Month: August 2023

Authored by Megan Redshaw, JD via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

Although we’ve been told Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is manufactured with harmless messenger RNA (mRNA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) product label shows it contains artificially modified RNA—a key ingredient that is not naturally occurring and poses a substantial risk to human health.

According to Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine label in the FDA’s Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers, each Pfizer vaccine dose for children ages 5 through 11 contains 10 micrograms (mcg) of modRNA, while fully-approved Comirnaty authorized for use in individuals 12 years of age and older contains 30 mcg of modRNA.

Pfizer, on its website, confirms its COVID-19 vaccine contains modRNA: “ModRNA stands for nucleoside-modified messenger RNA and in the synthesis of the RNA used in this vaccine platform, some nucleosides, which are important biological molecules that constitute DNA and RNA, are replaced by modified nucleosides to help enhance immune evasion and protein production.” The company says modRNA instructs the cells to produce desired proteins.

Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on its website (pdf) that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are “made of mRNA,” or “messenger RNA.”

According to the agency, the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna is created in a laboratory and teaches cells how to make harmless pieces of spike protein that trigger an immune response inside the body. The mRNA from mRNA-based vaccines is broken down within days after vaccination and eliminated from the body. In its description of mRNA and how COVID-19 vaccines work, the CDC makes no reference to modRNA or indicates that the RNA used in COVID-19 vaccines has been modified.

Messenger RNA occurs naturally and lives in our cells, and it does not last long enough to initiate an immune response before being destroyed by the immune system—it is modRNA that is synthetically created, according to Klaus Steger, a molecular biologist who headed several gene technology laboratories, regularly applying RNA-based technologies.

Unlike mRNA, modRNA modifies one of four compounds in RNA that make it last longer in the body, less immunogenic (reduced stimulation of the innate immune system), and more efficient at producing a protein—in this case, the spike protein, Mr. Steger stated. Since modRNA cannot target specific cells to make viral protein, it can attack perfectly healthy cells and bypass protective barriers in the body, like the blood-brain barrier.

Injecting modRNA into the body may lead to adverse events like strokes, cardiovascular complications, pulmonary embolism, and the formation of blood clots—many of which were disclosed in Pfizer’s documents (pdf) but were not attributed to its product.

“It is my opinion that, at a minimum, the intentional use of mRNA—an acronym well-known to stand for messenger RNA along with the endless statements about the vaccines being based on naturally occurring messenger RNA constitute misbranding in violation of a number of laws,” Ohio-based attorney Thomas Renz told The Epoch Times in an email.

“There is a legal and moral duty to provide informed consent, and to misrepresent a drug that was intended to be a gene therapy as a vaccine containing “natural messenger RNA” is an apparent violation of both of those duties.”

David Wiseman, a research bioscientist with a doctorate in experimental pathology and a background in pharmacy, pharmacology, and immunology told The Epoch Times in an email the FDA uses the term “modRNA” throughout its regulatory documents. Yet the FDA, when it gave emergency use authorization to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, said the vaccine contains messenger RNA, which it described as “genetic material” that contains a “small piece of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s mRNA that instructs cells in the body to make the virus’s distinctive ‘spike’ protein.”

The FDA’s description is problematic because the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t contain mRNA, Mr. Wiseman said. “mRNA is the kind of RNA produced in the copying of instructions from DNA in a process called transcription, so to say this is viral mRNA is inaccurate.”

“Understand that, at core, mRNA, modRNA, saRNA, etc.—these are all gene therapies and all about genetic manipulation,” Mr. Renz wrote in a recent Substack article. “To suggest that this is high risk is an understatement. We have no idea what we are doing and yet we continue forward trying to control these genes.”

Pfizer Is Using Modified RNA Gene Therapy to Develop Other Vaccines

Mr. Renz told The Epoch Times that Pfizer is not only using modRNA for COVID-19 injections but also leveraging gene therapy technology to produce self-amplifying mRNA (saRNA) vaccines and treatments.

