Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.
This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.
So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.
This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.
For those interested, please check out https://vladtepesblog.substack.com/ as an another avenue of expression. The Substack is a different project in a sense. It is older videos that in the light of subsequent events, look different or of increased importance, Check it out now and again if you like.
Mike and Tom were in the office early. Over beers the night before the two young analysts had come up with an idea. It was 6 a.m., and Wall Street was just waking up. As they sat at Mike’s desk sipping coffee they were surprised when their boss, Mr. Green, came suddenly through the door to the floor.
“Oh,” Mr. Green said as he entered, “a couple of early birds. And you are–I’m sorry I forget your names.”
“Mike Weinberg, sir.”
“Tom Szabo, sir.”
“What the hell are you doing here so early? And it’s Friday to boot. You young guys are usually half-way out the doors on Fridays.”
“Well, sir,” Weinberg began, “Tom and I had an idea we thought we would try to work out before the markets opened.”
“An idea.”
“Yes sir.” Weinberg glanced nervously at Szabo. They had never spoken directly to Mr. Green, the Wall Street legend.
“What idea is that?”
“Well, sir,” said Szabo, “Mike and I were talking about the election and what might happen if Harris wins, and we had this idea about a new instrument that would financialize a new market.”
“The only new market I want to financialize is sentiment. Air. Can you make a derivative out of air?” Mr. Green’s fuse was famously short.
“Sir, the Harris economic plan intends to tax unrealized capital gains.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Well, if the government wants to tax something that doesn’t exist why can’t we make a futures contract out of it? We’ll just use the government’s own metrics to quantify.”
“Where do you come from, Szabo?” Mr. Green suddenly appeared a little less irritated. Something in his eyes had softened.”
“Come from? Sir?”
“Schooling.”
“Physics, sir.”
“Weinberg?”
“Architecture, sir, then I–.”
“–That’s enough.” Mr. Green cut him off. “Ideas like this don’t come from degrees in finance. I don’t need your life story. Get my address in the Hamptons from Ms. Stacey. A team will be assembled. You will be at my house tomorrow at 1 p.m. sharp.”
Mr. Green then continued walking through the expansive floor of desks and computer monitors, towards his office. Weinberg and Szabo stared at each other in disbelief. Approaching the far side of the room Mr. Green suddenly spun around and shouted, “–That’s one step short of air, boys!”
Rail strike ends before it begins:
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/canadas-labor-minister-puts-an-end-to-cn-and-cpkc-work-stoppage/
A glimpse at insanity:
She is not the sharpest tack in the box.
Hey There Georgie (Soros’s) Girl
Newt Gingrich: The Tale of Two Conventions
thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/newt-gingrich-tale-two-conventions/
Aug. 23, 2024 9:30 am
The White House from Washington, DC, Wikimedia Commons
This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire
By Newt Gingrich
Real Clear Wire
Historians will look at the 2024 Democratic and Republican national conventions as harbingers of profound changes in American politics and government.
Callista and I participated in the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, so we got a good sense of who was there and what was happening in the GOP. When we watched the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the contrast between the two was overwhelming.
The Republican National Convention was shaped by the reality of the Trump revolution. President Trump miraculously survived an assassination attempt the Saturday before, and the convention simply added to the sense of drama. After nine years of campaigning (starting with the trip down the Trump Tower escalator in June 2015) Trump steadily gained support across the entire GOP.
Trump’s emergence and dominance changed the fabric of the Republican Party. This was illustrated by who was not in Milwaukee. President George W. Bush and Vice Presidents Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, and Mike Pence were absent. Former Republican presidential nominee and current Sen. Mitt Romney was missing. Former Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he would write in an alternative candidate rather than vote for President Trump.
The 2024 Republican National Convention was proof of the profound, wrenching shift in the power base of the Republican Party. The old guard was gone, and a new movement was emerging. Importantly, this change had been initiated by Republican voters.
The MAGA movement is the core of the Republican Party. It’s leader, President Trump, is now the central figure in a party which dates to 1854.
Consider the contrast with the Democrats in Chicago.
The leftwing establishment, which traces its dominance of American politics and government back to the election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was in full force.
Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton were there – along with former Secretary of State and Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, and the entire hierarchy of the Democratic Party.
The Republican convention in Milwaukee represented a party reflecting its voters’ wishes. The Democratic Party in Chicago represented a party firmly controlled by its leaders and focused on continuity of power.
Just think about the processes of Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and 2024.
In 2020, Democrat voters wanted a change from the establishment. There was a real possibility that self-proclaimed Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders could become the nominee. He was building momentum after a strong race against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The senior leadership maneuvered to work against Sanders and ensure that Biden would be nominated. This was an amazing considering Biden had come in fifth in Iowa and New Hampshire. Then-House Democratic Whip James Clyburn delivered the Democratic Primary in South Carolina. After that, Biden gained momentum. Suddenly, Biden’s other establishment opponents began to drop out and endorse him. Sanders – and the will of many Democrat voters – were blocked in a beautifully executed campaign behind the scenes by the Party’s bosses.
This year, the Democrats faced a new dilemma. After President Biden fell apart in his June 27 debate with President Trump, the Democratic Party leadership concluded that Biden could not win. The prospect of a second Trump presidency was so horrifying to them they decided to push Biden out.
An amazing pressure campaign was undertaken to force Biden’s withdrawal. It was instigated by the Democratic leadership and executed by their media allies. Day-by-day, new pundits came out calling for Biden to step aside. Various members of Congress followed suit. Finally, it became obvious that Biden was a no-go, and donors started to voice their concerns.
