d say spoilers, or violence entrepreneurs — who try to hijack peaceful protest movements.” Lastly: one TIP simulation also predicted, with something like remarkable anti-clairvoyance, that Trump would contrive to label Biden supporters guilty of “insurrection” for protesting a “clear Trump win”: The Trump Campaign planted agent provocateurs into the protests throughout the country to ensure these protests turned violent and helped further the narrative of a violent insurrection against a lawfully elected president. That passage was published on August 3, 2020, long before most Americans knew or cared that the word “insurrection” had political significance. We’d be instructed in its use within hours of the riots, when Joe Biden said, “It’s not protest. It’s insurrection,” and everyone from Mitt Romney to Mitch McConnell to media talking heads to the authors of the articles of impeachment like Jamie Raskin fixated on the word. Still, not until December 2021 did a public figure explain how the 14th Amendment might be deployed strategically in the post-January 6th world. The insight came from Elias, who has since deleted the tweet: We’re of course now seeing that litigation, notably in the form of a Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Trump from the ballot, which was handed down after complaints filed citing the 14th Amendment provision alluded to by Elias. All this is laid out as background for the coming nine months of campaign chaos, if we even end up having a traditional campaign season. Revolt of the Public author and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri summed up the situation in a piece for The Free Press titled “Trump. Again. The Question is Why?” The money quotes: The malady now exposed is this: the elites have lost faith in representative democracy. To smash the nightmare image of themselves that Trump evokes, they are willing to twist and force our system until it breaks… The implications are clear. Not only Trump, but the nearly 75 million Americans who voted for him, must be silenced and crushed. To save democracy, it must be modified by a possessive: “our democracy.” The Biden campaign, stuck in a seemingly irreversible poll freefall, has put all its rhetorical chips on the theme of “protecting democracy.” Biden mentions Trump’s “assault on democracy” at every opportunity, and even recently resorted to Apollo Creed-style imagery, campaigning at Valley Forge flanked by a dozen American flags and red, white, and blue lights. (Red-and-white striped trunks can’t be far off.) The DNC’s daily “talkers” memos for months have asked blue-party pols and friendly reporters to stress “the existential threat to freedom and democracy that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent,” while pointing to stories like Vanity Fair’s, “There Is No ‘Both Sides’ to Donald Trump’s Threat to Democracy,” in its CONTENT TO AMPLIFY section. The DNC’s “talkers” mailers This messaging would likely have worked after January 6th, when Trump’s post-electoral conduct rankled voters, as evidenced by an exit approval rating of 34%. It can’t now, since the word “democracy” has been appropriated to refer exclusively to the party that declared its New Hampshire primary “non-binding” and “meaningless,” canceled its Florida primary, is preparing mass technical challenges against third-party challengers like No Labels or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (and has a rich history in that area; see accompanying Nader ... Isobel83 (40) < 10 mi.