“Along with modRNA, Pfizer’s website also mentions saRNA (self-amplifying RNA) and numerous other lab-made RNA technologies,” he said. “We have discovered that various RNA technologies are in development for various uses, and these technologies, along with new adjuvant technologies, can allow for the introduction of gene therapy products into foods, the air (aerosolized vaccines), and even topical products.”

According to Pfizer, saRNA is a platform that uses a much larger molecule that encodes the antigen of interest and four additional proteins, allowing the cell to make more copies of the mRNA, resulting in more protein being expressed from a smaller dose. Pfizer states that it is currently using this gene therapy technology to develop influenza, shingles, and respiratory combination vaccines.

“It will be curious to know if this is going to be disclosed as well,” Mr. Renz added.

The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to impact his travel ability and plans, though the Kremlin has framed it as him wanting to stay in Moscow to focus on the special military operation in Ukraine. He addressed the BRICS summit in South Africa this week via remote feed.

The Kremlin confirmed on Friday that he will not be in attendance at the G20 summit in India next month, citing his “busy schedule”.  

Reuters in its report has recalled that the ICC “issued an arrest warrant for Putin accusing him of war crimes in Ukraine, something the Kremlin strongly denies. This means he risks arrest when travelling abroad.”

But in South Africa’s case the question of whether Putin would attend in person or not seemed more a matter of relieving the internal and international pressure being placed on the normally sympathetic (to Moscow) Ramaphosa government, which is a signatory to the Rome statute.

But in India’s case, it’s government is not a signatory to the Rome statute which would require action based on the ICC ruling. Still, the pressure remains and has impacted where he goes internationally.

Ukrainian officials have been hailing this as a ‘victory’…

⚡️Putin won’t attend the G20 summit in India – Peskov.

Didn’t attend the BRICS summit, didn’t go to Turkey, won’t go to India… ICC arrest warrants do increase his love for his motherland.

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 25, 2023

Heads of the world’s 20 largest economies will gather in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. This will reportedly include President Joe Biden.

Even if Putin were to go in person, it would likely create a deeply awkward atmosphere for the Russian leader given it would trigger other world leaders to snub him and other anti-Russia demonstrations, which would surely also be on display from the media.

In December of 2022 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi canceled a planned meeting Putin, with an Indian spokesman at the time saying the current circumstances would likely only harm Modi’s image. Modi had previous to that stressed that “today’s era is not an era of war.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In 2017, Denmark took a historic step in favor of free speech by rescinding its blasphemy law as 334 years.

For those of us in the free speech community, it was an important moment in Europe where free speech is being rapidly reduced.

Now, however, the liberal government is moving to reinstate the blasphemy crime with a new law barring the burning of the Qur’an, the Bible, and other religous texts.

The country already has an abusive law criminalizing offenses against foreign nations by publicly insulting them, including flag burnings. That law will be extended to religious books.

Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard adopted the same thread-worn rationalizations to curtail free speech. He simply dismissed that burning such books is free speech, dismissing such protests as “meaningless insults which have no other purpose than to create discord and hatred.”  Speech crimes are often pushed by those who disagree with the content of opposing speech as “meaningless.”

Despite the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States, the Constitution still protects such protests, including the burning of the American flag.

In Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that flag burning was protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is considered one of the core cases defining free speech in the United States. Brennan was joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Scalia, and Kennedy (Kennedy wrote a concurrence). I agree with the decision as did conservatives like Scalia. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a powerful concurrence where he famously stated:

Justice Kennedy

“For we are presented with a clear and simple statute to be judged against a pure command of the Constitution. The outcome can be laid at no door but ours. The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases.

Though symbols often are what we ourselves make of them, the flag is constant in expressing beliefs Americans share, beliefs in law and peace and that freedom which sustains the human spirit. The case here today forces recognition of the costs to which those beliefs commit us. It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt.”

The same is true with the burning of religious or culture symbols. 

I find such acts reprehensible, but they are clearly conveying a political or religious viewpoint.

