Month: July 2023

According to the Randstad Workmonitor, Indians are the most satisfied at work while Japanese are the least satisfied out of 15 countries surveyed.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, only 48 percent of Japanese said they were satisfied with their work.

You will find more infographics at Statista

To add insult to injury, 21 percent of Japanese had said during the previous survey that they were dissatisfied with their work – meaning the country had both the lowest and the highest outcome in the Randstad survey, respectively.

While the lack of satisfaction at work can have many reasons – and much has been said about the cutthroat nature of Japanese working culture – a bad work environment also contributes to unhappiness and Japan has aimed to protect workers from abuse and bullying with a law passed in 2020. An extensive mention of physical abuse in the law’s text shines a light on the grave problems of workplace harassment that have persisted in the country.

Higher satisfaction levels were recorded in India and Latin America.

North American satisfaction levels also ranked above the world average.

In Southern and Eastern Europe as well as in the APAC region, satisfaction levels were somewhat lower than in the world as a whole.

The unhappiness of Japanese employees has almost become a hallmark of international workplace surveys – from the now defunct Edenred-Ipsos Barometer to more recent surveys by Universum. According to Randstad, Japanese were also the least likely to expect a pay rise or a bonus.

Via Remix News,

Germany is facing several tough years due to a combination of transitioning to sustainable energy sources and the rising costs of energy, warned Germany’s Green Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck.

The federal minister, who has long called for a radical energy policy change, said that Germany faces “five tough years ahead” and revealed the country will have to borrow to support companies’ energy costs or lose their industry.

“Tough years of green industrial transition will put a burden on people,” Habeck said, noting that the IMF expects the German economy to shrink by 0.3 percent this year.

The German statistical office warned in May that the country was entering a recession, and some big companies are already thinking of moving out of Germany, fueling fears of a loss of industrial production.

German Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck arrives for the cabinet meeting of the German government at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Habeck said the situation is due to high energy prices, which he says Germany is feeling more because it was previously used to cheap Russian gas.

High interest rates are also slowing down investment and global trade, which Germany, as an export-dependent country, is especially feeling, according to Habeck.

He said there was no reason to fear the situation, but he did not want to ignore the facts that people’s burdens would increase.

“We are facing a period of great transformation between now and 2030, as Germany moves from a traditional fossil energy-dependent industry to green energy such as hydrogen,” the Green politician explained.

Habeck suggested that energy-intensive companies competing internationally should receive public subsidies for their energy costs to meet the challenges of the transformation and to have enough money to invest.

However, this proposal is not supported by either the coalition partner FDP or the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The geopolitical chessboard is in perpetual shift – and never more than in our current incandescent juncture…

A fascinating consensus in discussions among Chinese scholars – including those part of the Asian and American diasporas – is that not only Germany/EU lost Russia, perhaps irretrievably, but China gained Russia, with an economy highly complementary to China’s own and with solid ties with the Global South/Global Majority that can benefit and aid Beijing.

Meanwhile, a smatter of Atlanticist foreign policy analysts are now busy trying to change the narrative on NATO vs. Russia, applying the rudiments of realpolitik.

The new spin is that it’s “strategic insanity” for Washington to expect to defeat Moscow, and that NATO is experiencing “donor fatigue” as the sweatshirt warmonger in Kiev “loses credibility”.

Translation: it’s NATO as a whole that is completely losing credibility, as its humiliation in the Ukraine battlefield is now painfully graphic for all the Global Majority to see.

Additionally, “donor fatigue” means losing a major war, badly. As military analyst Andrei Martyanov has relentlessly stressed, “NATO ‘planning’ is a joke. And they are envious, painfully envious and jealous.”

A credible path ahead is that Moscow will not negotiate with NATO – a mere Pentagon add-on – but offer individual European nations a security pact with Russia that would make their need to belong to NATO redundant. That would assure security for any participating nation and relieve pressure on it from Washington.

