A subsidiary of a £886 billion net worth bank attempted to virtue signal by proclaiming “pronouns matter” alongside an image of an employee wearing a “she/her/hers” tag, but the stunt massively backfired on Twitter.
“Pronouns matter. #ItsAPeopleThing,” tweeted Halifax Bank, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group, one of the UK’s largest financial services organizations.
The topic immediately began trending on Twitter, with the vast majority of responses not displaying much sympathy towards the bank.
“What if a Halifax employee doesn’t want to put pronouns on their lapel, perhaps because they reject the cult of gender ideology?” asked Simon Edge. “Will they be disadvantaged in any way? Barred from promotion? Fired?”
What if a Halifax employee doesn’t want to put pronouns on their lapel, perhaps because they reject the cult of gender ideology? Will they be disadvantaged in any way? Barred from promotion? Fired?
Edge linked to a video of a man who said he made the “biggest mistake of his life” by having his genitals removed to become transgender.
“How are you so certain that removing your genitals … will solve your issues, those issues are going to wait for you when you wake up from surgery.”
Ritchie Herron is suing the NHS after transitioning, he claims was fast-tracked into making ‘the biggest mistake of his life’. pic.twitter.com/8ZZk240M5U
“Super glad my tax helped prop you up in 2008 so you could vomit a rainbow in my face today,” remarked another in reference to Halifax being bailed out by the government.
Super glad my tax helped prop you up in 2008 so you could vomit a rainbow in my face today.
“Reality matters more. I can guarantee that the majority of your customers are bored rigid with this and wish it would go away,” commented another respondent.
Reality matters more. I can guarantee that the majority of your customers are bored rigid with this and wish it would go away.
Despite such woke garbage continually proving to be incredibly unpopular with the general public, banks and transnational corporations just won’t stop doing it.
Poland Completes Belarus Border Wall To Repel Middle East And African Migrants
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and a delegation of security officials traveled to their country’s border on Thursday to mark the completion of a 186-mile steel wall along the Belarus frontier.
In remarks to reporters, Morawiecki used some some spin to deflect liberal attention from Poland’s selective approach to immigration that welcomes Ukrainians while rejecting Syrians—by portraying the migrant barrier as part of the West’s confrontation with Russia:
“The first sign of the war in Ukraine was (Belarus President) Alexander Lukashenko’s attack on the Polish border with Belarus. It was thanks to (our) political foresight and the anticipation of what may happen that we may focus now on helping Ukraine, which is fighting to protect its sovereignty,” he told reporters.
Belarus has backed Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, to include allowing Russian forces to use Belarussian territory.
Lukashenko’s “attack” on Poland came in the form of weaponized migration, as his government encouraged Middle East migrants to come to Belarus and then attempt to enter the European Union via the country’s borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. That move was seen as a novel form of retaliation for EU sanctions against Belarus over its treatment of dissidents.
Thousands of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Africa poured into Belarus and proceeded to the Polish border, where they endured bitter cold in their quest to cross the border. At times, the situation has brought major confrontations. In November, hundreds of migrants pushed toward the border near the Polish village of Kuznica and attempted to defeat a barbed wire fence with spades and other tools.
“This is part of the inhuman and really gangster-style approach of the Lukashenko regime that he is lying to people, he is misusing people … and bringing them to Belarus under the false promise of having easy entry into the EU,” an EU spokesperson said at the time.
Human rights groups have accused both countries of mistreating migrants. At least 20 have died in the border area’s “freezing forests and bogs,” says the Associated Press.
Coinciding with the completion of the wall, the Polish government lifted an emergency declaration that barred journalists and human rights activists from observing the situation along the border.
Activists have criticized the Polish government for simultaneously welcoming predominantly white, Christian, female refugees from Ukraine while turning away the largely Muslim, male migrants from elsewhere.
“If you give a lift to a refugee at the Ukrainian border you are a hero. If you do it at the Belarus border you are a smuggler and could end up in jail for eight years,” Natalia Gebert, founder of a Polish nongovernmental organization that helps refugees, told AP.
Meanwhile, in another sign of tension between Warsaw and Minsk, Thursday also brought a Polish government accusation that Belarus was fostering an “atmosphere of acquiescence” to vandalism against Polish graves,Reuters reports:
Poland’s foreign ministry said unknown perpetrators had recently damaged Polish tombstones and commemorations in several locations, mainly in Western Belarus, which used to be part of Poland before World War Two and where many Polish soldiers are buried.
The wave of Ukrainian immigration is taking a toll on the EU, as evidenced by German unemployment data posted Thursday. Analysts had projected the number of jobless would drop by 5,000, but it leapt by 133,000.
