Quote:The Biden administration has reportedly approved a deal with Iran to pay the rogue regime $6 billion in exchange for five detained American citizens.
The deal, according to the Associated Press (AP), entailed the Biden administration issuing a blanket waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar without U.S. sanctions. The money would then be held in Qatar’s central bank for Iran to use, reportedly for the purchase of humanitarian goods.
In addition, the Biden administration agreed to release five Iranian citizens held in the U.S.
According to the AP, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed off on the deal late last week, but Congress was not notified of the deal until Monday, which was also 9/11, the 22nd anniversary of the U.S. suffering terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists.
The deal appears to go against the U.S. policy of not paying countries to release American prisoners so as not to incentivize the behavior.
According to the report, the transfer of the $6 billion was the “critical element in the prisoner release deal.”
Some European nations reportedly “balked” at participating in the transfer, but the Biden administration’s blanket waiver was aimed at easing their concerns.
Quote:President Joe Biden was reportedly “stunned” and “plunged into sadness and frustration” after hearing that special counsel David Weiss intends to indict Hunter Biden.
A court document filed last week by Weiss revealed that he plans to indict Hunter Biden before the end of September.
The intention to indict the president’s son drew immediate criticism from legal experts and lawmakers, who viewed the filing of a potential indictment as another mechanism Weiss might use to shield Joe Biden’s son from justice.
Hunter’s plea deal broke down in August upon scrutiny from a judge, throwing a wrench into the agreement Weiss and Hunter crafted.
...
After the irregular deal, the prosecutors said they expected the case to go to trial, indicating they wanted to try the case outside Delaware. On September 6, Weiss filed a status report indicating a potential indictment of Hunter.
“The possibility of a federal indictment of Hunter Biden stunned the president,” according to several people close to the president, the New York Times reported Sunday.
“He plunged into sadness and frustration,” the sources said of the court filing. “Since then, his tone in conversations about Hunter has been tinged with a resignation that was not there before, his confidants say.”
...
Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project and former chief counsel for nominations to Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley, warned voters not to be fooled by potential charges.
“Don’t be fooled. Both Democrat senators picked Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss,” he posted on X, describing Weiss’s history. “Protected Bidens for years. Let statute of limitations expire on tax charges. Buried credible evidence of Bidens’ foreign bribery. Tried to give Hunter secret immunity.”
So is this a disguised attempt to tell the DOJ not to prosecute Hunter?
Quote:Chutkan, an Obama donor, is known to hand out some of the harshest sentences for January 6 defendants. Trump’s legal team cited the “inherently disqualifying” statements she made while handling the cases.
...
For example, Chutkan described the Capitol riot as “an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government by individuals who were mad that their guy lost” during Christine Priola’s October 2022 sentencing.
Chutkan claimed those inside the Capitol did so out of “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan Wrote: see the videotapes. I see the footage of the flags and the signs that people were carrying and the hats they were wearing and the garb. And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant; not to the ideals of this country; and not to the principles of democracy. It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.
“The public meaning of this statement is inescapable—President Trump is free, but should not be,” Trump’s attorneys argued. “As an apparent prejudgment of guilt, these comments are disqualifying standing alone.”
Trump shared that Chutkan quote to social media and said, “She obviously wants me behind bars,” adding, “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!”
Quote:New York City police officers are facing overtime cuts as the city struggles with the financial toll of the migrant crisis.
There are 110,000 migrants in New York City, which Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ office estimates will cost the city $12 billion over the next three years, the Daily Mail reported.
As part of city-wide budget reductions to help fund the influx of migrants, Director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget Jacques Jiha is calling for not only the New York Police Department (NYPD) but also the Fire Department, Department of Sanitation, and Department of Corrections to reduce overtime.
The overtime cuts come as the NYPD struggles with police shortages and rising crime rates.
Patrick Hendry, the head of the Police Benevolent Association, claims the city’s call to cut overtime is impossible.
“It is going to be impossible for the NYPD to significantly reduce overtime unless it fixes its staffing crisis. We are still thousands of cops short, and we’re struggling to drive crime back to pre-2020 levels without adequate personnel,” Hendry told the Daily Mail.
Quote:Seven of the 19 Islamic terrorists who hijacked commercial planes on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 Americans, remained in the United States after overstaying their visas thanks to a wide-open loophole that allowed nearly 854,000 illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.
In total, all 19 terrorists arrived legally in the U.S. as 16 secured tourist visas and three obtained business and student visas. Eventually, on September 11, the terrorists executed attacks in New York City, New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania that killed 2,977 Americans and have since left thousands more Americans dead with illnesses related to the attacks.
Seven of the 19 terrorists overstayed their visas either before the attacks or at the time of the attacks. Despite U.S. immigration law requiring their detainment and potential deportation, none were detained or deported.
The seven terrorists who overstayed their visas include:
Quote:At least 27 people were shot, five of them fatally, during the weekend in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s (D) Chicago.
Breitbart News reported at least 14 were shot Friday into Saturday night alone, and four of those shooting victims succumbed to their wounds.
By Monday morning, CBS News noted the number of victims had risen to at least 27, with one additional shooting fatality.
The additional fatality was discovered at 2:54 a.m. Sunday, when a male of unknown age was found shot in an alley “in the 8000 block of South Union Avenue” and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Chicago, like all of Illinois, has a red flag law, an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases, and a gun owner licensing requirement via Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) cards.
In addition to the state-level gun controls, Cook County, where Chicago is located, has its own “assault weapons” ban, as does the Chicago suburb of Naperville.
International News Not a Bit Less Scarier than the previous ones
Quote:Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chastised China’s premier on Sunday for “unacceptable” interference in British democracy, after a newspaper reported that a researcher in Parliament was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of spying for Beijing.
Sunak said he raised the issue with Premier LI Qiang when the two met at a Group of 20 summit in India. He told British broadcasters in New Delhi that he’d expressed “my very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy, which is obviously unacceptable.”
The two men met after the Metropolitan Police force confirmed that a man in his 20s and a man in his 30s were arrested in March under the Official Secrets Act. Neither has been charged and both were bailed until October pending further inquiries.
The Sunday Times reported that the younger man was a parliamentary researcher who worked with senior lawmakers from the governing Conservatives, including Alicia Kearns, who now heads the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee, and her predecessor in that role, Tom Tugendhat, who is now security minister. The newspaper said the suspect held a pass that allows full access to the Parliament buildings, issued to lawmakers, staff and journalists after security vetting.
Tensions between Britain and China have risen in recent years over accusations of economic subterfuge, human rights abuses and Beijing’s crackdown on civil liberties in the former British colony of Hong Kong.
Now I wouldn't blame you for not believing what you're gonna read next.
Quote:The UK’s Daily Telegraph now reports the flood was 2.2 million litres (half a million gallons) of wine. Continue to read the original story below:
Tanks at the Destilaria Levira in Levira, Anadia burst on Sunday morning, releasing what must certainly be thousands of gallons of otherwise ready-to-drink red wine into the town. Videos taken by locals showed the scale of the industrial accident, with the alcoholic drink surging past parked cars and down the hill.
The fire brigade responded and redirected the wine to a waste treatment plant, they said, and Portugese publication PT reported the local council confirmed on Sunday evening the wine had been prevented from reaching the local Cértima river, preventing an “environmental disaster”.
The cause of the loss of two tanks of wine is to be investigated. The company responsible, Destilaria Levira, appears to have been proactive in response and turned over its entire workforce to get on cleanup duty. In a social media post, the winery appealed to locals to take images of any damages to their property from the deluge of wine and send it to them, promising to pay for repairs.
Quote:Luis Rubiales, president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), has resigned from his position amid uproar over the unwanted kiss he gave to a woman player on her lips.
“Today, I notified the interim president at 930 pm, Mr. Pedro Rocha, that I have resigned as President of RFEF,” Rubiales said Sunday in a post on X.
Rubiales also said that he will resign from his position as vice president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
“I have also informed him that I have done the same with my position at UEFA so that a replacement for my role as vice president can be sought,” Rubiales said. “After the suspension by FIFA, in addition to the rest of the proceedings against me, it is clear that I will not be able to return to my position.”
Rubiales said he based the decision on protecting the RFEF and Spain from being barred from the 2030 World Cup, asserting that he will continue defending his name against what he described as “excessive persecution.”
Quote:Police in Northern Ireland have seized weapons from New IRA terrorists that reportedly came to the country from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine.
The New Irish Republican Army (NIRA) is believed to have acquired Russian military grenades that “may have been stolen from Ukraine front line,” police sources told the Belfast Telegraph.
The Terrorism Investigation Unit of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on Thursday conducted raids against suspected terrorist cells in the city of Derry and the town of Strabane that uncovered two military hand grenades, a handgun, over 50 rounds of ammunition, and over a kilogram of plastic explosives.
The searches were followed by an outbreak of public disorder, with police officers being attacked with petrol bombs and other makeshift missiles. In total, 16 police officers suffered injuries during the aftermath, including burns and suspected fractures.
On Friday, in the Rosemount area of Derry, police also recovered a machine gun pistol and six explosive devices. So far, three people, two men and one woman, have been arrested under the Terrorism Act, with connections to the New IRA being the “primary” line of inquiry.
The New IRA — believed to have been formed around 2011 as an outgrowth of the original IRA and other paramilitary groups — is one of the most active paramilitary terror groups in attacking Northern Ireland police and British security forces in the UK country.
AFRICAN NEWS
First we learned about Morocco's terrible earthquake only to hear about another terrible event in another African country...
Quote:Authorities in eastern Libya declared the city of Derna a disaster zone Monday after the Mediterranean storm Daniel caused devastating floods over the weekend in different parts of the North African nation.
At least seven people were reported dead Monday in an initial tally in the coastal town of Susa in northeastern Libya, according to the Ambulance and Emergency Authority, and one other person was confirmed dead Sunday. The man was stuck in his car and surrounded by floods in the eastern town of Marj, according to Walid al-Arfi, spokesperson for the government-run emergency response agency in eastern Libya.
The Libyan Red Crescent said it lost contact with one of its workers as he attempted to help a stuck family in the town of Bayda. Dozens of others were reported missing, and authorities fear they could have died in the floods that destroyed homes and other properties in several towns in eastern Libya, according to local media.
Over the weekend, Libyans shared footage on social media showing flooded housed and roads in many areas across eastern Libya. They pleaded for help as floods besieged people inside their homes and in their vehicles.
Ossama Hamad, the prime minister of the east Libya government, has declared Derna a disaster zone after heavy rainfall and floods destroyed much of the city.
Quote:A mob of Fulani Muslim raiders torched a Catholic parish rectory in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, killing a 25-year-old seminarian, local media reported.
Two priests, Fathers Emmanuel Okolo and Monday Noah, managed to escape from St. Raphael’s parish rectory but the seminarian, Na’aman Danlami, was trapped inside the building and burned to death in the attack that took place the evening of Thursday, September 7.
“The attackers were aiming to kidnap the parish priest. When they failed in their attempt to enter the fathers’ house, they set it on fire,” said Bishop Julius Yakubu Kundi of the local Diocese of Kafanchan. “The two priests were able to escape but, terribly, the seminarian was burned inside.”
“It’s a terrible loss. We recovered the body of Na’aman Danlami this morning and took it to the morgue,” the bishop told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
“This seminarian is the second member we have lost in the diocese at the hands of terrorist attacks by Fulani bandits,” the bishop added, in reference to the brutal murder of Father John Mark Cheitnum last year.
Father Williams Kaura Abba, a local priest who taught Danlami at the St. Albert Institute, described the incident as a “kidnapping spree.”
“Two priests in the burnt house were able to escape. The seminarian was trapped,” Father Abba said. “The bandits set the rectory ablaze. Na’aman Danlami, the seminarian, died of asphyxiation and suffered severe burns. May God rest the soul of this martyr.”
ASIAN NEWS
I know for sure that none of us ever asked for this, but the following meeting will take place anyway.
Quote:The North Korean and Russian governments confirmed Monday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un will meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, within the next few days. In fact, South Korean intelligence officials said Kim has already boarded his armored train and departed for the border with Russia.
The White House has been warning about the impending Kim-Putin meeting for over a week, warning Pyongyang it would “pay a price” for selling weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine.
“We will continue to call on North Korea to abide by its public commitments not to supply weapons to Russia that will end up killing Ukrainians,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said last Tuesday.
Last Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol joined in by telling North Korea not to sell weapons to Russia.
...
Both North Korea and Russia refused to confirm plans for a meeting between their leaders, and insisted arms trading would not be on the agenda if they did meet. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed Kim and Putin merely wanted to discuss joint military exercises.
On Monday, the Kremlin posted its first official confirmation that Putin has invited Kim to a meeting in “the coming days.” Korean state media also said the meeting would occur, but neither government would specify where and when.
The Kremlin said on Monday that Putin is scheduled to travel to Vladivostok for the Eastern Economic Forum on Monday and Tuesday. Vladivostok was the scene of the only in-person meeting between Kim and Putin to date, in 2019.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the House is launching an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, citing at least six separate allegations that led to the decision.
First, he cited the House Oversight Committee’s findings that Biden “did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings.”
“Eyewitnesses have testified that the president joined on multiple phone calls and had multiple interactions, dinners, resulting in cars and millions of dollars into (sic) his son’s and his son’s business partners,” he said.
... Second, McCarthy also cited bank records that show “nearly $20 million in payments were directed to the Biden family members and associates through various shell companies.”
The House Oversight Committee announced in August that it had found bank records that showed that Biden businesses received millions from business schemes in Romania and China, and that nine Biden family members received payments from the family foreign business ventures, including two of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.
Third, McCarthy also said the Treasury Department has “more than 150 transactions involving the Biden family and other business associates that were flagged as suspicious activity by U.S. banks.”
