Authored by Tony Lentini via RealClearDefense,

Military.com recently carried a story on a West Point cadet facing charges for sexual harassment and sexual assault. The article named names, not just of this one cadet, but also of another cadet charged with sexual misconduct, an officer faculty member facing conduct-related charges and the garrison commander who was acquitted of impaired driving charges.

Yet, after then-Superintendent Robert S. Caslen promised an investigation into why West Point permitted insubordinate communist cadet Spenser Rapone to graduate in 2016, the Army refused to release its findings on the spurious grounds of protecting Rapone’s privacy. This, despite the cadet’s public flouting of his Marxist political sympathies. Moreover, the promised but undelivered investigation was to be not of Rapone himself but of Caslen’s leadership or lack thereof in allowing an avowed communist to graduate. (Caslen subsequently resigned from his post-West-Point civilian job as president of the University of South Carolina for allegedly plagiarizing parts of a speech.)

In another case, the fate of several cadets who overdosed on cocaine laced with fentanyl on Spring Break two years ago has never been publicly released, again on privacy grounds.  I have an outstanding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to determine their final disposition that has been pending for over a year now, despite federal law requiring a response within 20 working days.  West Point’s public affairs officer cited privacy laws as the reason for the Academy’s stonewalling, even though I specifically did not ask for their names, only their punishment.  But their names should be released, as well as their fate, since drug abuse is a serious offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the cadets’ actions publicly discredited the United States Military Academy.

Something rotten is going on at West Point and within our military.  Why are some names released while others are not?  Why are sexual misconduct allegations and related court filings publicly disseminated while cadet drug abuse and West Point administrative failures are covered up?

My own FOIA request is now languishing in the “Initial Denial Authority” office of the Secretary of the Army at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia.  Repeated calls and emails to expedite the release of information as to the cocaine-fentanyl cadets’ final disposition have gone unanswered.  A classmate’s five-month-old FOIA request to obtain West Point documents related to the Superintendent’s stated intention to make the Cadet Honor Code “more aspirational” was summarily dismissed by that same office for clearly bogus reasons:  1) That the Academy’s FOIA office had supplied the requested materials (they had not, providing only non-germane items); and 2) That a document search had uncovered no such documents.  By “completely bogus,” I mean that they lied.

West Point is a federally funded institution.  The Academy, and the military in general, are subject to federal laws, just as the rest of us are.  In fact, even more so, because the U.S. military traditionally and by law is subject to civilian control.  So, why are they permitted to pick and choose which laws to obey and which to willfully ignore?  Why are they permitted to ignore legitimate taxpayer requests for information?  Why the disparity between releasing names in sexual assault cases but not in drug cases and administrative failures?

What is West Point covering up and why?  When and how will these lawbreaking officials be held to account?  And when is this once proud and honorable institution finally going to come clean?

Tony Lentini is a 1971 West Point graduate and a founding board member of the MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates.  He served five years in the Army, attaining the rank of captain, and then spent his civilian career in the energy industry, ultimately serving as vice president of public and international affairs for two independent oil and gas exploration and production companies.

Jordan Neely’s death in a crowded Manhattan subway car made worldwide headlines in May 2023, after bystander footage showed former Marine Daniel Penny restraining the erratic homeless man in a fatal chokehold. The case is finally set to go to trial, with jury selection beginning Monday.

Penny, who has argued that he acted to protect fellow passengers from a menacing Neely, faces charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Neely, a homeless Michael Jackson impersonator with a history of mental illness, died after Penny placed him in a chokehold for several minutes. According to prosecutors – who don’t have to prove intent to kill, Penny acted recklessly in causing Neely’s death.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has argued that Penny knew during the encounter that he might kill Neely, even if that was not his intention.

They’ve cited testimony from a Marine trainer, who told the grand jury that Marines are taught that chokeholds — which are meant to be a “non-lethal” restraint — can sometimes be fatal.

Prosecutors will also bring up evidence that Penny kept Neely in his chokehold for six minutes, continuing to restrain him even after the homeless man was no longer making purposeful movements.

“The notion that death is not a foreseeable consequence of squeezing someone’s neck for six minutes is beyond the pale,” the DA’s office wrote in a November 2023 court filing. –NY Post

Penny, a former infantry squad leader, has maintained that he did not intend to kill Neely, however Bragg’s office only has to convince a jury that Penny “recklessly” caused the death or disregarded a “substantial and unjustifiable risk of death” when he kept Neely in a chokehold for several minutes.