“These increases are due to the fact that the Ukrainian refugees are now being recorded in the job centers and are therefore visible in the labor market statistics,” said Federal Labor Agency head Detlef Scheele.
So, the G-7 leaders are in agreement, more war with Russia. Without actually saying exactly that, that was the main takeaway from he meeting of the most feckless leaders in the world.
They also pledged $600 billion they don’t have to fund global infrastructure projects to ‘combat China’s Belt and Road Initiative.’ One wonders where all this money and, in the case of Europe, energy is going to come from to fund all of this.
But the question I’ve had from the beginning of this obvious war of attrition the West wants to impose on Russia is the following: Do we have the stamina, in terms of real production capacity, to cash these checks our leaders are writing?
A major report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), one of the oldest military think tanks in the UK emphatically said not in anyone’s wildest dreams. Alex Mercouris of The Duran did an amazing job of breaking down what RUSI thought about NATO’s ability to wage war vs. Russia’s current military tempo, days before this idea caught fire.
In short, the gulf between NATO’s annual munition production and weekly consumption by the UAF is staggeringly vast.
I told you at the outset of this war that Russia was absolutely engaged in a war of attrition against the West, hoping NATO would take the bait of a ground war in Ukraine. I didn’t have numbers to back this up, only the inference because of what I understood about Putin and his previous maneuvers against the West.
What’s obvious to me is the neocons and neoliberals controlling the West think they can turn Ukraine into a quagmire for Putin, but what if Putin thinks he can turn Ukraine into a quagmire for them?
Russia is not capable of conquering Europe. But he doesn’t need to to defeat them. He just needs to create a version of this map:
I knew that Putin wouldn’t commit Russia to this conflict if it couldn’t sustain fighting it. I also knew that the West would LIE OUTRAGEOUSLY about the level of corruption within the Russian society to play on the biases of marginally-informed American armchair generals.
Is the Russian system perfect? No. Is there corruption? Yes. But it’s complete nonsense to think it wouldn’t be uncovered and stripped out of all branches of the Russian military/industrial complex during the initial military gambit. The shifts made by Russia strategically and in terms of personnel have set it up for the long haul, fighting a type of war they are very good at and which the US and NATO left the UAF mostly defenseless against.
Now, with sanctions further hollowing out the US’s and Europe’s economies and the “leadership” of the buffoons that just met in Germany, Russia is in the driver’s seat to grind out a victory in Ukraine and leave the West depleted of weapons if the current situation goes on without a course correction.
The point made by RUSI is that it may not be possible to course correct in time (or ever) in the time frame needed to affect the outcome in Ukraine, absent an unthinkable escalation.
The exhaustion we thought we would put to Russia, is the ultimate form of ‘sanctions boomerang’ on the West. To listen to RUSI tell the tale, we’re the ones without the capacity to fight if the conflict widens.
And yet, to listen to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken or National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, you would think Russia is still on the verge of collapse.
Now the G-7 think they have the power to set a global price cap on crude oil. I’ve told you time and again that Davos really does believe they have some kind of monopsony power over Russia’s exports. They still believe that their thirst for energy, food, industrial metals, fertilizer, etc. gives them power over Putin.
I remind you of this pivotal scene in Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises:
And Putin is the moderate within Russian power circles. There are a hundred Banes waiting in the wings happy to snap the necks of the John Daggetts he no longer needs to sell oil and gas to.
I’ve watched Putin for years. I’ve seen him put pressure on his central bank and the bankers to reform the financial sector. I’ve seen him publicly dress down and reform major industrial oligarchs in metals production. Six plus years of military operations in Syria have given him a lot of data on how to execute a long-term strategy and find the break points of his logistics and operations.
And I’m sure that this war in Ukraine is as much another data gathering exercise for the capabilities of the West as much as it is a stress test on his own internal production systems.
Russia is now 4 months into this review. Lots of people have been fired, jailed, etc. The non-hackers are being weeded out. Operations are leaning out.
Now let’s look at the West.
The US under Biden is now amping up military spending, presumably to increase ammunition production levels. But it may not be. As Alex rightly points out, echoing points that Dexter White has discussed in the Gold Goats ‘n Guns newsletter, keiretsu or just-in-time manufacturing is how we operate here in the West. That system is under massive stress thanks to the supply chain breakdown created by Davos over COVID-19.
While sanctions may have limited Russia’s ability to procure or maintain a large arsenal of its highest technology tanks and/or airplanes, again as Dexter has pointed out, it may not be relevant here because this isn’t a war of bleeding edge technology.
It’s a WWI style artillery war, which we are not prepared to fight. Scott Ritter pointed out to me when we met at the recent Ron Paul Institute conference that NATO no longer trains in maneuver warfare. While Russia’s combined forces training is limited, as evidenced in its attack on Kiev in February, the US’s major advantage has been severely curtailed by lack of training and readiness over the past couple of decades.