Weekly Digest: The Gender Political Divide

Steep fall in white military recruitment, unstable childhoods, abusive mothers and more in this week's roundup. Welcome to my weekly digest for January 26, 2024, with the best articles from around the web and a roundup of my recent writings and appearances. My new book Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture, will be officially released on Tuesday. For those of you who haven’t pre-ordered it already, there’s still time - and I still need your help in getting those pre-sale numbers up to help maximize the book’s impact. If you aren’t yet sold, check out the first review of the book, which is out in Religion Unplugged. It’s also your last chance to get some free bonus content for pre-ordering. You’ll also get a free ebook copy of my modern English translation and adaptation of John Owen’s Puritan classic The Mortification of Sin, and a one page chart summing up my three worlds model and more. To claim your free loot, click over to my publisher’s web site. The Gender Political Divide The Financial Times has a great piece today on the growing gender divide in politics among Gen Z and younger Millennials Here’s the money chart: What’s interesting here is that while young men have become more conservative, except in South Korea, they are not really conservative on net. As I discussed in newsletter #75, South Korea has an extremely toxic gender divide. Other countries are moving in that direction, however. NEWSLETTER Newsletter #75: The Toxic Reality of a Post-Familial Society AARON M. RENN · APRIL 17, 2023 Newsletter #75: The Toxic Reality of a Post-Familial Society Welcome back to my monthly longform newsletter. This is always free, but you can get access to additional exclusive content, podcast and interview transcripts, commenting privileges, and access to th… Read full story From the FT: In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up. Germany also now shows a 30-point gap between increasingly conservative young men and progressive female contemporaries, and in the UK the gap is 25 points. In Poland last year, almost half of men aged 18-21 backed the hard-right Confederation party, compared to just a sixth of young women of the same age. Outside the west, there are even more stark divisions. In South Korea there is now a yawning chasm between young men and women, and it’s a similar situation in China. In Africa, Tunisia shows the same pattern. Notably, in every country this dramatic split is either exclusive to the younger generation or far more pronounced there than among men and women in their thirties and upwards. Upgrade to paid White Americans Bailing Out of the Military A Military.com article on the steep decline in white military recruitment generated a lot of discussion last week. The Army's recruiting of white soldiers has dropped significantly in the last half decade, according to internal data reviewed by Military.com, a decline that accounts for much of the service's historic recruitment slump that has become the subject of increasing concern for Army leadership and Capitol Hill. … A total of 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white in 2018, but that number has fallen consistently each year to a low of 25,070 in 2023, with a 6% dip from 2022 to 2023 being the most significant drop. No other demographic group has seen such a precipitous decline, though there have been ups and downs from year to year. By my calculation, that’s a 43% decline in white enlistment since 2018. If there’s one area where the system is still heavily dependent on human capital from red America, it’s the military. The US military still needs conservative white kids who are willing to die or get maimed in the service of the goals of elites who hate them and their values. Presumably many of these folks avoiding the military are conservative evangelicals. Believe me, the word is out that the military is not what it used to be and a hostile space for conservatives. When I’ve raised this point at conferences in the last couple years, I’ve been amazed how many former service members told me they are recommending against the military. That even includes former special forces guys. Back in November I noted an Army ad that featured traditional military values and an all white cast. They clearly know they have a huge problem and are trying to dupe young white men about what they are actually about these days. Best of the Web In a follow-up to last week’s digest, there were a slew of additional articles published about polyamory this week in the NY Post, USA Today, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and probably other that I missed. Richard Reeves: The case for male spaces - I was very pleased to see Reeves come out in favor of this. Zach Goldberg at the Manhattan Institute posted this interesting chart of sex differences in “big five personality traits and their facets.” WSJ: How Should We Treat Abusive Mothers? That mothers sometimes harm or even kill their children is simply too shocking for many of us to bear. Yet we miss the chance to protect future victims when potential abusers pass unnoticed because they defy the stereotype. Opportunities for rehabilitation are also lost when abusive women are regarded as wicked villains who are beyond help. Women, of course, are too complicated to be pigeonholed as either selfless caregivers or heartless monsters. As the Gypsy Rose Blanchard story makes plain, our idealization of motherhood and reluctance to see women as abusers can harm both perpetrators and victims. Rob Henderson: Being Poor Doesn't Have the Same Effect as Living in Chaos - Not only is this a great newsletter on its headline topic, it is really great in talking about the role of genes and the environment. There’s a big section of the online right that wants to reduce everything to genes. But even in a purely Darwinian context, genes are about fitness in a particular environment. Hence, even if genes are important, the environment can be ultimately determinant of many outcomes. He uses the great example of obesity, which is clearly heavily influenced by genes. But obesity soared at a rate that can’t be explained by changes in genes, showing that changes in the environment must be the primarily cause. WSJ: Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Value of College NYT: When Public Health Loses the Public American Mind: Jesus Christ, Jordan Peterson - What does Jordan Peterson actually believe? American Reformer: What is education really for? This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid New Content and Media Mentions I was a guest on the Two Mikes podcast this week, talking about all things Carmel, Indiana. My podcast guest this week was Alexandra Hudson, talking about her new book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. You can subscribe to my podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. New this week: I’m Not Worthy of This Woman (paid only) - Keeping telling your wife she was a chump for marrying you, and don’t be surprised if she starts believing it. Christians Are Not Being Persecuted in America - But That Doesn't Mean All Is Well - Evangelicals need to understand the actual dynamics occurring in the United States Post-Script Aaron Renn. © 2024 Urbanophile, LLC 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

America This Week, January 26, 2024: "The Barbed Wire Episode"

Walter and Matt discuss the Texas border standoff and the growing elite reaction against populist complaints. Also, "The Kugelmass Episode," by Woody Allen

Friday Thread! Show Us One from Your Archive!