Bets could be made that the most relevant European powers might accept it, but certainly not Poland – the hyena of Europe – and the Baltic chihuahuas.

In parallel, China could offer peace treaties to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and subsequently a significant part of the US Empire of Bases might vanish.

The problem, once again, is that vassal states don’t have the authority or power to comply with any agreement ensuring peace. German businessmen, off the record, are sure that sooner or later Berlin may defy Washington and do business with the Russia-China strategic partnership because it benefits Germany.

Yet the golden rule still has not been met: if a vassal state wants to be treated as a sovereign state, the first thing to do is to shut down key branches of the Empire of Bases and expel US troops.

Iraq is trying to do it for years now, with no success. One third of Syria remains US-occupied – even as the US lost its proxy war against Damascus due to Russian intervention.

The Ukraine Project as an existential conflict

Russia has been forced to fight against a neighbor and kin that it simply can’t afford to lose; and as a nuclear and hypersonic power, it won’t.

Even if Moscow will be somewhat strategically weakened, whatever the outcome, it’s the US – in the view of Chinese scholars – that may have committed its greatest strategic blunder since the establishment of the Empire: turning the Ukraine Project into an existential conflict, and committing the entire Empire and all its vassals to a Total War against Russia.

That’s why we have no peace negotiations, and the refusal even of a cease fire; the only possible outcome devised by the Straussian neocon psychos who run US foreign policy is unconditional Russian surrender.

In the recent past, Washington could afford to lose its wars of choice against Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it simply can’t afford to lose the war on Russia. When that happens, and it’s already on the horizon, the Revolt of the Vassals will be far reaching.

It’s quite clear that from now on China and BRICS+ – with expansion starting at the summit in South Africa next month – will turbo-charge the undermining of the US dollar. With or without India.

There will be no imminent BRICS currency – as noted by some excellent points in this discussion. The scope is huge, sherpas are only in the initial debating stages, and the broad outlines have not been defined yet.

The BRICS+ approach will evolve from improved cross border settlement mechanisms – something everyone from Putin to Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina have stressed – to eventually a new currency way further down the road.

This would probably be a trade instrument rather than a sovereign currency like the euro. It will be designed to compete against the US dollar in trade, initially among BRICS+ nations, and capable of circumventing the hegemonic US dollar ecosystem.

The key question is how long the Empire’s fake economy – clinically deconstructed by Michael Hudson – can hold out in this wide spectrum geoeconomic war.

Everything is a ‘national security threat’

On the electronic technology front, the Empire has gone no holds barred to impose global economic dependency, monopolizing intellectual property rights and as Michael Hudson notes, “extracting economic rent from charging high prices for high-technology computer chips, communications, and arms production.”

In practice, not much is happening other than the prohibition for Taiwan to supply valuable chips to China, and asking TSMC to build, as soon as possible, a chip manufacturing complex in Arizona.

However, TSMC chairman Mark Liu has remarked that the plant faced a shortage of workers with the “specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility.” So the much lauded TSMC chip plant in Arizona won’t start production before 2025.

The top Empire/vassal NATO demand is that Germany and the EU must impose a Trade Iron Curtain against the Russia-China strategic partnership and their allies, thus ensuring “de-risk” trade.

Predictably, US Think Tankland has gone bonkers, with American Enterprise Institute hacks rabidly stating that even economic de-risking is not enough: what the US needs is a hard break with China.

In fact that dovetails with Washington smashing international free trade rules and international law, and treating any form of trade and SWIFT and financial exchanges as “national security threats” to US economic and military control.

So the pattern ahead is not China imposing trade sanctions on the EU – which remains a top trade partner for Beijing; it’s Washington imposing a tsunami of sanctions on nations daring to break the US-led trade boycott.

Russia-DPRK meets Russia-Africa

Only this week, the chessboard went through two game-changing moves: the high-profile visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to the DPRK, and the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.