So, what we have, overall, is a military picture with weak supply chains, limited ability to ramp production, and a military that hasn’t trained for sustained warfare on a mass scale.
This means that Biden’s expansion of the DoD’s budget to $813 billion this year may not even be what we think it means. Instead of being a buildup to fight a wider war, this may seriously be just the last dip at the trough before the whole system comes crashing down.
Remember, that Davos wants the US destroyed. It has assiduously hollowed out vital US manufacturing capability while simultaneously putting it in a fragile fiscal position with a divided and angry population.
The stage is set for internal conflict of a type and kind that we haven’t seen in over 150 years. And we’re supposed to fight a war with Russia, a nuclear and conventional military powerhouse?
This is leaving aside the reality that if NATO declares open war on Russia that Blinkered Blinken and the anti-Diplomats have pushed China into being paranoid about our intentions over Taiwan.
The real stress test is happening now. Ukraine is getting crushed under the weight of Russia’s ability to sustain an inhuman level of artillery bombardment. The RUSI article only touches on the potential for Russia to continue its production of the needed munitions, but one gets the idea that these things are cheap and fully domestically sourced.
This has forced into the open the massive shortfall of industrial capacity in the West as well as fracturing the political leadership as to what they should ultimately do here.
Half of them want to continue the war in perpetuity. The other half want a ceasefire. None of them would admit this at the G-7 meeting out of a need to not look weak or admit that the Russians have exposed them.
It takes a staggering amount of energy to fight a sustained war. The West is at the mercy of Russia to get that energy.
The next phase of this war is now the complete divorce of Europe from the Russian energy complex at prices that can’t keep Europe from sinking into depression if not outright depravity.
To achieve this, these out-of-touch narcissists think they can set a limit on what they will pay for a barrel of oil? I thought I’d heard it all in this life, but this is almost as delusional as the average Libs of TikTok video post Roe v. Wade’s demise.
The financial war of attrition against the West I’ve discussed at length for months is the reality of the day. Ultimately without energy or the money to procure or produce it, there is no real conventional war. Industrial warfare having returned, as is the premise of the RUSI article, has already determined the outcome in Ukraine.
This is just part of the reason why Henry Kissinger urged at this year’s Davos meeting to open up talks and begin the negotiations. It seems at this point his admonishments have fallen on deaf ears. Given the average age of the idiots making these decisions, this is, of course, not surprising.
Davos has set the US up for complete humiliation in Ukraine, sacrificed thousands of Ukrainians, bankrupted millions of Europeans and corrupted hundred of millions sustaining a vast bureaucracy incapable of responding to the growing needs of a failing system.
The sad part is this: They think they are #winning, because so much of this is going according to plan. They are missing the big parts about destroying the US too quickly in the process, if you want it to fight your war to cover your bankruptcy.
The vestiges of US Federalism still function at a high enough level to thwart all of their plans. c.f. the SCOTUS decisions last week and Ron DeSantis’ track record as Florida Governor.
Speaking of DeSantis, he’s rapidly emerging as the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024.
So, in conclusion this is what I see next:
Russia will not stop with their victory in Donbass
They will take Nikolaev, Kharkov and Odessa (Note Russian spelling, screw the BBC!).
Russia will not take the bait over Kaliningrad, but will cut off all gas to Germany.
The German government will fall, but it won’t matter b/c the Greens, who set policy, control the Bundesrat.
Russia will continue to not give Davos the excuse to start WWIII, even with Finland and Sweden entering the alliance.
They will keep upping the stakes while further exposing the emptiness of their threats.
The Biden Admin. will keep trying to start a war over Taiwan
Eventually China will oblige them, even though they don’t want to.
Bulgaria’s collapse is just the start of the end of the EU in Eastern Europe.
NATO will either collapse or nukes will fly…. I’m still betting on the former.
Erdogan caving over NATO expansion means Putin will oppose him in Syria.
The Fed will continue raising rates while the ECB hangs on for dear life.
In desperation I expect a false flag provocation to force the Russians into a move or simply justify the Davos pulling us into their next war, i.e. another virus or chemical weapons attack this time blamed on Putin.
The goal of this project is an independent Europe, a broken US and vassalage for Asia.
They will achieve, at best, one of those three things. An independent, but broken Europe under the vassalage of Russia and China, the the US retreats and licks its wounds. That’s the future I see now, if the nukes don’t fly.
Governments, corporations, and elites have always been fearful of the power of a free press, because it is capable of exposing their lies, destroying their carefully crafted images, and undermining their authority. In recent years, alternative journalism has been growing and more people are relying on social media platforms as sources of news and information. In response, the corporate state, digital conglomerates, and the mainstream media have been increasingly supportive of the silencing and censoring of alternative media outlets and voices that challenge the official narrative on most issues.