Julie Rendelman, a former prosecutor, suggested that the prosecution will likely play video footage of the incident in slow motion to underscore Penny’s extended use of force. “I think they really need to break down the scene, literally, second-by-second,” she explained.

According to Rendelman, prosecutors will make a huge mistake if they try to argue that Neely was “no danger to anyone” before Penny stepped in.

“You may lose some of those jurors who have been on the train many times, threatened by different individuals on many occasions,” she told the Post. “They really have to approach it in a way that recognizes that, but also recognizes that he went too far.”

The Defense’s Strategy

Penny’s defense lawyers, Thomas Kenniff and Steven Raiser, are expected to argue that their client’s actions were justified, pointing to what they describe as Neely’s erratic and threatening behavior. Witnesses recalled Neely shouting that “someone is going to die today” and declaring that he was “ready to go to Rikers.”

The defense is likely to question the medical examiner’s ruling that Penny’s chokehold directly caused Neely’s death. In an October 2023 motion, the attorneys argued that the examiner never provided specific evidence that Neely died from asphyxiation. Penny’s team may also attempt to introduce evidence of Neely’s drug use, pointing to toxicology reports that indicated Neely had the synthetic drug K2 in his system. While Penny’s lawyers acknowledge that the reports do not specify the quantity, they suggest that the drug could have been a contributing factor.

Who Will Testify?

According to the report, there will be several witnesses who were on the train, police officers who responded to the scene, and detectives who interviewed Penny. The city medical examiner’s office will likely present its findings, and the prosecution may call psychological experts to shed light on Penny’s mindset during the encounter.

A looming question is whether Penny himself will take the stand. Legal observers are divided on the wisdom of this move, but Rendelman said, “I think he probably needs to testify,” adding “This is one of the cases where it is likely that the jury is going to want to hear from Penny, because part of that justification is going to be about what he perceived at the time that the events were happening.”

The Stakes and Challenges

If convicted of second-degree manslaughter, Penny could face up to 15 years in prison. A conviction on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide carries a maximum sentence of four years. The final decision on sentencing would rest with Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley.

Jury selection is expected to be a critical phase, as prospective jurors’ own experiences on the subway could shape their views. “Jury selection is always a big part of any case, but for this one in particular, multiply that by 10,” said Brooklyn prosecutor Jason Goldman.

And according to Rendelman, “at the end of the day, one of their arguments is going to be even if you assume that initially – Daniel Penny’s argument that self defense is true, there was a point in time where there was no longer self-defense protection.”

Authored by Rhesa Browning via The Mises Institute,

Enough Already by Scott Horton is a must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth about US foreign policy in the Middle East for the last 35 years. Horton starts his exposé with the 9/11 tragedy, and then details all the terror wars up until today. Among all the facts and figures, Horton teaches ten important lessons.

Each chapter focuses on a specific country, but these lessons are woven throughout each.

Lesson 1—The US is Not Loyal to Its Allies

“If you want to know who America’s next enemy is, look at who we are funding right now.”—Dave Smith

I used to think this statement was an oversimplification, but it is deadly accurate. Our government routinely makes allies only to turn around and attack them years later. One clear example is what would become al Qaeda. In the 1980s, the US armed Afghan resistance fighters to oppose Russia in Afghanistan. After 9/11, al Qaeda became the archenemy of the US. Then, about ten years later, they started arming them again to fight in Iraq and in Syria.

In Afghanistan, the US supported the Taliban during the Clinton administration. Then multiple presidents fought a 20-year war against them only to give full control of Afghanistan back to the Taliban in 2021.

The US followed the same pattern with Iraq. The US armed them against Iran during the 1980s. They supported Hussein all the way to Iraq War I in 1990. Then they bombed and sanctioned the country until they captured him in 2003 and had him executed.

Lesson 2—The US Prolongs Wars

Without US involvement in the Middle East, both sides in a conflict would be similar in strength and have less resources to continue. In the Yemen War, the US sends arms to Saudi Arabia, who then sends them to their allies in Yemen to fight the Houthis, even though the Houthis “won” years ago. Take the US out of the equation and the Saudi’s allies wouldn’t be able to continue the war.