Last week’s Office Party is still going! Let’s do it again… So often, our archives are neglected. All those posts only our earliest subscribers have seen. Pick one of your favorite posts from your archive and show us! Here’s how this works: In all caps, write the TOPIC of the archived post. Headline URL What it’s about in one sentence. Tell us why you chose it. *If it’s paywalled, un-paywall it for us just for a week. Then: Find someone else’s post in this thread that looks interesting (someone you haven’t met). Tell them if you’re going to read. Read it and respond to it in the comments of the post. Restack! Be sure to tag the Substack author in your restack. This is about making new connections and championing each other. The more we interact, the more the algorithm notices, and the more visible we all become. It’s brilliant! (Notice this is Office Party rather then Office Hours but feel free to ask any questions!) © 2024 Sarah Fay 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 (She doesn't know then from than)

Friday Music Post Because it's Friday and I want to listen to some music

Are you tired of pretty much everything? Had it up to here with all this nonsense? Yeah, me too! So here’s some music I’ve been listening to lately to forget that the world is the way it is. Maybe it’ll help you too. WARNING: SOME OF THESE SONGS HAVE BAD WORDS IN THEM Idles, “Gift Horse” The less I understand these guys, the more I like them. Craziest grocery store ever. Or whatever they call it in England. They’ve got different names for everything over there. They’ve got a new album coming out on Feb. 16. It’s called Tangk, after the way their guitars sound. I’m just glad there are still bands like this out there. Not everything in 2024 is Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, or some awful rapper who wasn’t even born yet when Run-DMC killed it. Speaking of bad rappers… Lil Dicky, “HAHAHA” Hey, have you ever heard of the Joker? This guy has! Lil Dicky isn’t my favorite rapper ever (that would be ODB, RIP), but his Hulu show Dave is pretty funny. And he’s a great 21st-Century success story. Within 10 years, he’s gone from posting his own funny music videos to hanging out with Brad Pitt and basically daring DC Comics to sue him. God bless America! The Chats, “I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub in Brisbaine” This is a couple years old, and I don’t drink anymore, but it’s loud and it’s got a funny title and the guitarist looks like Stavros Halkias. Just basic, balls-to-the-wall punk from some snotty Australian drunks. Seems like the Aussies have more interesting music down there than we do these days. Maybe it’s the heat? Do they just go crazy? ZOMBI, “The Post-Atomic Horror” This is one of those bands that makes music that sounds like a schlocky ‘80s action movie soundtrack. Which is like a whole genre now. This is going on my “Writin’ Music” playlist. Propulsive, no lyrics. Perfect. Diamante, “1987” This little lady wasn’t even born yet in the year she’s singing about, but she’s absolutely correct to be nostalgic. The 1980s were the greatest decade in human history and it’s not even close.¹ And speaking of the greatest decade ever… KMFDM, “Airhead” Hey, remember these guys? I really like their latest, and the video somehow manages to compress my entire childhood into less than 5 minutes. Kinda sounds like a Garbage song from 1996. That’s a compliment, by the way. And as long as I’m feeling nostalgic, here’s one from around that time… David Bowie, “I’m Afraid of Americans” I hear ya, Dave. And finally… Tom MacDonald (feat. Ben Shapiro), “Facts” I’ve been following Ben Shapiro’s rap career for years, and this is his hottest banger yet. Apparently that other guy is Canadian. But I kinda like him anyway... © 2024 Jim Treacher 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Defame and Punish How left-wing NGOs mobilize private and public assets to silence critics.