Biden had won 98 percent of the delegates. No serious candidate entered the primaries against him. The party that preached saving democracy had a choice: principled defeat or hypocrisy with a chance to win. The Democratic Party power brokers forced Biden to retire without defeating him in a single caucus or primary. It was an astonishing example of top-down political power.
Trending: Mystery Item Falls Out of Pelosi’s Pants at DNC Convention (VIDEO)
More impressive than Biden’s ouster was the instantaneous shift to Vice President Kamala Harris. She never won a primary. In 2019, she was such a bad candidate she dropped out before a single vote was cast.
So, in the name of supposedly saving democracy, the Democrats now have a candidate for whom no one voted.
Here’s what this means to voters. The Democrats’ backroom politics guarantee a continuity of the same failed policies that have frustrated Americans and made life harder. They are the same policies which led to the current populist uprising in America.
The Republican Party is listening to people and changing. The Democratic Party is using machine tactics to avoid change and maintain power.
That’s the tale of the two conventions.
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/newt-gingrich-tale-two-conventions/
WW3 WATCH: As Traditional Strategic Nuclear Deterrence Wears Off, Russian Doctrine Threshold Gets Lowered and Navy Trains for Preemptive Tactical Nuke Attacks
thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/ww3-watch-as-traditional-strategic-nuclear-deterrence-wears/
Aug. 23, 2024 9:00 am
There is no shortage of distressing developments in the present war in Europe.
But one of the most frightening of the list has to be the fact that the old and tried nuclear deterrence seem to have lost its effectiveness, clearing the way for kinetic displays of nuclear power in order to jolt the memory of the European leaderships as to the dangers of messing with the Russian bear.
Add to that the fact that Moscow’s ‘red lines’ have been breached one after another – as I write Ukraine is striking Russian territory with NATO weapons like there’s no tomorrow – and we can see how the situation has impossibly escalated.
It now has arisen that Russia has trained its navy to target sites deep inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential – by now virtually certain – conflict with Nato
Financial Times reported:
“Moscow had rehearsed using tactical nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict with a major world power, […] planning for a series of overwhelming strikes across western Europe.”
You read it right – EARLY STAGES: not using strikes as a last measure, but as an early salvo.
Financial times examined Russian files drawn up between 2008 and 2014 that include a target list for nuclear capable missiles, as Russian officers highlight the advantages of using nuclear tactical strikes at an early stage, in ‘sudden and pre-emptive blows’.
“Russia’s Baltic fleet targets are largely in Norway and Germany — including the naval base in Bergen, as well as radar sites and special forces facilities. Russia’s Northern Fleet would be expected to hit defense industrial targets, such as the submarine shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness in north-west England. A target near Hull may be an industrial site – it is marked with a smokestack.”
The sample in the documents was just a small portion of thousands of targets across Europe.
Targets all over the continent would be at risk just as soon as the Russian Federation forces engaged with Nato forces even in in frontline countries such as the Baltic states and Poland.
‘Sudden and pre-emptive tactical blows are on the table’.
“’Their concept of war is total war’, said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey who studies arms control. ‘They see these things [tactical nuclear warheads] as potentially war-winning weapons’, he added. ‘They’re going to want to use them, and they’re going to want to use them pretty quickly’.”
Tactical nuclear weapons have a shorter range and are less destructive than the larger ‘Armageddon-strategic’ weapons.
“The presentation also references the option of a so-called demonstration strike — detonating a nuclear weapon in a remote area ‘in a period of immediate threat of aggression’ before an actual conflict to scare western countries. Russia has never acknowledged such strikes are in its doctrine.
According to NATO’S calculations, countries in the alliance have less than 5 per cent of the air defence capacities required to protect the alliance’s eastern flank against a full-scale attack from Russia. Putin said in June that Europe would be ‘more or less defenseless” against Russian missile strikes’.”
Russia’s armed forces practiced in June loading anti-ship cruise missiles, part of an undeclared stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads.
Russians moved the missiles in the containers, accompanied by the appropriate guard force and procedures for handling a nuclear warhead.
Read more: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/06/ww3-watch-kremlin-summons-us-ambassador-american-atacms/
WW3 WATCH: Kremlin Summons US Ambassador Over American ATACMS Used in Crimea Beach Attack, as Unconfirmed Rumors Say Russian MIG Jet Shot Down US Reaper UAV Over Black Sea
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/ww3-watch-as-traditional-strategic-nuclear-deterrence-wears/
Report: The Battles Democrats Are Fighting Over Vote Procedures Raise Alarm Bells Over Election Integrity
by Guest Contributor Aug. 23, 2024 11:00 am
Guest by post by Bob Unruh
The battles the Democrats are choosing to fight in court this election year are raising alarm bells about the integrity of the coming November vote, according to an analysis published in the Washington Examiner.
For example, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice is demanding “more lenient” mail-in voting rules in Ohio and Alabama, and it is suing to have more Spanish-speaking poll workers in the “border state” of Rhode Island.
read the rest at
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/report-battles-democrats-are-fighting-vote-procedures-raise/
The Last Commander: Afghan Lieutenant General Sami Sadat Shares Exerpt from New Book on the War in Afghanistan and the Disasterous Withdrawal by the Biden-Harris Administration
thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/last-commander-afghan-lieutenant-general-sami-sadat-shares/
Aug. 23, 2024 10:45 am
Lieutenant General Sami Sadat
When America retreated from Kabul amid chaos in 2021, Lieutenant General Sami Sadat, the last commander of the army of the Afghan Republic, was still fighting to the end.
