Month: October 2024

Authored by Daniel Oliver via American Greatness,

In a recent National Review, John O’Sullivan makes a compelling case for aiding Ukraine but not a convincing one. There are several problems, and they are worth rehashing one more time before the election.

If Trump wins, we know what happens.

If Harris wins, we really have no idea what will happen.

She is likely to bungle along as our current mentally challenged president has for the last two years: sandwiched between her anti-Semitic supporters and a lot of traditional Jewish Democrat supporters who – for some reason, no one (not even Norman Podhorets in the 352 pages of his 2010 book, Why Are Jews Liberals) has quite been able to explain – still vote Democrat.

O’Sullivan’s chief argument is the Hitler comparison: before World War II began, no one really believed that Hitler would sweep across Europe. But he did. And so, the thinking goes, will Putin. Maybe. But maybe not.

O’Sullivan writes:

“At their last summit meeting in Istanbul in November 1999, President Bill Clinton was surprised to be asked by Russian president Boris Yeltsin: Why don’t we agree that Russia can have Europe while the U.S. gets the rest of the world? His exact words were, ‘I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The U.S. is not in Europe. Europe should be the business of Europeans. Russia is half European and half Asian.’”

“Andrei Illarionov, who was Putin’s economic adviser for several years (and a very successful one), has on several occasions testified that the Russian president has a well-worked-out long-term strategy to divide continental Europe from America and the U.K., to reach a Treaty of Rapallo–like agreement with Germany and France, and subsequently to wage a long campaign of subversion to weaken the Anglosphere powers.”

O’Sullivan also notes the amount of Russian spending on its military:

“The most conservative estimate of Russian spending is 6.5 percent of GDP. Other estimates go as high as 14 percent—though [O’Sullivan concedes] recent events suggest that President Putin is not getting a good bang for his buck.”

Those are not uninteresting points, but as O’Sullivan also concedes, Putin’s military seems to be second-rate, at best.

“If Russia is struggling to defeat Ukraine and even to defend its territory from Ukrainian advances, then it’s very clear that Russia could never win a conventional war against NATO.”

Yes, but: could it win a conventional war against Europe without the U.S.’s NATO contribution?

What should the U.S. do? And whatever the U.S. does, should it do it for Europe or only, or at least primarily, for the U.S.?

If it is so obvious that Putin really intends to gobble up much of Europe, why don’t the Europeans gird their loins, fasten on their breastplates, and get ready for war?

At a meeting of sophisticated policy types in Europe a few weeks ago, one European “reminded” the gathering that in 2008, the GDP of the U.S. and Europe were about equal. Today, the U.S. GDP is 75 percent larger. Not only that, Europeans are enacting laws designed to restrict U.S. companies from doing in Europe the things that have made the U.S. GDP so much larger than the EU’s GDP. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece making the same points on October 15.

So what? So the Europeans claim they don’t have the economic muscle to fight Putin alone and therefore need U.S. assistance. What’s wrong with that picture?

But there’s more. In the Summer 2024 issue of The Claremont Review, Christopher Caldwell notes that France plans to reduce its manpower in Central and West Africa (where it has been booted out of one country after another) to 600 troops and asks, “So how does it propose to join the Ukrainians in a major European ground war against Russia, which has several hundred thousand troops who have withstood an American proxy war for the better part of three years?”

And, writes Caldwell, “If you exclude [Britain’s] nuclear deterrent, its military spending has fallen to 1.8 percent; Britain is now spending less to defend itself than to pay the interest on its vast debt. In an interview with the Financial Times in early July, a former director of the British Ministry of Defence’s Office of Net Assessment judged the U.K. military unprepared for ‘conflict of any scale.’”

And “the Baltic states—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—have fewer than 50,000 soldiers and not a single main battle tank.”

So Europe’s economy is in shambles and European countries don’t really have functioning armies. They could have better economies (if they tried the free market), which would enable them to have better armies. And the smart money is betting on that happening when pigs learn to fly.

Pending which, is the U.S. supposed to bail the Europeans out again?

In 1951, Eisenhower said, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.” Did he sense that the Europeans wouldn’t bother to provide for their own defense?