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project recently procured a cache of government documents that expose a disturbing pattern: left-wing NGOs seeking to mobilize the state against political opponents on specious accusations of “violent extremism.” According to the report, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urged Washington State’s “unified counterterrorism” center to investigate me, Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, and social-media influencer Libs of TikTok, under the false pretext that our reporting on gender theory in schools and transgender medical interventions constitutes “hate,” “extremism,” and “violence.” The campaign to mobilize law enforcement against critics of gender ideology or critical race theory is not a limited affair. The ADL and a related organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), have developed it as a scalable, repeatable tactic to silence political opponents. The playbook is simple. The SPLC and ADL paint a target on an individual critic, then mobilize a decentralized network of private and public assets to degrade, censor, and punish that target. On the private side, the groups activate left-wing journalists to smear the target in the press, demand that social media companies censor the target’s online speech, and encourage left-wing editors to denigrate the target on his Wikipedia page. On the public side, the groups send notices to state and federal law enforcement, hoping to mobilize the government to open investigations and intimidate critics with the threat of state repression, even incarceration. Sometimes it works. The SPLC and ADL have damaged the reputations of innocent journalists, driven negative media coverage against mainstream conservative groups, and influenced social media firms’ censorship policies. Seeing the success of this model, other left-wing pressure groups have followed suit, demanding full-scale state repression. The National School Boards Association, for example, persuaded the Biden administration to mobilize the FBI’s counterterrorism division against parents who opposed critical race theory. How are groups such as the SPLC and ADL able to call upon such a wide range of assets? By exploiting their reputations for being honest brokers. The SPLC and the ADL have been able to trade on their supposed moral authority on racism and anti-Semitism to silence critics of social-justice politics. Both organizations have abandoned their original, limited missions in favor of becoming general-purpose attack machines for the Left. The SPLC and ADL’s crusade against “anti-LGBTQ+ hate,” for example, has nothing to do with racism, poverty, or the South, nor with anti-Semitism or defamation of Jews. Fortunately, the public can increasingly see through these attempts to destroy the reputations of conservative commentators and reach its own independent judgment about the merits of each case. The SPLC and ADL’s recent campaign against “anti-LGBTQ+ hate” provides a good illustration. Despite the hyperbolic rhetoric, a thoughtful observer can rapidly discern that the predicate of the campaign is false. Critics of gender ideology, pornography in schools, and child sex-change interventions are not motivated by hate, nor are they advocates of violent extremism. In fact, if one must pin labels of hate, violence, or extremism on one faction in this debate, the charges should be reversed. Gender ideologues, not their critics, promote the hatred of biological reality, disseminate extreme ideological and pornographic literature in classrooms, and advocate for (and perform) violence on children’s bodies. There may, however, be a limit to the SPCL and the ADL’s approach. Though the organizations accumulated prestige over the decades, their authority appears to be waning. At one time, inclusion on the SPLC’s “Hatewatch” list was a death sentence for an organization or individual’s public reputation. Likewise, in the past, if the ADL accused a public figure of anti-Semitism, the consequences would be severe and instantaneous. No longer. As these organizations devolve into partisan entities, defaming innocent people, they have lost their former power. Now, public figures can simply ignore them or counterattack, at a rapidly diminishing cost. Critics should work to accelerate the delegitimization of left-wing pressure groups. These organizations should not have the power to hurl slander without consequences, nor should they be seen as trusted sources for censorship and law enforcement policies. If these groups resume a focus on fighting legitimate instances of racism and anti-Semitism, they will find broad support. If they proceed in their devolution into left-wing smear machines, they will continue to degrade their reputations to a point of total ineffectiveness. The choice is theirs. Christopher F. Rufo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Christopher F. Rufo. © 2024 Christopher F. Rufo 5114 Point Fosdick Dr., Suite F #3001 Gig Harbor, WA 98335-1733

Note to Readers: On the Border Protests I may want to travel to cover the "Take Our Border Back" convoy for Racket.