Sadat’s firsthand account of the disastrous withdrawal and the failures of the Biden-Harris administration are recounted in his new book, The Last Commander.
Sadat has shared an excerpt from the book with The Gateway Pundit.
Chapter 1: Two Betrayals (2021)
A week before the fall of Afghanistan in 2021 I was still holding Helmand, the province the Taliban most wanted to take, while the rest of the country collapsed. I was ordered back to Kabul, first to command all Afghan special forces, and the next day to stage a last-ditch defense of the capital itself. But it was too late. By the time I arrived nothing functioned. When President Ashraf Ghani fled from the presidential compound in a helicopter, telling no one, it was all over. The government imploded. I was the last commander still standing, trying to coordinate the defense of the capital after government ministers ran away. Even the air force had gone as pilots saved their aircraft and flew across the northern border to safety into neighboring Central Asian states.
So who was to blame for the collapse? Direct responsibility lies with the US, and specifically with former president Barack Obama and his Democratic successor, Joe Biden. Obama, who from the outset was clearly intent on withdrawing the US from the global War on Terror launched by President Bush, spent the whole of his first year in office delaying any decision about Afghanistan. Finally he agreed to send more troops, but only on the condition that they left on a strict timetable. This emboldened the Taliban, who knew they had only to wait it out and America would leave. The Taliban had a saying: “Americans may have a watch, but we have the time.”
Back in 2009 Afghan forces were not yet ready to take on the fight for ourselves, and while we were still building our military strength, America’s generals constantly argued for enough troops to fight alongside us—ready to stay until the job was done, not on a short-term artificial timetable. A new generation of generals, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal foremost among them, had studied counterinsurgency and wanted to put it into practice in Afghanistan. They knew it would need sustained support in terms of numbers of troops and time. But the strict timetable doomed their best efforts. Just as they reached the peak of the increase, troops began to leave on a downward slide due to finish in 2014. Revealing the date when Americans would leave the battlefield gave the Taliban a huge advantage.
But the long years of training made a difference. In 2019, Afghan forces went on the offensive, taking and holding ground for the first time on our own. I was one of a group of younger Western-trained Afghan generals put into senior positions by a new and ambitious defense minister, who decisively changed the course of the war in our favor, winning across the country. I am convinced that if we had retained consistent US air support we would have seen a dramatic increase in ground securely held by our forces, while the Taliban would have been reduced to a small insurgency, no longer a strategic threat by 2021. We had better troops, better equipment, and had developed the ability to mount many complex operations on our own.
But we still needed American planes to engage the most difficult targets, and a whole lot else besides. And in 2020 once again that support became conditional, time-limited, when President Trump agreed to a bad deal with the Taliban in Doha. It was a withdrawal deal, not a real negotiation to end the war. As a result, we were forced to release thousands of high-value Taliban prisoners from jail with only a vague promise from the Taliban to sever their links with al-Qaeda. We learnt a new English verb, “retrograde”—meaning taking out all the American military hardware in the country. It was later used as the title of a documentary about my last months in command.
When he came into office, President Biden could have taken a breath after the Trump years and reviewed Afghan policy. The Taliban had broken both the public and secret terms of the Doha deal. They had not severed links with al-Qaeda, many of those released from jail were back on the battlefield, and there were attacks on US bases and provincial capitals across the country. These attacks were not publicized at the time, however.
Trump had drawn the number of American troops down to just twenty-five hundred at the end of his presidency, and Biden was under pressure from his generals to keep them there. Along with troops from a number of allies, notably Turkey, Germany, Italy, and the UK, there were around ten thousand international troops in all—enough to give Afghan forces the basic support we needed to take the fight to the Taliban, if we had been allowed to do it.
A month after Biden’s inauguration, in February 2021, General Joe Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had commanded in Afghanistan, wrote an influential report arguing that keeping troops at this level for the medium term was a wise and affordable insurance policy. Otherwise, he wrote, international terrorists, including al-Qaeda and IS-K, would be able to “rebuild their capabilities in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region such that they might be able to attack the US homeland within eighteen to thirty-six months.”
Biden was not listening—and was evidently not getting intelligence that would have told him how bad this withdrawal would be. In a reverse of how intelligence should work, under Biden the White House tells the CIA what the president wants to hear, regardless of its importance or level of threat to the US and the rest of the world. Policy became a show rather than a program to save lives and make the world a safer place.
Our American military partners were as frustrated as we were. On a visit to Navy SEAL headquarters in Camp Dwyer, in a remote corner of Helmand in the southwest in January 2021, General Scott Miller and I sat in a secret operations room where the SEALS briefed us that they continued to track Taliban positions across the country. “If the peace talks fail,” a SEAL commander said, “we could destroy the Taliban in nine days in Helmand.”
But the talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban did fail, and Biden turned his back on Afghanistan nonetheless. Beyond a pause to extend the off-ramp so the final out date was September, not May, he had no appetite for longer involvement. He may have lost the argument for a drawdown in the Obama White House in 2009. Now that he was in charge, his withering contempt for my country came to the fore.
On April 14, 2021, after announcing the final out date in the Treaty Room in the White House, where President George W. Bush had launched the war in 2001, Biden walked in light rain along lines of graves in Section 60 of the Arlington cemetery, where the dead of America’s recent wars are laid to rest. He said that the final withdrawal had not been a hard decision to make. To him it was “absolutely clear.” With the defeat of al-Qaeda and the death of Osama bin Laden, there was no reason to stay in Afghanistan, a country that in his words had “never been united.”