Shoigu was received in Pyongyang as a rock star. He had a personal meeting with Kim Jong-Un. The mutual goodwill leads to the strong possibility of North Korea eventually joining one of the multilateral organizations carving the path towards multipolarity.

That would be, arguably, an extended Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). It could start with an EAEU-DPRK free trade agreement, such as the ones struck with Vietnam and Cuba.

Russia is the top power in the EAEU and it can ignore sanctions on the DPRK, while BRICS+, SCO or ASEAN have too many second thoughts. A key priority for Moscow is the development of the Far East, more integration with both Koreas, and the Northern Sea Route, or Arctic Silk Road. The DPRK is then a natural partner.

Getting the DPRK into the EAEU will do wonders for BRI investment: a sort of cover which Beijing does not enjoy for the moment when it invests in the DPRK. That could become a classic case of deeper BRI-EAEU integration.

Russian diplomacy at the highest levels is going all out to relieve the pressure over the DPRK. Strategically, that’s a real game-changer; imagine the huge and quite sophisticated North Korean industrial-military complex added to the Russia-China strategic partnership and turning the whole Asia-Pacific paradigm upside down.

The Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, in itself, was another game-changer that left collective West mainstream media apoplectic. That was nothing less than Russia publicly announcing, in words and deeds, a comprehensive strategic partnership with the whole of Africa even as a hostile collective West wages Hybrid War – and otherwise – against Afro-Eurasia.

Putin showed how Russia holds a 20% share of the global wheat market. In the first 6 months of 2023, it had already exported 10 million tons of grain to Africa. Now Russia will be providing Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Eritrea with 25-50 thousand tons of grain each in the next 3-4 months, for free.

Putin detailed everything from approximately 30 energy projects across Africa to the expansion of oil and gas exports and “unique non-energy applications of nuclear technology, including in medicine”; the launching of a Russian industrial zone near the Suez Canal with products to be exported throughout Africa; and the development of Africa’s financial infrastructure, including connection to the Russian payment system.

Crucially, he also extolled closer ties between the EAEU and Africa. A forum panel, “EAEU-Africa: Horizons of Cooperation”, examined the possibilities, which include closer continental connection with both the BRICS and Asia. A torrent of free trade agreements may be in the pipeline.

The scope of the forum was quite impressive. There were “de-neocolonialization” panels, such as “Achieving Technological Sovereignty Through Industrial Cooperation” or “New World Order: from the Legacy of Colonialism to Sovereignty and Development.”

And of course the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) was also discussed, with major players Russia, Iran and India set to promote its crucial extension to Africa, escaping NATO littorals.

Separate from the frantic action in St. Petersburg, Niger went through a military coup. Although the end-result remains to be seen, Niger is likely to join neighboring Mali in reasserting its foreign policy independence from Paris. French influence is also being at least “reset” in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Burkina Faso. Translation: France and the West are being evicted all across the Sahel, one-step at a time, in an irreversible process of decolonization.

Beware the Pale Horses of Destruction

These movements across the chessboard, from the DPRK to Africa and the chip war against China, are as crucial as the coming, shattering humiliation of NATO in Ukraine. Yet not only the Russia-China strategic partnership but also key players across the Global South/Global Majority are fully aware that Washington views Russia as a tactical enemy in preparation for the overriding Total War against China.

As it stands, the still unresolved tragedy in Donbass as it keeps the Empire busy, and away from Asia-Pacific. Yet Washington under the Straussian neocon psychos is increasingly mired in Desperation Row, making it even more dangerous.

All that while the BRICS+ “jungle” turbo-charges the necessary mechanisms capable of sidelining the unipolar Western “garden”, as a helpless Europe is being driven to an abyss, forced to split itself from China, BRICS+ and the de facto Global Majority.

It doesn’t take a seasoned weatherman to see which way the steppe wind blows – as the Pale Horses of Destruction plot the trampling of the chessboard, and the wind begins to howl.

International Friendship Day will be celebrated tomorrow, July 30.