In April 2022, CBS News reported that U.S. banks had flagged over 150 suspicious financial transactions from Hunter and James Biden, which included wire transfers of “large” amounts of money.
... Fourth, McCarthy cited an FBI informant who alleged that the president and his son both received bribes of $5 million each.
Fifth, McCarthy cited Biden using “his official office to coordinate with Hunter Biden’s business partners about Hunter’s role in Burisma Ukrainian energy company,” referring to recent revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop that then-Vice President Biden used private or alias accounts to send government information to Hunter.
... Finally, McCarthy said — likely in reference to the Justice Department’s handling of its investigation of Hunter Biden, “Despite the serious allegations, it appears that the president’s family has been offered special treatment by Biden’s own administration — treatment that [they] not otherwise would have received if they were not related to the President.”
Quote:Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen clarified Monday that he will not enforce New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s (D) “unconstitutional” ban on concealed carry.
The Associated Press (AP) quoted Allen saying, “It’s unconstitutional, so there’s no way we can enforce that order.”
He went on to express his opinion that the order “does nothing to curb gun violence.”
Earlier on Monday, Breitbart News reported KOB4 footage, which captured Grisham telling a reporter that the ban on concealed carry would not impact criminals.
In the footage, a reporter can be heard talking to Grisham, asking, “Do you think that criminals are going to hear this message and not carry a gun in Albuquerque, on the streets, for 30 days?”
Grisham responded, “Ah….no.”
...
[New Mexico State Rep. John] Block [R] indicated that an article of impeachment against Grisham is being drafted.
Quote:An MSNBC writer blasted New York City Mayor Eric Adams as "Black Trump" Sunday for his speech raising concerns about the migrant crisis which was spilling over into the Big Apple, calling it "bigoted thinking" inspired by the right.
"But there’s a reason Adams’ rant is being applauded by conservatives… Maybe it’s because [conservatives] feel they’ve made him… come around to their bigoted thinking," said Ja'han Jones, a writer for MSNBC's The ReidOut Blog, the "digital extension" of Joy Reid's primetime show.
In his most recent post, Jones repeatedly blasted Adams – who is a Democrat – for "parroting right-wing talking points and espousing conservative politics" on immigration.
"That has led some of his critics to label him ‘Black Trump’ And he lived up to the moniker Thursday with an anti-immigrant diatribe that sounded as if it had been ripped from the former president’s social media feed," Jones wrote.
Quote:As Breitbart News reported last month, 30-year-old illegal alien Yacarely Diaz-Castro of Nicaragua has been charged with drunk driving, causing serious bodily injuries after allegedly drunk driving and crashing her vehicle into the officer, who had pulled over a different car.
Police said the crash sent the officer over the guardrail, after which he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was treated for a fractured skull and vertebra. The crash may leave him with permanent injuries.
Gaetz, in a letter to Mayorkas, said he wants answers about how Diaz-Castro was released into the United States interior by DHS.
“Diaz-Castro was known to your Department. She is from Nicaragua and entered the United States illegally seven months ago, and she allegedly claims to have received a ‘Notice to Report’ Form I-385,” Gaetz writes.
...
Diaz-Castro is just one of nearly two million border crossers and illegal aliens who have been released into American communities specifically through Biden’s parole pipeline.
In February of this year it was revealed that Biden’s DHS had given NTRs (Notice to Report) to about 600,000 border crossers and illegal aliens — the document provided to Diaz-Castro — ensuring their release into the United States interior without any follow-up to appear before an immigration judge.
Quote:The news was first reported by the State Journal-Register, citing several franchisees in Illinois. Restaurants in Illinois have already started the process, along with stores out West, heralding in the speedy demise of self-service in favor of crew poring drinks.
“McDonald’s will be transitioning away from self-serve beverage stations in dining rooms across the U.S. by 2032,” the company confirmed in a statement to Business Insider.
“This change is intended to create a consistent experience for both customers and crew across all ordering points, whether that’s McDelivery, the app, kiosk, drive-thru or in-restaurant.”
The move means customers will no longer be handed an empty cup by an employee then add ice and their beverage of choice away from the point of sale.
Customers at fast food outlets which no longer offer the service must in future ask for refills at the counter.
Quote:The sports apparel giant reached out to the Soul District Business Association (SBDA) of Portland on Friday and informed them of their decision to cancel the reopening of the store they had closed last fall.
“This news has landed like a lead balloon in our district,” said John Washington, the SDBA’s executive director. “We had all been holding our breath since last November when the store quietly shuttered its doors due to internal and external theft and safety issues. But, like so many of us riding out the fallout of the pandemic and protests, we held out hope that Nike, city officials and community leaders would recalibrate and realign order. But it looks like it’s game over.”
...
“Nike’s commitment to supporting and uplifting Portland’s North and Northeast community is unwavering.,” the company said. “We are reimagining Nike’s retail space, permanently closing our current location at 2650 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and considering future locations as part of this community’s long term revitalization plan.
“True to our roots, we will seek the input of local community organizations and leaders to determine the best new location. As we plan ahead, we are keeping the best interest of our employees at heart, providing them options to continue to be part of the Nike family.”
Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted on Tuesday that hundreds of thousands of volunteers are rushing to join the Russian military and fight in Ukraine.
He portrayed the partial mobilization order he signed in September 2022 as one of the most successful recruiting drives in history, bringing a quarter of a million fresh troops into the Russian war machine.
“As you know, we carried out a partial mobilization, we drafted 300,000 people. Now, in the past 6 to 7 months, 270,000 people voluntarily signed contracts for service in the armed forces and volunteer units,” Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, where he may meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un shortly. Kim’s armored train reportedly entered Russia on Tuesday.
“1,000 to 1,500 people come to sign a contract with the Russian armed forces every day,” Putin claimed.
Various other Russian officials have claimed recruiting targets from Putin’s mobilization order were handily met. The Russian Defense Ministry reported in August that over 231,000 recruits have enrolled for voluntary military service since the beginning of 2023.
The far-left New York Times (NYT) newspaper noted in August that Moscow gets young men to enlist by questioning their manhood.
And then a Madrid-based think tank makes an interesting revelation.
Quote:Cuba’s communist Castro regime may have sent as many as 14,000 Cuban nationals to fight for Russia in Ukraine between July and August, according to a joint report published Monday by the Madrid-based Cuba Siglo 21 think tank and the Havana Consulting Group.
“All evidence points to a collaborative and concerted effort between the Russian and Cuban governments to organize a recruitment network of Cuban volunteers to join Russian troops in Ukraine,” Cuba Siglo 21 stated on its website.
The organizations reached their conclusion by analyzing data on the 117 flights between Russia and Cuba documented between July and August, at a rate of 13 flights per week.
The flights, according to the report, represented an available seat capacity of 52,497, of which 38,407 were occupied by Russian tourists that traveled to the island nation — 73.16 percent of the available seat capacity.
The analysis concluded that the remaining 26.84 percent of seats may have provided the Castro regime with the operational capacity to transfer up to 14,090 citizens to Russian territory between July and August. Russia is one of the few countries in the world where Cuban citizens do not need to obtain a visitor’s visa to enter.
The Cuba Siglo 21 report concluded, given the totalitarian nature of the Cuban government, that it would be impossible for Cuban nationals to leave or enter the country through any of its airports without being detected — a sign that any Cubans traveling to Russia for alleged military purposes could not do so without the Castro regime’s approval.
Reports of Cuban citizens fighting for Russia in Ukraine first surfaced in May, when the Florida-based news organization Martí Noticias reported that at least 14 Cuban nationals had signed contracts to provide military services to Russia’s armed forces in exchange for a fast track to Russian citizenship, among other benefits.
Quote:Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei celebrated the demise of “the arrogant power of America” in a speech in Tehran on Monday, the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the U.S. homeland by radical Muslim terrorists.
...
The initial reports on the deal suggested that the Iranian terrorist state would release five Americans in exchange for a “handful” of Iranian convicts in America and $6 billion, but the Americans in question have only been released out of the country’s notorious Evin prison into house arrest and are reportedly not free at press time.
...
“This is not a ransom,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby insisted in August.
Khamenei’s remarks on Monday did not mention the reported $6 billion agreement, nor did they dwell on the September 11, 2001, attacks. The “supreme leader” instead warned Iranians to fear alleged American “plots” to undermine the Islamic “revolution” but claimed such schemes were the last gasps of a dying power.
“The arrogant power of America and some European countries has weakened and will become weaker,” Khamenei said, according to Iran’s PressTV state propaganda outlet. Khamenei claimed the world was in the process of “transformation” away from the era of America being the world’s dominant superpower.
“The main lines of this transformation are several things: First of all, the weakening of the world’s arrogant powers,” Khamenei claimed. “They themselves say that the indicators of American power in the world like economy are declining. One of the most important indicators of American power was the strong American economy; they say it is declining.”
“America interfered in various governments, but the condition is now declining,” the cleric continued. “Today, America has to create a combined war in order to hit the governments that it wants to hit, which is very costly for it, and will not work out in the end.”
“Day by day, new powers are rising; this is a great global change,” Khamenei celebrated.
Quote:Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said on Monday:
On the 6th of September, instead of a peaceful resolution, Afghan troops resorted to indiscriminate firing, targeting Pakistan military posts, damaging the infrastructure at the Torkham Border Terminal, and putting the lives of both Pakistani and Afghan civilians at risk, when they were stopped from erecting such unlawful structures.
The dispute Baloch wanted the Taliban to resolve peacefully involved Pakistan’s closing of the Torkham border crossing, the main route of access and trade between the two countries.
Pakistan closed Torkham Wednesday after gunfire was exchanged between Pakistani and Afghan border forces. Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, complained last week that terrorists from Afghanistan had been attacking Pakistani troops with captured American weapons abandoned by President Joe Biden during his bungled August 2021 withdrawal.
Many of these attacks have been claimed by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the “Pakistani Taliban,” a militant group with strong ideological ties to the Afghan Taliban. Baloch criticized the regime in Kabul for allowing TTP to operate from Afghan soil.
“These elements are enjoying sanctuaries inside Afghanistan, as confirmed by the U.N. Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team in its latest report,” she charged.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi declared that Tehran will deploy the $6 billion in funds the US recently moved to unfreeze “wherever we need it.”
On Monday, the US announced it issued a blanked waiver for sanctions on $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets as part of a broader agreement to secure the release of five American detainees.
“This money belongs to the Iranian people, the Iranian government, so the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide what to do with this money,” Raisi told NBC.
A chorus of Republican critics blasted the deal, insinuating that Iran could find a way to use the unfrozen funds for nefarious purposes.
Really? Ya think?
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul Wrote:I remain deeply concerned that the administration’s decision to waive sanctions to facilitate the transfer of $6 billion in funds for Iran, the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism, creates a direct incentive for America’s adversaries to conduct future hostage-taking.
...
The administration is demonstrating weakness that only further endangers Americans and freedom-loving people around the world.
Quote:Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who signed the sanctions waiver last week to pave the way for the deal, stressed the funds could only be used for humanitarian purposes.
Raisi was somewhat coy when pressed if the funds would be used for something other than humanitarian needs.
“Humanitarian means whatever the Iranian people needs, so this money will be budgeted for those needs and the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government,” he told the broadcast network.
The $6 billion in question derived from oil sale revenue and had been held up in South Korea in compliance with US sanctions.
As part of the broader deal, the US will receive five American citizens being detained in Iran and will give Tehran back five Iranians being held in the US.
Notably, the sanctions waiver announced coincided with the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, something GOP detractors bemoaned.
Raisi assured NBC News’ Lester Holt that the five American detainees were kept in good condition.
The Biden administration is rumored to be seeking to revive elements of the now-defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action JCPOA — also known as the Iran nuclear deal.
That deal was brokered under the Obama administration and provided sanctions relief in exchange for Iran imposing temporary limits on its nuclear program.
Then-President Donald Trump unilaterally balked on the agreement and re-imposed sanctions in 2018.
Of course. Iran broke the agreement made in 2015 the following year in October/November 2016 by testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nukes. And again the following March... this a clear violation. But then again, they refused Inspectors at their Nuclear sites unilaterally in 2015 and 2017.
Some experts believe it will be harder for public health to get the facts out to who needs it.
Quote:Mark Zuckerberg’s purported “Twitter killer” app rolled out its search function last week for US-based users as well as those in Canada, Mexico, India and the United Kingdom.
“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” a Meta spokesperson confirmed to The Post on Tuesday.
“People will be able to search for keywords such as “COVID” in future updates once we are confident in the quality of the results.”
A search for COVID-related terms generated a pop-up link to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public health officials lamented the move to censor search terms related to COVID, particularly as a new variant has fueled a recent uptick in cases and hospitalizations, according to the Washington Post.
“The decision to censor searches about COVID will make it harder for public health experts and people who work in public health to get out important info to the public about how they can protect themselves,” Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, told the outlet.
Julia Doubleday, who heads outreach at World Health Network, told the news site: “Social media is a lifeline for patients, literally.”
“Long Covid patients have died of organ failure, infections, cardiac events, and more, and social media is one place they can share information,” Doubleday told The Washington Post.
“Cutting off communication between suffering and disabled patients is cruel in the extreme. It’s indefensible.”
Meta Platforms has not specified the extent to which it plans to moderate content on its platform.
The company has stated that its safety policies will mirror that of Instagram, the photo-sharing app through which users can automatically log in to Threads.
Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz, who wrote the article for the publication, slammed Meta’s decision.
Sure, stop permitting discourse about Covid like before, and silence other opinions. So much for getting a second opinion. And some of those silenced last time were found correct.
A possible game changer for the US electric vehicle industry
What just happened? What is likely to be the world's largest deposit of lithium has been discovered in a volcano crater along the Nevada-Oregon border. It's estimated that the McDermitt Caldera holds between 20 million and 40 million metric tons, which would be larger than the current 21-million-ton record-holding deposit beneath the salt flats of Bolivia.