Biden handed another propaganda victory to our enemies by choosing September 11, 2021, as the date the last soldier had to leave. This is a day celebrated by terrorists around the world as they remembered the attacks on America in 2001. It was as if Osama bin Laden had come back to life and asked for this date, so they could celebrate another victory against America. He was forced to bring it forward to August but the damage was done.
The idea that we were beyond hope or help betrayed not only Afghanistan. Biden also betrayed the thousands of American troops and development workers who had been alongside us since 9/11, not always spending money wisely, not always fighting with effect, but in the end building a different life for a new generation of Afghan men and particularly Afghan women who wanted something different from those who came before.
Trending: Mystery Item Falls Out of Pelosi’s Pants at DNC Convention (VIDEO)
Lieutenant General Sami Sadat is the chairman of Sadat Consultants Limited, an Intelligence and Risk management company based in London. General Sadat was former Commanding General of the Afghan National Special Operations Corps, where he commanded the Afghan National Army’s 215 Maiwand Corps in southwestern Afghanistan and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). General Sadat also served as a senior director in the Afghan intelligence services. He is a graduate of the Joint Services Command and Staff College at the Defence Academy of the U.K. and the NATO Military Academy in Munich, Germany.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/last-commander-afghan-lieutenant-general-sami-sadat-shares/
Michael Ashura
@MichaelAshura
#Chlorine clouds are already over #Lviv after a strike on a warehouse in #Ternopil
??Ukrainian media and eyewitnesses write about this.
??Earlier, these clouds formed over Ternopil, where there was an attack on a fuel depot.
Consequences of manufacturing chlorine for use in shells to fire against Russian civilians.
https://x.com/MichaelAshura/status/1826531867912536084
Post
Conversation
Dustin Grage
@GrageDustin
?NEW DEVASTATING AD: Tim Walz lied and abandoned his troops. Now he wants to be Vice-Presiden
https://x.com/GrageDustin/status/1826390543724937707
Navy Could Sideline 17 Support Ships Due to Manpower Issues
Sam LaGrone
August 22, 2024 7:52 PM – Updated: August 23, 2024 8:07 AM
Military Sealift Command fleet replenishment oiler USNS Yukon (T-AO-202) gives fuel to the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) while the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Russell (DDG-59) sails alongside during a replenishment-at-sea, March 12, 2024. US Navy Photo
Military Sealift Command has drafted a plan to remove the crews from 17 Navy support ships due to a lack of qualified mariners to operate the vessels across the Navy, USNI News learned.
The MSC “force generation reset” identified two Lewis and Clark replenishment ships, one fleet oiler, a dozen Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF) and two forward-deployed Navy expeditionary sea bases that would enter an “extended maintenance” period and have their crews retasked to other ships in the fleet, three people familiar with the plan told USNI News Thursday.
Based on the crew requirements on the platforms, sideling all the ships could reduce the civilian mariner demand for MSC by as many as 700 billets.
A defense official confirmed the basic outline of the plan to USNI News on Thursday. Two sources identified the forward-deployed sea bases as USS Lewis Puller (ESB-3), based in Bahrain in U.S. Central Command, and USS Herschel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece, and operated in U.S. European and Africa Command.
A Navy official, when contacted by USNI News, acknowledged the service was working on a plan to retask civilian mariners but did not provide details.
The new effort, known informally as “the great reset” has yet to be adopted by the Navy and is awaiting approval from Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, USNI News understands.
read the rest at
https://news.usni.org/2024/08/22/navy-could-sideline-17-support-ships-due-to-manpower-issues
The Atlantic Is Cooling at a Mysteriously Fast Rate After Record Warmth
The sudden shift in water temperature is puzzling scientists.
By Adam Kovac Published August 20, 2024 | Comments (434)
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Years of record-high water temperatures in the Atlantic have given way to a surprising cooling.
Years of record-high water temperatures in the Atlantic have given way to a surprising cooling. © John Spade via Flickr
For over a year, surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean hit new highs, but that trend has reversed at record speed over the past few months, and nobody knows why.
In June, temperatures in the Atlantic were 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) hotter than normal in much of the ocean, with some areas getting as much as 9 degrees F (5 degrees C) warmer than average. Those temperatures weren’t a one-off, as the Atlantic had regularly seen record-breaking levels since March 2023. That year marked the fourth in a row that the world’s oceans set new heat records.
The hot water was partially a result of human-caused climate change, but it was also due to a particularly strong El Niño in 2023 and 2024. But that system appears to have passed, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA data shows Atlantic sea surface temperatures have cooled at a surprising rate since May. Since June began, temperatures have been a degree or two Fahrenheit colder than normal for this time of year. That means El Niño will likely be replaced by its counterpart, La Niña, a weather system that allows cold water to rise to the surface of the Atlantic, some time between September and November. Both El Niño and La Niña are complex systems driven by trade winds, solar heating, and rainfall in the tropic regions, and can be difficult to predict. Still, the sudden shift in Atlantic temperatures has been puzzling, and nobody seems to know why it’s happened so quickly.
“We’ve gone through the list of possible mechanisms, and nothing checks the box so far,” Frans Philip Tuchen, a postdoctoral student at the University of Miami, told New Scientist.
The ocean heat wave was tied to some devastating environmental impacts, including a global coral bleaching that caused stress in over 99% of the Atlantic’s tropical reefs. Bleaching occurs when there is a change in conditions, leading algae living in the coral to get expelled. The result is bone-white coral, which not only affects biodiversity but also lessens reefs’ ability to blunt the impact of coastal storms and reduce flooding.