To mark it, Statista’s Anna Fleck looks at data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey to see where “socializing” is most often considered a hobby in different countries around the world.

As the following chart shows, Germans, and to a slightly lesser extent the Danish and Spanish, are particularly likely to include spending time with others as one of their main personal pastimes.

You will find more infographics at Statista

By contrast, respondents in the United States and in urban India were far less likely to consider socializing as one of their top hobbies, with only around one in four picking the option.

In the U.S., just some of the hobbies which were selected by a higher share of people included cooking and baking (40 percent of respondents), reading (36 percent), pets (34 percent), video gaming (33 percent) and outdoor activities (31 percent).

In the U.S. at least, a slightly higher share of women said socializing was one of their hobbies (27 percent) versus men (23 percent).

Authored by Emina Melonic via RealClear Wire,

The cacophony of the Internet has been distracting from proper intellectual discussion for quite some time now. Over time, it has added clashes of ideological cymbals and symbols, signifying not much other than anger, destruction, and despair. The fact that Americans are divided has become a forgone conclusion. People have been split into so many subsets that it’s impossible to carry out a proper conversation. We indeed have an American Tower of Babel.

To make matters worse, discourse appears to be the least of our problems. Political philosophy and political life itself have entered a post-everything phase, and this has rendered the very meaning of America on shaky grounds. What can we do in this situation? Is it possible to restore order not only in America but also in society as a whole? Glenn Ellmers’ new book, The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy, offers challenging questions to this problem. Unlike many political analyses of today, Ellmers’ book engages deeply with several thinkers, seeking and providing clear paths out of a disorienting and dense thicket.

Reminiscent of the past tradition of philosophical essays, The Narrow Passage is a concise and sharp reminder of philosophy’s relevance. In a world in which ideologues fancy themselves journalists, and journalists fancy themselves philosophers, Ellmers brings clear and deep thinking into the intellectual fold. Thoughtfully and with supreme confidence as well as intellectual humility, Ellmers dares to do what most writers and cultural critics are afraid of: challenge the mediocrity of ideological dogmatism, be it on the Left or Right.

Guided by the wisdom of Plato, Leo Strauss, and Harry Jaffa, Ellmers explores the idea of political life in the context of dramatic changes our world has seen in the last few years. Ellmers’ book is part philosophical exegesis, part cultural critique, and it is these two elements that make the book and Ellmers’ voice unique. He brings together several elements of political philosophy, and “one of the central themes of this book is this battle between the scientific-bureacratic-rational state (which comes out of Hegel) and the post-modern rejection of all objective standards (which comes out of Nietzsche).”

The extreme use of rationalism has gotten us into such metaphysical trouble. This inevitably leads to moral relativism, and no one is immune. We are more post-modern than we’d like to admit, despite the fact that we may be fighting for age old tradition. We shouldn’t run away from this. In fact, post-modernism cannot be properly dealt with without engaging with thinkers that we deem enemies.

Enter Michel Foucault. While most conservatives either ignore or entirely dismiss Foucault as an unserious thinker, Ellmers engages with his thought in a very careful and deep way. While Ellmers’ philosophical conclusions differ greatly from Foucault’s, he asks us to reconsider Foucault’s arguments for purposes other than the French philosopher envisioned. As Ellmers writes, “Foucault’s central theme was the power discourse, or the relationship between political power, knowledge, and truth…It might be tempting to dismiss [Foucault]…as so much academic babble. But I would argue that we should reflect on Foucault’s argument in part because he is offering a quite accurate description of how today’s intellectuals perceive the world, and therefore how the ruling class, at least to some degree, thinks and operates.”

Foucault understands the strangeness of modern life, and the power structures that are strangling humanity. The discourse Foucault is interested in is the one that reveals the power structure and power struggle. He “shows that what may seem like propaganda and lies to abnormal or mentally recalcitrant subjects are nothing but the ebb and flow of the power discourse as it modulates in response to environmental changes.” In other words, we are just cogs in a big machine. But do we have to be?