At the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, “Australian eSafety commissioner” Julie Inman Grant stated that “freedom of speech is not the same thing as a free for all,” and that “we are going to need a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online—from freedom of speech … to be free from online violence.” Meanwhile, the Canadian government is seeking to restrict independent media and the freedom of expression via the implementation of Bill C-11, which would allow it to regulate all online audiovisual platforms on the internet, including content on Spotify, Tik Tok, YouTube, and podcast clients.
Similarly, the UK is seeking to introduce an Online Safety Bill, the US “paused” the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board following backlash, and the European Union approved its own Digital Services Act, all of which aim to limit the freedom of speech. Attempts by elites and politicians to silence dissenters and critical thinkers is not something new. In fact, history is full of examples of “the persecution of men of science, the burning of scientific books, and the systematic eradication of the intelligentsia of the subjected people.”
However, these current efforts to curtail freedom of speech and press by supposedly liberal governments are still somewhat ironic, given that even “the most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a ‘devil’s advocate.’ The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all that the devil could say against him is known and weighed.”
The corporate state, digital conglomerates, and the mainstream media want to ensure that they have the exclusive authority to dictate people’s opinions, wants, and choices through their sophisticated propaganda techniques. To do so, they have even resorted to transforming falsehoods into truth. In fact, the word truth has already had its original meaning altered, as those who speak the truth on certain subjects are now regularly accused of spreading hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation.
Presently, truth is no “longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to be believed in the interest of the unity of the organized effort, and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organised effort require it.”
However, modifying the definition of truth comes with the potential for great peril, as truth-seeking often contributes to human progress in that it leads to discoveries that ultimately benefit society at large. It should be noted that truth is by no means the only word whose meaning has been changed recently in order for it to serve as an instrument of propaganda; others include freedom, justice, law, right, equality, diversity, woman, pandemic, vaccine, etc. This is highly concerning, because such attempts at the “perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals” of the ruling class are expressed is a consistent feature of totalitarian regimes.
As a number of liberal-democratic governments increasingly move toward totalitarianism, they want people to forget that there is “the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.” According to them, “public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken public support.”
In fact, they believe that all views and opinions that might cast doubt or create hesitation need to be restricted in all disciplines and on all platforms. This is because “the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed” when “the vindication of the official views becomes the sole object” of the ruling class. In other words, the control of information is practiced and the uniformity of views is enforced in all fields under totalitarian rule.
The suppression of freedom of the press, speech, expression, and thought means that current and future generations will be “deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” They are also at risk of becoming ignorant of the fact that the only way in which a person can know “the whole of a subject” is by “hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind.” That is to say, current and future generations will be unaware that “the steady habit of correcting and completing” one’s own “opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it.”
At present, it is likely that the masses do not regard freedom of the press, speech, expression, and thought as being particularly important, because “the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another.” Nevertheless, no one should have the power and authority to “select those to whom” freedom of thought, enlightenment and expression is to be “reserved.”
In fact, John Stuart Mill went so far as to claim that “if all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” He further added that silencing the expression of an opinion is essentially an act of “robbing the human race,” which applies to both current and future generations. Even though the suppressors can deny the truth to people at a particular point in time, “history shows that every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.”
If current efforts to suppress freedom of the press, speech, expression, and thought succeed, then the search for truth will eventually be abandoned and totalitarian authorities will decide what “doctrines ought to be taught and published.” There will be no limits to who can be silenced, as the control of opinions will be extended to all people in all fields. Accordingly, contemporary authoritarian policy makers need to be reminded about the crucial importance of freedom of speech, expression, and thought, which the US Supreme Court recognized in the 1957 case Sweezy v. New Hampshire when it ruled that
to impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made…. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die…. Our form of government is built on the premise that every citizen shall have the right to engage in political expression and association. This right was enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Exercise of these basic freedoms in America has traditionally been through the media of political associations…. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, who innumerable times have been in the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted. Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.
Dutch Farmers Livid Over EU’s ‘Green’ Nitrogen Rule Block Border Between Holland And Germany
Thousands of tractor-driving Dutch protesters came out this week to continue demonstrations against the government’s radical plan to cut nitrogen emissions by 30% – 70% as part of their ‘green’ agenda.
Farmers from the world’s 5th largest exporter of food are demanding that the Hague immediately reverse course, and have blocked the border between Holland and Germany over the rule which would lead to the closure of dozens of farms and cattle ranches.