El Niño and La Niña have global consequences far beyond altering water temperature. One recent study found that El Niño can cause trillion
read the rest at
https://gizmodo.com/the-atlantic-is-cooling-at-a-mysteriously-fast-rate-after-record-warmth-2000488967
(Richard: We all know they have a lot of weapons stored and have a lot more fighters.)
UNLEASHING HELL Hezbollah ready to launch huge October 7-style attack on Israel after 10 years of plotting & building miles of tunnels
The terror group recently revealed footage of their hidden tunnel network from which missiles can be launched
Nick ParkerJuliana Cruz Lima
Published: 19:35 ET, Aug 22 2024
Nick ParkerJuliana Cruz Lima
Published: Invalid Date,
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window)
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HEZBOLLAH is ready to launch a huge attack on Israel after a decade of evil plotting and building a miles-long tunnel network, experts have warned.
Analysts monitoring years of military activity in southern Lebanon warned that October 7 could soon look “like a picnic” if and when the Lebanese terrorists unleash hell.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/12269579/hezbollah-ready-attack-israel-tunnels/
TOC Ready Room 22 August 2024: Biggest grab-bag EVAH; Defense, economics, nuclear energy, more
What’s wrong and right with the world.
As the Democratic National Convention & Mass Protest-fest bursts upon us, it’s time to get some updates out of the way so we can concentrate on whatever moments of eventhood may eventuate this week.
There are quite a few notables to tag, so these will not be in-depth treatments. There are several national security issues, but we’ll start with an economic policy topic that demands urgent treatment, because most commentators are focusing on the wrong thing in discussing it.
They’re focusing on what they understand (very well, to be sure), and not on what we’ll really – really – regret in the long run.
“Price-gouging”: Just say no to the witch-hunt
The topic is being discussed among pundits as “price controls.” Candidate Kamala Harris spoke relatedly on the matter late last week, and pundits, knowing well the counterproductive damage always done by price controls, were off to the races laying out for us the excellent case that it’s lunacy to impose price controls.
But in Ready Room at TOC, we’re all about getting inside the OODA loop. And in this case, that means listening with our ears to what Harris actually said. What she said was much more dangerous than “price controls.” That’s why, no matter what you hear in mitigation of her bad proposal, it is imperative to
There is a lot more on this and other issues at
https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2024/08/22/toc-ready-room-22-august-2024-biggest-grab-bag-evah-defense-economics-nuclear-energy-more/#more-9508
Weirdo Walz Had Private Meeting With Alex Soros During DNC
by: Matt Palumbo August 23, 2024
Fight tech tyranny. Join Dan on
Rumble.
Weirdo Walz Had Private Meeting With Alex Soros During DNC
Photos by Getty Images
As we’re all aware, it’s apparently a conspiracy theory to posit that George Soros, who has openly spent billions backing Democrats and associated nutjobs, does in fact fund the people he openly funds.
His $25 billion empire was handed to his son Alex Soros last year, and unlike his father who publicly donates to causes and then has his cronies deny what we can see with our own two eyes, Alex Soros openly boasts about his influence on his social media accounts.
While the DNC was going on this week, Soros was in attendance with his fiance Huma Abedin (who sure knows how to pick them), and had a meeting with socialist and rioter sympathizer Tim Walz, which he posted the evidence of online.
BREAKING: Kamala’s VP Tim Walz had a private meeting with Alex Soros today
Alex is in charge of the $25B empire pic.twitter.com/zlHZJxCTP3
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 23, 2024
Last year, around the time he took over his family empire, Alex had a meeting with VP Harris that we only know about because he posted about it on Instagram – as Harris interestingly left that meeting off her public schedule that day.
And there were plenty more meetings. As Fox reported last September:
Vice President Harris hosted George Soros heir Alex Soros at her private residence, along with several other top Democratic donors earlier this year, White House visitor logs show.
The White House released Harris’ May 2023 visitor logs late last week, and a May 31 entry showed that Soros visited her private residence, listed in the documents as “1st Floor VPR.” Joining Soros were supermodel Savannah Huitema and seven other prominent Democratic donors.
Soros posted a picture of himself with Harris on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on June 6, and boasted about a meeting with the vice president. Details of where and when the meeting took place were not previously known, however.
In the event of a Harris-Walz presidency, there will be no doubt who is really pulling the strings.
https://bongino.com/alex-soros-had-private-meeting-with-tim-walz-during-dnc
The Lowest IQ Convention I’ve Ever Seen (Ep. 2315) – 08/23/2024
https://rumble.com/v5c2ov9-the-lowest-iq-convention-ive-ever-seen-ep.-2315-08232024.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Kamala Harris Promises Amnesty for Millions at DNC Speech
by: Matt Palumbo August 23, 2024
Fight tech tyranny. Join Dan on
Rumble.
Kamala Harris Promises Amnesty for Millions at DNC Speech
Photos by Getty Images
Kamala Harris made it clear what the whole purpose of the Biden-Harris administration opening the border wide open was last night – to give them amnesty to vote Democrat.
Of course, we’ve known that this is what’s behind the Democrats’ openness to illegal immigration for decades now, though it’s rare that they say the quiet part out loud. It’s often phrased as a “great replacement conspiracy theory” when we point out that this is their very strategy.
As Breitbart reported:
Vice President Kamala Harris outlined her plans to pass amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens in the United States during her speech on Thursday evening at the Democrat National Convention (DNC).