“You are being manipulated. But you already know that,” Ellmers writes. You might wonder what technological and social media-influenced manipulations have to do with political life; in reality, it has to do with everything. As Ellmers writes, “…Americans are lied to on a daily basis – by corporate advertisers, medical hucksters and spiritual charlatans, the sensationalist media, and of course the authorities in government.”

Because of this, reality is constantly challenged. If reality itself is questioned, then how can a human being expect to participate in political life? All we have are forms of control, yet all of these attempts at totalitarianism are not definitive and hard. For example, it’s clear what the meaning of censorship is, theoretically speaking, but today’s censorship works in shapeshifting ways. One is censored through ambiguous means reliant on pseudo-morality.

The authoritarians in charge are many, but who are they? Everyone and no one is in charge. The system of tyranny appears to be a mesh of vertical and horizontal lines, absolving the authoritarians of guilt as they enact their tyranny. Ellmers rightly asserts that our awareness of all of this may be an actual hindrance to doing something about it. “Our cynical hyper-awareness of being “in the cave,” our post-modern sophistication, actually drives us deeper underground and away from the natural experiences of moral-political life. We accept the idea of the authoritative political narrative or discourse, and then assume (as Foucault did) that reality is nothing but discourse.”

Throughout his book, Ellmers is not interested in so-called solutions. This is not to say that he is not concerned about the state of the world, or that he doesn’t want to offer certain strategies in combating the chaos that is before us. But he deeply understands that if political philosophy is to be used in any way, then it has to be given room to breathe without any imposition of ideology or specific practical matters. Of course, one could argue that there is nothing more practical than politics because it gets into the heart of the matter of being a citizen. But in a society that appears to have lost interest in deeper thought, one that has gotten used to “content” and “products” that take care of immediate gratification, it will be difficult to figure out how to move away from a mob-oriented politics to one based on citizen and community.

In all this bureaucratic and cultural mess, people are attempting to feel like they belong somewhere, that they have home. “Part of what we are seeing,” writes Ellmers, “in the re-emerging tribalism of both Left and Right may be a creation of profound emptiness in the soul created by the loss of this “belonging,” an attempt to recover a sense of meaning and purpose by recreating a holy community of citizen-believers.”

One cannot blame people for turning to something that may resemble a like-mindedness. But caveat emptor–there are many intellectual frauds out there that are stoking the fires of chaos all for the purposes of their own self-interest. As much as the need to belong is a truly human and noble desire, we ask must ourselves: to what do we really want to belong?

In a 1955 lecture titled “The History of Political Theory,” Hannah Arendt said that “The modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us, can also be described as the spread of the desert. That we live and move in a desert-world was first recognized by Nietzsche, and it was also Nietzsche who made the first decisive mistake in diagnosing it.” But even deserts, as Arendt later observes, are full of storms and elements that are beyond our control. This, more than anything, seems to be a human condition, and each generation ends up experiencing it in their own way.

But there is something more at play here, which includes the inevitable impact on the political life of a citizen. Our atomization (perhaps something Foucault already recognized) is spreading despair. As Ellmers writes, “Despair, Jaffa was fond of saying, is not only a sin (because it presumes we have been abandoned by God), but also an intellectual error.” We don’t believe in political life anymore. There is a reason for this–everywhere we look, we see corruption out in the open and we can’t do anything about it.

Maybe we have entered a post-political age, but wouldn’t even that assessment render us weak in embracing our unwanted post-modernism? No matter what, despair should never be an option, even if sadness, anger, and loneliness often rise to the surface. It’s in the act and encounter that we become fully human, and part of that act is a recognition of political life as well as truth. Ellmers’ book is a valuable exploration of the significance and singularity of truth and authenticity, without which political life cannot exist.