Readers may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet lately, trying to finish today’s articles. With that done, I’m headed back out on the trail, with South Carolina planned next. However, the standoff in Texas is interesting, and the “Take Our Border Back” convoy protest sounds like something I may want to report on in person. If you know anyone who’s planning to go and doesn’t mind a having journalist tag along for a leg, please let me know. I want more watch-and-see in Racket this year, and though the campaign will provide plenty of that, there are other things happening. In either case, thanks for your time.

Capitol Hillsong The Friday Pillar Post

Happy Friday friends, I’m feeling pretty much like the world could end at any time. That might seem a little bit dramatic, I’ll concede that up front. And where I’m going with this is going to strike some of you as silly and overwrought. But I’m mostly serious. Just hear me out. I started the week ranting to the Mrs. about this shiny new breed of AI software that allowed a speech at Davos, delivered in Spanish by the Argentine president, to be seamlessly and simultaneously rendered into English, in his own voice and accent, with his mouth augmented to fluently fit the translation. Argentine president Javier Milei, sans chainsaw. If we can do this, I said, we can never know what’s real again unless we see it with our own eyes. Right on queue, a story out of New Hampshire detailed how an AI prank call had gone out on polling day, with the voice of Joe Biden telling voters that it was all a bunch of malarkey and they should stay home. Harmless enough in the grand scheme of things, but I think this is just the beginning. Imagine that shortly after Election Day in November the result is in dispute, subject to recounts and court cases. Now imagine a fake “leaked” video emerges, appearing to show Donald Trump saying he wants his supporters to march on Washington to storm the Supreme Court, or seize the White House. Or one appearing to show Kamala Harris discussing Biden’s mental state and her intention to invoke the 25th Amendment in the first weeks of a new term. How many minutes on TikTok would it take for any of that to go viral, and at what consequence? Would any denial or any debunking be enough to convince even half the country that something like that was fake — and which half? What are the odds it would occasion an actual riot, and then counterriots? Let’s dial the stakes up higher. Let’s say the deepfake is of the Ukrainian president saying something truly outrageous, like his special forces are smuggling a suitcase nuke into Moscow — what do you suppose the Russians would justify doing with that? And what response could or would the West deploy? The people who do the Doomsday Clock set the time at 90 seconds to annihilation this week. It’s an alarmist PR stunt, to be sure. But even a fake clock can tell the right time once in a while. I don’t have a plan to mitigate any of this, by the way. But neither does anyone else — and there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency around it either. That’s what I find really frightening. I’m aware this is a bit full on for an opening. I’m sorry about that. By way of an apology, and a palate cleanser, here’s an archive video of the BBC interviewing a man as he sets a world record for putting live ferrets down his trousers. Enjoy that. Then, here’s the news. Share The News The German bishops are worried, very worried, about the rise of the new right in their nation’s politics. Some of them are even taking to the streets. As Luke described in a really interesting analysis this week, the country’s Rechtsruck, or rightward shift, dates back years and has its roots in several different social realities and political events. And, as Luke reports, supporters of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party may bridle at the label “far right” but it’s hard to escape that impression, given some of the ideas and proposals emanating from its wider movement. But what, if anything, can the bishops do? And how are the country’s Catholics dividing their votes in all of this? Read the whole thing — The Vatican City Court of Appeals has found a former pre-seminary rector guilty of corruption of a minor. Fr. Gabriele Martinelli committed his crimes as a student a the Pius X Pre-seminary, formerly located within Vatican City. He was handed a sentence of 2.5 years in prison and a 1,000 euro fine. The verdict was a partial reversal on appeal of a previous decision, which had acquitted the priest due to insufficient evidence. — This week marks the one-year anniversary of the so-called Richmond memo, the leaked FBI paper calling for surveillance and infiltration of “radical-traditionalist Catholic” parishes to combat their supposed threat to national security. This week I spoke with the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who