“I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system,” Harris said on the final night of the DNC. “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”
That “earned pathway to citizenship” is presumably designed to allow the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens to apply for green cards, and eventually, secure naturalized American citizenship via legislation that remains opposed by the majority of lawmakers in the House and Senate.
Harris’ record on the border has been such a disaster that after she was picked as the presumptive Democrat nominee for President, publications rushed to deny that she was ever Border Czar.
In an Axios article, propagandist Stef W. Kight claimed that; “Harris supporters have rushed to her defense. “She assumed the role that Vice President Biden had during the Obama administration, which is diplomacy with Central America,” former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told Fox News on Tuesday. ‘She is not the border czar.’”
Complicating things for Kight is her own publication, which has branded Harris “border czar” on multiple occasions.
An Axois article dated April 14, 2021 reports that “The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the “root causes” that drive migration.”
Kight herself wrote an article on July 30, 2021, on Reps. Henry Cueller and Sen. Lindsey Graham calling on Biden to appoint Jeh Johnson as border czar.” Kight reports that “Vice President Kamala Harris had previously been tasked with addressing the migrant surge and its root causes” While not referring to Harris as border czar herself, she had referred to her exact position as such in the article’s headline.
Kight also wrote that “The two sent a letter to Biden asking him to create the position and appoint Johnson. “We’ve had border czars in the past,’ Cuellar said at a press briefing Friday” without criticizing the use of the word “czar.”
For two decades the conventional wisdom has been that there are 11 million illegal aliens in America, which was also the official tally when Biden took office, but it’s a number which our government has never seen fit to update.
A Yale Study in 2018 found that the true number of illegals in the country was 22 million at the time, and Biden’s border crisis has only added to that. During the 2021 fiscal year over 1.7 million illegals were apprehended, in the 2022 fiscal CBP encountered nearly 2.4 million illegals, while in the 2023 fiscal year there were nearly 2.5 million encounters. In other words, the Biden admin has set three consecutive records for the number of encounters at the border.
https://bongino.com/kamala-harris-promises-amnesty-for-millions-at-dnc-speech
KASSAM: Kamala’s Speech Was BORING. But It Did Contain Some Dark, Far-Left Dog Whistles…
https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis-post/kassam-kamalas-speech-was-boring-but-it-did-contain-some-dark-far-left-dog-whistles/
BREAKING: Pennsylvania Court Filing Reveals Robert Kennedy Jr. to Endorse Trump
by Jim H?ft Aug. 23, 2024 1:38 pm43 Comments
It is official.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has signaled his intent to endorse Donald Trump for president.
This revelation emerged from a Pennsylvania court filing on Friday, where Kennedy’s independent campaign also made a request to be removed from the state’s ballot, AP reported.
The news outlet reported:
Ahead of a planned speech, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign said in a Pennsylvania court filing Friday that he is endorsing Donald Trump for president.
Kennedy’s independent campaign also requested that he be removed from the Pennsylvania ballot, though it was not immediately clear that he was officially dropping out of the race.
On Thursday night, Robert F. Kennedy officially dropped out of the presidential race in the state of Arizona.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/breaking-pennsylvania-court-filing-reveals-robert-kennedy-jr/
CNN Analyst Van Jones Forced to Apologize After Confrontation with Vivek Ramaswamy Over Previous Unhinged Rhetoric That Endangered Ramaswamy’s Family
CNN analyst Van Jones found himself on the receiving end of a public apology after a confrontation with GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
The two men met for the first time during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, following a series of incendiary remarks made by Jones that Ramaswamy claims led to death threats against him and his family.
The tension began when Jones, during a post-debate analysis on CNN in 2023, labeled Ramaswamy as “the rise of an American demagogue.”
“That guy is dangerous,” Jones stated. “He won’t stop Trump, but he’s going to outlive Trump by about 50 years.”
“I watching the rise of an American demagogue that is a very, very despicable person… Literally, I was shaking listening to him talk because a lot of people don’t know that is one step away from Nazi propaganda coming out of his mouth,” Jones added.
Ramaswamy responded to Jones’ comments during a speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference, where he dismissed Jones’ rhetoric with disdain.
“You got this character Van Jones on CNN afterward saying: ‘This is the rise of an American demagogue who’s gonna live 50 years longer than Trump, this is dangerous, I am shaking,’” Ramaswamy said, adding, “Just shut the f—k up.”
On Thursday, Ramaswamy and Jones met for the first time at the DNC.
Ramaswamy recounted the impact of Jones’ words on his family’s safety. “The first time in the campaign, we get a death threat from a man who wants to show up in New Hampshire,” he said.
“Thankfully, the police in the regime got it. The next day, back to back, my wife scared enough. The next day we wake up, it’s 3 AM. We get a call from him. He’s my security guard saying, ‘Thank God you picked up because we just got a call. Somebody showed up in your house and has four dead bodies.’ That’s within 48 hours.”
Jones later extended an olive branch, requesting Ramaswamy’s personal number and offering to apologize directly to his wife.
“I will call you in couple days and I will apologize to your wife,” said Jones.
“We don’t need to do any this on air…” said Ramaswamy.
“That’s okay. I’ll call your wife and talk to her.”
“You know what we can do? You can turn the page and maybe have a chapter to demonstrate what actually good discourse looks like in this country,” Ramaswamy replied. “That’s not just on you, that’s on me as well. That’s on two of us… I hope we can build a friendship.”