Nevertheless, the left in Denmark are now embracing on a new age of censorship and speech criminalization.  The country will now create an amorphous crime for those who show “improper treatment of objects with religious significance.” The vagueness is by design. Citizens will not know what may be considered such improper treatment and thus a chilling effect will curtail future political speech.

The reversal in Denmark illustrates the dire situation for free speech in Europe and the growing danger here in the United States.

Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

So, the Germans are putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes, and, apparently, I’ve already been found guilty and sentenced. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.

The Berlin District Court has issued a so-called “penalty order” or “order of punishment,” in which I am advised that I am now officially a criminal in Germany, for tweeting two Tweets. According to my attorney, a trial will now be scheduled, at which my attorney will argue the case before the judge that just issued the “order of punishment.” At this trial, the judge will listen attentively to the arguments my attorney has already made in writing, consider them carefully, and find me guilty, again. Then the judge will reaffirm the “order of punishment.”

Go ahead, read that paragraph again.

After my Kafkaesque trial has concluded, my attorney will file a series of appeals, which will fail, at which point I will have to decide whether to pay a fine of 3,600 Euros or go to German prison for 60 days.

This process will take months, if not years, and will cost me God knows how much money in attorney’s fees, court costs, and then the €3,600 fine. Yes, I’m going to pay the fine. I am not going to German prison for 60 days. Life is too short, and I am getting older, and it wouldn’t really accomplish anything except making a narcissistic spectacle of myself.

However, what will accomplish something (I don’t know how much, but something) is if I see the whole process through to the end, and shine as much light on it as I possibly can, because my case is just one of many such cases, and the real story here is not about me, it is about the crackdown on political dissent that is being carried out, not just here in Germany, but also in other countries all throughout the West.

There are not many outlets reporting this story, not outlets with any significant reach. If you are reading this column, you’re probably aware of various alternative media outlets that are, but most of these outlets are quarantined off where “normal” people never have to see them, and are delegitimized as “unreliable sources” and purveyors of “misinformation,” and so on.

There are a few bigger sources covering the story, which are also increasingly being branded “illegitimate,” Matt Taibbi’s Racket News, Michael Shellenberger’s Public, Glenn Greenwald’s Locals operations, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few more, forgive me.

The point is, unless you’re a charter member of the “science-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, hate-speech-speaking, anti-vaxxing, misinforming left-or-right extremist” club — i.e., people who read weird “malinformationist” publications like The Grayzone, OffGuardian, ZeroHedge, Dissident Voice, and Unlimited Hangout, and who are planning to vote for Bobby Kennedy, or, God help them, Donald Trump — you probably have no idea what I mean when I refer to “the crackdown on dissent” … or you do, and you think it’s just hunky-dory.

I won’t mince words. The folks who think it’s hunky-dory are totalitarians. They’re fascists. They applaud the crackdown on dissent. They applaud the criminalization of dissent. They applaud the censorship of political speech, of any speech they do not agree with. They want their political opponents in prison. They want everyone who disagrees with them punished. They want people who offend them cancelled. They want anyone who refuses to conform to their official ideology erased.

I have been calling these people “totalitarians” and “fascists” for a number of years now. I do not enjoy doing that. I’m not doing it gratuitously. Some of these people were my friends. I’m doing that, calling these people “fascists,” and comparing the nascent totalitarianism that is erupting all throughout the West to other, earlier totalitarian systems, like Stalinism (sorry, Marxist friends), and, yes, to fucking Nazi Germany, because, despite the fact that there are numerous differences, a lot of it is textbook totalitarianism. Naked textbook totalitarianism. There isn’t another, nicer word for it … or for those who are enthusiastically embracing it.

I’m not going to present the evidence for that assertion again. I have done that ad nauseam, much of it in my latest book, which is banned by Amazon in several countries, and which bears a warning on other Amazon sites to “visit the WHO, the CDC,” or your local national health authority, “for the latest information on Covid-19 and vaccines” before you consider buying it, and the cover art of which is about to make me an official “hate criminal,” with a criminal record.