Located in the 28-mile-long and 22-mile-wide McDermitt Caldera, the discovery of the deposit will be a massive boost to the United States' lithium reserves, which have been estimated at just one million metric tons. Most of the world's major deposits are in countries outside of North America, such as Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, China and Australia. It could also encourage more US investment in electric cars and will alleviate fears over lithium shortages – it's thought that a million metric tons of lithium will be needed by 2024.
"It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply and geopolitics," Belgian geologist Anouk Borst told Chemistry World. "The US would have its own supply of lithium and industries would be less scared about supply shortages."
The size of the deposit still has to be confirmed, but Lithium Americas Corporation says it expects to start mining the supply in 2026.
Experts from Lithium Nevada, the University of Oregon, and New Zealand research institute GNS Science have said that when the supervolcano erupted around 16 million years ago, the magma that burst through the ground enriched the clay soil with lithium.
A type of clay, called illite, was found near the southern side of the caldera that is highly concentrated with lithium. It's likely the result of another resurgence of magma after the caldera's ancient lake had dried out, replacing lithium-smectite in lake sediment with an even richer lithium-illite claybed, writes Science Alert.
Not everyone is celebrating the discovery, especially the Native American tribes who say the land is sacred. There are also potential dangers to native wildlife, and researchers are worried that the project will cause groundwater levels to drop to dangerous levels. Even NASA has spoken out against mining in the area. The space agency has been using Nevada's Railroad Valley lakebed since 1993 to accurately gauge the time it takes for satellite signals to travel to Earth and back, allowing it to calibrate the satellites.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has pardoned a Loudoun County father arrested during an incident at a Loudoun County School Board meeting in 2021, according to a statement released on Sunday.
A 14-year-old student sexually assaulted a female student at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021, but was allowed to transfer to Broad Run High School, where he abducted and sexually assaulted another female student in October of 2021. The teen was later convicted in juvenile court.
Scott Smith, the father of the second teenager sexually assaulted at a Loudoun County high school, criticized school officials before his arrest at the Loudoun County School Board meeting. He was charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct.
One of the charges was dropped on appeal, and the other was set to go to trial in about two weeks.
“Scott Smith is a dedicated parent who’s faced unwarranted charges in his pursuit to protect his daughter. Scott’s commitment to his child despite the immense obstacles is emblematic of the parental empowerment movement that started in Virginia,” Youngkin’s statement read. “In Virginia, parents matter and my resolve to empower parents in unwavering. A parent’s fundamental right to be involved in their child’s education, upbringing, and care should never be undermined by bureaucracy, school divisions or the state. I am pleased to grant Scott Smith this pardon and help him and his family put this injustice behind them once and for all.”
Following Smith's legal process, he was critical of both Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares. Smith said he hadn't heard from either of the politicians since they won their elections; both of whom used his name and story feverishly during their respective campaigns.
In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" this morning, Youngkin said he spoke to Smith on Friday — just days ahead of Youngkin's latest "Parents Matter Conversation" Tuesday in Leesburg.
The attorneys of the Loudoun County father addressed the pardon in a release that included Smith's statement, which reads in part:
"My family has been living a nightmare that no family in America should have to endure. But rather than sit quietly and take it, I decided to stand up against the government - and for that I was branded a "domestic terrorist" and charged with crimes that I did not commit. I want to thank Governor Youngkin for his declaration that I am innocent, and for his absolute and unconditional pardon."
Smith also spoke to reporters on Sunday.
"My wife, she's exhausted. She's the brains behind the whole operation. I'm the muscle; she's the brains. My daughter, you know, she's been constantly bullied and berated by her peers," he said. "But she's as strong as I am. She has her good weeks and has a couple bad days in between, but you know, she graduated from high school. She's looking forward to the future."
A grand jury issued a scathing report in December about the school system's handling of the sexual assaults, saying that the second assault could have been avoided.
The report indicated there wasn't any evidence the school district's administration or board engaged in an organized cover-up of the sexual assaults, as some had speculated.
The grand jury brought indictments against former Superintendent Scott Ziegler and spokesman Wayde Byard. Byard was acquitted of the charge against him, Ziegler's cases go to trial later this month.
09-13-2023, 08:40 PM (This post was last modified: 09-13-2023, 08:40 PM by kyonides.)
The Defender of the Iranian Ransom Scheme Wrote:Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who signed the sanctions waiver last week to pave the way for the deal, stressed the funds could only be used for humanitarian purposes.
Raisi was somewhat coy when pressed if the funds would be used for something other than humanitarian needs.
“Humanitarian means whatever the Iranian people needs, so this money will be budgeted for those needs and the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government,” he told the broadcast network.
A Certain Wulfo Wrote: Of course. Iran broke the agreement made in 2015 the following year in October/November 2016 by testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nukes. And again the following March... this a clear violation. But then again, they refused Inspectors at their Nuclear sites unilaterally in 2015 and 2017.
Don't forget how many times they have disconnected the cameras placed in those facilities as per IAEA's request.
Quote:InfoWars host Owen Shroyer was sentence to 60 days in federal prison on Tuesday over the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, despite not stepping foot inside the Capitol building itself.
“I was not a part of any larger plan for illegal activity or violence that day,” Shroyer said at his sentencing hearing Tuesday morning. Still, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Shroyer to 60 days in prison.
...
“Shroyer helped create January 6,” federal prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “The government respectfully requests that this Court sentence him to 120 days of incarceration, 12 months of supervised release, 60 hours of community service, and $500 in restitution.”
“In the months prior to January 6, Shroyer spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers,” the government added.
In response to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Shroyer’s attorneys argued the government was infringing on Shroyer’s First Amendment right to free speech.
...
“The Government’s sentencing memorandum is a shocking effort to criminalize dissent and warrants a stiff rebuke from this Court. Mr. Shroyer has every right to believe, and to assert to this very day, that the 2020 election was stolen,” they added.
Shroyer’s prosecution over the events of January 6, 2021, stems from a previous plea agreement Shroyer reached with federal prosecutors in 2019.
Quote:Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio claimed federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating former President Donald Trump in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Tarrio to a record-high 22 years in prison despite not being in Washington, DC, on January 6.
“I don’t know what instructions I would give somebody at that point … I’m not speaking. I have no function. So there was no communication,” Tarrio said in a phone interview with the Washington Post.
Tarrio revealed that federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicating Trump during a phone interview from the D.C. jail.
“I was looking and seeking what the plea offer would look like, right?” Tarrio told the Washington Post. “They didn’t want to give me a number. I need a number. To me, the most important thing is when I get home to my family.”
...
Instead, Tarrio said, the prosecutors asked him what role then-President Donald Trump played in getting the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. He said the prosecutors, accompanied by FBI agents in the Miami jail where Tarrio was being held at the time, showed him messages that he exchanged with a second person, who in turn was connected to a third person who was connected to Trump. Tarrio said he told the investigators that he didn’t know the third person. He refused to name the people who prosecutors said allegedly connected him to Trump.
“They weren’t trying to get the truth,” Tarrio continued. “They were trying to coerce me into signing something that’s not true.”
Tarrio said, “there was never an open-ended question after” federal prosecutors tried to implicate Trump.
Quote:The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation and prosecution of CEFC China Energy Co. boss and Biden family associate Patrick Ho displayed “irregularities,” including concealing known connections between the Chinese Communist Party-linked entity and the Bidens, and communication between Hunter Biden and the FBI agents involved in Ho’s case, according to a memo by the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project.
Ho, infamously referred to as “the f** spy chief of China” by Hunter Biden, was arrested in November, 2017, and convicted in December, 2018, in the Southern District of New York and sentenced to 3 years in prison for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering. Ho’s first phone call upon his arrest was to Hunter Biden, who was allegedly providing legal services to him at the time.
Now, a memo by the Heritage Foundation obtained exclusively by Breitbart News alleges that since Ho’s conviction, “significant evidence has emerged identifying concerning irregularities with the DOJ investigation and prosecution,” including that “DOJ was aware of connections between the Biden family and CEFC at least as early as 2017 and that they acted to conceal this information from the public,” as well as “contacts between Hunter Biden and FBI agents related to Ho’s arrest,” and “a leak of investigatory information in the Ho case.”
The memo cites the fact that Ho was under FISA surveillance during a period where he was in “regular communication” with CEFC and the Biden family, which would indicate the FBI and DOJ had knowledge of their business arrangements in at least 2017, and probably in 2016.
The memo also cites evidence that the DOJ redacted mentions of the Biden family — specifically, Hunter Biden — in the evidence presented at Ho’s 2018 trial. For instance, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal requested redactions of an email presented in the case for the purpose of avoiding a “political dimension”— which was eventually revealed on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell.”
Another point made in the Heritage memo is how Hunter Biden was afforded attorney-client privilege as Ho’s legal representation, despite being a direct witness in the case. Hunter was also asked on the day of Ho’s arrest by another of Ho’s attorneys to “find the names [sic] FBI agents you spoke with, that would be helpful.”
Quote:Washington, DC, Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) is bypassing the district’s skyrocketing crime to exhaust his office’s resources on investigating the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.
Late last month, Politico reported that Schwalb’s office had launched an investigation into Leo, who was influential in the nominations of all of former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices.
“Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is investigating judicial activist Leonard Leo and his network of nonprofit groups, according to a person with direct knowledge of the probe,” Politico detailed. “The scope of the investigation is unclear.”
News of the investigation into Leo comes as D.C. crime surges, wreaking havoc on communities and residents living in the nation’s capital.
Year-to-date crime statistics, as of September 12, show there have been 190 homicides in D.C. so far this year — up nearly 30 percent compared to the same period last year. Likewise, sex crimes are up six percent, assaults with dangerous weapons have increased three percent, and robberies have skyrocketed by 69 percent compared to last year.
Overall, there have been 1,000 more violent crime incidents across D.C. — up almost 40 percent — so far this year compared to 2022.
Yesterday we learned about how the Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen commented on how he could not enforce NM Governor's concealed carry ban. Now there's another official backing him up.
Quote:New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez (D) released a letter Tuesday making clear he will not “defend” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s (D) ban on concealed and open carry.
When Torrez says he will not “defend” the ban, he specifically states that he will not argue in favor of the ban in the two lawsuits that have already been filed against it.
Breitbart News reported that one lawsuit was filed by the National Association for Gun Rights and the other by Gun Owners of America.
KOB4 noted that Torrez is concerned that Grisham’s order focused on law-abiding concealed carriers rather than criminals.
Torrez wrote, “Given that only responsible gun owners are likely to abide, much less recognize your ban, it is unclear how this action will lead to a measurable decline in gun violence in our community … The data do not support the conclusion that gun violence in our community is attributable to otherwise law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutional right to carry firearms for protection outside the home.”
He also criticized Grisham’s decision to push the ban under the guise of a “public health emergency,” writing, “I believe it is unwise to stretch the definition of a ‘public health emergency’ to encompass something that is fundamentally a public safety issue.”
Quote:In her yearly State of the Union address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen invoked the “call of history” while advocating for the enlargement of the EU and throwing her full support behind Ukraine joining the globalist bloc.
“History is on the move,” von der Leyen told parliamentarians in Strasbourg on Wednesday as she argued for the cause of expanding the borders of the EU eastward once again, proclaiming that “the future of Ukraine is in our Union.”
“In a world where size and weight matters, it is clearly in Europe’s strategic and security interests to complete our Union,” she said, adding that the Commission also backs the entry of Moldova and the Western Balkans joining the bloc.
While her counterpart, European Council President Charles Michel, said last month that Ukraine would join the Union by the end of the decade, von der Leyen made no such time commitment.
But something "funny" also took place during that address.
Quote:EU Chief Von der Leyen may have been speaking of destiny, Ukraine, and the “call of history” at her State of the Union speech on Wednesday, but at least one commissioner saw the grand occasion as a chance to catch up on her crafts.
The incongruous sight of Europe’s Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson clicking away with her needles during a landmark speech in the Parliamentary hemicycle prompted bemused reactions online.
Brexit leader and former long-serving member of the European Parliament Nigel Farage was among those offering his take, remarking: “Even Ursula von der Leyen’s own EU Commissioners are bored to death with what she has to say!”.
...
During the speech, European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — Germany’s former scandal-hit defence minister — spoke of drawing Ukraine into the European Union. This, she said, was the “call of history” and the bloc would be “at Ukraine’s side every step of the way. For as long as it takes”.
While Commissioner Johansson took to social media after the speech to signal her support for the migration pact discussed in the speech, she did not make reference to her self-amusement in the chamber. Nevertheless, knitting it part of the political identity of the Swedish politician: she grabbed headlines in 2021 for knitting through another Von der Leyen speech and tweeted in 2020 that she’d knitted gift socks for her colleagues.
At least that isn't a crime like the one committed by former Speaker of the House Nanci Pelosi by tearing up a printed copy of Trump's speech, which should have been sent to the National Archives instead.
Quote:Don’t push Ukrainians into a corner by cutting Western support for the war or else the millions of refugees who have presently “behaved well” in Europe may start to act unpredictably, President Zelensky has said.
Speaking to a British centre-left-leaning news magazine, the Ukrainian President has made remarks that may to some ears sound like a threat, or at least a dire warning, as he spoke of the possible negative consequences for European nations if they reduced the donations and aid given to his country. While the interview with the Economist largely paraphrases Zelensky’s words — as a non-native speaker his English can be a little convoluted — the meaning appears from their writing to be clear, as the magazine warns curtailing aid would “create risks for the West in its own backyard”.
“There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned”, Zelensky is reported to have intoned, saying while they are grateful for the asylum they had been given during the war and had “behaved well” so far, this could apparently not be guaranteed to continue.
In perhaps some of the darkest words Zelensky has had for his European allies during the war, the magazine reports he told them: “…it would not be a ‘good story’ for Europe if it were to ‘drive these people into a corner’.”