The same thing happened in Somalia when the US armed Ethiopian forces to invade. Continued US support incentivized the Ethiopian groups to continue fighting after it started. Outside the Middle East, this lesson played out the exact same way in the Ukraine-Russia war. Plus, the US stopped peace negotiations between Zelensky and Putin through their proxy Boris Johnson.

Lesson 3—The US Justifies Starting Wars with Nonsense

The best example is Iraq War II. One of the main intellectual justifications for attacking Iraq in 2003 was a white paper titled “A Clean Break,” written by David Wurmser. In it he dreams that if the US military would overthrow Iraq’s Baathist Party, they could set up a government and form close allies in the region. He then imagined that Syria and Lebanon would prefer to follow a US puppet regime in Iraq over Iran, and that the new Shia Iraqi government would unite more closely with the US than Iran. However, they were never going to prefer a secular Western government over fellow Muslims. Contrary to Wurmser’s mythology, Iraq immediately allied with Iran and the rest of the Shia world instead of the US.

We also all know about the false accusations the Bush Administration made to garner support for Iraq War II. They fabricated stories about Iraq having chemical and biological weapons, and about Hussein collaborating with al Qaeda.

Lesson 4—The US Causes the Problems They Claim to Prevent

The clearest example of this is Libya in 2011. The US government justified their intervention saying that, without it, Muammar Gadhafi would massacre his own civilians in response to al Qaeda-aligned rebels opposing his rule. However, US involvement in the conflict caused civilian massacres instead of preventing them. The US-backed rebels terrorized civilians wherever they gained control and instituted a new slave system.

Lesson 5—The US-Led Terror Wars Don’t Defend America

After 9/11, the Taliban offered to help the US capture Osama Bin Laden. Instead of working with the Taliban to avenge the lives of dead Americans, they attacked Afghanistan to conquer the country and install a Western-style government. It demonstrated the purpose was to build an empire, not to defend America.

The US waged many of the subsequent wars to benefit Israel and Saudi Arabia. The US fought Iraq War III and the Syrian War to reduce Iran’s influence in the region for this purpose. Another reason the US started Iraq War II was to open land for a new pipeline from Iraq to Israel. 

In the Yemen War, the Houthis were enemies of Saudi Arabia, not the US. The US still dutifully sent in weapons.

Lesson 6—The US Lies about Every Aspect of These Wars

They lie about why we should stay, they lie about status updates, they lie about the groups they support. In one of Scott Horton’s radio commercials, he states, “they lied us into war, all of them.” It applies to every aspect of these wars.

In 2012, the US government showed they were willing to lie in the most insane ways. They blamed the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on an anti-Islamic video made by an Egyptian-American from Los Angeles. They even threw him in jail for almost a year based on spurious “probation violations” charges. In reality, the terrorists attacked to exact revenge for secret raids against them coordinated by Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan. Further, US officials were in Benghazi to transfer weapons from Libya to Syria, between radical Islamists. That led to another lie calling ISIS “moderate” rebels.

Lesson 7 – The US-Led Terror Wars Produce More Terrorists

The US military interventions in the Middle East have created more terrorists. In September 2001, al Qaeda consisted of 400 people hiding in eastern Afghanistan. Scott Horton doesn’t give an exact number of their numbers today (though some have estimated at least over 20,000), but he listed al Qaeda-affiliated organizations operating all over the Middle East. Just about every country mentioned in Enough Already now has al Qaeda or Bin Ladenite-style forces in it. Ironically, al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan is at another low point now that the Taliban is back in control.

Lesson 8—The US Primarily Kills Civilians 

The book throughout presents death and casualty numbers for these wars. Based on those numbers, they roughly kill about 100 times more civilians than combatants. During the 1990s, US bombings and sanctions killed around 500,000 Iraqi civilians. Drone strikes in Pakistan often targeted civilians based on faulty intelligence. Even when they hit terrorists, civilians die because the strikes hit public spaces or community gatherings. Tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians have died because of the war and the blockade resulting in mass starvation there. US-backed al Qaeda forces killed thousands of civilians during the Libyan Civil War of 2011. The same exact thing happened in Syria as ISIS was notorious for massacring civilians in the areas they conquered.

Lesson 9—The US has Lost Every War It Started in the Middle East

They haven’t “won” one war in the Middle East. The war in Afghanistan ended with the US giving the country back to the Taliban. In Yemen, the Houthis won and continue to control the main population centers. In Mali, Somalia, and Libya, al Qaeda-affiliated groups are in power. The closest thing to a US victory is Libya since they armed al Qaeda to take out Gadhafi. In Syria, Bashar Al Assad is still in power. Even though the US was successful in deposing Saddam Hussein, the current government is strongly allied with Iran over the US. With such a list of failures the only sensible path is to pursue peaceful interactions.