until October was an active member of the House judiciary committee, about his sense of the FBI memo. I was also on Capitol Hill Tuesday to attend a Mass in the extraordinary form of the liturgy. While the Mass celebrated the Feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort (patron saint of canon lawyers, by the way) it was really held to mark the memo’s anniversary and make the point that liturgically traditional Catholics “aren’t terrorists,” as one of the Mass’ organizers put it to me. You can read our report of the Mass here. — A Spanish priest in Valencia was found dead in his bedroom this week at the age of 80. Despite no signs of violence or forced entry, the case was immediately treated as suspicious when the janitor who found the body of Fr. Alfonso Benito López started receiving text messages from the priest’s phone. As Filipe d’Avillez reported for us, local police were initially baffled by the messages, which several other people also received. Police were unable to come up with a motive for the apparent murder of a popular and well-respected priest of the Archdiocese of Valencia. Later in the week, though, an arrest was made — a 40-year-old Peruvian migrant with no criminal record. As Filipe noted in his follow-up report, the emerging version of events is now rather less mysterious, though sadly no less tragic. Upgrade to paid A gathering storm A story which attracted little attention this week, but should have, was the decision by a Vatican City court to throw out a lawsuit brought by Libero Milone, the first and former auditor general of the Vatican. Milone, appointed by Pope Francis in 2015, and forced from office in 2017, alleged wrongful dismissal and sued the Secretariat of State, whom he blamed for ousting him and trashing his professional reputation in the process. The judges ruled that Milone and his former deputy Ferruccio Panicco, with whom he filed the suit but who died last year, may indeed have been wrongly strong-armed into resigning by the former leadership of the Vatican City’s corps of gendarmes. But, they said, that doesn’t make the Secretariat of State liable. Milone and Pannico (who, again, I stress, died last year) were also ordered to pay a combined total of more than 100,000 euros in court costs. On all this, I have some thoughts. For a start, I thought the decision coming out right as Milone’s old office announced a new “whistleblowers email hotline” was grimly hilarious. I also thought that the then sosituto at the Secretariat of State, Pillar reader and convicted criminal Cardinal Angelo Becciu, taking public credit for working with the gendarmes to effect the auditors’ forced resignations at the time it happened might have led judges to a different conclusion. I would have thought that when a convicted abuser of high Vatican office boasts of having used his office to exactly the end Milone and Pannico argued — forcing them to resign — and for exactly the reasons they said — to halt their prying into his illegal financial operations — judges might conclude that Becciu’s department was, indeed, involved. I would also have thought that when a plaintiff dies in the middle of a lawsuit in which he also charges the Vatican seized his personal medical records, halting his diagnostic treatment and contributing to a cancerous death sentence, the court might think twice about sending his grieving widow a bill for 65,000 euros in court costs, instead of the pension he was suing for. The Vatican court thought differently, though. And now we will wait to see what happens next. Milone has previously said he deposited with the court proof, hundreds of pages of documentary proof, of systematic curial financial corruption right to the highest levels and that he would consider making it all public if he is denied justice. For the moment, he’s keeping his powder dry, refusing to comment beyond telling me he’s meeting with his lawyers in the coming days to game out their next move. It’s not for me to tell him or the Vatican judges what to do. But as all sides consider Milone’s avenues of legal appeal, I think they’d do well to consider what could happen next. If Milone does have, as he claims, proof that the Vatican is riddled with the kind of financial corruption which has already brought waves of scandal on the Church, and if he can mount a compelling case that he’s been systematically hounded from office and denied compensation, the results could be ruinous for the Holy See. Proof of cardinals lining their pockets and continuing in office could be the final nail in the cash-strapped Vatican’s financial coffin. Worse, convincing evidence that the government of the Holy See is really a kind of clerical kleptocracy could havel repercussions in the realm of international law — there’s never a shortage of calls for the Vatican to lose its unique sovereign status, and evidence of systematic corruption could tip the