A faux argument that has been trotted out by the Biden administration and other supporters of U.S. aid to Ukraine untutored in economics is that by spending gazillions of dollars on military hardware that we would then give to the Ukrainians, we are really helping America by paying American workers. But where does that money come from? Either from taxes on productive workers (when you tax an activity, you get less of it) or from loans to be paid off by our productive children and grandchildren. If paying some Americans to build bombs for Ukraine is such a good idea for America, why don’t we pay all American workers to build bombs for Ukraine?

One contribution the U.S. could make is to turn on its oil spigots—turned off by the climate crazy—and mentally challenged—Joe Biden, whose policy is surely supported by Kamala Harris. That would lower the world price of energy and drastically decrease Russia’s revenue—and wouldn’t cost the U.S. a cent.

Over the last decade, oil and gas have provided the largest single source of revenue for the Russian government, accounting for up to 50 percent of Russia’s budget.

In October 2024, Alexandra Prokopenko, an economist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimated that “at current exchange rates, a $20 fall in oil prices would lead to a 1.8 trillion ruble ($20 billion) fall in [Russia’s] revenues . . . equivalent to about 1 percent of Russia’s GDP.”

Flooding the market with oil would also create financial hardship and perhaps calamity for Iran too (yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus).

Trump would do that. Harris would not. (Vote early and often.)

Meanwhile, back on the global stage, the U.S. must turn its attention to the growing threat from China, a far more serious threat than Russia—a point O’Sullivan seems to disagree with. He writes: “It is inevitable that an America that is now, if anything, too aware of China’s challenge (having ignored it for too long) will move money and troops from Europe to counter that challenge.” Well, yes. Precisely.

O’Sullivan’s comparison of Putin to Hitler may be correct, but he underestimates the threat that China poses—and also, probably underestimates the benefit to Europe that containing China provides.

The U.S. can’t do everything, and the sooner the Europeans grow up and recognize that and then act on that recognition, the better off they—and we—will be.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

– Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.

Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left… The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. 

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of their so-called “anti-government” views, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented, and their communications monitored.

These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

This language of fear has given rise to a politics of fear whose only aim is to distract and divide us. In this way, we have been discouraged from thinking analytically and believing that we have any part to play in solving the problems before us. Instead, we have been conditioned to point the finger at the other Person or vote for this Politician or support this Group, because they are the ones who will fix it. Except that they can’t and won’t fix the problems plaguing our communities.

Nevertheless, fear remains the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence, disease, illegal immigration, and so-called domestic extremism have been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. However, with crime at an all-time low, is such fear rational?

Statistics show that you are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocating in bed than from a terrorist attack. And you are 9 more times likely to choke to death in your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack.

Indeed, those living in the American police state are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist. Thus, the government’s endless jabbering about terrorism amounts to little more than propaganda—the propaganda of fear—a tactic used to terrorize, cower and control the population.

In turn, the government’s stranglehold on power and extreme paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats has resulted in a populace that is increasingly viewed as the government’s enemies.

Why else would the government feel the need to monitor our communications, track our movements, criminalize our every action, treat us like suspects, and strip us of any means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons?

So far, these tactics—terrorizing the citizenry over the government’s paranoia and overblown fears while treating them like criminals—are working to transform the way “we the people” view ourselves and our role in this nation.

Indeed, fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.

The American people have been reduced to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues:

I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.

As history makes clear, fear and government paranoia lead to fascist, totalitarian regimes.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

The following, derived by from John T. Flynn’s 1944 treatise on fascism As We Go Marching are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

• The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).

• The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.

• The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.

• The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

• The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.

• The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.

• The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.

• The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.

• The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.

• The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

“Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect,” writes economist Jeffrey Tucker.

“It’s incorrect to call fascism either right wing or left wing. It is both and neither… fascism does not seek to overthrow institutions like commercial establishments, family, religious centers, and civic traditions. It seeks to control them… it preserves most of what people hold dear but promises to improve economic, social, and cultural life through unifying their operations under government control.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

We are at a critical crossroads in American history.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it has become the driving force behind the American police state.

All of which begs the question what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

As we once again find ourselves faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, “we the people” have a decision to make: do we simply participate in the collapse of the American republic as it degenerates toward a totalitarian regime, or do we take a stand and reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us?

There is no easy answer, but one thing is true: the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Less than a day after Tesla CEO Elon Musk made bold claims at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Saudi Arabia, touting big AI growth in the coming years, which is only suggestive of powerful tailwinds for his Optimus robot, Boston Dynamics—once the leader in viral humanoid robot videos—published a clip on YouTube on Wednesday morning showcasing its robot performing typical warehouse tasks usually carried out by workers in Amazon distribution centers.