The comments came in the context of a discussion on how to end the war sooner, and Zelensky’s intuition of “a change of mood” in Western leaders away from bottomless support as long as it will take as the counteroffensive falters. “I see that he or she is not here, not with us”, he said of the new attitude towards Ukraine he claims to have detected.
Why did he say that? Is he blackmailing Western Europe now?
I'd get the idea of telling Russia something like that as a warning to Russian troops but not if Zelensky is addressing his own allies.
Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the United Kingdom of trying to provoke Moscow into a nuclear conflict, claiming that Britain was behind a Ukrainian military attack on a Russian atomic facility.
Speaking from Vladivostok ahead of an expected meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Putin claimed that Russia had captured members of a Ukrainian special forces team allegedly tasked with waging an attack on the power lines supporting an undisclosed nuclear facility. The Russian leader went on to claim that once captured, the Ukrainian “saboteurs” revealed that their plan was orchestrated by British intelligence agents.
Speaking of the UK government, Putin said according to The Times of London: “Do they understand what they are playing with?”
“Are they trying to provoke us into retaliating against Ukrainian atomic power stations? Does the British prime minister know what his secret services are doing in Ukraine?”
The Russian strongman went on to assert that the UK of “underestimating” the potential geo-political fallout if such an attack was seen to fruition, although he did suggest that the alleged mission could have been ordered by Washington without Prime Minister Rishi Sunak being made aware.
Although Putin did not provide details about the supposedly foiled plot or indeed the location of the facility in question, there have been increased warnings — including from the United Nations — that the Zaporozhzhia nuclear station could come under fire and that there have been several explosions recorded in the area in previous weeks.
Quote:The Italian Red Cross sounded the alarm Wednesday about humanitarian conditions on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa after more than 5,000 people in more than 100 different migrant boats arrived in one day with smugglers in north Africa taking advantage of calm seas to set off.
At least one baby died near shore as a boat capsized, state radio said.
Dozens of new arrivals crouched on the rocky jetties of Lampedusa´s port, while others sheltered in the shade of a nearby camping ground as the island´s lone migrant welcome center, which has a capacity of around 400, overflowed with more than 6,000 people.
“Days ago there were more than 4,000 people and we were talking about a record, today we are talking about a record of landings,” the Red Cross’ national director Rosario Valastro said in a social media post. The issue isn’t a competition about records, he said, but about finding solutions to an emergency.
...
Lampedusa´s former mayor, Giusi Nicolini, who has long advocated for migrants, said so many people had arrived it seemed impossible to even count them all. In a social media post, she thanked the guests and owners of a nearby campground for providing water and more to one group who found shade by the road.
...
So far this year, more than 115,000 people have arrived by boat, nearly double the 63,000 in the same period last year or the 41,000 in 2021, according to interior ministry statistics.
Guinea, Ivory Coast and Tunisia round out the top nationalities so far this year.
Quote:Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi scolded Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, on Sunday because Canada allows Sikh groups to promote what Modi described as “secessionism.”
After defending Canada’s commitment to freedom of expression, Trudeau found himself stuck in India due to “technical issues” with his plane.
The Indian government released a statement about Modi’s conversation with Trudeau regarding Sikh demonstrations, a persistent sticking point in relations between India and Canada.
According to the statement, Modi told Trudeau that Sikh demonstrators in Canada are “promoting secessionism and inciting violence against Indian diplomats, damaging diplomatic premises and threatening the Indian community in Canada and their places of worship.”
Modi added that strained relations between Canada and India could not be improved unless Trudeau’s government takes steps to rein in the Sikh secessionists, also known as the “Khalistan movement.”
Modi warned Trudeau that the Khalistan movement has links to organized crime, drugs, and human trafficking, which should be Canadian security concerns as much as they are Indian concerns.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:McCarthy, who appeared on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel, said a document drafted by the White House counsel’s office and sent from formal White House staff to media outlets at the outset of the impeachment inquiry — which led to the false reports and the use of the disinformation talking point by many media outlets and Democrats allied with the White House—could amount to obstruction of the investigation.
“You’re 100 percent right,” McCarthy said when Breitbart News noted there is in fact evidence and the fake talking point the White House disseminated is disinformation. “And you just raised another issue that points to why we need impeachment inquiry to have the strength of our subpoenas because you now have the White House counsel. That talking point didn’t come from the campaign. It came from the taxpayer-paid White House counsel directly to media outlets. So think of the fear they have, whether they’re going to be allowed to go before government or others when you have the White House counsel threatening them to say investigate Republicans, there’s nothing here. I mean, right there is obstruction. Would you not question that? I would wonder is it not? It would be a question raised.”
...McCarthy, during his interview on Breitbart News Saturday, recounted one such interaction with an Associated Press reporter on Capitol Hill where he forced the reporter to admit there was in fact evidence. He also pointed to a CNN fact check of him which actually found that each of the claims he made during his announcement of the impeachment inquiry about the Bidens were true.
...
McCarthy also, during the interview, explained how Republicans have uncovered serious evidence against the president since they took the majority — and that Biden’s claim from the 2020 campaign that he never spoke to his son Hunter Biden about any business dealing has been proven to be a lie.
...
“Then one of these emails which we haven’t gotten yet but we’ll need to — it says in there that the staffer writing to Joe Biden and also Hunter Biden about a phone call with the president of Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “What we found is, this is around the same time that Burisma was getting pushed by the prosecutor. We know from Devon, Hunter’s business partner, that Burisma was really pushing them as board members to call Washington to do something about it. We also know that Joe Biden had told the American public that he withheld a billion dollars of taxpayer money until they fired the prosecutor that was going after Burisma.
Quote:McCarthy revealed the push for the classified briefing for every member of the House during an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel.
The push comes after a CNN report in late August revealed that President Joe Biden’s cabinet was warned in classified security briefings that a smuggler with ties to the Islamic State was found to be helping migrants sneak into the United States across the southern border. It is unclear at this time who exactly this ISIS-connected smuggler was bringing into the country and if those people represent a threat to national security. But CNN’s report noted that several top Biden administration officials were so “alarmed” by the revelations they included the classified information in a briefing to top cabinet officials.
“You have followed the border probably better than anyone but I have requested a classified all-member briefing on the southern border and the troubling reports because here we have a smuggler with ties to ISIS, we’re a week past September 11, we don’t know what is coming across this border,” McCarthy told Breitbart News on Saturday morning.
“In February, we caught more people on the terrorist watch list in that one month than we did the entire last four years,” McCarthy explained. “Now, we have no idea what’s happening. The cartels have taken over. We’ve got this CNN report and they said in this report that it was so alarming that this classified information was provided to the cabinet members in the Biden administration. You’re not hearing anything else about it. I said members of Congress need to be briefed, especially on the classified [information], to tell us what is happening on the border especially if ISIS is involved here.”
Quote:While Democrats such as Mayor Eric Adams (D) and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) have repeatedly suggested that welcoming illegal immigration to New York is compassionate and humane, stories from border crossers and illegal aliens paint a vastly different picture.
In interviews with the New York Times, multiple border crossers and illegal aliens — who have arrived in New York City with the other 110,000 migrants since the spring of last year — detail how they are being exploited and extorted in the city’s “underground economy.”
...
One such Venezuelan man, with a wife and three children, told the Times he has been left with thousands in debt after taking out a loan to pay Mexican drug cartel smugglers to get him and his family across the United States-Mexico border.
The man is now renting a moped for $400 a week and paying a weekly $150 fee to use an UberEats account under the name “Jessica” so he can make deliveries across Manhattan and Brooklyn — his family’s main source of income.
During one week in July, the man said he racked up nearly $900 through making UberEats deliveries but was left with just about $300 when his moped rental payment was due and after paying the woman he rents his account from.
Quote:The Texas Senate voted that Texas Attorney General Kenneth Warren Paxton, Jr. should be acquitted. The majority vote on each article in his impeachment trial was for acquittal. The senators voted to dismiss the four remaining impeachment articles and adjourn for the session, Sine Die.
Jurors had to decide not only whether the suspended attorney general committed every element in each article of impeachment but also that Paxton must be removed from office.
Following the senators’ acquittal votes, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, president of the Senate and presiding officer of the court, signed the order of acquittal and reinstated Paxton as the Attorney General of the State of Texas.
As presiding “judge” Lieutenant Dan Patrick instructed, “An impeachment article is not divisible.” Breitbart Texas reported that Patrick stated, “This means the senators must consider each allegation in each article and determine whether the managers have proved each allegation in an article beyond a reasonable doubt before they can consider whether an article warrants removal from office. Then and only then may an article be sustained.”
The Senate President explained that if an article has three allegations and only two can be proved by the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, a senator was not to vote to sustain an article.
Quote:At a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a visit to the besieged island, AFP reports Meloni said the European Union (E.U.) needed to come together to face the challenges of uncontrolled migration with common purpose.
It is “the future that Europe wants for itself that is at stake here, because the future of Europe depends on Europe’s capacity to face major challenges,” Meloni warned.
Between Monday and Wednesday, an estimated 8,500 people — more than the island’s entire local population — arrived aboard 199 boats, according to the U.N. migration agency.
Lampedusa is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland which has long made it a target for illegal arrivals coming by boat.
“Irregular immigration is a European challenge that needs a European response,” von der Leyen said, calling on other members of the bloc to take in some of the migrants but declining to address the source of the crisis.
The Italian Red Cross, which runs the overcrowded Lampedusa migration centre, said Sunday 1,500 migrants remained there despite having a capacity for just 400.
Quote:German police said dozens of people, including at least 26 officers, were injured during unrest surrounding an Eritrean cultural festival in the southwestern city of Stuttgart.
Shortly before the event was set to begin Saturday afternoon, around 200 protesters gathered in the area outside and began throwing stones, bottles, and other items at police officers and participants of the event.
Six of the 26 injured police officers were treated in a hospital for their injuries, police said. Four event participants and two protesters were also injured, according to police, although information wasn’t immediately available about the severity of their injuries.
Saturday’s protests were the latest in a string of unrest surrounding Eritrean cultural events in Germany and elsewhere. In July, a clash at an Eritrean festival in the western German city of Giessen left 22 police officers injured. A fight between Eritrean government supporters and opponents in Tel Aviv in early September led to one of the most violent street confrontations among African asylum seekers and migrants in the city’s recent memory.
The event Saturday was organized by several groups considered close to the government of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.
Tens of thousands of people have fled Eritrea for Europe, many alleging they were mistreated by Isaias’ repressive government.
Quote:“The EU is making efforts to sever ties with Turkey,” he told reporters before departing for the 78th U.N. General Assembly in New York.
“We will evaluate the situation, and if needed we will part ways with the EU.”
He was responding to a question about a recent report adopted by the European Parliament, which stated “the accession process cannot resume under the current circumstances, and calls on EU to explore ‘a parallel and realistic framework’ for EU-Türkiye relations.”
Turkey applied to join the European Union in 1999, and accession talks began in 2005. Accession negotiations were frozen in 2018 because of “democratic backsliding,” according to the European Parliament.
Erdogan’s statement on Saturday came more than a week after Turkey’s foreign minister affirmed his country’s resolve to join the EU and urged the bloc to take courageous steps to advance its bid.
Quote:Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Friday that talks with China to construct a new nuclear power plant would be completed “in a few months’ time,” after which ground could be broken on Turkey’s third nuclear plant.
Turkey is in a curious position regarding nuclear power. The government is clearly interested in beefing up its capabilities in the hope of reducing the $80 billion it spends on importing energy every year.
None of Turkey’s three nuclear plants are operational yet. The first one, built by Russia’s state energy company Rosatom at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast, is a $20 billion project that should generate five gigawatts (GW) of electricity when fully operational in 2025.
Russian President Vladimir Putin joined Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the Akkuyu inauguration ceremony in April, during which nuclear fuel was ceremonially loaded into the first reactor on the site. Putin hailed Akkuyu as “the largest nuclear construction project in the world.”
...
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafel Mariano Grossi also hailed the Akkuyu project as a major step toward environmentally sensitive power generation.
Quote:Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu vanished from public view more than two weeks ago, missing several important events, including a bilateral defense meeting with Vietnam and talks with Singapore.
Reuters quoted sources on Friday who said Li is under investigation for corruption and might be under detention, house arrest, or orders to keep a low profile.
According to Reuters, Li and eight other officials are under investigation by the Chinese military’s disciplinary committee for unspecified irregularities in bidding for military contracts.
An important clue pointing to Li’s fate was a notice issued in July by China’s military procurement unit, inviting the public to report “irregularities” from October 2017 onward so the military bidding process could be “cleaned up.” Li was in charge of the procurement unit until October 2022.
The Chinese Defense Ministry began making ominous comments about its “zero tolerance for corruption” shortly before Li disappeared. Li made his last known public appearance in Beijing on August 29, a few weeks after the Defense Ministry announced its determination to “win the hard and protracted battle against corruption.”
Another possibility is that Li was removed to clear up a diplomatic logjam with the United States. Li has been under U.S. sanctions since September 2018 for purchasing weapons from a prohibited Russian company called Rosoboronexport, which was itself sanctioned in 2015 for violating nonproliferation agreements and missile technology export controls.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
What does it take for Joe Biden to grant his political rival Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the Secret Service protection he has been requesting?
Does Kennedy have to be mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet, like his father and uncle?
RFK Jr. escaped the same fate Friday night when an armed man impersonating a US marshal tried to approach him at a Los Angeles campaign event just two miles from where his father was assassinated in 1968.
His private security team managed to avert catastrophe, but this is exactly the sort of threat he was warned is a uniquely high risk for his campaign.
The alarming security assessment is why he asked the Biden administration in June for an early start on Secret Service protection – but inexplicably he was denied.
Even after Joe lost eligibility for a detail when his vice presidency ended, Hunter still had the Secret Service running around after him.