Lesson 10—The US Terror Wars Hurt Americans

The wars hurt normal American citizens in several different ways. Most directly, 7000 American soldiers have been killed with more wounded. Thousands more are suicidal and living lives of desperation because of PTSD.

The factor affecting most Americans is that the US government pays for military interventions through inflation, debt, and taxation. Simply put, they are stealing from us. As a result, it has become harder for Americans to purchase a home or build a family. This lack of economic opportunity also affects crime rates and homelessness.

Last, the tools used in those foreign wars are now used on American citizens. The most serious threats to our liberty come from the PATRIOT Act, police militarization, and the NDAA, which allows the government to jail citizens with no due process. I would say that we’ve had enough already. It’s time to end the war on terrorism and every other war we are supporting in the world.

The race to shock and awe with the greatest number of tax cuts ahead of the November 5 election is nearing its climax.

Donald Trump said he’d consider exempting police officers, firefighters, active duty military and veterans from paying taxes, the Republican nominee’s latest campaign trail idea to deliver tax breaks to key groups of supporters.

“It’s something I would think about,” Trump said in response to a question about excluding first responders and military members from tax bills on an online show Maintaining with Tyrus that aired Friday.

“You’re like my tax person there, but yeah. I mean something has to be done,” he said. “It’s almost an incentive to where you can get people interested.”

The idea to exempt members of the military and first responders from taxation is the latest in a long list of tax proposals Trump has talked about while campaigning against Kamala Harris. He’s pledged to i) eliminate taxes on tipped wages, ii) taxes on overtime pay and iii) taxes on Social Security benefits.

To be sure, Trump didn’t give any more details about the service member tax exclusion, and any such ideas would require congressional approval in order to become law, which is why absent a Republican sweep most of Trump’s promises will end up as being just hot air.

The no-taxes-on-military-and-first-responders idea could be among the largest new tax cuts he’s discussed to date, exempting more than 20 million people from federal tax payments. According to Bloomberg, there are about 18 million living veterans in the US, roughly 1.3 million active duty troops, approximately 1 million police offers in the US and more than 300,000 professional firefighters, according to several estimates. The US does offer some broad tax exemption to military members, but that is largely limited to people who are serving in active combat zones.

Over the last several months, Trump has rolled out a steady drumbeat of politically beneficial tax cut plans focused on key election constituencies, as a way to appeal to voters in an extremely tight election — particularly, low-and-middle-income Americans frustrated by high prices. The Republican nominee has thrown out such a wide range of tax proposals that even his own advisers are unsure about which ones he intends to enact if elected.

Now that it is clear that neither candidate gives a rat’s ass about the war-time US budget deficit which just hit a mindblowing 6% of GDP despite US GDP allegedly growing at a 3%+ rate…

… Trump it taking his tax break promises to the limit while also campaigning on extending the tax cut first passed when he was president. Major portions of that law, including lower tax brackets for households and deductions for small businesses, are set to expire at the end of 2025. Trump has also pledged to further lower the corporate rate to 15% from 21% and expand the state and local tax deduction, a write-off popular in New York and California where Republicans face close House elections to keep their majority in the chamber.

Economists have warned that his policy portfolio may balloon the federal debt, adding as much as $15 trillion to the debt over the next decade, according to an estimate from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump contends that economic growth and energy production would offset the loss in tax revenue.

Of course, the only other presidential candidate that could balloon the federal debt more than Trump is Kamala Harris, whose admin has seen US debt grow by $8 trillion, with US debt growth set to double or triple if her promises of reparations to blacks are realized.

In the Friday interview, Trump also suggested military members should become teachers when asked about measures to secure schools.

“So what about teachers that are in the military and they’re teachers, they leave the military, they become history teachers,” Trump said. “They’re in the room and they get to know the students and they know how to use a gun. You can’t have people that don’t have any idea about what to do with guns.”

Some states, including Iowa and Tennessee, have passed laws allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons on school campuses, a controversial measure that has faced broad criticism from teachers unions and some parents, who say that will make schools less safe.

Authored by James Bovard,

When did preventing election fraud become a violation of the Voting Rights Act?