Very angry Dutch farmers block border between Holland and Germany. Harsh protests in many Dutch cities after politicians’ decision to closes dozens of farms and cattle ranches to reduce nitrogen by 30% – 70% to comply with EU regulations on nitrogen pollution. pic.twitter.com/uKYXj0gvD8
On Wednesday, dozens of tractors blocked a highway close to the German border, according to traffic authorities.
Even larger protests are scheduled for July 4, with organizers taking to Telegram to call people to action against rules they say will “flatten” the country’s agriculture industry.
According to the Epoch Times, the message calls on concerned farmers and citizens to organize their own regional actions with the goal of closing all “distribution centers for food supplies and all major polluters” until “the government changes its plans.”
One viral call for a July 4 protest came from a large truckers’ Telegram group, suggesting that some truckers in the Netherlands may find themselves in solidarity with the nation’s agriculturalists.
The farmers, who plan to protest at many of the nation’s airports, specifically mentioned Schiphol and Eindhoven. NLTimes.nl has reported that spokespersons for both airports say they are monitoring the situation but have little information at present.
Holland closes dozens of farms and cattle ranches to reduce nitrogen by 30%. Angry and hungry farmers block the nation everywhere. pic.twitter.com/VNSodhGanB
In 2021, the Netherlands’ coalition government proposed slashing livestock numbers in the country by 30 percent to meet nitrogen emissions targets.
The country has already implemented stringent restrictions on new construction with the aim of curbing nitrogen emissions.
Rabobank has argued that those new hurdles have slowed down homebuilding in the Netherlands, intensifying a housing shortage in the densely populated coastal nation.
On June 10, the government issued a national and area-specific plan for curbing nitrogen emissions. Those emissions are heavily driven by ammonia from livestock manure.
Some parts of the country would have to slash those emissions by 70 or even 95 percent.
It openly acknowledged that “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers within [this] approach,” as reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service.
“The Minister of Nature and Nitrogen Policy expects about a third of the 50,000 Dutch farms to ‘disappear’ by 2030,” the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported in a June 23 Market Insight Report.
The Netherlands is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of food, exceeded only by the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and China, according to World Bank statistics.
The Dutch government offers a multibillion-dollar buyout arrangement for farmers.
Christianne van der Wal, minister of nature and nitrogen policy, has left open the possibility that the government will expropriate land from farmers who do not comply, as reported by NOS Nieuws.
The proposals and resultant protests come amid worldwide fertilizer and food shortages.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on June 24 that “there is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022,” adding that “2023 could be even worse.”
On a recent episode of “Facts Matter” on EpochTV, American farmer John Boyd, Jr. warned of potential food shortages as a result of steeply rising input costs.
He said the expenses of running his own operation have tripled, driven in large part by significantly increased fertilizer costs.
In Sri Lanka, a ban on chemical fertilizers contributed to an economic crisis that has destabilized the government.
The country has recently announced a temporary ban on fuel sales to private vehicles, effective June 27 through July 10.
The latest round of demonstrations by Dutch farmers comes after a wave of similar protests in 2019 after lawmaker Tjeerd de Groot called for livestock numbers in the Netherlands to be cut by 50 percent.
Demonstrators have burned hay bales alongside highways, blocked roads with tractors, and spread manure to make their anger known.
In recent days, protesters have targeted the homes of Dutch government officials, including Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Nitrogen Minister van der Wal.
Footage circulating on social media purports to show protesters spraying manure on Dutch law enforcement.
Rutte criticized protesters, saying, “You can demonstrate, but in a civilized way,” as reported by the Associated Press.
AP also reports that Dutch police say they arrested 10 people on June 28 in connection with the protests.
Two drug traffickers who were arrested during a traffic stop in California last week after they got allegedly busted with 150,000 pills of fentanyl have been released back onto the streets, officials said.
Detectives arrested Jose Zendejas, 25, and Benito Madrigal, 19, both from Washington, during a fentanyl bust in Tulare County on June 24, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
The two were booked into the county’s pre-trial facility on charges of possession, transportation, and selling of illegal drugs.
In an update on Monday, the sheriff’s office said they “received a court order releasing both suspects from custody on their own recognizance.”
“We felt it necessary to clear up any confusion there might be about the release process when it comes to our jail system,” police said.
“All inmates booked into Tulare County jails are sent through what is known as the Risk Assessment Process through the Tulare County Probation Department,” it explained. “That ‘Risk Assessment’ is then sent to a judge with the court, who, then, determines whether or not the individual arrested is held on bail or if they are to be released.”
Police said although Mike Boudreaux, the sheriff of Tulare County, “strongly disagrees” with the judge’s decision to release the alleged traffickers, citing public safety concerns, his office is forced to comply with the court order.