When a debit card he shared with Joe got cleaned out by a hooker, two former agents were dispatched within hours to Hunter’s hotel room to find out what happened to “Celtic’s account”, Celtic being Joe’s codename.
When Hunter’s sister-in-law-turned-lover, Hallie Biden, threw his gun in a trashcan opposite a school, two men flashing Secret Service badges turned up at the gun shop within hours and unsuccessfully demanded the very paperwork which now sees Hunter indicted in Delaware.
If Secret Service protection in perpetuity is available to shield Hunter Biden from the consequences of his bad choices, surely it’s not too much of a burden to protect for the duration of his campaign.
Disgraced first son Hunter Biden sued two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers Monday, saying that they violated his right to privacy and tried to “embarrass” him when they publicized his tax information.
The legal action against IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, came just four days after Hunter, 53, was indicted on federal firearms charges for allegedly lying about his drug use to buy a gun in 2018, a case that could go to trial as his father’s bid for re-election heats up.
The suit seeks to “force compliance with federal tax and privacy laws” and stop the spread of “unsubstantiated allegations” and “unlawful disclosure” of Hunter’s tax information.
Shapley and Ziegler were not named in the lawsuit, but the filing centers on statements and congressional testimony made by the agents as they sounded the alarm on what they called a wide-ranging coverup in the Department of Justice’s tax fraud investigation into the first son.
Hunter attorney Abbe Lowell Wrote:IRS agents have targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden via public statements to the media in which they and their representatives disclosed confidential information about a private citizen’s tax matters.
Biden’s suit sought a $1,000 award for each unauthorized tax disclosure and attorney fees, as well as all related documents.
Shapley’s legal team quickly blasted the suit as an attempt at misdirection by the first son.
Shapley’s legal team Wrote:This suit against the IRS is just another frivolous smear by Biden family attorneys trying to turn people’s attention away from Hunter Biden’s own legal problems and intimidate any current and future whistleblowers.
“The federal judge in Delaware who oversaw the aborted plea deal shot down similar claims against the whistleblowers after they exposed the secret backroom deal between Hunter Biden and the Department of Justice.
...
Neither IRS SSA Gary Shapley nor his attorneys have ever released any confidential taxpayer information except through whistleblower disclosures authorized by statute. Once Congress released that testimony, like every American citizen, he has a right to discuss that public information.
William “Widge” Devaney, a former New Jersey federal prosecutor, told The Post he believes that the first son may have a valid case, noting the complications of trying to sue the congressional committees that amplified the whistleblower information.
William Devaney Wrote:The IRS is allowing them to go on television. They’re allowing them to give various statements to the press, which is beyond what they’re entitled to do under the whistleblower statutes.
Devaney adding that the suit appeared to be less about money than political pushback and bolstering Hunter’s criminal defense case.
Shapley and Ziegler told the House Oversight Committee in July that political appointees interfered in the case and shielded investigators from probing finances of Hunter’s that were linked to his father.
They also claimed federal prosecutors blocked investigations into the president’s possible role in multi-million dollar payments to Hunter from a Chinese government-linked energy conglomerate, and prevented agents from looking into emails that suggested he was splitting revenue from his overseas business interests with his father.
Joe Zeigler Wrote:Any time we potentially wanted to go down the road of asking questions related to the president, it was, ‘That’s going to take too much approvals, we can’t ask those questions.’
Monday’s lawsuit, filed in DC federal court, claimed that the sharing of Biden’s personal tax information was not permitted under whistleblower protections.
The legal action came almost exactly three months after Hunter struck a deal with the feds to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in connection with his failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes in both 2017 and 2018. The agreement would have also seen his felony charge of possessing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine dismissed.
But the probation-only agreement, which followed a five-year investigation and was dubbed a “sweetheart deal” by Republicans, was scuttled at a July 26 hearing after Hunter’s lawyers learned that prosecutors were keeping additional charges on the table in connection with an ongoing investigation into his overseas business deals and financial records, while the presiding judge expressed concern over the agreement’s structure.
After Hunter pleaded not guilty, US Attorney David Weiss withdrew the charges in Delaware and was granted special counsel status by Attorney General Merrick Garland Aug. 11.
President Biden has denied any impropriety or involvement in his son’s international lobbying activities, which were first detailed by The Post in a bombshell 2020 exposé.
After an F-35 fighter jet disappeared into the South Carolina sky, officials have found its debris field and launched an investigation into the “mishap” that forced its pilot to eject, according to the US Marine Corps and a defense official with knowledge of the search.
The pilot ejected Sunday near Charleston and was taken to a local medical facility in stable condition, Joint Base Charleston said. But the fighter jet went missing.
The jet’s debris field – about two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston – was discovered Monday after an extensive, multi-agency search from both the ground and air.
The F-35B Lightning II jet is described as “the most lethal, survivable and connected fighter jet in the world” by
The jet costs about $100 million, said Russell Goemaere, spokesperson for the F-35 Joint Program Office.
The entire F-35 program is on track to cost $1.7 trillion over the lifetime of the plane.
It’s not clear what prompted the pilot to eject Sunday.
"The mishap is currently under investigation, and we are unable to provide additional details to preserve the integrity of the investigative process," the Marines said in a statement Monday.
Before the debris field was found, the military made an unusual plea to the public for help finding the F-35 jet, saying its last known position was near Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion, northwest of the city of Charleston.
Community members are now being asked to stay away from the fighter jet’s remains while recovery crews work to secure the debris field in Williamsburg County.
"We are transferring incident command to the USMC this evening, as they begin the recovery process," Joint Base Charleston posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
It isn’t the first notable incident involving military aircraft in recent weeks.
"This stand down is being taken to ensure the service is maintaining operational standardization of combat-ready aircraft with well-prepared pilots and crews," the Marine Corps said in a news release.
While the Marine Corps’ statement didn’t detail the other two mishaps, there were two aviation incidents that happened in August.
Days later, a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey crashed during military exercises in Australia, killing three US Marines and leaving five others in serious condition. That crash also remains under investigation.
Though there is no indication of any connection between the crashes, all of the incidents are classified as Class-A mishaps by the Marine Corps – defined as an incident that leads to a fatality or more than $2.5 million in property damage.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
Quote:“The hearing will focus on constitutional and legal questions surrounding the president’s involvement in corruption and abuse of public office,” the spokesperson said.
In addition to the hearing, the spokesperson told Breitbart News the committee intends to subpoena Hunter Biden and James Biden’s bank records as early as this week.
Hunter Biden denied the committee’s request in February for bank documents and communications, alleging the demands lacked a “legitimate legislative and oversight basis.”
The committee openly threatened to subpoena the Bidens since it launched its investigation in November 2022. It did not issue subpoenas sooner because the committee insisted on practicing restraint to “show good faith.”
The good faith period apparently ended when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) opened an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, giving House investigators more legal tools to compel the Bidens to comply with the investigation.
...
Sixty-one percent of Americans believe Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business deals with China and Ukraine, according to a recent CNN survey. Only 38 percent say Joe Biden was not involved, and just one percent say he was involved and did nothing wrong.
Quote:President Joe Biden will announce the Office of Gun Violence Prevention on Friday and the new office will be coordinated with Mike Bloomberg gun control proponents and others.
According to the Washington Post, “The new office will report up through Stefanie Feldman, the White House staff secretary and a longtime Biden policy aide who has worked on the firearms issue for years.”
Coordination in the office is expected between the “White House, the Community Justice Action Fund and Everytown for Gun Safety.”
Shannon Watts, a Mike Bloomberg affiliate who founded Moms Demand Action, praised the creation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, saying, “If this announcement is, in fact, the creation of a single point of leadership on gun violence in the administration, it’s a very big deal for the movement.”
She added, “A governmental focal point dedicated to creating a framework for overseeing national policy, research and resources would be more than symbolic — it would be a significant turning point for the movement.”
On August 31, 2023, Breitbart News reported that Biden’s ATF was using executive rule to expand background checks to the point of nearly being universal.
Quote:While lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. debate sending billions more in military aid to Ukraine, an American citizen journalist, Gonzalo Lira, is languishing in a Ukrainian prison on allegations of spreading Russian propaganda, throwing into question the status of free speech in the supposed democracy the Biden administration argues is worthy of more taxpayer dollars.
The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve another $24 billion for Ukraine for now through the end of this year, which would add to the $113 billion that Congress has committed to the country since its war with Russia began in February of last year.
President Biden on Tuesday at the United Nations argued that investment in Ukraine was an investment in “the future of every country that seeks a world governed by basic rules.”
However, the administration has been much less vocal about Ukraine potentially violating the rights of an American journalist who is currently detained in Ukraine for his reporting; and in a speech at the U.N. almost entirely devoted to Ukraine, the status of Gonzalo Lira was not mentioned once by Biden.
Lira, a dual citizen of the United States and Chile who was living in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the time of the Russian invasion, is reportedly facing between five to eight years in prison under Ukraine’s wartime propaganda laws.
The American citizen journalist was initially arrested in May of this year on suspicion of producing pro-Russian propaganda on his YouTube channel, where he questioned the narratives around the war presented in the legacy media and from the Zelensky government, including suggesting that Moscow was provoked into invading by the Ukrainian government and the expansion east of the American-led NATO military alliance.
In July of this year, Lira posted messages on Twitter and YouTube claiming that he was going to try to cross the Ukrainian border into Hungary to claim asylum after being released from prison on bail. He has not posted on either platform since.
Quote:New York City is considering a measure that would essentially remove statues of Founding Fathers such as George Washington, all while facing a migrant crisis costing taxpayers billions.
According to a list found in New York City’s council agenda for Tuesday, September 19, officials will consider a bill that would:
…require the Public Design Commission (PDC) to publish a plan to remove works of art on City property that depict a person who owned enslaved persons or directly benefitted economically from slavery, or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.
Under this criteria, the Father of the Nation’s depictions could get the boot, including the famous statue in Union Square Park.
Other statues, including that of Christopher Columbus, would also be subjected to this measure.
According to the bill, if the PDC opts not to remove a work of art of an individual who fits the criteria, it would be required to “include in the plan steps it will take to install an explanatory plaque next to the work of art.”
“This bill would also require the Department of Transportation to consult with the Department of Education to install plaques on sidewalks or other public space adjacent to schools that are named after a person that fits the criteria,” a summary of the measure adds.
Quote:Ray Epps, an Arizona man who became the center of a conspiracy theory about Jan. 6, 2021, has been charged with a misdemeanor offense in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
Epps, a former Marine who claimed in a lawsuit filed this year that Fox News Channel made him a scapegoat for the Capitol riot, is charged with a count of disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds, court records show.
Messages seeking comment from an attorney representing Epps in his lawsuit against Fox were not immediately returned Tuesday. There was no attorney listed in the court docket in the criminal case filed in Washington’s federal court.
Epps was falsely accused by Fox of being a government agent who was whipping up trouble that would be blamed on Trump supporters, his lawsuit claims.
Although the lawsuit mentions Fox’s Laura Ingraham and Will Cain, former Fox host Tucker Carlson is cited as the leader in promoting the theory. Epps was featured in more than two dozen segments on Carlson’s prime-time show, the lawsuit said. Messages seeking comment were sent Tuesday to Fox News and a lawyer for Carlson.
Quote:Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday accused the Indian government of murdering Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil in June.
Canada quickly announced the expulsion of a senior Indian diplomat as a punitive measure. India denounced Trudeau’s charges as “absurd” and expelled a senior Canadian diplomat in response.
“Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” Trudeau said in an emergency statement to the House of Commons on Monday.
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. It is contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open and democratic societies conduct themselves,” he declared.
Trudeau urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government to “cooperate with Canada to get to the bottom of this matter.”
“Canada has declared its deep concerns to the top intelligence and security officials of the Indian government. Last week at the G20 I brought them personally and directly to Prime Minister Modi in no uncertain terms,” he said.
Trudeau had an uncomfortable encounter with Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, last Sunday. Modi scolded Trudeau for allowing Sikh separatist groups – like the one Nijjar was involved with – to hold fiery demonstrations on Canadian soil. Modi told Trudeau that such groups have been responsible for “inciting violence against Indian diplomats, damaging diplomatic premises, and threatening the Indian community in Canada and their places of worship.”
Trudeau responded by defending Canada’s commitment to free speech.
Oh really, Trudeau? Then how to do you explain the following article?
Quote:A court in Alberta, Canada, sentenced Pastor Artur Pawlowski on Monday to 60 days in prison for a speech to Freedom Convoy truckers in February 2022 in which he supported their protests against repressive lockdown, vaccine, and other mandates related to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
Pawlowski, who first rose to prominence for expelling Canadian police from his church for trying to shut down an Easter service in 2021, faced multiple charges, including “mischief,” a crime in Canada, and violating the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act (CIDA). The latter charge suggested that Pawlowski’s speaking to protesters on the Alberta-Montana border was an attack on the province’s road infrastructure, as he encouraged them to continue an ongoing blockade demanding the lifting of coronavirus-related mandates. Prosecutors were demanding up to ten months in prison for the pastor on the grounds that he has publicly and repeatedly denied having any remorse for his vocal opposition to lockdowns.
“I’m not ashamed of what I did. If I had a chance to do it again, I would do it again, gladly,” Pawlowski told a crowd of supporters after his conviction on Monday.
Judge Gordon Krinke reserved a conviction on the charges of attacking infrastructure, as Pawlowski’s defense had challenged the CIDA as unconstitutional, and proceedings regarding that law are ongoing. He found Pawlowski guilty of “mischief” and breaching a release order in May. The 60-day sentence handed down on Monday includes time served, so Pawlowski walked out of the court free – but with a criminal conviction on his record.
“A period of incarceration is required in order to achieve the objectives of denunciation and deterrence,” Krinke said at the sentencing, according to the CBC.