According to President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, it is now a federal crime to prevent illegal ballots in presidential elections. 

Barely 30 days before the 2024 election, the Justice Department sued the state of Virginia to prohibit its removal of the names of noncitizens from voting rolls. Gov. Glenn Youngkin was enforcing a 2006 Virginia law, but the Biden administration portrayed that action as an attack on “the cornerstone of our democracy.” Youngkin denounced the federal lawsuit as “a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections” in Virginia.

The Virginia lawsuit is simply the latest in Democrats’ long war against honest voting, which began with the Clinton administration’s Motor Voter Act. That 1993 law mandated voter registration in every welfare and food-stamp office in the nation. Brent Thompson, executive director of the Fair Government Foundation, observed in 1996, “The Motor Voter law did away with a panoply of anti-fraud mechanisms long relied on by the states to police and deter fraudulent voting.”

In 2015, the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton condemned voter identification requirements as part of a “sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people.” A Washington Post headline aptly summarized her message: “Hillary Clinton Declares War on Voter ID.” Verifying identification was unnecessary because, as long as enough ballots showed up with a check by Hillary’s name, she would be irrevocably entitled to all the power she could seize in the following four years. 

Lax voting procedures in some states were insufficient to enable Hillary to capture the White House. But the panic induced by Covid-19 enabled politicians to radically loosen the rules for the next presidential election. Many states made it easier—if not automatic—to vote by mail, even though a 2012 New York Times analysis concluded that “fraud in voting by mail is… vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention.” Some states abandoned any effort to verify mail ballots, dropping requirements for matching signatures, return addresses, or having a witness verify the person and the vote. Civil Rights Commissioner J. Christian Adams noted that “Democrats succeeded in tossing out state laws related to absentee ballot verification, deadlines and a whole range of laws all in the name of Covid.”

Neither the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution (rules for federal elections “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof”) nor state law stopped the rigging of the 2020 vote. Michigan sent “unsolicited absentee-voter ballot applications by mail to all 7.7 million registered Michigan voters…without signature verification as expressly required” by state law. The Wisconsin Elections Commission approved setting up to 500 unmanned ballot drop boxes in major Democratic cities in violation of Wisconsin law. That commission  and local election officials encouraged all Wisconsin “voters to unlawfully declare themselves ‘indefinitely confined’—which under Wisconsin law allows the voter to avoid security measures like signature verification and photo ID requirements,” as the Texas Attorney General noted in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that election officials acted illegally, but that did nothing to nullify the hundreds of thousands of votes that came in via illicit loopholes. Biden carried Wisconsin by 20,000 votes.

To stifle controversy over electoral rule changes, Biden’s media allies created a fairy tale. A week after Election Day, the New York Times ran a banner headline across the top of the front page: “Election Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud.” How did the Times know? Their reporters basically called election officials in each state and asked, “Did y’all have any fraud?” A total lack of fraud in an election with more than 100 million voters would have required divine intervention to achieve. Biden’s 2020 victory became the election equivalent of the Immaculate Conception. A Washington Post headline scoffed that anyone who doubted Biden’s victory was an “Election Denier”—placing them in the same odious category as Holocaust deniers. An ABC News analysis portrayed distrust of the election results as a form of mental illness.

Most of the American media pretended that voter fraud was so rare that the mere suggestion of its occurrence was a heresy against democracy. But a few weeks after Biden was sworn in as president, a federal investigation revealed that the U.S. government bankrolled some of the most brazenly corrupt elections in modern times. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), issued a report titled, “Elections: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan,” that should have received far more attention in Washington and beyond. SIGAR revealed that the net result of 15 years of U.S. pro-democracy assistance was that Afghanistan’s 2019 presidential election was “the most corrupt the country had ever held.” U.S. tax dollars poured into the coffers of Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission to safeguard voting, but that agency was a prime source of the most shameless vote stealing. U.S. aid enabled the Afghan government to purchase sophisticated electronic voting systems. But SIGAR’s report warned that “because governments often control electoral commissions and the procurement of election technology, they are well placed to use it to commit fraud.” SIGAR ruefully noted, “The true purpose of adopting election technologies may not be to actually reduce fraud, but to create the illusion of doing so.” A U.S. Army colonel who deployed several times to Afghanistan told SIGAR that as early as 2006, the Afghan government had “self-organized into a kleptocracy.” Officials who were stealing everything else never hesitated to steal votes. The collapse of democratic legitimacy paved the way for the collapse of the U.S. puppet regime in Kabul in August 2021.