Boudreaux told Fox News that “California’s system of justice is failing us all,” adding that he was “infuriated” after he found out about the release of the men. The network reported that Tulare County Court Commissioner Mikki Verissimo signed the order to release both men.
Detectives with the Tulare County High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Unit (HIDTA) found 150 packages, each with 1,000 pills, hidden inside the suspect’s vehicle during last week’s traffic stop.
The confiscated drugs have a street value of around $750,000, as each pill sells for about $5.
According to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, fentanyl, a deadly opioid 50–100 times stronger than morphine, was linked to the most overdose deaths in 2021, with 71,238. Fentanyl is increasingly cut into other drugs to cut costs.
Some experts have noted that drug overdoses have been steadily increasing every year. However, in recent years, fentanyl, much of which is brought into the country via Mexican cartels from China, has triggered the recent spike in deaths.
Earlier this year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a warning about a surge of fentanyl overdoses and mass overdose events.
The South Carolina state Senate is considering a bill that would basically ban abortions, with no exception other than for abortions needed to “designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman” (though even that’s uncertain, given the sentence that “The provisions of this section must not be construed to authorize the intentional killing of an unborn child”). The bill wouldn’t prohibit adult women from traveling to another state to get an abortion, though it would prohibit “transport[ing] a pregnant minor who resides in this State to another state to procure an abortion.”.
The arguments for and against the prohibition on abortion are obvious, so I won’t focus on them. (I oppose such prohibitions, but I have little useful to add about them.) Instead, I thought I’d flag something that’s more within my area of expertise, and that others might miss: The law’s ban on “knowingly or intentionally aid[ing or] abet[ting]” an abortion “includes, but is not limited to knowingly and intentionally,”
(1) providing information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking information on behalf of a pregnant woman, by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an abortion; [or]
(2) hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service purposefully directed to a pregnant woman who is a resident of this State that provides information on how to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used for an abortion.
Say a news site writes a story, “North Carolina Abortion Clinic Near S.C. Border Targeted for Protests,” and identifies the clinic. (Assume the clinic is legal in North Carolina.) It seems to me the elements of the crime would be met:
The story provides “information … regarding … the means to obtain an abortion,” or “information on how to obtain an abortion,” because it provides information about a clinic that could conveniently perform abortions for South Carolina women.
The author surely must know that some readers will use that information to figure out where to get an abortion, or at least are reasonably likely to so use it: It might be only one in a thousand readers, with the remaining readers reading the story simply for the information it provides against the protest, but that could still be tens or hundreds of women. And indeed the story might, in the normal course of things, mention things about the abortion providers that paints them in an especially good light (“Harvard Medical School-trained Dr. Jane Schmane, who practices at the clinic, said ….”), which would end up drawing patients to that particular clinic.
The author’s employer is hosting or maintaining an internet website containing the story.
The story may well be seen as being provided “to a pregnant woman” or “purposefully directed to a pregnant woman,” because pregnant women will surely read it, and of course the author wants pregnant women (alongside other women) to read it. To be sure, it doesn’t seem to be directed to an identified pregnant woman, the way an e-mail to a particular person might be—but subsection (2) obviously contemplates sites published to the world at large, since an “internet website” would basically never be purposefully directed to a particular identified reader.
The news site may well be headquartered in South Carolina, or have a branch or office in South Carolina, and would thus be subject to the jurisdiction of South Carolina.
The law appears not to be limited to information about abortions that would be (illegally) performed in South Carolina. Perhaps one could argue that the law as a whole doesn’t ban abortions performed out of state, and thus the aiding-and-abetting provision applies only to aiding and abetting in-state abortions. But the text of this section seems to cover in-state communication of information about abortions generally, and not just about in-state abortions. (Moreover, the law would clearly cover stories written about companies that are mailing abortion pills into South Carolina, if the law mentions the company’s name or gives enough information based on which a quick Google search can identify the company.)
That seems pretty clearly unconstitutional to me, since it doesn’t fit within the narrow Brandenburg v. Ohio First Amendment exception for purposeful incitement of imminent, likely unlawful conduct, both because (1) the conduct that the speech might facilitate would be lawful, since it would be an abortion lawfully performed in North Carolina, and because (2) the bill isn’t limited to publications written with the specific purpose of promoting abortions. But such speech seems like it would be covered by the bill.
I should note that a law likely could ban providing specific information to a particular woman about where she could get an illegal in-state abortion. That would likely fit within the “speech integral to criminal conduct” exception, by analogy to solicitation of a specific crime (see U.S. v. Williams). Just as telling a friend where she can illegally buy drugs is aiding and abetting illegal drug sales, so telling a friend where she can illegally get an abortion would be punishable aiding and abetting. But this bill appears to me to go considerably beyond that.