Maybe a bit of jealousy is unfolding between Boston Dynamics and Musk’s Optimus robot, which has received a lot of attention in October – from the “We, Robot“ event on October 10 to Musk’s comment at the event in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday:

“I think by 2040, probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people. Every country will have an AI or multiple AIs, and there will be a lot of robots, way more robots than people.”

Back to the We, Robot event, where Musk said Optimus will cost less than $30,000 and forecasted that the humanoid robot will be the company’s most popular product in the years ahead… 

NEW: Elon Musk introduces an army of Optimus robots, says people will be able to buy them to complete tasks.

Epic.

Musk then said attendees could walk up to the Optimus robots who would do things like serve drinks.

“At scale, you should be able to buy an Optimus robot for… pic.twitter.com/zsGF4zzhaR

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 11, 2024

Maybe all this attention on Optimus provoked Boston Dynamics to release a video of its bipedal humanoid robot, Atlas.  

Here’s more from Boston Dynamics:

Atlas is autonomously moving engine covers between supplier containers and a mobile sequencing dolly. The robot receives as input a list of bin locations to move parts between.

Atlas uses a machine learning (ML) vision model to detect and localize the environment fixtures and individual bins [0:36]. The robot uses a specialized grasping policy and continuously estimates the state of manipulated objects to achieve the task.

There are no prescribed or teleoperated movements; all motions are generated autonomously online. The robot is able to detect and react to changes in the environment (e.g., moving fixtures) and action failures (e.g., failure to insert the cover, tripping, environment collisions [1:24]) using a combination of vision, force, and proprioceptive sensors.

Suppose robots and AI are forecasted to lead to millions of job losses in the years ahead. Then why did Democrats facilitate the greatest migrant invasion this nation has ever seen with low-skilled, unvetted illegal aliens when many of those jobs are likely to be automated away? Ah, yes, it’s all about the votes.

Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics,

To hear the candidates and their surrogates tell it, we live in Weimar Germany 1932. There are only fascists fighting communists, with nobody in the middle. The candidates have eagerly pinned those noxious labels on their opponents.

MSNBC, which competes with ABC and CBS for dreadful news judgment, drove home that point with its coverage of Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden. Amid clips of the Trump event, they spliced clips of Nazi rallies. Subtlety be damned.

A better analogy than Weimar is “Spinal Tap,” the mockumentary about a hapless heavy metal band. In one scene, the band’s guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, explains why his amplifiers are louder than everyone else’s. Their amplifier dials only go up to 10. His go up to 11.

Tufnel: It’s one louder, isn’t it? … What we do is if we need that extra … push over the cliff … you know what we do?

Interviewer Marty DeBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Tufnel:  Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

That is American politics today. One louder. But with everyone louder – and angrier – no one can hear each other.

With the amps at 11 and the country ideologically polarized, we are pushing America toward the cliff. Both parties think that’s the other’s fault.

These intense passions won’t end when the ballots are counted, especially if the results are close. In 2020, Trump impugned the results and the winner’s legitimacy. In 2016, after Hillary Clinton lost, she repeatedly denounced Trump as an illegitimate president. That rhetoric mobilizes the most extreme followers. It’s kindling wood for violence, exactly what a constitutional democracy should avoid with the peaceful transfer of power.

This turbulence has two sources. One is short-term, a cynical tactic to increase partisan turnout. Get them to the polls by playing on their fears. The other is long-term. Both sides are genuinely scared about what the other side will do if they win. Those two sources, long-term and short-term, reinforce each other.

They push us toward the cliff. Before plunging over, it’s time for sensible people to take a deep breath and assess the real differences, not the hype, and consider how to cope with the dangers.

The most fundamental point is this: America’s best protection against extreme dangers are robust constitutional institutions, combined with impartial law enforcement.

What are these vital institutional protections?

• Separation of powers
• Respect for the rule of law
• Impartial enforcement of our laws
• Protection for the minority party’s rights, ensured by the Senate filibuster
• Limits on presidential fiat, not governance by constant Executive Orders
• Requirements that major rules proposed by administrative agencies receive clear approval from elected representatives before they can be implemented
• Restraint and effective oversight on the enormous, secretive power of the FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies, whose actions must be kept within constitutional bounds and never used for domestic political gain or political blackmail

These institutional protections are the load-bearing walls of constitutional democracy. All of them have been under enormous strain, mostly by partisans who care far more about achieving their preferred outcomes than about preserving constitutional methods for achieving them. Indeed, they would readily change those methods, such as packing the Supreme Court, to achieve their goals.