The Biden administration sought to exploit Covid-era precedents to turn America into a Drop Box Democracy where minimal efforts by voters automatically sanctify maximum power for politicians. In 2021, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, to force all states to adopt the most unreliable electoral procedures used during the pandemic. The bill, which failed in the Senate, would have compelled all future federal elections to permit paid ballot-harvesting and universal mail-in voting, prohibit checking voter identification, and require states to count ballots that arrive ten days after an election. Many of the same Democrats who championed Covid vaccine passports, which disproportionately barred blacks from restaurants and gyms, also insist that requiring voters to show identification is Jim Crow at its worst.

Histrionics and shenanigans continue to be the Democrats’ preferred substitute for election integrity:

• Kamala Harris objected to voter identification requirements because she bizarrely claimed it was “almost impossible” for rural voters to photocopy their identification papers.
• The city of Detroit responded to a Republican National Party Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for ballot drop box surveillance footage by claiming that the footage had been deleted—after the FOIA request was received. Detroit was notorious for shrouding its vote counting on Election Night 2020, blocking poll watchers from witnessing Biden’s miraculous comeback.
• In Georgia, Judge Thomas Cox on Wednesday struck down the Georgia State Election Board’s new rules to require video surveillance of ballot drop boxes and to regulate ballot-harvesting.
• Lawsuits are proceeding regarding lax standards for absentee mail-in ballots in North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and elsewhere.

Preventing bogus ballots should not be treated like a moral or theological issue. When did verifying votes become a crime against democracy? Why is the Justice Department crusading to turn voting into an entitlement program for non-citizens? Do Democrats seek to make the actual voting as fraud-ridden as politicians’ campaign promises?  Elections need rigorous safeguards against fraud because, as Thomas Paine warned long ago, “the trade of governing has always been monopolized by… the most rascally individuals of mankind.” Four presidential elections since 2000 have been heavily tainted by allegations of foul play. American democracy has zero legitimacy to spare at this point.

Via Common Dreams

“We have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon.” That sentence is the concluding line from an allegedly leaked (or hacked) U.S. intelligence document posted online this week and later reported on by Axios, CNN, and other outlets.

As Axios reported on Saturday, “U.S. officials are extremely concerned about a potentially major security breach after two alleged U.S. intelligence documents about Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran were published by a Telegram account affiliated with Iran.”

The Associated Press and independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein both cited government sources who said the documents appeared to be authentic. While U.S. officials have yet to comment publicly on the material, reporting confirmed an investigation into their authenticity and how they came to be in the public domain was underway.

Since a barrage of missile strikes aimed at military targets in Israel by Iran on Oct 1, a retaliatory strike in response to Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other attacks, the world has been waiting for Israel’s promised military response.

Assuming the documents are authentic, what they show is that U.S. intelligence—as is well known and despite being close allies—keeps a close and clandestine eye on Israeli military operations.

CNN cited an unnamed U.S. official who called the documents being made public “deeply concerning,” though the outlet did not publish the documents in full. The documents, according to CNN,

are marked top secret and have markings indicating they are meant to be seen only by the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

They describe preparations Israel appears to be making for a strike against Iran. One of the documents, which says it was compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says the plans involve Israel moving munitions around.

Another document says it is sourced to the National Security Agency and outlines Israeli air force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, also believed to be in preparation for a strike on Iran. CNN is not quoting directly from or showing the documents.

NEW: A set of classified U.S. intelligence documents purporting to show information about Israel’s plans to strike in Iran have been confirmed as authentic in a report by CNN (https://t.co/8AVOexA1Y8).

Drop Site News has also been reviewing these documents since they were posted… pic.twitter.com/VKOEq9qcbo

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 19, 2024

It has long been known that Israel has a nuclear weapons program and maintains a nuclear arsenal, but it remains both Israeli and U.S. government policy never to acknowledge or confirm the existence of either. In one of the documents, the U.S. specifically references Israel’s ability to deploy a nuclear weapon, though it categorizes the threat of doing so in this case as low.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, recently banned from X for posting an internal opposition research dossier that the Trump campaign had compiled on JD Vance, posted images of both documents to his substack page, as he excoriated major outlets for refusing to do.