Chinese And Russian Navies Circle Japan In “Show Of Force”
In yet another example of the increasingly close alliance between Russia and China, the Chinese Navy and Russia’s Pacific Fleet have been engaging in war game operations, seemingly in tandem around Japan, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.
Reports of coordinated military exercises have not been officially acknowledged by Russia or China, though Japan continues to post regular updates on ship movements. The naval exercises were apparently focused around the islands of Miyako and Okinawa, which hold 50,000 US forces, as well as a 70-mile wide corridor between the island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.
While not unheard of, military cooperation in the Pacific between Russia and China has grown in frequency, with naval exercises increasing over the past month. While Japan calls these movements a “show of force,” they may very well be practice for a conflict planned in the near future.
After the recent BRICS summit in Beijing and the reaffirmation of China’s economic support of Russia during its war with Ukraine and NATO sanctions, it only makes sense that the economic relationship would evolve into at least a loose military agreement. The latest decision on the induction of Sweden and Finland into NATO as well as naval escalation in the South Pacific are only going to drive Eastern interests closer together over time.
China is nursing a compulsive obsession when it comes to absorbing Taiwan into the CCP, and with the West overly focused on Russia and Ukraine, they may act soon. If an invasion of Taiwan is planned it would have to take place sometime in September/October when weather conditions in the region are favorable to naval operations. Leaked reports from Russian intel in March seem to indicate that a fall invasion of Taiwan was indeed in the works. Some believe that the Russian war with Ukraine will force China to scuttle such plans, but there is also a chance that Ukraine will provide excellent cover for an action against Taiwan; forcing western governments to split their efforts and focus on two fronts instead of one.
The bigger question is: Will Russia and China form an official military alliance? There is no debate now over their trade alliance, but the notion of military cooperation between the two countries will lead many people to scoff. Keep in mind, however, that there were numerous skeptics that argued only a week ago that the Turkish government under Erdogen would “never” agree to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and yet that is exactly what they did.
The geopolitical landscape is changing fast and the old rules no longer seem to apply.
“If people aren’t going to do their job, then we’re here to do it for them,” said Nick Bezzel, of the Elmer Geronimo Pratt Pistol & Rifle Gun Club, after being told for the second time today that officials in Brookhaven, Mississippi wouldn’t meet with him and other armed black activists.
Bezzel was with a group of demonstrators, including Black Panthers, who were upset over a case involving a 24-year-old Federal Express driver named D’Monterrio Gibson. On January 24th earlier this year, Gibson was shot at by a man named Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Case, while attempting to make deliveries.
The two Cases were eventually charged with assault, but bonded out quickly. Gibson and the accompanying group wanted elevated charges, for instance attempted murder or a hate crime. Ford Fischer’s News2Share cameras captured the scenes of activists being told a planned meeting with a District Attorney was called off, and being thrown out of the area by the Brookhaven police chief just as they were leaving.
Two days later, a coalition of black pro-gun groups, including Black Panthers, the Black Riders Liberation Party, the aforementioned Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt Gun Club, Sisters of the Underground, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, the Black Power Militia, the Black Power Coalition, and others, gathered on Juneteenth in Natchez, Mississippi at the site of the “Devil’s Punchbowl,” where some historians say up to 20,000 black people died during and after the Civil War.
News2Share captured those scenes as well, which included a collective signing of a “Declaration of the Regulated United Black Militia.” Some protesters brandished a placard with a “Declaration of Self-Determination by Black Peoples and Organizations,” while others replaced “Hands up, don’t shoot!” with a new chant: “Guns up! Shoot back!” Other chants included:
Black people in America ain’t taking it no more, is that right? That’s right!
We believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb, and a life for a goddamn life!
These are different times… Guns up, shoot back! I said, goddamnit, black power!
As Ford narrated:
Despite the obvious newsworthiness of these several militias from around the country gathering to sign a “Declaration of the Regulated United Black Militia,” no other media covered the event.
There are a lot of taboos on commercial television, which for instance doesn’t like to show scenes of poverty (unless it’s being chased by police), rarely interviews non-voters, almost never does military contracting fraud stories, and seldom shows results on the ground of American military/drone strikes, even if they’ve already appeared on the airwaves of other countries.
Perhaps the most dependable taboo in American media, however, involves black Second Amendment advocates. As Ford and News2Share have documented over the years, there are many such groups, and they sometimes march in conjunction with groups like the Boogaloo Boys. In fact, the biggest taboo of all might be showing such groups demonstrating together:
Today armed Black Lives Matter and “boogaloo” protesters joined forces for an open carry rally against police violence and government overreach. I’ll have HD video up ASAP, but here are some photos I snapped today.