The dangers have grown because the policy differences between the two parties today are deep and fundamental. These are not the differences between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, or between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. They are deeper, angrier, and laden with almost-religious fervor. Apostates are excommunicated.

These opposing views are amplified in today’s media landscape, which is characterized by separate silos for separate audiences. People tune in to see their views confirmed and others’ denigrated.

Amid these changes, the base constituencies of both parties have moved away from the center, away from the possibilities of compromise.

These cleavages are prominent in issues freighted with social and cultural meaning. That’s certainly true for disputes surrounding abortion and transgender rights. Both issues have practical consequences, but the disputes go further. They are fights over cultural symbols that matter to many people who have no direct, personal stake in reproductive rights or gender changes.

For many women, abortion is a hard-won right and they believe that they alone should decide whether to keep their pregnancy or terminate it. Achieving that right (codified in the 1973 Roe v .Wade decision) was the most important feminist victory since the advent of voting rights for women. Their political opponents say pregnant women should not have unfettered discretion to deal with pregnancy since it involves another, innocent life. The debate over women’s rights, human autonomy, and the protection of innocents is suffused with both practical consequences and symbolic weight.

The same is true for transgender rights. The right of adults to choose their gender is now widely accepted, a major change from 20 or 30 years ago. The battles now are whether children should be subject to irreversible changes, who should make those decisions, whether transgender women (born men) should compete against biological women and girls in sports, whether biological and transgender girls should use the same bathrooms and locker rooms, and whether taxpayers should pay for gender-changing operations on prison inmates and illegal aliens. The numbers involved in these issues are relatively small, but their symbolic weight is large. Opposing sides face each other across a cultural chasm, drenched with contempt for the opposition.

These differences are playing out against a disorienting background condition, which is often ignored when we discuss politics and culture. The basic structure of modern economies is changing rapidly. The last such disorienting economic change was the Great Depression and, before that, the Second Industrial Revolution in the 1890s (the advent of big steel, oil, chemicals, and large corporations to manage them). Both the 1890s and 1930s produced long-lasting shifts in voters’ political alignments.

We are seeing another great realignment now, driven (on the economic side) by rapid innovation in computer technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. When those are combined with low-cost transportation, virtually free communication, and trade rules that encourage globalization, the result is social dislocation and disorientation. There is a palpable threat to employment in American manufacturing and, increasingly, in service industries.

Both political parties have responded by supporting trade protection, with Trump taking the lead. Doing so has helped him forge a populist Republican Party, centered on the working-class.

Amid these vast changes and bitter ideological differences, it is hardly surprising to see our political discourse becoming more virulent, depicting the opposition as “enemies,” as Trump has done for some elected representatives (and not just violent extremists).

The only way to contain those differences peacefully is to channel them through established democratic institutions, using well-established procedures. That’s the only hope the losing side will accept the results as legitimate.

To propose major changes to those institutions risks further undermining their already-wobbly legitimacy. To impose those changes for immediate political victories, to impose them with support from only one party, is worse than foolhardy. It’s dangerous. It would keep the amplifiers pinned on 11 while we scream at each other across the deafening noise.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago. His latest book is Free Speech 101: A Practical Guide for Students. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

Trick-or-treating has been associated with Halloween celebrations in the U.S. and Canada since the early 1900s, but, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz shows below, traditions of children going door to door in a quest for treats exist in many parts of the world, with one European custom being widely recognized as the precursor of the North American tradition.

You will find more infographics at Statista

As far back as the Middle Ages, people in the British Isles dressed up for holidays and went from door to door performing scenes in order to receive a thank-you in the form of food and drink.

The tradition is preserved today in Scotland and Ireland under the name guising and features dressed-up children rather than theater displays.

The origin of Halloween, celebrated on October 31, also goes back to Celtic traditions, more specifically the Samhain festival, which marked the beginning of winter and a time when fairies and spirits needed to be appeased. 

Like many Christian holidays, All Saints’ Day (November 1) and its eve, All Hallows’ Day, coincide with the pagan festival and trick-or-treating is done in Portugal on the first day of November.