“As with the J.D. Vance Dossier, which the entire media knew about but refused to publish, it appears the media has once again lost its nerve – and its sense of what’s news,” Klippenstein wrote.

According to Klippenstein’s assessment:

The intelligence report includes a rundown of the various aspects of Israeli military activities that the U.S. is monitoring to inform its judgments and conclusions: weapons handling, air defense, ground forces, Navy, Air, Special Forces, and even Israel’s Nuclear Forces. But even then, only the weapons handling and special forces categories are identified as having a “medium” predictive ability in regards to determining Israel’s action; the rest are designated “low” predictive ability.

The second intelligence report is titled “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran and Conducts a Second Large-Force Employment Exercise.” The document details Israeli activities during an evident “mission rehearsal” (in U.S. lingo) that could be indicative of how Israel will strike Iran. Citing imagery analysis and other sources, the NGA report notes that the Israeli Air Force is already conducting covert drone operations over Iran (evidently doing its own spying), and how, as part of Israeli Air Force activity, has been handling air-launched ballistic missiles and other weapons.

From the leaked US intel documents: “we did not observe any Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles … we have not observed any indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon”. Notice the NF – no foreigners – marking for that paragraph. https://t.co/Bkfq9KtWew pic.twitter.com/YE9IFKN301

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 20, 2024

Defending release of the full documents, he explained that both provide “insight of enormous public interest as we stand at the precipice of a broader conflict” and contained “information that directly bears upon U.S. obligations and actions. It is for that reason that I’ve decided to publish the basic documents.”

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Russia GDP is now estimated at +3.8 percent, topping the US, despite sanctions. What’s going on?

Russia’s War Economy

Eurointelligence discusses Russia’s War Economy

It is worth looking at the autumn forecast for Russia by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, one of the best sources of economic information for central and eastern Europe. They upgraded their growth forecast for this year by 0.6pp to 3.8%. Russia is outgrowing all western economies, including the US. Growth is forecast to slow down to 2.5% next year because of the impact of a 19% interest rate. It is clear that Russia’s economic expansion is a classic case of a wartime Keynesian effect.

It is also interesting to contrast Russia’s economic development with that of Ukraine’s main supporters in Europe, which have entered into synchronised austerity, first in Germany, and now in France and the UK.

Russia’s fiscal stability is perhaps the biggest surprise. Defence spending is on trajectory towards 6% of GDP. And yet, the 2024 budget deficit is projected at 1.5%, falling to 1% in 2025.

Vasily Astrov, the Russia expert at WIIW, concludes that Putin will have money for the foreseeable future to continue financing the war against Ukraine. A rise in income and corporate tax has meant that Russia’s state finance will become less dependent on energy.

Financial sanctions are ultimately not as successful as their advocates once believed because money is not a natural global monopoly. International banks are certainly susceptible to US dollar sanctions. But not all banks in the world operate in dollar markets. The use of secondary sanctions has become a first-order instrument in the US’s diplomatic toolkit in this century. But it falls into the category of instruments which lose their value the more you use them. Even amongst US economists, we see a lot of complacency about this. It was friction combined with network effects that favoured the emergency of a single dominating currency – the pound sterling, the dollar later. The danger to the dollar is not the euro, or renminbi. It is that micro-channels are becoming viable as technology reduces the frictions.

Lessons of the Day

• The more you depend on sanctions, the less they work.

• That’s the real risk to the dollar.

Here’s a Repeat Lesson on Why Sanctions Fail

On September 26, I commented To Those Hard of Learning, Here’s a Repeat Lesson on Why Sanctions Fail

In that post I refuted a claim that sanction failures are due to a lack of political will.

Also see my September 19, 2023: Lesson of the Day: Sanctions Don’t Work Because They Create New Markets

A person who touted a buyer’s cartel sanction success, now complains the buyers cartel leaks like a sieve.

Finally, please see How China Gets Around US Sanctions on Semiconductors

US sanctions backfire again. China is stronger as a result.

Russia’s GDP shows just how badly misguided and overused sanctions have worked.

A high-ranking Israeli military officer was killed while fighting in Gaza on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the same day.

Colonel Ehsan Daqsa, 41, was commander of Israel’s 401st Armoured Brigade, and died when his tank was targeted by explosive devices during operations inside Jabalia refugee camp. Reports suggest an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated when a group of officers stood outside of their tanks.