Quote:German climate activists sprayed orange paint onto Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on Sunday morning to urge the German government to take more urgent action against climate change.
Members of the group the Last Generation used fire extinguishers filled with paint to spray all six columns of the popular landmark in Germany’s capital. The group’s priorities include getting Germany to stop using all fossil fuels by 2030 and take short-term measures, including imposing a general speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) on highways, to cut emissions more quickly.
“The protest makes it clear: It is time for a political change,” the group said in a statement. “Away from fossil fuels – towards fairness.”
Police cordoned off the area surrounding Brandenburg Gate and confirmed that they detained 14 activists affiliated with the Last Generation.
The group best known for its protests in which activists glue themselves to roads and block traffic plays a provocative and polarizing role in German politics and society.
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner condemned the group’s actions, saying their tactics go beyond legitimate forms of protest.
Quote:Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer made a move to park his tanks on the Conservatives’ lawn by announcing he would fix the English Channel migrant crisis if elected, but observers including Brexit leader Nigel Farage warn it would fail solve the problem and would even make things worse.
The people smugglers who bring migrants across the English Channel in small boats should be treated like terrorists, Labour Leader and would-be next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Sir Kier Starmer wrote this week in headline-catching remarks meant to position his party as one that will be tough on border criminals. While eye-catching, the claim came with other measures he said would enable the changes he foresaw.
Shockingly, Starmer said the United Kingdom should set course to drift back towards integration with the European Union, rejoining Europol and joining the bloc’s migrant resettlement programme, the same system Poland is presently fighting so hard to escape.
While the Conservatives have been quick to jump on Starmer’s plan as unworkable or unrealistic, they do so from a position of considerable weakness themselves, having been in power for 13 unboken years during which time migrant levels have only risen. This failure is doubly damaging for the Conservatives at the ballot box because they have fought many elections over the past two decades on a platform of promising to make major cuts to migrant arrival numbers — both legal and illegal — and have not only failed, but also admitted they lied about really wanting to try in the first place.
Trying to provide their own covering fire for this persistent failure, policing minister Chris Philp insisted Friday morning that the Prime Minister would fulfil pledges on migration “in the fullness of time”.
Basically... never. They're not interested at all.
Quote:Russell Brand has been accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women in a joint investigation from the publicly-owned Channel 4 news network and the Sunday Times in Britain.
The British comedian vehemently denied any wrongdoing and pre-empted the publication of the allegations, posting a video on Friday evening in which he said that although he has lived a “promiscuous” life, all of his sexual interactions were consensual.
Brand went on to suggest that the publication of the allegations — stemming from between 2006 and 2013 — may have been politically motivated, asserting that there is a “serious and concerted agenda to control” independent media personalities in order to silence voices critical of mainstream liberal narratives.
The investigation, part of which was published on Saturday by The Sunday Times, claimed that four women have come forward with complaints of rape, sexual assault, as well as controlling and abusive behaviour from when he served as a presenter on BBC Radio 2 and the left-leaning publicly-owned Channel 4 and then later during his time as an actor in Hollywood.
One woman told news outlets that she had been raped by Brand in his then-Los Angeles home and that she had sought treatment at a rape crisis centre later that day. The paper claimed to have seen text messages from the hours after the alleged incident in which she relayed to the actor that she felt that she had been taken advantage of and writing: “When a girl say[s] NO it means no.” To which Brand is said to have replied that he was “very sorry”.
Quote:Six Ukrainian deputy defense ministers were fired Monday following the dismissal two weeks ago of Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov in a corruption scandal, officials said, as heavy fighting continued in the east.
Deputy defense ministers including Hanna Maliar, Vitalii Deyneha and Denys Sharapov, as well as the state secretary of the Ministry of Defense, Kostiantyn Vashchenko, were fired, according to the Telegram account of Taras Melnychuk, permanent representative of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Melnychuk provided no explanation of the firings, but the government has been investigating accusations of corruption in the military related to purchasing equipment. Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar lawmaker who took over as defense minister, did not immediately issue a statement.
Reznikov was removed earlier this month after a scandal involving the defense ministry´s procurement of military jackets at three times their cost. Reznikov denied the allegations but resigned.
The reshuffling of the department came a day after Ukraine’s military said it captured the village of Klishchiivka from Russian troops after months of fierce battles. Fighting continued Monday as troops tried to hold the village south of the Russian-held city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region.
Its recapture followed the retaking of the nearby village of Andriivka.
Quote:One million economic migrants from around the world will exit Columbia for the United States in 2024, says the leftist president of Columbia, Gustavo Petro.
Colombia will not interfere with the huge flow out of Colombia, across Panama’s Darien Gap, through Mexico, and up to the U.S. border, Petro told the New York Times:
The answer to this crisis, he said, was not to go “chasing migrants” at the border or to force them into “concentration camps” that blocked them from trying to reach the United States.
“I would say yes, I’ll help, but not like you think,” Mr. Petro said of the agreement with the Biden administration, which was big on ambition but thin on details. He said any solution to the issue had to focus on “solving migrants’ social problems, which do not come from Colombia [but come from the United States].”
“He expects half a million people to cross the Darien this year, he said, and then a million next year,” up from 250,000 migrants in 2022, the newspaper added.
One million more Darien Gap migrants in 2024 would be in addition to the huge illegal migrant flow from Central American countries.
Colombia’s illegal inflow, plus the huge legal inflow of one million legal immigrants and one million supposedly temporary workers, would deliver roughly one migrant for every birth in the United States. That massive inflow would accelerate the elite-pushed demographic replacement within Americans’ homeland.
Quote:Díaz-Canel — who represents all-powerful dictator Raúl Castro, 92, during international engagements — used most of his speech to condemn what he claimed was an “unfair, anachronistic, and dysfunctional” global financing system, lamenting that his country and many other impoverished socialist states were heavily in debt. Díaz-Canel insisted that debt-laden countries were “not asking for handouts or begging for favors” when demanding the institutions they owe money to ease the debt burden.
Díaz-Canel also repeatedly condemned the United States for choosing not to engage in trade with the repressive communist regime — a state sponsor of terrorism that regularly tortures pro-democracy dissidents, imprisons children for decades at a time if considered “disrespectful” to the Castros, and uses state-sponsored rape and threats of sexual violence against concerned mothers and other women.
Cuba is currently a member of the Human Rights Council alongside fellow serial international law criminals China, Pakistan, Qatar, and Vietnam, among others, but its term is set to expire at the end of the year.
“Cuba will continue to strengthen its democracy and socialist model which, while under siege, has demonstrated how much a developing country of small dimensions and few natural resources can do,” Díaz-Canel asserted. “We will never give up our right to defend ourselves.”
Díaz-Canel began his remarks by quoting Guevara, one of the key figures of the 1959 communist coup that brought Fidel Castro to power, and noting that Guevara, too, had addressed the General Assembly. Díaz-Canel omitted the content of those remarks in 1964, in which Guevara confirmed, “firing squad executions, yes, we have executed. We execute and we will keep executing so long as it is necessary.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Leaked images of the photo ID cards for illegal aliens were first published by Adam Shaw at Fox News, showing space for the carrier’s photo, a QR code, and information about the carrier, including name and age — similar to a driver’s license or state-issued ID.
The ID cards, part of a DHS pilot program, could be used by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at airports or to access public benefits.
When news of the ID cards leaked last year, officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency defended the program, saying, “For provisionally released noncitizens, the digital modernization will provide ongoing access to important immigration documents through the secure card and connected portal.”
John Fabbricatore, a former ICE official and advisory board member at the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE), told Breitbart News that the ultimate goal of the Biden administration is to limit illegal aliens’ face-to-face contact with DHS agents as much as possible.
“It’s a normalization of illegal immigration,” Fabbricatore said.
Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Breitbart News that House Republicans should act to stop the ID cards, among other things.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s border chief is providing quasi-amnesty and work permits to 470,000 more Venezuelan illegal migrants who are now crowding New York and other cities.
Biden’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) expansion will add one worker for every nine Americans who will begin to seek jobs this year.
In combination with Biden’s massive inflow of legal and illegal migrants, the temporary amnesty will further force down wages for most Americans — after three years of shrinking wages.
The amnesty will spike housing costs for American families, and displace more Americans from construction, trucking, and restaurant careers.
The expansion will also further reduce marketplace pressure on U.S. employers to buy productivity-boosting machinery or to hire the millions of Americans who have been sidelined amid massive immigration levels since 1990.
The offer of legal protections will also encourage more Venezuelans and other foreigners to migrate into U.S. workplaces, especially because Biden has shown little interest in helping Venezuelans overthrow their dictatorship.
Quote:According to a source within U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has no cohesive enforcement strategy to address the border incursion of more than 2,500 migrants into one Texas border town on Wednesday. The source, not authorized to speak to the media, told Breitbart Texas every Border Patrol station in the region is beyond capacity. The only instructions received from DHS is to quickly process and release the mostly Venezuelan migrants who made landfall in Eagle Pass to a non-government shelter.
Breitbart Texas posted in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, on Wednesday morning and watched as the more than 2,500 migrants moved through the city streets headed to the Rio Grande to begin the border crossing. Piedras Negras is the city directly across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, a city of 30,000 residents. Some migrants carried children on their shoulders and the few belongings they possessed while they moved to surrender to federal and state authorities waiting in Eagle Pass. Many were single adult migrants.
The source told Breitbart Texas the recent increase in migrant incursions in Eagle Pass, some 7,000 over the previous 72 hours, has filled a local soft-sided Border Patrol processing facility to more than three times its capacity. The lack of detention space at this facility has forced the movement of the migrants to all other Border Patrol stations in the immediate vicinity, resulting in overcrowding at those locations as well.
Quote:Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared visibly angered when questioned during the Department of Justice (DOJ) Oversight Hearing on Wednesday about whether or not his agency is biased against traditional Catholics.
During the hearing, Rep. Jefferson Van Drew (R-NJ) had a heated exchange with Garland after calling out the DOJ and FBI for a string of scandals, including an internal FBI memo that leaked earlier this year. In the memo, the FBI described certain traditional Catholics it was tying to violent extremism as those who prefer Latin mass, have a “disdain” for most modern-day popes, and have a “frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”
The memo also suggested that violent extremists’ “interest” in “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology was growing and that it therefore presented an opportunity for the FBI to engage with certain churches in an attempt to goad the churches’ leadership into serving as FBI “tripwires,” who would operate like unofficial informants to the FBI.
...
...Van Drew told Garland. “And never in my life did I think I would see our great DOJ turn into a politicized weapon to be wielded by an investigation to attack political rivals. I still hold the thousands of hardworking staff with high regard, but unfortunately there are some within the department in my mind who have betrayed their oaths.”
“And for that you must be held accountable,” he continued. “I hold you accountable for the labeling of parents as domestic terrorists standing up for the proper education of their own children. I hold you accountable for the anti-Catholic memo. Imagine sending agents undercover into Roman Catholic churches because they were supposedly domestic terrorists.”
...
“Attorney General, though the chair, I ask you: Do you agree that traditional Catholics are violent extremists?” Van Drew repeated.
“I have no idea what ‘traditional’ means here,” Garland said before becoming visibly angry. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous – so absurd that you would ask me that question.”
Garland has previously stated that that his family members were victims of religious persecution in Europe, and two of his grandmother’s siblings were murdered in the Holocaust.
“It was your FBI that did this. It was your FBI that was sending – and we have the memos, we have the emails – undercover agents into Catholic churches,” Van Drew continued.
“Both I and the director of the FBI have said that we were appalled by that memo,” Garland replied.
But those two guys didn't do anything to prevent the FBI from doing so even AFTER the leaks became public.
Quote:Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at a press conference from Germany on Tuesday that the Ukraine War could be sustained because the United States and its allies are “rich.”
Milley was asked: “President Zelenskyy said this weekend that U.S. military aid to Ukraine is arriving far too late. Do Ukraine’s military partners have the industrial capacity to enable Ukraine to make major gains in another fighting season?”
Milley responded: “…you asked about the capacity. Can we continue to do this? The short answer is yes, we can continue to do this, and the United States and its allied countries are rich, powerful, with significant resources, military resources that are capable of sustaining this fight, in President Biden’s words, as long as it takes.”
He added, “And that’s what the intent is of our political leadership of all of the nations of Europe and around the world, actually, and the United States, and that’s exactly what we, the military, will do. We’ll do what we’re directed to do, and we’re going to do it as long as it takes.”
Milley ended his opening remarks at the press conference by saying, “Slava Ukraini,” which means “Glory to Ukraine.”
So he can make US and its allies go bankrupt and get no tangible benefits from defending Ukraine?
People want results, good results. Not failures.
Quote:Raisi took some hard slaps against the United States despite the Biden administration attempting to curry favor with a $6 billion hostage ransom, and concluded with deranged ravings about terrorism that the U.N. translators clearly had difficulty making sense of.
The U.N. staff also seemed to have a bit of impish fun by turning their cameras on the audience to show how much of the audience drifted away during Raisi’s endless rant or visibly stopped paying attention to what he was saying.
No one called time on Raisi even as his tirade passed the grueling 35-minute mark (the U.N. recommends a 15-minute time limit for General Assembly debate speeches).
...
No sane observer would describe the brutal theocracy Raisi presides over as a bastion of reason, dignity, or human rights. While he was speaking at the U.N., his thugs back home were cracking down on protests to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his “morality police” murdering a young woman named Mahsa Amini for allegedly wearing her mandatory headscarf improperly.
Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, was clearly such a sane observer. Erdan stormed out of the General Assembly during Raisi’s speech, waving a photo of Amini, and was briefly detained for unclear reasons by U.N. security personnel. Erdan later said that “being detained for standing with the Iranian people and protesting a vile mass murderer who was given an audience on the global stage is utterly disgraceful.”