That’s right, as I explained at greater length in a previous column, the pretext for this so-called “hate crime” prosecution is two Tweets I tweeted almost exactly one year ago of the cover art of that very same book, which just happens to document the rollout of the “New Normal” (i.e., the new totalitarianism) in 2020 and 2021.

Here are the two Tweets that constitute my “hate crimes.”

The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” The image is the cover art of my book.

Say what you want about me and my writing. I can be “provocative,” and some of my political satire is bombastically over-the-top, but, as Matt Taibbi put it in a recent Racket News piece …

“No amount of drugs exist that if consumed would allow a rational person to conclude that the writing of C.J. Hopkins furthers ‘the aims of a former National Socialist Organization.’ Agree with him or not, and I increasingly do, he used his imagery to compare the sweeping declarations of emergency power that were common around the world during the pandemic (and were particularly authoritarian in Germany) to Nazi tactics.”

And that is what I am being accused of, and “punished” for doing, by the German authorities, i.e., “furthering the aims of a National Socialist Organization” … basically, promoting Nazism, for tweeting those two Tweets above.

There is no complex legal issue here. Yes, swastikas are banned in Germany if you’re a Nazi or promoting Nazism or Fascism, but they are permitted for the purposes of “civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art, science, research and education, coverage of historic and current events,” and similar purposes, according to German law. Do you seriously believe that the German hate-crime police and the prosecutor and the judge do not understand that? Of course they understand that. They’re not complete imbeciles. They know the charges are just a pretext. And they know we know the charges are just a pretext. They do not care. They do not have to. They don’t even have to pretend to be following the rule of law. Not anymore. Because they know the majority of the masses are with them.

The point of prosecutions like this (and much more serious and significant prosecutions, like that of Julian Assange, for example) is to send a message. The naked disregard for the rule of law, the blatant absurdity of the charges, the open contempt for democratic principles, is all part of the message. It’s not a message about the law. It’s a message about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. And what happens to those who refuse to bow down to it.

The message is not intended for me, or for more important figures like Julian Assange, or the many other less well-known dissidents that are being made examples of currently. We’re just the medium that conveys the message. We’re the delivery service. The message is for you.

I’m pretty sure you’re getting the message. The question is … how are you going to respond?

I do not mean by “storming” your capitol. Please do not go out and get yourself shot. I mean, are you going to help shine a light on where we are headed? Because it’s pretty fucking dark. Folks are offering to send me money to help with my legal costs, and I’m extremely grateful, because I’m going to need it (and here’s how to do that), but what I think we need to do is a little harder, and costs more, and is much more important.

We need to talk to the totalitarians … yes, the ones who wanted to put us in camps. If we can’t get through to them, we’re probably screwed. And there is a window of opportunity to do that now. It’s not 2020 or 2021. The mass hysteria has worn off for a lot of people. I know, not all of them, but for some of them, a lot of them. Some of them are finally reachable.

Take a chance, talk to them, the ones you know, or used to know. Try to get through to them. Not the bug-eyed, fanatical, foaming-at-the-mouth types who can’t wait for the return of the “emergency measures.” The other ones … you know the ones I mean. The ones who want out. You can see it in their eyes. Take a chance. Talk to these people. Totalitarianism, fascism, it is not an identity. It’s a mindset. No one is born a fascist. People can be deprogrammed. Some of them can. And, at this point, we need all the help we can get.

So, if you’re one of the kind and generous folks who have been asking what you can do to help and offering to send me money, sure, go ahead and send me the money — thank you, I’ve been overwhelmed by your messages, and I’m sorry that I can’t personally respond to all of them — but also consider what I’m suggesting, if you can possibly bring yourself to do it. If you can’t, I completely understand. Trust me, I am still just as angry as you are. I am hurt. I feel betrayed and abandoned. I have a feeling that some of you feel that way too. So I know what I’m asking when I ask you to talk to the New Normal totalitarians, the ones who might be reachable.

If you can’t yet, don’t. But if you’re able to, try.