balance with international bodies, political and financial. Anyone who thought the conclusion of the financial crimes trial last month would close the book on Vatican legal scandals was, I am afraid, mistaken. On the contrary, the weather is looking right for an almighty deluge to come. Read the whole story here. Upgrade to paid Capitol Hillsong I suppose I always assumed I’d go to a sung traditional Latin Mass one day, but I didn’t expect my first invite to be on Capitol Hill. Though I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. Given the pictures and occasional videos I’d seen of TLM liturgies over the years, I suppose I was expecting gothic architecture, marble and gilt everywhere, clouds of incense borne aloft on the soaring tones of a full schola. If you’d asked me to describe a hypothetical TLM congregation, it would probably have conjured a textbook image of tradical chic, ladies draped in lace dotted about the assembly like snowy islands amid a sea of bow ties and pocket watches. Below adult eye level, fedoras cast along the pews like scatter cushions, and ranks of little combed heads, arranged neatly in descending age order, like something out of Norman Rockwell. Because if the extraordinary form of the liturgy is about anything, it's about the aesthetics — right? The look, the sound, the smell, the totality of people and place and thing, that’s what is supposed to make it seem so timeless, so magical, to newbies like me. What I was not expecting was a modest set-up, in a hastily repurposed conference room, gray carpet with a bare folding table for a makeshift altar. For every mantilla in the crowd, there was a pair of sunglasses perched on a head, a big bow, or a home-knitted hat. Forget about ladies in demure floor-length skirts. Jeans and knee-high boots were more the order of the day. And faux fogies? Not a chance. Apart from my own suit*, there wasn’t a scrap of tweed in the place. However recherché their liturgical tastes, the male Congressional staffers I saw Tuesday prefer the shrunken suits and tan shoes à la mode with the young bucks of Capitol Hill. If the G-men are using these people for a terrorist identikit, it must be giving them conniptions of paranoia; they look just like everyone else in the building. While the venue was pro tem and the fashions contemporary, the singing at least was timeless, led by a pair of clearly accomplished cantors. The liturgy itself was an interesting affair. There wasn’t a single bell or smell in the place — incense and fire alarms make poor bedfellows. But, as advertised, the priest (the anonymous priest) conducted the Mass ad orientem (strictly speaking, I think the wall faced westward, but it’s the idea of East that matters, I suppose) and sotto voce. It was a first for me. At times, it was not unlike trying to overhear the only conversation in a quiet cafe. It left me with the same sense of mild social transgression, too. Upgrade your subscription Of course, the whole event was transgressive, and canonically illicit. Since I was invited to attend the underground Mass on the hill as a journalist, the need for strict objectivity barred me from fully participating and receiving Communion. I may have accidentally lapsed into prayer at times, but this is something to bring up with my confessor in due course. The occasion was to mark the first anniversary of a memo from the FBI’s Richmond field office, branding so-called radical-traditionalist Catholics a domestic terror threat. I scanned the assembly for possible agents of chaos, ready to run amok at the seat of government. Perhaps that mother in the corner was nursing something more sinister than a baby under that blanket? I looked, too, for an FBI plant among the faithful. Someone with classical instead of ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation, maybe. Or anyone touching their ear as they prayed quietly into a lapel mic. It seems odd to brand the people I met as a threat to anything. Chatting informally to them before and after Mass, they seemed no more or less conservative, or political, than the average congregation in D.C., this despite them being a moment’s earnest stride from the well of the House. The people were prayerful. The rosaries hanging from dutifully folded hands were maybe a little longer than the average, but once you’ve swapped the splendor of a well-preserved chocolate box parish for a slightly shabby meeting room, the overall effect is that of a quiet retreat in a conference hotel. Reverent, pious, a little different for sure, but is this what all the fuss is about, really? I can't say I get it. I don’t get the supposed threat this Mass is meant to pose — to the safety of the Republic or to the unity of the Church. But whatever the threat is supposed to be, it’s taken seriously enough that the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington calling the Speaker of the House to shut it all