WATCH:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826998015694913973
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/cnn-analyst-van-jones-forced-apologize-after-confrontation/
Found an interesting YT channel. Example video:
Pakistanis are involved in 50% Crimes in UAE | Arab Trust More on India | Pakistani Public Reaction
Streeter in Pakistan. Female interviewer harassed about exposing her hair.
https://www.dumpert.nl/?selectedId=100101073_2a8230e5
Secret Service Headquarters Ordered Agents NOT to Request Additional Manpower for Trump Rally Where He Was Almost Assassinated
by Cullen Linebarger Aug. 23, 2024 3:40 pm197 Comments
The more information that leaks out regarding the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the worse it looks for the Secret Service.
Senator Josh Hawley on Friday obtained more damning information from a Secret Service whistleblower that the agency headquarters specifically ordered agents not to request any additional manpower for the event because such requests would be denied on the spot.
It’s almost as if the Secret Service senior staffers wanted President Trump dead and buried. How can he place any trust in the agency going forward?
read the rest at
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/secret-service-headquarters-ordered-agents-not-request-additional/
Sullum: Democrats Aren’t Even Paying Lip Service to the Second Amendment Anymore
By Cam Edwards | 7:31 PM | August 21, 2024
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
When the Democrats released their party platform earlier this week, I wrote about the fact that admist the many calls for gun control, there wasn’t a single mention of even half-hearted support for the Second Amendment. Reason’s Jacob Sullum has picked up on that was well, and says it’s a sea change from previous election cycles. In the past, Democrats generally coupled their calls for “assault weapon” bans, “universal” background checks, and other anti-gun policies with vague statements of support for hunters or “responsible” gun owners, but those days are long gone.
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That treatment of this subject is similar to the approach that Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned “the rights of responsible gun owners” but did not elucidate the basis of those rights, and in 2020, when the platform did not go even that far. The 2016 platform devoted a paragraph to gun control, which became two paragraphs in 2020 and has now expanded to five. Neither of the two most recent platforms so much as alludes to respect for gun rights.
By contrast, Democrats in 2000 promised to “respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and legitimate gun owners.” Four years later, after the gun issue, including Al Gore’s support for banning “assault weapons,” was widely blamed for contributing to George W. Bush’s election, Democrats promised to “protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms.” The 2008 and 2012 platforms included similar language, in both cases explicitly invoking the Second Amendment, which disappeared in the 2016 platform and now does not even seem like a dim memory for Democrats.
This wasn’t just an oversight on the part of Democrats. Just fourteen years ago, in 2010, fully 25% of Democrats in Congress had “A” ratings from the NRA. Now? The NRA has endorsed Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola this cycle, but she’s the only Democrat running for federal office who’s received the support of the organization. And Peltola is hardly in lockstep with the NRA and other 2A groups. She’s said she’s open to things like “universal” background checks, waiting periods, and gun bans for under-21s.
As the Democrats have fully embraced the gun control lobby (and its tens of millions of dollars in campaign spending), the party has abandoned almost every pretense of support for the Second Amendment. And as Sullum writes, with Kamala Harris, Democrats have a longtime anti-gun advocate at the top of the ticket.
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Although Vice President Kamala Harris’ current campaign website is short on specific policy positions, the platform confirms what we already knew: She does not see the Constitution as an obstacle to her gun control agenda. Back in 2019, when Harris was vying with Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she promised to impose new gun policies—including “universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of the NRA’s corporate gun manufacturer and dealer immunity bill”—by executive fiat if Congress failed to approve such legislation during her first 100 days in office.
That was too much even for Biden. “There’s no constitutional authority to issue that executive order when they say ‘I’m going to eliminate assault weapons,'” he said. “You can’t do it by executive order any more than Trump can do things when he says he can do it by executive order.” Asked about that comment during a Democratic presidential debate, Harris laughed and blithely replied: “Well, I mean, I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying ‘no, we can’t,’ let’s say ‘yes, we can.'”
Biden objected. “Let’s be constitutional,” he said. “We’ve got a Constitution.” He also suggested that Harris should “check with constitutional scholars” about whether her plan was consistent with the separation of powers.
While Biden aspired to “be constitutional,” in other words, Harris replied, in essence: “Constitution, schmonstitution. Why should that get in the way of my agenda?”
Back when Harris was the District Attorney in San Francisco, she co-authored a brief in support of D.C.’s ban on handguns, arguing that the Second Amendment didn’t protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. There’s no reason to believe she’s changed her mind, especially when she’s argued that as president she could enact a sweeping gun ban with the stroke of a pen.
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Joe Biden has his own history of trying to create new gun laws via executive orders and agency rules, and as Sullum says, there’s no reason to believe that a Harris/Walz administration would be any different. In fact, given Harris’s previous statements, she’s likely willing to go even farther than what we’ve seen from the White House over the past four years.
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/08/21/sullum-democrats-arent-even-paying-lip-service-to-the-second-amendment-anymore-n1226010
Trump claims “invasion” of illegal immigrants crossing into the US from Canada
by Noah Jarvis, True North Wire – August 23, 2024
https://tnc.news/2024/08/23/trump-claims-invasion-of-illegal-immigrants-crossing-into-the-us-from-canada/
“A 2,000 Year Old Relic”: Researchers Date ‘Shroud of Turin’ to Time of Christ With Groundbreaking Blood & X-Ray Analysis
thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/2000-year-old-relic-researchers-date-shroud-turin/
Aug. 23, 2024 6:20 pm
Guest post by Miriam Judith.