Don’t try to convince them that you were right and they were wrong. Just shine a light on the road we’re on. Try to get them to recognize where we’re headed. Regardless of who was right and who was wrong about whatever, we are all going down this road together.

Personally, I’d rather not ride it all the way to the end and face what is down there this time.

Our readers know there’s yet to be a quick solution to the US pilot shortage, which may linger until 2032. Current data shows a staggering 17,000-pilot gap. This shortfall can be attributed to several factors:

• Early retirements spurred by the pandemic.

• The unyielding retirement age of 65.

• A dwindling number of pilots from the military.

• The unappealing prospect for civilians to embark on a pilot career. 

Airlines can only train 1,500 to 1,800 pilots a year. The deficit has triggered all sorts of flight disruptions, with the latest from American Airlines. 

However, South Korean researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) developed “Pibot,” a life-sized humanoid robot that can fly planes and understand complex flight controls. 

Flight news website Airways Magazine explains more about Pibot’s capabilities:

As the world continues to adapt to the growing trend of Artificial Intelligence (AI), South Korean scientists have unveiled a humanoid robot capable of piloting an aircraft.

Named Pibot, the life-sized robot, measuring 160 cm tall and weighing in at 65 kg, is capable of gripping the controls, memorizing aircraft manuals, and even responding to emergency situations. It is fitted with multiple cameras capable of monitoring the aircraft’s systems and operational conditions.

Currently under development by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), researchers utilized Al chatbots such as ChatGPT to create ways for PiBot to learn the pilot manuals for various aircraft. The robot can then be changed onto an alternative airframe by clicking the type. It can also memorize worldwide Jeppesen aeronautical navigation charts, an impossible task for its human equivalent.

PiBot can also communicate with air traffic control (ATC) and other humans on the flight deck, meaning it can operate via a Captain or First Officer. This has been done using Voice synthesis. By plugging the robot into the aircraft, it can communicate directly with the airframe.

Airways Magazine explained the humanoid pilot has already demonstrated it can control an aircraft safely. 

While it’s clear a robo-pilot is not something the US Federal Aviation Administration would clear anytime soon — it might catch the agency’s attention amid the worst pilot shortage ever. 

US airlines have been quietly lobbying Congress to allow them to use just one pilot in the cockpit instead of two. But with an increasing number of pilot deaths — some even in mid-air — one has to wonder: Is the FAA open to considering a mix between human and robot pilots in the cockpit? 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In all the media and regime frenzy over the January 6 riots and the Pentagon Leaker in recent months, it is interesting to examine the contrast between how the regime treats “crimes” against its own interests, and real crime committed against ordinary private citizens. 

Witness, for example, how the Biden administration and corporate media have treated the January 6 riot as if it were some kind of military coup, demanding that draconian sentences be handed down even to small-time vandals and trespassers. Regime paranoia has led the Justice Department to ask for a 30-year sentence for Enrique Tarrio, a man who was convicted of the non-crime of “seditious conspiracy” even though he wasn’t even in Washington on January 6. In recent months, Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,” received a sentence of three-and-a-half years, even though prosecutors admit he did nothing violent. Riley Williams was given three years for simply trespassing in Nancy Pelosi’s office. Members of the Capitol Police force have been lionized in the media as great protectors of “sacred” government buildings, and any threat to the property or persons of Washington politicians has been equated with an assault on “democracy.” 

Yet, had these supposed insurrectionists inflicted these same actions against an ordinary private individual, there’s a good chance the perpetrators would not even be arrested, let alone given years of prison time. Consider, for example, the mobs that ransack private businesses in American cities, stealing tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise while police and prosecutors consider it all to be low priority.  Violent crime and property crime surge in many areas of the United States, with violent crime rising 30 percent in New York City in 2022. Unsolved murders in the US are at a record high. Meanwhile, progressives and social democrats are looking for ways to reduce criminal penalties against violent criminals. Police departments often devote only tiny portions of their budgets to homicide investigations, and if your property is stolen, odds are good you can forget about ever seeing it again. 