Emina Melonic’s work has appeared in National Review, The New Criterion, The Imaginative Conservative, American Greatness, Splice Today, VoegelinView, and New English Review, among others.

Early Sunday morning, there are reports of several drone strikes in ‘Moscow City’ – a very high-end business district just 2.8 miles from the Kremlin.

BREAKING: Drone hits an office building in Moscow, Russia.

pic.twitter.com/ukD5PB08Ee

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 30, 2023

Footage of the attack pic.twitter.com/63FZmcqOdj

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) July 30, 2023

The moment the explosion in Moscow took place this morning.

You can always count on a Russian dashcam. pic.twitter.com/rOarvur1Bo

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) July 30, 2023

“Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow at night. The facades of the [Moscow] City’s two office towers sustained minor damage. There are no casualties or injuries,” Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said on Telegram.

Of course, we have no confirmation that these were Ukrainian drones.

News agency TASS cited emergency services as saying that there was “an explosion” between the fifth and the sixth floor of the 50-story building in the ‘IQ-Quarter’ complex, which has three high-rise buildings.

The aftermath of the strike:

Drone hits “IQ Quarter” high-rise in Moscow, which is home to apartments and government offices. At least 1 person injured pic.twitter.com/bp8VYI3j3h

— BNO News (@BNONews) July 30, 2023

The following are reportedly videos of the internal damage:

Footage from inside the building that was struck by a drone this morning in Moscow pic.twitter.com/gSnHUrNsLZ

— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) July 30, 2023

The damaged building has been evacuated, officials said. The evacuations from other Moscow City buildings are underway.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

Answering Democrat critics who want to legislatively impose a code of conduct on the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito said Congress has no constitutional authority to regulate the court.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court” – the Constitution did, Justice Alito told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published July 28.

“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” he said.

“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court – period.”

He was referring to Article III, section 1 of the Constitution, which states:

“The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

His Republican supporters say this means Congress has a relatively free hand to regulate lower courts—including creating and abolishing them—but can do very little to the Supreme Court.

Justice Alito said he was not sure if his colleagues on the nation’s highest court agree with this view.

“I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t think I should say. But I think it is something we have all thought about.”

Justice Alito’s comments came after the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly approved a Democrat-backed Supreme Court ethics reform bill on July 20 on a party-line vote.

Republicans oppose the legislation, the proposed Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (SCERT) of 2023 (S.359), which they say is unconstitutional. They have suggested that Democrats—many of whom want to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices—only want to move against the judicial body because its six-member conservative-leaning majority has been handing down decisions they find objectionable.

The proposed SCERT Act, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chairman of one of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panels, would direct the Supreme Court to issue a code of conduct governing its own members and require justices to recuse themselves from certain cases. It would also mandate the public disclosure of gifts, paid travel, and income information.

It would allow members of the public to file complaints against justices and appoint a panel of five lower court judges to investigate the complaints. Litigants would be allowed to file a motion to disqualify a justice from a case—a process Republicans say is ripe for abuse.

The measure would impose new rules governing the filing of friend-of-the-court briefs, which seek to influence the court on specific cases and require greater disclosure by the parties filing them.

Most of the left’s ire has been directed at conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. They are upset that wealthy Republican donor Harlan Crow gave Justice Thomas luxurious vacations, tuition support for a grandnephew he raised, and purchased low-dollar real estate from the justice’s family.

Justice Thomas didn’t disclose the events, saying he was advised that it wasn’t required, but has vowed to disclose such events going forward.

But critics have also attacked Justice Alito, who has defended his decisions not to disclose a paid Alaska trip in 2008 and not to recuse himself from a court case in 2014 that was related to the person who paid for the transportation.

The justice said he did not mention the trip in a 2008 report because not disclosing it was the “standard practice” in cases like this.

Justice Alito and the eight other members of the court voluntarily follow disclosure rules that apply to lower court judges and officials in the executive branch.