down was considered a live possibility. And punitive consequences seem assured for the priest celebrant, if his name becomes widely known. And, I would add, those sanctions will be merited. Whatever the sincerity of their pastoral sensibilities, clergy shouldn’t break the law without expecting the prospect of sanction. More to the point, knowingly breaking the law — and reminding your flock that’s what you’re doing before beginning Mass — sets an example and teaches a lesson about respect for the Church’s authority. By the time I was back at my desk Tuesday afternoon, the online Catholic police were out in full force, trying to winkle out his name. But there is something almost too funny to be serious about the militant felt-banner wing of the Church taking to twitter.com to denounce a Mass in a meeting room for not having the proper paperwork. On the other hand, it is the curse of marginal communities that they do attract fringe figures and embarrassing champions. For every I-don’t-know-how-many-dozens of quiet, nice, normal Catholics who just like a bit of Latin, there seems to be an inevitable nutjob in a borrowed saturno insisting that the ordinary form — indeed the whole post conciliar Church — is vulgar and invalid, our culture decadent and depraved, and that we all need a little more Vlad Putin in our lives. It’s become part of the landscape. It’s now the done thing, if you’re a priest or religious community gone rogue (or just downright bad), to make “going full trad” your final act of defiance against Church authority, and your primary income stream once you’ve been suspended by your bishop. The internet is littered with solicitations for “persecuted priests” in their private ministries, their delusions of messianism sustained by the misplaced charity of nice people — ecclesiastical pigeons fed to fat, despite the signs saying “please don’t feed the birds.” Malcontents and mountebanks are nothing new to the Church, and no amount of liturgical uniformity would stamp them out. But they provide an easy reason to demonize anyone they sidle up next to. Meanwhile, back in room H-137, no one whispered about the invalidity of the “bogus ordo” or the illegitimacy of “Mr Bergoglio,” still less seem enthused about a new American Reich. Upgrade to paid The people I met struck me as liturgical libertarians, not the crypto-fascists the FBI seem to imagine. If they have a criminal bent, it's canonical, and in the sense that no bishop is going to tell them successfully where and how they have to go to church. And they feel justified in their defiance, insisting that the bishops demanding their obedience now were loath to show it themselves when Benedict XVI was pope and on their side. But is that a spirit of good Catholic docility? No. And was the Mass I saw canonically licit? No. The congregation was, I suppose, on the younger side, literally and spiritually speaking. There was enthusiasm and faith, for sure, but also a whiff of knowing rebelliousness about the whole thing. If the expectation is, as Cardinal Gregory has suggested, that this sort of “traditionalism” will die a “slow, bloody death” it may prove misplaced, unless bishops are prepared to get very punitive indeed. What the people I met say they want — and are determined to have whatever the Church tells them to the contrary — is the TLM. But shorn of the “extras” afforded by grander settings, what they have got seems not vastly different to what I want and have most Sundays: simple, reverent liturgy. It was beautiful, to be sure. And miraculous, in the way every Mass is. So, what’s the big deal? I don’t mean that rhetorically. It’s a serious question. If it’s all a matter of reverence and style, it seems an odd thing to strain the bonds of Christian obedience and communion for a preferred, prohibited, liturgical form when you could otherwise achieve the same ends. Surely there must be a question of substance, the very substance of the sacraments, to make all this worth it? Maybe there is something else lurking under the surface. Maybe all the people I met secretly harbor pre-conciliar revanchist fantasies. Maybe all the smiles and friendly greetings and happy children are part of the act — ecclesiastical offerings of motherhood and apple pie to sucker you in and soften you up for the straight dope later. Or maybe the suspicion, cultural and generational, has become so deep and so mutually reflexive that the radical chic of the underground has become its own justification and reward. Maybe what’s really lacking is understanding, dialogue, catechises and half a dozen other Churchy buzzwords that actually can and should mean something important. And maybe if bishops talked a little less of slow, bloody deaths and a little more of paternal solicitude, that might help, too. I don’t know, but that’s what I think. For what it’s worth. See you next week, Ed. Condon Editor The Pillar © 2024 The Pillar