All Saints’ Day also has a big significance in Mexico (celebrated as Day of the Dead there) but U.S. Halloween traditions have also been adopted, most heavily in the Northern and Central parts of the country, where the custom is named calaverita (litte skull) after the sugar skulls which are gifted for the festival.

But scary dress and trick-or-treating antics are not tied to a single date: Scandinavian children engage in them around Easter, while those in Northern Germany and Southern Denmark pick New Year’s Eve. In Southern Germany, Austria Switzerland, the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium, treats are given out not for threats, but for songs, which children perform on November 11 (St. Martin’s Day). Caroling for sweets is also performed during Ramadan in Central Asia. This is where trick-or-treating blends into Christmas caroling, which is sometimes also rewarded with food offerings, for example in Eastern Europe.

The practice is associated most closely with England and the United States, but involves adults as well as children and more commonly the collection of money, for example for charity.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Coast Guard said that it intends to send specialized forces, training teams, and other capacity-building assets to help Indo-Pacific allies bolster their ability to safeguard exclusive economic zones and protect their natural resources from exploitation, according to the Coast Guard 2024 operational posture report released on Oct. 25.

The report states that the region remains “a top regional priority” for the United States, citing its geostrategic importance, vital role in global trade, and the need to ensure “a free, open, and rules-based maritime order.”

“We are expanding our presence and cooperation in Southeast and South Asia, with a focus on advising, training, deployment, and capacity building,” the Coast Guard stated while also pledging to continue to support its allies’ efforts in combating “predatorial fishing practices.”

The report comes amid growing concerns over China’s military assertiveness in the region but did not mention the Chinese communist regime by name. It stated that the United States aims to boost the capacity of regional coast guards to support them in countering “malign influence,” enforcing their laws and addressing their priority interests such as climate change.

According to the report, the Coast Guard will deploy its National Security cutters—the centerpiece of its fleet—to the Western Pacific and move the 270-foot Harriet Lane cutter to the Indo-Pacific. The Coast Guard said it will also maintain operations of fast response cutters and buoy tenders in Oceania.

During an Oct. 18 press conference, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that China’s “increasingly coercive” behavior in the Indo-Pacific could have implications for the whole world and that cooperation with Indo-Pacific allies has become vital.

“We’re also troubled by the growing alignment between Russia and the People’s Republic of China [PRC], including the PRC’s support for [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] indefensible war of choice against Ukraine, and that makes our close cooperation with our Indo-Pacific friends more vital than ever,” he stated.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been criticized for its increasingly aggressive actions against its neighboring countries, particularly Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan.

Last month, China conducted joint military drills with Russian naval and air forces in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan’s Hokkaido Island, aiming to boost their strategic military cooperation and enhance “the ability to jointly respond to security threats.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has reported a surge in Chinese military activity around the island in recent months. On Oct. 27, the ministry said it had detected 22 Chinese military aircraft and seven vessels near the island’s vicinity, with 17 of the aircraft spotted crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

On Oct. 10, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. criticized Chinese coast guards for blasting horns, firing water cannons, and ramming Philippine maritime boats during three separate clashes near the disputed Sabina Shoal, also known as Xianbin in Beijing and Escoda in Manila.

The United States announced last week $8 million in new funding to modernize the Philippines Coast Guard (PCG), following the U.S.-Philippines maritime dialogue held in Manila on Oct. 24.

The funding will be used to support the PCG’s infrastructure enhancement, training program development, and resource acquisition and management planning, according to an Oct.28 statement by the U.S. Embassy in Manila.

During the meeting, delegates from the two countries reviewed ongoing cooperative efforts and discussed ways to address maritime concerns in the disputed South China Sea.

Both sides underscored the importance of upholding the 2016 arbitral award on the South China Sea, which ruled in favor of the Philippines in its legal action against China and declared that Beijing’s sovereignty claims had no legal basis. The CCP has refused to accept or recognize the ruling.

Beijing has asserted territorial claims over nearly the entire South China Sea, including reefs and islands that overlap with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

The world’s richest man and Donald Trump’s most prominent supporter has reportedly acquired two mansions in Austin, Texas, within walking distance of each other, paying upwards of $35 million for the villas to support his growing family (of which there are at least 11).  