A potentially historic new study has been published in the journal Heritage, placing the biblical mystery that is the Shroud of Turin at the center of controversy once again.
The ancient fabric, also known as the ‘Holy Shroud,’ first emerged in the 15th century and has since been revered by many Christians as the burial cloth that Jesus Christ was wrapped in following his crucifixion.
Imprinted on the linen shroud is the silhouette of a man, who appears to have been subject to the same brutal crucifixion process as Jesus of Nazareth, leading many to believe for centuries that the man on the cloth is Christ Himself.
Previous research seemed to discredit the claims when scientists in the 1980s used carbon dating technology that estimated that the cloth was manufactured during the Middle Ages – much later than the crucifixion and burial of Christ.
However, a new study that was released by Italian scientists suggests that the cloth was likely manufactured approximately 2,000 years ago. If true, this would date it to when Christ walked on earth and could potentially validate previous claims that science had apparently ‘debunked’ decades ago.
In the study, researchers used an X-ray scattering technique to determine that the fabric may have actually been manufactured over 20 centuries ago, stating that they believe the materials were preserved largely due to Europe’s low temperatures. Nevertheless, the latter point needs to be true to confirm their findings. It isn’t much of a stretch, but it also isn’t one hundred percent conclusive.
BREAKING: New Italian X-Ray study of Shroud of Turin CONFIRMS it dates to 2000 years ago
This debunks previous flawed carbon dating
The shroud was scientifically matched to a piece of linen known to date from the siege of Masada in 72 AD https://t.co/khjtKUPSYN pic.twitter.com/REEoyNdfWO
— Jack Poso (@JackPosobiec) August 21, 2024
From the study, titled ‘X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud’s Linen Sample:’
“On a sample of the Turin Shroud (TS), we applied a new method for dating ancient linen threads by inspecting their structural degradation by means of Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS)… We obtained one-dimensional integrated WAXS data profiles for the TS sample, which were fully compatible with the analogous measurements obtained on a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is 55–74 AD, Siege of Masada (Israel).
The degree of natural aging of the cellulose that constitutes the linen of the investigated sample, obtained by X-ray analysis, showed that the TS fabric is much older than the seven centuries proposed by the 1988 radiocarbon dating.
The experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the TS is a 2000-year-old relic, as supposed by Christian tradition, under the condition that it was kept at suitable levels of average secular temperature—20.0–22.5 °C—and correlated relative humidity—75–55%—for 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to the seven centuries of known history in Europe.”
Using AI to process the new x-ray analysis, a hyper-realistic image of what Christ would have looked like if the cloth was indeed what he was buried in over 2,000 years ago was produced. It immediately went viral online, racking up millions of views.
Many claim the computer-enhanced image of Jesus from the Shroud of Turin supposedly looks “European” and so can’t be authentic. But note the similarity (allowing for iconographic style) with the Christ Pantocrator icon, which was painted in the 6th century in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/BHFeqLVbAB
— Eric Sammons (@EricRSammons) August 23, 2024
Furthermore, another recent discovery also backed up the study’s conclusions.
In a separate analysis from an engineer at the University of Padua in Italy, the researcher was able to analyze a previous sample of the cloth, discovering that the materials found within it were typical in ancient Jerusalem rather than Europe, where it is believed to have originated from as a forgery. According to the University of Padua professor, Guilin Fanti, there are also several features imprinted on the shroud that support the claim of it being Christ’s original burial cloth.
He found that the features in the silhouette are strikingly similar to the physical representation of Christ on Byzantine coins. In addition, the analyzed particles have been confirmed by Fanti to be human blood containing two different blood types.
“I would refer to Type A blood as that which came out of the corpse and therefore postmortem blood; it consists of microcytes which indicate the respiratory suffering of Jesus on the cross,” Fanti told the DailyMail.
“Type B consists of coagulated blood crusts probably formed when Jesus was on the cross or ascended Calvary,” he continued.
The new evidence is a stark contrast to previous studies claiming that the Holy Shroud is a fake that originated hundreds of years after Christ’s crucifixion. The information that has recently been discovered has caused a centuries-long debate to re-emerge regarding the origin of the burial cloth.
Trending: Legend: Fox News Cuts Off Trump Phone Interview on Kamala Convention Speech for Gutfeld! Show–So Trump Calls Greg Gutfeld Live on Air (Video)
This reality incentivizes examination of the relationship between faith and science, particularly from a Christian perspective. Contrary to the popular notion that science provides the definitive answers to life’s biggest questions, the pursuit of knowledge itself is an endeavor that hinges on faith. Just as one must trust in scientific methodologies and the interpretations of scientists, so too must individuals rely on faith to grasp the tenets of any belief system, including Christianity.
Regardless of the scientific discoveries, throughout scripture, we find numerous references to the supremacy of faith over the wisdom of the world. In 1 Corinthians 1:25, the Apostle Paul writes, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Moreover, the Bible encourages believers to stand firm in their faith even when confronted with conflicting views. Romans 12:2 challenges Christians not to conform to the patterns of this world, which often include an uncritical reverence for scientific authority, but rather to be transformed by the renewing of their minds in submission to the knowledge that is provided by God.
In an age defined by skepticism and uncertainty, Christians can take comfort in the knowledge that their beliefs do not need to be validated by the latest scientific discoveries. Instead, they can rest assured in the truth of Scripture and the unwavering nature of God’s promises.
While we shouldn’t look to scientific studies to confirm our faith in Jesus Christ, it’s nice when the results substantiate our beliefs.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/2000-year-old-relic-researchers-date-shroud-turin/