Raisi himself could not care less about Amini or the innocent people who died when his forces viciously suppressed the greatest uprising of the Iranian people in four decades, but he did make a point of visiting the families of security forces killed while crushing that remarkable flicker of liberty.
Quote:The Global Times panned Biden’s remarks for their “usual snarling at Russia” in response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and claimed that Biden’s conciliatory remarks about Washington’s relationship with China indicate “the White House now has few arrows in its quiver” with which to confront the communist rogue state. It also objected to Biden acknowledging that America has a leadership role to play on the international stage as the world’s wealthiest country and a beacon of freedom and human rights.
As per tradition, Biden was the second world leader to speak at this year’s General Assembly on Tuesday, dedicating a significant percentage of his remarks to encouraging U.N. members to support Ukraine. Biden also announced several programs to “maximize the impact of our collective investment” by enriching underdeveloped Middle East and African countries — an apparent bid to challenge China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which offers predatory loans to poor countries as a means of eroding their sovereignty and nefariously expanding the Communist Party’s influence.
“We’re focusing on economic corridors that will maximize the impact of our collective investment and deliver consequential results across multiple countries and multiple sectors,” Biden told the U.N., continuing:
For example, the Lobito Corridor will extend across Africa from the western port of Angola to the DRC to Zambia … Similarly, the groundbreaking effort we announced at the G20…to connect India to Europe through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel will spur opportunities and investment across two continents.
“The US President Joe Biden has once again turned the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) into a runway for touting US ‘leadership,'” the Global Times grumbled. “He has made the Ukraine crisis the spotlight of the gathering to shore up alliance of US-centered small cliques and used the crisis as a weapon to attack other countries.”
I gotta say this is the only kind of decent proposal the current regime has offered ever since it entered the White House. The problem is that the US tends to finance most of those projects with some sort of small contributions from Europe. And Europe is facing the same issues like massive immigration!
And why wouldn't China complain about it? They wanna become the first world power at all costs.
Quote:Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticized the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday for hypocrisy on the issue of mass migration, charging open-borders advocates with spreading “chaos,” making human traffickers rich, and bringing the evil of slavery back into the world.
Meloni defended the concept of nationhood and spoke of the natural yearning for national identity, while also stressing the importance of the U.N. as a vehicle for finding “shared solutions that can guarantee peace and prosperity.”
Meloni said nations exist because they “reflect humankind’s innate need to feel a sense of belonging to a community, to a certain people, and to be able to share with others the same historical memory, the same laws, the same customs and traditions – in a word, one’s identity.”
Meloni said the U.N. represented the triumph of reason and debate over violence but threw in a little criticism for the institution talking endlessly about principles it does not always put into practice: “We live in complex times, of continuous emergencies and change, and we cannot afford the luxury of words of circumstance, of lofty principles that have never been realized, of easy choices in place of the right ones.”
“If these two premises – the nation and reason – are still the foundation of our action, then we must reject the utopian and self-serving narrative of those who say that a world without nations, without borders, and without identity would be a world without war and conflict,” she said.
Quote:Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa boasted to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that his country has entrenched “democracy, constitutionalism, good governance, and the rule of law” under his leadership, and demanded the lifting of ongoing Western sanctions against Zimbabwe and every other country currently subjected to them.
Few international observers would agree with Mnagagwa’s characterization of Zimbabwe as a bastion of clean representative government. Mnagagwa’s government arrested dozens of the monitors assigned to the August 2023 election, allegedly for leaking election results ahead of time.
The opposition cried foul, complaining of “blatant and gigantic fraud,” including voter suppression and ballot rigging. International human rights groups described an atmosphere of “intimidation” against opponents of the ruling ZANU-PF party, which continued its unbroken 43-year streak in power.
As for Zimbabwe’s economy, the World Bank assessed that it consistently performs below the level that should be made possible by abundant natural resources and good human capital – not primarily because of sanctions, but due to “price and exchange rate instability, misallocation of productive resources, high informality, low investment, and limited structural transformation.”
“High inflation, multiple exchange rates, and unsustainable debt levels have increased the cost of production, reduced incentives for productivity-enhancing investment, and encouraged informality,” the World Bank maintains.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:While announcing the launch of the executive Office of Gun Violence Prevention, President Joe Biden pledged to use the office to “centralize, accelerate, and intensify” his administration’s gun control push.
Biden noted that he has chosen Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee the office.
A report by the Washington Post makes clear coordination in the office is expected between the “White House, the Community Justice Action Fund and Everytown for Gun Safety.”
After Biden announced the launch of the new office on Friday, he then called for an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and universal background checks. He also called for Congress to take action for more gun restrictions then he pledged to use the office to “centralize, accelerate, and intensify” his administration’s gun control push.
Biden secured the Bi-Partisan Safer Communities Act in the summer of 2022, thanks to help from Sen John Cornyn (R-Texas), who worked with Democrats to get the legislation passed.
That move makes me think he doesn't care about the law at all.
Quote:U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez blocked California’s ban on ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds on Friday.
This is the second time Benitez has issued a decision against the ban.
On June 29, 2017, Breitbart News reported that Benitez blocked the ban to prevent “otherwise law-abiding” citizens from being criminalized.
He noted that the ban takes away Second Amendment rights “and amounts to the government taking people’s private property without compensation.”
On Friday, Benitez issued a decision against the ban again by following the Bruen (2022) framework, which requires tradition to be on the side of the gun control in question.
KQED quoted Benitez noting, “There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity.”
He noted that, historically speaking, detachable magazines “solved a problem with historic firearms: running out of ammunition and having to slowly reload a gun.”
He added, “There have been, and there will be, times where many more than 10 rounds are needed to stop attackers,” Benitez wrote. “Yet, under this statute, the State says ‘too bad.’”
Quote:Cash, gold bars, and a Mercedes Benz – totaling more than $710,000 collectively – were recovered between the home and safety deposit box of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and his wife, Nadine Menendez, during an investigation into bribes they allegedly accepted from New Jersey businessmen, federal prosecutors say.
The indictment, brought by the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, accuses Menendez and his wife of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes” from three New Jersey businessmen – Wael Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes – “in exchange for his influence and power as a Senator to seek to protect and enrich” them and “benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.”
It notes prosecutors searched the Menendezes’s residence in June 2022. During the search, federal agents located some $480,000 in cash, including in envelopes stuffed in jackets embroidered with “Robert Menendez” and “Senator Menendez” on the chest, per the filing. Some of the envelopes were recovered from “clothing, closets, and a safe,” and some of them yielded DNA and or fingerprints from Daibes or his driver, the filing said. Upwards of $70,000 in cash was also discovered in a safety deposit box in Nadine Menendez’s name.
The indictment alleges Daibes or Hana gave the Mendezes the gold bars authorities recovered from the residence, which totaled more than $100,000 in value. According to the indictment, Menendez “agreed to attempt to influence and attempted to influence the pending federal prosecution of” Daibes in exchange for “cash, furniture, and gold bars” between December 2020 and early 2022.
On March 31, 2022 – months before the search of his residence – prosecutors say Nadine Menendez gave a Manhattan jeweler “two one-kilogram gold bars to be sold,” which allegedly previously belonged to Daines.
The serial numbers on the bars indicate they were once under Daibes’s ownership, the indictment declares. A day earlier, prosecutors say Daibes and she got lunch with her later texting, “THANK YOU Fred,” with emojis of prayer hands, a heart, and an “X,” an “O.”
Additionally, The couple’s third codefendant, Uribe, is accused of providing a Mercedes Benz worth upwards of $60,000 to the couple in 2019. This was allegedly in exchange for Menedez’s alleged help in interfering in a New Jersey criminal investigation into a Uribe associate.
Quote:New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has joined the small, but growing chorus of Democrats urging Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to resign from the U.S Senate after the fellow New Jersey Democrat was indicted on federal bribery charges Friday morning.
Murphy, in a statement reported by CBS News, branded the bombshell claims against Menendez “deeply disturbing,” adding that the claims “implicate national security and the integrity of our criminal justice system.”
“Under our legal system, Senator Menendez and the other defendants have not been found guilty and will have the ability to present evidence disputing these charges, and we must respect the process,” Murphy stated, according to the news outlet. “However, the alleged facts are so serious that they compromise the ability of Senator Menendez to effectively represent the people of our state. Therefore, I am calling for his immediate resignation.”
Quote:The teenage driver accused in the fatal hit-and-run of a retired policeman in Las Vegas apparently believed he would not be in custody for very long.
Jesus Ayala, who recently turned 18, was allegedly driving the stolen car in August when he hit and killed 64-year-old Andreas Probst who was riding his bike on the side of the road, the New York Post reported Friday.
Vegas teen told cops ‘I’ll be out in 30 days’ after he was nabbed in killing of retired top cop chief in hit-and-run...
Sixteen-year-old Jzamir Keys was also inside the car during the incident. According to Breitbart News, the teenagers will face charges as adults.
Video footage shows the teens nearing the victim, who is wearing a red t-shirt and black shorts, as he pedaled along the roadway. At one point, one of them says, “Hit his ass,” and moments later the car slams into the victim who is left laying on the side of the road as the pair drive away.
Quote:An Illinois man accused of leaving his dead wife’s body on the side of the road has been released thanks to the state’s new cashless bail system.
Alona Muryn, 29, was found dead at the side of the road after Inverness police received a call around 1:30 a.m. Monday.
Police believe Muryn got into an argument with her husband, who was driving. “The woman removed her seatbelt, opened her car door, and fell from the vehicle,” per CWB Chicago. “Police said she was struck by the car after falling out.”
According to the allegations, her husband, Ivan Muryn, then “stopped, checked on Alona, and “fled the scene without calling for help.”
He turned himself in later in the day. He is also a citizen of Ukraine. But he was only told to surrender his passport, not to drive, and placed on an electronic monitoring system. Murwyn could not be held because he is “not charged with a domestic crime.” Additionally, per the report, he “does not qualify to be jailed before trial because the charge he faces is not considered a forcible felony and because it could result in probation upon conviction.”
So being the main suspect in a murder case no longer matter in Illinois? Even a fictitious character like Sherlock Holmes would strongly disagree with them.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the extension and redesignation of temporary amnesty status for nearly 18,000 Afghans living in the United States despite their initial entry being plagued by document vetting failures.
On Friday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the extension and redesignation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for close to 18,000 Afghans who were admitted to the U.S. after the withdrawal of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The massive resettlement operation brought nearly 100,000 Afghans to American communities in a matter of months — often without having been interviewed in person.
So they don't even know what kind of people they are, and still, they're getting permission to enter US soil?
Is the DHS now looking to invite MORE TERRORISTS to become legal residents of the US??
Quote:These were brought to mind by the announcement on Friday that Russia was banning exports of diesel fuel. An updated version of the Russian reversal might go something like this: “In America, you sanction oil. In Russia, the oil sanctions you.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the Biden administration forecast that its sanctions would be crippling. Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics who is said to have designed the sanctions, estimated that Russia’s economic output would be cut in half.
...
“Never before has such a large, modern economy been cut off so quickly from most of the world.”
To put it mildly, this has not worked out as planned. The sanctions did succeed in making Russia officially the most sanctioned country in the world. That just proved not to matter as much to Russia’s economy as many of the experts in financial warfare were forecasting.
The Russian economy shrank 2.1 percent in 2022. That’s a serious recession but not exactly the economic devastation that the U.S. said would be visited upon the country in retaliation for the invasion. In July, the IMF said that it expected Russia’s economy to grow 1.5 percent this year. Russia is now projecting that its economy will grow by more than two percent this year.
The professional Western critics of Putin’s regime warn that we should not trust Russia’s official economic figures, much less the forecasts of its state economists. They say the numbers are inflated to dishearten the West and that they are just part of Putin’s propaganda war against the United States. But even if the Russian economy is not growing as much as its finance ministers say, there’s little room for doubt that its economy is growing.
What’s more, Russia has become a leader in the campaign by the OPEC+ group to raise the price of oil by limiting its production. While much of the world that is most susceptible to U.S. influence attempted to limit Russia’s ability to buy and sell goods and services, Russia has shown that it is perfectly happy to limit its own largest exports—petroleum and gas.
On Friday, after Russia announced an indefinite ban on diesel exports, the price of Brent Crude rose to $93.55 a barrel. With the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve badly depleted after the Biden administration used it to push down oil prices last year and then failed to replenish the stockpile when oil was much cheaper, there’s no ready source of new supply to keep prices from rising even further.
If Russia were starved for foreign capital, it would be exporting everything it could. Instead, it is more concerned about shoring up domestic supply to prevent inflation.
Quote:Cyprus has formally called on the European Union to re-evaluate which areas of Syria can be declared safe and free from armed conflict so that Syrian migrants can eventually be repatriated there, the Cypriot Interior Ministry said Friday.
Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou was the sole official to raise the issue during July’s informal gathering of his EU counterparts in Spain. No other EU nation has taken a formal position on safe zone re-evaluation, the Interior Ministry told The Associated Press.
Cyprus is fronting the re-evaluation bid because it says its proximity to the region has now made it a prime destination for Syrian migrants.
Ethnically divided Cyprus, with a population of nearly a million in the southern, internationally recognized part where migrants seek asylum, says migrants now comprise 6% of its population – much higher than the average in other EU member countries.
War-torn Syria has for the past 12 years has been designated as an unsafe country where indiscriminate violence poses a real risk to the safety of its citizens. The threat makes them eligible for international protection status which enables them to live and work in third countries.
...
The government of Cyprus is proposing that the EU initially re-examines whether conditions on the ground in Syria – or parts of the country – have changed enough for Syrians to be safely repatriated.
The practicalities of how such repatriations would take place could be decided at a later stage. One possibility would be to start repatriations of Syrians who hail from the declared safe zones, according to the Cypriot Interior Ministry.
Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a basically upbeat assessment of Ukraine’s long-awaited “counteroffensive” against invading Russian forces but conceded “nobody knows” if there will be a major breakthrough this year in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
Zelensky added that he thinks “we will have more success” in the coming year, following a slower-than-expected start for the big counteroffensive. As in several other recent interviews, he disputed criticism that Ukraine’s push has deteriorated into a stalemate, pointing to gains made by his forces in the east of the country.
Ukraine’s timetable to begin producing strategically significant results might not be as long as Zelensky would like. Two weeks ago, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned there are only “about 30 to 45 days left” of decent weather for military operations this year.
“I said at the very beginning of this that this was going to be long, slow, hard, and high-casualty-producing, and that’s exactly what it is,” Milley said.
Zelensky told CNN on Tuesday that more advanced weapons, such as American long-range missiles and Patriot air defense systems, would be crucial to breaking Russia’s defenses. Without those weapons, he predicted “more casualties on the battlefield and elsewhere.”
“We are on the finishing line. I’m sure of that,” he said.
Asked about growing skepticism in Washington for continued heavy funding of the Ukrainian war effort when it seems unable to make significant gains against the Russians, Zelensky said it was “difficult” for outsiders to understand the realities of the battlefield.
Quote:Ukraine carried out a fiery missile strike Friday on the main headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, a Russian official said. Videos and photos showed large plumes of smoke over the building in Sevastopol in annexed Crimea.
The Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said there was no information about casualties. He said firefighters were battling a blaze, and more emergency forces were being brought in, an indication that the fire could be massive.
A stream of ambulances were arriving at the fleet’s headquarters and shrapnel was scattered hundreds of meters (yards) around, the Tass news agency reported.
Razvozhayev initially warned Sevastopol residents that another attack was possible and urged them not to leave buildings or go to the city center. He later said there was no longer any air strike danger but reiterated calls not to go to the central part of the city, saying roads were closed and and unspecified “special efforts” were underway.
Ukrainian officials, who have claimed responsibility for a series of other recent attacks on Crimea, didn’t immediately announce Kyiv launched the strike.
Sevastopol residents said they heard explosions in the skies and saw smoke, Russian news outlets reported. Images circulated in Ukrainian Telegram channels showed clouds of smoke over the seafront. The Associated Press could not immediately verify the videos.
Quote:Poland on Wednesday announced it will stop supplying weapons to Ukraine in order to prioritize its own defense, according to local reports.
Local outlet TVN24 reported that Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that Poland will no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine and will “now arm [themselves] with the most modern weapons.”
“We know perfectly well that Ukraine is defending itself against the brutal Russian attack. We won’t jeopardize her safety. Our hub in Rzeszów, in consultation with the Americans and NATO, still plays the same role,” he reportedly said in an interview with Polsat News in reference to the Polish city where international weapons shipments come in and depart for Ukraine.
The announcement prompted shock throughout the international community, as Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters after Russian forces invaded it in February 2022.
However, Polish-Ukrainian relations have been strained in recent weeks after Poland banned Ukrainian grain imports to safeguard its own farmers.
Quote:A 13-year-old boy from the suburbs of Stockholm who was found dead in woods near his home earlier this month, is the latest victim of a deadly gang war in Sweden, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Milo, who was only identified by his first name, had been shot in the head in a chilling example of “gross and completely reckless gang violence,” prosecutor Lisa dos Santos said. He is believed to have been shot in Haninge, south of Stockholm. She declined to give further details due to the ongoing investigation.
Swedish media, which have published photos of Milo with the permission of his family, said the body had been moved to the woods after the boy – who was not known to the police – was killed. He was reported missing on Sept. 8 and his body was found by a passer-by three days later.
Criminal gangs have become a growing problem in Sweden in recent decades, with an increasing number of drive-by shootings, bombings and grenade attacks. Most of the violence is in Sweden’s three largest cities: Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo.
As of Sept. 15, police had counted 261 shootings in Sweden this year, of which 34 were fatal and 71 people were wounded.
In September alone, the Scandinavian country saw four shootings, three of them fatal, in Uppsala, west of Stockholm, and in the Swedish capital. One of the victims was the 13-year-old Milo.
Quote:“It is unrealistic to completely phase out fossil fuel energy,” China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said at a press conference Thursday.
China is by far the world’s worst polluter and largest consumer of fossil fuels, conspicuously including prodigious amounts of coal burned in its steadily growing number of coal-fired power plants.
Xie’s comments appeared to be a definitive dashing of hopes that China might get more serious about reducing its carbon emissions at the upcoming COP28 U.N., climate conference in Dubai this November.
Reuters reported Xie saying China is “open to setting a global renewable energy target as long as it took the divergent economic conditions of different countries into account” – which means, of course, that China and its client states will not be expected to make the kind of sacrifices demanded of Americans and Europeans.
The China-led BRICS economic bloc made this explicit at its summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August. The BRICS group views climate change as the responsibility of the wealthy industrialized nations of the West, and has no intention of compromising their own industrial goals in favor of expensive and unreliable “green energy.”
Xie “welcomed pledges made to him by his U.S. counterpart John Kerry that a $100 billion annual fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change would soon be made available,” indicating that Chinese Communist still love to talk about climate change, especially when America is making gigantic commitments to pay for it.
On the other hand, Xie was irate at what he described as “protectionist” U.S. trade sanctions on Chinese solar panels, lecturing the U.S. about “politicizing” green energy and warning of price increases as high as 25 percent on solar panels from the trade sanctions.
U.S. imports of Chinese solar panels picked up in March after a slowdown caused by the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA), which requires companies to prove their Chinese supply chains are not tainted with slave labor from the Uyghur Muslims.
Quote:Chinese Vice President Han Zheng promised the United Nations General Assembly during his address on Thursday afternoon that his Communist Party would never practice “hegemony and expansion” and promote dialogue and peace – before threatening the nation of Taiwan with the “firm resolve, strong will, and the power of the Chinese people.”
Han asserted that Taiwan, a sovereign country that has never been governed by a state based in Beijing, had been part of China since “ancient times,” and warned that “no one should ever underestimate” how far Xi Jinping’s genocidal regime would go to realize “complete reunification.” He also vowed that his country would always promote “peace, development, equity, justice, democracy, and freedom.”
...Despite being a country, Taiwan is never invited to the event – or allowed membership in any United Nations agency, from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) to UNICEF – as a result of severe Chinese government pressure on the United Nations.
The United Nations recommends, though does not mandate, that speeches be loosely tied to a theme. This year’s theme is “Rebuilding Trust and Reigniting Solidarity.”
Xi was one of several leaders of rogue regimes who did not risk the trip to New York. Chinese state media did not dwell on Xi’s aversion to travel, criticizing American President Joe Biden’s allegedly “cliché” speech on Tuesday, instead.
“We should respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and observe the purposes and principles of the U.N. charter,” Han asserted during a segment of his speech meant to condemn countries that refuse to do business with serial human rights criminals. He then pivoted to a call for the full elimination of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
“There is but one China in the world. The government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and Taiwan has been an inalienable part of China’s territory since ancient times,” Han incorrectly asserted. “No one, no force, should ever underestimate the firm resolve, strong will, and the power of the Chinese people to safeguard their sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Quote:Syrian dictator Bashar Assad on Thursday traveled to China with his wife Asmaa and a delegation of senior officials, making his first visit to the authoritarian superpower since the beginning of Syria’s civil war 12 years ago.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Assad’s visit was intended to “further deepen political mutual trust and cooperation in various fields between the two countries and push bilateral relations to a new level.” His agenda included meeting with his opposite number, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and attending the opening ceremony for the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Xi also came to Hangzhou for the Asian Games, and to meet with an assortment of China’s business partners and allies, including the heads of state from Cambodia, Kuwait, and Nepal. Xi’s business with Assad was the most serious of all, as China is angling for a plum and profitable role in Syria’s postwar reconstruction projects.
Syria formally joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in January 2022, all but guaranteeing China a dominant position in reconstruction. The Assad regime celebrated its induction into BRI as support for the legitimacy of the dictatorship, and a signal that Assad retained full control of his country after winning the long and brutal civil war with Russian and Iranian assistance.
BRI was also Syria’s ticket to shrugging off the effects of Western sanctions, setting up the first great project of the China-Russia-Iran axis of tyranny.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
A climate scientist has admitted overhyping the impact of global warming on wildfires to ensure his work was published in the prestigious science journal Nature.
Dr Patrick Brown, the co-director of the climate and energy team at The Breakthrough Institute, Berkeley, published a paper last week arguing that climate change had increased wildfires in California.
The Nature study has been accessed more than 3,000 times online and was cited by 109 news outlets across the globe.
But in a blog and series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, Dr Brown admitted that there were other factors influencing wildfires that he had purposefully omitted – such as poor forestry management and an increase in people starting fires deliberately or accidentally.
He said he had found that journals would not publish climate studies unless they followed a specific “formula” and “mainstream narrative” in which global warming was viewed as the sole culprit for environmental destruction.
Nature denied it had a preferred narrative and said it was “considering the implications” of Dr Brown’s admission, adding that his comments reflect irresponsible and poor research practices.
Dr Brown warned that climate scientists often used irrelevant metrics to create “eye-popping numbers” or used time periods that are not relevant to modern societies.
And he said he had discovered it was “taboo” to mention that global warming was often mitigated by changes in technology and resilience.
“The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative,” he said.
“Why did I focus exclusively on the impact of climate change? I wanted the research to get as widely disseminated as possible, and thus I wanted it to be published in a high-impact journal.
“When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula I outlined here, my papers were promptly rejected out of hand by the editors of high-profile journals without even going to peer review.”
He added: “This type of framing, where the influence of climate change is unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers.
“It is standard practice to calculate impacts for scary hypothetical future warming scenarios that strain credibility while ignoring potential changes to technology and resilience that would lessen the impact.”
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes / Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle
And given fifty years of seeing these arguments, initially claiming from the 60s to the 80s a global Ice Age was coming, and then the 90s on up claiming the ice caps would melt by 2012...
He also posted the email on Barstool’s website with the name of the sponsor redacted. The event’s partners include hard seltzer High Noon, C4 Energy, Coca-Cola, and ’47, among others.
Portnoy, who recently reacquired Barstool Sports from Penn Entertainment for $1, called Heil’s message “tortious interference” — referring to intentional damage to his professional relationships with a third party to cause economic harm.
He was also furious that the reporter had not reached out to him directly.
Heil contended that she planned to contact Portnoy on Thursday morning, but hadn’t yet because she hadn’t come up with “specific questions” for the Barstool boss.
Heil denied sending any kind of message before
Portnoy read the message back to her. He also
posted the email to Barstool’s website.
“Anybody who’s listening to this, to think that you were going to give me a fair chance when you’re leading to our sponsors before you talk to me is crazy,” Portnoy retorted, claiming Heil’s upcoming “hit piece” would surely include “all this stuff you’re about to make up against me.”
“The Washington Post, which is a wildly left-leaning publication, you have things you’ve said. You hate Trump. You hate Elon. Not that I’m those people. To think you’re gonna give me a fair shake. I wasn’t born yesterday,” he added.
By the end of the call, the two agreed to speak at 10 a.m. Thursday. However, late Wednesday, Portnoy tweeted that the call was canceled, and the paper “proposed 5 p.m. instead.”
“I said 10 a.m. or nothing. They refused,” he added.
The Post has sought comment from Heil, the Washington Post and Portnoy.
The 46-year-old internet celebrity has faced accusations from several women of sexual misconduct and rough sex that turned humiliating, but Portnoy strongly denied the claims, as The Post previously reported.
Three other women told Business Insider that Portnoy filmed their sexual encounters without permission. He sued the publication this year but eventually dropped his lawsuit.
The inaugural One Bite Pizza Festival, borne out of Portnoy’s popular “One Bite Pizza Reviews” that he shares on YouTube, is 95% sold out, according to its website.
Some all-inclusive tickets are still available for $219.99 and VIP tickets are going for $699.99 for the event, which will be held at Maimonides Park in Brooklyn.
News of the World
So is this a disguised attempt to tell the DOJ not to prosecute Hunter?
![[Image: SP1-Scripter.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Scripter.png)
![[Image: SP1-Writer.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Writer.png)
![[Image: SP1-Poet.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Poet.png)
![[Image: SP1-PixelArtist.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-PixelArtist.png)
![[Image: SP1-Reporter.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/GmxWbHyL/SP1-Reporter.png)
Of course. Iran broke the agreement made in 2015 the following year in October/November 2016 by testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nukes. And again the following March... this a clear violation. But then again, they refused Inspectors at their Nuclear sites unilaterally in 2015 and 2017.
Sure, stop permitting discourse about Covid like before, and silence other opinions. So much for getting a second opinion. And some of those silenced last time were found correct.![[Image: QrnbKlx.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/QrnbKlx.jpg)
![[Image: sGz1ErF.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sGz1ErF.png)
![[Image: liM4ikn.png]](https://i.imgur.com/liM4ikn.png)
![[Image: fdzKgZA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/fdzKgZA.png)
![[Image: sj0H81z.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sj0H81z.png)
![[Image: QL7oRau.png]](https://i.imgur.com/QL7oRau.png)
![[Image: uSqjY09.png]](https://i.imgur.com/uSqjY09.png)
![[Image: GAA3qE9.png]](https://i.imgur.com/GAA3qE9.png)
![[Image: 2Hmnx1G.png]](https://i.imgur.com/2Hmnx1G.png)
![[Image: BwtNdKw.png%5B]](https://i.imgur.com/BwtNdKw.png%5B)
Why did he say that? Is he blackmailing Western Europe now?
Oh really, Trudeau? 
Then how to do you explain the following article?
Even a fictitious character like Sherlock Holmes would strongly disagree with them.
![[Image: NYPICHPDPICT000042546146.jpg]](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/NYPICHPDPICT000042546146.jpg)