The situation is quite different when it comes to protecting the state, its agents, and its property from any threat. During urban riots, such as those which occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and Minneapolis, Minnesota, the police went to great lengths to protect themselves and government property. If you were just a private shopkeeper or ordinary citizen, however, you were on your own. At the Uvalde School shooting in 2022, hundreds of law enforcement officers from all levels of government chose to protect themselves rather than the children who were being murdered inside. When Uvalde parents demanded the police act, the police attacked the parents. 

We find similar phenomena at the federal level. There are, of course, special federal laws against violence perpetrated against federal employees. Ordinary taxpayers receive no such consideration. Note how federal agencies move to arm themselves to the teeth while also seeking to disarm the private-sector. Federal agents will spare no expense finding someone who put his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, but it’s another matter entirely when we’re talking about serious violent crime against regular people.  Federal agents, of course, allowed 9/11 to occur right under their noses, they refused to investigate known rapist Larry Nasser, and shrugged off reports about the man who would end up slaughtering children at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Contrast this with how long the federal government has been conniving to get revenge on Julian Assange for merely telling the truth about US war crimes.  

Naturally, law enforcement officers rarely face any sanctions for their failures to bother themselves with private property, life, or limb. The federal courts have made it clear that law enforcement officers are not obligated to actually protect the public. In other words, the taxpayers must always pay taxes to hold up their end of the imagined “social contract” or face fines and imprisonment. But the other side of that “contract,” the state, has no legal obligation to make good on its end. This, of course, is not how real contracts work. 

The state’s fastidious devotion to protecting itself, compared to its casual concern for the safety of mere taxpayers, illustrates an important principle of state behavior. In his essay The Anatomy of the State, Murray Rothbard notes 

We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’etre.

This double standard has been repeatedly on display in recent years as the regime has increasingly been consumed with paranoia over threats to itself—propagandistically termed “threats to democracy”—while attention given to real crime against private citizens is apparently not a priority at all. 

In a rapid shift in private aviation among millionaires, cent-millionaires, and billionaires, Textron Inc.’s Cessna Citation, the most popular and most flown private jet in the US, which held that record for 15 years, has just been dethroned. 

Bloomberg reports new monthly flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows Brazil’s Embraer Phenom 300, a medium-sized jet that seats around nine passengers, had 360,000 takeoffs and landings at US airports in the 12 months through August, 1,200 more than the Citation Excel family of jets. 

Brian Foley, a private aviation consultant, said the biggest reason behind the surge in popularity of the Phenom 300 is fuel efficiency, which burns one-third less than the Citation Excel. He said cheaper fuel costs offset the Phenom 300’s smaller cabin space.

For some context, at cruising speed, the two Pratt & Whitney turbofans of the Citation Excel burn around 225 gallons per hour of Jet A fuel. 

Meanwhile, the Phenom 300 is around 158 gallons of Jet A fuel per hour. 

Even though Phenom 300s are being flown more, Cessna still dominates private jet deliveries. 

Textron told Bloomberg, “One of every three business jets worldwide is a Cessna Citation, and product upgrades like these continue to give customers new reasons to choose us for our proven performance, leading technology and unmatched cabin experience.” 

Despite the ‘climate change’ cheerleading, private jet demand soared to new heights in recent years, though mounting macro uncertainty and the highest interest rates in two decades led to a cooling in private jet flights earlier this year. 

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,

The Democrats have an ace in the hole in their relentless war on the Constitution – conservative America’s reverence for the concept of the rule of the law.

Only their steadfast commitment to this traditional ideal explains why conservatives are allowing   Democrats to flagrantly corrupt our judicial system to destroy their opponents and protect themselves. For all their huffing and puffing, conservatives have effectively taken a let the system play itself out attitude while Democrats nakedly politicize that system through their partisan indictments of former President Trump and their Potemkin Village probes of the Bidens. These are not statements of opinion. These are facts.