Whatever your feelings about guns — I personally am not a fan — the psychology of the contrasting coverage of pro-gun demonstrations is fascinating. News audiences are clearly meant to associate white pro-gun protesters with a dangerous and probably organized national race-hatred movement, while black pro-gun protesters either don’t exist or are a fringe movement not worth covering. Under no circumstance must such groups be shown together, even when they organize co-demonstrations. The first installment of Activism, Uncensored from last June, for instance, showed such a joint demonstration in Virginia Beach:
It’s often hard to gauge whether certain movements are gaining or losing strength nationally, or are simply organizing more effectively thanks to the Internet. However, it’s clear the national press doesn’t have a settled-upon strategy for covering armed black protesters. Most commonly they appear in reflection, shown as an exaggerated phantom of conservative news coverage, with the New York Times blasting Fox News for over-depicting “fringe hate groups” during the Obama years a classic example. These groups do exist, however, and their shows of strength in places like Natchez are clearly newsworthy. What’s behind the taboo?
The South Carolina state Senate is considering a bill that would basically ban abortions, with no exception other than for abortions needed to “designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman” (though even that’s uncertain, given the sentence that “The provisions of this section must not be construed to authorize the intentional killing of an unborn child”). The bill wouldn’t prohibit adult women from traveling to another state to get an abortion, though it would prohibit “transport[ing] a pregnant minor who resides in this State to another state to procure an abortion.”.
The arguments for and against the prohibition on abortion are obvious, so I won’t focus on them. (I oppose such prohibitions, but I have little useful to add about them.) Instead, I thought I’d flag something that’s more within my area of expertise, and that others might miss: The law’s ban on “knowingly or intentionally aid[ing or] abet[ting]” an abortion “includes, but is not limited to knowingly and intentionally,”
(1) providing information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking information on behalf of a pregnant woman, by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an abortion; [or]
(2) hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service purposefully directed to a pregnant woman who is a resident of this State that provides information on how to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used for an abortion.
Say a news site writes a story, “North Carolina Abortion Clinic Near S.C. Border Targeted for Protests,” and identifies the clinic. (Assume the clinic is legal in North Carolina.) It seems to me the elements of the crime would be met:
The story provides “information … regarding … the means to obtain an abortion,” or “information on how to obtain an abortion,” because it provides information about a clinic that could conveniently perform abortions for South Carolina women.
The author surely must know that some readers will use that information to figure out where to get an abortion, or at least are reasonably likely to so use it: It might be only one in a thousand readers, with the remaining readers reading the story simply for the information it provides against the protest, but that could still be tens or hundreds of women. And indeed the story might, in the normal course of things, mention things about the abortion providers that paints them in an especially good light (“Harvard Medical School-trained Dr. Jane Schmane, who practices at the clinic, said ….”), which would end up drawing patients to that particular clinic.
The author’s employer is hosting or maintaining an internet website containing the story.
The story may well be seen as being provided “to a pregnant woman” or “purposefully directed to a pregnant woman,” because pregnant women will surely read it, and of course the author wants pregnant women (alongside other women) to read it. To be sure, it doesn’t seem to be directed to an identified pregnant woman, the way an e-mail to a particular person might be—but subsection (2) obviously contemplates sites published to the world at large, since an “internet website” would basically never be purposefully directed to a particular identified reader.
The news site may well be headquartered in South Carolina, or have a branch or office in South Carolina, and would thus be subject to the jurisdiction of South Carolina.
The law appears not to be limited to information about abortions that would be (illegally) performed in South Carolina. Perhaps one could argue that the law as a whole doesn’t ban abortions performed out of state, and thus the aiding-and-abetting provision applies only to aiding and abetting in-state abortions. But the text of this section seems to cover in-state communication of information about abortions generally, and not just about in-state abortions. (Moreover, the law would clearly cover stories written about companies that are mailing abortion pills into South Carolina, if the law mentions the company’s name or gives enough information based on which a quick Google search can identify the company.)
That seems pretty clearly unconstitutional to me, since it doesn’t fit within the narrow Brandenburg v. Ohio First Amendment exception for purposeful incitement of imminent, likely unlawful conduct, both because (1) the conduct that the speech might facilitate would be lawful, since it would be an abortion lawfully performed in North Carolina, and because (2) the bill isn’t limited to publications written with the specific purpose of promoting abortions. But such speech seems like it would be covered by the bill.
I should note that a law likely could ban providing specific information to a particular woman about where she could get an illegal in-state abortion. That would likely fit within the “speech integral to criminal conduct” exception, by analogy to solicitation of a specific crime (see U.S. v. Williams). Just as telling a friend where she can illegally buy drugs is aiding and abetting illegal drug sales, so telling a friend where she can illegally get an abortion would be punishable aiding and abetting. But this bill appears to me to go considerably beyond that.