Nosy New York Times journalists, citing sources and public records … 

… were the first to report that Musk acquired two mansions in Austin, all within walking distance of each, for $35 million. They said one of the mansions was a 14,400-square-foot mansion resembling a Tuscan home. The other home was directly behind it. 

Sources told the NYTimes there was a third mansion about a 10-minute walk away—this is the home Musk usually stays at while in Austin. 

NYT journos wrote:

Three mansions, three mothers, 11 children and one secretive, multibillionaire father who obsesses about declining birthrates when he isn’t overseeing one of his six companies: It is an unconventional family situation, and one that Mr. Musk seems to want to make even bigger. 

Musk moved to Austin after dumping his California mansions and shifted his companies, SpaceX, Tesla, and the Boring Company, to Texas. This decision was primarily because Governor Gavin Newsom and far-left Democrats ruined California with backfiring progressive policies that sparked a tidal wave of violent crime. Plus, business conditions in the state are atrocious compared with Texas. 

In Musk’s mind, imploding global fertility rates are the biggest crisis of our lifetime: “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.” 

Authored by The Epoch Times Staff,

As election day approaches, courts have been making a series of decisions that bear on how Americans’ votes get counted in the 2024 election cycle.

Virginia, a critical swing state, sought the Supreme Court’s intervention yesterday – just eight days before Election Day – after two lower courts blocked its effort to purge non-citizens from its voter rolls. The Justice Department (DOJ) had sued the commonwealth and won an injunction over its purported violation of the National Voter Registration Act’s prohibition on systematic attempts to clean up voter rolls 90 days before an election. [ZH: The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the commonwealth, allowing the removal of non-citizens).

DOJ filed a similar lawsuit in Alabama, which resulted in a separate injunction by a federal judge. The same law was part of the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) challenge to Michigan’s alleged failure to maintain its voter roles, but a federal judge dismissed the party’s lawsuit on Oct. 22.

Mail-in ballots have been a controversial issue, especially after their widespread use during the 2020 presidential election, with questions surrounding their reliability. Two ballot boxes were reportedly burned on Oct. 28 in Washington and Oregon. 

Two rulings on mail-in ballots have come from the Nevada Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the weeks leading up to the election. The first held on Oct. 28 that late-arriving ballots could be counted up to three days after the election, while the other held on Oct. 25 that the Constitution required ballots be counted on election day.

The RNC, which sought stricter limits on counting in Mississippi and Nevada, recently told The Epoch Times it was involved with more than 130 lawsuits across 26 states this election cycle. 

The party also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which voted 5-4 to allow provisional ballots from individuals who improperly cast mail-in ballots.

Elon Musk, who endorsed former President Donald Trump, came under fire in Philadelphia, where the city’s district attorney sued to halt what he described as an “illegal lottery” promoted by the billionaire. Musk’s America PAC is giving away $1 million every day to a person who has signed a petition supporting the Constitution.

Other lawsuits have been filed over policies surrounding results certification, overseas voters, voting by convicted felons, mail-in ballots, and voter rolls. Georgia, another potential swing state, attempted to install seven new rules before the election, but each was struck down by a superior court judge earlier this month.

Despite all the recent billions in US taxpayer monies recently sunk into Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky is fuming after key controversial aspects to his ‘victory plan’ pitched to Biden administration officials were leaked to The New York Times.

The following is the leaked content made public for the first time in the Tuesday NY Times piece:

In one part not made public, Mr. Zelensky proposed a “nonnuclear deterrence package” in which Ukraine would get Tomahawk missiles, a totally unfeasible request, a senior U.S. official said. A Tomahawk has a range of 1,500 miles, more than seven times the range of the long-range missile systems called ATACMS that Ukraine got this year. And the United States sent only a limited number of those, senior U.S. officials said.

On the whole, the NYT report comes off scathing and negative toward Zelensky, calling his recent tour to lobby Washington and the West in favor of his victory plan a failure. But then it comments that the plan was likely set up to fail.

The Times piece strongly suggests the whole thing is a political charade to begin with, and that Zelensky set up the ‘victory plan’ for failure in order to lay ultimate blame on the West for ‘lack of support’ when it inevitably rejects it:

But the real audience for the plan might be at home, some military analysts and diplomats say. Mr. Zelensky can use his hard sell — including a recent address to Parliament — to show Ukrainians that he has done all he can, prepare them for the possibility that Ukraine might have to make a deal and give Ukrainians a convenient scapegoat: the West.