Another Israeli soldier was seriously wounded in the same incident, which involved a second tank being blown up.

It remains somewhat rare that a colonel (and brigade commander) would be involved in leading operations directly in the battle zone in Gaza. Col. Daqsa has been identified as one of the most senior officers to have been killed in over a year of Gaza operations.

The Times of Israel reports of the details of his death: “An IDF probe into the death of Daqsa found that he was outside his tank with other officers when they were hit by an explosive device in Jabaliya, as part of an ongoing offensive there against Hamas.”

This strongly suggests that despite the death of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Hamas militants are still fighting fiercely and are not relenting.

Western leaders used the opportunity of Sinwar’s death last week to call for urgent ceasefire and the return of the Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza, but at this point it seems a distant prospect.

Fighting could actually intensify in the wake of Sinwar’s death, given he has been held up among Palestinians in Gaza as a martyr and a hero, who went down fighting till the end.

Meanwhile it looks like Hamas and its external backers are already readying to name a successor: 

Hamas is likely to name Qatar-based Khalil al-Hayya as a successor to slain leader Yahya Sinwar, aligning it closer to Iran and giving its main backer more sway in the next stage of the group’s war with Israel.

Al-Hayya is a protégé of Ismail Haniyeh, Sinwar’s predecessor who was believed to have been assassinated by Israel in Tehran in July. He has been leading indirect negotiations with Israel over both a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks last year, which triggered the ongoing conflict.

Currently there’s very heavy fighting in and around Jabaliya, which is a few kilometers north of Gaza City.

Jabalia |

Israeli soldiers of the 432 battalion share on their private accounts scenes showing them burning Hamed School, Next to Indonesi Hospital in Jabalia RC.

The smoke rising from the school was filmed by Palestinian journalists near the area. pic.twitter.com/gpsZ7yzjWR

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) October 20, 2024

Israeli airstrikes have pummeled the area, providing cover for tank and ground forces, but several reports over the past days have pointed to huge civilian casualties, with dozens killed.

Some 400,000 people are reportedly in Jabalia camp, and there are reports that the military siege has cut off most supplies of food, water, and medicine.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A CNN commentator declared Saturday that white people who don’t vote to “save democracy” won’t be able to “escape the accountability that they must face.”

The remarks were made by Angela Rye during a discussion on the network in which she attempted to move blame for Harris’ dismal polling numbers away from black men.

Rye stated “The responsibility of saving democracy should be on the largest demographic in this country that is white men and white women.“

NEW: CNN commentator Angela Rye says white people who don’t vote for Kamala Harris need to be held accountable.

Rye says that white people who don’t vote to “save democracy” can’t “escape the accountability that they must face.”

The comments came while Rye was trying to… pic.twitter.com/eam8Ujvv5f

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 19, 2024

“Saving Democracy” by expressing a desire to get rid of it again.

Angela Rye forgot democracy is about voting for who you believe in, not being guilt-tripped into voting for Kamala.

— OneXOneY (@OneXOneY) October 19, 2024

She said “it’s a mistake to let white folks escape accountability “

Nobody (black or white ) should be reprimanded for not voting for Scamala Harris or anybody else.

Voting is individual choice.

Smh https://t.co/5kdWNkQmun

— Jeylani Brown (@BrownJeylani) October 19, 2024

Also a bit racist no?

Kamala’s supporters are the most racist people in America. They’re merely echoing what they are guilty of.

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) October 19, 2024

Black people not expressing enthusiasm for Harris is white people’s fault.

White people responsible for white people votes AND black people votes.

LOL

She’s a clown and @CNN should be embarrassed for having her on.

— MissUSA1776 (@real_miss_kim) October 19, 2024

Maybe Obama needs to drop by to give them a stern lecture.

How, exactly should white people be held accountable?

Come and try to “hold me accountable” Angela…whatever that means…

— jim iuorio (@jimiuorio) October 19, 2024

It’s not rocket science as to why Americans, regardless of skin colour, don’t want to vote for Kamala.

People want to be able to afford groceries again.. It’s that simple

— aka (@akafacehots) October 19, 2024

Every time one of these people opens their mouth, it only helps one side.

These race obsessed bigots can keep spreading their new racism all they want – it wins more people to our side.

We want the individual “character” dream of Martin Luther King – not this new age collectivism and group identity pushed by Marxist academics.

— Craig Chamberlin (@CraigChamberlin) October 19, 2024

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