Democrats like Mr. Whitehouse believe that the very fact that Justices Alito and Thomas have received gifts from wealthy benefactors is corruption in and of itself.

The Supreme Court is “the only court in the country, perhaps the only court in the world, with no ethics process at all,” Mr. Whitehouse said at the committee hearing on July 20.

“Then came the news that six politically active right wing-billionaires have been paying household expenses, engaging in financial transactions, and providing massive secret gifts of travel and hospitality for at least two justices.”

“We are here because the highest court in the land has the lowest standard of ethics anywhere in the federal government. And justices have exhibited much improper behavior, not least in hapless efforts to excuse the misdeeds,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

It is unclear when the full Senate will take up the proposed SCERT Act. If it passes the Democrat-controlled Senate, it seems unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Justice Alito also said in the interview, “I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year.”

Facing political attacks, “the traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute” and allow others, especially “the organized bar,” to come to their defense.

“But that’s just not happening. And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”

In the interview, Justice Alito also addressed the possibility that governments could begin defying Supreme Court rulings, as some did after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated public schools.

Public approval for the court is currently at a low ebb in the nation’s polarized political environment and some states and elected officials have been doing their best to do an end-run around the court’s decisions. Some claim the court itself is illegitimate.

President Joe Biden frequently criticizes the court. After it struck down his student loan forgiveness program in June, instead of accepting the decision, he promptly began working on new ways to grant debt relief.

After the court struck down New York state’s tough concealed carry gun permitting system a year ago, recognizing for the first time a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, New York and other Democrat-led states passed new gun restrictions, some of which have been enjoined by the courts.

After the court’s decision a year ago reversing the 1973 abortion precedent, Roe v. Wade, President Biden began pressing Congress to codify the now-overturned decision. And he’s made abortion one of the centerpieces of his 2024 reelection campaign.

“If we’re viewed as illegitimate, then disregard of our decisions becomes more acceptable and more popular,” Justice Alito said.

“So you can have a revival of the massive resistance that occurred in the South after Brown,” he added.

Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

U.S. citizens in Haiti are urged to leave the Caribbean country immediately due to the recent surge in armed clashes between gangs and police.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti and the Department of State issued a “Level 4” travel advisory on Thursday, categorizing Haiti as a “Do Not Travel” destination.

“On July 27, 2023, the Department of State ordered the departure of family members of U.S. government employees and non-emergency U.S. government employees,” the agency said in an updated travel advisory.

“U.S. citizens in Haiti should depart Haiti as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transportation options, in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges,” the travel advisory continues.

U.S. citizens in the capital Port-au-Prince should monitor local news and depart only when it is safe to do so, the warnings read.

Specific neighborhoods, including Vivy Michel, Tabarre, Torcel, Tapage, and Trutier, have been deeply affected by the violent clashes, posing significant risks to residents and visitors.

The ability of the U.S. government to provide emergency services to its citizens in Haiti is currently extremely limited, raising concerns about their safety and well-being.

US Embassy Sounds Alarm

Kidnapping has become widespread in Haiti, with U.S. citizens frequently falling victim. Kidnappers often use sophisticated measures or take advantage of unplanned opportunities, even attacking convoys.

Violent crimes involving firearms, such as armed robberies, carjackings, and kidnappings for ransom, are common and pose risks to both residents and visitors.

“Kidnapping cases often involve ransom negotiations and U.S. citizen victims have been physically harmed during kidnappings,” the agency said, adding that victim’s families have paid thousands of dollars to rescue their family members.

Protests, demonstrations, tire burning, and roadblocks frequently occur in Haiti and can turn violent unexpectedly.

Critical shortages of gasoline, electricity, medicine, and medical supplies persist, further exacerbating the fragile situation in the country. Medical facilities lack qualified staff and basic resources.

Travelers have reported being followed and violently attacked shortly after leaving the Port-au-Prince international airport, while private vehicles stuck in heavy traffic congestion have been targeted by robbers and carjackers.

Read more here…