In the wake of this leak to the Times by Biden admin officials, Zelensky has begun lashing out directly at the White House in a rare moment.

“And this was confidential information between Ukraine and the White House. How should we understand these messages? So, it means between partners there’s nothing confidential?” Zelensky said in a fresh media interview published Wednesday.

According to Politico’s commentary:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Wednesday that he asked the United States for Tomahawk long-range missiles to help defeat Russia — and slammed the White House for leaking secrets to the American media.

…Zelenskyy, though, was displeased with information about the Tomahawk request being divulged to The New York Times for a story in which an anonymous senior U.S. official described the Ukrainian request as totally unfeasible.

⚡️ President Zelenskyy on Tomahawks: “It was confidential information between Ukraine and White House. How to understand these messages? So, it means, between partners there is no confidential things.” pic.twitter.com/gTDFuEWLks

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) October 30, 2024

Still, one Ukrainian official told the same publication, “We know the plan is realistic. U.S. own military studied it and said it is realistic.” So it seems the White House is indeed throwing Zelensky under the bus, even as he tries to do the same to the White House.

What has become very clear to all is that Ukraine forces are in the throes of suffering decisive battlefield defeat in the east, and now the blame-game begins.

* * *

Below is some further commentary by Gray Zone journalist Aaron Maté [emphasis ZH]…

US officials recently leaked that Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” includes a request for long-range US Tomahawk missiles, which they ruled out as too escalatory. Zelensky is understandably upset that this was disclosed. He’s being thrown under the bus.

But it’s worse than that. Before it invaded in Feb. 2022, Russia sought a US commitment to not place long-range missiles like the Tomahawk inside Ukraine. Biden initially said he was open to discussing that, but then backed off.

This likely factored into Russia’s decision to impose its security demands by force. Rather than negotiate with Russia, Biden chose to encourage war — and then leave Ukraine hanging anyway.

Authored by Tristan Abbey via RealClearEnergy,

It should go without saying that natural gas in normal conditions doesn’t liquify itself. It’s a shame the Biden-Harris administration acts as if it does.

When the gas comes out of the ground it must be captured immediately, transported by pipeline to a processing plant, processed, fed into another pipeline, and transported to a liquefaction facility, where it is super-cooled to 260 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) and becomes a liquid. But that’s only half the deal. After it is liquified, the gas is loaded onto a specialized ship called an LNG carrier, transported across the ocean to a regasification facility, regasified, fed into another pipeline, and delivered— to residential customers where it will warm their homes or cook their food; to power plants to generate electricity; and to all manner of factories as a raw component in the manufacture of fertilizers, steel, plastics, paint, and other commodities. 

Breaking into the global LNG market has been a generational endeavor—and an outstanding success—for the American economy. The technical sophistication required to master the liquefaction, transportation, and regasification of this vital hydrocarbon is not trivial. Each LNG cargo represents the fruits of years of permitting and construction, the investment of billions of dollars, and negotiations of contracts (also known as “off-take agreements”) that will be in force for decades. Long-term operations, long-term relationships, long-term impact.

The arrival of carriers laden with American LNG to Europe in the months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was celebrated by the Biden-Harris administration. These ships, metaphorically speaking, set sail a decade earlier, as LNG export terminals navigated the dilapidated federal regulatory process. These liquefaction facilities, in turn, rely on natural gas supplied from fields that themselves had to be explored and developed over many years.

But now the White House incumbents are playing with fire. Their decision in January 2024 to pause most export approvals until the completion of duplicative economic and environmental studies has already damaged the trustworthiness of American natural gas supplies. Japan, one of our closest allies and most important customers for LNG, was the first to sound the alarm. That damage will be compounded if these studies provide an excuse for the federal government to extract concessions from the U.S. natural gas industry before approvals resume.

Regulatory uncertainty means higher costs, longer and delayed timelines, and potentially disrupted supply chains. “Turning off” LNG exports would cause a cascading series of dislocations throughout the economy, not only in the export sector. It has taken the better part of a generation already to achieve the nation’s dominant position in natural gas. That is at risk with the stroke of a pen. The next president can lift the pause on approvals, but that will need to be done carefully to mitigate the risk of litigation, and only Congress can provide a permanent solution.

Tristan Abbey is a senior fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics and the author of the new report, “A Generational Opportunity: Achieving U.S. Dominance in Global LNG.”