Part of me is glad that so many legal analysts have spilled so much ink exposing these charades. But we degrade our country and ourselves when we treat this unspeakable behavior with anything other than horrified contempt. Every good-faith critique normalizes and legitimizes this profoundly un-American conspiracy.

Viewing the obvious forest rather than the tangled trees, the cases against Trump are a continuation of the deceitful effort by Democrats and their deep state allies, especially in the DOJ, to annihilate their chief political opponent. That effort began even before his election when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manufactured false claims that Trump had conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election. When that sham was exposed, they almost immediately made Trump only the third president in the country to be impeached for asking Ukraine’s leader to look into the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes. They set aside almost every rule and order of business by rushing to impeach him once again after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. While that was going on, Democrats insistently rained down other bogus concerns – that he was violating the Emoluments Clause because wealthy foreigners continued to stay at his hotels, that his alleged mental instability made him unfit – to remove him from office.

The hypocrisy is beyond belief: The party that assails Republicans for questioning the integrity of the highly irregular 2020 election spent years and vast government resources to undo the results of 2016.

The charges Trump now faces are part of the ongoing campaign by Democrats to subvert the rule of law to delegitimize what they see as the greatest threat to their power.

In the meantime, Democrats are blatantly using the criminal justice system to protect President Biden. It is now beyond dispute that Biden lied to the American people when he said he never discussed foreign business with his son Hunter and when he claimed during his final 2020 debate with Trump that Hunter’s laptop, which contained evidence of those corrupt dealings, was a “Russian plant.” Has a candidate ever peddled more consequential falsehoods?

In fact, the president was not only aware of his son’s influence-peddling schemes, whose sole selling point was the connection to his vast power. He was an active participant through phone calls and meetings with clients. Irony does not capture the deviousness of the Democrats’ decision to impeach Trump for asking Ukraine to look into this corruption.

The cover-up of the Bidens’ conduct is equally disturbing. The U.S. attorney in Delaware assigned to the case, David C. Weiss, is a former colleague of Biden’s late son Beau. Although the tax avoidance charges involved are straightforward, Weiss spent more than five years allegedly looking into them – allowing the statute of limitations to run out on millions of unreported earnings Hunter generated in 2014 and 2015. Note that even as the president calls on Americans to pay their fair share, neither he nor his allies have demanded that Hunter pay his.

Indeed, we only know about Weiss’ corruption because of two courageous IRS whistleblowers. In response, Weiss quickly struck a deal with Hunter to settle the matter, crafting a sweetheart deal that would have let him off the hook with a slap on the wrist. All might have been forgiven but for the presiding judge, who rejected the deal last month as “not standard” and potentially unconstitutional.

In response to this scandal, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel to look into the mess. This move is beyond brazen – Weiss is now apparently in charge of probing his own misconduct. The goal is obvious: Protect the president, and let the statute of limitations run out on other alleged crimes while shutting down any questions about the “ongoing investigation.”

The arrogance is jaw-dropping; the lawlessness is in plain sight. Democrats are not even trying to hide their malfeasance – which is part of their method. If they can make us accept their authority to twist the system so that it is no longer a means of justice but a tool of their political power, then their possibilities are unlimited.

Imagine if the roles were reversed: What if Republican prosecutors had indicted a former Democratic president, who was also the party’s leading candidate in the next election, in four separate cases on 91 questionable charges while a GOP-controlled Department of Justice simultaneously protected its sitting-president boss, who was seeking reelection, by slow-walking a probe of his family’s alleged crimes?

The corporate media would be in high dudgeon about this assault on the Constitution and the streets would be filled with left-wing protestors who would make the BLM riots, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and the harassment of Supreme Court justices in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade seem mild.

Here’s the conundrum. While no one wants conservatives to start engaging in direct action, their passivity is allowing Democrats to weaponize the government. On the one hand, I admire their faith in our system. Even Trump, for all his barking, has largely submitted to his gross mistreatment.

But our system is shattered. The rule of law is now more concept than fact. Where’s the outrage?

J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.